Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 12th, '03

[JackSpratts]

P2P Penetration

Over the recent holiday weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time with a friend I don’t see often enough. She’d recently done some work to her home and couldn’t wait to show it off. I brought over some housewarming cyberpresents for the new place and set to work installing them on her family PC.

It’s always interesting to check out the systems of folks who aren’t seriously involved in the Peer-To-Peer scene. It gives me a chance to see what’s hot and what’s not, what’s popular, what’s obscure.

On this particular system I was a bit surprised to find a cleaned version of Kazaa, as I hadn’t thought many besides heavy users even knew about it, but there it was all ready to go. On top of that, she had a powerful anti-spyware application and even ran regular scans with it. Hmmm I thought, the word is getting around.

I had a few surprises for her of course. I turned her on to a couple of good programs like Soulseek and BitTorrent – she hadn’t heard of either - and she jumped right into both. Her eyes went wide checking out the torrent and it was interesting watching her size up what it means for leeches, immediately grasping they have no place on the BT network. She even got the concept that your files can “drain” faster than they “fill”, which is a bit harder to figure when you first watch the progress lines. But she liked it, and kept checking her status, inbound and out.

Soulseek was a no brainer of course, as that one is the closest thing to Napster since, well, Napster. It’s as easy to use as “install and go” - and everyone gets the terrific buddy system immediately.

I popped a couple of up to date CoDecs in the box so she could watch the latest flicks (she’ll need them now) and played around with the system for a few more minutes before heading out to her deck and a sunny afternoon.

The half hour or so we spent at the computer gave me a chance to reconnect with her and have some fun while we were at it, and it also gave me a little more insight into just how far peer-to-peer has penetrated the American consumer market.

It’s one thing to bat around figures like “30%” or “80 million users” but at the end of the day as important (and huge) as those numbers are they’re of little relevance in any personal way. Outside of press releases, policy making and debating points they’re not particularly useful or informative. What’s required is a way to bring those numbers home.

What I need to do every so often is spend time with someone who uses his or her computer in a low key fashion. Like for surfing or chatting or for just keeping in touch with family and friends. This is how many people actually use them, the ones who will carry file sharing from a niche activity right into the mainstream, and in so doing make it indispensable. The future of Internet file sharing belongs to them. If they don’t “get it”, file sharing could well succumb to the constant assaults of wealthy companies and the legislators in their pockets. But if the people get it, and I think that they do, nothing will stop it. After this weekend I’m more convinced than ever that the future of file sharing is in pretty good hands.










Enjoy,

Jack.










Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA
David McGuire

Small Internet radio stations, angered over what they say is the recording industry's effort to wield royalty rates as a weapon to drive them out of business, say they are preparing to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America.

The Las Vegas-based Webcaster Alliance will send a letter today to the RIAA, threatening to sue the group for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act unless the RIAA agrees to reopen negotiations over the royalty rates webcasters must fork over to artists and record labels, Webcaster Alliance attorney Perry Narancic said.

"We're trying to negotiate with these people, but with a big stick," Narancic said.

The existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged, Narancic said.

The Webcaster Alliance has more than 300 members ranging from tiny hobbyists to small broadcast stations with accompanying Internet sites. The group's members include stations specializing in trance, bluegrass, classical and other genres.

The RIAA has not seen the letter and as such had no comment about its contents, but spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the organization has negotiated in good faith with webcasters.

"We have worked diligently to negotiate fair agreements that offer a broad and flexible array of rates and terms to large, small and non-commercial webcasters," he said.

Webcasters of all sizes have wrangled with the recording industry since 1998, when Congress passed a law requiring Internet radio stations to pay royalties to artists and record labels.

Even after the Librarian of Congress inked a royalty compromise last year, many smaller Internet radio operators maintained that the rates were too high.

Under pressure from Congress, the RIAA and its royalty agent, SoundExchange, negotiated tailored royalty arrangements with specific webcasting segments, including large commercial operators, college stations and small commercial stations, like those represented by the Webcaster Alliance. In June, the RIAA announced that it had struck deals with all major classes of webcasters.

But the Webcaster Alliance maintains that the RIAA and SoundExchange did not go far enough to craft royalty deals with small Internet radio stations and that its lawsuit would challenge the special royalty deals it has already struck, Narancic said.

At issue is which group speaks for small commercial webcasters. To establish royalty rates for this class of Web radio stations, the RIAA negotiated with a group called Voice of Webcasters, which represented fewer than 15 Internet radio stations, according to Narancic.

The VOW members, who Narancic characterized as some of the largest "small" webcasters in the country, agreed to a comparatively high baseline royalty rate -- under which all small webcasters would pay at least $2,000 a year to record labels and artists -- in exchange for a break on high, per- song rates.

The $2,000 figure is four times higher than the $500 baseline established by the U.S. Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress and is beyond the reach of the smallest players in the commercial market, Narancic said.

"This is not an industry where people are making money hand over fist and ripping off the RIAA. You can't imagine what the effect of a $2,000 minimum is," Narancic said. "We've got about 10,000 webcasting operations in the United States. Of that 10,000 we're talking about eliminating all but a few thousand."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Jul9.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hollywood Heist

Will tinseltown let techies steal the show?

By Ronald Grover & Heather Green
With Tom Lowry in New York, Catherine Yang in Washington, and Cliff Edwards in San Mateo, Calif.

Premiere day was fast approaching for The Hulk. The film's budget had already climbed to more than $150 million, including an extra $20 million for George Lucas' special effects company to give the giant green hero an extra dose of ferocity. Even the red-carpet ceremony was in flux, with a last- minute move at the insistence of director Ang Lee from historic Grauman's Chinese Theater to the Universal Amphitheater, where the sound was sharper. But that 11th-hour nitpicking was nothing compared with an earlier uproar at Universal Pictures: Two weeks before Hulk's June 20 release, pirated versions of the blockbuster (BBI ) hopeful were already circulating on the Internet after a New Jersey man got his hands on an early copy and surreptitiously posted it on the Net. Worse yet, the film was getting nasty reviews from disappointed sci-fi buffs.

For Hollywood moguls, that script is more terrifying than anything they could ever put on the big screen. More and more, the first showings of the latest Julia or Mel flicks aren't in just the local cineplex. They're on KaZaA, Morpheus, or iMesh, Internet sites known mostly for music file-sharing but now snapping up pirated movies with remarkable ease. Within a few days of Keanu Reeves battling his first black-suited bad guy in theaters in The Matrix Reloaded, an estimated 200,000 folks had already taken in the action, according to an online rating agency, downloading the long- awaited sequel in their dens and dorms. New episodes of HBO's hit Six Feet Under are on the Net, too, and you needn't be a computer whiz to find them.

It's all too reminiscent of the monster that ate the music business. For a town that loves a good sequel, that's one repeat performance Hollywood isn't keen to produce. Only five years ago, music sales were booming. Today, the industry is nearly paralyzed by piracy. Illegal downloads and file-sharing were partly responsible for last year's loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in worldwide music revenues, about 8%, says PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The speed at which music was brought to its knees makes Hollywood execs tremble. "We may not be the smartest guys around," says Peter Chernin, president of News Corp. "But we'd have to be brain-dead to ignore what it did to those guys."

Can Hollywood avoid getting Napsterized? Right now, the pirates are only nibbling at the $65 billion-a-year film and TV business. Downloading a movie is still a clunky affair that can take a few hours, and only 27% of the country's 66 million online homes have the superfast broadband connections to do it.

Most of the piracy so far is through good old-fashioned counterfeiting. The ripping and burning of movies to DVDs is growing into a global underground industry that last year cost film studios an estimated $3 billion in lost DVD sales. It's prodding the guys in Guccis into action: Security folks outfitted with night goggles routinely patrol press screenings, searching for illicit camcorders. Former FBI agents are leading raids of illegal DVD copying plants in Thailand and Malaysia. Industry lawyers are flooding court dockets with lawsuits against all manner of thieves (page 82).

But the digital threat is looming as ominously as the thick flock of crows gathered on the jungle gym in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Technology is coming on quickly that will make the prospect of copying movies and TV shows much more tantalizing -- and far easier. Already, some 600,000 copies of films a day are being downloaded illegally, according to industry estimates, which could cost Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars in lost video sales. A new crop of gizmos, from digital televisions to personal video recorders (PVRs), will soon make duplicating anything on the tube -- from Fox (FOX ) Broadcasting Co.'s 24 to the latest Jennifer Lopez flick -- a couch potato's dream. And within three years, half the online population will have broadband, making it easier to pass programs captured in digital form around on the Net.

The living room is center stage for all this new digital entertainment. But will it be a war zone or a thriving marketplace shared by the creators of content and the makers of the cool machines that deliver it? That's the urgent question facing studio execs. It's not that they can't envision a rosy scenario for convergence, where there's money to be made at every turn -- from movies on demand to Sex and the City fans streaming their favorite episodes on the PC to teens watching videos on handhelds. "We would certainly like to be able to make our content [increasingly] available in a digital world," Comcast (CMCSK ) Corp. CEO Brian L. Roberts told the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in early June. "But we need to feel secure that we're going to get paid for [it]."

The next few months will be crucial for the Hollywood gang, who are currently wrangling with cable operators, consumer-electronics makers, and the technology industry over protecting their digital gold. Each group has its own philosophies about how much protection -- mandated and voluntary -- the content needs. Historically, working hand in hand with disparate interests has been anathema to the moguls, a single-minded, ego-driven bunch for whom compromise doesn't come easily.
http://businessweek.com/magazine/con...1001_mz001.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lawmakers in Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont and in 130 cities and counties nationwide have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act.

Group Takes Aim At Patriot Law
Tim Hearden

Some residents here want city councilors to order police to defy the USA Patriot Act amid growing complaints that civil liberties have become a casualty in the war on terrorism.

A local citizens' group called the Bill of Rights Committee of Mount Shasta is circulating petitions this weekend to have the issue placed before the City Council on July 28.

The group's chairman, 64-year-old retired carpenter Donald Nobach, said the post-Sept. 11, 2001, legislation has bred "a fascist government" that can launch unbridled invasions of privacy and arrest people without warrants.

"This is not really a political thing . . . because civil rights crosses all boundaries," said Nobach, who served in the Air Force from 1956 to 1961. "Anybody in their right mind would want to maintain what I fought for. I served in the military, and I fought for these rights, and I'm not going to give them away easily."

But the group's proposal would face opposition from acting Police Chief Bill Pieruccini, who said he would disregard the City Council's orders and help federal authorities if his assistance were requested.

"The bottom line is at this point, I support the laws and the Constitution the way that the legislators we've elected have seen fit to pass," Pieruccini said. "That's one of my duties as a police chief . . . so I would definitely have a difficulty if my council told me not to support it. We would definitely have a problem."

The Mount Shasta resolution is part of a national effort to curtail the 20-month-old Patriot Act that gives the federal Justice Department sweeping powers to gather information and crack down on suspected terrorists.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill that would end the Patriot Act's authority for broad searches of materials obtained at libraries and bookstores. Boxer's bill would reinstate a previous law that required such searches to be conducted with a specific warrant tied to a suspect.

Meanwhile, numerous interest groups are taking aim at the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which would strengthen the Patriot Act by allowing the government to make secret arrests, place unrestricted wiretaps and create DNA databases on ordinary Americans.

Lawmakers in Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont and in 130 cities and counties nationwide have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act. The proposal by Mount Shasta's Bill of Rights Committee is being reviewed by City Attorney John Kenny.
http://www.redding.com/top_stories/l...toplo043.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Both Sides Now
Matt Sebastian

Meet Pete Holm, the music industry's worst nightmare.

Sitting in his bare garden-level bedroom, the 23-year-old self-described music nut is rifling through a desk drawer, struggling to recall the last time he actually walked into a record store and bought a CD.

"Does it count if I bought one by accident?" a sheepish Holm asks, explaining how he purchased a DVD recently that, to his surprise, came bundled with a soundtrack album. "No?"

Finally, Holm fishes a leather CD wallet out of the drawer and flips through it, revealing a dozen or so discs by such '90s heavyweights as Nirvana, R.E.M. and Metallica. He ultimately decides the last CD he willingly paid for was a solo album by Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.

That was two years ago.

"I can't tell if this is embarrassing or kind of cool," Holm says, laughing.

So where does Holm get his tunes? Where else but the Internet, home to all the free songs Holm and millions of his fellow music lovers can download. A graphic designer in Golden, Holm has 15 gigabytes of music stuffed into his desktop computer's hard drive — the equivalent of about 350 full CDs.

"It's not that I'm anti-CD," Holm explains. "It just came to a certain point where it was easier to download something than it was to get in my car and drive to the store to buy a CD. Plus, it's free."

But those copyright holders — in these cases, the musicians or their record labels — aren't necessarily on the same page when it comes to downloading. Some have no problem with the free sharing of their work.

"I think it's the greatest thing on Earth," says Sean Kelly of the Boulder-bred Samples. "I highly support our music floating around out there. You can't get any better press or distribution than this Internet stuff.

"I don't know why anyone's against it."

For small bands that make money touring, there's no practical reason to oppose downloading.

"I think it hurts Metallica and people like that," says Doug Martsch of indie rock trio Built to Spill. "But for a band on my level — smaller bands, that is — I think the Internet really helps get the word out."
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/music...086004,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

File Swappers to RIAA: Download This!
Mike Musgrove

The Recording Industry Association of America's announcement on June 25 that it will start tracking down and suing users of file-sharing programs has yet to spook people, say developers of these applications.

"Forget about it, dude -- even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers," said Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, one of several systems that allow users to upload and download files -- many of which are unauthorized MP3 copies of songs published by the RIAA's member companies. Rosso said file-trading activity among Grokster users has increased by 10 percent in the past few days. Morpheus, another file-trading program, has seen similar growth.

Maybe MP3 downloaders are interpreting the recording industry's threat -- an escalation from its earlier strategy of targeting file-sharing developers -- as a sort of "last call" announcement. Starting June 26, RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a news conference, the group would collect evidence against consumers illegally trading files of copyrighted music, with lawsuits to follow in a couple of months.

Or maybe consumers figure the odds of getting busted by the RIAA's legal team are low: A recent report by research firm Yankee Group estimates that 56 million people use file-swapping software in the United States.

Either way, the number of users seems to have grown last week.

"Anytime you get media attention, you get people interested to try it out," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of Streamcast Networks Inc., which developed Morpheus.

Weiss said he's also seen a surge of postings on Morpheus message boards from users who are ticked off at being in the RIAA's cross hairs. "People are just outraged at the actions of the recording industry," he said. "I've got people saying they want to organize groups to boycott buying CDs now."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hptoc_tn


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Estonia, Where Being Wired Is A Human Right

In a once-crumbling former Soviet republic, even the farmers have broadband Internet access.
Colin Woodard

The journalists covering the shipboard meeting on the environmental problems of the Baltic Sea were desperate.

They had deadlines to meet, but the ship's Internet system was slow and, at more than $6 a minute, expensive. One correspondent was forced to kill a feature story after several fruitless hours trying to send his huge sound file back to London. Online story research was costing other reporters an arm and a leg.

So as the ship steamed from Poland to Estonia last month, reporters appealed for technological help to the media officers of the conference.

That's when Uku Kuut spoke up. "When we get to Tallinn this afternoon, just give me an hour or two and we'll fix your problem," said Mr. Kuut, a mild-mannered Estonian who'd tagged along to help with local logistics. The founder of a Tallinn-based Internet firm, Kuut's card identified him simply as "Internet mogul."

For those on board who had lived in Eastern Europe during the Soviet and post-Communist eras, Kuut sounded as if he were promising the moon.

A little more than a decade ago, Estonia was a crumbling republic of the Soviet Union, where information was tightly controlled and telephones were rotary, rare, and unreliable. Just a few days before, in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, this reporter couldn't find a functioning pay phone to make a local call.

But shortly after docking in Tallinn, Kuut, tools in hand, had set up a wireless, two-megabyte-per-second Internet node in the ship's coffee lounge. "Not a problem," he said, checking messages on his cellphone. "Estonia is a very wired place."

Indeed, 12 years after achieving independence, this tiny republic of 1.4 million has embraced the Internet age with a vengeance.

When it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, less than half of Estonia's people had a telephone line. Monday, 800,000 Estonians own cellphones - nearly 60 percent of the population - and Internet usage and broadband access are approaching West European levels.

In 2002, almost a third of the population used the Internet, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. That put it ahead of not only Russia (with 12.4 percent using the Internet), but also much of the rest of Europe - impressive for a country with an average per capita income of $7,000.

And that's not all. Estonians do 80 percent of their banking on the Internet, while businessmen habitually negotiate and close deals by firing text messages to each other's cellphones. Farmers are ordering broadband lines, and motorists on rural roads frequently pass blue information signs pointing them to the nearest place to access the Web.

Inside Tallinn's medieval parliament and prime minister's offices, cabinet ministers and legislators have gone completely virtual, conducting meetings, votes, and document reviews on their networked flat-screen computers.

"We're the first paperless government," says former Prime Minister Mart Laar, from the entrance to the courtyard of his old office. "Journalists have compared [the building] to the Starship Enterprise, and it's true," he adds, beaming with pride.

In 2000, the parliament, perhaps inspired by their new gizmos, passed a law declaring Internet access a fundamental human right of its citizenry. A massive program is under way to expand access to the countryside, where economic development is hampered by lack of decent roads and other transportation links. The Internet, the government argues, is essential for life in the 21st century.

"Some people still think of Internet access as a luxury," explains Kuut, whose company, Vemis, works extensively in rural areas. "But 10 years ago, most people in Estonia looked at hot, running water as a luxury, and nobody would think that today."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0701/p07s01-woeu.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Royalties Plan For File Sharing
William Fisher

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it will soon bring its formidable legal forces to bear on the individuals who share copyrighted music files through the Internet.

Starting as early as mid-August, it expects to file "thousands" of lawsuits against people who make large numbers of songs available on peer-to-peer networks.

The RIAA is right about three things. First, under current copyright law, the behavior of the file swappers is illegal. Second, partly (although only partly) as a result of the ubiquity of file swapping, the music industry is in crisis. CD sales continue to decline, record company revenue is falling at an accelerating pace, and many music retailers are going out of business. Third, among the groups threatened by this crisis are the creators of music--the composers and performers.

The RIAA now takes the position that the only way to solve the crisis and protect the creators is to sue many individual file swappers, hoping that the threat of both civil and criminal penalties will prompt the millions of people worldwide who currently engage in this behavior to mend their ways. Its new strategy has many disadvantages and perils.

The proposed litigation campaign will be extraordinarily costly. It is likely to be ineffective--as file swappers use proxy servers, offshore Internet sites, and encrypted peer-to-peer systems to avoid detection. And it will further alienate the already disaffected community of music consumers. More importantly, better solutions to the crisis in the music industry are available. The more dramatic--but also the best--would be the establishment of a compulsory licensing system.

In brief, here's how such a system would work:

The creator of a recording would register it with the U.S. Copyright Office and would receive, in return, a unique file name, which would be used to track Internet transmissions of the work. The government would tax devices and services used to gain access to digital entertainment. The primary target of such a tax would be ISP access.

The RIAA now takes the position that the only way to solve the crisis and protect the creators is to sue many individual file swappers.
Secondary targets would include CD burners, blank CDs, MP3 players, etc. Using techniques pioneered by American and European performing-rights organizations, a government agency would estimate the frequency with which each song was enjoyed by consumers. Revenue collected from the tax would then be distributed by the government agency to creators in proportion to the rates with which their songs were being consumed.

Once this alternative mechanism for compensating creators was in place, the old one would be dismantled. In other words, copyright law would be reformed to eliminate the current prohibitions on the reproduction, distribution, public performance, adaptation, and encryption circumvention of published music recordings.

The social advantages of such a system would be large. Consumers would pay much less for much more music. Creators would be fairly compensated--indeed, would earn more than under the current regime. The set of musicians who could earn a livelihood by making their work available to the public would increase sharply. And litigation costs would decline dramatically.
The more dramatic- -but also the best-- would be the establishment of a compulsory licensing system.
To be sure, such a system is not yet ready for immediate implementation. Many technical and administrative issues need to be resolved before it could be launched. But several academics, programmers, and public-interest groups are currently working to address those issues.

The RIAA should join us. Instead of continuing to waste its money and credibility on an unwinnable war against the file- sharing masses, it should cooperate in the design of a solution to the underlying problem that would benefit all of the players in this drama.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-1024856.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IFPI: Music Piracy Funding Organized Crime
Ryan Naraine

A European trade group on Thursday linked organized crime syndicates to the US$5 billion underground industry for music piracy and sounded a call for governments to get involved to squash piracy rings internationally.

The U.K.-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents 1,500 record companies in 70 countries, said more than one billion CDs were illegally copied and sold in 2002, funding "an illegal international business worth US$5 billion."

"One in three of all CDs sold worldwide is a fake," the IFPI declared, insisting that much of the proceeds from pirated music are funding organized crime syndicates. In its Commercial Music Piracy 2203 report, the IFPI said the "priority countries" where music theft was rampant included China, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Poland, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.

In China alone, the bootleg CD market is estimated at $530 million, more than 90 percent of all music sales.

While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has adopted an aggressive litigation strategy to stamp out music piracy in the U.S., the IFPI warned that the financial problems in the music industry went beyond the illegal file-sharing networks.

According to the IFPI, the global pirate music market is of greater value than legitimate music sales in every country of the world, except the U.S. and Japan and without government backing to target the organized piracy rings, the industry will continue to decline.

The IFPI report, which offered statistics on unauthorized CD sales, did not measure losses from the online peer-to-peer networks, where illegal file-sharing is rampant.

The IFPI wants international governments to impose tough jail sentences and more stringent copyright laws to combat the organized crime syndicates. "Today's report comes with a three-point call for greater cooperation from governments in the fight against piracy: first, better laws and enforcement rules are needed to protect music; second the massive over-production of discs needs to be regulated by effective Optical Disc Regulations," the group urged.The IFPI, which represents music labels including Sony Music, Warner Music, Universal Music, Bertelsmann and EMI, also called for aggressive prosecution for commercial pirates.

"Music piracy is serious organized crime that can only be tackled when courts deliver serious deterrent penalties," IFPI boss Jay Berman said in a statement.

He said industry anti-piracy teams have stepped up enforcement activities last year, seizing up to 50 million units of pirated discs. The group claimed "spectacular enforcement successes" during enforcement activities in Mexico and in the Philippines, raids that resulted in the shutdown of 71 CD production lines, with a production capacity of 300 million CDs.
www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/2233501


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Nation of Pirates

Panicked by digital plunder, the entertainment industry fights back
Kenneth Terrell

The raging green monster has broken loose. In a rampage, it tears across screens around the planet, its digitally animated fury leaving a trail of damage estimated at billions of dollars. The mightiest forces of the U.S. government fail to corral it. A marvel of technology, it lures ever more devotees. No, it's not the Hulk, eponymous star of Universal Pictures' faltering blockbuster. That green goliath may be formidable enough to fight an army to a standstill, but even his superhuman strength couldn't stop a more insidious enemy: digital piracy. Two weeks before the film arrived in theaters, a version already was circulating online, available free to users of popular file-trading software.

Piracy has become a national pastime. It's no longer just college kids trading the latest hit by rockers Radiohead or the rapper 50 Cent. Cunning technology, antiquated laws, and growing public disdain for footing the costs of traditional retail business have combined to create a potent cocktail that has Internet users everywhere tipsy on bootlegged bounty. Every day, ordinary people download billions of files: blockbuster movies, cable TV shows, music, video games, software, and nearly every other kind of copyright-protected material available in digital form. The process is seductively simple. Just install the software, available free from a Web site, type the name of the desired file into its search engine, pick among the choices accessible for download, and in minutes to hours--depending on file size and connection speeds--you can find a copy on your hard drive.

After years of trying to curtail this behavior, only to see it expand exponentially, the entertainment industry is launching a new offensive. Having failed to quash the technologies, it is going after the pirates themselves. It vows to bring lawsuits--hundreds of them to start--against people who offer to trade copyrighted materials. Says Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America: "These people are stealing, plain and simple."

This unprecedented tactic could target millions of people--possibly someone in your own home or office--with stiff penalties. It's just the latest turn in a high-stakes struggle. As content becomes divorced from products like CDs and videotapes, its creators need new ways to control and charge for it. How industry, consumers, and the courts adapt to this new reality will determine the shape of digital entertainment and intellectual-property law for years to come. "It ultimately comes down to legislative and regulatory control," says Lee Black, an analyst with the Jupiter Media research group. "And that doesn't necessarily move at the pace of technological change."

Almost three years after U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel shut down Napster, the pioneering service that introduced more than 20 million people to the illicit thrills of skipping record stores, piracy is bigger than ever. Kazaa, the trading software that is Napster's most popular heir, has been downloaded more than 230 million times worldwide, and the phenomenon now goes well beyond music. Long transfer times had limited the popularity of trading movies over the Internet, but broadband connections are changing that. An estimated 400,000 to 600,000 copies of films are traded digitally every day, according to Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

The movie industry estimates that Internet swapping costs it more than $3.5 billion a year worldwide. Record companies are also claiming huge losses. While the sagging economy and the lack of an exciting pop-music trend bear some responsibility for the industry's 26 percent decline in CD sales since 1999--a $4.3 billion drop--digital piracy undoubtedly plays a role.

Shriveled royalties. Many pirates have little sympathy for the big companies, but the record labels are not the only ones hurt. Songwriters, who traditionally have relied on the sales of hit records to provide income for years after they topped the charts, have watched their job's version of a pension plan shrivel up. "My royalties have literally been cut in half by this thing," says Lamont Dozier, a member of the Motown songwriting team that penned dozens of Top 20 tunes including the Supremes' "Stop! In the Name of Love" and the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)." "It's really taken a toll on my situation."

Piracy is also pinching independent record stores. As bootlegging has spread, these retailers--unable to lure customers by offering bargains on household gadgets or slashing CD prices as stores like Best Buy and Wal- Mart do--have watched their customer base dwindle. "I've never seen a more horrible time," says Ron Liest, whose family has owned Stedeford's Records on Pittsburgh's North Side since 1964. "We were just joking that maybe we should sell Krispy Kremes," says Liest, whose store specializes in rhythm and blues, rap, and other urban styles of music. Independent retailers often champion up-and-coming artists, and their decline could mean a loss of diversity in music.

Yet the convenience and anonymity of file sharing have made it a remarkably guilt-free form of plunder. In effect, the masses of Americans have joined the previously small chorus of hard-core hackers in chanting the credo "Information wants to be free." "For all practical purposes it is stealing music, but I have no moral qualms about it," says Vik, a 21-year-old college senior from Baltimore who uses Kazaa. "When you can get free music, it's hard to resist."

This frenzy of trading draws its strength from the theory of "six degrees of separation"--the notion that only a relatively few steps are needed to link you to any other person in the world. With hundreds of millions of PCs plugged into the Internet at any given moment, chances are high that at least one of them has a digital copy of that rare Bruce Springsteen live recording or missed episode of Sex and the City. Your computer just needs an efficient way of asking other PCs where that particular file can be found. That's where a peer-to-peer software program--such as Kazaa or LimeWire--comes in. It forwards your search request to other computers on the network, each of which searches its hard drive for the file you want. If it's there, that computer establishes a direct connection to yours and begins transferring the tune or video. If not, the computer forwards your request to other PCs. By going out just a few degrees--most peer-to-peer services set the range at seven--your computer can network with about 10,000 other PCs and access a million files. Typically the search locates a copy of the desired file within minutes.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0.../14pirates.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"It's hard to concentrate on one thing. I think I have a condition."

The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?
Matt Richtel

THIS is Charles Lax's brain on speed.

Mr. Lax, a 44-year-old venture capitalist, is sitting in a conference for telecommunications executives at a hotel near Los Angeles, but he is not all here. Out of one ear, he listens to a live presentation about cable television technology; simultaneously, he surfs the Net on a laptop with a wireless connection, while occasionally checking his mobile device — part phone, part pager and part Internet gadget — for e-mail.

Mr. Lax flew from Boston and paid $2,000 to attend the conference, called Vortex. But he cannot unwire himself long enough to give the presenters his complete focus. If he did, he would face a fate worse than lack of productivity: he would become bored.

"It's hard to concentrate on one thing," he said, adding: "I think I have a condition."

The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On — and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.

Some people who are persistently wired say it is not uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a hand-held device to exchange instant messages surreptitiously — with someone in the same meeting. Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of chatting with actual human beings.

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. — online compulsive disorder.

"It's magnetic," said Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard. "It's like a tar baby: the more you touch it, the more you have to."

Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus. Though many people regard multitasking as a social annoyance, these two and others are asking whether it is counterproductive, and even addicting.

The pair have their own term for this condition: pseudo-attention deficit disorder. Its sufferers do not have actual A.D.D., but, influenced by technology and the pace of modern life, have developed shorter attention spans. They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

"It's like a dopamine squirt to be connected," said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics — a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. "It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure."

"It's an addiction," he said, adding that some people cannot deal with down time or quiet moments. "Without it, we are in withdrawal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/bu...partner=GOOGLE


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plextor's PlexWriter Premium
A premium blend of CD-RW features
Andrew Brown

IT'S BEEN QUITE A WHILE since I've done a CD-RW drive review. In fact, the last time I did one, 24X drives were all the rage. This of course raises the question why haven't I done another one before now?

In a word, boredom. The CD-RW world has been stagnant for a while now, with nothing to get really excited about besides faster and faster burn speeds. When you're going from 1X to 2X and cutting thirty minutes or so off your burn time, that's a big deal. But think about 24X drives: The fastest burn time I got in my last review was four minutes, twelve seconds. Assuming for a moment that a 48X drive really is twice as fast, that cuts the burn time to 2:06, shaving just over two minutes off the recording time. Two minutes. Whoop-tee-frickin-doo. Unless you're running a CD burning sweatshop, two minutes just isn't that big a deal. You begin to understand why another CD-RW drive review wasn't at the top of my list.

Fortunately, Plextor has stepped up and brought something new to the table in the form of its new Plextor Premium drive. Not only does it boast the fastest speeds I've ever seen (52X CD-R burn, 32X CD-RW burn, 52X read) it also includes some innovative new features, such as the ability to create encrypted, password-protected discs, or to squeeze nearly a gigabyte of data onto a 700MB CD-R. Of course, such things can look much different in the real world than they do in a press release. Does the Plextor Premium really break new ground? Keep reading and we'll see.
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2...m/index.x?pg=1


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Piracy And Peer-To-Peer
Declan McCullagh

To thwart peer-to-peer pirates, the Recording Industry Association of America is wielding the clunky but mighty club of the federal court system.

The RIAA recently won a court order forcing Verizon Communications to divulge the identity of a Kazaa user suspected of copyright infringement and now says that soon it will sue hundreds of alleged P2P infringers.

Ian Clarke and the merry band of programmers who are creating Freenet are taking a different approach: They're betting that technology, not the law, holds the key to the future. They believe that Freenet, a radically decentralized network of file-sharing nodes tied together with strong encryption, will make it possible to share any kind of file with impunity--and offer superior anonymity in the process.

It might even work. Freenet may not be one of the most popular file-sharing networks right now, but its creators have carefully designed it to be as difficult as possible to censor or monitor. That has implications beyond copyright law. If successful, Freenet could make laws against publishing material such as libelous statements, trade secrets or military intelligence either irrelevant or, at least, unenforceable.

So, is it legal and moral to create and use Freenet? That's a complicated question, but I'd say that the draconian police tactics required to prevent people from running Freenet nodes--measures such as constant Internet surveillance and the banning of encryption without backdoors for law enforcement--mean the costs of an outright ban would outweigh the benefits.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never come close to answering that question. But last week, a federal appeals court ruling in the case against Aimster (another P2P network), suggested that a file-swapping network that cloaks its users' activities might run afoul of copyright law precisely because it is designed to conceal illegal acts.

I asked Clarke, Freenet's inventor, and Matt Oppenheim, RIAA's senior vice president of business and legal affairs, if they would be interested in engaging in an e-mail debate on Freenet and the race between law and technology. I'm delighted to say that both of them agreed. Their exchange follows.

News.com: Should file swappers have any expectation of privacy?
Ian Clarke: Everyone, including file swappers, should have the ability to communicate freely without someone looking over their shoulders. Free communication is essential to free thought, which is essential to democracy.

Matt Oppenheim: An individual who illegally distributes music on a peer-to-peer network has less of an expectation of privacy than a bank robber wearing a mask when holding up a teller. http://news.com.com/2010-1027-1023325.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TV 'Brick' Opens Up Copyright Can Of Worms
Benoit Faucon

A French company is ready to launch a device that lets television viewers watch any channel on earth, and may open another front in the battle over digital copyright.

Nexedi SARL's "TV Brick" effectively turns the internet into the world's longest antenna lead. It's now aimed just at Japanese expatriates in Paris, though chief executive Jean-Paul Smets says that's just a first step before launching the product into other European nations. The company argues that the system is on the right side of the law in Japan and Western Europe, though courts may differ; distribution elsewhere could be a walk into a legal minefield.

The €950 ($1628) TV Brick is a device the size of a cable-TV set-top box, from which two cables emerge. The TV watcher in Paris plugs one cable into the TV set and connects the other to a phone line using digital subscriber line, or DSL, technology. A relative back home in Japan buys a similar box from Nexedi SARL's Japanese reseller and connects it to his TV set and DSL line the same way. Broadcast signals travel down the aerial in Tokyo and into one box, where they're converted into internet data and squirted to Paris; the box at the other end pulls the data off the internet, turns them back to a TV signal and pipes that into the set. (The data also travels the other way, so Paris TV can be watched in Tokyo.)

"This product destroys borders," Mr Smets said. "It answers a strong demand. Globalisation has made its way into families and many of them are split between different countries."

Picture quality is poor, though Mr Smets says the expats tell him that homesickness and the desire to keep in touch with domestic culture make that a minor concern.

But there is the law. Broadcasting any TV channel outside normal geographical territory is illegal because TV content rights are negotiated on a per-country basis. Mr Smets argues, though, that the law in Western Europe and Japan allows circulation of copyrighted materials by any method, as long as it stays within a circle of family members and is for non-commercial use. He adds that instructions on the TV Brick detail these restrictions.
http://afr.com/articles/2003/06/30/1056825330084.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He FedExes the entire computer – it’s cheaper than uploading the data.

A Conversation With Jim Gray
Dave Patterson

Sit down, turn off your cellphone, and prepare to be fascinated. Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.

Who would ever, in this time of the greatest interconnectivity in human history, go back to shipping bytes around via snail mail as a preferred means of data transfer? (Really, just what type of throughput does the USPS offer?) Jim Gray would do it, that's who. And we're not just talking about Zip disks, no sir; we're talking about shipping entire hard drives, or even complete computer systems, packed full of disks.

Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, sits down with Queue and tells us what type of a voracious appetite for data could require such extreme measures. A recent winner of the ACM Turing Award, Gray is a giant in the world of database and transaction-processing computer systems. Before Microsoft, he worked at a few companies you might know: Digital, Tandem, IBM, and AT&T. He's also a member of the Queue Editorial Advisory Board.

Shooting questions at Gray on such topics as open-source databases and smart disks is David Patterson, who holds the Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Patterson headed up the design and implementation of RISC I, which laid the foundations for Sun's SPARC architecture. Along with Randy Katz, Patterson also helped pioneer redundant arrays of independent disks —yes, RAID.
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?...howpage&pid=43


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEC Develops Water Cooling Notebook Module
Press Release
Submitted by: Fabrizio Pilato

 NEC Corporation announced the development of the world's first slim sized water-cooling module for notebook personal computers that employs a piezoelectric pump driving method. This water cooling-module enables a highly advanced, slim sized, notebook PC with minimal operating noise.

The water-cooling module uses a piezoelectric pump to drive the cooling liquid. This newly structured water-cooling module is developed by integrating the pump and the tank with the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel.

Main features of NEC's water-cooling module

(1) Through optimized design of the radiation plate and the ingenuity of the coolant passage configuration below the CPU attached area, a cooling performance of 80W (2 times that of conventional systems) is realized. Moreover, the optimized piezoelectric pump structure suppresses the operating noise up to the whisper level of about 30dB, in turn enabling highly efficient water-cooling performance.

(2) By development of a piezoelectric pump with higher water pressure and slimmer size (thickness 5mm), the thickness of the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel is reduced to within 3 mm. The increase in the thickness of the chassis is reduced to 4mm, half that of conventional water-cooling methods.

(3) By integrating the aluminum radiation plate, the tank and the piezoelectric pump, ease of installation in personal computers and long-term reliability is achieved.

(4) Hermetical sealing is improved through the use of materials with little liquid permeability. In turn the size of the cooling liquid tank is reduced by 9/10 compared to conventional tanks.



Features of the conventional water-cooling system

(1) Water pressure of the electromagnetic centrifugal pump is relatively weak. If the thickness of the circulation channel is decreased, cooling-liquid flow is restricted.

(2) The system is difficult to install as the tank, pump and CPU attached area are all inter-connected to a metal pipe and a rubber tube.

(3) Installation of a large tank is necessary as cooling liquid seeps through the resin parts of the tank, pump and the connection tubes resulting in liquid reduction over time.

The water-cooling module developed by NEC is the slimmest model in the world. When installed in a notebook personal computer increase in thickness is minimized. In order to drive a conventional piezoelectric pump alternating voltage of 100V is necessary. However, with NEC's water-cooling module system the pump can be driven with 5V of direct voltage. As a result it is easy to install in all IT equipment. This product is suitable not only for use in notebook PCs, but also in servers and desktop computers. It is expected that it will be positioned as a core technology for spreading the water-cooling system in IT equipment and that it will be used as an alternative to the conventional water-cooling heat sink and heat pipe.

NEC Personal Products, Ltd. plans to commercially produce the water-cooling module within two years. NEC aims to create a de-facto industry standard and will actively work towards licensing supply of its module technology to parties outside the NEC Group.
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/334/C1811/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Surveillance Software Keeps Track Of Rogue MP3s
Munir Kotadia

FutureSoft, an enterprise content security company, has updated its DynaComm i:scan file surveillance product to allow real-time monitoring of Windows-based servers and workstations. The software is designed to search for the presence of unwanted applications, such as P2P clients, IM software or hacking tools, and allows administrators to log, block or remove the offending files.

According to FutureSoft, DynaComm i:scan 3.0 can also be used for protecting internal information by either preventing sensitive files from being accessed by unauthorised users, or keeping a record of when and by whom the file was accessed.

Andy Wooles, managing director of FutureSoft UK, said: "It is like putting a burglar alarm on certain files. If people try and look at them, it is possible to log the attempt or even lock the file."

Wooles explained that DynaComm creates a unique signature for sensitive files, which enables those files to be tracked. "Even if someone renames an executable file as readme.txt, you would still be able to find it," Wooles said.

I:scan works on two levels. Initially, it executes an antivirus-type scan to identify rogue applications, inappropriate content or copyright material. Secondly, the system monitors the network in real time and alerts the administrator if unwanted files are introduced, or "marked" files are accessed.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t26...zdnetukhompage


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Music Industry Faces Legal Hurdles To Suits
Richard J. Dalton Jr.

Grandparents, parents and teenagers could be hauled into court in an unprecedented legal attack on music sharing launched last week by the recording industry, which plans to sue the person responsible for any account used to pilfer copyrighted tunes.

At least, that's the idea. But in practice, experts say, the recording industry faces some legal hurdles in prosecuting copyright infringement. And there are many ways for consumers to avoid running afoul of the law.

The easiest way, of course, is to stop sending copyrighted music to others. The recording industry is not going after people who download free copyrighted music online, though it says this practice is illegal as well. Many music-swapping programs allow users (or their parents) to disable the function that sends music while still permitting downloads.

The recording industry has focused on the people who are sending music, rather than receiving it, because it's easier to find them. The reason: Songs they offer are listed in directories available via the music-sharing software.

The Recording Industry Association of America said it began last week to gather evidence for potentially thousands of lawsuits against computer users who make large numbers of songs available to others - and made sure that it got wide publicity. "The biggest issue for them is trying to intimidate people," said Ray Wagner, a security research director at Gartner Group, a tech market research firm in Stamford, Conn.

Computer users share music, movies and even software online by placing files in a folder on their PC that's available to other users of sharing software, such as Kazaa and Morpheus. The software organizes those files into easy-to-search directories.

The recording industry plans to scan the directories for users offering large numbers of files. The scanner would then identify the user's IP address, which identifies a specific computer connected to the Internet but not the user. The industry would then subpoena the user's name and home address from the Internet service provider for that computer.

But there's a glitch: The provider might not know which user had the IP address. IP addresses are often recycled as computers connect and disconnect from the Internet. Many service providers keep logs of which users have a given IP address at a given time, but some don't.

Another potential stumbling block is that the person responsible for the Internet account might not be the culprit in copyright infringement.

"Is it little Johnny or is it mom or is it dad?" Lohmann asked. "That's going to give rise to some interesting legal issues. Are parents going to be held responsible for what their children are doing?"
http://www.dailypress.com/business/l...ess-localheads


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Forget about it, dude--even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers." - Grokster president Wayne Rosso.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Concert Attendance, Grosses Up
Nekesa Mumbi Moody

Concert attendance jumped by 24 percent in the first half of the year as acts like the Dixie Chicks, Cher and the Rolling Stones helped reverse a two-year slide in ticket sales.

Fans bought 13.1 million concert tickets to the top 50 concert tours from January to June, compared to 10.6 million sold during the same period last year, according to Pollstar, the industry trade magazine. Gross receipts were up 26 percent to $678 million, up from $538 million in 2001.

"We're back up to kind of where we were in 2000," said Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor-in-chief. "We had progressively been selling fewer tickets as the prices escalated."

But trouble may be looming for summer tours due to cold, rainy weather that delayed the traditional kickoff in late May and early June. "It's really hard to sell a ticket to an outdoor concert if it's raining all the time," Bongiovanni said.

Concert attendance had been declining steadily since 2000, when 12.9 million tickets were sold. The average ticket price for the first six months this year was approximately $52 -- up only one dollar from the previous year, according to Pollstar. Last year, ticket prices cost an average of $51, up from $47 the previous year.

Yet for the biggest acts, prices continue to rise. Tickets for the top-grossing tour -- Elton John and Billy Joel -- cost an average of $113. The Rolling Stones' average ticket cost $158, up from $119 when they toured last year.

"The really expensive tickets are largely being bought by the aging baby boomers," said Bongiovanni.

Baby boomer acts such as the Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Cher represented half of the top 10 concerts for the first six months of the year. But country acts such as the Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chessney and Tim McGraw also performed strongly.

"The Dixie Chicks were one of the few acts that seemed to do great business just about everywhere they went," Bongiovanni said of the female trio, which wasn't hurt by the Bush- bashing controversy that engulfed them earlier this year.

Though Chessney was the 10th-highest grossing tour, he actually was the top draw according to tickets sold. His tour sold 682,000 tickets at an average price of $36, grossing $24.4 million. In comparison, Elton John and Billy Joel sold approximately 465,000 tickets at an average price of $113, grossing $52.7 million.

One act placed in the top 10 without even going on tour. Celine Dion's Las Vegas stage show has grossed $33.2 million since it opened in March.

"That was something of an experiment, and that did very well," Bongiovanni said.

The top 10 concert tours from January to June, and their grosses:

1. Elton John-Billy Joel, $52.7 million

2. The Rolling Stones, $37.4 million

3. The Dixie Chicks, $35.1 million

4. Celine Dion, $33.2 million

5. Cher, $31.7 million

6. Tim McGraw, $30.6 million

7. Fleetwood Mac, $28.3 million

8. Eagles, $27.2 million

9. Bon Jovi, 26.9 million

10. Kenny Chessney, $24.4 million
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusic/jul10_tour-ap.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some Xbox Fans Microsoft Didn't Aim For
Seth Schiesel

AFTER a 31-year-old Manhattan financial executive received Microsoft's Xbox video game system as a gift in January, he walked to a store and bought a half-dozen game titles. The video game industry would have been pleased to hear it.

After he played those games a few times against computer-controlled opponents, he got a bit bored and signed up for Microsoft's Xbox Live service, which enabled him to play against other people online. The video game industry, again, would have been pleased.

After a few months on the Xbox Live network, in May, he got a bit bored again. This time, however, he opened his Xbox and soldered in a chip that allowed him to change the console's basic computer code and bypass its internal security technology. After installing a new hard drive, he transferred about 3,000 MP3 music files to the system and downloaded illegal copies of 3,500 old-time arcade games. Then he installed the Linux operating system, which allowed him to use the box essentially as a personal computer.

Needless to say, the video game industry would not have been pleased.

When Microsoft released the Xbox in November 2001, it was heralded as far more than a game machine. Even as the Xbox took aim at Sony's PlayStation 2 game empire, the console was meant to lead Microsoft's broader invasion of the living room. Incorporating a hard drive, which made it more readily adaptable than other consoles, the Xbox had the potential to be a digital-entertainment nerve center.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said at the time, "We're going to put new software that runs on Xbox that, both in the gaming dimension and other dimensions, will amaze people with the power that's in this box."

That is happening, but not necessarily as Microsoft planned. All sorts of new software is indeed running on Xbox consoles these days, and they are in fact becoming home-entertainment hubs, but it is not Microsoft doing the amazing.

Rather, an online confederacy apparently numbering in the thousands - including accomplished hackers of varied motives and everyday technophiles like the Manhattan financial executive (who shared his experience on the condition of anonymity) - is taking the lead. Those involved often call their efforts "unleashing" or "unshackling" - freeing the Xbox to express its inner PC. Technology industry executives, however, often call such activity a bald attempt to hijack the Xbox illegally.

It is a battle that involves many of the ethical and legal issues facing the technology and media industries at this digital moment. What rights do consumers have to tinker with products they own? How far should companies go to protect their intellectual property? What happens when the desires of consumers conflict with the business models of companies they patronize? Who gets to decide just what a particular product may be used for?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/te...ts/10xbox.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lexmark: We're Not Against Cartridge-Recycling
Chan Lee Meng

KUALA LUMPUR: US printer giant Lexmark International Inc is not against the recycling of printer cartridges and the company tries to reduce refuse as part of its environmental strategy, said Ng Chee Soon, managing director of its South Asia operations.

Ng, who is based in Singapore, was here recently for the launch of new Lexmark products.

He said the company operates two programmes in Malaysia to boost recycling efforts -- the Prebate and Operation Resource programmes.

The Prebate programme offers endusers an “up-front rebate” of 19% off the retail price for cartridges.

In return, the user agrees that the cartridge will be used only once and that the empty cartridge will be returned only to Lexmark for remanufacturing and recycling.

“By selling this Prebate cartridge to the enduser, our resellers are likewise agreeing to comply with these terms and conditions,” Ng said.

Related to that, the Operation Resource programme allows used Lexmark cartridges to be returned to Lexmark for recycling, at no cost to the customer.

In Malaysia, Lexmark has authorised ECS Astar Sdn Bhd to execute the Operation Resource programme.

Ng said Lexmark collected more than a million used cartridges last year (globally), compared to only about 100,000 cartridges annually before the two programmes were implemented.

Used printer cartridges (or “empties” in industry lingo) have been fingered as one of the contributors to the growing problem of computer waste.

He also said the company’s practices with regard to printer cartridges are not “anti-competitive” and the company does “provide customers with choices.”

In response to an In.Tech query in February, the company had confirmed that merely using a remanufactured or third-party cartridge in a Lexmark printer does not void its warranty.

However, if there is a problem with the printer which was caused by the third- party cartridge, then the warranty will most likely be void, the company said.
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Anti-Piracy Checks On Terminator 2 DVD

A recent reissue of the blockbuster Terminator 2 contains a DVD- ROM version of the movie with a new anti-piracy technique: 5-day viewing licenses issued over the Internet. The new digital rights management (DRM) system also looks up a PC's Internet address--if the computer has a non-U.S. number, playback of the DVD-ROM will be prevented. The Web-checking system means that even if the DVD-ROM is copied, only one PC at a time around the world can play it back-- bad news for DVD pirates located in Asia and elsewhere. And anyone thinking of copying the movie file from the DVD-ROM onto a hard drive and sharing it online can forget it: The file is only playable from a valid DVD-ROM disc--again, only after online verification. Digital Envoy, a provider of rights management technology, and SyncCast, which specializes in media streaming, worked together to create the digital rights management (DRM) system.

The system works with the DRM technology integrated into Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series and has been included in the DVD-ROM bundled with the Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Extreme Edition) disc set, shipped in North America in early June for US$29.98. The set contains a standard DVD, but the DVD-ROM has a high- definition version that provides three times more video detail, SyncCast spokesman David Nichols told CNETAsia. The movie file is encoded in WM9 format, required for the DRM operation of Windows Media Player 9. The PC playing the DVD-ROM must be connected to the Internet, so as to obtain a license. Content owners can decide which type of license to issue; 1 time play, unlimited play, expires after 30 days, and so on, said Nichols. "In the case of T2, Artisan (the studio releasing the DVD) decided to issue licenses that have to be renewed every 5 days. You can get as many 5 day licenses as you want but each license is only good for 5 days," he said. This allows, say, a notebook user to view the movie for 5 days while on the road and disconnected from the Web.

While Nichols did not reveal fully how the DRM works, it is understood that it requires the online verification of details such as the user's IP address and the unique IDs of the disc, movie file and computer playing the file. "If the user's IP and address is in the region designated by the content owner and they have a valid disc they are issued a license. Users who we determine are outside of the designated region are provided an email address to contact the licensor to request a license directly from them," said Nichols. "Once they prove they have a valid disc, we issue a license to the user's computer. The user can play the file on any drive connected to his computer that has the license. If the user tries to play the content on a different computer, it won't work. If the user attempts to pass the content off to a friend, it won't work," he said. The same DRM system can also be used to protect movie streams or downloaded movie files. Despite the checks, no user information is sent to SyncCast or Microsoft without the user's permission, he added. SyncCast's and Digital Envoy's system are examples of various DRM technologies being tested. In Japan, Sony has been offering movie downloads that are timed to "self-destruct" after a given time.
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=54041


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RIAA Smearing Earthstation 5, executive says.

Legal Threats Against Consumers Drives Millions of Downloads To EarthStation 5 peer to peer network Due To Software's Privacy Features
Press Release

JENIN, West Bank--"Apparently the RIAA appears to be scared out of their minds over the heavy security features of Earthstation 5's software. So much in fact that they have hired numerous individuals to try and persuade users not to use Earthstation 5 by making statements claiming that Earthstation 5 is run by the RIAA," says Ras Kabir, president of Earthstation 5 (http:/www.earthstation5.com).

The RIAA and their attorneys have also come to the fast reality that they have no legal remedy within Palestine. "Since the RIAA admission to the world press that they are able to break the security of the top eight peer to peer companies including Kazaa and their announced intention last Thursday to sue thousands of individual file-sharers, Earthstation 5's peer to peer software has experienced extraordinary demand with hundreds of thousands of users downloading Earthstation 5's software each hour"

"File-sharers world-wide are learning that our Earthstation 5 software hides the identities of its users so they can now freely share their music and movies online without the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA," said Kabir. "Our motto is share...share...share to your heart's content because no one can stop you."

Earthstation 5 also has a FREE multi-user Voice and Video chat system, FREE Dating system and provides FREE video streaming of first run movies and live Sporting events. Earthstation 5 is currently available in English, Russian, Turkish, German and more languages are coming out each week.

Earthstation 5 is provided free to its users and can be downloaded at http://www.es5.com. Earthstation 5 is spyware free, adware free and contains no annoying advertising. Earth Station 5 is located in the Jenin, West Bank.

Ras Kabir's warning to the RIAA, "The next revolution in P2P file sharing is upon you. Resistance is futile and we are now in control".
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+06:59+AM

ES 5 Background


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The day when the recording industry approaches a trading network as a facilitator and not an annihilator is when the sector will be in harmony once again.”

Download No Evil

The downward download spiral continues with the music industry now threatening to go after individual users of peer-to-peer services. It will happen, but what will happen next? Rick Munarriz thinks the industry has some lessons left to learn. The moment the industry embraces the potential of the swapper will be the real start of the next music revolution.
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

Where were you the day the free music died?

As we power down from the extended Independence Day weekend, you may not realize that the days of freedom as some of you may know it are binary numbered. Of course, I'm talking about the tens of millions of you out there who see the pursuit of happiness and illegal music downloads as inalienable rights.

It probably won't happen until next month, but the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was dead serious last week when it announced that it would be filing lawsuits against individual users of peer- to-peer file sharing networks. It meant business when it went after Napster. It meant business when it decided to make an example out of a few college students earlier this year.

The group lost its battle against swapping software makers Grokster and Morpheus three months ago. But the reason the case was dismissed -- because the companies can't be held liable for the illegal uses and abuses of its software -- doesn't bode well for the end user. In most cases, your Internet Service Provider knows who you are and what you're doing -- and the record companies are now armed with the legal firepower to start taking names.

You won't find too many vocal fans of the RIAA. The organization has become the dirty-work scapegoat for the record labels and recording artists who want to see an end to the piracy -- but only from a safe distance, away from the splash zone of fan alienation. With its advocates silent and its detractors many in the wired world, the vilified organization knows the score. While it won't be refreshing its tarnished image with its battle against Joe Swapper, it also recognizes that it has little left to lose in a war that already sent its chief packing when Hilary Rosen announced her resignation earlier this year.

The music industry is flawed. If you had to align the sector with professional sports, baseball would be a good fit. The owners are losing money. Many star players are under fiscally unfeasible contracts. The fans are resentful of being gouged with high prices. Oh, and when the long ball is scarce, stealing is often the only way to get ahead.

But as bad as the state of baseball seems to be, the music business has it far worse. At least baseball gets a good chunk of money through sometimes lucrative broadcasting contracts -- those who stay at home and watch the game on TV or stream the play-by-play online are still a valuable resource. The record labels aren't as lucky. They have failed to skim any kind of serious green off the broadband- blessed teens.

But in both industries, the plight of the owners remains the same. They can spend time and money in developing talent without making a penny in secondary revenue streams -- where the real money is being made these days. A baseball team won't be able to cash in on the sponsorships that star athletes are privy to, and a record label isn't getting a cut of the tour receipts and merchandising sales that are often the result of the record company's marketing efforts.

That has little choice but to change in the music world. The recording industry can't bank on the prerecorded CD as its only source of revenue. It's a loss leader now.

The music industry is dominated by five major record labels. Sony (NYSE: SNE), AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL), EMI (Nasdaq: EMIPY), BMG, and Vivendi Universal (NYSE: V) should know better than this. In most cases they are diversified entertainment behemoths, built to cash in on the various layers of the consumer's leisure-seeking experience. They are not small. They are usually not this stupid.

With the RIAA penciled in on the frontline, one would think that the five majors would be huddling away in the war room, formulating a plan for the time when the battering ram of public opinion becomes so strong that it crashes through the brittle RIAA and its wafer-thin copyright shields.
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/...ry030707rm.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Napster Founder Developing New File-Sharing Technology
Joseph Menn and Jon Healey

Napster the brand is going legit under new owner Roxio Inc.

Now Napster the person is trying to do the same with an Internet start-up that could, once again, have a far-reaching effect on the music business.

Napster creator Shawn Fanning is looking for backers of technology he's developing that would let file-sharing networks distribute music without violating copyrights, people familiar with the project said.

Fanning's technology would recognize copyrighted songs on a network and let the copyright owners set a price for downloading them.

That's quite a departure from the original Napster service, which let users copy songs from one another's computers free. Bearing the then-18-year-old Fanning's online nickname, Napster launched in 1999 but quickly drew a copyright infringement lawsuit from major record companies and music publishers, which forced it to shut down in mid-2001.

Regardless of whether the gambit works, it demonstrates that 22-year-old Fanning has moved beyond the service that made him a household name. Yet Fanning, who lives in the Bay Area and declined to be interviewed, is still trying to shape the future of the music industry — this time by working with his onetime competitors.

Fanning's new program relies on audio fingerprinting that identifies every song being offered by users on a file-sharing network. As the user submits the song, it would be checked against a database at Fanning's firm to see whether it is copyrighted. If it is, the song couldn't be distributed without payment.

Napster Inc. was trying to develop something similar when it ran out of money and filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Roxio bought Napster's brand name, Web address and technology at a bankruptcy auction.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Roxio plans to offer a new version of Napster by March, but it is unlikely to have any of the file-sharing flavor of the original. Instead, it would be built around the label-backed Pressplay subscription service that Roxio bought from Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.

Fanning has been acting as a consultant for Roxio while also pursuing his new file-sharing venture independently. Record-company executives say Fanning has been making the rounds of the major labels in recent weeks, demonstrating his technology and urging them to invest in and endorse his system.

If they do, he has told the labels, he would ask Kazaa and other leading peer-to-peer networks to sign on as well.

"It's fantastic, but it only works if Kazaa goes along with it," said one label executive who asked not to be named. He said his label was impressed with Fanning's demonstration and is reviewing the proposal.

Spokesmen for the companies distributing Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster, three leading file-sharing programs, said they hadn't been contacted by Fanning and weren't familiar with his efforts.

StreamCast Networks Inc., the company that distributes Morpheus, is "willing to look at any business opportunity," Chief Executive Michael Weiss said. "If he's looking for us to distribute his software through the Internet, I'd be willing to see what he had in mind."

Grokster President Wayne Rosso said that given the record companies' history of internal disagreements, Fanning would have "a better chance of getting Yugoslavia back together" than convincing all the labels to back the new venture. Another problem, Rosso said, is that Fanning's plan perpetuates a pay-per-track approach that "really isn't the answer in the long run" because customers want to pay a flat fee for unlimited downloading.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/18...ology+.shtm l
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

File-Sharing Service May Come To PSU

The school may subscribe to a service which allows students to share music, President Graham Spanier said.
Chris Buell

Although the future of today's file-sharing services is an uncertain proposition, a legal version could be available in the near future for music-hungry college students.Universities could subscribe to a file-sharing service similar to current ones with a one-time fee, allowing students unlimited access, said Penn State President Graham Spanier.

Spanier is a co-chair of the Joint Committee of Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force charged with tackling file-sharing issues."That approach would take what's now illegal and make it legal," he said. "The idea here is we don't want to make criminals of our students -- and Congress wants to." That was one of the most promising ideas discussed when committee members convened in New York about two weeks ago, Spanier said.

"I think we've made tremendous strides," said Bruce Block, senior vice president of technology for the Recording Industry Association of America. He added there was a consensus that universities represented a different situation than the general public.Block said a request for information was sent out to legal file-sharing services about the feasibility and options of such an approach.

"I'm looking forward to hearing what some of these companies are going to suggest as business models," he said. Spanier said pilot programs to test a new music service could be running at universities as early as next spring, and Penn State would likely participate in any such program.

He said the cost of such a program would have to be incorporated into the budget and made invisible to students, or it wouldn't work. It could be paid for through room and board or student activity fees, depending on whether it is offered university-wide or only to students in residence halls.

"We can't really charge the students at all. It's got to be free to them," he said. Spanier equated the arrangement to that of the cable television service offered in the dorms.Either way, Spanier said the university could not afford to pay the current prices for digital music, meaning any subscription service would have to offer the university a significant discount.

Several variations of the service are possible. Music could be streamed for free by students, with permanent downloads costing extra, or downloads could be "tethered," meaning they remain active as long as the user has a Penn State computer account.

Some students expressed skepticism about such a program.

"I don't think it's fair to assess a fee to everyone if they're not using the service," said Brian Hall (senior-letters, arts and sciences). Hall said he does not use file-sharing services and would probably not use a new version offered by the university.

"I'm paying enough to go here without paying an additional fee," he said.

Adam Savit (senior-history) said he uses Kazaa, a popular file-sharing service, almost every day. But he did not think the university subscribing to a service would solve the problem of copyright infringement.

"There's no personal consequence yet to doing it illegally," he said. Until there is, students will likely choose getting music for free, he added.

Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which specializes in intellectual property right issues, said such a service would probably fall short of students' expectations.

Any deals a university might reach would probably be with an already-legitimate file-sharing service, which offer less content and selection than illegal services, he said.

"I think it's a hopelessly misguided effort," Lohmann said. "Students have already indicated what kind of service they want."
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive...03dnews-01.asp


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

America Is Behind the Broadband Curve
John Chambers

Cisco CEO, John Chambers talks about how high-tech has changed the global economy, and raises concerns that the US may be falling behind.

The Internet and education will be the equalizers in life. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the industrial revolution life. So with our network academies, which are Cisco's give-back program, we're now in 151 countries around the world. 472,000 students. And you know what, there's no difference in scores from Romania, New York City, Palo Alto, and China. It shows you how quickly things change if people have a chance to participate.

In Afghanistan, we just completed our first semester course. We had 19 students in it that hadn't been to school for six years. You know what, they got much better grades than any major school in the US. You give them a chance, they do fine. And the ability really to participate in this new economy is there.

Speaking of the new economy, I'm a believer in employee ownership. Whether you own a house or a car, stock options are much more than an issue about 'Are you improving transparency?,' which we and Intel -- and others, we'll argue -- are not. We'd be over-stating our expenses by about $3 billion a year on a non-cash basis if we did this. But it also will not change the compensation at the top. That's going to be handled in another way. But the real issue here, which people are missing, is the job implications.

Bottom line -- if you take away the ownership capability and you can get a job in Asia at one-tenth the cost, with a better educated workforce, with a better infrastructure and more supportive government, you're going to see your engineers move dramatically over this next decade. Then unfortunately, once your engineers move, about a year later they become CEOs -- and your business is gone. So let's understand what we're about to do.

If I'm right, you're going to be talking about engineering as high-tech job exports after 2003. This is why you see many of us in the high-tech industry fighting this [expensing of stock options] so strongly and saying, 'Let's study what we're doing, if what we're doing isn't going to accomplish the original goals and results in large job losses.' Silicon Valley has already lost 127,000 jobs. Introducing this type of idea at a time when we're all on our backs is perhaps not the best economic policy. So we ought to think real carefully before we jump off this cliff. As a country, whether the US, or in Japan or in Europe, would you take that type of risk?

On the topic of broadband wireless and how it's impacting the world, South Korea is an excellent example. This is where business and government work together to make huge inroads. About six years ago, when I went to South Korea and talked to their political leadership, it was a conceptual discussion. I went there two years later, and I started having the discussion, but the Prime Minister stopped me, and said 'John, here's my optical strategy, here's my broadband strategy, here's how we're going to migrate through, here's the productivity, and here's how we're going to unite it.' I was taking notes.

The point is, to implement an effective broadband strategy, it has to be a country mission. There are many countries around the world that do a much better job of that than the US does, in the UK, in Germany, in South Korea, and now in Japan. The first thing that has to happen in the US is that it has to be a national priority. Broadband to every American home at an affordable price by the end of the decade. Second, you can't force people to share that infrastructure with their competitors at cost or for nothing. So you have to have predictability in pricing and you have to have a reward for taking the risk.

The third issue is that you cannot get inconsistent regulations or false starts. You can't be negotiating. If you want to delay the implementation and delay it for three to four years, don't put it in the same battle where you lose profit sources and don't allow people to make the investments they need. You have to have competition. Broadband wireless is one of them. But you also have to have competition in terms of the traditional providers in voice and the cable providers. You ought to have options of two to three different technologies. You don't need 50, because we all learned that too much competition is just as bad as too little, in terms of the implementation.

I think it starts from the top -- broadband into every American home by the end of the decade. Other countries have already done that. We're falling behind. In terms of wireless, I think it will be a wireless world. But all of us will use a combination.

So if you just walk through what we did with acquiring Linksys -- whether we do it or somebody else does it, you will have your wireless capability, this connection they're providing your PCs and other devices, in your phone, in your home, or wherever. We just announced the 802.11b phone, that you'll be able to use everywhere, and every time you address the mobile marketplace. Which you will then take to your car and as you're driving your car or as you go onto your campus, we'll grab it back in on the campus, and keep it back in the Cisco network as you go into your office. You'll [connect to] hardware with a wider bandwidth, with even better security. As you go into the airport and go into the frequent flyer club you'll have a wireless connection there. You get on planes -- almost all the planes are now being built with wireless capability in them.

So as the applications become designed to be completely transparent, you won't in theory know -- and I think this is attainable -- what combination of your service provider network, of the Internet, of your own enterprise, you're using -- whether it's fixed wire, wireless, cable, optical -- who cares. I think that's where the world is going.

This is an excerpt from a speech Mr. Chambers gave at Accenture's Global Convergence Forum. In part one of this speech, Mr. Chambers offered insights on the IT investment cycle. In part two, he discussed how Cisco takes advantage of market transitions.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...id=591_0_1_0_C


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why Is It 'OK' To Nick Software?
Stephen Tomkins

What's the difference between ripping software and shoplifting? None. Yet millions of us twist the arguments and kid ourselves we are not hardened criminals.

Call me prejudiced, but from what I know, I'd say you could well be a criminal.

If you're computer-literate enough to be reading this, there's a strong chance you will know how to copy expensive design software from your friends, or download alien-shooting games from the net without paying. And if you know how to, then the chances are you've done it.

Am I wrong? Don't worry, I won't tell.

The likes of you and me wouldn't normally like to think of ourselves as thieves. We don't pocket CDs in HMV or triple chocolate muffins in Tescos. So why are we happy to steal electronically?

According to the industry, it's because we're a pack of immoral cyber bandits. Developers across the world lose $11bn a year in business software alone, says the Business Software Alliance. It estimates nine out of 10 programs sold on auction sites are pirated.

How Much Top Software Costs:

Adobe Photoshop 7 - £535
Microsoft Office XP - £295
Macromedia Dreamweaver - £325
Through peer-to-peer file-swapping - FREE
Copies to mates - 15p per CD

The booty on your hard drive cost Americans 111,000 jobs in 2001, $5.6bn in lost wages and $1.5bn in unpaid tax. If that doesn't make you feel a twinge of guilt, you're obviously a hardened crook and should consider becoming a career criminal or an oil executive.

Admittedly, the figures may be inflated. How do they know you would have bought the software if you hadn't half-inched it? And how do we know that if you'd paid for it they would have spent the money on creating new jobs, rather than on executive jacuzzis or a new laser corkscrew for Mrs Gates?

Deflate the figures if you like, deep down they still remind us of what we always knew: our virtual shoplifting may feel safe, respectable and innocuous, but that doesn't stop it harming anyone.

When you make it out of the doors of cyberspace with your Mac bulging, someone somewhere loses out.

All of which is terribly obvious and brings us back to the question why do we feel so comfortable with our theft?

Because it's virtual? We haven't taken anything solid or physical, so we don't feel we've taken anything at all. I'm sure that's part of it, although the icon stubbornly remains on the desktop, reproaching us every time we use it.

Another reason is our uncertainty that we've stolen anything. How can we have, when no one has lost anything they used to have? A valid philosophical question to be sure, though the law doesn't see it that way.

But the most important reason is also the most depressing. We don't feel bad because there's no risk of our being caught and punished. If I pocketed a bottle of whisky in the supermarket I'd be so anxious about the security guards grabbing me, plagued with visions of shame and humiliation, police cars and magistrates, that even if I got away with it I'd feel horribly guilty.

That doesn't happen with computer applications, even though they tend to cost much more than the kind of whisky I buy.

This isn't a flattering thought. It suggests the main reason I tend to behave decently and honestly (in my own way) is not that I am decent and honest, but that I know bad things will happen if I don't.

26% Of Business Software In Uk Is Illegal

That's down from 42% eight years ago

There's one more reason why we're not more troubled by our ill-gotten games, I think. It's that we don't really mind ripping off huge fat-cat corporations, which would probably do the same to us given half the chance.

The ethics of intellectual property are not only about individuals. If companies charge extortionate prices because they can, perhaps they ought to get their own house in order before suing customers. And if they package their software in sweatshops, who's ripping off whom?

Consider the cautionary tale of music CDs. Everyone, bar the music industry, agrees they've been sold at vastly inflated prices since the 80s. Along come CD writers and MP3s and the market collapses about their ears. Who's surprised?

If bootlegging acts as a safety valve to keep software prices sensible, might that not be such a bad thing after all?

So what are we to do? Perhaps "trial piracy" could offer a reasonable compromise between us and the marketers. The unconventional software billionaire Kai Krause suggests this rule of thumb: "If it's still on your hard drive after a year, pay for it.'

And if you can't manage that much, you can just relax in the knowledge that you are simply a Bad Person. At least you're not alone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3049966.stm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Western Europe


'Brussels Tea Party' A Genuine Prospect?
David Minto

The EU faces a large-scale revolt from American online businesses disgruntled by a change in EU tax laws regulating the digital sale of goods and services, according to Jason Duke, Managing Director of UK software development company Strange Logic.

From last Tuesday, companies engaging in e-commerce have been required to pay the rate of value-added tax (VAT) for the EU country in which their goods are consumed. The previous regulations allowed US companies to escape paying any VAT when engaging in e-commerce within the EU, because the levy was determined by the country in which the company was based.

Mr Duke claims, however, that US business s have been shocked to now find themselves responsible for collecting European VAT when they make a sale. "Many of the discussions with North American colleagues used language reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party and the American War For
Independence," he said.

Mr Duke went on to assert that some American business owners are now refusing to sell to EU consumers, protesting against what they as a

Of course, many EU e-commerce protagonists are unlikely to too sorry for their US and non-European counterparts, considering that they themselves have always had to tax the services and products they sell, and have therefore been at a competitive disadvantage in their own backyard.

However, Duke says he is offering a free solution to all those reluctant tax collectors out there, with software enabling businesses to recalculate the price displayed on their websites to incorporate the country specific VAT. For companies of a more severe bent, the application also allows them to ban EU visitors.

A anti-digital-VAT website has been set up, the wittily named BrusselsTeaParty.com, where businesses and EU consumers can get technical information and reports, and can also register their views on the issue.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16978


50% of German Web Users Still Regard Downloading As 'Difficult', report

German internet users have reservations about pay-download services to the extent that 62 per cent will first attempt to find the digital material free of charge and 15 per cent absolutely refuse to go near any digital content with a price tag, according to a new survey by Mummert Consulting and the University of Karlsruhe.

The statistics gleaned do not all come as bad news, and researchers found that half of those surveyed had paid for downloaded data at least once.

However, it was the reservations surfers had about paying for downloads that were articulate most strongly. Only one in ten buyers claimed to perceive no problems with the pay-download combination. For the rest, chief among the concerns were the quality of the downloaded material (53 per cent of those surveyed feared viruses or incomplete files) and the difficulty of complaining (40 per cent). 50 per cent of respondents said they would characterise the operation of downloading as difficult.

Interstingly, however, relatively few concerns were directly attributable to the billing mechanisms involved. Whilst many surveyed questioned the trustworthiness of operators (49 per cent) and feared hacker attacks (39 per cent), only 17 per cent thought there was a lack of suitable payment options and only 17 per cent again cited incorrect account billing as a concern.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16991


Operating Your Computer From Half A Kilometre Away

US-based company Gefen has announced that it has developed a technology allowing USB-based computer peripherals, such as digital cameras, camcorders, scanners, printers, keyboards and mice to be used up to 1,650 feet from a computer.

Gefen’s USB-500 trumps the previous Gefen product, the USB-400, which allowed multiple USB devices to be used up to up to 330 feet away from the computer they were operating. Most USB devices have a connection limit of 17 feet.

So why would you want to operate your computer from half a kilometre away? Well, according to Gefen, its devices are widely used in manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare industries, where computers may need to be operated in unsafe or unusual environments that could endanger the central processing unit. Geefen says the USB-500 also provides a solution for any type of remote multimedia presentation capability that can be controlled with computer equipment.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16989


Skanova Wins New Municipal Broadband Contract

TeliaSonera’s new unit for wholsesale and third party business in Sweden, Skanova, has won a contract to build a broadband network in the Municipality of Vansbro.

The administrative board of Dalarna County approved the Municipality of Vansbro´s application for funds to build a broadband network, with Skanova as the provider of a municipal core network. Most areas of the municipality are now expected to be connected by the end of 2003.

“We received several tenders but Skanova was the only company that could meet our requirements for a fast build- out rate and implementation,” said Gunnar Magnusson, chairman of the Vansbro municipal board. “Broadband is incredibly important, especially for the business and industrial community. If we can´t keep up with technology trends and quickly arrange connections for enterprises and households, there is a risk that many companies would leave our municipality.”

The broadband network in Vansbro will a combined fibre-optic and ADSL network. The network will be built out in Vansbro, Hulån, Dala-Järna, Nås, Uppsälje and Äppelbo. A network linking these towns will also be installed.

Up to the summer of 2002 it was not possible for Swedish municipalities to apply for government assistance to build out broadband networks based on ADSL technology. Now that the regulations have been changed, all of Sweden´s municipalities can gain access to broadband through a network that is installed parallel to their existing municipal core network.

During the spring Skanova signed similar agreements with municipal authorities in Ångermanland, Östergötland, Bohuslän and Västmanland, among others.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16980


Broadband Net Speeds Ahead
BBC

The number of Britons with high-speed net access is continuing to grow.

According to the Office of National Statistics 17% of net-using households have a broadband connection. Numbers look set to continue growing as firms start offering new ways to get a fast link to the net.

BT has also announced that it is equipping more telephone exchanges with high-speed links in response to customer demand.

The net is now being used in 47% of British households, according to the Office of National Statistics. In the three months covered by the research, 54% of adults said they had used the net. The majority of people, 81%, go online via a dial-up modem. But a growing number of net-savvy homes, 17%, use broadband. More people are going to be able to get broadband too as BT reveals the level of demand needed to persuade it to extend high- speed links to a further 500 telephone exchanges.

Rather than wire the whole country up for broadband via telephone wires - a technology known as ADSL - BT chose to only upgrade exchanges in some towns and villages if demand was high. It is measuring demand by setting up a system that lets people declare their interest in buying broadband should their local exchange be upgraded. BT said that 56 of the exchanges in its new list would be upgraded immediately as enough locals had already registered their interest.

The telecommunications firm launched the registration system in July 2002 and so far more than 470,000 people have signalled their interest in broadband. It said that 300 local exchanges have already been upgraded and a further 400 are due to be fitted with ADSL technology.

Some keen net users are finding other innovative ways to get broadband. This week four residents of a street in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen in Scotland, started getting high-speed net access via power lines. The Powerline technology pipes data through electricity cables and lets users surf the net via a connector that plugs into a conventional electrical socket. It can work at speeds up to two megabits per second. Scottish Hydro-Electric is behind the technology which was piloted in Crieff and Campbeltown before being rolled out in Stonehaven. It will also be offered to other customers of other companies of Scottish and Southern Energy - the parent of Scottish Hydro-Electric.

People living in rural areas of East Anglia and East Midlands will soon be offered a chance to get broadband via wireless technology. From the end of September a company called Wireless Rural Broadband is setting up a service that gives companies a radio-based 54mbps net link for only £10 per month. Although primarily meant for companies, the firm said it would consider taking orders from home users too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/3055389.stm


French Court Takes Music Label To Task Over Copy-Protection Warning
BNA

A French court in Nanterre has taken EMI Music to task for failing to provide full disclosure of copy-protection on a CD. The company informed purchasers that the CD contained protection but did not advise that it would not work with certain CD players. The court considered the insufficient warning to be misleading to consumers. Case name is CLCV v. EMI Music France.

French language decision at http://www.juriscom.net/documents/tg...re20030624.pdf

[JackSpratts]

Q&A With Spyware Remover Dr. Damn

Everyone hates spyware, but where does spyware come from and how does it get on your computer? Any filesharing fanatic will tell you that one of the most notorious sources of spyware infection is from downloading and using file sharing software such as Kazaa and iMesh.
There are many alternatives to these clients that are hacked to remove the spyware from them, so-called cleansed file sharing clients are made by hackers such as DrDamn. Geeknews sent a quick Q&A to DrDamn to get his thoughts on the file sharing scene and more.

Geeknews: You have released several filesharing clients after modifying them to remove spyware and ads, can you explain a little bit about how this is done and why you do it?

DrDamn: Basically, I just install the software, delete all the spyware (sometimes this can be more complicated than it should be) and then then I write a new installer for the software from scratch. In the case of iMesh, I had to crack the EXE so that it wouldn't notice that the spyware was missing.

Geeknews: Can you explain which filesharing client(s) you like the best and why?

DrDamn: I tend to be very pragmatic with these types of choices. I mostly use SoulSeek and eMule (although if Mike would fix the crash bugs I'd probably switch back to Shareaza) but I've also been using BitTorrent quite a bit lately. It really has a strong community following, despite being the most unusual file sharing client around (i.e. the lack of any search function.)

Geeknews: Do you have plans to release other *cleansed* filesharing clients? If so can you go into detail on which ones and which ones you may do in the future?

DrDamn: I'll keep releasing them as long as I need to. I'm hoping my efforts, along with the efforts of many others, will eventually raise awareness of spyware to the point where the companies that write spyware applications can't stay in business.

Geeknews: What do you think about AOL pulling the plug on Nullsoft's WASTE distributed networking program?

DrDamn: I can't say I'm surprised. AOL did the same thing when Nullsoft released Gnutella several years ago. I haven't yet tried Waste myself, but I probably will soon. It certainly sounds like a cool concept, though.

Geeknews: How do you feel about industry advocates such as the RIAA and ASCAP?

DrDamn: They represent a failed business model. Seriously, if they want to stay in business they're going to have to offer someting that wouldn't be so easy to distribute for free, such as mult-channel, 24 bit audio. If the RIAA could set standards for record players back in the day, I don't see why they couldn't say that CDs are dead and DVD- audio is the new standard.

Geeknews: What is your background and where do you want your online ventures to take you?

DrDamn: I guess you could say I'm your typical college student with various computer- related hobbies. My main goal is to educate people about spyware, and I do that through the distribution of spyware-free filesharing clients. People often want me to make clean versions of other software, but I really just don't have the time.

More: http://www.geeknews.net/index.php?pg=15


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hollywood's Box Office Slump Continues
David Germain

This year's movie superheroes are getting licked by last year's.

While The Matrix Reloaded, X2: X-Men United, The Hulk and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines had big weekend openings, Hollywood revenues lag behind the record pace of 2002, when Spider-Man and Star Wars ruled the summer.

Since early May, when X2 kicked off the summer blockbuster season, domestic revenues are at $2.11 billion US, down 3.3 per cent from summer 2002, according to box- office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

For the year, revenues are $4.65 billion US, a 4.5 per cent drop from 2002, when movie grosses hit an all-time high of $9.32 billion.

The picture is even worse factoring in this year's higher ticket prices. With an average admission cost of $6.03 US, up from $5.80 in 2002, Hollywood has sold about 772 million movie tickets this year, off 8.2 per cent from 2002.

Moviegoers seem less enchanted by this summer's crowd of explosive action flicks, none of which has approached the $400 million-plus performance of Spider-Man and $300 million payday of Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones.

Audiences may be a bit worn out by the onslaught of comic-book adaptations such as The Hulk, X2 or Daredevil, and by Hollywood's record number of sequels -- about two dozen this year.

In summer 2002, fans were still buzzing about Spider-Man when the low-budget sleeper My Big Fat Greek Wedding grew into a blockbuster on audience word-of-mouth alone. Moviegoing tends to breed more moviegoing, but this summer, the films are not catching people's fancy in quite the same way.

"Maybe this is just my esoteric theory, but it could be that people just feel like doing something else than going to the theatre," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "Maybe they did so much moviegoing last year that they're burned out."

This year's most anticipated movie, The Matrix Reloaded, came in second behind Spider-Man among best weekend debuts ever and grossed $135.8 million in its first five days. But unlike the staying power of Spider-Man, Matrix Reloaded earned mixed reviews and so-so word-of-mouth, with revenues falling steeply in subsequent weekends.

The animated fish tale Finding Nemo swam past Matrix Reloaded last weekend to become this year's top-grossing movie, at $274.9 million and counting.

Other big action flicks have opened strongly then nose-dived, most notably the The Hulk. Second-weekend revenues plunged 70 per cent from its $62.1 million debut.

Meantime, Finding Nemo and other lighter tales such as the heist caper The Italian Job or the comedies Bruce Almighty, Bringing Down the House and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days held up better week after week.

Despite lagging revenues, a few surprise hits could be enough to put Hollywood on track to overtake last year's record box office.

This year's advantage is a solid lineup of potential hits in the second half of summer, traditionally a quieter time at theatres than the stretch from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July. Summer 2002 closed with a whimper, while this season has a chance to go out with a bang.
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMovies/jul8_slump-ap.html


1. "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," $44 million.

2. "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde," $22.9 million.

3. "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," $14.2 million.

4. "Finding Nemo," $11 million.

5. "The Hulk," $8.2 million.

6. "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas," $6.8 million.

7. "28 Days Later," $6.1 million.

8. "The Italian Job," $4.3 million.

9. "Bruce Almighty," $4 million.

10. "2 Fast 2 Furious," $2.4 million.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spike Lee and Viacom Settle Lawsuit

Spike TV won't be getting spiked after all.

Filmmaker Spike Lee and Viacom settled a dispute Monday that allows the media giant to rebrand its TNN network as Spike TV, ending a lawsuit that contended the new moniker was a deliberate attempt to hijack Lee's image.

Lee, director of Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing, had obtained a temporary injunction in June that prevented the name change, but on Monday state Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub lifted the order.

The ruling means Viacom, which also owns CBS and MTV, can proceed immediately with plans to call the network Spike TV, the "first television network for men." Details on the settlement were not disclosed.

TNN shows reruns of The A-Team, Baywatch and Miami Vice and sports entertainment such as pro wrestling and American Gladiators. The network also carries an animated series featuring Pamela Anderson as the voice of Stan Lee's Stripperella, an undercover agent who is also a stripper.

Lee, whose real name is Shelton Jackson Lee, said he objected to being associated with low-brow programming.

The judge initially ordered Lee to post a $500,000 US bond June 13 after he issued a temporary injunction against Viacom's plan to rename TNN. But after a hearing two weeks ago, the judge raised the bond to $2.5 million and gave Lee until Monday to post it.

The additional $2 million was never posted, and the judge vacated the injunction after both sides reached the agreement, said one of Lee's lawyers, Terry Gross.

"We have settled the case with Viacom," Gross said. "It's obviously good when parties settle."

During the hearing Monday, TNN vice- president Kevin Kay said the network had lost millions of dollars since the injunction and stood to lose millions more if the bar continued.

Viacom officials didn't immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on the judge's order.

While the case was pending, Lee was in Los Angeles filming Sucker-Free City for Showtime, a cable network owned by Viacom.
http://www.canoe.ca/Television/jul8_spiketv-ap.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A New Nuclear Age

Planners design technology to withstand the apocalypse
William M. Arkin

The Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review, approved by President Bush in January 2002, outlined steps the U.S. should take to ensure its future ability to "defeat any aggressor." Included was a mandate for an "assured, survivable and enduring" communications network, one that would remain functional even after a full-scale nuclear attack.

Defense Department documents recently made available to the Los Angeles Times describe how the government is now moving ahead with a number of new programs toward that end, including a $200-million, eight-year effort to expand and streamline nuclear war planning. Concurrently, the same commercial technologies used in wireless communications and personal computing are being enlisted to achieve a long-standing nuclear war fighter's dream: systems able to operate even during a protracted nuclear war.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How to Make a Sonic Purée From Pop Snippets
Matthew Mirapaul

Elvis Presley sounded all shook up. As his music streamed from a computer's speakers, he sang, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog/ don't be cruel." Then, after urging listeners to avoid contact with his blue suede shoes, he crooned, "Hallelujah."

This mangled medley was not remixed by a mischievous D.J. Instead, the mismatched music was generated by new software. N.A.G., as the interactive program is called, works like a cross between Google, the Morpheus music file-sharing network and a Cuisinart kitchen appliance.

It allows users to search for words — like "Presley" and "love" — in areas of the Internet where MP3 song files are, for the most part, illicitly swapped. But the program is not designed to play complete tunes. As N.A.G. retrieves song files labeled with the selected words, it slices off audio snippets and blends them into sonic collages.

The results are generally closer to sound art than conventional music. Searching for "Madonna," for instance, spawns a staccato string of song excerpts, some as short as one-twentieth of a second. But chance can yield a mellifluous outcome, as when overlapping versions of "Yesterday" by the Beatles, James Taylor, Boyz II Men and José Feliciano produce a near fugue.

N.A.G. was created by Jason Freeman, a 25-year-old New York composer and media artist, who put the program online last week. It can be downloaded from Turbulence.org, the Internet-art site of New Radio and Performing Arts, a new-media arts organization that commissioned the work.

Despite the recent announcement by the recording industry that it intends to sue computer users who illegally share large numbers of music files, N.A.G. users are unlikely to be targets. Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America, said, "I'm concerned about anything that relies upon infringements to succeed." But he added that he did not expect the program to be responsible for widespread copyright violations.

Mr. Freeman said he became intrigued by the file-sharing networks once he began to appreciate the vast music library they contained. But the notion of simply downloading songs bored him, he said, so he decided to develop a tool that would roam the networks, using them not so much to steal music as to render something new.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Freeman described N.A.G. as an instrument that plays the Internet. "I just love the serendipity," he said. "It's not that things always line up in really interesting ways. But when they do, it's all the more exciting."

N.A.G. is an acronym for Network Auralization for Gnutella. Gnutella is a set of technical specifications that allows individual computers on the Internet to exchange data like MP3 song files. It underlies Morpheus, LimeWire, Bear Share and other file-sharing networks.

But the work's title also alludes to Mr. Freeman's nagging doubts about how the battle over file-sharing will affect musical creativity. As a composer, he is concerned by how easy it is for file-sharers to violate musical copyrights. Yet he is also troubled by the music industry's efforts to impose limits on how digital music can be copied, redistributed and, ultimately, transformed.

Mr. Freeman wondered what would happen if commercial music were exclusively distributed this way. "Would the virtuosic techniques of D.J.'s still be possible?" he said. "Would teenagers still be able to make mash-ups or remixes to share with their friends? And, of course, will works of art such as N.A.G. still be possible?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/ar...ic/08MIRA.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Music in the Mind
C. Claiborne Ray

Q. Why should I experience the constant repetition in my mind of melodies that I heard either long ago or recently?

A. Studies of brain activity reported last year by researchers at Dartmouth pinpointed an area of the brain that specializes in processing melodies.

This area has links to short- and long-term memory, as well as to emotions. It is also involved in assimilating information that is important to an individual and in handling interactions between emotional and nonemotional information. Because of the links and the function, remembering a melody may have much in common with remembering an emotion.

The researchers, led by Dr. Petr Janata, a psychologist, identified the region as the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, just behind the middle of the forehead. The study traced magnetic resonance images of blood flow in the brain.

In part of the study, musically trained subjects listened to a melody that cycled through the 24 major and minor scales of Western music. Especially when a test note that did not "belong" in some of the keys was heard, discernible changes occurred. As the keys changed, brain activity traced a doughnut-shaped area in the region.

Though the study was conducted using Western scales, the priming of the brain with any other set of organized musical information would have the same effects, other scientists suggest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/science/08QNA.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Zealand Police Get Tech Crime Powers
Correspondents in Wellington

POLICE and security agencies in New Zealand have been given broad powers to intercept electronic communications after the passage of new legislation that also boosted hacking laws.

The Crimes Amendment Act extends existing police powers to tap phone lines with the approval of a High Court judge. It was overwhelmingly approved by 111 of the New Zealand parliament's 120 members.

The new law takes effect October 1 and gives police, the Government Communications and Security Bureau and the Security Intelligence Service additional power to intercept emails, faxes and text messages with High Court approval.

New Zealand has passed a raft of new security and anti-terror laws and beefed up domestic security since the September 11 2001 terror attacks in the United States. The new legislation reflected changes in technology, crime and law enforcement since the country's Crimes Act was passed in 1961, Justice Minister Phil Goff said.

But all nine Green Party legislators, who opposed the measure, called it a further invasion of privacy. The party's co-leader, Rod Donald, said it was "an extension of the surveillance state".

Mr Goff said the law also bolsters privacy by making it illegal for unauthorised people to intercept emails and faxes not intended for them. Previously only unauthorised phone taps were illegal.

Controls on hackers were toughened by making it illegal, without proper authorisation, to intercept, access, use or damage data held on computers, Mr Goff said. It will also be illegal to sell, distribute or possess computer hacking programs.

"People attempting to put an Internet site off-line, or change or delete someone else's data, will face maximum sentences of seven years" in prison, Mr Goff said.
http://australianit.news.com.au/comm...=date&Intro=No


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plan for VHF Internet Trials
Simon Hayes

VACATED VHF television spectrum could be used for high-speed internet access in rural areas, if an Australian National University trial is successful.

ANU's BushLAN project - which uses channels one and two on the VHF band to provide internet access - will be tested at Wollongong on the NSW south coast in the next couple of months.

With funding from the ACT Knowledge Fund and the Australian Research Council, the graduate student program will use VHF antennas linked to multiple homes by 802.11b wireless LAN technology to deliver internet from a transceiver at the ISP to the users.

Twenty ANU honours students have been working on the project.

Gerard Borg from ANU's Plasma Research Labs said spectrum could become available for other uses as television stations vacate VHF in favour of digital transmission.

"In the ACT and Wollongong these channels are not being used, but there has to be a long-term question as to who has the best use for these frequencies," he said. "It will always be up in the air.

"We will leave it up to others to decide if this is the best use of the spectrum."

Once up and running, BushLAN will deliver between 100Kbps and 1Mbps up to 100 km from an ISP.

Up to 1000 users could be served on 20MHz. "This is off-the-shelf VHF equipment," Dr Borg said. "We are looking at Linux as an embedded system."

With transceivers operating at 25MHz to 70MHz on a single channel, BushLAN will use WiFi to connect users to antennas.

VHF telecommunications would be a cheaper option than satellite.

"In terms of ongoing costs and set-up costs, this will be cheaper than satellite," he said.

"It doesn't have the latency of satellite and it's a bit more reliable than satellite because the user has total control of the equipment."

Any future commercialisation of the system would depend on the future use of the spectrum, and the commitment of commercial users to the system, he said.

Metropolitan television stations are due to leave VHF in eight years.

"There are companies out there that support us and think it's a brilliant idea that's worth the risk," Dr Borg said.

"If one day it turned out it was a (permitted) use of the spectrum, then they could make it happen."
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...nbv%5E,00.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Court Backs Thumbnail Image Linking
Stefanie Olsen

Search engines' display of miniature images is fair use under copyright law, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, but the legality of presenting full-size renditions of visual works is yet to be determined.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision is a partial win for defendant Arriba Soft--an image search engine now known as Ditto.com--in its case against photographer Leslie Kelly. Kelly sued Arriba Soft in April 1999 for copyright infringement when the company's software had recorded miniatures, or thumbnails, and full sizes of Kelly's digital photos and made them accessible via its search engine.

The court ruled that use of thumbnail images in search engines is legal, confirming an earlier ruling by the same court from February 2002. But the court withdrew a previous decision on the display of full-size images, which it had deemed out of the bounds of fair use because it was likely to harm the market for Kelly's work.

That part of the ruling held Arriba Soft liable for copyright infringement for opening a new window to display full-size images, a practice known as in-line linking or framing. Other visual search engines use this technique, including Google, Lycos and AltaVista. The case is now ordered to go to trial.

"As to the first action (on thumbnails), the district court correctly found that Arriba's use was fair. However, as to the second action, we conclude that the district court should not have reached the issue because neither party moved for summary judgment as to the full-size images," according to the opinion.

Steve Krongold, the plaintiff's attorney, said that despite the ruling, he is confident that they will win in a trial.

"We do not agree that displaying full-size images, which were taken from another person's Web site and used to sell products and services at Arriba Soft, is a fair use of that image," said Krongold, an attorney with Turner Green, based in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Although Ditto.com could not be immediately reached for comment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed a brief urging the court to permit Web linking to copyrighted images, viewed the ruling as a victory.

"Web site owners can rest a bit easier about linking to copyrighted materials online," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann said in a statement. "By revising its ruling, the court removed a copyright iceberg from the main shipping lanes of the World Wide Web."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1023629.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Searching for a Dial Tone in Africa
G. Pascal Zachary

The Internet bubble has long since popped in the United States, Europe and Asia. But in parts of Africa the Internet is serving as a powerful force for change, primarily by allowing companies and individuals to make international telephone calls far less expensively than through conventional channels.

Calls in and out of sub-Saharan Africa have long been among the world's most costly, strangling business opportunities and burdening ordinary people. Services have been tightly controlled by government-owned telephone companies, many of which are rife with corruption and incompetence. Governments also imposed high tariffs on international calls, seeing it as a lucrative source of revenue.

But now, thanks to what is called voice-over-Internet, phone alternatives are flourishing, sharply lowering costs and expanding opportunities for business and consumers in some of the poorest places on earth — even as they pose a competitive threat to government-sanctioned telephone companies.

Sending telephone calls over the Internet is gaining ground in Africa because it makes possible a range of new services, linking the sub-Saharan to the world's major industrial centers in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. And better digital connections, mostly via satellite, are raising the hope that Ghana — the most peaceful country in a West African region besieged by civil wars and ethnic strife — may become the regional hub for an information-technology industry.

"As Ghana improves its connectivity to the outside world, it has the potential to become for Africa what Bangalore became for India," said Paul Maritz, a former senior executive at Microsoft who recently visited Accra to survey the nascent high-tech scene here.

Last Thursday, at a United Nations conference in New York, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, delivered a message that developing countries also need to include wireless access, known as Wi-Fi, in building an Internet system.

"It is precisely in places where no infrastructure exists that Wi-Fi can be particularly effective," Mr. Annan said, "helping countries to leapfrog generations of telecommunications technology and empower their people."

As the movement advances, though, many government-owned telephone companies, which dominate wired service in most African countries, are fighting a rear-guard action.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/05/bu...ss/05VOIC.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stop Me Before I Become Anonymous
John C. Dvorak

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may become indirectly responsible for our inability to stop the next terrorist attack on the US. Hear me out on this one. The association's recent move to bust individuals, mostly students, for music trading will spark a movement toward anonymous computing unlike anything we've ever seen. Already two anonymous music swapping systems have appeared: Filetopia and Blubster. This is just the beginning.

We can expect to see the development of new stealth technologies that will be used routinely by everyone. A massive trend toward true Net anonymity will have repercussions that are all bad. Child porn rings will be harder to uncover. E-mail sources will be harder to find. Spam will rule. Virus coders will remain in the shadows. Terrorism can flourish in such an environment. And the RIAA still won't win the battle over file swapping. But it will have set off a bad chain of events.

There have been bursts of activity concerning anonymity on the Net, with paranoid users finding ways to hide themselves from any sort of scrutiny. There are still a few remailers out there through which you can send anonymous e-mails. You might do this to prevent your e-mail address from being harvested by so-called spam bots. It's also handy for writing poison-pen letters to the boss or whomever. Many of these anonymous remailers were compromised by various governmental security agencies (or so it was believed) and their use has declined recently. Also, the general public didn't seem to have a serious interest in extreme anonymity, since the openness of the Net didn't seem to be causing anyone's exploitation.

Some years ago, you could even subscribe to an anonymity service that would route all your surfing and even IRC activity through various routers and servers in such a way that you could never be tracked by either IP address or MAC address/serial number. The service cropped up during the dot-com era. A few years ago, I saw the CEO of the company that had provided the service, and he told me that people simply weren't interested enough to subscribe.

That was then and this is now. Nobody was subscribing to the anonymous Net because there was no fear. There would have been no groundswell of technological change to protect a child porn ring. This is not the case with kids in college who are computer science majors. Especially when the kids like swapping MP3 files around the campus. I would recommend to the RIAA that if it is going to bust people for music trading as a way of making money, it should file as many suits as it can in the shortest amount of time. Anonymity technology is coming on fast.

None of this is new. Concern about anonymity has simply been moribund until now. In 2001, for example, the CIA took up with Oakland-based SafeWeb to implement Triangle Boy—a software system that could keep the Net activities of CIA employees anonymous. The public-at-large saw no particular value in this.

What I'd like to see is some research on Net users that will show how many of them have downloaded even one song illegally. Just one. During the heyday of Napster there were millions and millions of users. With new software coming from Microsoft and others that will allow just about anyone to peruse your hard disk remotely, I can see the public at large getting a little more cautious, especially when it sees the RIAA bankrupting students with legal action.

And you can be certain that the ISPs out there—all of them—will do whatever they can to help users implement anonymity strategies. They fought against the RIAA when it wanted them to give up user names. This is not because ISP's care about protecting users. It's a huge pain for ISPs to have to police the users and do extra paperwork for the benefit of some outsider. Screw that.
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0...a=44323,00.asp


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Privacy In Peril
Steven Musil

Wal-Mart Stores shoppers can breathe easier knowing that an experimental wireless inventory control system won't be tracking them and their purchases from the store to their homes.

Wal-Mart unexpectedly canceled testing for the system, ending one of the first and most closely watched efforts to bring controversial radio frequency identification technology to store shelves in the United States. A Wal-Mart representative said the retail giant would not conduct a planned trial of a so-called smart-shelf system with partner Gillette that was scheduled to begin last month at an outlet in a Boston suburb.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology uses microchips to wirelessly transmit product serial numbers to a scanner without the need for human intervention. The technology is seen as an eventual successor to bar-code inventory tracking systems, promising to cut distribution costs for manufacturers and improve retailing margins.

Backers of the technology foresee billions of packaged goods tracked using in-store RFID systems that might one day help prevent shoplifting and speed shoppers through automated checkout lines. But the technology has drawn attacks from consumer privacy groups that worry about potential abuses if product-tracking tags are allowed to follow people from stores into their homes.

The news isn't so good for file swappers. Those hoping to share music and other works online without exposing their identity to the prying eyes of copyright enforcers face a tough choice.

Hiding on a file-sharing system is hard for a very simple reason: Peer-to-peer networks are designed for efficiency, not anonymity. They rely on a straightforward mechanism that is ruthlessly efficient at trading files. But, by broadcasting the contents of shared folders, the system leaves people vulnerable to identification and, therefore, to possible legal action.

On a peer-to-peer network, files are directly swapped between computers, each of which has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address that can be traced back to the Internet service provider, corporation or university to which it belongs. Because computers on a peer-to-peer network transfer files without going through an intermediary, the IP address of one person on the network is generally available to everyone else.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued the parent company of Puretunes, a Spanish site that briefly offered inexpensive music downloads. Puretunes emerged in May, claiming that it had won rights from several Spanish licensing agencies that gave it the ability to distribute major- label music legally online.

Label representatives said the site was operating illegally because Puretunes had not acquired the permission of labels, artists or song publishers.

However, the service went offline last month. The RIAA suit comes after several weeks of complaints from angry Puretunes customers. Puretunes' plan was to give visitors all-you-can-download access to a vast music library for time periods such as one night, one weekend or one week.

On the other side of the copyright fight, a group representing small Webcasters is threatening to sue the RIAA on antitrust grounds, fearful that hundreds or thousands of stations will be pushed offline.

The Webcaster Alliance, a group representing about 300 Net radio stations, says royalty agreements negotiated last year at the behest of Congress and the Library of Congress threaten to put a number of small stations out of business. The group's members have not paid royalties to copyright owners under any of several possible payment schemes, one of which was passed last year by Congress in an attempt to protect the economic viability of small Net radio stations.

In another corner of the copyright battle, a federal appeals court ruled that search engines' display of miniature images is fair use under copyright law, but the legality of presenting full-size renditions of visual works has yet to be determined.

The court ruled that use of thumbnail images in search engines is legal, confirming an earlier ruling by the same court from February 2002. But the court withdrew a previous decision on the display of full-size images, which it had deemed beyond the bounds of fair use because it was likely to harm the market for a photographer's work.
http://news.com.com/2100-1083-1024849.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P2P's Little Secret
Declan McCullagh

File swappers hoping to share music and other works online without exposing their identity to the prying eyes of copyright enforcers face a tough choice.

Popular peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, where the lion's share of online trading of music and other files takes place, are designed such that participants who wish to remain completely anonymous must pay a severe price in terms of convenience and usability, experts warn.

"There is no good system out there for hiding identities," said Randy Saaf, president of MediaDefender, a Los Angeles-based company that investigates peer-to-peer networks for the music industry. "If they're sharing content, they're wide open--they're running the risk. It's hard to anonymize people on a big public network."

There are plenty of incentives for Web surfers to try to cloak their identity these days. Recently, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) pledged to sue individuals who infringe copyrights, and it won a court order forcing Verizon Communications to divulge the identity of a Kazaa user. The RIAA has already filed suit against four university students, and some schools have disciplined students for inappropriate file-swapping.

So far, the RIAA's threats of litigation have had no effect, said Wayne Rosso, president of peer-to-peer company Grokster. "As far as I can see, nobody really cares," Rosso said. "Our downloads are up, traffic is holding steady. Come on, users know they can't sue 60 million of them. Who are they kidding?"

Hiding on a file-sharing system is hard for a very simple reason: Peer-to-peer networks are designed for efficiency, not anonymity. They rely on a straightforward mechanism that is ruthlessly efficient at trading files. But, by broadcasting the contents of shared folders, the system leaves users vulnerable to identification and, therefore, to possible legal action.

On a peer-to-peer network, files are directly swapped between computers, each of which has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address that can be traced back to the Internet service provider, corporation or university to which it belongs. Because computers on a peer-to-peer network transfer files without going through an intermediary, the IP address of one person on the network is generally available to everyone else.

Typically, a copyright holder can unmask a suspected infringer by sending a subpoena--which invokes a controversial section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)--to the company or university providing network connectivity to the IP address in question, asking it to reveal the identity of the suspect. Once it knows the suspect's name, a copyright holder has the option of filing a lawsuit or simply sending a cease-and-desist notice.

Products that offer privacy for activities such as Web surfing and e-mail have been available for some time, although most have been greeted with indifference by consumers. That attitude could change, however, with the RIAA's new policy of filing lawsuits against individuals, potentially sparking a renaissance in anonymizing tools for peer-to-peer networks.

If large copyright holders begin to target privacy-protecting Internet services, advocates worry that the tiny industry may not be able to survive the eventual fusillade of laws and litigation. (In October 2001, Zero-Knowledge Systems, a pioneer in the type of identity-shielding technology that would be a boon to peer-to-peer networks, closed its flagship anonymity network, Freedom.)

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says that anonymity should remain the default condition both online and offline. "It is in many different contexts in the physical world, whether it's travel or commerce," Rotenberg said. "The burden typically falls on organizations that want your personal identity to justify their reason."

Given the RIAA's history of lawsuits, Rotenberg said he fears the worst. "To the extent that anonymity appears on the RIAA radar screen--as have P2P and other technologies that stand in the way of copyright enforcement--you can be sure that RIAA attorneys will launch a frontal assault, regardless of the constitutional implications," Rotenberg said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029-1023735.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digital Music For Adults

MP3s have appealed mostly to people with more time than money -- until now.
Pat Regnier

On a rainy afternoon in April, I dropped into the record store -- excuse me, CD store -- across the street from my office in Manhattan.

I didn't buy anything. I just wanted to remind myself one more time of what a CD store looks like, before they go the way of soda fountains and men's hat shops.

This fit of future-forward nostalgia was brought on by the launch that morning of Apple's new iTunes 4 with Music Store, an online service that lets you download songs for just 99 cents each and whole albums for $10.

Music Store will have a limited audience at first -- you need a Mac running the OS X system to use it -- but it's pretty clear now that the music industry is ready to give up on the CD.

Disembodied digital music has gone mainstream. For those of us old enough to still use terms like "record store" (I'm all of 31), this is going to take some getting used to.

Up to now, the digital music boom has been driven largely by the tastes of teenagers. Most grown-ups just don't have the time to skulk around online looking for "free" pirated music files with software like Kazaa and LimeWire. (At least some of us still have scruples about stealing.)

What's more, we don't want to listen to our music only on PC speakers or Walkman-like portable MP3 players; many of us have invested over the years in decent stereo systems.

We've also put a lot of money into our CD collections, and I for one am reluctant to abandon my CDs for anything that doesn't sound as good, or close to it. But the dirty secret about MP3s, the most popular new format, is that they can sound terrible -- particularly if you listen to jazz or classical or, really, anything more musically sophisticated than Britney Spears.

Still, going virtual is worth it. Over the past couple of months, I've tried out more than a dozen new digital music devices. I'm convinced that this new technology is something adults can love.

Apple's deservedly popular iPod is just the beginning. With a new breed of surprisingly inexpensive stereo components called digital audio receivers, you can now access your entire music collection anywhere in your house.

You'll even find that you listen to music in new ways. Recently the Talking Heads' sublime "Heaven" popped up on my jukebox in random play mode; I'd owned the CD for years but hadn't played it much and never noticed this amazing song. That kind of discovery happens all the time now that my music collection has been liberated from shiny plastic disks.

Ready to join the revolution? Here's what you need to know.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/24/pf/s...nups/index.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Metallica Disses Apple iTunes
Jerry Del Colliano

News sources including CNN are reporting that Metallica has opted not to sell its songs on Apple’s newly successful iTunes 4 pay-per-download service claiming that they want to sell their entire album not just the individual songs. This decision comes after Metallica’s public opposition to Napster and other peer to peer file sharing systems that allow people to swap copywritten music files without paying per download. Apple allows users to buy a limited amount of albums on its iTunes 4 system but representatives from Metallica’s management company tell CNN that Apple’s policy is to only sell albums from artists who allow them to sell their singles too.

Other popular bands are reportedly not completely enthused with selling their songs on iTunes including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day and Linkin Park. This causes some users to feel even more compelled to try to find the songs for free elsewhere on the internet. Still to this day, ripping songs from a CD to MP3 can be completed in just minutes which can then allow the songs to be immediately posted on file swapping systems.

Searching for “Metallica” on Limewire, a peer to peer file sharing application that runs on the Gnutella network, resulted in 223 different tracks from the band including every song from their latest album, St. Anger. For young fans, the temptation to steal many of the tracks and rip them onto a $0.10 CDR might prove to be stronger than the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA. Apple’s iTunes is far from a perfect solution, however it does offer music enthusiasts an opportunity to buy music the way many of them want to enjoy it. If bands were looking for new ways to make albums more compelling, they might want to look at copy protected new formats like DVD-Audio which provide higher resolution surround sound mixes, small music videos and hidden feature “Easter eggs.” DVD-Audio discs are priced comparably to CDs and play back perfectly (not in MLP surround however) on DVD-Video based game machines like Sony’s Playstation II and Microsoft’s Xbox.
http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/...etallica.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patent Bending
James Surowiecki

The American newspaper business as we know it was born on September 3, 1833, when a twenty-three-year-old publisher named Benjamin Day put out the first edition of the New York Sun. Whereas other papers sold for five or six cents, the Sun cost just a penny. For revenue, Day relied on advertising rather than on subscriptions. Above all, he revolutionized the way papers were distributed. He sold them to newsboys in lots of a hundred to hawk in the street. Before long, Day was the most important publisher in New York.

One thing that Day did not do was patent any of these innovations. Soon after the Sun appeared, penny papers made their début in Boston and Baltimore; in New York, James Gordon Bennett started the Herald, mimicking the Sun’s price and sales methods. By 1840, the Sun and the Herald were the country’s two most popular dailies.

This is how American business worked until very recently. Innovators came up with new ways of selling products, handling suppliers, running organizations, or managing information. If the ideas were good, the innovators got rich, but they also got imitated, which made them less rich than they might have been. It was great for everyone else, though. The competition lowered prices and increased quality; the new ideas spread and were improved upon. The mail-order catalogue, the moving assembly line, the decentralized corporation, the frequent-flier mile, the category-killer store—none of these radical ideas were patented.

Those were the days. Now the first thing someone with a good notion does is press the government to protect it. Priceline patented its reverse-auction method for selling cut-rate airline tickets. I.B.M. patented a method for keeping track of people waiting in line for the bathroom. Last month, Netflix, a company that runs an online DVD-rental subscription service, got a patent covering, among other things, the way its customers request titles and the way it sends out DVDs. And eBay is now in court appealing a verdict that it infringed on a Virginia man’s patent. The crime? Selling auctioned items at a fixed price. What gall.

For most of American history, it was next to impossible to get a patent on what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called “a mere method of doing business.” A business method was considered to be an idea—selling newspapers in the streets, delivering packages overnight—and ideas of this sort were not patentable. But in July, 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit did away with that principle. The case, State Street v. Signature Financial, involved software that Signature had written to enable it to administer mutual funds more efficiently. But the court’s language was broad enough to embrace any business process (as long as it was new and “nonobvious” and had a “useful, concrete, and tangible result”). The gates opened, and in the past five years thousands of business-method patents have been granted. One inventive soul won a patent for a system of using pictures to train janitors. Another got one for describing a way to cut hair with both hands.

All patents, of course, stifle competition. That’s why inventors like them. But business-method patents have an especially chilling effect, in that novel approaches to commerce can be ruled off-limits to others. What eBay was accused of copying was a concept, not a computer code. As James Boyle, a law professor at Duke, put it, “Under this logic, one could get a patent on the idea of fast food—not a different way to broil the burger but the idea of fast food itself.”

Although intellectual-property experts like Boyle have loudly criticized the State Street decision, Congress has shown little interest in doing anything about it. (In fact, lawmakers have proposed bills that would make things even worse, such as allowing sports “techniques” to be patented. Imagine pitchers paying a royalty every time they threw a forkball.) That has left the matter of business-method patents in the hands of patent judges and the staffers at the Patent Office—people who spend most of their time working with patent-seekers, and who are therefore more sympathetic to their interests than to the public’s. (Economists call this phenomenon “regulatory capture.”) The office says on its Web site that its role is “to grant patents,” but surely its role should be to distinguish between innovations that are worth patenting and those that are not.

Americans have traditionally been chary about intellectual-property rights. Thomas Jefferson, who served on the nation’s first patent board, wrote, “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.” Although we have always had a vibrant patent system, we’ve managed to strike a balance between the need to encourage innovation and the need to foster competition. As Benjamin Day, Henry Ford, and Sam Walton might attest, American corporations have thrived on innovative ideas and new business methods, without owning them, for two centuries. In the past decade, the balance has been upset. The scope of patents has been expanded, copyrights have been extended, trademarks have been subjected to bizarre interpretations. Celebrities are even claiming exclusive ownership of their first names (consider Spike Lee’s objection to Viacom’s cable channel Spike TV). The new regime’s defenders insist that in today’s economy such vigilance is necessary: ideas are the source of our competitive strength. Fair enough. But you don’t compete by outlawing your competition.
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?...alk_surowiecki


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lessig

Leaving The Copyright Lane For The Public Domain

Kim Scarborough sent this (warning: large mp3) wonderful radio show from the Columbia Workshop in 1937 about characters leaving the “copyright lane” for the “public domain.” It is a brilliantly complex and funny tale that reveals an understanding about the value of the public domain that would be hard to recognize today.

More Walt Disney Creativity

Eric Hughes sent me a great piece about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which will be released this Friday. As he points out, every character in the movie (which the ads call “the most innovative film of the summer,” and “when our future is at stake, they will be our last hope”) is a character in the public domain. As WALT Disney before (and as Disney, Inc has apparently forgotten now), the creators of this movie have used the public domain to produce creative new work. For those who defend the idea of (effectively) perpetual copyright: Do you think there would be more of these works if there were a gaggle of rights holders to clear permissions with?

Here is Eric’s list of characters, with the caveat that this is a work in progress. Send corrections to me.

From Eric:

The movie is based on a wonderful comic by Alan Moore, the best comics author alive. I had read the original a few years ago, but now there’s a film out. So I got curious about where Allan Moore got all the extraordinary gentlemen from. Here’s the list.

Allan Quatermain: A character from H. Rider Haggard stories, the most famous of which is King Solomon’s Mines, 1885. There’s an interesting profile at here. King Solomon’s Mines was written on a bet that he could write something better than Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Thomas Sawyer: Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, 1876. Huckleberry Finn came later. Character added for the movie; he’s evidently the only American.

Dr. Henry Jekyll / Mr. Edward Hyde: R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886.

Captain Nemo: Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, 1870.

Rodney Skinner. H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, 1897. I have been unable to confirm whether this was the character’s name in the novel.

Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.

Mycroft Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Greek Interpreter, 1892. I’m not sure if this is the first appearance or not.

Mina Murray Harker. Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897. Jonathan Harker’s wife.


Declaration Of Independence — Copyrighted

JD Lasica has a nice catch. Apparently, the Boston Globe has copyrighted the Declaration of Independence. But see 17 USC §506(c).


What Declan Doesn’t Get (finally, we’re back)

I’m relieved to find myself again in disagreement with Declan. In the simple world that images just two choices — regulation or no regulation — Declan thinks Microsoft is behaving inconsistently. Microsoft has argued (rightly and wrongly, depending upon the case, imho) against various examples of regulation. But Declan is now aghast to discover that Microsoft has been now lobbying to get the FCC to impose a different form of regulation. Oh my gosh! Imagine that!

The problem here is not Microsoft’s. The problem is Declan, and the simple-isms that continue to reign in Declan-thought. No one serious opposes all regulation. No one serious supports all regulation. The only serious debate is whether a particular regulation makes sense.

The particular regulation that Microsoft has endorsed does, in my view, make lots of sense. As Microsoft described in FCC hearings, increasingly, cable companies are beginning to assert the right to decide which applications will run on their cable networks. Microsoft faced this when they tried to deploy Xbox technology. Tim Wu has other examples of this control here.

Declan quotes many who say, hey, no reason to worry. There’s no good evidence that there is any significant discrimination — yet.

But this is the part of this argument that convinces me Declan is spending too much time in Washington, and should go back to his CompSci roots. The issue here is not “regulation vs no regulation”; the issue here is the continued viability of any end-to-end architecture to the Internet.

If in fact networks are allowed to decide which applications and content can run on the network, then “the Internet” is dead. Sure, there will be a network out there — the cable network, or whatever you want to call it — but it will no longer be “the Internet” that Saltzer, Clark and Reed wrote about.

And, more importantly, and completely contrary to the non-thought that now reigns in Washington about this: the very possibility that this is the future of the Internet is having an effect on investment right now.

The point is obvious (save to those who inhale the DC air): Investments in technologies for the Internet are being made today, based upon the expectations about what the Internet will be in 3-5 years. If cable companies are allowed to decide what applications and content gets to run on that network, then the cost of innovation has been increased right now. If everyone with an Xbox technology needs permission to use the Internet, then what everyone should begin to recognize is that only Microsoft — and others with their money and power — will have permission to use the Net.

Maybe that’s ok with Declan and the Cato types. After all, they’re fighting for a principle — “no regulation.” Ah yes. “No regulation.”

What planet do these guys come from?
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...7.shtml#001335


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Behind a Hacker's Book, a Primer on Copyright Law
Seth Schiesel

ANDREW HUANG, an engineer and programmer in San Diego, has written a book called "Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering." It has also been an introduction to copyright law in the digital age.

Wiley Technology Publishing, a unit of John Wiley & Sons, agreed last year to publish the book. But after Mr. Huang delivered the manuscript five months ago, the publisher backed out over concerns that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 made it illegal to disseminate information about how to circumvent copyright protection.

"We put it through our own internal legal vet, and our lawyers came back with a red flag and said that based on at least one chapter and perhaps several, we may be in a position where we might be in violation" of the law, Robert Ipsen, vice president and executive publisher of Wiley Technology Publishing, said in a telephone interview. "We felt that we had a really solid, edgy book that was going to walk the line from a legal perspective but which we thought would have keen interest in the marketplace.''

"We were excited about it,'' he added, "and were somewhat chagrined that he had clearly wandered off into no-man's land in one or two chapters that in our legal counsel's opinion were clearly violating the spirit and letter" of the copyright act.

A spokeswoman for Wiley said that the company would not ask Mr. Huang, who is known online as "bunnie," to return the small advance he had received.

Rejected by Wiley, Mr. Huang had the book printed himself and began selling it by mail order, shipping copies from his garage.

With help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group based in San Francisco, Mr. Huang recently found a new publisher, No Starch Press in San Francisco. Bill Pollock, No Starch's president and publisher, said his company expected to publish the book this month.

The digital copyright law "is a very wrongheaded, stupid act, and it's got a lot of people scared,'' Mr. Pollock said. "When it gets to the point where people are canceling publishing of books, it's very scary. It's a sort of censorship.''

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a telephone interview that he anticipated similar issues in the future. "It's a problem that more people in the computer science and security field are going to run into," he said. "Even if what they are finding is probably perfectly legal, publishers don't want to risk expensive litigation to find out."

Mr. von Lohmann would not discuss details of the Wiley situation but said, "This is exactly the sort of chilling effect on publishers that we're worried about."

Mr. Ipsen said Wiley often worked with Microsoft to publish guides for Microsoft products, like the Xbox. Susan Spilka, a Wiley spokeswoman, said that Wiley's Microsoft relationship played no role in the company's decision not to publish Mr. Huang's book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/te...ts/10book.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Numbers

Music Biz Seeking Profits at 99 Cents
Brian Garrity

The music industry may have begun to figure out how to sell digital downloads, but making money from them is another story.

As the 99 cent digital singles model begins to take root across the industry through services like Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, Liquid Audio, Rhapsody and a host of others set to bow for the PC this fall, industry executives and artist representatives are questioning whether the pricing model makes sense financially.

With all parties involved angling for nickels and dimes in the average download sale, labels, artists and service providers all agree on at least one thing: No one is getting rich from singles sales at this point.

"Even though sales look like they're doing fairly well through the iTunes situation, you still have to be doing an enormous amount of downloads for that to become a real income stream," says Whitney Broussard, an attorney with entertainment law firm Selverne, Mandelbaum & Mintz.

Still, digital distribution advocates say the long-term potential is there.

If the industry can figure out how to sell downloads numbering in the tens of millions, labels can theoretically scale back their physical manufacturing costs and enjoy a healthy alternative revenue stream to the CD.

Despite being limited to the percentage of Mac users running OSX, the iTunes service has sold more than 5 million downloads since its April 28 bow. It has average sales of about 500,000 tracks per week, according to sources.

Artist representatives say overall digital download sales must surpass 20 times that 500,000 weekly volume for the pay-per-download business to become economically meaningful once larger PC services kick in.

"Most of these services are not profitable," the head of a leading digital music service acknowledges. "Right now, we're just trying to get people used to paying."

Labels are doing their part by dropping the per-track wholesale price charged to digital services and, in some cases, simplifying royalty payments to artists.

But it's all a work in progress.

Despite encouraging signs from iTunes, high-ranking major-label sources say it is too early to speculate what share of the market downloads will eventually capture.

In an effort to help drive volume, some services are trying lower prices. Listen.com, for instance, has dropped the price of its burnable tracks to 79 cents.

"We think on an ongoing basis the price point would be better off being somewhere between 50 cents and $1, not necessarily a dollar," listen.com chief executive Sean Ryan says.

But Listen's offer is in the context of a subscription service. For a la carte download stores, there is little room for price elasticity.

Looking at the revenue split on a typical 99 cent download sale, it is clear that all parties have thin margins.

On average, the label is taking home 47 cents per track before accounting for production, marketing, promotion and other costs; the service provider is grossing 34 cents per track before technology, processing and distribution costs; and the artist takes 10 cents before paying out to producers and other collaborators. The publisher/songwriter share is 8 cents.

That's assuming the label is selling tracks at a 65 cent wholesale rate and that the artist is receiving an album royalty rate with no deductions applied.

Those conditions can vary, depending on the label, the artist's deal and the service provider.

Apple, for instance, pays a straight 65 cent wholesale rate for tracks, sources say.

With other services, the situation is not as cut-and-dried. The major labels are wholesaling tracks to them for as low as 52 cents and as high as 80 cents.

Some labels wholesale at a fixed rate; others have variable prices.

In the latter case, tracks from superstar acts and prerelease radio singles can wholesale at premium rates north of $1. The price then slides based on availability at retail of a physical single and length of time in the market.

There are also variables with the service provider in terms of distribution model.

For example, Yahoo and Best Buy, which serve as distribution affiliates, typically take 10-15 cents on the sale of each track.

Credit card transaction processing fees also help determine how much the service provider nets from download sales.

When consumers purchase a single track, or even a small number of tracks, the service provider loses money on the sale because the base processing fee for each purchase is at least 25 cents. The fee drops on a per-track basis as transactions get larger.

To address this, services encourage bulk purchases or mandate the purchase of prepaid bundles to spread out credit card transaction costs.

The labels' profit is likewise dependent on wholesaling strategies, artist deals and other expenses, including publishing fees.

Under copyright law, the labels must pay the full mandated per-track mechanical rate to publishers and songwriters for digital singles.

Also, tracks longer than five minutes receive a larger publishing royalty.

Additional potential expenses include digital rights management technology fees, the digital equivalent of co-op advertising and bad debt.

"People look at downloads and say, the record company is making out, because they don't have to manufacture a record.' But in fact, the margin can be lower for a download than a record," says a senior VP at one major-label group.

As far as artist payments are concerned, some labels pay out on the artist's album royalty rate--typically a 15% royalty on the wholesale price. Others give artists a royalty rate for singles sales, which is 12% on average.

It also differs from label to label whether deductions are taken on technology (typically 20%), packaging (20%) and free goods (15%) before paying royalties on a permanent download. Such deductions are standard with sales of physical CDs.

Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group are considered to be at the forefront of progressive wholesale and compensation efforts.

Both label groups announced last year that they would not deduct such fees in digital singles sales.

Artists also have to split up their take with producers and other collaborators.

For example, if a hip-hop song features a star producer, samples and guest vocalists, the artist can be left with only a few cents.

"It can be a very small amount of money," Broussard says. "Even with respect to the artist getting the state-of-the-art, artist-friendly provisions, we're still talking about a few pennies."

To date, download economics have not been an area of much concern for artists and their handlers because of the limited revenue opportunity.

But artist representatives warn that the jury is still out on the economic model for downloads, as far as artists are concerned.

Veteran manager Irving Azoff points out that many digital distribution deals are short-term licenses and that "there are going to have to be renegotiations later."

He adds, "If this thing really connects, they're going to have to go back to artists and pay more of the 50/50 model than the 80/20 model they're trying to do right now."
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=3043640


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Overheard by James Grimmelmann

"If the record industry promised to listen to every song and enjoy it, that might make a difference."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Major Publishers File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Collegiate Copies

HarperCollins Publishers, Pearson Education, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sue Indiana Coursepack Producer
Press Release

Five major publishers have filed a copyright infringement suit against Collegiate Copies, Inc. and its owners, John E. Seeber and Thomas Seeber. HarperCollins Publishers, Pearson Education, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. allege that Collegiate Copies has engaged in routine and systematic reproduction of materials from the plaintiffs’ publications without seeking permission to reproduce the content either directly or through Copyright Clearance Center. The publishers’ complaint was filed recently in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

Collegiate Copies provides coursepacks to local universities in Indiana, including Indiana University at Bloomington. The contents of a typical coursepack include journal articles, excerpts from books, and other printed materials, selected by the instructor of a course as required reading for that course. The copy shop obtains copies of the books and other materials in the syllabus from a library, copies the portions identified by the instructor, and binds large numbers of them for students’ use. The copy shop then sells these coursepacks to students at a profit.

“Copyright law ensures that rights holders are fairly rewarded for their work and investment,” said Roy Kaufman, Associate General Counsel of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. “We actively promote compliance through various education initiatives. Lawsuits like this are the last resort in minimizing copyright infringement, yet we are willing to take this step when needed to protect our interests.”

“Increasingly, publishers want to address the serious problem of copyright infringement,” said Allan Adler, Vice President, Legal and Governmental Affairs, of the Association of American Publishers. “Businesses and academic institutions can eliminate their risk by securing permissions from the various rightsholders individually or through Copyright Clearance Center as a one-stop licensing service.” The Association of American Publishers is the principal trade association for the U.S. book publishing industry. The protection of intellectual property rights is among the association’s primary concerns.

Copyright Clearance Center, the not-for-profit copyright licensing and management company, helps businesses, academic institutions, copy shops, print centers and other users of protected materials comply with copyright law through its convenient licensing solutions. Royalties collected by the company are distributed to the publishers, authors, or other copyright owners who have engaged Copyright Clearance Center as their rights management agent.
http://www.copyright.com/News/PressRelease2003July8.asp


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slouching toward Armageddon
Dr. John Logie

In a now infamous New York Times article from January, 2002, Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), likened his organization’s efforts in opposing peer-to-peer downloads of motion pictures via the Internet to a military engagement. Valenti said, "We’re fighting our own terrorist war," adding, "the great moat that protects us, and it is only temporary, is lack of broadband access" [1]. Valenti’s remarks position his industry as both a victim and a target, and span centuries of military history. The timing of Valenti’s comments makes it clear that his reference to a "terrorist war" was meant to be understood in the context of the United States’ response to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Valenti was inviting readers of a newspaper serving the city hardest hit by these attacks to understand the film industry as having endured a parallel trauma. By contrast, Valenti’s description of the industry as temporarily protected by a "great moat," positions the MPAA as, at best, a medieval protectorate, and at worst, the sort of plutocratic castle-keep regularly targeted by Robin Hood.

Valenti’s remarks are especially striking given the recent successes of his constituents. For the United States motion picture industry the 2002 Memorial Day holiday weekend was among the most lucrative in history. American moviegoers stampeded box offices, spending over US$200 million on admissions. In June, 2002, Business Week Online reported that "box office receipts are 21 percent ahead of last year’s pace" [2].

But Jack Valenti was not happy. According to the Boston-based "digital solutions" corporation Viant the year’s 21 percent increase in box office receipts was paralleled by a 20 percent rise in illicit downloads of films, with roughly half a million copies downloaded each day [3]. These statistics prompted Valenti to observe, "It’s getting clear — alarmingly clear, I might add — that we are in the midst of the possibility of Armageddon" [4].

Valenti continued: "Eight out of 10 [movies] have to go to airlines, to hotels, to Blockbuster, to HBO, then to basic cable — to get their money back. If you are ambushed in the early days of your theatrical exhibition, the chances of you recouping in a world that is mostly broadband would be very, very different" [5]. Valenti’s "Armageddon" is thus understandable as a "mostly broadband" world in which secondary and tertiary revenue streams for Hollywood films are threatened by Internet-enabled piracy. These comments reflect a loss of perspective all too common in Hollywood. But Valenti’s biography reveals that he has more than a passing acquaintance with the kind of apocalyptic threat his language trivializes.

Valenti is a decorated veteran of the Second World War. He was a close associate of Lyndon Johnson, and served Johnson as the United States ramped up its involvement in the Vietnam War. In short, prior to his assumption of the Presidency of the MPAA in 1966, Valenti was a true Cold Warrior, writing and supervising the bulk of Johnson’s speeches. He no doubt played a key role in the Johnson administration’s withering attack on Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee for U.S. President. Goldwater had a well-earned reputation as a hard right-winger, once defending himself by claiming that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Valenti seized on this, arguing behind closed doors that "we ought to treat Goldwater not as an equal, who has credentials to be president, but as a radical, a preposterous candidate who would ruin this country and our future" [6]. Valenti’s successful deployment of his argument is testified to by the "Daisy" commercial, which ran once during the 1964 Presidential campaign, but nevertheless is generally understood to have had a devastating effect on the Goldwater campaign.

Given Valenti’s history as an architect of Johnson’s media messages, Valenti’s invocation of "Armageddon" should almost certainly be seen as a calculated statement from a man familiar with the particularities of both public speaking and political conflict.

Even so, it remains tempting to dismiss Valenti’s statements as rhetorical excesses of a man predisposed to hyperbole. Valenti did, after all, claim in 1983 that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" in sworn testimony before the United States Senate [8]. But Valenti’s rhetorical performances are far from anomalous in the ongoing debates over peer-to-peer downloads, in which the use and transmission of copyrighted materials are often recast as tactical warfare.

This paper offers critical analysis of recent discourse on peer-to-peer file transfers, illustrating the degree to which participants in the debates over the legality of Napster and its successors position themselves as combatants. Further, this paper maps this debate against the model of the Cold War (a model expressly invoked by Valenti and other participants in the debate) in part to point up how distant copyright questions are from actual warfare, and partly to illuminate the relative immaturity of the peer-to-peer debates. This point is underscored when the peer- to-peer debate is evaluated in terms of stasis theory, a classical rhetorical technique that, despite its vintage, provides a specific diagnosis for the impoverished discourse that has, to date, characterized this important public policy debate.
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/iss...gie/index.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat

Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information
Laura Blumenfeld

Sean Gorman's professor called his dissertation "tedious and unimportant." Gorman didn't talk about it when he went on dates because "it was so boring they'd start staring up at the ceiling." But since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman's work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives -- if they could get their hands on it -- would find a terrorist treasure map.

Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society.

"I'm this grad student," said Gorman, 29, amazed by his transformation from geek to cybercommando. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I'd be briefing government officials and private-sector CEOs."

Invariably, he said, they suggest his work be classified. "Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?" he said. "They're worried about national security. I'm worried about getting my degree." For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman's case, there's a new concern: publish and perish.

"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. "The fiber-optic network is our country's nervous system." Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things.

"You don't want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up," he said.

The Washington Post has agreed not to print the results of Gorman's research, at the insistence of GMU. Some argue that the critical targets should be publicized, because it would force the government and industry to protect them. "It's a tricky balance," said Michael Vatis, founder and first director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. Vatis noted the dangerous time gap between exposing the weaknesses and patching them: "But I don't think security through obscurity is a winning strategy."

Gorman compiled his mega-map using publicly available material he found on the Internet. None of it was classified. His interest in maps evolved from his childhood, he said, because he "grew up all over the place." Hunched in the back seat of the family car, he would puzzle over maps, trying to figure out where they should turn. Five years ago, he began work on a master's degree in geography. His original intention was to map the physical infrastructure of the Internet, to see who was connected, who was not, and to measure its economic impact.

"We just had this research idea, and thought, 'Okay,' " said his research partner, Laurie Schintler, an assistant professor at GMU. "I wasn't even thinking about implications."

The implications, however, in the post-Sept. 11 world, were enough to knock the wind out of John M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc., which provides power to 1.8 million customers. When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman's findings, he exhaled sharply.

"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. "Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn't to me."

Recently, Derrick received an e-mail from an atlas company offering to sell him a color-coded map of the United States with all the electric power generation and transmission systems. He hit the reply button on his e-mail and typed: "With friends like you, we don't need any enemies in the world."

Toward the other end of the free speech spectrum are such people as John Young, a New York architect who created a Web site with a friend, featuring aerial pictures of nuclear weapons storage areas, military bases, ports, dams and secret government bunkers, along with driving directions from Mapquest.com. He has been contacted by the FBI, he said, but the site is still up.

"It gives us a great thrill," Young said. "If it's banned, it should be published. We like defying authority as a matter of principle."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Jul7.html



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Google Cache Raises Copyright Concerns
Stefanie Olsen

Like other online publishers, The New York Times charges readers to access articles on its Web site. But why pay when you can use Google instead?

Through a caching feature on the popular Google search site, people can sometimes call up snapshots of archived stories at NYTimes.com and other registration-only sites. The practice has proved a boon for readers hoping to track down Web pages that are no longer accessible at the original source, for whatever reason. But the feature has recently been putting Google at odds with some unhappy publishers.

"We are working with Google to fix that problem--we're going to close it so when you click on a link it will take you to a registration page," said Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman at New York Times Digital, the publisher of NYTimes.com. "We have established these archived links and want to maintain consistency across all these access points."

Google offers publishers a simple way to opt out of its temporary archive, and scuffles have yet to erupt into open warfare or lawsuits. Still, Google's cache links illustrate a slippery side of innovation on the Web, where cool new features that seem benign on the surface often carry unintended consequences.

The issue is particularly relevant at Google, a company that prides itself on creativity and routinely floats trial balloons for new features and services. Its culture of innovation may become increasingly risky as Google, which draws millions of visitors to its site daily and redirects them to others through secretive search formulas, cements its position as one of the most popular and powerful companies on the Web.

At the heart of Google's caching dilemma lies a thorny legal problem involving a core Web technology: When is it acceptable to copy someone else's Web page, even temporarily?

"Many of us copyright lawyers have been waiting for this issue to come up: Google is making copies of all the Web sites they index and they're not asking permission," said Fred Lohman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "From a strict copyright standpoint, it violates copyright."

"Most people agree that the caching exception in the DMCA is obsolete," Lohman said. "I don't think it would cover Google's cache. Google is not waiting for users to request the page. It spiders the page before anyone asks for it."

Still, other lawyers argue that Google's practice would be protected by fair-use laws. A judge might look at the market impact of Google's caching and find that it's valuable, given that it could ultimately drive traffic to the cached site. Or the reverse could be true, depending on the nature of the page.

For its part, Google is confident that the service is within the law. "We've evaluated this from a legal perspective, including copyright law, and have determined that Google's cached page service complies with the law," a Google spokesman said.

A similar issue has played out in the courts in an image-searching case, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, filed in April 1999. Leslie Kelly, a photographer, sued the company for copyright infringement when its visual search finder cataloged thumbnails and full-sizes of his digital photos and made them accessible via its own search engine.

The court initially ruled against Kelly based on the "established importance of search engines," but Kelly appealed and won. In Feb. 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Arriba's use of thumbnail images of Kelly's photos was fair use, but its display of full-size images was not fair use, because it was likely to harm the market for Kelly's work by reducing visits to his Web site and by allowing free downloads. But the opinion on full-size images was remanded by the 9th Circuit Court this week and is set to go to trial in the lower court of central California.

Judith Jennison, defense lawyer for Arriba Soft, said that one of the issues in the case is that Arriba Soft, in its process of indexing the Web, made copies of Kelly's photos and saved them for 24 hours in its servers. The 9th Circuit Court agreed that creating that copy is fair use under copyright law, she said, adding that there would be a slightly different analysis in a case related to Google. Also, the fact that the search site has an opt-out program would likely illustrate that the market for original copyrighted works can be protected, which is a significant factor in fair-use analysis.

"In Google's case, the result would likely be the same, because the temporary caching for indexing purposes would be fair use per Kelly v. Arriba Soft," Jennison said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038-1024234.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Efficiency of the Market
Richard Menta

The other day I came across a portable CD and it caused that odd little ripple to run through my senses. The player itself was not anything special, just the opposite in fact. It was produced by Memorex and sold for $29.99. A simple, basic device to play music with.

But the way my mind was working that day this was the thought that immediately popped into my head. "Gee, for that much money I can buy to play on it - one-and-a-half CDs"?

The iRiver iFP-195T is a 512MB Flash unit and is available on Amazon

This elicited a pause and I picked up the blister pack encased device.

I stared at the player while my mind proceeded to mentally take that CD player apart. I thought of its myriad of parts - memory chips, relays, a mechanism to spin the CD, a laser to read the 1s and 0s contained on it, a small processor to convert those 1s and 0s into audible sound, etc. All of these parts, each with a crucial role to perform, are assembled into a single unit and sold for a penny under thirty bucks retail.

My mind then held up a CD. The answer was a simple one - a flat, shiny disc.

Now I must add it's a flat shiny disc with music on it. Music that is produced through the sweat and toil of thousands of artists, their producers, the 40- story skyscraper housing the executives and studio staff, and the marketing department. A lot of what we call fixed costs there.

Memorex has a marketing department too. It also has a large office filled with product managers and engineers developing the latest devices. It has an assembly line filled with employees to put together the hundreds of parts that make up each product. Electronics manufacturers also spend considerably on R&D to invent the products that will hit store shelves a few years from now.

CDs are just stamped out in one quick swoop.

So why are CDs relatively so much more expensive relative to the electronic products that play them? If you think about it, the person who purchased the Memorex unit above probably did so because they felt the $45 player (equal to 2 1/4 CDs retail) was too much.

The answer is the industry is run inefficiently. This naturally happens when a few conglomerates control an industry because executives seem to always find some way to spend the excess. It is also what makes such supposedly powerful and controlling industries vulnerable to change. Inefficient operation exposes such industries to the significant schisms in the market that inevitably occur every 20 to 30 years, changes that effect even efficient industries. For example, when was the last time you used a typewriter?

The record industry has been able to control the distribution channels to effectively push prices up. It has limited competition to the mass market to a point where its members - members who viciously compete with one another - could still effectively collude to fix retail prices. They were caught, but the price of CDs went up further. List price today is $20. Street price is something a little less.

Rock historian Dave Marsh once commented that the record industry would prefer to sell you only one CD a year for a hundred bucks rather than five for that price because it would further reduce their costs and make them even more money. The fewer artists to promote, the lower the expense. They have no desire to sell you twenty CDs for $100, even when it's popular music a decade or more old.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/efficiency.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RIAA Sues Puretunes.com Music Web Site
Reuters

A recording industry trade group said on Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against a Spanish company that operates Puretunes.com, a music download service launched in May.

The lawsuit, filed last Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Sakfield Holding SA, alleges the company engaged in copyright infringement and unfair competition.

The lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the music industry, also claimed that Puretunes had defrauded its customers into believing that its service was licensed by record companies.

A representative for Puretunes could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president for business and legal affairs for the RIAA, said the group was seeking damages and an injunction against the Web operator.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. federal court because the service operated as a business in the United States, selling U.S. recordings to U.S. consumers, he said.

The RIAA is a trade group for major labels Sony Music, AOL Time Warner's Warner Music, Vivendi Universal's V.N Universal Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, and EMI.

The group has been increasingly aggressive in its efforts to crack down on online piracy as fans have turned to such unauthorized services for music and the industry struggles with a steep decline in CD sales.

Javier Siguenza, a Madrid-based lawyer representing Puretunes, told Reuters in May the new company abided by Spanish copyright laws.

Puretunes had also previously said it was a legal service operating under licensing agreements from various Spanish trade associations representing performers and recording artists.

Unlike other download services such as Kazaa, Puretunes manages a music library and says it will pay royalties to performers. Eight hours of downloads cost $3.99 while unlimited downloads for a month cost $24.99, a steep discount from industry-sanctioned services such as Pressplay and those operated by Britain's OD2.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3064487


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And Now for Something Completely Different

How DTMD Could Save Your Local Phone Company
Robert X. Cringely

I promised to explain how we could expand our current copper phone network to offer unprecedented bandwidth -- the kind of bandwidth that makes some industries and destroys others -- and I mean to deliver, but first we need some context. Sadly, the context isn't so much technical as economic and political. There is a grand struggle taking place just now in the U.S. telecom market. Elephants are dancing and the grass -- which is to say we the customers -- risks getting trampled. Once again the issue is between the traditional phone company -- the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) -- and an interloper generally labeled as a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC). Only the CLECs this time around have different names than before and are fighting a very different battle. Today's CLEC combatants are AT&T and MCI, and the battle they are taking to the ILECs isn't over Internet service but over a package of local voice, long-distance and Internet services. These CLECs are offering flat-rate plans with totally unmetered local and long-distance calls, and it is driving the ILECs crazy. The ILECs in turn are offering the same kind of flat rates to compete, and the result is that nearly all the profit is being driven out of the phone business. Something has to give.

What is giving are the phone lines, themselves. Though nobody but me seems to be saying it, at the heart of the problem lies a rapid decline in the number of dedicated fax lines, each of which produces a lot of profit for the ILECs, and the decline of fax is being driven by the success of the Internet. People send e-mails with attached files rather than faxes. This loss of revenue, while it appears small, is crucial.

The ILECs are in trouble because their average revenue per phone line is slowly decreasing. They had hoped to make up this revenue loss through gaining the right to sell long distance service, but the profit is falling there, too. That's why ILECs and CLECs alike need to steal business from each other. And that's why they both like DSL, which is one of the few sources of real additional revenue in years for the phone companies. But DSL has only 25 percent of the U.S. broadband market -- compared to more than 65 percent for cable modems. And DSL has a revenue limit since most data is free and DSL lines aren't fast enough to compete with cable TV, another big revenue source that has started competing for local phone service. This year in America, five million families get their telephone service from their cable TV company and the number is growing. For phone companies, these signs are not good.

The last time the CLECs and ILECs were fighting what gave were the CLECs because they were financially weaker than the ILECs, and the ILECs were playing paperwork games to keep it that way. But AT&T invented all those games and can't be so easily fooled. And since the company sold its cable TV operation to Comcast, it has both the resources and the concentration to make life hard for even the biggest ILEC. This has the ILECs looking for a loophole, and they think they have found one.

A couple months ago, the three strongest U.S. local phone companies -- Verizon, Bell South, and SBC -- decided to coordinate their long-delayed build-out of fiber-to-the- home, which is the very stuff that I claimed last week isn't really happening. The three ILECs agreed to cooperate on technical standards and purchasing with the idea of streamlining the fiber roll-out and really making it work. This kind of cooperation is legal, by the way, because the three companies do not have overlapping service.

This cooperation agreement has yielded a Request for Quotation (RFQ) in which suppliers will bid on doing the actual work of taking fiber into the walls of tens of millions of American homes. The whole project is worth approximately $100 billion, which is also conveniently the number usually assigned as the value of the copper network that is being replaced. This balancing of numbers is no accident.

So the RFQ is out there and companies are preparing their bids. But as a guy who has in the past bid on such projects, won them, then found that the project never materialized, this version of future reality is not necessarily the final version of future reality.

These three ILECs have a plan and that plan is to build out the fiber, then sell their old copper network, maybe for the service it can provide, maybe for the copper in your walls, they don't care. What they do care about is being out of the copper network business because doing so is their way of responding to the threat posed by AT&T and MCI. You see new rules from the Federal Communication Commission issued in February say that ILECs have to share with CLECs only their existing network. If they build a new network, then they won't have to share that. So the ILECs have decided to take their ball and go home. By building a new fiber network, they hope that they can abandon MCI and AT&T, taking their local phone customers along with them. At the same time, the new fiber will allow the ILECs to compete with cable TV to bring video into our homes. At least, that's the plan.

But $100 billion is a large price to pay for such freedom if there is a better way to accomplish the same thing for a lot less money.

Now we're at the part where I explain how to send HDTV over normal phone lines.

Some readers were quick to point out this week that several Japanese ISPs have started installing DSL circuits running up to 26 megabits-per-second, which makes my argument last week for 20 megabits look pretty lame. But not all megabits are created equal. What's being installed in Japan is VDSL, which is very fast indeed, but not as well suited to the U.S. phone market where most of my readers are. Quest does have some VDSL lines deployed in the Midwest. VDSL requires a pristine phone line and even then supports that 26 megabit speed over a maximum of only 4,000 feet, and practically, over less than 1,000 feet. ADSL2+, which is another follow-on to current DSL, is slower still. Both it and VDSL are best suited to networks with fiber to the curb, or at least, fiber to the neighborhood. And many such places exist, just not where I live.

What I want is very simple. I want 20 megabits-per-second (HDTV speed) over a single twisted-pair phone line, and that line should be afflicted with taps, loading coils, and crosstalk, which is to say it should be an average copper phone line circa 1964. I want that 20 megabits to run for at least two miles from the Central Office and preferably three. Out where I live, at 36,000 feet from the CO, I'd like to still see at least seven megabits-per-second on an all-copper network that simply requires swapping out the DSLAMs.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030703.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Direct Connect Upgrade Released

Author: Jon Hess
Program Type: Freeware

Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network. Moreover, its network architecture is built on a peer-to-peer foundation; users run, control, and maintain the network. Users are able to share any type of file - absolutely no restrictions. These files are easily viewed through a familiar organized windows-explorer interface. To conveniently access the plethora of files, advanced searching capabilities and filters are provided. All of these features are integrated into Direct Connect's unique communal file-sharing system.

Note: Direct Connect 2 is for Windows NT4/2000/XP only.


Changes in Current Version:

· The application now supports a ‘DC’ description tag - Configurable
· The application can hide other users description tags - Configurable
· 'Grant slots' was added to the user context menu. If a slot is granted to a user, that user may connect to you even if you are 'full' if they have not already done so
· You can now refresh the public list from the connect window's toolbar
· Operators now have icons
· The application auto reconnects to servers it has been disconnected from after 5 minutes
· The GUI display of the bandwidth cap is fixed to an 8x multiplier for upload/download ratio
· Application now minimizes to the system tray
· The operator commands from the redirect menu have been fixed
· Operators always sort to the top of the list
· You can now set the program to auto connect to a hub on launch
· The application no longer beeps when you type a new message
· You can now enter mutli-line message via cut and paste or shift+enter
· Enter can be used from any text field in the search window to initiate a query
· Search columns are re-orderable

Info, reviews: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail...fid=1056966453


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wise Move?
James Plummer

Flush with its victory letting it pry the names of computer users from their internet service providers, the Recording Industry Association of America is on the attack again. With a full-page ad in the New York Times Thursday, RIAA has kicked off a high-profile and risky campaign against those who dare to share digital music files online. The trade group has announced plans to file suit against Internet users -- including "kids" -- who trade a "substantial" number of music files on line.

Using tough talk in their ad, the RIAA was joined in their crackdown announcement by a coalition of other trade associations and unions in the music business. A number of individual artists, including the Dixie Chicks, also expressed support for the RIAA's upcoming legal offensive as well, in remarks posted on the RIAA's website. RIAA president Cary Sherman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that they plan "at least several hundred lawsuits to start, but that's only the beginning."

Is this really the wisest move? Probably not.

RIAA is playing coy about what they even mean by the word "substantial." If RIAA plans to focus their action against "supernodes" who offer thousands of music files on university or industrial quality super-broadband connections, consumers will understand the rationale. But RIAA could be stepping in it if they decide to scare the love of copyright into peer-to-peer users at large by including among the planned "hundreds" of defendants some who only share a handful of songs.

Such an overreach would be intruding upon what is considered by many fans to be a fair use of a purchased product -- sharing a song or two from entire albums purchased here or there. A full-court press against such Internet users could result in a customer backlash. Besides the obvious prospect of consumer boycotts, RIAA could also find the dockets turned on them and face lawsuits for malicious prosecution. RIAA should tread very carefully here.

The rationale behind RIAA's offensive is apparently that, by going after users of the P2P networks, consumers might be driven to the new authorized online music services that have been popping up recently. If RIAA can keep control of themselves by targeting and discouraging the small percentage of P2P users that provide the majority of copyrighted files, and use that legal strategy in conjunction with other techniques such as seeding the networks with fake files and clogging the system with slow downloads of real files, they may be somewhat successful. Increasing the time costs of average music consumers who use P2P networks without threatening jail time and ridiculously large fines will encourage music downloaders to look at alternatives with relatively low costs in both time and money, such as the new authorized music downloads, as well as used CDs available online at places like Amazon.com. The big labels may also want to consider taking advantage of the publicity by cutting retail prices on new CDs in order to make the P2P option even less attractive.

But a whole-hog offensive would just speed the move to more advanced peer-to-peer systems such as EarthStation5 or NullSoft's Waste which makes use of, respectively, anonymizing techniques and smaller trusted communities of file-sharers. RIAA will have a much harder time penetrating these systems, and if their actions result in Internet users flocking towards them, they will probably regret overplaying their hand rather than trying to find a way to work with peer-to-peer networks to market and sell music.

The victory in the Verizon v. RIAA case gives the music industry broad legal powers to administratively subpoena the identities of computer users without even the approval of a judge. If the belligerent tone adopted in the Times ad and other recent pronouncements translates into overly aggressive action against music consumers who engage in casual file-trading, RIAA can expect their sales to slip that much faster as consumers move file-sharing further underground and perhaps even -- horror of horrors -- take a closer look at independent artists, many of whom have themselves been speaking out against the crackdown on P2P.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/10...D=1051-070103A


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


File Swappers 'Buy More Music'
BBC

Music fans who download songs from the internet go on to buy more albums, a survey has suggested.

The survey's findings oppose the music industry's long-standing argument that internet downloading is responsible for a slump in CD sales, with album sales falling 5% in the last year.

Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet. An MPL spokesperson said: "Downloading is actually a 'try before you buy' tool for a significant amount of people. "It allows people to sample new music and decide whether or not to buy it - it is not necessarily a replacement for purchase."

However, downloading tracks did lead to a significant drop in the number of singles being bought, with just 13% of the 500 people surveyed saying they went on to buy singles in shops after getting them on the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) told BBC News Online there was "an element of truth" in the survey's findings, but that it was "disingenuous" to suggest downloading could boost album sales.

"We did a survey in April that asked people the reasons why they downloaded, and 65% said because it was free," a BPI spokeswoman said. "That's just human nature."

The BPI wanted to "educate" people to use legitimate downloading sites that paid royalties to artists, she said, adding it was "unlikely" to push for prosecution of heavy "uploaders" of music.

This strategy is currently being pursued by the US music industry.

The survey also said 41% of its respondents declared themselves "heavy downloaders" - accessing more than 100 tracks - but that 34% of them still felt they bought more albums than they did a year ago. Asked why they download music, the respondents were most likely to say it was "to check out music I've heard about but not listened to yet" (75%) and "to help me decide whether to buy the CD" (66%).

MPL said its survey suggested people used the internet as a way of finding out about new music, and that the industry should use it as a way of promoting new artists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3052145.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Global Illegal CD Market Swells

The battle to stem pirate music appears to be failing as the total number of illegal CDs sold worldwide topped the one billion mark for the first time in 2002.

A report published by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) shows that the illegal music market is now worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) globally. It believes two out of every five CDs or cassettes sold are illegal. The IFPI said much of this money is going to support organised criminal gangs, dispelling the myth that it is a "victimless crime". Jay Berman, chairman of the IFPI, said: "This is a major, major commercial activity, involving huge amounts of pirated CDs. "What we have faced in the last three years is an explosion worldwide in the number of unlicensed optical disc plants."

Peter Jamieson, executive director of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), said that that one in three CDs sold in Britain was a pirated copy. "If you factor in unlicensed downloads then only one in three music products in the UK is authorised."

Despite the increase in the amount of CDs illegally produced and sold around the world, up 14% on 2001, there has also been a rise in the amount of CDs and recording equipment seized. The number of discs seized on their way for public sale was more than 50 million, a four-fold rise on the previous year.

For the first time the IFPI has published a list of the top 10 countries where it wants a crackdown on piracy.

The 10 priority countries

Brazil
China
Mexico
Paraguay
Poland
Russia
Spain
Spain
Taiwan
Thailand
Ukraine

There are two types of products that worry the industry, which tend to be concentrated in different regions. Of the estimated total number of illegal music copies sold, 40% originate from factory production lines which produce professional- looking products but without paying any money back to the industry or artists. Asia and Russia have been identified as hot spots for this.

There is also the growing problem of CD-R piracy, where albums are created using CD-burning computer software which can allow mass production relatively cheaply and discreetly. Action was taken against Ukraine, including US trade sanctions which are still in place, because of its failure to bring an end to rampant piracy, but the problem has now moved across the border to Russia. The IFPI predicts 32% of illegal products on the market are produced this way with Latin America and southern Europe identified as the biggest offenders.

Copied cassettes account for 20% of the total market but this is in decline as the demand for the format slides.

There was a global rise in the number of CD copying machines seized in 2002 from 4,000 to 7,000, with a capacity to produce 250,000 illegal discs.

The IFPI is now calling on governments worldwide to aid the fight against piracy by enforcing copyright laws and regulate optical disc manufacturing. It also wants countries to aggressively prosecute offenders, seize their equipment and to seek compensation for copyright holders as a deterrent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3053523.stm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi-Tech Babble Baffles Many
BBC

Most people are confused and flummoxed by the jargon used to describe new technology, says a survey.

Terms such as MP3 and Bluetooth are only understood by a small number of people, a report by a consumer research group found. The findings are bad news for the industry, as it suggests that the baffling terms are putting people off buying the latest gadget.

"The technology industry must simplify its vocabulary so that consumers around the world can better understand the benefits technology can bring to their lives," said Patrick Moorhead, chairman of AMD's Global Consumer Advisory Board, which commissioned the study.

More than 1,500 people in the US, UK, China and Japan took part in the survey, which looked at how far consumers understood jargon used to described new gadgets. The results showed that people were perplexed by many of the terms routinely bandied around by technology firms.

Just 3% of those surveyed got a perfect score on a quiz, which included terms such as MP3 - a digital audio file - and Bluetooth - a short-range technology which uses radio waves instead of wires. Even the word megahertz, commonly used in advertisements for home computers, mystified many.

Only slightly more than half correctly identified the definition of megahertz - a measurement of frequency which can be used to measure how many times a part of the processor, called the clock, ticks every millionth of a second.

Even people who knew about technology where baffled by some words. Only a third knew what a DVR was. DVR stands for digital video recorder - a gadget that records shows on a hard drive instead of video tape and usually allows you to pause live TV.

The survey makes gloomy reading for an industry which is counting on consumers snapping up new gadgets. It showed that many people are delaying buying products such as digital cameras because it is all seen as too complex and difficult to understand. Instead nearly two-third said they "wish to have things work and not spend time setting up."

"The hi-tech industry is spending more than $10 billion a year in the US alone advertising the speeds and feeds of the products," said Mr Moorhead, "but the industry is not getting the full value of their advertising dollars."

The study did offer are some signs of hope for the technology industry. It suggested that people who already have home computers were likely to buy most gadgets such as DVD players.

The survey was commissioned by a research group set by chip maker AMD.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3054210.stm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. Court Blocks Washington Video Game Sales Law
Reuters

A federal judge on Thursday issued an order postponing enforcement of a Washington state law designed to restrict the sale of violent video games to minors.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the law, which was set to take effect from July 27 and would have imposed a $500 fine on anyone who sold a video game depicting violence against "law enforcement officers" to minors under age 17.

"Plaintiffs have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of House Bill 1009 and the balance of hardships tips in their favor," Lasnik wrote in his order from the court in Seattle.

In a statement, Doug Lowenstein, president of plaintiff the Interactive Digital Software Association, praised the judge's finding that games are a form of protected speech like music and movies.

"In so doing, the Court made clear the very high burden that governments face when they try to regulate such protected speech," Lowenstein said.

Washington state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, the Democrat who wrote the law, had said recently that any injunction would only be preliminary and that she expected the case to go to trial.

"It has very little bearing on the final outcome of the case," Dickerson said.

A federal appellate court in St. Louis recently struck down a St. Louis County law that would have fined retailers who sold or rented violent video games to minors. In that case, in which the IDSA was also a plaintiff, the court held that games were protected speech under the Constitution.

The Washington law was criticized from the start by game industry groups who said it was too vague and unconstitutionally restricted the free expression of game publishers.

A bill is also pending in the U.S. House of Representatives that would make it a federal crime to sell or rent violent games to minors. Industry executives have said they thought the bill had no chance of passing. (Additional reporting by Ben Berkowitz in Los Angeles)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3071726


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copyrights and Wrongs
Matthew Baldwin

It’s been a good year for comic-book fans, cinematically speaking. Such luminaries as Spider-Man, Daredevil, the X-Men, and the Hulk have all rampaged across the silver screen in the last 12 months, and today we get one more: the highly anticipated LXG.

Here’s a primer for those of you who haven’t TiVo’ed every episode of the Superfriends. LXG is based on a comic book entitled The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which hit the shelves a few years back and chronicled the adventures of a late-19th-century crime-fighting team composed of the most remarkable literary characters of the Victorian Age: Allan Quartermain, hero of King Solomon’s Mines, H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and the legendary Captain Nemo. Together they travel the world, interact with the fictitious creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe, and even come to loggerheads with the Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. It was a series that caused a stir amongst the comicati because it had it all: intelligent writing, literary allusion, and guys with superpowers punching the crap out of each other.

The book’s author, Alan Moore, was able to create this literary-parallel universe because the protagonists are all within the public domain, and so are not owned by any one person or corporation, and thus available for anyone to use without having to pay royalties. This is why you can watch low-budget Sherlock Holmes mysteries on PBS, buy a copy of Alice in Wonderland for under five bucks, and see Shakespeare in the park for free.

But here’s what you won’t be seeing anytime soon: my masterpiece, The League of Extraordinary Rodents. It was going to star Stuart Little, Algernon, Batman, and Mickey Mouse as the greatest mammalian crime- fighting team the animal kingdom had ever seen, and we’d follow them on thrilling adventures as they fought such evildoers as the, uh, the Federation of Felines and, um, Sergeant GlueTrap and, uhhhh…Well, to be honest I never really fleshed out the details. But trust me: It would have been awesome.

And it would have been legal, too – if the US still adhered to its original copyright laws, which set ownership limits at 28 years. Unfortunately, all four of my Leaguers are contraband under current copyright law. Congress, you see, has extended copyrights no less than 11 times over the past 50 years, most recently in 1998 when it enacted the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (SBCEA) and tacked a whopping two decades onto the existing limits. Now copyrights held by corporations last for nearly a century; those owned by individuals persist for 70 years after the creator’s death.

Curiously, many of those who fought the hardest for the SBCEA were those who had benefited the most from the public domain. Disney, afraid of losing exclusive control of Mickey Mouse (who first appeared in 1928 and would have gone public this year), lobbied vigorously for the 20-year extension, despite having made billions off such classic characters and stories as Cinderella and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Also in favor of the extension was the Motion Picture Association of America, the same institution that oversaw the production of the aforementioned LXG, a film that adds Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray to the comic book’s original roster.

Although the SBCEA was passed by Congress overwhelmingly, it was not without its opponents. Foremost amongst them was Eric Eldred, a bookmonger from Massachusetts who wished to continue providing free texts to his Web site’s visitors. He eventually brought suit against the federal government, and the Supreme Court heard his case, Eldred v. Ashcroft (née Eldred v. Reno), earlier this year.

Eldred and other opponents of the SBCEA (including The American Library Association and Dover Books) pointed out that the Constitution allows Congress to set copyright terms ‘for limited times’ only, and that by extending the term every time Mickey Mouse is imperiled, Congress is in effect creating a ‘perpetual copyright,’ clearly counter to what the Constitution’s framers desired. Proponents of the extension – a consortium largely comprised of the same media and entertainment giants who had pushed for the SBCEA in the first place – argued that a lack of sufficient copyright protection gives artists no incentive to create.

Disney’s arguments notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe that Steven Spielberg or John Grisham would change vocations knowing that their great-great-great-grandchildren would miss out on some royalty checks, or that J.K. Rowling would scrap her series without reassurance that Harry Potter wouldn’t guest star in a comic book within 69 years of her own dying day.

And at some point lengthening the copyright term surely stifles more creativity than it fosters. Just think: If just anyone could make a James Bond movie, MGM might invent some new heroes instead of churning out 007 flicks every 16 months; if Disney’s canon was turned into open game it might come up with some new material instead of plundering its own theme parks for movie ideas, in the case of the current Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp vehicle.

Contrawise, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – one of the most inventive comic series in recent memory – was made possible by the original copyright laws that recognized the public domain as a boon to artists, not a burden. Alas, the 2003 Supreme Court didn’t see it this way – it upheld the SBCEA, thereby keeping Mickey Mouse in his cage for another generation.

So while you’ll still be able to catch LXG this weekend, don’t bother looking for The League of Extraordinary Rodents in your local comic-book store – it looks like it will remain off the shelves until 2018 at the very least.
http://www.themorningnews.org/archiv...d_wrongs.shtml












Until next week,

- js.









~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16830 July 5th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16759 June 28th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16705 June 21st
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16638 June 14th









The Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts at lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.

[napho]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
P2P Penetration

Over the recent holiday weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time with a friend I don’t see often enough.
I had a few surprises for her of course. I turned her on - and she jumped . Her eyes went wide checking out my size. But she liked it, and kept checking it out.


I popped up couple of times in her box and played around with the system for a few more minutes.
The half hour or so we spent at the computer gave me a chance to reconnect with her and have some fun while we were at it.





Sounds like you got laid repeatedly JS. What a scam!

[JackSpratts]

lol @ napho.

- js.