Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 29th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week:"My preliminary view is to grant the motion." - U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on moving ISP Subpoena Suit to RIAA-friendly court.

“I have no particular take on [iTunes hack] QTFairUse. I simply acknowledge, accept and find delight in digits -- especially those carrying art, knowledge and creativity -- bionomically finding the shortest, most efficient and effective path from source to destination.” – Music industry executive Jim Griffin


Thanksgiving Issue


P2Ps Respond to Senate Criticism
Roy Mark

Calling congressional critics "sincere but misinformed," the principal trade group of the peer-to-peer (P2P) network industry hopes to meet in person with U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R.-SC) and other lawmakers who are considering legislation to regulate P2P activity.

On Friday, Graham sent a letter co-signed by five other senators calling on the P2Ps to "adhere to copyright laws and cease the distribution of pornography, especially child pornography, over their networks." The letter was sent to executives of Grokster, Bearshare, Blubster, eDonkey2000, LimeWire and Streamcast Networks.

"Purveyors of peer-to-peer technology have legal and moral obligations to conform to copyright laws, and end the pornographic trade over these networks," Graham wrote. "These programs expose our children to sexually explicit materials and provide an anonymous venue for child pornographers to hide behind the vale of technology."

Co-signers of the letter included Dianne Feinstein (D.-CA), Barbara Boxer (D.-CA), Gordon Smith (R.OR), Dick Durbin (D.-IL) and John Cornyn (R.-TX).

While long accused of facilitating music piracy, the P2P industry came under additional fire earlier this year as a source of readily available child pornography. The actual data on whether P2P networks have more pornography, child or otherwise, than Internet sites is vague, at best.

"We feel very strongly a meeting needs to take place in person. We actually appreciate the opportunity to get a commitment to get the actual facts out," Adam Eisgrau, executive director of the newly formed trade group, P2P United, told internetnews.com. "There is much to be learned about the real industry. We want to loudly shout it from the rooftops for people to ask us about this exciting new technology. P2P United exists to correct the record."

The charter members of P2P United are Free Peers, Grokster, Lime Wire, MetaMachine, Piolet Networks and StreamCast Networks. Kazaa, the world's largest P2P software distributor, is not a member of the new trade group.

Eisgrau, who is also a vice president at Flanagan Consulting, a political lobbying group formed by former Congressman Mike Flanagan, said vested interests such as the music and movie business have promoted misinformation about P2P networks in order to "cripple the P2P industry."

The decentralized nature of P2P networks, which allow users to download and directly share electronic files independent of a central server, has raised concerns among lawmakers and law enforcement officials that child pornography is spreading through the networks at an alarming rate. A number of reports have linked child pornography with pedophiles.

Since Napster, the first widely popular P2P program, was shut down by court order, newer file-sharing programs like Kazaa, Grokster and BearShare have all surged in popularity and have become one of the most popular applications on the Internet, particularly among children and young adults. Unlike Napster, which allowed only the sharing of music files, the newer P2P networks allow the sharing of digital images.

Graham's letter suggests P2P networks provide "meaningful and notice and warning" to users about the legal effects of using P2P software, incorporate "effective" copyright and pornography filters, and change the standard default "sharing" mechanism of P2P software.

"We strongly believe that voluntarily taking these three common sense steps would go a long way toward educating and protecting consumers," Graham wrote. "It also would clearly indicate your company's desire to become responsible corporate citizens."

Eisgrau countered that "this notion of irresponsibility is wrong," citing his members' online "Parent-to-Parent Resource Center" that provides parents information on how to protect themselves and their children from child pornography.

"Like all right-thinking people, our members are sickened by child pornography and regard misuse of the Internet for its dissemination as reprehensible," Esigrau said in September after a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. "When it comes to Web-based child porn, however, technology isn't the perpetrator -- criminals are. These deviants have misused every legitimate technology, from the printing press to telephones, video, instant messaging and Internet search engines, to satisfy their lurid and illegal appetites."
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3113461


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U.S. Judge wants suit heard in RIAA-friendly court.

SBC's Fight Against Subpoenas May Go To A Court That Has Sided With The Record Industry
Joseph Menn

A federal judge on Friday signaled her support for the record industry as it seeks to file more lawsuits against people who trade songs online, though a challenge from a North Carolina student added a new hurdle for the music companies.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America asked SBC Communications Inc.'s Internet access business this year to turn over the names of customers suspected of swapping pirated songs. SBC refused to honor the subpoenas, instead asking the court to invalidate the law under which they were issued on the grounds that it violates the due-process and privacy rights of consumers.

In a hearing in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she was inclined to transfer the suit to Washington, D.C., where another federal court rejected a similar complaint by Internet service provider Verizon Communications Inc.

"My preliminary view is to grant the motion," Illston said. She spent much of the hourlong hearing asking an SBC attorney why she should not move the case to Washington. Illston did not say how or when she would rule, but attorneys working alongside San Antonio-based SBC said they were discouraged.

SBC argues that it is improper for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to force the release of customer information based on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing and without a judge's review. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief in support of SBC.

New York-based Verizon raised similar issues in the case it lost before U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington. That ruling eventually turned more on whether the DMCA entitled the record labels to information about Internet users even when the service provider is not storing the songs itself. Bates' decision is now on appeal.

This week in St. Louis, a federal judge upheld RIAA subpoenas issued to Charter Communications Inc. despite argu- ments from the cable Internet service provider that the subpoenas were improper.

But in a sign that the battle will continue, the ACLU on Friday launched a new constitutional challenge to the subpoenas in Greensboro, N.C., on behalf of an anonymous user of the University of North Carolina's computer system. The filing seeks to quash a subpoena issued to the university seeking the student's identity, on the grounds that it violates the student's due process rights.

"We think that this particular statute, as the RIAA is interpreting it, is unconstitutional," said ACLU Senior Staff Counsel Christopher Hansen.

An RIAA spokeswoman responded that the ACLU's arguments "are legally unfounded, and we are confident that the court will agree."

In another pending case, an alleged music pirate is fighting a subpoena in Washington.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...lines-business


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Australian RIA To Sue Net Services
Jennifer Dudley

THE Australian Recording Industry Association plans to sue Internet service providers who failed to stop consumers illegally downloading music.

ARIA's music industry piracy investigations manager Michael Speck said ISPs relied on illegal music downloads for 20 per cent of their revenue and were aware customers were flouting copyright laws but did nothing to stop them.

He said the failure of Internet companies to prevent copyright infringements left ARIA with no choice but to prosecute them.

But Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos slammed Mr Speck's comments as "provocative" and "inflammatory" and said ISPs were keen to work with copyright holders to prevent infringements.

ARIA's declaration follows its legal action against a Brisbane man and his Sydney-based Internet service provider over alleged music piracy.

The civil case, which will be heard in the Federal Court, alleges Stephen Cooper from Bellbowrie established a website which allowed Internet users to illegally download more than 140 million files at a cost of "several hundred million dollars", Mr Speck said.

He said ARIA had also sued the directors of Mr Cooper's ISP and the person who established his account.

Mr Speck said MIPI was also investigating ISPs who were ignoring and profiting from illegal music downloads, as they charged by the amount of data a user downloaded.

"It's clear they become aware of this activity in the normal course of their business and they should abide by the copyright law in this country," he said.

"We understand from employees of Internet companies that up to 20 per cent of their revenue in many cases comes from traffic created by downloading illegal sound recordings.

"There aren't many business that could survive if 20 per cent of their revenue disappeared and that's what we believe is motiving ISPs to hang on to it for as long as possible."

Mr Speck urged ISPs to halt the practice by blocking access to illegal music download sites and programs or "by other arrangements".

But Mr Coroneos said ISPs did not have any responsibility to monitor the activities of its users and should not be asked to invade customers' privacy.

He disputed Mr Speck's estimate of revenue from illegal music downloads and said ISPs were keen to work with the music and film industries to develop a solution to the problem.

"We have been working with ARIA and other copyright bodies throughout the year on an industry code of practice that will void the need for litigation," he said.

Music piracy investigator John Thackray said legal music sites could help stem the problem, but music piracy was "a growing market" and more ISPs would be prosecuted.

Mr Speck said ARIA did not plan to prosecute individual music downloaders, as the US music industry had done.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...55E462,00.html


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NZ Peer-To-Peer Service Shut Down
Paul Brislen

New Zealand's largest peer-to-peer (P2P) service has shut down, apparently for good.

P2p.net.nz, hosted on Orcon internet's servers, returns a 404 "file not found" error and speculation in the industry suggests that it won't be returning.

According to the Domain Name Commissioner's website, the p2p.net.nz domain name is owned by Seeby Woodhouse, managing director of Orcon Internet, however Woodhouse denied any involvement with the service other than having it as a client.

ISPs in Australia and New Zealand are being targeted by copyright owners trying to limit the sharing of copyright files, but Woodhouse would not comment on why p2p.net.nz has closed.

Discussion in various newsgroups centres on one of two theories. The first is that the traffic charges were getting so high that Orcon decided it couldn't maintain them any longer. The second theory is that legal pressure to close the service was brought to bear, possibly by the Recording Industry Association New Zealand.

RIANZ chief executive Terence O'Neill-Joyce did not immediately return Computerworld Online calls.

P2p.net.nz ran a series of connected hubs and several users are still using the "direct connect" DC++ software to share files. One posting to the nz.comp newsgroup offering connection to a private hub received several replies from interested users.

Because p2p.net.nz was run as a New Zealand only model, traffic to and from the site was predominantly local. Traffic on Telecom's JetStream Starter service and TelstraClear's Paradise cable network do not charge full rates for national traffic, so users weren't paying for the downloads. On top of that, connecting to other file sharers locally means the connection speeds are much faster than trying to connect to someone overseas. Orcon typically blocked international traffic to the local hubs
http://pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?...18&fp=2&fpid=1


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Latest Opus - 'DVD John' Hacks iTunes DRM, Releases Info
John Borland

The Norwegian programmer who distributed the first widely used tool for cracking the copy protection technology found on DVDs has turned his attention to Apple Computer's iTunes.

Late last week, programmer Jon Johansen posted a small program called QTFairUse to his Web site, with little in the way of instruction and even less explanation. But during the next few days, it became clear that the program served as a demonstration of how to evade, if not exactly break, the anticopying technology wrapped around the songs sold by Apple in its iTunes store.

Johansen's software isn't for technology novices. In its current form, it requires several complicated steps to create a working program from source code, and it doesn't create a working song file that can be immediately or simply played from a digital music program like Winamp or Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

But if other developers--or Johansen himself--pursue the project, it could herald the arrival of simple ripping programs that could create unprotected music files from iTunes songs as simply as from an ordinary compact disc.

Apple representatives did not return calls for comment. Johansen did not respond to an e-mail asking for comment.

Johansen's latest program, which works only for the Windows version of iTunes, is just the most recent move in the ongoing game of cat and mouse being played by digital rights management technology creators and hackers, who see the copy locks as a challenge.

The Norwegian's 1999 program, called DeCSS, ignited a debate over the legality of copying DVDs that has yet to end. Now widely distributed, DeCSS and similar tools are the foundation for much of Hollywood's fear that digital versions of movies will be copied and distributed online.

Johansen was sued in Norway for releasing the software, but a court there ruled that he had the right to decode a DVD he had purchased so that he could play it on a Linux-based computer.

Microsoft's copy-protection technologies have also come under consistent attack from hackers. One attempt was successful in breaking through the Windows Media rights management, but updates from Microsoft quickly defanged the hack.

More recently, a Princeton University student showed how to evade the copy-protection technique placed on a compact disc released by BMG simply by pushing the computer's shift key while loading the CD.

Johansen's program works by patching Apple's QuickTime software with a new software component of his own. Because he called the program a "memory dumper," programmers on message boards around the Web speculated that QTFairUse made a copy of the raw, unprotected song data from the computer's temporary memory after it was unprotected for playback, rather than simply recording the audio stream as it played. But this was not independently verified by Apple or Johansen.

If that is indeed the approach Johansen took, it's possible Apple could release an update to QuickTime that nullifies Johansen's work, much as Microsoft did for the early break of its digital rights management tools.

In several CNET News.com experiments, the unprotected file created by Johansen's program was not playable. Several people on Web message boards reported using a series of other MPEG 4 audio tools to create a usable song from the resulting file, however.

Another Windows iTunes add-on called MyTunes was released several weeks ago, which allowed computers to capture and save copies of songs streamed through iTunes from another computer on a local network. That program did not work with the copy-protected songs purchased from the iTunes store, however.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5111426.html


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The New York Times discovers spyware and surprise - it’s in KaZaA.

When Free Isn't Really Free
John Schwartz

FREE.

Is there any sweeter word? Its promise of something for nothing, and its underlying connotation of liberation, put a spring in the step and make the world seem a better place.

But lately, free isn't what it used to be, especially on the Internet, whose very history and technology are based on the notion that information and pretty much everything else online want to be free. Web giveaways increasingly come at a steep price, in the form of computer glitches, frustration and loss of privacy and security - not to mention the threat of expensive lawsuits for large-scale music downloaders.

"You often get what you pay for," said Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America. "In the case of what is so-called free, it comes along with challenges."

Of course, that is what you would expect him to say. Mr. Bainwol, after all, is the chief representative of an industry that says it has suffered grievous harm from music downloading, and that is trying to quash the free-music movement with lawsuits.

But now people from all sides of the Internet copyright debate have begun to notice that freebies often mask a multitude of possible cybersins. A report released last week by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a high-tech policy group in Washington, called for new regulations, voluntary industry measures and consumer education to combat the problem of "spyware" that often piggybacks on programs, including the software people use to download music.

The Federal Trade Commission has not tried to prosecute any companies for distributing spyware, and courts have declared the programs legal so far. But the Center for Democracy and Technology says that more should be done to protect consumers from sneaky software. "Spyware represents a serious threat to users' control over their computers and their Internet connections," the report said.

The definitions are fuzzy, but the programs fall under three broad categories: "adware," which serves pop-up ads and banners, including some for pornography; true "spyware, " which monitors Web wanderings for marketing purposes; and more insidious "snoopware," which can track everything users do on their computers, whether or not they are online. Some programs can even disable anti-virus software and hijack the results of Web searches.

The list of suspect software is long. Kazaa, the most popular program for downloading free music, comes with a cluster of software, some created by a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment. One of Brilliant's "extras," called Altnet, can even make someone's computer part of a Brilliant-owned network that harnesses a PC owner's excess computing power to distribute music. Derek Broes, a vice president at Brilliant, said that the program could be turned off by computer users and that the company's products should not be classified as spyware.

On its Web site, the company states that revenue from advertising and installed programs are part of what makes Kazaa free; you can get a version of the software without ads and other clutter, but it will set you back $29.95. Nikki Hemming, the chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said in an interview that the extra programs were not a big issue for users. "I think there is a bar not to be crossed, and we've been pretty careful to manage that," she said. With 10 million Kazaa downloads a month, "it's not a deterrent to consumers," she added.

The problem is that very few of those doing the downloading know what they are getting into. That is because most people do not bother to read the contracts that they click through when they install Kazaa - or, for that matter, any other programs and services they download.

"These user agreements that allow the downloading of spyware are Trojan horses," said Representative Mary Bono, Republican of California, at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing last week. "The average user has no idea that he or she is opening up their entire personal and financial life, down to the keystroke, to an unknown, often ill-intentioned, third party," said Ms. Bono, who introduced a bill last summer to restrict the use of spyware that operates without a computer owner's full knowledge or consent.

Sharman is not the only company giving people unwanted extras. Gator, one of the first pieces of software to be described as spyware by security and privacy experts, is made by a company now known as Claria. It is automatically installed with many free programs and can track a user's Web surfing habits - without actually identifying him or her by name - for marketing purposes. Some versions can keep even closer track of individuals, giving each one a user ID, according to the report of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Computer games available free from sites like Shockwave.com often carry a program called n-Case, which inundates online shoppers with pop-up ads promoting rival offerings. On its Web site, the company that makes the software, 180Solutions, says 16 million people have downloaded its program, which it says offers advertisers "a 360-degree view of the user's behavior - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/bu...ey/23free.html


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Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?
Bill Werde

Imagine having a singer with a world-class voice at your disposal, any hour of any day. She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu.

Close friends of Madonna or Mariah may already have had that pleasure, but for everyone else a new technology called Vocaloid may offer the next best thing. Developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as a synthesizer might be programmed to play a series of notes like a violin one time and then like a tuba the next, a computer equipped with Vocaloid will be able to "sing" whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. But its arrival raises the prospect of a time when anyone with a laptop will be able to repurpose any singer's voice or even bring long-gone virtuosos back to life.

In fact, in today's world of computer-produced music, who needs humans at all? Vocaloid could be used as part of an integrated music-generating machine. Start with any number of existing programs that randomly generate music. Run those files through Hit Song Science, the software that has analyzed 3.5 million songs to determine mathematic patterns in hit music. (Major labels are already taking suggestions from it — "Slower tempo, please, and a little more melody at the bridge.") Throw in a lyric- generating program, several of which can be found free online, and then route the notes and lyrics through Vocaloid to give the song a voice. It might not be a hit, but the process could provide inspiration for a lot of lonely songwriters.

At this early stage of its development, the future life of this technology is as much fun to think about as the almost-human voices could be to play with. At the very least, Vocaloid promises to bring a whole new copyright-infringing definition to the phrase "losing one's voice." We may soon know if an unmanned computer could produce hit singles or the voice of tomorrow's virtual pop hero. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/ar...ic/23WERD.html


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It's Just a Game, but Hollywood Is Paying Attention
Norm Alster

AVE KILLINGSWORTH, 33 and a former disc jockey, is so immersed in pop culture that he has images of Spider-Man and Batman tattooed on his back. In his free time, he puts that passion to work betting in an online game, guessing which films will make it big. He is so good at forecasting the public's taste that he has reaped a windfall, at least in play dollars, turning $2 million into $460 million.

Mr. Killingsworth is one of a million people who have traded on the Hollywood Stock Exchange (www.hsx.com), where players can register at no cost to predict box office receipts for films. For him, it's a game, and it's fun.

But for Hollywood studios and entertainment executives, along with real traders and others, the game has become something to take quite seriously. Studios, along with academics, are interested in it as a way to predict which movies will succeed. Traders are working to turn the concept into an actual financial market, like those for futures in corn, oil and other commodities. It has also served as the model for a television show merging trading and music.

All this interest revolves around a fantasy game that allows online players to trade "securities" whose prices forecast the first four weeks of box office revenue for new and yet-to-be-released films. Late last week, traders could "buy" stock in "The Cat in the Hat" (released on Friday), at $130 a share, meaning that the market expected four- week box office receipts of $130 million. Or they could buy "Spider-Man 2," due for release next May, at $235 a share, or even "Spider-Man 3," which has not yet been made and won't be released for years, at $87.

The exchange's appeal lies in the premise that the collective wisdom of large numbers of traders can most efficiently determine the value of properties that would otherwise be hard to assess.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/bu...ey/23bets.html


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Staff Warned As Bosses Begin To Adopt Big Brother Tactics

Tanya Thompson

OFFICE staff are being urged to be vigilant amid claims that company bosses are launching covert surveillance operations to spy on them at work.

Employment lawyers are warning of a steep rise in the number of firms prepared to eavesdrop in the workplace, using a range of bugging devices and microscopic cameras.

David Christie, an Aberdeen-based solicitor with Proactive Employment Lawyers, said the area is difficult to police and the law was beginning to lag behind the new technology.

He added: "They have access to a bewildering array of eavesdropping technology. Employer surveillance has become big business and a lot of large companies are using sophisticated technology against their own people."

Human rights groups are increasingly concerned about bugging devices - which are not illegal or licensed in this country. Thousands of people in Britain are tapping into private conversations and surveillance equipment is traded legally through shops, mail-order firms and the internet.

Privacy International, a watchdog on government and corporate surveillance, estimates that more than 200,000 bugging devices and covert cameras are sold every year.

Stephen Grant, a partner with the Edinburgh-based investigators Grant & McMurtrie, has seen an increase in requests for corporate monitoring in the last five years.

They recently exposed an employee who was caught on camera smoking a cannabis joint, and a manual worker who was building a house extension while off work with a bad back."It is a boom area," he added. "We launch operations at work where it is feared that staff are stealing or malingering. We could use a camera if the client has grounds to suspect theft or other breaches of contract. These are tiny, pinhole cameras which you would never see."

Employment lawyers are warning a little-known code of practice from the Information Commissioner could erode privacy rights. Sending e-mails to friends, checking football scores or playing computer games on the internet could result in a written warning or dismissal.

Before the changes came into force in June, many employers were cautious about spying on their staff, even if they had genuine fears about misuse of company time and equipment. Lawyers now say the code of practice will give bosses the green light for full-scale surveillance operations, when it may not be justified.

Jim Price, an employment lawyer and partner with Ross Harper solicitors, in Glasgow, said many workers were unaware they are spied upon.

He added: "If employers only have to justify surveillance to themselves, it is very subjective. Staff could be monitored frequently and will never know."
http://www.news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1299642003

Cyberslacking:

http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=914


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Illegal File Sharing: The Times, They Are A- Changin’
By EDITORIAL BOARD

The Recording Industry Association of America has recently stepped up its fight with illegal downloading, evidenced by the flooding of peer-to-peer networks with corrupted versions of legitimate files. The approach is the latest in a long line of short-sighted strategies to combat the downloading that continues to revolutionize the music industry.

In some ways, the recording industry ought to be defended. As the copyright holder for pirated music, the industry has the moral high ground. It’s unfair to condemn the labels for finding a way to foil their most dangerous competitor — and the approach is certainly a more productive one than filing copyright infringement lawsuits against children and the elderly.

But the recording industry is responsible for fostering the unfriendly market that allowed file-sharing services to explode in the first place.

At a glance, the music market might not seem too unhealthy. Top artists can still move half a million copies in one week. But the single-driven, top-heavy CD market is troubled. One of the revelations of the file-sharing era is that consumers only grudgingly pay $18 for an album with two songs they want.

CDs cost only pennies to print, and artists make most of their money by merchandising and touring. The bloated recording industry must realize that file- sharing technologies have undercut the stranglehold they’ve had on the music world, and the industry needs to adjust its practices accordingly.

Free peer-to-peer services may not be around forever, but they will not disappear entirely. The concepts are simply too well-established for people to abandon, as are the economic interests — from MP3 players and CD burners to DSL service — that give the nation’s top technology firms a stake in a file- sharing future.

The eventual replacement for illegal services like Napster will be a compromise between industry and consumer interests — a legal way for people to pay less than they do now and get only the songs they want. The success of similar services like Apple’s iTunes shows that the concept already has a growing market.

Clearly, record executives would love to return the industry to its 1998 pre- Napster heyday, but that is simply not going to happen. No matter how many lawsuits the major labels file or how many file-sharing networks they shut down, the music industry has deeply changed in the past five years. The recording industry must change with it, or be left behind.
http://www.californiaaggie.com/?a_id=602


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Get 'Em While They're Legal
Ernest Miller

Thank goodness! The TiVo-addict friendly PVRBlog reports that HDTV-capable TiVos will be available for sale the first quarter of 2004 (HDTV-recording TiVo). See a picture of the device here: TiVo HD DVR. What this means, of course, is that such devices will be available without broadcast flag implementation, at least until July 2005, as many of the commentators on PVRBlog note.

Interestingly, PVRBlog is selling a home-modified TiVo (extra capacity, wireless connectivity) on eBay (Upgraded Series 2 188hr TiVo, HMO & wireless). Pretty good price right now, too. Unfortunately, under the current regime we won't be seeing too many home-modified devices after July 2005.

Comments

won't do much good. Tivo requires a subscription and frequent software updates. As soon as the deadline passes, boom, broadcast flag compliant. As for me, I'll keep by pre-repeal of 17 usc 107, pre-DRM, and pre-macrovision Sony (v. Universal) VCR as long as it lasts.

Posted by: patentbuster@msn.com at November 20, 2003 12:14 PM
http://importance.typepad.com/the_im..._while_th.html


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Chip Implant Gets Cash Under Your Skin
Declan McCullagh

Radio frequency identification tags aren't just for pallets of goods in supermarkets anymore.

Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla., is hoping that Americans can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify themselves when going to a cash machine or in place of using a credit card. The surgical procedure, which is performed with local anesthetic, embeds a 12-by-2.1mm RFID tag in the flesh of a human arm.

ADS Chief Executive Scott Silverman, in a speech at the ID World 2003 conference in Paris last Friday, said his company had developed a "VeriPay" RFID technology and was hoping to find partners in financial services firms.

Matthew Cossolotto, a spokesman for ADS who says he's been "chipped," argues that competing proposals to embed RFID tags in key fobs or cards were flawed. "If you lose the RFID key fob or if it's stolen, someone else could use it and have access to your important accounts," Cossolotto said. "VeriPay solves that problem. It's subdermal and very difficult to lose. You don't leave it sitting in the backseat of the taxi."

RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which some manufacturers have managed to shrink to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting a unique ID code, typically a 64-bit identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. Most RFID tags have no batteries. They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.

When embedded in human bodies, RFID tags raise unique security concerns. First, because they broadcast their ID number, a thief could rig up his or her own device to intercept and then rebroadcast the signal to an automatic teller machine. Second, sufficiently dedicated thieves may try to slice the tags out of their victims.

"We do hear concerns about this from a privacy point of view," Cossolotto said. "Obviously, the company wants to do all it can to protect privacy. If you don't want it anymore...you can go to a doctor and have it removed. It's not something I would recommend people do at home. I call it an opt-out feature."

Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said implanted RFID tags cause an additional worry. "When your bank card is compromised, all you have to do is make a call to the issuer," Hoofnagle said. "In this case, you have to make a call to a surgeon.

"It doesn't make sense to go from a card, which is controlled by an individual, to a chip, which you cannot control."

ADS shares have slid from a high of about $12 in 2000 to 40 cents, and the company is now fighting to stay listed on the Nasdaq. "Our common stock did not regain the minimum bid price requirement and on Oct. 28, 2003, the Nasdaq Stock Market informed us by letter that our securities would be delisted from the SmallCap," ADS said in a Nov. 14 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also warned that its implantable microchips are manufactured solely by Raytheon without a "formal written agreement," and any price increases or supply disruptions would have serious negative consequences.

MasterCard has been testing an RFID technology called PayPass. It looks like any other credit card but is outfitted with an RFID tag that lets it be read by a receiver instead of scanned through a magnetic stripe. "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs," MasterCard Vice President Art Kranzley told USA Today last week. "It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything--someday, maybe even under the skin."

ADS is running a special promotion, urging Americans to "get chipped." The first 100,000 people to sign up will receive a $50 discount.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5111637.html


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Death of a Friend
Glenn H. Reynolds

I'm losing a friend, and it's time to say goodbye. The friend is MP3.com, the online music distribution site. Although it had a market capitalization of a billion dollars when it went public just four years ago, it will be shutting its doors, er, servers, on December 2. CNET, which has bought up much of what remains of MP3.com, will be introducing some sort of new service, but at the moment the details aren't clear. Most likely, though, it will be something very different: a platform for selling commercial tunes, under some sort of copy-protection scheme, not a platform for distributing independent music for free. I hope I'm wrong about that, and MP3.com's email announcing the change suggests, without actually promising anything, that I might be, but I'm not very optimistic. Finding new ways to sell me the latest Britney Spears song seems to be the goal of most new online music services. But what I'm looking for is a way to find music I like from
bands I'd otherwise never know about.

That's what MP3.com did best. And -- I'm not a disinterested party here -- I know because I was one of those artists. Actually, I was several of them: my techno band Mobius Dick, for example, which was able to put up a song, have it hit the charts in a few days, and wind up the subject of a story in Salon within the week. Other bands ranged from jokes (Eco-folkies The Meadowlarks, who protested the "brutal" customs of Valentine's Day with a song entitled How Many Flowers Must Die) to more serious efforts, like the Nebraska Guitar Militia, for whom I wrote some songs and whose new CD will sell independent of MP3.com anyway. And I discovered a lot of other bands that I liked via MP3.com. Los Angeles-based Salsoul act Cecilia Noel and the Wild Clams rules -- I bought her CDs immediately after streaming some of her songs, as I did with Nashville-based new wavers Audra and the Antidote. And if you're following these links (and you should be), don't miss bands like the Hector Qirko Band, Terry Hill's Balboa, and Digital Ritual. You may like them. I know that I found a lot more good and interesting artists through MP3.com than I've found via listening to the radio. I don't know where I'll look now.

Most of these bands will still be around in some form, of course: lots have their own websites, and there are other opportunities to market music over the internet, and other hosting sites like IUMA, PeopleSound, and so on.

But none have the reach, or the ambition, that MP3.com offered. It was even possible to make money

on MP3.com, with some artists earning six-figure incomes -- though most didn't make much. I made a few hundred bucks a month for a while, and thought I was doing well for having music on the Internet. And I was. So were quite a few other people. But more than the money, it was the opportunity to get music in front of a lot of people, and to be part of a community of musicians and fans. MP3.com did that better than anybody else, too. I'll miss it.

It's true, of course, that MP3.com has been sick for a long time. They foolishly bet the company on a music "storage" system called "Beam-it" that was really a filesharing system, were nearly put out of business by the resulting lawsuit, then rescued by Vivendi, a company that's in pretty bad shape itself. But the original idea was a great one: Easy to use, easy to upload music and art, lots of networking and music-finding capabilities, and a real sense of community. That lived on, to a degree, even after the takeover. Now it's soon to be gone, and it's not at all clear that the replacement will be similar.

I can't help but notice that this change seems to be working to the advantage of big record companies. It's not just that they're cracking down, with mixed success, on file-sharers. It's that the environment for independent music on the Web seems to have grown more inhospitable, too. And I've always had a suspicion that shutting down these independent channels for music distribution, more than cracking down on piracy, has been the real goal of big record labels. The
technology for making music, after all, has gotten steadily cheaper. Where once their control of big studios gave them an economic advantage, now record companies' chief asset is their control of distribution and marketing channels. The Internet threatened an end-run around that process. It still does, but the end of MP3.com bodes poorly for the future. Its replacement is likely to be something that ought to be named DRM.com., based on Digital Rights Management, and aimed not at facilitating the spread of music, but at limiting it.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, here. Cheaper bandwidth and hosting, coupled with the explosion in wi-fi, probably mean that we haven't yet entered the Golden Age of Internet music, and that MP3's experience was just a sort of false dawn -- a musical Leif Ericsson to some future online Columbus. I certainly hope that's right. But it's hard to be optimistic when a friend dies.

My gloom aside, I recommend that you spend some time poking around and checking out the music while you can. MP3.com's collection of independent music, millions of songs available for free download with the artists' permission, is an enormous store of common wealth -- for a little while longer. The best place to start is probably by picking a genre from the charts page, and then checking out the artists there. Take advantage while you still can, because it's not (quite) dead yet.
http://techcentralstation.com/111903C.html


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Vivendi To Destroy MP3.com Archives?
Charles Farrar

Tech news Website CNET bought MP3.com from Vivendi earlier this month, but there now seems a question as to whether or not CNET's intentions include destroying MP3.com's music archive. At least, that is what the founder of MP3.com fears, according to an essay he published during the week at P2P.net.

"(Vivendi) sent out the announcement that...MP3.com had been sold and the new owner was not taking possession of the music and band pages. This means the music will die, disappear, and vanish forever," wrote MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, who added that MP3.com was the largest music site in the world.

"And...it contains a diversity of music found nowhere else," he continued. "If you want Britney Spears, there are lots of places to go. If you want Brittany Bauhaus, Brittany Lacy, Brittany Frompovich, or even Lymp Brittany, MP3.com is the one place in the world you'll find them. On December 2nd, their sites there will no longer exist."

CNET announced November 14 that it had a deal with Vivendi Universal to buy MP3.com's assets, saying they planned to relaunch MP3.com, though they didn't say when. They did say, however, that they would retool MP3.com as a source of information for digital music, not as a direct competitor to other music download services, including the resurrected former giant whose original peer- to-peer star helped eclipse MP3.com in the first place: Napster.

"CNET Networks believes MP3.com can attract an audience similar to visitors of its GameSpot Web site, which features video game reviews and downloads," CNET said when announcing the MP3.com deal. "The company did not announce a timeframe for its planned relaunch of MP3.com, but said it is interested in connecting with artists and record companies that have previously distributed their music via the site."

Other reports have suggested December 2 as the possible relaunch date. Robertson's essay said December 3 would be what he called "another fire...actually scheduled to take place in San Diego," an allusion to the recent wildfires which devastated much of San Diego's surrounding area. "(A)nd it will burn to the ground the largest collection of digital works ever assembled. We're certain this blaze is scheduled to happen; the question is, can we stop it in the next 2 weeks?"

Robertson started MP3.com six years ago in an extra room in his house, he said, with just a few Web pages offering less than twenty songs, until Robertson and his colleagues created an automated way for people to add their own music "in a self-serve manner" - and within a short time of that, MP3.com became a world Internet phenomenon. Until the rise of Napster and other peer-to-peer file- swapping networks, MP3.com looked like the unchallenged leader in getting music in cyberspace, with MP3.com encouraging both established musicians and unknown artists to contribute their music and get it heard by a growing audience.

"At virtually any event that had at least 100 people in attendance, I could ask the crowd if anyone had music on MP3.com and a few shy hands would be raised," Robertson said. "For some it was all business, for some it was a way to share music with family, and for others it was a place to get feedback from the community to improve their musical ability and to connect with fans. Today, MP3.com has more than 1 million full-length songs from more than 250,000 artists, available for people to listen to and download. The majority of this music cannot be found anywhere else in the world."

MP3.com also spurred the development of early, popular MP3-playing programs like Rio, Winamp, and MusicMatch, the third an easily-used MP3 creation program. The P2P phenomenon eventually overtook MP3.com's original leadership position, but MP3.com's music archive - particularly its archive of unknown artists - remained one of the Internet's broadest. And that, Robertson said, was the likely biggest loss of all if indeed CNET should destroy MP3.com's catalog.

Robertson also rejected suggestions that Vivendi intended all along to just shut down MP3.com, erase the MP3 file format, and the collection of music. "You don't spend nearly $400 million on property you intend to destroy," he wrote. "In fact, VU deployed the technology and people from MP3.com throughout their media empire. VU now uses a customer tracking system across its media properties to manage email campaigns and profile music listeners in a scientific way.

"They took the digital publishing engine MP3.com perfected, and now have the most advanced digital publishing architecture in the world," he continued. "Music goes from the recording studio directly into a digital library, where it can be sent to the CD pressing plant, music subscription systems, publishing libraries, and much more -- all digitally and precisely tracked."

Vivendi underwent a recent company shakeup and began selling of a number of digital music assets, including and especially Pressplay to Roxio, which used the program to operate the re-launched Napster earlier this fall.

Robertson, meanwhile, has a new project, SIPphone, an Internet telephone service which has competition from another early dot-com legend, Ed Cespedes's Voiceglo. Cespedes was formerly the president of TheGlobe, one of the Internet's earliest portals and one of the dot-com bust's earliest and highest-profile collapses, when its stock hit the stratosphere and then crashed and burned almost as spectacularly.

Robertson won't have nearly as much dot-com baggage to overcome as Cespedes, given that TheGlobe's collapse continues resonating around mainstream cyberspace. He admits TheGlobe flew too high on too many borrowed wings, though he also points out that, unlike many other dot-com collapses, TheGlobe never filed bankruptcy and eventually repaid every one of its investors and settled all of a number of class-action lawsuits.

"TheGlobe became iconographic of the dot-com bubble burst," Cespedes acknowledged in a recent interview. "It was exacerbated by the fact that we had two young co-CEOs who were a little too enamored of the limelight. But it's also easy to say the limelight was enamored of them. When we went public, and the stock jumped from nine to 90 on its first trade, it put us on the map across the world forever...It was the stratospheric craziness of the dot-com era. When the dot-com era ended, it was easy to pick on the guy you knew."

He also said the Internet telephony field would only benefit with players like Robertson and other former peer-to-peer movers entering. In fact, he predicted in the same interview that voice-over Internet protocol telephony might eventually replace cellular telephony.
http://www.avnonline.com/issues/2003...112203_4.shtml


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Australia.

CD Burning Okay: Musicians
Chris Jenkins

WHILE record companies prepare for the sentencing of three Sydney men convicted of music piracy by the Federal Court, a new survey shows most musicians and other music professionals believe copyright laws are too harsh.

The survey, entitled "Music - The Business, Law and Technology report," was conducted by music industry services firm Immedia at its Australasian Music Business Conference in August.

It found that 81 per cent of the 200 respondents felt that the Copyright Act should be changed to allow the copying of a user's own legally purchased CDs, but not borrowed or downloaded music.

Less than half (48 per cent) of respondents felt that downloading free music constituted theft from artists and composers, while only 25 per cent felt it was theft from record labels. Twenty seven per cent of respondents did not feel downloading music was theft.

More felt burning CDs was theft from artists (57 per cent) and record labels (29 per cent), while 55 per cent considered the illegality of copying a legally bought CD, making a compilation or ripping music to a digital device "an iniquity".

Seventy-seven per cent of respondents had a CD-burner and 47 per cent said they had burned up to 50 CDs in the past year.

Forty-two per cent considered music file-sharing to be "a bad thing". However, half of the 45 per cent who said they had downloaded music had only downloaded free content, with 31 per cent downloading a mixture of free and paid-for content and 8 per cent downloading only music they had paid for. Peer-to-peer networks were used to sample music before purchasing by 21 per cent of respondents.

Fifty-four per cent of the respondents also admitted to illegally copying software, while 26 per cent admitted to copying games.

Immedia managing partner Phil Tripp said the results showed those working in the industry believed "people who support the music industry by buying music or owning their own albums should have the right to transfer tunes to other playback media without breaking the law".

Mr Tripp said he supported lobbying the government to change the law "so that the industry does not further alienate consumers who buy their own music".

Forty-two per cent of the respondents were musicians or songwriters, 16 per cent were artist or band managers, 14 per cent music business students, 6 per cent record company staff, and 14 were in the 'other' category, including music publishers, agents, lawyers, producers, engineers and copyright association staff.

However, the Music Industry Piracy Initiative's chief investigator, Michael Speck, said the survey "confirmed what the music industry has been saying about the problems associated with peer-to-peer piracy".

He said the survey could suggest "that because lots of people break a law, as a matter of fact it should be repealed". This may "unwittingly assist" peer-to-peer pirates.

Mr Speck said a debate over the copying of legally purchased music for personal use would be "extremely difficult" to have until peer to peer piracy was under control. Pirates within the music industry would be equally subject to prosecution should it be warranted, he said. "You don't get any special consideration because of your disposition or profession."

"Suggesting consumers should remain criminals simply because they are copying their own stuff is fallacious," Mr Tripp said, saying that other countries, notably the US, gave consumers "fair use" rights over music they had purchased.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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“Sledge hammer to crack walnut.”

Privacy Commissioner Slams Music Enforcers, Cautions On DRM
Julian Bajkowski

Federal Privacy Commissioner Malcom Crompton has attacked the tactics of the music antipiracy lobby, saying that those who ride roughshod over privacy in the hunt for pirates occupy the same moral ground as those they seek to have jailed.

Addressing the 11th Biennial Copyright Law and Practice Symposium, Crompton warned a dangerous "asymmetry" between "vigorous protection of intellectual and vigorous invasion of personal information" now existed.

"One of the things that is potentially happening here, and around the world, is that if you want to go after one person for their alleged misuse or wrongful distribution of IP, what [copyright holders] do is that they manage to get hold of all the log files of an ISP or server.

"This has the potential to invade the privacy not of the person being chased, but of all the people that have ever used that ISP. [It's] not appropriate, it's a sledge hammer to crack a walnut," Crompton said.

While stopping short of demanding jail terms for premeditated or systemic invasions of privacy by commercial interests, Crompton said that it was in the public interest to make sure "the cure is not worse than the disease".

“I challenge both the digital industry and software pirates to recognise that Digital Rights Management includes both the right of protection for Intellectual Property (IP) and the right of protection for personal information (PI),” Crompton said.

The Privacy Commissioner also cautioned defenders of defend intellectual property rights must demonstrate transparency as to the way personal information is collected by commercial interests.

"DRM technologies allow very fine-grained customer profiling [and must] allow individuals the choice of not participating. This includes the need for new technologies to be consciously designed as privacy enhancing technologies that prevent accumulation of such data for this kind of secondary purpose," Crompton said.

The Commissioner noted Microsoft's Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) was "at the crossroads" in terms of building privacy into technology.

"NGSCB has great privacy enhancing potential, and deployments by developers, not just Microsoft will be the real test. Microsoft has recognised there is a privacy issue in here, that privacy can be got right and in that sense we should all work with them, give them the benefit of the doubt and urge them to do the right thing because they recognise the right thing needs to be done" Crompton said.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company would need to examine the Commisioner's musings in their full context prior to making a comment.

The Australian Recording Industry Association said it was still without a media spokesperson, thus unable to comment at time of publication.
http://pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?id=1749605766


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Telcos, ISPs At Odds Over Net-Phone User ID
Kate Mackenzie

PRIVACY and security are the main sticking points in plans for an Australian trial of ENUM, which meshes phone numbers with internet addresses.

Australia's biggest telcos are getting involved in the debate over ENUM, or e164, which has a number of potential uses, such as unified messaging and voice-over-IP.

However, the complexity of melding vastly different internet and telecommunications systems and cultures is proving a challenge.

The Australian Communications Authority issued a discussion paper on the system last year and is facilitating a discussion group involving telecoms and internet industry representatives.

A trial, expected to cost about $1 million, will be run by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and supported by the Australian Telecommunications Co-operative Research Centre.

The ACA will call tenders to run the address registry for the trial early next year, and ACA numbering assistant general manager Rowan Pulford said the trial was expected to be up and running before April.

The concept of a single number or address that could locate an individual by any method of communications raises privacy, security and authentication issues that a separate working group is looking into.

Mr Pulford and Mark Gregory, an RMIT lecturer who is heading the university's trial, said agreement was needed on these issues before the trial went ahead.

Few countries that were examining ENUM had looked into these issues, they said.

Telstra is understood to have raised several objections to security and privacy proposals from the security working group this month.

However, a Telstra spokesman was circumspect on ENUM security and privacy, saying it was a concern shared by all participants, but the telco had not "reached any firm position".

Telcos prefer a thin approach to number and address directories — keeping personal information separate from numbers, whereas the internet domain name system is fat, including personal profiles in whois databases.

"There is a different view between telcos and internet companies," Mr Pulford said.

"In many ways that's typical of ENUM, because it is like a culture clash between the unregulated internet and the highly regulated telcos."

Optus industry technical regulation manager Sam Mangar contributed a list of possible uses for ENUM, including a single contact number, unified messaging, call preferences and applications using the voice-over-IP and SIP (session initiation protocol).
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html

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Canadian Music Group Aims To Charge Internet Users
David Akin

A group representing Canada's songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians.

The case has broad ramifications for the Internet industry in Canada, legal experts say.

"This is the big case for the Internet. This will set the position on how we are going to treat Internet service providers, whether they are going to be seen as people who are responsible in some way for content that goes through their services," said Mark Perry, a professor of law and a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.

If successful, the legal pleadings of the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) could open the door to other rights holders -- groups as diverse as software publishers or Hollywood movie distributors -- who could use SOCAN's precedent to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect royalties for their members.

Although those groups are prompted to seek new sources of revenue because of what they say are illegal downloads of copyrighted content, SOCAN is asking ISPs to pay a blanket annual royalty regardless of whether the ISP is transmitting legal or illegally downloaded music.

"This is a huge case for Canada and the Internet and whether we're part of the global Internet community or on the outside looking in," said Jay Thomson, president of the Ottawa-based Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). "Consumers could very well see an increase in their Internet costs and they could see a slowdown in the transmission speed of their Internet communications."

CAIP is one of the parties to the case. Its main opponent, SOCAN, and many other parties to the case declined to comment before the court hears the matter.

Legal experts say the Supreme Court has been looking for a case like the one involving SOCAN and the ISPs because they will be able to clarify several key issues involving Internet use in Canada by ruling on a narrow technical question involving some technology ISPs use to speed up performance of their networks.

For example, legal experts say the justices of the Supreme Court will be aware that what they say on the technical issue at hand will apply to the broader issue of the responsibility ISPs have for any content that passes through their systems. That could affect the liability ISPs have for some kinds of objectionable content such as pornography, hate propaganda or computer viruses.

"We've always taken the position that we are the conduits of other people's content. We simply provide the network over which other people communicate with each other," Mr. Thomson said. "It's the people who are doing the communicating who should be responsible for that content."

The Supreme Court will also be asked to adjudicate on a jurisdictional issue, specifically whether Canadian law ought to apply to organizations which operate Web servers physically located outside the country but which deliver content to Canadians.

There is some case law already in Canada that supports the idea that business activities aimed at or used by significant numbers of Canadians ought to be subject to Canadian law even if the organization behind those activities is located outside the country.

"This case is terrifically significant," said Richard Owens, executive director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto. "From an Internet law point-of-view, it'll have effects around the world. Legal academics have been waiting for [this] for a long time. The Supreme Court is finally stepping in and giving us some guidance for the digital age."

So far, SOCAN has had partial success in convincing a Canadian court of the justice of its cause. SOCAN had originally asked the Copyright Board of Canada to impose a royalty on Canadian ISPs but the Copyright Board ruled that ISPs ought to be granted an exemption from paying royalties because they were, like telephone companies, simply a carrier or transmitter of the music files. SOCAN appealed that decision to the Federal Court of Canada and, there, found some success.

The Federal Court agreed with the Copyright Board that ISPs were indeed carriers or transmitters of content except when ISPs engaged in caching content to speed up the performance of their systems. Caching (pronounced cash-ing) is a common procedure used by ISPs in which copies of popular Web pages are stored on a computer close to a group of end users. When an end user in Toronto, for example, requests the home page of search site Google, the Google search page is retrieved from a computer in Toronto rather than from Google's main computers in California.

The Federal Court held that the act of creating a cache of content means that ISPs are moving from their role as carrier to a role in which they actively decide what kind of content will exist on their systems. And that means, under Canadian copyright law, they should be responsible for that content.

The ISPs disagreed with that interpretation of the Federal Court and were granted leave to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for SOCAN, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and a host of interested parties, such as the Canadian Cable Television Association, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and several ISPs will argue their case Wednesday. A ruling on the matter is typically made months after oral arguments are presented.

SOCAN is proposing that ISPs pay a royalty of 25 cents per subscriber per year as well as 10 per cent of any gross profit ISPs make through the sale of advertising.

"The tariffs are actually quite large," Mr. Perry said.

If adopted at that rate, SOCAN could receive several million dollars a year.

In 2002, SOCAN received a total of $32 million in royalties paid by Canadian radio stations which play music written by SOCAN's members.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories

[JackSpratts]

Jim Griffin on the Future of Music

Jim Griffin is one of the leading thinkers when it comes to the future of digital music. Griffin once held a key position at Geffen after which he started his own company with Cherry Lane's Milt Okun. Jim Griffin is also co-founder of the most important forum for debating the future of music, Pho. Greplaw has picked Jim Griffin's brain.

# Who is Jim Griffin?

This is the very toughest question, as I am loathe to substitute my judgment for others. It's still tougher to measure the field from within the field. I will simply say that I am fascinated by the digital delivery of art, knowledge and creativity; that I believe it to be the most important issue our generation could possibly face (Gutenberg being the most important before our generation, a friction-free Gutenberg is ours to implement); and that its monetization is a special challenge that I relish.

# Okay, but provide me with five keywords that I should use at Google to learn more about Jim.

I will go a bit further than that, as I was feeling a bit playful this morning when I first addressed your questions.

I am 46 years old, my family a mix of central European and Irish. I grew up in the Chicago area, and was lucky to attend a very good high school (Rich East in Park Forest, Illinois) that has contributed much to the music and entertainment (the Zutaut brothers, Dawn Upshaw, Barry Oakley, Kim Thayil, Tom Berenger and many others). I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Kentucky. After school I went to work at a newspaper, and after three years left to represent media workers around the world from my office in the Washington, D.C., area. Twelve years of that and I moved to Los Angeles to work with Geffen, after which I started my own company with Cherry Lane's Milt Okun. I am happily married to Stacie Seifrit Griffin, ex-head of special marketing at KROQ and marketing head at Paramount television network. We have one child, Hazen Eugene Griffin, now about a month old. My father was a union leader in the mold of Chavez or Debs, my mother the head of training for Illinois Bell telephone. I am good friends with my two siblings, Michael Griffin (he works at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles) and Ellen Griffin-Stolbach (a psychologist in the Chicago area).

# That's more like it, no need to fire away at Google now. What is Pho?

Pho is Vietnamese beef noodle soup. Pho the community arose from the simple notion of sharing a bowl of soup and great conversation related to the digital delivery of art. Before I worked at Geffen I represented media workers and lived in Washington, D.C., where there many good Pho kitchens, but I couldn't find one in Los Angeles. About the time I departed Geffen to start a company, I found a nearby pho kitchen in LA's Chinatown, and invited people to join me there for lunch, and then decided it would a regular Sunday occurrence, which soon blossomed into literally hundreds of people every Sunday. An e- mail mailing list evolved from the discussion. More than five years later, we now have dozens of regular worldwide gatherings in cities as diverse as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, and so on, not to mention ephemeral gatherings whenever and where ever digital media people assemble. And the mailing list has thousands of readers, lurkers and participants representing the leadership of companies and organizations, students, music lovers -- really any one who wants to join the debate.

# Can anyone join Pho?

Yes.

# How can Greplawers join in practice?

Register at Pholist.org. If you've an aversion to database participation write me at griffin-a-t- cherrylane.com and tell me who you are and why you want to join the list.

# What is Cherrylane Digital?

Cherry Lane Digital is part of the Cherry Lane Music Group of companies. Cherry Lane was founded by Milt Okun, a renowned musicologist and music publisher. Milt and I founded Cherry Lane Digital together after I left Geffen, although for its first year or two of operation it was known as OneHouse. Cherry Lane Digital is focused on absorbing uncertainty over the transition to the digital delivery of art, especially music. We primarily consult to the technology and entertainment industries.

# You were once the driving force behind the online release of a full-length song by Aerosmith. In 1994! How did you convince the folks at Geffen in doing it?

They convinced me. Shortly after arriving at Geffen and becoming its chief technology officer, I was asked when we could enable the company to digitally deliver a full-length song to the public. I replied that we could do it now if they could clear the legal rights to a song. The key marketing, legal and artists relations people secured the right to many songs quite quickly, and we chose the one that had the best balance of length and dynamic quality from a popular artist, and that turned out to be Aerosmith. There were other choices, but the songs were either too long or not suitable for the nascent medium. I recall digitizing the songs hundreds if not thousands of times, seeking the best codec and format to balance file size and therefore transmission time. Every second mattered. For the record, it took 22 minutes to download over a 28.8 modem, and was a 22 kHz WAV file. We chose the format because it was the only one that would automatically bring up a sound player in Windows; this predated media players, and at the time relatively few computers had sound cards or even speakers. It is also important to acknowledge the role of both Luke Wood and Robert von Goeben in this historic first. Luke was the driving force behind the rights clearance -- he is a great music executive in the grand tradition of Mo Ostin and other industry leaders. Robert is now a venture capitalist, and from a graphics and media perspective is a brilliant contributor. My role was to build the digital environment at Geffen and enabling the tools and technologies that made this happen.

# While running the technology department at Geffen, did you see the future as it is today?

Surprisingly so, though the speed of friction-free delivery and its marketplace arrival and morphing has surprised even me.

# Would you have done anything different at Geffen with today's knowledge of peer-to-peer and high-speed Internet access?

Not at all. The world today mirrors what we built within the walls of Geffen. All internal information was even then delivered via Intranet (we didn't know it would be called that, but we were either the first or amongst the first to use http clients inside the company), and all external information was delivered via public web server or private FTP. This was at the time revolutionary, even heretical. I distinctly recall one conversation with our parent company, Universal, where they threatened to fire me and even sue me for employing these technologies for the movement of proprietary company information. Indeed, Universal were furious we chose to deploy Ethernet over Token Ring.

# What advice would you give the technology manager at Geffen?

There is no Geffen anymore. It is simply a marketing label Universal slaps on some employee business cards and some of the product they release. I left Geffen as this end became inevitable; David had left the company and for the rest of us it was just a matter of time before assimilation was complete. David Geffen was the ideal owner, and the executives chosen by him the ideal colleagues. It was an honor to work for him.

# So, with Geffen gone, what advice would you give the technology manager at Universal?

Internal use of technology ought mirror the customer environment. Run your network as would a college. Avoid proprietary solutions; embrace open standards, redundant arrays of inexpensive devices and follow the market without trying to lead it. It is especially important that you use inside the company all those technologies that customers are using. As an example, every desktop in an entertainment company should run at the very minimum an internal or external P2P client that lets the employees use media as do customers.

# DVD-Jon, Jon Johansen, has written a program called QTFairUse, which will intercept files purchased from the iTunes Store while the file is streaming and before the Digital Rights Management system gets locked onto the file. On one hand, the program may provide fair-use, on the other hand, this may in practice be the silver-bullet to the first functioning commercial alternative to more or less illegal downloading through for example Kazaa. What is your take on QTFairUse?

I have no particular take on QTFairUse. I simply acknowledge, accept and find delight in digits -- especially those carrying art, knowledge and creativity -- bionomically finding the shortest, most efficient and effective path from source to destination.

# Wow, it sounds like you are a true John Perry Barlow devotee - should copyright owners forget about wrapping up their material in bottles?

I am more a devotee of John Perry Barlow the man than I am the Barlow School of Thought. John Perry is a splendid person, the conscience of our industry and cause. If my son grew up to be the future Barlow in every way I'd be delighted and proud. That having been said, Barlow often says ideas and art want and need to be free, but I disagree, thinking that if they are truly free (meaning without cost) then there won't be much more of them. I think his heart is in the right place, though, and think instead that to the degree possible it is our responsibility, our opportunity, our challenge to make them feel free, especially at the moment of deciding to use them. This makes me an advocate of flat-fee buffets of art, of bundled price with unbundled choice, with many hands making light work of the fees. Ultimately, this is a path for growing the business of artistic endeavor. Granularity and control have traditionally proven themselves the enemies of creative monetization. We've typically found growth and progress in bundles: One fee to enter the amusement park instead of taking tickets for the rides; a book of 40 poems by Poe instead of buying just The Raven or The Telltale Heart; tiers of cable channels; subscriptions to the opera; the sports section with the news section and the rest of the paper, and so on.

# Are digital rights management systems the answer? Then what was the question?

Sure, if you seek to limit the audience for the content, but it is rare that there is any sense in treating mass media with digital rights management techniques. DRM, for most people, means "Did you get paid?" Essentially, you manage your digital rights best if you get paid for the digits. Are we managing our digits well if we condition their delivery on locks and keys? Of course not. Cable television has essentially no DRM. Virtually every cable recipient has a video cassette or other recorder to capture the content. Are we managing our digital rights well if we fail to sell our content into this environment on account of its obvious lack of control? Of course not. If we failed to sell it to cable, we wouldn't get paid. Are we practicing good DRM if deny our content to analog or digital radio? Of course not. If we fail to deliver content, we will not be paid. So it seems quite obvious that conditioning access on locks and keys doesn't work today, and is purely a theoretical, hypothetical suggestion that has never proven value in the marketplace.

# Should copyright proprietors be afraid of their digital future?

The financial value of art is found in its ability to draw a crowd. If you own a copyright the draws a crowd you have nothing to fear save for your own ineptitude in managing your financial affairs, and in general we manage best when we manage the least.

# I read somewhere that you would like to see laws that make authors and creators eligible for payment and at the same time warrants open access to consumers. Which are the cornerstones of such law?

I don't think government and art intersect well, so I generally oppose legal intervention, though I think we get the legal intervention we deserve when we fail to reach voluntary blanket licensing agreements. In general, the historic principles and lessons applied during the transition from acoustic to electric apply to the transition from electric to digital: It's all about a pool of money, and a fair way to divvy it up. Electricity effectively removed control from much art. The result, for public address operators, radio and television broadcasters, cable and satellite owners, webcasters, and so on, has been flat-fee payments aggregated into huge pools that are divvied on sampling methodology or other means. So the cornerstones are simple, and they apply equally to monetizing most any intersection of technology and freedom: A pool of money, and a fair way to allocate it.

# But why should anyone contribute to the pool of money, if the bits can be obtained for free through Kazaa and Bittorrent without telling the pool owner?

Actuarial economics will replace actual control, but that is difficult if not impossible to achieve without some degree of compulsion. Like automobile insurance or health insurance or similar actuarial concepts, they work best when spread across as wide a group as possible and fail when they tend to adverse, voluntary groups. I favor imposing involuntary fees across network users such that the fees become so low they are hardly worth complaining about. Worldwide, the average per capita spending on music is well under a dollar per month, likely under a quarter. The United States leads the world at somewhere between two or three dollars a month. We can replace the entire music business worldwide for less than it costs to complain about the fee, and all media can be compensated for at a fee that integrates well with monthly wireless or wired fees. This is hardly revolutionary: Europeans are accustomed to paying a mandatory annual television fee, and Americans pay still more voluntarily for cable on a monthly basis.

Copyright is actually copy risk, and the way we deal with risk generally avoids actual control in favor of actuarial, insurance-like concepts. For example, vehicles kill and maim perhaps a million people worldwide, but we do not truly control vehicles or require absolute safety. Indeed, our idea of road safety is five feet and a white line, and in fact we market vehicles by showing them soaring down the highway at high speeds, displaying their power and freedom with tiny letters at the bottom of the television screen warning us not to actually try this ourselves. How can we tolerate the marketing of such risky behavior? A pool of insurance money and relatively fair way of allocating the payments. Indeed, we don't even require you to have the money to buy the car; we accept that loaning money means some people don't pay, and we tolerate that, too, with an actuarial pool of credit absorbing the risk of loss. Against this backdrop, copyright is hardly a problem. Bob Marley said about music that "when it hits you feel no pain."

Digital networks and their attached devices, like roads and their vehicles, bring risk to rights holders. These new paths offer both good and bad consequences. Shall we predicate access on eliminating risk? If so, there would be no roads, little transportation, and no broadcast radio and television, no cable, no satellite, and certainly no digital networks. Our path to progress is clear: Tolerate risk, but anticipate its consequences and address them through actuarial means, by pooling fees and allocating their rewards to risk takers such as artists and rights holders. Paying into actuarial network funds should be no more voluntary than ought be automobile insurance.

# What drives creativity? Are intellectual property rights really important to creators?

Sure. Money drives economies, and artists need roofs, meals, cars and the means to raise families as much if not more so than any member of society. I recall hearing that Cole Porter was asked what comes first for him, the lyric or the melody? Neither, he replied. What comes first is the phone call, and by that he meant someone calling with a need to buy music.

# You are spending a lot of time in Helsinki, Finland. What are you doing for Nokia?

I respectfully decline to offer specifics, but suffice it to say that if you've read this far in the interview you understand very well what Cherry Lane Digital does for Nokia. I am definitely not here to help the Finns redress their loss to Sweden in the hockey championships, though I do enjoy sauna and jumping into the hole in the ice. And my Finnish friends are the best of friends.

# Since you are giving the Swedish hockey team credit, I guess I should wrap this up with a less provocative question. Which is the best record - ever?

There is no best record ever, just as there is no truth, no right, no wrong, at least not that I can apply to anyone else. I will say simply that for all of us there is only what we know to be true, what we believe to be right, what we think wrong, and that the trouble starts when we try to apply this to the person next to us, to substitute our judgment for theirs. As for me, the best record ever is Brian Eno's Music for Airports, but that is simply my choice for the moment and perhaps the past decade. Pure, simple tones, conducive to all manner of dialogue and thought.

Jim Griffin was interviewed by Mikael Pawlo.
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article....3/11/28/095219

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Fears Over Singapore Hacking Laws
Correspondents in Singapore

NEW laws allowing Singapore to launch pre-emptive strikes against computer hackers have raised fears that internet controls are being tightened and privacy compromised in the name of fighting terrorism.

The city-state's parliament has approved tough new legislation aimed at stopping "cyberterrorism," referring to computer crimes that are endanger national security, foreign relations, banking and essential public services.

Security agencies can now patrol the Internet and swoop down on hackers suspected of plotting to use computer keyboards as weapons of mass disruption.

Violators of the Computer Misuse Act such as website hackers can be jailed up to three years or fined up to $S10,000.

But a vocal opposition fear the law will be abused.

"It could be misused to invade into the privacy of citizens to gather information," said Sinapan Samydorai, president of Think Centre, a civil liberties group. He said the new laws could be used as an "instrument of oppression" by the government.

An online poll by popular internet portal Yahoo Singapore showed that 70 per cent of respondents felt the new laws gave the authorities too much power, and they were afraid they were being watched.

But the Ministry of Home Affairs said "any measures to be deployed will be non- intrusive in nature."

"For example, any scanning programme deployed will not intrude into a subscriber's personal computer. It will only scan the internet passively to determine vulnerabilities in the affected network," a spokeswoman said.

Any private information about "law-abiding citizens" security agencies may come across in their hunt for hackers will be protected, she added.

The new measures have been likened by critics to the Internal Security Act, which has been used to detain political dissidents and radicals without trial.

Ho Peng Kee, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, said the new powers will be used sparingly, and warned that online saboteurs can be as dangerous as suicide bombers.

"Instead of a backpack of explosives, a terrorist can create just as much devastation by sending a carefully engineered packet of data into the computer systems which control the delivery of an essential service, say for example, a power station, thus causing it to malfunction," Ho said in parliament this month.

Ho said the authorities had noted a marked increase in successful hacking activities, from 10 cases in 2000 to 19 cases in 2001, 41 cases in 2002, and 24 cases in the first half of 2003 alone.

"The number of unsuccessful attempts is probably many times more," Ho said.

Ho vowed that the new powers will only be invoked in case of an "imminent" threat to security.

Singapore has detained more than 30 alleged members of the Jemaah Islamiyah, said to be the Southeast Asian wing of the al-Qaeda network behind the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, and is a staunch American ally. It has stepped up security on all fronts for fear of an attack.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog, called for an independent body to check the use of the additional internet security powers.

"Even if the fight against cyber-crime has become essential, it should not justify the granting of extraordinary powers to governments," said Robert Menard, secretary-general of RSF.

Experts quoted by Singapore's Computer Times noted that the new laws will not be able to stop overseas-based hackers, or truly fanatical operators.

Kit Yau, a Hong Kong-based analyst with technology research group IDC, said Singapore should spell out how the new laws are to be implemented in order to allay public fears.

"This is part of the government's job of providing security, but you have to make people know what is going on, what are the limitations," she said.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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Internet Loosening Media Control in China
Patrick Casey

China's government has long controlled the information its citizens receive through official media, but that may end as the Internet burrows deeper into the fast-changing communist country, a Chinese Internet expert says.

"I won't say China is democratic, but you no longer can control information," says Guo Liang, deputy director of the Research Center for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-supported think tank in Beijing.

"SARS is a good example of that," he said in a recent interview in New York. "Even 10 years ago, people could hardly criticize anything. The government could easily hide something and people would hardly dare to expose anything."

Special filters block Web surfers in China from seeing sites run by overseas Chinese dissidents, human rights groups and some news organizations, though the enforcement is spotty and often inexplicably random. Guo and others dispute the filters' effectiveness and don't think they have much effect.

"You cannot control Internet. That is my basic theory," said Guo, who recently completed a survey on Internet use in 12 smaller Chinese cities. "People can receive all sorts of information. The filters cannot scan a graphic."

As an example, he cites communications by Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government as an "evil cult."

"I still receive once a week some message from Falun Gong," Guo said. "It is Chinese characters but is like a photo. How can you filter that? No way."

Guo's survey, funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation, queried 4,100 people aged 17 to 60 in 12 Chinese cities.

Although that sample is not considered representative of the overall population, the survey's findings offer an unusual window into how the Internet is transforming politics in China - providing citizens with a platform to express opinions and a window on the outside world.

For example, 72 percent of the Internet users surveyed agreed that "by using the Internet, people have more opportunities to express their political views." Sixty-one percent think the Internet gives them more opportunity to criticize government policies and 73 percent said government officials "will learn the common people's views better" because of the Net.

Only 13 percent said they favor controlling political content.

China has about 68 million Internet users among its 1.3 billion people, according to figures provided in July by the China Internet Network Information Center.

Internet usage is highest in China's largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, with about 30 percent of residents going online.

But a similar percentage - about 27 percent - of the people surveyed in 12 of China's smaller cities go online, too. "I did not expect that," Guo said.

In Guo's survey, 63 percent said they have home access, while 41 percent, mostly in outlying areas, use Internet cafes. Smaller numbers can access the Net from work or school.

Fifty-seven percent of the Chinese Internet users questioned said they go online to browse Web sites, while 51 percent use e-mail and 49 percent download music.

Only 5.3 percent of those surveyed used the Net for online shopping. Those who do spend a yearly average of $50 on small items such as books, magazines and CDs.

One reason for the low number of online purchases is that credit cards are not widely used in China, though debit cards are becoming popular, and delivery systems are not well developed.

Hao Xiaolei says she sometimes lets her fingers do the shopping from her Beijing residence, buying mostly small items and paying in cash.

"I have an account with my address and after confirmation of my purchase, their account service person would deliver it in person," she said via e-mail. "When I receive it, I pay for it. They promise a maximum of 48-hour delivery delay."

According to 62 percent of the people surveyed, the primary problem with using the Internet in China is that their connection is too slow. Connection speeds are affected, many say, by the censors the government uses to block tens of thousands of sites.

Forty-five percent think their connection fees - which can be as low as about a dollar for eight hours of access - are too high, while 34 percent complain about their connections being dropped.

China has closed more than 3,300 Internet cafes in what it calls a safety crackdown since a fire in June 2002 at a Beijing cafe killed 25 people. The government says nearly 12,000 other Internet cafes closed temporarily while they made improvements.

The crackdown added to efforts by the communist government to control how Chinese use the Internet, even as it encourages the spread of online activity for business and education.

Under new rules that took effect last year, minors are banned from many Internet cafes. Managers are required to keep records of customers' identities and to close by midnight.

But Guo said many Internet cafes are unlicensed and do not track their customers or check their ages.

"One reason that young people like the Internet cafes is that after work they don't have lots of entertainment or night life, so they don't know what to do," Guo said. "Young people like Internet as a fashion thing. They can tell their friends, `I can play games on Internet.' Young people like to show off."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/7319207.htm


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Japanese Police Make First File-Sharing Arrests
Mainichi Daily News

KYOTO -- Two people who used the file-sharing software "Winny" to offer movies and video game software to an unspecified number of people over the Internet have been arrested, police said.

Katsuhiko Kimoto, a 41-year-old self-employed businessman from Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, and an unemployed 19- year-old from Matsuyama were arrested on suspicion of violating copyright laws.

Law enforcers also searched the home of the developer of Winny, and shut down the Internet page that was offering free copies of the software.

It is the first time police have arrested people for using file- sharing software. Investigators said Kimoto used the software to release the U.S. movie "A Beautiful Mind" and one more item over the Internet without permission of the copyright holders, while the 19-year-old allegedly offered the popular video game software Super Mario Advance and another item so people could download them.

Both suspects have reportedly admitted to the allegations against them. Two companies including Nintento had launched complaints.

Winny enables people to easily download movies, games and other software that is being shared by simply typing in part of a file name. The Tokyo-based Association of Copyright for Computer Software said that there were about 250,000 users as of September this year. Distribution of obscene images and child pornography through use of the software has also become a problem.

The Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association estimates the damage in this incident of "A Beautiful Mind" alone at about 230 million yen.

"This can be described as an exposure that warns against the morals of users," an association representative said. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Nov. 28, 2003)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20031...fp007000c.html


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KaZaa Grows Asian Movie Catalogue
Bernama

Sharman Networks, publisher and distributor of the KaZaa file sharing application, said that Singaporean blockbuster film Teenage Textbook Movie will be sold to KaZaa users worldwide in a distribution deal that sees the licensed Asian movie catalogue available through the KaZaa network continue to expand.

The film will be made available through a deal between Sharman Networks' partner Altnet Inc (www.altnet.com), a provider of secure digital media via peer- to-peer technology, and Singaporean production company Mega Media, Sharman Networks (www.sharmannetworks.com) said in a statement.

It is the third deal for distribution of full-length movie content via KaZaa announced in the past month, including the launches of Bollywood hit movie Supari, the world's first licensed full-length feature film to be distributed using filesharing technology, and surf film 'TO' Day of Days by Australian director Jack McCoy.

The deal means that the estimated 60 million users of KaZaa (www.kazaa.com) worldwide would be able to download Teenage Textbook Movie for US$2.99 (RM11.36).

The film is protected using Altnet technology, which allows Mega Media to have control over the rules of distribution and pricing of their product, Sharman Networks said.

Mega Media is also using KaZaa to promote the award-winning Singaporean- Vietnamese film collaboration, The Song of the Stork, the first production about the US-Vietnam war to be filmed in Vietnam.

"The release of the Teenage Textbook Movie through KaZaa has added a completely new dimension to the distribution of our films," said Mega Media managing director Jonathan Foo.

"We can now reach a truly global audience through the Internet. Our philosophy is to make Asian films for a world audience, and KaZaa is helping to make that a reality," he said.

"KaZaa offers a way for any movie company to not only market and promote new releases, but also extend the life of movies beyond the cycle of traditional theatrical release, video and cable distribution," said Sharman Networks chief executive officer Nikki Hemming.

"This means back catalogue material can be monetised using the cost efficiencies of peer-to-peer technology, and fans looking for rare or delisted content at a fair price can find it on KaZaa."
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology


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Taiwan Music Industry Rejoices Over File-Sharing Victory
Bill Heaney

A decision in the legal case against a 22-year-old man surnamed Chung who shared music files over the Internet without the permission of record labels was hailed by the music industry yesterday as a landmark in the fight against online piracy.

"This case proves that peer-to-peer file-sharing infringes copyright," International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Taiwan branch secretary-general Robin Lee told the Taipei Times in an interview yesterday.

The music industry has claimed since 2000 that peer-to-peer Web sites break the law as they allow subscribers to download music via the Internet without paying royalty fees to the rights holder.

After successfully closing only one Web site -- Napster -- the industry changed tack earlier this year and started going after site users.

"We will use this case to let everybody know that users of peer-to-peer Web sites are breaking the law, and we will bring more cases to court if peer-to-peer doesn't stop," Lee said.

In Taiwan, the IFPI -- which represents 12 local and international record companies -- launched three cases against individuals, and two against the peer-to-peer Web sites Ezpeer.com.tw and kuro.com.tw.

The decision against Chung is the first result in the court cases. Last week, the prosecutors office of the Panchiao District Court decided to defer prosecution in the case against Ezpeer subscriber Chung after he admitted that he infringed the copyright law and agreed to publish an apology in the local press. The apology appeared last Friday.

Chung also signed agreements that he would not use peer-to-peer Web sites again, or share music files without the prior permission of rights holders. Under the deferred prosecution framework, Chung could be dragged back in front of the courts if he breaks the agreement and starts sharing files again.

One legal expert said the decision was important, but not final.

"This represents some kind of victory for the music industry," said Liu Yen-ling , a copyright lawyer with Winkler Partners in Taipei. "It shows that prosecutors at least think Chung is guilty, but it is not a complete victory."

The news comes as Taiwan's music industry struggles to survive. Taiwan's legitimate market in recorded music has dropped dramatically in value from NT$12 billion in 1997 to NT$4.9 billion last year, according to IFPI figures.

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer sites are raking in the cash. Kuro charges its 500,000 users NT$99 per month, netting the company NT$600 million per year. Ezpeer charges NT$100 per month with 300,000 members, which means NT$360 million per year.

Officials from Ezpeer and Kuro were not available for comment yesterday afternoon, but both have repeatedly claimed that their services are legal as they do not store songs on their servers, or charge subscribers to download music.

Consumers in Taiwan can buy music over the Internet without fear of prosecution. Earlier this month, iBIZ Entertainment Technology Corp launched a music download site in Taiwan in cooperation with 14 record labels, charging between NT$10 and NT$30 for each song.

Chunghwa Telecom Co's Hinet Internet service and computer giant Acer Inc have also negotiated deals for music sites, and five other companies are in discussions, IFPI's Lee said.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/.../27/2003077458


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Fourteen Arrested for Circulating E-Mail Message Criticising Mugabe

Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE

Reporters Without Borders today urged the Zimbabwean authorities to drop charges against 14 people who were arrested for circulating an e-mail message criticising
President Mugabe's economic policies and calling for his departure. They were all released on bail but have been ordered to appear in court on 26 November.

"Robert Mugabe has already gagged the traditional news media and we must now speak out so that the Internet does not meet the same fate," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. "The Zimbabwean opposition is increasingly using the Internet to distribute information criticising the regime and this right must not be denied them," he added.

The Herald, a government-controlled daily, said those detained were released after paying bail of 50,000 Zimbabwean dollars (10 US dollars). The e-mail message encouraged Zimbabweans to stage violent demonstrations and strikes to force President Mugabe to stand down, the newspaper said.

This is the first time the authorities have used a law passed last year by the parliament allowing them to intercept e-mail. An employee with a Zimbabwean Internet service provider told the BBC that no system for monitoring e-mail has yet been installed. The police therefore intervened after receiving a copy of the message.

The Zimbabwean news media use the Internet to get round government censorship. After the Daily News was banned in October, its editors decided to continue publishing on a website hosted in neighbouring South Africa. The Insider, a newspaper that has declared its intention of providing independent news, is publishing online since September to avoid the prohibitive cost of a paper edition.
http://allafrica.com/stories/printab...311240754.html


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Small Movie Production Companies Sue MPAAOver Screener Ban
ILA

A group of small movie production companies have launched a suit against the new MPAA policy partially banning the practice of sending video copies of movies to award groups. The MPAA argues the ban is needed to cut down on movie piracy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...683900,00.html


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Copyrighted Music and Movies Still Free
Tracey Meyers

Most would think that the illegal P2P (Peer-to-Peer) practice of sharing Copyrighted music and movies has dissolved in the last few months with music industries across the globe fighting ISPs and individuals for the stolen millions of sales revenue. The fact is the illegal practice still occurs and is gaining in popularity as pre-03 (before 2003) Napster like software is continually available to those who want it. Recent media coverage from ISPs confronting users of companies like Kazaa has populated their site with authorities waiting to pounce on illegal file sharers, forcing users to seek alternative services. Experiencing one of the largest surges in site traffic for P2P providers is WinMx; courtesy of word-of-mouth from their users. mIRC and other similar chat forums still remain to be a more effective methodology to obtain and share illegal files as users have an increased anonymity and ability to conceal the contents of the hard drive rather than opening a port to share everything on their PC.

Despite the development of pay-per-tune applications like Apple’s iTunes and the revamped Napster, it comes as no shock that the preference for free music still remains. Some musicians have supported the free downloading of their music as it increases their notoriety. Often these musicians are independents with little or no means to advertise their offerings. Some larger musicians have vocalised their support for free music. The stereotype would have you believe the larger and more popular artists scream and whinge when their music is repetitively downloaded, regardless of their current bank balance.

The larger-than-life Chuck D of Public Enemy offers free music for his fans on his website and believes online music has and will continue to make the band or musician into his own broadcaster. In an interview posted on Wired.com, Chuck states, “To the pirates, I say the more the merrier. Success comes from the fans first - if someone is going to pirate something of mine, I just have to make sure to do nine or ten new things. I mean, you cant download me.”

Canadian-based publication, The Globe and the Mail, provides an alternate argument, believing ‘Internet users are really willing to pay for downloading music.’ The truth to this statement rests on statistics of people buying music online and portable players doubled, and in some areas tripled, in the first half of 2003. These figures are more than likely to be the result of the numerous litigations pursued by the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) in the last 12 months. Their RIAA’s persistence has seen members of Congress, the music industry, ISPs, Colleges, Schools, and the public raise their hand to aid in the dismissal of illegal file sharing. Industry leaders in the movie and music industry have raised reward offerings for those who can deliver illegal file shares to the authorities. The most notarised example this year came around the time of the release of the Hollywood blockbuster, The Hulk. People were sharing an incomplete version of the film that featured a ‘poorly’ constructed depiction of the loved Marvel character via P2P. The result of this illegal share raised the fine to almost $2 million US and jail time.

Measures like these have been echoed between the two industries, adamant in ceasing the illegal transfer of their copyrighted material. Hollywood has addressed this problem by the implementation of Hollywood Online by 2005 to cease the popular underground practice of recording the movie on to DivX or any other stream before the DVD release date. What does the Music industry hope to implement? Will popular record labels ever succumb to the declining offline sales to deliver a downloadable format of the record for a smaller price? This proposition will result in the dissolution of a number of music middlemen that would see the reinvention of the record company to a virtual domain, and would result in the depletion of CDs, tapes, records and ultimately jobs in the industry.

Once one of the labels converts to the virtual stream, others will soon follow, creating a domino effect across the industry. When this will transpire is unsure but if the record companies want to survive, they will have to adapt, otherwise artists will offer the services themselves eliminating the need for the ‘middleman’ much like MP3.com offers its independent artists.
http://www.net4nowt.com/isp_news/new...p?News_ID=1598


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Legal Music Downloads Double

Paid music services take off, with Apple's ITunes leading the way.
Macworld.co.uk staff

Digital music download services are exploding, with the number of U.S. consumers downloading tracks doubling in the first half of 2003.

Ownership of MP3 players such as Apple Computer's market leading IPod is also climbing: 19 percent of U.S. music downloaders own such devices--up from 12 percent in December 2002.

A quarterly digital music behavior report from research firm Ipsos-Insight shows that in late June 2003, "roughly" one out of six (16 percent) of U.S. music downloaders aged 12 and older had paid to download music online. The company says this is the equivalent of 10 million people.

At that time, Apple's ITunes Music Store was setting the trend for digital music sales and consumer rights. Few of the current big-name digital music services, such as Roxio's Napster 2.0, existed at that time. Forrester Research recently asserted that digital music sales will account for one third of all music sales by 2008.

The data is contained within the company's Tempo: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior, a quarterly research study that examines the ongoing influence and effects of digital music worldwide. Report author Matt Kleinschmit observed: "A twofold increase in the number of American downloaders exposed to for-pay music downloads in just a six-month time frame (compared to 8 percent in December 2002 and 13 percent in April 2003) signals a remarkable shift in downloader behavior."

The research also reveals that young adults aged 18 to 24 are most likely to have paid to download digital music, however, it also shows that older downloaders are getting involved--19 percent of computer users between 25 and 54 have also paid to buy digital music.

The research also shows that 12 to 17 year olds--who often don't have credit cards--are the least likely to say they have paid for digital music. Apple has attempted to address this point in ITunes 4.1, introducing gift vouchers and a parent-controlled allowance feature so people in this age group can choose to use its legal service rather than steal music.

Kleinschmit said: "Downloaders of all ages are clearly beginning to experiment with fee-based online music distribution in increasing numbers."

The analyst points out that the new data was collected in June, prior to the debut of ITunes for Windows and competing Windows-friendly services: "It will be interesting to see how these refined fee-based online music services impact this figure in futures waves of Tempo, and whether downloaders' dependence on peer-to-peer file sharing decreases accordingly."

On the increased market-share for MP3 players, Kleinschmit said: "The rise in portable MP3 player ownership among U.S. downloaders, coupled with the growth in paid downloading, suggests that digital music enthusiasts may be shifting their overall music acquisition and listening behaviors from a physical to a digital approach."

He described this as a potentially "positive sign" for associated industries: "Legitimate market opportunities are increasingly prevalent in the world of digital music, even alongside unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing," he said.

LimeWire chief technology officer Greg Bildson recently dismissed the impact of legal services on peer-to-peer networks. Speaking to Macworld he said: "We've seen no effect on the number of software downloads we see in any given day."

Data supporting the Ipsos-Insigh's claims was collected between June 27 and 30 from a sample of 1112 respondents aged 12 and over. The analysts claim its conclusions are 95 percent likely to be accurate.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113665,00.asp


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Will Consumers Change Copyright Law?

As the music industry readies another round of lawsuits, file sharers may challenge the claims.
Rita Chang,

As the music industry continues to fight online file swapping by filing suit, digital music lovers everywhere should take pause--and, perhaps, inventory.

Just last week, another ISP--Pacific Bell Internet Services--went to court to fight a subpoena by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA, representing the major music labels, wants the ISP to disclose the names of customers it contends are uploading large volumes of digital music to peer-to-peer sites. Another ISP, Verizon, recently lost a similar fight to protect its customers.

That the RIAA is seeking more customer names indicates it may be preparing another round of suits against digital music fans. The industry association sued 261 people in September, when it launched its current copyright protection campaign.

If you're afraid the RIAA knows about your music collection, what are your best options? Will you settle or fight to the bitter end?

If you decide to fight, make sure your lawyer is well versed in U.S. copyright law. The recording industry is staking its claims on copyright infringement.

Few consumers have yet pushed back in the courts. A California man is seeking class action status for a suit against the RIAA. That case claims the RIAA is misleading consumers with its amnesty program, announced the same time as the first lawsuits. The so-called Clean Slate program urges file swappers to repent, file an affidavit promising to stop using peer-to- peer services, and destroy any illegal files.

Don't assume copyright law is stacked against the consumer, say some legal experts. To understand how U.S. copyright law applies to file sharing, it's useful to consider uploading and downloading separately. Still, provisions in the law leave several gray areas.

"The extent of the consumer's privilege to download and exchange music is terrifically unclear," says Jessica Litman, law professor at Wayne State University and author of Digital Copyright.

"The law is unambiguous," said Marybeth Peters, head of the U.S. Copyright Office at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September. "Using peer-to-peer networks to copy or distribute copyrighted works without permission is infringement, and copyright owners have every right to invoke the power of the courts to combat such activity." But Litman notes that current law allows consumers to make copies of copyrighted music for noncommercial use. She cites the 1992 Home Audio Recording Act, which permits consumers to copy a digitally recorded work.

Under that act, "consumers cannot be sued for making noncommercial copies of recorded music, and digital music recorder manufacturers are required to incorporate technology that allows the recorders to make unlimited first-generation copies but prevents the recorders from making second-generation copies (a copy of the first-generation copy)," Litman says. The makers of digital music recorders and recording media (like audio CD-Rs) must pay a fee into a fund to be divided among copyright owners, composers, and performers. In exchange, copyright owners can't sue consumers or the makers of digital music recorders for copyright infringement.

Computer manufacturers, however, were exempt from incorporating technology preventing second-generation copies and paying any fees, because "people didn't know we were going to use them as home entertainment centers," Litman says.

Now, however, the music industry argues that copies of recorded music made on computers are infringements. According to Litman, in the 1999 RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that it is legal for consumers to use their computers to make MP3 copies of recordings and transfer them to portable MP3 players.

However, in the Napster case, the Ninth District Court "declined to extend the rationale of the Diamond case to peer-to- peer file sharing," Litman says.

The issue remains rife with ambiguities. Among other things, the Ninth Circuit left the issue of "fair use" open to debate. Rather than rule on the consumer's liability, the court focused on the peer-to-peer software vendor who, the court decided, abets infringement of copyrighted material.

"Just to make everything more complicated, we have 12 circuit courts of appeals in the U.S., and none of them is required to follow the rulings of the others, so issues often remain unsettled even after one or two courts of appeal have spoken," Litman says. "That's why the Supreme Court often takes cases to resolve conflicts in the circuits."
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113645,00.asp


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Open-Source Audio in a Proprietary Universe
David Halperin

Even before we could send recorded sound reliably over the Internet and a file-sharing revolution set the music industry in an uproar, the large size of digital audio files was causing headaches. A minute of raw stereo sound at CD quality -- or 16-bit, 44.1 KHz sampling -- occupies 10.5 MB on a hard drive. Obviously, files of song-length recordings at that size can quickly get unwieldy.

Compression proved to be the answer. In 1987, technicians at the Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen in West Germany began working on a sophisticated compression algorithm, one that could achieve compression ratios of 10:1 and better while preserving high-quality sound.

The original test bed for this technology was a box of electronics the size of a refrigerator, but by 1992 the Fraunhofer team, working with Deutsche Thomson Brandt, had reduced it to software and it became part of the MPEG standard. Officially known as MPEG-1 Layer III -- also endorsed by the ISO -- the new kid on the block soon became known as MP3 , and the rest, as they say, is history.

Players, both software and hardware, were created to play MP3s. Combined with Napster's peer-to-peer file-sharing network, the compact new codec -- or compression-decompression algorithm -- helped overturn the traditional relationship between music publishers and consumers, a confrontation now being played out in the courts.

Fraunhofer and Thomson still own the copyrights to MP3 and charge developers to use it in their authoring packages and players. A refinement, MP3Pro, has recently hit the streets, and the new MPEG-4 standard incorporates Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) developed by Dolby and used by Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) for its iTunes pay-per-track online music store.

Meanwhile, other developers have not been idle. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) incorporated a proprietary audio codec into its Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, and RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) used its own codec in its RealPlayer systems. Like MP3, these formats must be paid for by developers wishing to use them. Both the authoring applications used to create music in these formats and the players themselves are usually charged fees.

Those fees typically vary with the number of units to be produced and, in some cases, the nature of the use. The numbers are serious: 100 million MP3 players, for example, are expected to be in use worldwide by the end of this year, and a billion music tracks are said to be downloaded every month.

Open-source developers have been busy, too. As Christopher Montgomery, founder and lead programmer at Xiph.org, an open-source development project, puts it, "Open source is not a fad any more than the Internet is; it is a necessary force driving innovation and the Internet forward while protecting the interests of individuals, artists, developers and consumers."

Several open-source audio encoding-decoding formats have been created, and they are supported by many authoring and player packages. There's LAME. There's Monkey's Audio and a voice-oriented codec called Speex.

There's also Exact Audio Copy, software written by a student at the University of Dortmund in Germany. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, there's the oddly named Ogg Vorbis, which could be the strongest challenger yet to the proprietary music formats.

"We are seeing Ogg Vorbis adopted by MP3 player manufacturers and chip manufacturers who, as the market grows and as the lower end becomes increasingly commoditized, are looking for ways to boost their feature sets," IDC senior analyst Susan Kevorkian told TechNewsWorld.

"One way for them to do that is to support a greater number of codecs," said Kevorkian. "The crux of the matter is how many people are using it and how much music is available encoded in that format."

DRM might be the critical issue. "The question is, are the music labels actively supporting [Ogg]?" Kevorkian said. "Because if digital rights management isn't a part of it, then it's certainly not the direction that the music industry's going. In fact, [open-source developers] are proponents of unprotected codecs."

However, said Kevorkian, the major record labels are experimenting more actively with CD content protection technologies that include both a protected set of Red Book audio files -- the standard audio CD file format -- plus Windows Media Audio files, which are protected so that you'd be able to transfer them to your PC's hard drive but not distribute them online.

"Also," she said, "as the music industry supports paid music services more actively, we expect the majority of paid music services to support Windows Media Audio because the codec and the DRM are closely integrated, so every music service provider doesn't have to think about combining the two like Apple did."

Whether or not open-source audio standards will threaten the dominance of MP3 and WMA remains to be seen. Open-source audio developers -- opposed by aggressive commercial giants, ideologically committed to nonprofit but needing development capital -- seem to face unbeatable odds. Perhaps they'll take heart by looking at open source's recent progress in the corporate world.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32192.html


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Schools to Avoid: University of Florida
Posted by michael

from the vote-with-your-dollars dept.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The University of Florida has apparently come up with a technological approach to deal with P2P file sharing on their campus networks. According to this article on wired.com they have developed a program that scans the PCs of students in the UF dorm rooms. The program, dubbed 'Icarus' not only detects P2P applications but viruses, worms, and other trojans. If a P2P application is found then an e-mail is sent to the user, a message is popped up on their screen, and their internet connection is disconnected. First time offenders lose their connection for 30 minutes. The second offense results in a 5 day loss. The third strike results in an indefinite loss of connectivity. An editorial in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, called the use of Icarus 'an invasive and annoying system that further deters students from living in dorms.'"
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/10/03....shtml?tid=146


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DMCA News

Fatwallet Files Lawsuit Challenging Both Retailers’ Demands For Removal Of Thanksgiving Sales Price Web Postings And Subpoena Seeking Posters’ Identities
Press Release

Faced with demands by national retailers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove Thanksgiving sales information from its web site for the second year in a row, FatWallet, Inc. filed a lawsuit yesterday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking a declaration that these demands constitute an abuse of the DMCA and violate the First Amendment rights of both FatWallet and its users (FatWallet, Inc. v. Best Buy Enterprise Services, Inc., et al., Case No. 03C50508).

The lawsuit was a response to “takedown” notices received by FatWallet over the last few weeks from Best Buy, Kohl’s Department Stores, and Target Corporation, each of whom demanded that FatWallet remove from its web site user postings containing Thanksgiving sales price information on the grounds that the information was protected by copyright. Best Buy took things a step further, sending FatWallet a subpoena requesting that it identify the person who posted the information. Because the subpoena was not properly served and suffered from other procedural defects, FatWallet notified Best Buy that it would not identify the poster. Shortly before Thanksgiving 2002, FatWallet received a similar subpoena from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., as well as takedown notices from retailers including Best Buy, Target, K-Mart, Inc., and Jo-Ann Stores.

“The posting on a web site of sales price information is not the proper subject of a subpoena or a takedown notice under the DMCA. Hopefully, by filing this lawsuit, FatWallet will be able to put an end to this repeated misuse of the DMCA’s special subpoena and notice provisions and ensure that its First Amendment rights, and the First Amendment rights of its users, are fully protected,” said Rachel Matteo-Boehm, an attorney with Steinhart & Falconer LLP, one of the law firms representing FatWallet in the suit.

“Our users should be able to freely post and discuss factual information, like sales prices, without being sued or accused of copyright infringement, and we hope that by filing this lawsuit, we will be protecting these important consumer rights,” said Tim Storm, FatWallet’s founder and President.

FatWallet, Inc. is a venue for consumer-to-consumer communication as well as business-to-consumer marketing.
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...hreadid=245808


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MPAA, RIAA Seek Permanent Antitrust Exemption
Andrew Orlowski

Just weeks after an antitrust suit was filed against the RIAA by webcasters, the music labels' lobby group, is, along with Hollywood, seeking a permanent exemption from similar litigation. The proposal seeks to extend the exemption to anything covering mechanical copyright: a sweeping extension of the copyright cartel's immunity.

It's buried away in a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch called the EnFORCE Act, or the Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003. With 12-year old girls being threatened with $150,000 fines, and the computer industry embracing social engineering technologies such as locked music, you would think the last thing that the nation's cultural heritage needs is stricter enforcement by the copyright cartel.

Hatch said the big studios and major record labels need the exemption because of "market realities...The bill authorizes appropriations to ensure that all Department of Justice units that investigate intellectual property crimes have the support of at least one agent specifically trained in the investigation of such crimes," he said last week.

Hatch was a former critic of the RIAA, and advocate of compulsory licensing, who was seduced by the lobbyists, as Joe Menn describes in his book All The Rave. "Online systems provide a cheaper and easier method of self-publishing," Hatch said. He compared the musicians' predicament on major labels to "it's kind of like paying off your mortgage, but the bank still owns the house."

Hatch had discovered this because he had become a songwriter and performer of inspirational Christian music. At a gala awards dinner in March 2001 hosted by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Hatch was awarded a "Hero Award" and the diners heard Nashville star Natalie Grant perform one of his songs, "I Am Not Alone".

The flattery certainly proved inspirational to Hatch, whose own view of "market realities" has changed substantially since then.

"Any bill that further increases the RIAA's power over consumers is extremely disconcerting to us," president of the Webcaster Alliance, Ann Gabriel told us today.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34191.html


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Record Label Sings New Tune
Katie Dean

Record labels have long been accused of stealing musicians' copyrights as soon as the ink is dry on the contract. Now, one small independent label in Great Britain is doing the opposite: It's giving the rights to the artists -- and anyone else who wants to use the music, too.

Loca Records wants to foster experimentation and freedom in music by building a stable of free music which can be shared, remixed and manipulated by anyone. Songs are not locked by digital rights management technology.

The music is available for free in MP3 format, but the company sells its CDs and vinyl in retail stores throughout Europe. Artists earn a percentage of any record sales; Loca Records makes its money through record sales, gigs it promotes and merchandise.

"You're free to copy it, give it to your friends and you can play it. If you're really interested, you can sample it and then re-release it," said David Berry, managing director of Loca Records and an artist himself, known as Meme. "Because at the end of the day, if you sample the work and create a fantastic remix, we think you're entitled to try and make some money from it."

Loca Records licenses its music using Creative Commons. The organization offers free copyright licenses to anyone who wants to share his or her work with the public while reserving some rights. Using these licenses, Loca Records permits anyone to copy and distribute the content, make derivative works and sell it, as long as they attribute the work to the original creator and distribute it under the same "share alike" license.

"I do worry that copyright is getting out of control. This gives us an opportunity to create a new culture and a new sound. If we are greedy and we lock down our culture now, there will be nothing for the next generation," Berry said.

The company has published the work of six musicians so far. In January, it will release its first album complete with added music source code, including samples, MIDI files, the score, drum sounds, any text files and the arrangement itself.

Berry said that Loca Records, which does not sign exclusive contracts with its artists, is investing in musicians by giving them the freedom to experiment and build on each other's creations.

"The record labels don't invest in new artists, which I think is a tragic thing," Berry said. "Now they are more interested in polished, produced, manufactured music ... essentially dancing school graduates."

Some artists are initially hesitant to work with this unfamiliar type of contract, but once they understand how it
works, the response has been positive, Berry said.
"This is like a natural progression for electronica," said ML, an electronica musician and DJ in Brighton, England. "It seems like an obvious thing to do. Personally, I find it very liberating."

"It requires someone to take my music and tear it apart -- to re-create something and interpret it," ML said.

Still, the label is very small-scale. Berry said Loca is not designed to be a multinational record label and the company expects its artists to outgrow the label as they get more attention.

It's also not the only label experimenting with new forms of music distribution and collaboration. Magnatune, an
independent label in Berkeley, California, also offers music for download and sharing, and Opsound invites any musician to submit songs to its website, where others can listen, share and remix them. Both labels license the music using Creative Commons.
"I think it's a wonderful idea," said David Kusek, associate vice president of the Berklee College of Music, which recently announced a plan to distribute music lessons for free over peer-to-peer networks.

Historically, building upon one another's music was common, Kusek said. Jazz, in particular, was based on improvisation, theme and variation and "who could outdo each other" with each interpretation of a piece.

"It was the differences that were more interesting," Kusek said. "We lost a lot of the spontaneity that was inherent in music when it became a package that could be stamped a million times and resold."

"The existing labels of the last 50 or 60 years have been all about controlling the expression, the packaging, the distribution and the scarcity of the music in order to turn a profit," he said. "That forced music to be defined as a product. It can be a product, but in its pure form it's entertainment."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,61282,00.html












Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17092 November 22nd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17925 November 15th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17877 November 8th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17835 November 1st




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

[TankGirl]

Thanks for another great WiR, Jack!

The Open-Source Audio in a Proprietary Universe story was a good technical sum-up on the compression format and DRM issues. It is a precious thing for the people and for the p2p revolution that at this stage we have available free, non-proprietary compression formats like OGG with associated encoders and decoders. The development on open source p2p software has similarly been very encouraging - eMule, BitTorrent and WASTE being good examples of it.

While the copyright industries focus their efforts on establishing DRM-fenced content spaces, we can use the evolving open source technology to build a global virtual library of Alexandria where everybody – credit card or not - can enjoy the fruits of culture for free.

- tg

[multi]

in another p2p forum celebration..

post 15000

with a wealth of history and information
therein!

seeing i was premature with the WiR birthday i will just say another great WiR post and thanks for all the work around here js !

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by multi
in another p2p forum celebration..

post 15000

with a wealth of history and information
therein!

seeing i was premature with the WiR birthday i will just say another great WiR post and thanks for all the work around here js !

thanks multi! and to our favorite finnish femme for founding the peer-to-peer forum i fay fanks tg!

- js.

[multi]

yes !
sorry TG of couse she always does great job on all forums
(she only needs to start a sub forum somewhere and it magicly comes to life!)
congratulations to all the p2p forum users..on making this a decent place to come for info...

15000 THREADS !
sorry my bad..

[SA_Dave]

Thanks Jack! Another great issue (I do read every one! )

A number of reports have linked child pornography with pedophiles.

I almost choked when I read this. I wonder who sponsored this stellar investigative journalism...

Eisgrau, who is also a vice president at Flanagan Consulting, a political lobbying group formed by former Congressman Mike Flanagan, said vested interests such as the music and movie business have promoted misinformation about P2P networks in order to "cripple the P2P industry."

The "P2P Industry" is doing a better job of crippling itself than the RIAA can ever hope for. Way to go!

As the copyright holder for pirated music, the industry has the moral high ground.

Another hilarious quote, or a rather revealing slip of the subconscious?

"NGSCB has great privacy enhancing potential, and deployments by developers, not just Microsoft will be the real test. Microsoft has recognised there is a privacy issue in here, that privacy can be got right and in that sense we should all work with them, give them the benefit of the doubt and urge them to do the right thing because they recognise the right thing needs to be done" Crompton said.

Crompton was actually making some valid points in previous paragraphs. What idiot believes that any business, particularly this one, can be influenced by gentle moral persuasion?

A quarterly digital music behavior report from research firm Ipsos-Insight shows that in late June 2003, "roughly" one out of six (16 percent) of U.S. music downloaders aged 12 and older had paid to download music online. The company says this is the equivalent of 10 million people.

This figure might be more believable than the "75% of internet users" of a few weeks ago, but I still don't buy it.

Congrats on another P2P-Zone anniversary!