Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 4th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quote Of The Week


"Kazaa does something useful, I'm not going to say that it doesn't. But turn that around--you're allowing millions of strangers onto your machine." - Simon Perry


"The days when [Hollywood] can go to Congress and get a blank check for everything they want are over, I hope." - Michael Petricone


"I don't think you'll ever see database protection. Something else you won't see this year is something known as the Induce Act." – Marybeth Peters


"We've been working with Internet2 for a while to explore ways we can take advantage of delivering content at these extremely high speeds, and basically manage illegitimate content distribution at the same time." - Chris Russell, MPAA


"The speed of these networks--up to thousands of times faster than ordinary Internet networks—-allows users to obtain copyrighted movies in minutes and music in seconds." – Cary Sherman


"I have a long extension cord." – Ken Schaffer












Outgunned On Copyright?
Declan McCullagh

Is the entertainment industry losing its clout on Capitol Hill?

At first blush, a lot of people might find that to be a laughable proposition. But a prominent architect of the Recording Industry Association of America's legal strategy confided to me last week that his colleagues are being "outgunned" in the legislative skirmishing over new copyright laws.

It may seem counterintuitive, but there is some truth to that statement. It explains why Marybeth Peters from the U.S. Copyright Office is saying that the entertainment industry won't get what it wants from Congress before politicians leave town for Thanksgiving.

That'd be fine by Michael Petricone, vice president for technology policy at the Consumer Electronics Association. "The days when they can go to Congress and get a blank check for everything they want are over, I hope," Petricone said.

The RIAA and MPAA remain more adept at importing celebrities, hiring former politicians and wielding the legislative process as an offensive weapon. Predicting what copyright legislation will be enacted in the last days of the 108th Congress is a risky business, but one thing is certain: The list of laws will not include the Induce Act, which is revered by the entertainment industry but reviled by technology companies.

The Induce Act is, of course, the controversial bill designed to target peer-to-peer networks. When it prompted a deluge of phone calls to Congress amid concerns it would imperil products like Apple Computer's iPod, its Senate sponsors ordered everyone to sit down at a table in closed-door negotiations. But no workable compromise emerged.

The trench warfare of copyright politicking tends to be predictable: The Motion Picture Association of America and the record labels staff the fortifications in the east while an assortment of technology companies hunker down in the west. Then they fire volleys back and forth until one side runs out of ammunition.

That's what usually happens. When the Induce Act materialized, however, the tech industry won by calling in the heavy artillery in the form of broader-than-usual alliances. By venturing beyond the usual cluster of Silicon Valley companies, the allies managed to prevent the kind of consensus from forming that has characterized recent copyright laws.

Among the new allies: the Association of American Universities, the American Conservative Union, the American Library Association, BellSouth, MCI, RadioShack, SBC Communications and Verizon Communications. Even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal slammed the Induce Act in their editorial pages. (CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, also is on record as opposing the bill.)

Sarah Deutsch, a vice president at Verizon, said the Induce Act was temporarily defeated because the entertainment industry overreached, not because their lobbyists are losing influence. "It's very hard for me to believe that either the RIAA or MPAA could be outgunned on intellectual-property issues," Deutsch said. "If they're not succeeding, it's because they've drafted an overly broad piece of legislation that's garnered lots of opposition."

During the last decade, the tech industry has grown far more spendthrift in purchasing political favors. In 1992, the computer and Internet industry gave a total of $5.3 million while the entertainment industry spent a hefty $13.5 million.

By the 2004 election cycle, those numbers had almost reached parity--at $21.1 million from tech donors and $23.9 million from the entertainment industry. Looking exclusively at spending by lobbyists, the technology industry already handily outpaces its television and music counterparts.

Yet even fat checks from technology companies can't guarantee victory. The RIAA and MPAA remain more adept at importing celebrities, hiring former politicians and wielding the legislative process as an offensive weapon. "The content industries have always been more government-focused than the technology industries," said Consumer Electronics Association's Petricone. "The resources they can bring to bear in a legislative battle far, far outweigh those of anyone on the other side."

The next few days will put that notion to the test. With the Induce Act now moribund, attention is shifting to a package of copyright and peer-to-peer bills that may be glued together and voted on this week as part of a new Intellectual Property Protection Act. Candidates for inclusion are the Pirate Act, which would let the Justice Department file civil suits against infringers; a House proposal to increase criminal penalties for illegal file-swapping; and a measure to target the illicit use of camcorders in movie theaters.

As of Friday, the buzz was that the "omnibus" package will be stripped of its most objectionable portions and turned into a "minibus" copyright bill. That might give the entertainment industry some solace. But it's far less than its lobbyists had expected.
http://news.com.com/Outgunned+on+cop...3-5460597.html


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Hollywood Seeks Internet2 Tests, P2P Oversight
John Borland

The Motion Picture Association of America is in talks with the Internet2 research consortium, hoping both to test next-generation video delivery projects and to monitor peer-to-peer piracy on the ultrahigh-speed network.

Internet2 is essentially a vastly faster version of the Internet run by universities and technology companies, aimed at facilitating research into high-bandwidth hardware and applications, and helping researchers who exchange huge amounts of data. Student file-swapping traffic also has found its way onto the network, however.

The MPAA has been talking with the research consortium for several months, with an eye toward possibly joining the Internet2 group as a member, or simply opening up a collaborative relationship.

"We've been working with Internet2 for a while to explore ways we can take advantage of delivering content at these extremely high speeds, and basically manage illegitimate content distribution at the same time," said Chris Russell, the MPAA's vice president of Internet standards and technology. "Those would go hand in hand."

The Internet2 project has shown Hollywood the commercial potential--and the dangers--of a network powerful enough to allow a full DVD to be transferred even faster than an ordinary MP3 might be today.

Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said.

Talks between Internet2 and the Hollywood group have been ongoing for almost a year, following a speech that former MPAA chief Jack Valenti gave to university officials focusing on the problems of piracy and the possibility of having any movie ever made available at a moment's notice.

That vision resonated with Internet2 researchers, who are already exploring new models of content delivery. At least one studio, Warner Bros., is already a member of the group, as is the Napster online music service. The two groups have been discussing potential collaboration since.

"This wraps together the broad interest we have in working with our members and potential members on advanced content delivery," said Internet2 Vice President Gary Bachula. "Obviously we're interested in making sure that's legal and safe."

Researchers have themselves been watching the growth of file-swapping traffic on the next-generation networks with some concern for several years.

University of Oregon researcher Joe St. Sauver presented a paper in early 2002 showing that on many spans of the network, file trades related to the Kazaa and Morpheus software accounted for as much as 30 percent of network traffic while school was in session.

The share of Internet2 bandwidth taken up by file-sharing traffic is today much lower, typically under 7 percent, although a large amount of network measurement traffic has been added to the total mix since 2002, pushing the percentage of all other applications down. St. Sauver said many universities also have added network control tools that can block or slow file-swapping traffic.

The rise of supercharged file-swapping services like i2Hub has caught copyright holders' eyes in recent months, however. Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, testified to Congress early last month that the fast university networks posed their own special risk to copyright holders.

"The speed of these networks--up to thousands of times faster than ordinary Internet networks—-allows users to obtain copyrighted movies in minutes and music in seconds," Sherman told legislators. "Further, the closed nature of these networks, being available only to those engaged in academia, makes it more difficult for copyright owners to protect their works and to notify responsible parties of their infringement."

The studios launched their first set of lawsuits against file-swappers earlier this week. However, any relationship with Internet2 would go beyond simply finding and cracking down on copyright offenses, the MPAA's Russell said.

Hollywood executives are interested in part in figuring out how file-swappers' behavior might change when extremely fast connections are available, he said. This could help studios guard against future piracy, as well as control today's swappers.

The trade association also is interested in testing new video technologies, although no specific projects are under way. The MPAA is already working with the Cooperation for Education Network Initiatives in California group, which is seeking gigabit-speed connections for California communities by 2010, Russell said.

Some projects are already under way on Internet2 that show promise of expanding the role of networked entertainment with this power available. Researchers at the University of Southern California have demonstrated a high-definition video connection with 10 separate surround-sound channels of audio, streamed flawlessly from Georgia to California, for example.
http://news.com.com/Hollywood+seeks+...3-5458537.html


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Witnesses Tackle Kazaa Filtering Claims
Kristyn Maslog-Levis

Overriding severe objections from Sharman Networks' counsel, Federal Court Justice Murray Wilcox allowed an anti-piracy services provider based in New York to give evidence at the civil trial against owners of the peer-to-peer software Kazaa.

Tom Mizzone, vice president of data services at MediaSentry, told the Federal Court today that his company was able to identify Australian users of the peer to peer Kazaa software by tracking the IP address.

Mizzone said that the IP addresses allocated for Internet service providers in Australia could be traced through the "scanners" the company used in tracking down sound recordings and user information within the Kazaa system.

He added that MediaSentry was also able to detect the copyright infringing music files made available for download in the Kazaa system's shared folders. Mizzone told the court that his company was doing what any ordinary user of the Kazaa system was able to do. Aside from detecting files, they could also communicate with the users using instant messaging, he said.

Mizzone's statement is critical to the applicants' claim that Sharman Networks can use the Kazaa software to identify users who are downloading copyright-infringing materials and communicate with the users at the same time.

The respondents have maintained that they are not able to control how Kazaa users use the software and that trials of filtering have failed in the past.

Also this morning, Justice Wilcox dumped the majority of the respondents' affidavits for the civil trial saying they were not relevant to the case about copyright infringement.

The affidavits rejected by Justice Wilcox contained details of how the P2P technology Kazaa is being used to exchange legitimate materials. Justice Wilcox said he agrees that Kazaa can be used for the sharing of licensed materials and therefore court time should not be wasted discussing the issue.

Justice Wilcox added that the case should not be an "ideological debate" and it was about whether the respondents have infringed or authorised the infringement of the applicants' copyright over sound recordings.

Three other witnesses for the applicants were also called to discuss the record companies' attempts to discourage music piracy by deploying "decoy files" or "spoofing activity" on the Internet.

Decoy files are music files that look like playable materials but only plays 30 second loops of the song's chorus. Spoofing is a method where a peer-to-peer network is flooded with fake files of a certain title. If a user tries to download the title, he receives a "spoof" that has the same title as the requested song or video, but actually contains a message warning the user that he has attempted to break copyright law.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9168660,00.htm


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File-Sharing Lawful, Court Hears
Kirsty Needham

Australians make up less than 2 per cent of Kazaa users, with most living in the US, where the internet file-swapping service has been deemed lawful, the Federal Court has heard.

"The distribution is not unlawful or illegal in any way in the place where it is occurring," said Tony Meagher, SC, defending Sharman Networks and Altnet from accusations of piracy. The chief executives of the two companies, Nikki Hemming and Kevin Bermeister, watched in a packed courtroom.

Sharman and Altnet operate from Cremorne and Surry Hills, although they are registered in Vanuatu and the United States respectively. Worldwide, 100 million people are believed to use Kazaa software.

Six Australian record companies, and another 24 international record labels and artists, claim Kazaa infringes Australian copyright law by allowing internet users to swap illegal copies of songs. They want it shut down.

Mr Meagher said the central issue was whether Sharman and Altnet authorised the illegal use of Kazaa software by Australians.

The same principle had been dealt with in the 1980s, in cases involving double-sided tape deck and video cassette recorders made by Amstrad and Betamax in Britain and the US, he said.

Mr Meagher said it was plain that the double-sided tape deck was used to make infringing copies of songs and was even advertised for this purpose by Amstrad. But the House of Lords had upheld that there was no authorisation of this behaviour by the company because the product also had a lawful use.

Mr Meagher said the Kazaa software had lawful use, and Sharman and Altnet could not control the behaviour of users.

However, Tony Bannon, QC, representing the record companies, had earlier said that Kazaa's published "no-tolerance policy" on child pornography, including its threat to disconnect and bar users from the system, showed Sharman could exercise some control.

Mr Meagher differentiated between the free and paid version of Kazaa, known as Kazaa Plus. Consumers who pay for Kazaa Plus do not get four of the software components.

"I understand that if you pay more you should get more," said Justice Wilcox.

Mr Meagher replied: "If you pay you don't get the privilege of being bombarded with advertisements."

The missing software was used to deliver ads, which is how the companies otherwise earned revenue, he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/...oneclick=true#


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Anti-P2P bill May Slip Past Legislative Rush
Declan McCullagh

A top government official predicted Thursday that a proposed copyright law that has alarmed technology companies will not be enacted in the last-minute legislative rush before the holidays.

Marybeth Peters, the U.S. register of copyrights, told a conference here that the so- called Induce Act would not be part of the slew of legislation--including key spending measures--that Congress is expected to vote on before leaving for next week's Thanksgiving holiday.

"I don't think you'll ever see database protection," said Peters, who has been involved in closed-door negotiations this fall over copyright legislation. "Something else you won't see this year is something known as the Induce Act."

The database bill would create a new intellectual property right for collections of information, while the Induce Act would prohibit inducing anyone to violate copyright law.

That proposal, which goes by the full name of Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, represents the latest legislative attempt by large copyright holders to address what they see as the growing threat of peer-to-peer networks rife with pirated music, movies and software. Violations would be punished with civil fines and, in some circumstances, lengthy prison terms. But tech companies, librarians and consumer electronics groups are worried that legitimate hardware and software could be imperiled as well.

Peters also said that an unrelated huge copyright bill, called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (IPPA), had even odds of being enacted before Congress left town.

"Parts of this bill are extremely, extremely controversial," Peters said. "There's a 50-50 chance as I understand it that this bill could go (forward)."

The IPPA effectively bundles together a collection of bills, many of which either the House or the Senate have already approved. Some sections, for instance, authorize federal prosecutors to file civil lawsuits against file swappers, while others make it easier to launch criminal prosecutions against peer-to-peer users who are infringing copyrighted material.
http://news.com.com/Anti-P2P+bill+ma...3-5458680.html


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Cable's Rivals Lure Customers With Packages
Ken Belson

For years, consumers who wanted to cut the cord with their cable company found that getting television and high-speed Internet service often meant the inconvenience of finding two new providers.

That's now changing. Cable's two hungry rivals - phone companies and satellite providers - are stealing cable's disgruntled customers with cheaper all-in-one packages that bundle TV with Internet and phone services.

In theory, cable companies like Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable, a unit of Time Warner, are ideally suited to offer one-stop shopping for all telecommunications services, including new Internet-based phone services, with their single pipe into the house. But they have not been able to shake the perception among millions of consumers that cable companies charge too much for bad service.

Not surprisingly, cable's problem has created an opening for an ungainly alliance of regional Bell companies - Verizon Communications, SBC Communications and BellSouth - and the two biggest satellite companies, DirecTV and EchoStar, which runs the Dish Network, to lure away cable customers by selling each other's products at a discount.

Frustration with their cable company was what prompted Jonathan and Courtney Rothstein to subscribe to DirecTV when they moved two years ago from New York City to Chappaqua, in suburban Westchester County. The plan they picked from DirecTV was $20 cheaper than what Cablevision, the local cable company, offered in their new neighborhood. They also ordered a TiVo digital video recorder for $4.99 a month, and received free installation of the satellite dish.

"It was more for our money," said Mr. Rothstein, an architect. "The only thing with satellite is there are so many channels that I can't follow them all."

But the Rothsteins still face one problem. Their phone company, Verizon, does not offer high-speed Internet lines in their neighborhood. So they still have to pay Cablevision $49.95 a month for broadband service, about $15 more than Verizon's high-speed Internet line.

"When we moved in two years ago, it was really the only option, so I was hostage to the price," Mrs. Rothstein said. She will happily sign up with Verizon when it brings broadband connections to her area, she said.

With aggressive advertising campaigns like "Stop Feeding the Pig" that lampoon cable companies, DirecTV and Dish Network have attracted 24 million customers in the past decade with its low-cost pitch.

But to maintain that growth rate, the satellite companies knew they also needed to offer Internet access and phone lines. At the same time, phone companies crave the ability to offer television without having to invest huge sums of money.

"We feel good because we don't have to spend billions of dollars to provide our customers with video," said Ron Dykes, the chief financial officer at BellSouth which, like Verizon, sells DirecTV's service to its customers. "Our main objective is to replace cable."

SBC Communications, the most aggressive of the three Bells in recruiting satellite TV customers, works with Dish Network and has even invested $500 million in its parent, EchoStar.

The three Bells have signed up 325,000 subscribers for satellite TV so far this year, 13 percent of the 2.5 million new customers satellite companies have added over the period. Most of those customers were former cable customers.

During the first three quarters this year, the eight largest cable providers combined, excluding Adelphia, which is operating under bankruptcy protection, have lost 552,000 subscribers for basic cable services. Many of the losses have come at the weaker cable companies, including Charter Communications.

Still, 19 percent of American households now have satellite service, up from 12 percent four years ago, while cable's share of the TV market has fallen to 62 percent, from 66 percent, during the same period.

Some industry analysts say the partnership of satellite and phone companies has not greatly altered those industries. Others say the Bells will abandon the satellite providers once they start selling television programming over the fiber-optic networks they are now building.

"With the Bells poised to enter the video business, how long can these partnerships last?" said Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "They will go from a position when they were both aligned against a common competitor - cable - to a position where they are competing" against each other.

For the most part, the phone companies are just beginning to build fiber networks and assembling the programming necessary to sell television on their own. SBC, for one, has said it will offer programs from the Dish Network through its network, and struck a deal with Microsoft last week to acquire the software to do so. But until fiber lines become common, the satellite-phone alliance gives both industries a way to challenge cable's strengths.

The Bells are promoting big discounts - up to 20 percent off customers' monthly bills - if they order a television plan and a full complement of phone and Internet services. The discounts have also allowed the satellite companies to focus more on products rather than just price.

"We have been very successful at positioning ourselves as a low-cost provider," said John Scarborough, a spokesman for EchoStar. "Now we're positioned in a bundle with SBC, and we have the common objective of beating out the evil-doers of cable."

There are gaps in what the phone and satellite companies can offer, though. Satellite providers have fewer local and high-definition programs than cable companies, and satellite technology does not allow video-on-demand and other services that require two-way signals. Satellite customers also complain about losing television signals during rain and snowstorms.

Phone companies, too, have limitations in competing with cable. For one, they cannot deliver high-speed Internet connections to customers like the Rothsteins, who live too far from their local switching stations. That is a particular problem for customers in rural and suburban areas, and it limits the number of satellite customers who might otherwise sign up for broadband services from phone companies.

In the meantime, cable providers have responded aggressively to the new threat with advertising campaigns to promote cable-only features like free video-on-demand, their faster Internet connection speeds and cheap Web phone service.

"Bundles are where cable's priorities are," said Char Beales, the chief executive of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, an industry-funded group. "If you look at the deals the satellite providers are putting together with the phone companies, they've definitely got bundle-envy. Cable is more consistent."

Still, she said it would take a long time to change consumer perceptions. Customer satisfaction surveys by J. D. Power and Associates showed that though the cable industry had improved in the eyes of consumers, it continued to lag behind satellite providers, which were considered friendlier and cheaper.

"It's hard for the cable industry to close the gap," said Steve Kirkeby, an analyst at J. D. Power. "Fundamentally, satellite customers are much happier than cable customers. And at the end of the day, there's no doubt that satellite is winning the hearts and minds of customers on cost."

For now, the phone companies are biding their time, riding on the satellite industry's coattails, until they can offer television programming of their own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/te...satellite.html


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CD Company Slips Quietly Into a World of Creativity
Anne Midgette

The idea of a late style, or a cycle of works, is usually imposed on a composer after his death. Beethoven did not set out to write 16 string quartets, nor did he know that the last five were the culmination of his so-called late period. But the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, 70, is defining the terms of his late period himself.

When his Seventh Symphony had its premiere in 2000, Sir Peter made it clear that it was his final symphony. He was now going to concentrate on string quartets. A cycle of 10 string quartets.

Even more unusual, he found a record company to commission him to do it.

Last week Naxos of America released the CD of the first 2 of Sir Peter's 10 projected "Naxos Quartets." Four more CDs are to follow at regular intervals. It's a huge commitment for the Maggini Quartet, a British-based, British-specializing ensemble that's faced with the task of learning the new works and presenting them in annual concerts at Wigmore Hall in London. (Nos. 4 and 5 had their premiere in October.)

What's really remarkable, however, is the involvement of a record company in commissioning new music. The conventional wisdom at most major labels is that it's hard enough to sell new music. Going out and helping it come into being is virtually unprecedented.

"Like all recordings of contemporary music," said Klaus Heymann, Naxos's founder and chief executive, "this is a not-for-profit project."

Naxos specializes in bucking conventional wisdom - and is now widely acknowledged as a rare success story in a struggling industry. A budget label - its CD's retail for about $7 in the United States - it works with a cadre of less-known (but often first-rate) artists like the Maggini Quartet and concentrates on familiar and unusual repertory, with surprising results. A disk of Walter Piston's violin concertos has sold 12,000 copies in the United States alone, and William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," a three-CD set released in October, made it to the Billboard classical budget chart.

Commissioning isn't an altogether new venture for the label: Mr. Heymann noted that in the past he had commissioned works from Chinese composers. But this project is different in scope and scale. And it may be the start of a beautiful relationship - between Naxos, at least, and other composers.

"Given the unexpectedly good sales of the first volume of the Peter Maxwell Davies quartets and the very positive publicity regarding this project, we may very well do this again," Mr. Heymann said. (The CD was released in September in Britain and Europe, where it has already sold more than 5,000 copies.) It's not a big risk for the label; rather than an upfront payment, this agreement involved royalties, both on the copyright and commissioning fee.

And Naxos didn't exactly gamble on an unknown. Sir Peter has managed the delicate balancing act of becoming widely revered, certainly in his own country, while writing serious and not very easy music. He lives in a distant corner of Orkney, the agglomeration of islands off Scotland's northern coast, and his music is strongly imbued with a sense of place: "An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise," "A Hoy Calendar." Linked to this is a strong sense of community and of a composer's role within it. He has written extensively for children, worked within community organizations and schools (one cycle of 10 concertos, called the Strathclyde Concertos, was written for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in tandem with an ambitious project in area schools that allowed children to follow the process of composition), and created the St. Magnus Festival on Orkney, held every June.

His music is both craggy and accessible. The Naxos Quartets - a cycle that the composer likens to a serialized novel in 10 chapters -open with rocky, beautiful bursts of activity, setting forth a landscape in which the composer deliberately seeks to evoke the green but uncompromising slopes of Orkney. The "chapters" may or may not trace the course of a life: the second quartet, which opens in an Orcadian fog, is dedicated to a childhood friend of the composer; and the third has been called an antiwar piece.

The first Naxos release comes at a time when Sir Peter has been particularly focused on the dissemination of recordings of his work. In September he started a new branch of his Web site that allows people, for a fee, to download his music or arrange it on custom CD's (music.maxopus.com). He's adding new recordings at the rate of 10 a month, hoping ultimately to make available most of the 300-plus works in his oeuvre. In this he's paralleling other composers who have bought back the rights to their out-of-print recordings, like the American Michael Torke or the German Karlheinz Stockhausen. Self-distribution may be the wave of the future.

But Naxos could create an interesting alternative if it pursues the idea of creating new recording projects with other composers.

"We would probably go for an American composer," Mr. Heymann said, "because the United States is our biggest market."

Nobody would be likely to turn him down.

"I think it's the first time that a record company's done anything like this," Sir Peter said. "I possibly would have written quartets, but it's nice to be given fixed deadlines, which I keep; it's a marvelous incentive."

"It's like being in the middle of a wonderful journey," he said of the project, as he prepares to finish the sixth quartet. As to the ending of his "novel": "I have imagined it," he said, then broke into an impish laugh. "But it may well change."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/ar...ic/27davi.html


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A Natural Experiment
James Boyle

Imagine a process of reviewing prescription drugs which goes like this: representatives from the drug company come to the regulators and argue that their drug works well and should be approved. They have no evidence of this beyond a few anecdotes about people who want to take it and perhaps some very simple models of how the drug might affect the human body. The drug is approved. No trials, no empirical evidence of any kind, no follow-up. Or imagine a process of making environmental regulations in which there were no data, and no attempts to gather data, about the effects of the particular pollutants being studied. Even the harshest critics of drug regulation or environmental regulation would admit we generally do better than this. But this is often the way we make intellectual property policy.

So how do we decide the ground-rules of the information age? Representatives of interested industries come to regulators and ask for another heaping slice of monopoly rent in the form of an intellectual property right. They have doom-laden predictions, they have anecdotes, carefully selected to pluck the heartstrings of legislators, they have celebrities who testify - often incoherently, but with palpable charisma - and they have very, very simple economic models. The basic economic model here is “If you give me a larger right, I will have a larger incentive to innovate. Thus the bigger the rights, the more innovation we will get. Right?” Well, not exactly. Even without data, the models are obviously flawed - copyrighting the alphabet will not produce more books, patenting E=MC2 will not yield more scientific innovation. Intellectual property creates barriers to, as well as incentives towards, innovation. Clearly the “more is better” argument has limits. Extensions of rights can help or hurt, but without economic evidence beforehand and review afterwards, we will never know. In the absence of evidence on either side, the presumption should obviously still be against creating a new legalised monopoly, but still the empirical emptiness of the debates is frustrating.

This makes the occasion where there actually is some evidence a time for celebration. What we really need is a test case where one country adopts the proposed new intellectual property right and another does not, and we can assess how they are both doing after a number of years.

There is such a case. It is the “database right.” Europe adopted a Database Directive in 1996 which both gave a high level of copyright protection to databases, and conferred a new “sui generis” database right even on unoriginal compilations of facts. In the United States, by contrast, in a 1991 case called Feist, the Supreme Court made it clear that unoriginal compilations of facts are not copyrightable. (The case is not as revolutionary as it is claimed to be. Most of the appeals courts in the United States had long held this to be the case. In fact, a tenet of the US intellectual property system is that neither facts nor ideas can be owned.) Since 1991 the U.S. Congress has managed to resist frenzied attempts by a few database companies to create a special database right over facts. Interestingly, apart from academics, scientists and civil libertarians, many database companies, and even those well-known communist property-haters, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose the creation of such a right. They believe that database providers can adequately protect themselves with contracts, technical means such as passwords, can rely on providing tied services and so on. Moreover, they argue that strong database protection may make it harder to generate databases in the first place; the facts you need may be locked up. The pressure to create a new right continues, however, aided by the cries that US must “harmonise” with Europe. So here we have our natural experiment. Presumably the government economists are hard at work both in the US and the EU, seeing if the right actually worked? Umm.... No.

Despite the fact that the European Commission has a legal obligation to review the Database Directive for its effects on competition (they are three years late in issuing their report) no attention appears to be being paid to the actual evidence of whether the Directive helps or hurts in the EU, or whether the database industry in the US has collapsed or flourished. That is a shame, because the evidence is there, and it is fairly shocking.

Intellectual property rights are a form of state-created monopoly and “the general tendency of monopolies,” as Macaulay pointed out, is to “make things dear, to make them scarce, and to make them bad.” Monopolies are an evil, but they must sometimes be accepted when they are necessary to the production of some good, some particular social goal. In this case, the “evil” is obviously going to be an increase in price of databases, and the legal ability to exclude competitors from their use – that, after all is the point of granting the new right. The “good” is that we are supposed to get lots of new databases, databases that we would not have had but for the existence of the database right.

If the database right were working, we would expect positive answers to three crucial questions. First, has the European database industry’s rate of growth increased since 1996, while the US database industry has languished? (The drop off in the US database industry ought to be particularly severe after 1991 if the proponents of database protection are correct; they argued the Feist case was a change in current law and a great surprise to the industry.)

"Despite the fact that the European Commission has a legal obligation to review the Database Directive for its effects on competition (they are three years late in issuing their report) no attention appears to be being paid to the actual evidence of whether the Directive helps or hurts in the EU"

Second, are the principal beneficiaries of the database right in Europe producing databases they would not have produced otherwise? Obviously if a society is handing over a database right for a database that would have been created anyway, it is overpaying - needlessly increasing prices for consumers and burdens for competitors. This goes to the design of the right - has it been crafted too broadly, so that it is not being targeted to those areas where it is needed to encourage innovation?

Third, and this one is harder to judge, is the right promoting innovation and competition rather than stifling it? For example, if the existence of the right allowed a one-time surge of newcomers to the market who then to use their rights to discourage new entrants, or if we promoted some increase in databases but made scientific aggregation of large amounts of data harder overall, then the database right might actually be stifling the innovation it is designed to foment.

Those are the three questions that any review of the Database Directive must answer. But we have preliminary answers to those three questions and they are either strongly negative or extremely doubtful.

Are database rights necessary for a thriving database industry? The answer is a clear “no.” In the United States, the database industry has grown more than 25-fold since 1979 and - contrary to those who paint the Feist case as a revolution - for that entire period, in most of the United States, it was clear that unoriginal databases were not covered by copyright. The figures are even more interesting in the legal database market. The two major proponents of database protection in the United States are Reed Elsevier, the owner of Lexis, and Thomson Publishing, the owner of Westlaw. Fascinatingly, both companies made their key acquisitions in the US legal database market after the Feist decision, at which point no one could have thought unoriginal databases were copyrightable. This seems to be some evidence that they believe they could make money even without a database right. How? In the old-fashioned way: competing on features, accuracy, tied services, making users pay for entry to the database and so on.

If those companies believed there were profits to be made, they were right. Jason Gelman, one of our students, points out in a recent paper that Thomson’s Legal Regulatory division had a profit margin of over 26% for the first quarter of 2004. Reed Elsevier’s 2003 profit margin for LexisNexis was 22.8%. Both profit margins were significantly higher than the company average and both are earned primarily in the $6 billion US legal database market, a market which is thriving without strong intellectual property protection over databases. (First rule of thumb for regulators: when someone with a profit margin over 20% asks you for additional monopoly protection, pause before agreeing.)

What about Europe? There is some good news for the proponents of database protection. As Hugenholtz, Maurer, and Onsrud point out in a nice article in Science Magazine, there was a sharp, one-time spike in numbers of companies entering the European database market immediately following the implementation of the Directive in member states. Yet their work, and “Across Two Worlds,” a fascinating study by Maurer, suggests that the rate of entry then falls back to levels similar to those before the Directive. Maurer’s analysis shows that the attrition rate is also very high in some European markets in the period following the passage of the Directive - even with the new right, many companies drop out.

At the end of the day, the British database industry - the strongest performer in Europe - adds about 200 databases in the three years immediately after the implementation of the Directive. In France there is little net change in the number of databases and the number of providers falls sharply. In Germany, the industry added nearly 300 databases immediately following the Directive - a remarkable surge - about 200 of which rapidly disappeared. During the same period the US industry adds about 900 databases. Bottom line? Europe’s industry did get a one-time boost, and some of those firms have stayed in the market; that is a benefit, though a costly one. But database growth rates have gone back to pre-Directive levels, while the anti- competitive costs of database protection are now a permanent fixture of the European landscape. The US, by contrast, gets a nice steady growth rate in databases without paying the monopoly cost. (Second rule of thumb for regulators: Do no harm! Do not create rights without strong evidence that the incentive effect is worth the anti- competitive cost.)

Now the second question. Is the Database Directive encouraging the production of databases we would not have got otherwise? Here the evidence is clear and disturbing. Again, Hugenholtz et al, point out that the majority of cases brought under the Directive have been about databases that would have been created anyway - telephone numbers, television schedules, concert times. A review of more recent cases reveals the same pattern. These databases are inevitably generated by the operation of the business in question and cannot be independently compiled by a competitor. The database right simply serves to limit competition in the provision of the information. Last week, the European Court of Justice implicitly underscored this point in a series of cases concerning football scores, horse-racing results and so on. Rejecting a stunningly protectionist and one-sided opinion from its Advocate General, the court ruled that the mere running of a business which generates data does not count as “substantial investment” enough to trigger the database right. It would be nice to think that this is the beginning of some scepticism about the reach of the Directive, scepticism that might even penetrate the Commission’s review of the Directive’s anti-competitive effects. Yet the Court provides little discussion for the economic reasons behind its interpretation; the analysis is merely semantic and definitional, a sharp contrast to its competition decisions.

"Database growth rates have gone back to pre- Directive levels, while the anti-competitive costs of database protection are now a permanent fixture of the European landscape. The US, by contrast, gets a nice steady growth rate in databases without paying the monopoly cost."

So what kinds of databases are being generated by this bold new right? The answer is somewhere between bathos and pathos. Here are some of the wonderful “databases” that people found it worthwhile litigating over: A website, consisting of a collection of 259 hyper- links to “parenting resources,” a collection of poems, an assortment of advertisements, headings referring to local news, charts of popular music. The sad list goes on and on. The European Commission might ask itself whether these are really the kind of “databases” which we need a legal monopoly to encourage, and that we want to tie up judicial resources protecting. The point that many more such factual resources can be found online in the United States without such protection, also seems worthy of note. At very least, the evidence indicates that the right is drawn much too broadly and triggered too easily in ways that are profoundly anti-competitive.

Finally, is the database right encouraging scientific innovation or hurting it? Here the evidence is merely suggestive. Scientists have claimed that the European database right, together with the perverse failure of European governments to take advantage of the limited scientific research exceptions allowed by the Directive, have made it much harder to aggregate data, to replicate studies, and to judge published articles. In fact, academic scientific bodies have been among the strongest critics of database protection. But negative evidence, by its nature, is hard to produce; “show me the science that did not get done!” Certainly, both US science and commerce have benefited extraordinarily from the openness of US data policy. This is an issue I will deal with in a later column.

I was not always opposed to intellectual property rights over data. Indeed, in a book written before the enactment of the Database Directive, I said that there was a respectable economic argument that such protection might be warranted and that we needed research on the issue. Unfortunately, Europe got the right without the research. The facts are now in. If the European Database Directive were a drug, the government would be pulling it from the market until its efficacy and harmfulness could be reassessed. At the very least, the Commission needs a detailed empirical review of the Directive’s effects, and needs to adjust the Directive’s definitions and to fine-tune its limitations. But there is a second lesson. There is more discussion of the empirical economic effects of the Database Directive in this 2000 word column than there is in the 600 page review of the effects of the Directive that the European Commission paid a private company to conduct. That is a scandal. And it is a scandal that is altogether typical of the way we make intellectual property policy. President Bush is not the only one to make “faith-based” decisions.

The writer is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, a board member of Creative Commons and the co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4cd4941e-3c...0e2511c8.html#


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Don’t let this outrage happen to you: Answer the summons

Judge Gives $300,000 Fine In No-Show Screener Case
Academy member allowed copies to be made of promotional DVDs

A federal judge has fined a man $300,000 for allowing copies to be made of two movies he obtained as part of promotions aimed at winning the U.S. film industry’s top awards, the Oscars, Warner Bros. studio said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson granted a default judgment against Los Angeles resident Carmine Caridi, who was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and had received DVDs of “Mystic River” and “The Last Samurai” in 2003.

The judgment ends a chapter in last year’s industry ”screener ban,” in which the studios tried to crack down on the illegal copying of videos and DVDs into digital files that could then be posted on the Web and watched by anyone.

The studios believe illegal copying of films costs them more than $3.5 billion annually in lost sales of videos and DVDs. They fear billions more are lost from digital copies on the Web, and have mounted a huge effort to stop it, including suing people they accuse of copyright infringement.

Federal officials claimed Caridi, who acted in small parts in two of “The Godfather” movies, sent his DVDs to Russell Sprague of Homewood, Illinois, who digitized them for posting on the Internet. Sprague was later charged with violating copyright law and he pleaded guilty. Caridi was not charged.

Warner Bros. sued Caridi, but he never responded, according to court papers. He could not be reached for comment.

The Oscars are given out each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The awards often bring in more money for movie studios via ticket, video, DVD and television sales.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6570559/


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Arrr mateys, it burns!

Studios Win 23.8 Million Judgment Against Pirate Site

A Malaysian resident who ran a website that charged users to watch pirated films has been ordered by a California court to pay 23.8 million dollars to movie studios.

The studios had sued Tan Soo Leong and company MasterSurf for operating the website Film88.com, according to the Motion Picture Association. The MPA's director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, John Malcolm, said MasterSurf set up an international web of servers designed to shelter the venture for liability. The trade group said Leong previously operated an almost identical Web site, Movie88.com, out of Taiwan until authorities there shut the company down. MasterSurf's primary servers were then hosted out of the Netherlands and Iran, but the MPA and a Netherlands anti-piracy organization used Dutch courts to shut down servers there, according to the MPA. Leong and MasterSurf also were barred from infringing on any of the studios' movies, and ordered to destroy any and all copies of copyright films that reside on servers or in other formats. Malcolm said the MPA "shattered" MasterSurf's capabilities and shut the company down. "This case shows that some people will go to extravagant lengths to profiteer from pirating movies," he said.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041124/323/f78l9.html


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LGT, Music Industry Settle MP3 Phone Row

LG Telecom Ltd., the smallest of Korea's three mobile phone operators, said yesterday that it has reached a settlement with music industry groups in a dispute over MP3 mobile phones sales.

In a statement, LG Telecom said the settlement was reached with three music industry groups, including the Music Industry Association of Korea, the Seoul- based lobby group that represents major labels. The mobile phone carrier said that it would soon sign similar settlements with two other music-related organizations.

Under the deal, LG Telecom subscribers will be able to download copyrighted songs from third-party music Web sites. The service will be offered free of charge to consumers until the end of June next year, the company said.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0411240032.asp


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Court Nixes Lawsuit Fighting Copyright Law
John Borland

A lawsuit brought by a group of Internet archivists against recent congressional actions expanding copyright protections has been dismissed by a federal judge.

The case was led by Net pioneer Brewster Kahle, whose most recent Internet Archive project aims to make a huge digital archive of Web sites and other media. The court's ruling, issued late last week, marks another setback for a movement of activists and scholars against expanding legal protections for artistic works.

Kahle and his allies contended that Congress' lengthening of copyright-protection terms--even when an author's work didn't request further protection--had radically transformed traditional copyright law. They asked the courts to rule that much of this recent copyright law change was illegal, which potentially could have opened up large amounts of books, movies and music created in the 1960s and 1970s to public domain use.

In a decision made available Wednesday, federal Judge Maxine Chesney concluded that Congress did have substantial flexibility in expanding copyright protections without court interference.

The court relied primarily on last year's Supreme Court ruling that said Congress had the power to extend the term of copyright. In that decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said the court was "not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order."

Kahle and another public domain-based archive had sought to distribute so-called orphan works, or books and other works that were still under copyright but no longer in print or available to the public. That was not possible under the recent round of copyright extensions, they said.

Kahle said Wednesday that the decision would be appealed, and that they had always planned to fight the primary battle in the appellate courts. The court had not directly addressed what he said was the primary thrust of the case--a change in laws to automatically renew copyrights, instead of requiring copyright holders to reregister, he said.

"The key component of the district court ruling is that the judge did not consider the main aspect of this case, which is the changing of the contour of copyright law from opt in to opt out," Kahle said. "That has dramatically changed what's under copyright, and even more ominously, changes the nature of what can be put on the Internet."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5466329.html


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Australia

Recording Industry, File-Sharers Face Off
Mike Corder

The next chapter in the global legal battle between the recording industry and file-sharing services is due to unfold here Monday when the owners of the hugely popular Kazaa software go on trial on civil copyright infringement charges.

"We don't want to shut down Kazaa, just its illegal activities," said Michael Speck, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a body set up by major Australian record labels to target copyright infringers.

Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks Ltd., insist that while they urge users not to commit music piracy, they have no control over what people do with the popular "peer-to-peer" software they provide. With Kazaa, songs, movies and television programs are freely exchanged without paying royalties to the copyright owners.

Industry lawyers say they will try to prove in the federal court case that Sharman can control the illegal use.

The entertainment industry already has sued file-sharing services in the United States. Two federal courts in California have cleared Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. of liability, though the industry has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sharman is named in a similar suit whose ruling is pending in a lower court.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said the U.S. cases should not directly affect the outcome of the Australian lawsuit, but all share the principle that a software developer is not directly responsible for the activities of its users, just as Xerox cannot be blamed for copying done on its machines.

It "is a common theme in copyright legislation worldwide," Geist said. He expects lawyers for Kazaa's owners to use similar arguments, "and the court may well respond in a similar fashion."

Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks in Sydney, Australia, refused to comment on the case.

Kazaa already has one major court victory under its belt.

In December 2003, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that Kazaa's Netherlands division cannot be held liable for copyright infringement.

A possible difference in the Australian case is the recording industry's invocation of a rarely used law that allows litigants in civil copyright cases to gather evidence. Investigators earlier this year seized evidence in a series of raids on companies and individuals linked to Kazaa.

A judge has rejected Sharman's efforts to throw out the seized evidence.

A forensic computer analyst is expected to be the first prosecution witness and was expected to tell judge Murray Wilcox what the raids uncovered.

The case - spawned by the largest copyright infringement investigation in Australian history - involves Australia's six major recording labels. Defendants include Sharman Networks, Sharman License Holdings and Sharman's Sydney-based chief executive officer, Nikki Hemming.

The trial is scheduled to last up to three weeks and Wilcox is not expected to rule until next year. If Wilcox rules that Sharman is liable for music piracy, another hearing will be scheduled to determine damages and compensation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Nov26.html


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No To Filtering: Coonan

THE Federal Government had rejected mandatory filtering of the internet to stop child pornography, Parliament was told today.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan said the government had recently reviewed ways of preventing child pornography, including a British-style national internet filtering system but rejected it.

Senator Coonan said the study had found such a filter would cost around $45 million a year initially and $33 million a year in later years.

She said it also had the potential to choke the internet and drive up costs for consumers and small business.

"The biggest issue is not so much the money but such an expensive scheme would not necessarily solve the problem and small to medium ISPs (internet service providers) would be driven out of business for little or no benefit," Senator Coonan said. "What does work is greater information and parental supervision and that is the kind of program that the government is promoting."

The government has provided $30 million to educate parents about the perils of the internet and ISPs are required to provide cost-price filtering software to subscribers.

Senator Coonan's comments were triggered by a question from Independent senator Brian Harradine.

"Why won't the government at least for the start prevent child porn being transmitted into Australia either through the internet and ISPs or via satellite?" Senator Harradine said. "Why won't the government take that action since we've got laws against child porn?"
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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CA Slaps Spyware Label On Kazaa
Dan Ilett

Peer-to-peer program Kazaa is the No. 1 spyware threat on the Internet, according to Computer Associates International.

Through its PestPatrol research, CA found that Kazaa posed a greater threat than other programs in its top five spyware list because of its widespread popularity. Kazaa claims that its software has been downloaded 214 million times.

CA gave Kazaa a high "clot factor," its measure of how much a program slows a machine by adding unnecessary registry entries and directories. However, classifying a popular application like Kazaa as spyware is a delicate matter, and CA admits this creates difficulties in attaching labels.

"Kazaa does something useful," said Simon Perry, vice president of security strategy for CA. "I'm not going to say that it doesn't. But turn that around--you're allowing millions of strangers onto your machine. (Kazaa) is No. 1 because of the amount if copies it's got out there."

The company said that any other peer-to-peer file exchange programs, such as Blubster, Gnucleus and WinMX, could also degrade network performance and consume storage space because they are bundled with adware or spyware.

Adware program Ezula came second in the company's top five, beating Adopt.hotbar.com and GameSpy Arcade.

Perry said the difficulty in exactly defining spyware was one reason why the company often referred to certain programs as pests. He said that while the definition of a virus was clear today, spyware is a fuzzy area and that the top five probably wouldn't change much because the programs had a much longer lifespan than viruses.

He added that CA used the term "pests" as an umbrella phrase to cover around 30 types of annoying programs.

"Pest is a broader category. It includes spyware, adware and browser help objects. One of the things virus writers don't try is to come and sue you. Some of the producers of spyware we detect say to us 'Why are you claiming my software has any malicious intent?'"

However, CA's Web site clearly lists Kazaa as the top spyware threat. Sharman Networks, Kazaa's distributor, was not immediately available for comment.
http://news.com.com/CA+slaps+spyware...3-5467539.html


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Amid Dire Predictions, Classical Records Flower
Anthony Tommasini

Early this year the polemical British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht came out with what he called a "rock-solid prediction" that the year 2004 would be the last for the classical record industry. Though Mr. Lebrecht's dire prediction was absurd, his grim overall take on the field resonated. The major recording companies have been mired in financial crises for years, and some clueless leaders at the major labels have only made things worse.

After shedding staff and floundering artistically for years, two former behemoths in the industry, BMG Classics and Sony Classical, merged this year. Clearly the merger hasn't solved the problem. The combined company recently announced an additional 25 percent cut in staff at its offices in Germany. These labels are the humbled remnants of companies that once maintained the most distinguished catalogs in the business, RCA and Columbia. Could Peter Gelb, the president of Sony Classical, be jumping ship by accepting the post of general manager of the Metropolitan Opera starting in 2006?

Sounds bad, right? Yet I have seldom had so many exciting and important new classical music recordings come across my desk as in the last year or so.

Major labels like EMI Classics are championing contemporary music, as with the new recording of Messiaen's visionary "Éclairs sur l'Au-Delà," his last major orchestral score, in an exhilarating performance by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Smaller labels are releasing invaluable explorations of the masters, like the mezzo- soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's sublime program of Handel arias and cantatas with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Harry Bicket on Avie. Koch International Classics showed that sizable companies are still open to offbeat projects of special interest, like the pianist Sara Davis Buechner's lovely program of piano works by the operetta composer Rudolf Friml, surprisingly fine music and a labor of love from Ms. Buechner.

Despite the financial struggles in the industry, it feels as if we are in the midst of a golden age of classical recording. So what's going on?

Several things, no doubt. Being forced to cut back production drastically has made label executives come up with projects that matter, recordings that truly contribute to the discography. "Smaller is better" may be a cliché, but that approach has paid off for the classical recording industry.

Perhaps for once the free market is working the way it is supposed to. At the smart labels, the shift of thinking recalls the golden days in book publishing when distinguished houses had small lists of authors they believed in, and they took the time to nurture and promote their works. Today publishing companies release far too many books, hoping that one will be a surprise best seller, like "The Perfect Storm" and "The Da Vinci Code," and cutting losses from books that don't catch on right away.

Among the major classical labels, EMI has had the smartest reaction to the financial challenges. The company has made choices among artists, choosing not to extend the contract of the tenor Roberto Alagna and making a major commitment to the remarkable young Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Fans of Mr. Alagna may question the company's choices, but at least EMI is making them and standing by its artists.

Though for 20 years the market has had a glut of the same core repertory, EMI understands when an artist has something fresh to say about familiar works, as with Mr. Andsnes's most recent release, joyous and sparkling accounts of two Mozart piano concertos (No. 9 in E flat and No. 18 in B flat), with Mr. Andsnes conducting the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Manfred Eicher, the principled producer at the Munich-based label ECM, who has released bracing recordings of contemporary music, has also made valuable contributions to the standard repertory, as with its release of the first book of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier," played by the Austrian pianist Till Fellner, a lucid, sensitive and refined performance.

In earlier times it was essential for an artist to have an exclusive contract with a recording company, though such relationships are rarer today. Deutsche Grammophon has made a long-term commitment to the splendid young Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, whose recent "Sempre Libera" is a radiantly sung program of Italian arias with the great Claudio Abbado conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

But the soprano Deborah Voigt is proving that with the right management and a sense of mission, you can steer yourself into projects without having an exclusive contract with a major label. This year EMI released Ms. Voigt's "Obsessions," a program of arias and scenes from her signature Wagner and Strauss roles, sung gloriously, with Richard Armstrong conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. But also this year, Deutsche Grammophon issued Ms. Voigt's first foray into the role of Isolde in a live recording of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" from the Vienna State Opera, with Thomas Moser as Tristan, conducted with breathtaking intensity by Christian Thielemann.

Which brings up the issue of live recordings. A large market for complete opera recordings still exists, but these mammoth projects have become prohibitively expensive, especially in the United States, where the prospect of paying unionized orchestra musicians for the required number of studio sessions has ended many projects at their conception.

But as recording costs have soared, so has the capability of recording technology. Today, with digital editing techniques, a single wrong note or off-pitch tone can be replaced with the right one from another take. Consequently, more and more companies have begun to record operas and major symphonic works live, with the final edit compiled from several performances. The new "Tristan und Islode" offers arresting evidence of how successful this so-called compromise can be.

Moreover, the trend among major orchestras to compensate for the timidity of the major labels by releasing and distributing their own recordings on their own labels continues. LSO Live, the recording outlet of the London Symphony Orchestra, has just issued a spirited new performance of Verdi's "Falstaff," conducted by Colin Davis, recorded live last spring at the Barbican in London. Similarly the San Francisco Symphony has just released Michael Tilson Thomas's bold account of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, with the rich-voiced soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and the affecting Ms. Hunt Lieberson as soloists.

Any notion that these ventures into self-produced recordings are just an experiment should be quashed by the latest entrant, the Boston Pops. Long a cash cow for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Pops has just issued its first self-produced and self-distributed CD, "Sleigh Ride," a Christmas album conducted by Keith Lockhart.

In addition, the smaller labels are responding with heartening creativity to the business challenges in the industry and the cutbacks by the majors. Highlights this year include Nonesuch's "Voices of Light," a program of vocal works by Messiaen, Debussy, Fauré and Osvaldo Golijov, sung exquisitely by the soprano Dawn Upshaw, accompanied by the elegant pianist Gilbert Kalish. There is a gripping new release of orchestral works by Steve Reich, performed by the dynamic conductor David Robertson and the Orchestre National de Lyon, from Naïve.

And Naxos, the invaluable and adventurous budget label, may get top honors for the most significant contribution of the year with its release of William Bolcom's setting of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," 46 poems by William Blake, in a live performance by the University of Michigan School of Music Orchestra and Chorus. This work, with over two hours of Mr. Bolcom's poly-stylistic music, is surely his masterpiece.

It is still hard to know how things will fare with the smaller-is-better approach at the major labels and the current trends toward self-producing among major orchestras. Also, distribution via the Internet is already transforming the role of retailers. In 10 years the classical recording business may look quite different from the way it does now. But despite the naysaying, the business will adapt and survive.

Meanwhile I can hardly find enough time to listen to all the discs that have come out during this golden era of classical music recording. Maybe I'll listen again to the blazing new Philips recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 with Valery Gergiev conducting the Kirov Orchestra in a live performance. Or the pianist Pierre- Laurent Aimard's revelatory and pianistically stunning account of Ives's "Concord" Sonata on Warner Classics. Or. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/ar...old.html?8hpib


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On Guard at Fort Hood

Computer intrusion detection system stops both outside attacks and harmful spyware introduced into the network from inside.
Tam Cummings

The Directorate of Information Management (DOIM) at Fort Hood, TX, is waging a multi-front cybersecurity war as it provides information assurance (IA) for more than 30,000 computer systems in 600 buildings at the nation’s largest military post.

“We’re taking a proactive stance to make ourselves better and more relevant in our information warfare and cybersecurity mission,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Ed Morris, director of DOIM. “It’s clearly very important, from the highest levels, that we provide our customer base a secure environment to operate from, especially with our missions at home and in the Global War on Terror.”

The mission of the DOIM is to provide vital computer, telephone and data communications services to Army tenant organizations located on Fort Hood. The Army relies heavily on the logistical automation supported by the DOIM’s current computer and communications networks. One of DOIM’s most important responsibilities is ensuring uninterrupted and secure service for its customers.

IA is a major challenge confronting the DOIM. Attacks by hackers armed with viruses and worms, coupled with peer-to-peer (p2p) connections or unprotected laptops logging onto the Installation Local Area Network (ILAN), mean that assaults can come from multiple fronts and even from within the perimeter of the post.

Malicious users are continually updating their attack arsenal and releasing it onto the Internet, so the attacks are originating both outside the DOIM’s Internet gateway firewall and from inside its own boundary defenses. The result is that the Army has had limited visibility into the identity of the enemy or the origin of the formatted cyber-attack.

In response, however, the DOIM is fortifying its network security by increasing intrusion detection visibility on attacks originating in front of and behind the perimeter firewall.

“The DOIM IA response strategy enlists a counteroffensive program from the inside out. It integrates Army-approved intrusion detection tools, intense training and testing of personnel using the ILAN and use of the most advanced techniques and technologies to improve intrusion visibility-the final step to having the necessary countermeasures to respond,” Morris said.

The new strategy includes integration of a three-tier intrusion detection and prevention system dubbed SecureNet, developed by Dallas-based Intrusion Inc. Fort Hood is one of 12 posts using SecureNet, a monitoring hardware and software system designed to provide intrusion detection, prevention and data privacy.

Outside/Inside Threat

The traditional Army battle plan assumes identification of the enemy and threat, and its optimum response requires use of mature technological resources to achieve the desired results for short- and long-term military gain, control and victory. But the current IA threat is unique. Either unknown attackers who are often difficult or impossible to identify and who are dedicated to advancing technology for their own gain are mounting a continuous onslaught, or personnel unaware their own laptops or outside computers are harboring a sleeper virus or worm are innocently introducing attacks on the system.

Morris’ team discovered these “innocent” attacks often occur when deployed personnel return to Fort Hood and connect to the ILAN. Because there is a good chance these personnel have not kept their computers as up to date with patches and virus security as DOIM’s system, they can pose as severe a threat to IA security as any outside hacker.

Under Fort Hood’s arrangement with SecureNet, the DOIM has deployed an advanced intrusion detection system behind its perimeter firewall, providing a second measure of defense and offering a viable and visual threat visibility for its security team. The new intrusion system works like a sound and motion sensitive surveillance camera, but for data. Just as a bank uses a surveillance camera to monitor access into and within its vaults, the Fort Hood intrusion system monitors all data access through its Internet firewall.

DOIM’s “camera” is an intrusion sensor monitoring access into and out of the network. Constantly scanning for signature bites, these multiple sensors have been strategically placed throughout the Fort Hood ILAN, where they report real-time security events to a centralized management system monitored by DOIM information assurance engineers.

“Today, we’re able to spot suspicious or unauthorized access attempts from outside our firewall and respond with the proper countermeasures,” said Stephon Primous, IA systems engineer. “The programs talk to each other, scanning the system. Once the software suspects the traffic, it alerts us and shuts it down. It has the ability to perform detection and then prevention.”

The second security problem occurs when a user connects an already infected computer, such as a traveling laptop or (against policy) a personal computer, to the Fort Hood ILAN. Once the device is able to connect, it is already behind the perimeter firewall, and therefore not easily visible or contained. This type of vulnerability allows an infected machine to spread the virus or worm throughout the network, infecting other computers, its progress undetected at the perimeter.

SecureNet provides additional intrusion monitoring and prevention sensors behind the perimeter firewall and across its network infrastructure. This enables the IA team to quickly identify and contain inside vulnerabilities and limit damage to its systems. The new monitors also help to identify non-security-compliant computers, unauthorized PCs and machines performing operations not allowed by DOIM security policy.

Peer-to-Peer Risks

The DOIM is also stepping up enforcement of its policy prohibiting users from setting up p2p network communications. P2p describes common file-sharing programs employed by many computer users for downloading music and other types of files.

“The problem with p2p is that many of the sites our users hit can be an unwanted source for spyware insertions on the post,” said Major Bert Belisch, 1114th Signal Battalion operations and planning officer. “Once the user connects to a site, often a spyware program unknowingly gets returned to the user’s PC, along with the file downloaded.

“These spyware programs started out originally as just a nuisance to our users, but today, they’re beginning to impact the reliability of our systems and have even broader implications related to the security of our data,” Belisch said. “Now that we added the intrusion spyware sensor at the firewall, we’re able to spot and block p2p communication attempts originating from inside our network, thus eliminating a large source of spyware infestation problems at Fort Hood.”

The system also detects and blocks other types of spyware insertion attempts and outbound spyware notifications initiated from previously infected computers, such as a traveling laptop.

Now, for the first time, DOIM IA personnel have ready access to detailed internal network security data. They can rapidly respond to an attack in real time, often blocking many of the worst exploits automatically, before significant damage begins. Because the intrusion sensors are deployed in-line, Fort Hood can not only prevent the attack or worm propagation from occurring, but also automatically notify the IA engineer that an intrusion was identified, what action was taken to protect the system and identify its specific port and source.

This new intrusion system, combined with training and a Security Status Review (SSR) program initiated by the IA staff, has enabled the DOIM leadership to identify and prepare security trends data for the post. Closer inspection of the data ensures the Army makes more informed decisions about computer security policy.

“So today, the DOIM is able to get specific details about who we’re fighting and from where they came,” Morris said. “Once we get the enemy in our sights, we take aim and eliminate the offender. We will be able to clearly define our security strategies and mount the necessary Army resources to repel the attacks and advance our mission.”
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