Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 3rd, '04

[JackSpratts]

Early Edition


Quotes Of The Week

"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service." – Canadian Federal Court judge Konrad von Finckenstein

"The big labels have still sued less than 0.1% of illegal file-sharers." - The Economist

"It was very difficult to have this kind of spotless thing going for so many years, then all of a sudden you're the most hated band in the world." - Lars Ulrich

"It doesn't cease to be theft just because the person you're stealing from is doing better." - Stephen Peach, ARIA CEO

"The recording industry can't prove that they have a problem. This P2P may actually be saving the record industry from worse problems." - Howard Knopf, attorney who represented the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic against the CRIA.

"I think I know what country I'll go to college in now." – danhm.








The Myth of Illegal Filesharing

Now I’ve been saying it for years (even here - see last week), and many observers of the file sharing scene have been saying it as well but sometimes it has to be told with the authority of the court to really be heard. That’s just what happened in Canada, and there has never been better words for file sharers than those spoken this week.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has started a legal assault on file sharers that mimics the assault in America. That the Canadian group got a later start may have let them think they’d have an advantage over their sister group in the U.S., allowing them to avoid many of the same legal mistakes that led to unfavorable rulings against the RIAA. Like that group, the CRIA has to go through a legal process in order to identify file sharers’ identities from the IP addresses collected off the internet, and for that they need the courts to force the ISP’s to give up names because the ISP’s won’t do it voluntarily, which is a thorn in the side of copyright extremists but a huge point in the ISP’s favor. The Internet service providers forced the issue in front of a judge, but unlike the American ISP’s, the Canadians had a different take on the matter. In America all ISP’s are publicly opposed to file sharing, so they say anyway, like record companies they equate it with stealing and go so far as to actually stipulate it’s illegal. They may not have wanted to give away customers’ names every time a media company came calling but that’s always had more to do with money, and trying not to alienate their subscribers than any pro-filesharing sentiments they may share, according to official statements at any rate. The situation could not be more different in the North. When faced with the same record company arguments the Canadian ISP’s responded in another way. Not only did they refuse to stipulate the illegality of file sharing, they went so far as to suggest that file sharing itself might actually be legal, that specifically uploading is legal, and therefore there is no need to give up subscriber’s names. They simply wouldn’t do it. That’s a claim no other ISP in the world has advanced. That I happen to agree with them has put me squarely at odds with every government that has weighed in on the subject, until now. In a decision far more favorable to individual file sharers than even last years’ wonderful court ruling legalizing peer-to-peer programs in the States, a court in Canada has ruled that the personal sharing of copyrighted material is itself legal and that downloading and uploading does not violate Canadian statutes. This could not be bigger news. For unlike the U.S. ruling legalizing P2P programs because they can be used for the transfer of non-copyrighted material, the Canadian court places no such restriction on the user.

As of this moment it looks like Canadians can legally share whatever they have on their hard drives, as long as the material itself is legal to own. This means songs, albums, movies, and probably anything digital in their possession. Due to the nature of the decision it may even include software programs, newspaper and magazine articles, DVD’s, and yes, even how-tos for making maple syrup. The judge, Konrad von Finckenstein, alluded to Xerox machines, which always figure prominently in any discussions about copying. He made it clear that distribution is not a passive act, that even having a copy machine in a library does not make the library a distributor, since the librarian isn’t the one engaging in the activity, and you have to take action if you’re going to be liable for distribution.

Said the judge, “Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying.” This means that having a folder potentially accessible to someone who may stumble across it is not the same thing at all as pushing that folder on a user. Well, certainly. But here is where it gets interesting; if Canadian copyright law allows citizens to copy and download for their own personal use, and according to the copyright board it does (Canadians, like those in the U.S. pay for the privilege with special taxes on blank media), then allowing them to copy out of your folder must be legal as well, making uploading as legal as downloading, and that’s where the judge was heading. That this changes everything is an understatement, that this will be fought to the bitter end by the copyright extremists is unfortunate but to be expected. Yet today, right now, we see a fundamental shift in the consciousness of the courts, and it’s a shift that may spread to other states in time.

Never again can a Canadian newspaper, website, television or radio program precede the words “file sharing,” with the word “illegal.” To do so would be a falsehood. A libel. A slander. There is no such thing as “illegal file sharing.” It is an ugly myth. That I’ve always said so makes it for me a matter of philosophical conviction. That the courts have now said so makes it for Canadians a matter of law.

Well done Judge von Finckenstein. Well done Canada.









Enjoy,

Jack.





Canadian court decision here





File Swappers Win Big
Mathew Ingram

In his ruling Wednesday on whether the Canadian record industry could force Internet service providers to identify digital music-swappers, Federal Court judge Konrad von Finckenstein didn't just poke a few holes in the industry's legal case – he blew it completely out of the water. In fact, if it was a turkey and this was hunting season, it would be nothing but a cloud of feathers.

There were a number of reasons why Judge Finckenstein might have quashed the Canadian Recording Industry Association's attempt to identify individual music uploaders, including the fact that it is difficult to tie specific IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to individual users, or to ensure that those users were the ones who actually shared the music files at the time in question.

As it turned out, Judge von Finckenstein did both of those things. But then, after the industry's case was already weak and wobbly at the knees, he delivered the knockout punch: According to the judge, there is no compelling evidence that either downloading or sharing of digital music files is even illegal. In other words, regardless of the other flaws in the industry's case, the CRIA didn't have a leg to stand on in the first place.

This decision – which the record industry has said it will appeal – goes substantially farther than a U.S. ruling in a similar case in December. In that case, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was trying to force Verizon to identify some of its customers who were sharing music files. An appeals court judge ruled that the U.S. legislation only applied to material that ISPs kept on their own servers, not data that merely passed through their telephone or cable lines.

Even that decision left the door open for the industry to pursue file-sharers in other ways – they just have to go through a more time-consuming subpoena process using what are called “John Doe” lawsuits. Judge von Finckenstein's ruling removed any legal basis for the recording industry to make a claim in the first place, effectively putting the CRIA back at ground zero.

On the topic of downloading, the judge was succinct: Canada's Copyright Act allows users to reproduce a musical work onto a recording medium for their private use, and thus, “downloading a song... does not amount to infringement.” Judge von Finckenstein referred in his decision to a Copyright Board of Canada ruling in December which came to the same conclusion, based on the copyright levy consumers pay on blank CDs, which in turn is distributed to rights holders.

That part of the judge's decision wasn't all that surprising, and it's why the CRIA has focused not on the downloading of digital music files but on the sharing or “uploading” of them. But Judge von Finckenstein blew that argument apart as well. He said that “no evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service.”

Simply setting up a situation that allows copying does not amount to authorizing infringement under the Copyright Act, the judge ruled. In fact, he said, “I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service.” The mere fact of placing a copy where it can be found by another user, he said, “does not amount to distribution.”

In other words, as far as the Federal Court is concerned, neither the downloading nor the sharing of digital music files is illegal under Canadian law. Should it be? Judge von Finckenstein didn't deal with that issue, since it's not the court's job. If the federal government wants file-swapping to be illegal, it will have to make that clear – because as of Wednesday, one of the country's senior judges is convinced that it is not. And the recording industry is left to lick its wounds and plan some other form of attack.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...tory/Business/


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Court Rejects Music Lawsuit

Internet Providers Don't Have To Name Users
Angela Pacienza, Canadian Press

File swappers in Canada can rest easy for the moment after a Federal Court ruling today said that uploading music files into shared folders on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa is legal.

Justice Konrad von Finckenstein's decision throws a wrench into plans by the music industry to sue people who share songs over the Internet. Unlike similar cases in the United States, he said the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) didn't prove there was copyright infringement by 29 so-called music uploaders.

CRIA had sought a court order to force Internet service providers to identify alleged high-volume music traders identified only as John and Jane Does. Without the names, CRIA can't begin filing lawsuits.

The ruling follows a recent decision by the Copyright Board of Canada that downloading music in this country is legal.

Von Finckenstein said that downloading a song or making files available in the shared directories does not constitute copyright infringement under the current Canadian law.

"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings," he wrote in his 28-page ruling. "They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service."

He compared the action to a photocopy machine in a library. "I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service," he said.

CRIA said it would not be derailed in its fight against music piracy and will appeal the ruling.

"We feel that we have firm grounds for appeal," CRIA president Brian Robertson said in an interview.

"You cannot have widespread copyright infringement without any penalties or deterrents. We believe the case that we filed was a strong case proving copyright infringement. It's something we will continue to pursue."

He added CRIA will continue to seek the identities of the 29 John and Jane Does it has collected evidence against.

The verdict sent shock waves through the industry and surprised some copyright analysts.

"It raises questions of the viability of suing individual users in Canada under current Canadian copyright law," said Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in Internet and e-commerce law and technology counsel with the law firm Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt.

"It is a remarkable decision. He's clearly ruled that (uploading/downloading) activity isn't unlawful."

Calling the decision "stunning," Geist anticipates it will push the industry to increase lobbying efforts for legislative change to copyright laws.

The recording industry is pushing for Canada to sign the World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms Treaty which would automatically change some copyright law including the definition of distribution like that done via Kazaa, WinMX, eMule and iMesh.

Internet forums were abuzz with the news, the majority in favour of the judge's decision.

"I think I know what country I'll go to college in now," wrote "danhm" on the slashdot.org forum. "Nice to see privacy winning one for a change. Now if we can get the U.S. Supreme court to rule the same way. After all, they've been using foreign court rulings more and more recently," added "Sharp'r."

Last month, the industry association took five Internet service providers to Federal Court, trying to force the companies to hand over the names and addresses of 29 people who allegedly shared hundreds of songs with others over the Internet last November and December.

The alleged infringers are currently identifiable only through a numeric Internet protocol address and user handles like Jordana(at)KaZaA and Geekboy(at)kazaa.

Bell Canada, Shaw Communications, Telus Communications and Rogers Cable all fought CRIA's request. Videotron agreed to comply, saying owner Quebecor is also concerned about piracy in other parts of its business, which includes newspapers, television, Internet services and CDs.

Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications, was delighted with the ruling.

"We are very, very pleased and I'm sure our customers are as well," he said from his Calgary office.

Shaw had argued privacy legislation protects the identities of its clients.

"We have obligations to protect the privacy of our customers. We've always taken that approach," said Bissonnette.

Shaw and the other ISPs also argued the information they'd be forced to collect wouldn't be 100 per cent accurate because of the dynamic nature of IP addresses.

Today's decision combined with a recent Harvard Business School study on CD sales strikes a blow to a worldwide movement to curb music swapping, says Howard Knopf, a lawyer who represented the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in the case.

The study, released yesterday, found that downloading had no impact on sales of CDs in recent years.

"The recording industry can't prove that they have a problem," said Knopf. "This P2P may actually be saving the record industry from worse problems."

Earlier this week, the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry held a news conference to outline its international campaign against music piracy, pointing to lawsuits launched in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Canada.

The group claims worldwide sales of recorded music fell seven per cent in 2002, and added that it expected figures for 2003 to show sales dipping by at least the same amount.

In the United States, the recording industry has sued 1,977 people since launching its assault against illegal file- sharers last fall. It has reached out-of-court settlements in around 400 cases.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=968793972154


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Uploaders Not ‘Pirates,' Court Told
Keith Damsell

The music industry's “war against file sharing,” if successful, will mean “significant collateral damage” to the rights and interests of Internet users, a federal court was told Monday.

“These folks are civilians, not commercial pirates,” Howard Knopf, a lawyer representing an Ottawa Internet rights advocacy group, told the Federal Court of Canada. Sharing music via the Net is “clearly not illegal,” he said, adding that the court should “apply the [copyright] law as it is today.”

Last month, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) asked the court to order five of Canada's largest communications firms to identify 29 so-called uploaders who they allege posted hundreds of songs illegally. The industry says cyberspace song theft has led to job losses and an estimated $425-million in lost sales over the past five years. The Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic claims a court order would strip away the important anonymity the Internet guarantees. If identified, alleged uploaders “can never regain their privacy rights. Once breached, those rights are gone forever,” said CIPPIC lawyer Alex Cameron.

CRIA's bid for a court order is “a private dispute between private parties” with no impact on personal freedoms, replied lawyer Ronald Dimock. Each alleged uploader agreed to disclose personal information if required when they signed a service contract with their high-speed Internet provider, he said. “There's really no privacy rights ... to be balanced here.”
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...tory/Business/


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P2P 'No Threat' To Music Sales
Robert Jaques

Academic research disputes claim that file sharing is hitting CD shipments

Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa peer-to- peer (P2P) file sharing software, has welcomed research claiming that the sharing of digital music files has no effect on CD sales.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, CD shipments in the US fell from 940 million to 800 million between 2000 and 2002, with file sharing getting the blame.

And last week, the British Phonographic Industry published research reporting that retail spending on music is down 32 per cent on albums and 59 per cent on singles among UK downloaders from P2P sites.

But research by Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, of Harvard Business School, and Professor Koleman Strumpf, of the University of North Carolina, disputes the claims.

"We find that file sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample. Based on our results, we do not believe file sharing will have a significant effect on the supply of recorded music," the academics concluded.

Sharman Networks insisted that the loss of revenue from music sales as a result of P2P use is one of the first arguments "wheeled out" by the entertainment industries.

The company said that the new study's primary finding supports its position that instead of hindering the sales of entertainment media, P2P could be leveraged to increase the amount of revenue generated by more traditional media.

"Consider the possibilities if the record industry actually co-operated with companies like us instead of fighting," said Nikki Hemming, chief executive at Sharman Networks, in a statement.

"We have offered content providers the opportunity to work with P2P customers for nearly two years, yet the record industry continues its narrow-minded strategy of litigation and legislation."

A PDF of Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee's draft paper on file sharing can be downloaded here
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1153936


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Tokyo Court Denies Copyright For Web News Headlines

A damages suit filed by the Tokyo head office of the Yomiuri Shimbun against an Internet service firm that used the newspaper's headlines without permission was rejected in the Tokyo District Court on Thursday.

Denying the newspaper's demand that the Internet firm stop using the headlines and pay damages of 68 million yen, the court ruled that using Internet headlines without permission did not violate copyright.

"Using headlines that are open to the public on the Internet without authorization does not constitute a copyright violation," Presiding Judge Toshiaki Iimura said in handing down the ruling.

The ruling is reportedly the first on Internet headlines.

In making the ruling, the court denied that the headlines were creative expression. "These headlines were created within 25 characters, and either stated objective facts, or used only very short qualifying words, and cannot be described as creative expression," the ruling said.

The newspaper had filed the suit against Kobe-based Digital Alliance. The headlines the Internet firm used either duplicated headlines that various newspapers had used on their sites, or modified them slightly.

A representative of the newspaper said the paper could not agree with a ruling that allowed unauthorized use and would appeal the ruling. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, March 25, 2004)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040...dm002000c.html


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Attempt To Extradite Online 'Pirate' Blocked
John Borland

An Australian judge on Wednesday rejected an attempt by U.S. prosecutors to extradite a man accused of helping lead a high-profile Internet piracy group.

U.S. federal attorneys want to bring Hew Raymond Griffiths, a 42-year-old computer programmer who lives in New South Wales, to the United States to face criminal copyright charges. If extradited and convicted of his alleged role in leading the DrinkorDie group, Griffiths would face up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

The Australian magistrate blocked the move, ruling in part that the extradition attempt did not provide enough information about specific instances of Griffiths' alleged copyright infringement.

"It was a major problem for how he was being prosecuted," said Antony Townsden, the Legal Aid Commission solicitor who represented Griffiths. "I don't know how anyone would be able to represent themselves if they were to face such a general charge."

The ruling could be a significant setback for U.S. prosecutors, who have invested considerable resources into tracking down elements of DrinkorDie and other Net "warez" groups who distributed pirated versions of software, music and movies online, often before they were released commercially.

The U.S. and British governments have brought charges against other individuals targeted in the long-running piracy sweep dubbed "Operation Buccaneer," leading to more than 20 convictions and guilty pleas.

A representative for the U.S. Attorney's office in the eastern district of Virginia, which is leading the extradition proceedings, could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to the indictment, filed by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, Griffiths helped oversee DrinkorDie operations that resulted in the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted software, games, music and movies worth more than $50 million. The group was founded in Russia in 1993, the legal documents alleged, but was run by computer hackers worldwide.

Townsden said the U.S. government's attempts to extradite Griffiths, who did not have resources to defend himself overseas adequately, were unfair. All other defendants in the DrinkorDie cases have been charged in their home countries, he noted.

Australian authorities, acting on behalf of the United States, have 15 days to appeal the verdict to that country's federal courts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5179588.html


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Ashcroft Creates Task Force For Copyright Violations
Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that it had created a task force to evaluate prosecutions of copyright violations, including Internet piracy, and make recommendations about how existing efforts can be improved. "The task force will determine how best to meet the evolving challenges that law enforcement faces in the intellectual property arena," said David Israelite, deputy chief of staff to Attorney General John Ashcroft and chairman of the task force.

Although Congress has pressured the department to use the powerful No Electronic Theft Act to jail file-swappers, no such prosecutions have taken place. Wednesday's announcement also comes as proposals are circulating in Congress to give the Justice Department the power to levy additional civil penalties on copyright infringers.
http://news.com.com/2110-1023-5182781.html?tag=nefd_hed


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U.S. House Panel Approves Copyright Bill
Declan McCullagh

A House of Representatives panel has approved a sweeping new copyright bill that would boost penalties for peer-to-peer piracy and increase federal police powers against Internet copyright infringement.

The House Judiciary intellectual property subcommittee voted for the "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act" (PDEA) late Wednesday, overruling objections from a minority of members that it would unreasonably expand the FBI's powers to demand private information from Internet service providers.

The PDEA--the result of intense lobbying from large copyright holders over the past six months--has emerged as a kind of grab-bag that combines other proposals introduced in the past but not approved. One section that first surfaced last year punishes an Internet user who makes available $1,000 in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000. If the PDEA became law, prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were downloaded--they would need only to show that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder.

One part of the PDEA that did not appear in earlier bills would require the FBI to "facilitate the sharing" of information among Internet providers, copyright holders and police.

"I am sure (that its sponsor) does not mean to expand the powers of the FBI," Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., said during the subcommittee hearing. "The concern I have is that this is very ambiguous. The language itself could lead an aggressive FBI to a different conclusion." Lofgren's attempt to amend the PDEA failed by a 4-14 vote.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., a PDEA supporter whose district abuts Hollywood, said that Lofgren's conclusions were unfounded. "They have been as passive as you can be," Berman said, referring to the FBI. "They have authority they don't exercise."

Although Congress has pressured the department to use the No Electronic Theft Act to jail file swappers, no such prosecutions have taken place so far. Earlier Wednesday, however, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the creation of a task force on copyright violations.

The PDEA is an improved version of last year's legislation and will assist "federal law enforcement authorities in their efforts to investigate and prosecute intellectual property crimes," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., the subcommittee's chairman, said in his opening remarks. Smith said that the reworked version "clarifies and narrows the application of criminal copyright law to the worst P2P offenders."

Other sections of the PDEA would require Ashcroft to boost the number of antipiracy cops on the Justice Department's payroll, and order the U.S. Sentencing Commission to revisit prison term guidelines to make sure they reflect "the loss attributable to people broadly distributing copyrighted works over the Internet without authorization." The PDEA also combines parts of another of last year's proposals that bans unauthorized recording in movie theaters and includes harsh penalties if pre- release movies are swapped on peer-to-peer networks.

Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group that agitates for fair use rights, said in a statement after Wednesday's vote that: "We hope the full Judiciary Committee will take a harder look at the change in the standard needed for prosecution of copyright infringement under this bill. The new standard created by the subcommittee could criminalize what is now lawful use of copyrighted materials."

At the same hearing, the House subcommittee also approved a bill that would increase criminal penalties for selling counterfeit labels that could go on CD-ROMs or software packages, and another bill to increase felony penalties for using false contact information when registering a domain name.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5182898.html


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Free Book

Lawrence Lessig’s latest book is now available for download.

From the site –

“FREE CULTURE is available for free under a Creative Commons license.
You may redistribute, copy, or otherwise reuse/remix this book provided that you do so for non-commercial purposes and credit Professor Lessig.”
http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/


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Word Pictures on Internet Radio
Carol Vogel

It may seem odd that the director of a contemporary-art center, whose life is consumed by visual experiences, would be obsessed with radio. But for 20 years Alanna Heiss has dreamed of running her own radio station.

"I like the idea of hearing without always looking," said Ms. Heiss, the director of the P.S. 1 Center for Contemporary Art in Long Island City, Queens.

She is about to realize her dream. On April 19, P.S. 1 is starting an online radio station, WPS1, at its Web site, www.ps1.org. It is based in recently constructed studios in the Clocktower Building, a city-owned property designed by Stanford White at Leonard Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan, where P.S. 1 has an exhibition space. Bloomberg L.P. has sponsored the project.

Two years in the making and billed as the world's first art radio station, WPS1 will present original talk and music shows with contemporary writers, artists and musicians as hosts. The station will also broadcast historical audio material from a variety of sources, like the sound archives of the Museum of Modern Art, with which P.S. 1 merged in 1999.

Being part of the Modern has its advantages. The radio station will have access to 2,500 sound recordings of curators and directors. They include Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum's founding director, giving a talk called "Art Under the Soviet and Nazi Dictatorships" in 1952.

Also caught on tape is a mix ranging from Walt Disney giving a speech on the Modern's 10th anniversary on May 10, 1939, to Marcel Duchamp speaking at the Modern on Oct. 20, 1962.

The radio station will coordinate with the Modern's curatorial programming as well. It plans to play sound pieces by Dieter Roth, the German-born multimedia artist now based in Switzerland, whose work is the subject of a retrospective that opened two weeks ago at the Modern's temporary space in Long Island City.

Some of the Modern's curators will also be broadcast on the station. Other plans call for a real estate show featuring Heather Cohane, the founder of Quest magazine, with advice for artists on buying and renting places to live.

"This will not be seen as a talking head situation, but an extension of P.S. 1," Ms. Heiss said. "It's like an important new wing."

Ms. Heiss is the station's executive producer, and Linda Yablonsky, a writer, will be the program manager. Several P.S. 1 staff members are involved, too, including Brett Littman, the station's managing director, who is P.S. 1's senior administrator.

P.S. 1 officials hired the architect William Massie to design the studio. Using bright orange laser-cut steel and plastic, he has created an ear-shaped space for recording and broadcasting. The design combines a 1960's psychedelic feeling with a futuristic one, something that will eventually be visible on the Web site. In a space that P.S. 1 once used as a gallery, it will show "HiFi," detailed photographs of vintage recording devices by Todd Eberle.

While the exhibition is not open to the public, in time P.S. 1 plans to show the images on its radio Web site.

Just outside its offices is the clock tower that www.wps1.org is using as its symbol. "That's where we're broadcasting from," Ms. Heiss said. "The tower itself becomes a symbol of time and sound. Because it's Internet radio, you have real time and back-in-time."

Modern Art Treasures

On May 6, the night after Sotheby's is auctioning the fabled art once owned by the financier and publisher John Hay Whitney and his wife, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, it will auction a group of paintings collected by Ray Stark, the movie producer, and his wife, Fran.

The collection was in Stark's West Hollywood home until his death in January. (Mrs. Stark died in 1992.)

Thirteen works will be offered for sale, seven in the important evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art on May 6 and six the following day in its auction of less expensive works.

The Starks also bought sculpture, forming one of the great collections of 20th-century Modern sculpture by artists like Moore and Giacometti, which is not being sold. The works belong to a foundation set up by Stark.

Among the highlights of the collection that is for sale is one of Monet's "Water Lilies" paintings, this one executed from 1917 to 1919. It is large — 39 3/8 by 79 inches — and like many of the other late "Water Lilies," it is unsigned but stamped by his son Michel with the artist's signature. David Norman, a co-chairman of Impressionist and Modern art for Sotheby's worldwide, said he believed the painting was one of the artist's best examples from the series.

"It is one of the most complete and most vibrant," Mr. Norman said. "It was painted in huge sweeps. It virtually surrounds the viewer."

Sotheby's estimates that the painting will bring $9 million to $12 million.

Before the foundation decided to sell a portion of the collection at Sotheby's, officials approached several art dealers to see if they would be interested in selling the Monet. That was several months ago. At the time, the asking price was around $20 million, said some art experts who were offered the painting, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another top painting that belonged to the Starks is Braque's "Woman With Guitar"(1931), one of his Cubist interpretations of a classical subject. It is expected to sell for $1.5 million to $2 million.

Popular Again

At a meeting of the Collectors Committee at the National Gallery of Art in Washington last week, the patrons' group, which has been financing acquisitions there since 1975, agreed to buy a 1962 sculpture by the artist Lee Bontecou.

Ms. Bontecou has been experiencing something of a renaissance. In the 1960's she was represented by Leo Castelli and became known for making relief sculptures of iron, canvas and wire. But tastes and fashions change, and over the years she faded into relative obscurity — until now.

Her renewed popularity is due in large part to a traveling exhibition that opened in October at the U.C.L.A. Hammer Museum and is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago until May 30. Then it travels to the Museum of Modern Art from July 30 to Sept. 27.

The National Gallery acquired an untitled 1962 work that experts say is worth $700,000 to $1 million. "We only had a small sculpture in our collection," said Earl A. Powell III, the gallery's director.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/ar...gn/26INSI.html


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When Instant Messages Come Bearing Malice
Sandeep Junnarkar

RICK GROLEAU, a 40-year-old technical manager from Mountain View, Calif., received a message last month from a friend on his AOL Instant Messenger buddy list alerting him that Osama bin Laden had been captured. When he clicked on a link ostensibly directing him to a news article, it took him instead to a site offering a game to download.

Although Mr. Groleau declined to download the game, his friend admitted that she had done so. She was among the many IM users who unwittingly triggered a virus- like effect.

Clicking on the link not only installed a game but also added a slick trick to propagate itself across the AOL Instant Messenger network, known as AIM. When gamers accepted the terms and conditions for installing the application, they inadvertently let the program send the same invitation to contacts on their buddy list.

Downloading the game also installed adware - software that runs undetected, tracking users' Web habits and interests, presenting pop-up advertisements and resetting the home page.

"This was not e-mail from some random person," Mr. Groleau said. "It came through AIM from someone I personally know. I clicked on the link right away."

It is that reflex that the perpetrators are counting on to transform IM services into a handy route to deliver spam (known as "spim" on IM), unleash viruses, create back doors into the systems of unsuspecting users and cause general mayhem across the Internet.

Instant messaging was first popularized by teenagers in the 1990's; it has since gained widespread use among consumers and businesses as a vehicle for sharing documents, digital photos and links while knowing which contact on a list is online at any given moment. Last year there were an estimated 162 million consumer IM accounts worldwide, compared with 82 million in 2000, according to IDC, a technology research firm in Framingham, Mass.

While the numbers are far short of the estimated 524 million consumer e-mail accounts worldwide, experts say that hackers and spammers may increasingly make IM users a target because of the nature of instant communication.

"Now that everyone is using Instant Messenger, it has become a popular target," said Sharon Ruckman, the senior director of Symantec Security Response, a provider of Internet security updates and solutions.

The CERT Coordination Center, a computer security response team based at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has repeatedly cautioned that IM users are especially susceptible to "social engineering," meaning attacks that prey on human foibles by enticing people with promises of free products, pornography and interesting-sounding links.

In responding to strangers' offers, people may divulge personal information or leave their systems vulnerable. "It's a tactic to get you to open your door and have people come in and take pictures around your house so they learn the weaknesses," Ms. Ruckman said. "Then when you're at work they know exactly how to break into your house."

IM also leaves much to be desired when it comes to privacy. When two people communicate through instant messaging, the messages are relayed as plain text through an IM service's central servers before they reach the recipient. An unscrupulous systems administrator could easily train a program to search for words, passwords or combinations of numbers to harvest critical personal information, privacy advocates say.

The lack of privacy is compounded when IM messages travel over public wireless networks like those at cafes, airports and hotels. These wireless hot spots keep security levels low to give users access to the network with little trouble. Using a commercial sniffer, "you can see all these packets of text data flying around," said John LaCour of Zone Labs, a computer-security firm in San Francisco.

One of IM's biggest attractions, file sharing, may also be its greatest weakness. IM users can transfer files to each other and give others access to their shared-files folder. These folders sometimes contain family photographs and documents with names, addresses and telltale financial information, "all the little pieces of information that actually might help someone assume a person's identity," said Fred Felman, the vice president for marketing at Zone Labs. Consumers, he added, are "blissfully unaware" of the dangers.

But consumers alone cannot be blamed for their victimhood.

The CERT Coordination Center and other security firms have often publicized flaws in the IM software from each of the top services - AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. The warnings have almost exclusively involved "buffer overflow" attacks, a common software error. This programming defect allows a hacker to overwhelm a system with a string of characters far too large for a particular input field and sometimes seize control of the machine.

In January, Tri Huynh, a researcher at SentryUnion, a computer security firm in Woburn, Mass., reported just such a buffer overflow vulnerability in Yahoo's messenger service. Yahoo patched the flaw, which was one of several discovered in 2003.

Problems can extend beyond buffer overflow issues. This month, Microsoft disclosed that a bug in its MSN Messenger program could allow an attacker to rifle through a victim's hard drive without leaving a trace.

Dan Moniz, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, said most hackers and security researchers discover vulnerabilities through reverse engineering and trial and error because AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN closely guard information about their software.

"Open design and open protocols are the best insurance against future catastrophic bugs," Mr. Moniz said. "They don't prevent them, but they do make them easier to find and, hopefully, easier to fix."

Officials at Microsoft said that MSN Messenger's relatively small size made it easier to test and control programming defects. Still, programs like the Osama Found game are likely to increase as spammers begin to harness the power of instant messaging.

Many of the tricks for spreading viruses and spam through IM are inspired by tactics that are used to exploit e-mail, like the typical attacks through Microsoft Outlook, in which viruses and worms propagate by e-mailing themselves to everyone in a person's address book.

"In instant messaging a similar thing has happened, where it takes the buddy list and sends out the instant message to people on the buddy list," said Tatiana Gau, America Online's chief trust officer. AOL is now screening for the Osama Found link as messages pass through its gateways and blocking instant messages that have it.

In some ways, victims of the Osama Found spim can count themselves lucky. "It didn't carry a nasty payload," said Mr. LaCour of Zone Labs. "Imagine if that was an executable link that was actually malicious. It could have spread pretty fast."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/te...ts/25mess.html


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From the strange mind of the RIAA’s favorite hatchet man.

RIAA Applauds Civil Lawsuit P2P Bill
Dinah Greek

File sharers charged under proposed legislation would face fine but no criminal record

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has welcomed the tabling of legislation that would allow the US Department of Justice to bring civil copyright infringement cases rather than criminal ones.

The proposed law follows the recent announcement by the FBI and the RIAA of a new voluntary, government- sanctioned anti-piracy seal for copyrighted music to warn users on illegal file sharing.

Introduced by US senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch, the latest proposal would allow for federal civil claims with damages without resulting in a criminal record for the defendant.

RIAA chairman and chief executive Mitch Bainwol said in a statement: "This legislation provides federal prosecutors with the flexibility and discretion to bring copyright infringement cases that best correspond to the nature of the crime.

"Copyright infringement is a serious crime damaging the thousands of hardworking artists, songwriters and everyone else who helps bring music to the public.

"Despite some encouraging signs, piracy continues to plague the music community. There's an essential role for education, enforcement by copyright owners, and federal prosecutions of the worst offenders."
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1153836


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IPv6 Test Demonstrates Peer-To-Peer Network
Nicolas Mokhoff

The second test phase of the Moonv6 network, the world's largest multivendor IPv6 network, demonstrated the ability of the IPv6 spec to operate with most network elements as well as handling real-time business applications.

The Moonv6 phase II test, running from March 7 to 19, included a test network stretching from Durham, N.C., to California. The test, supported in part by a Defense Department communications agency, showed that the IPv6 network operated with high-speed links, firewalls, routing, common applications and quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning.

The end of the second testing phase formally launches the next version of the Internet Protocol to be used as the backbone for network peer-to- peer communications. "What could not have been achieved with IPv4 is now possible with IPv6, that is, an end-to-end secure network using IPv6," said U.S. Army Maj. Roswell Dixon, IPV6 action officer at the Defense Department. "For the government sector that is a big deal."

IPv6 significantly increases the number of addresses that can be assigned to devices and computers. "In a mobile army, moving on a terrain at 20 miles per hour, you need the implementation of IPv6 in all your communications gear," said Dixon.

End-to-end communication is also important for academic research where half of deployed networks already use IPv6, according to Rick Summerhill, director of backbone Internet infrastructure for Internet2. "We are well along to the full transition to IPv6 by 2008 with the this latest testing phase," Summerhill said.

Network domain name server functionality was provided using Linux, Microsoft, Sun and Hewlett-Packard HP-UX operating systems over the wide- area network between North Carolina and Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

The Moonv6 project is a collaboration between the North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF), the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), Internet2, the military's Joint Interoperability Testing Command (JITC) and other DoD agencies.

According to Jim Bound, chairman of the NAv6TF, adoption of IPv6 in Asia and Europe has been a forgone conclusion for several years. Doubts about the technology have persisted in the North American market, however. Asian and European governments and universities have been investing resources to speed IPv6 deployment and integration experience, Bound said.

With DoD backing, Moonv6 aims to provide a platform for the North American IT community to garner IPv6 deployment experience. Routing vendors Procket, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Cisco have agreed to leave equipment at UNH-IOL to keep Moonv6 operating to connect multiple service providers and the U.S. military in a global IPv6 backbone.

"The success rates we've seen here argue that IPv6 is clearing the hurdles to inevitable adoption. We plan to continue industry-wide multivendor testing on a rolling basis," said Ben Schultz, the UNH-IOL managing engineer who organized the test.

Also participating in the second phase of testing were AT&T, Chunghwa Telecom, France Telecom, KDDI Labs USA, Native6, NTT R&D, Root Server Test Bed Agilent, Ixia, Spirent Communications, 6Wind, Check Point, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Hitachi, Hexago, Lucent Technologies, Netscreen Technologies, Nokia, Panasonic and Symantec.

QoS functionality also was demonstrated, proving that IPv6 is capable of allowing different classes of traffic to maintain different priorities. This was achieved by assigning priority to important phone calls or video streams over routine file transfers or e-mail.

Basic firewall and stateful firewall technology, which can be used to prevent network attacks, passed all test security requirements.

Among the basic applications demonstrated over the native IPv6 network topology were Microsoft Windows Media Player and Panasonic's IPv6- controlled, Web-enabled video cameras. Several commercially available media conferencing software applications were also tested, including France Telecom's eConf, an application that turns PDAs equipped with a miniature camera into mobile videophone connected via a wireless video link.

Testing also showed that dual-stack configurations (networks running IPv6 and IPv4 in parallel) could provide the most seamless method of accommodating both protocols over the next several years, when both will need to coexist on the Internet.

Rose Klimovich, vice president and general manager of AT&T VPN Services, said customers can sign up for its IPv6 service. "We will implement new features as demand rises in a year or so," said Klimovich.
http://www.commsdesign.com/showArtic...cleID=18401469


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Memo to Steve Ballmer
Steve Gillmor

Dear Steve,

I know this comes at a busy time, with you most likely distracted by the European situation. But I know that you're always open to feedback from the community and most of the press, and your popular Longhorn evangelist Robert Scoble has assured us that Microsoft execs are listening. So here goes.

Steve, you need to support RSS. Where do I want to go today? To my RSS reader. Why? Because I'm spending more and more of my screen time in the RSS space. It's far more time-efficient than browsing the Web. Together with instant messaging, it's become an effective and reliable workaround for e-mail outages.

When Dave Winer developed SOAP with Don Box and Microsoft engineers, you and Bill signed on
and jumpstarted the Web services revolution. In fact, I first met Dave when you invited him to the Forum 2000 .Net rollout in recognition of his pioneering efforts. Now both Dave and his counterparts in the Atom community have agreed to seek a unification of the syndication standards via an IETF working group.

Certainly RSS has been popularized as an efficient way to aggregate blog postings. But RSS adoption in the media and e-commerce spaces is accelerating even faster. Server-based aggregation sites such as Bloglines and MyYahoo are evangelizing the technology. Newsletters and direct marketing campaigns are shifting out of e-mail to take advantage of RSS' efficiencies and positive word-of-mouth characteristics.

And then there's the intersection of peer-to-peer and RSS enclosures, where companies such as Disney are taking advantage of TiVo-like time shifting of rich media payloads. Groove 3.0's new Windows file sharing technology and the BitTorrent distribution specification are just two of the powerful tools now capable of enhancing the scalability and economic viability of RSS feeds.

But lack of Microsoft support at the highest levels is retarding the RSS momentum. Neither you nor Bill has mentioned the technology in any public setting. Yet your engineers and developers continue to produce a raft of RSS aggregators, servers and Outlook add-ins in their spare time. A product manager even demoed a phone-based photo-blog application during Bill's keynote at VSLive this week.

Perhaps it's just as a friend of mine suggested: RSS is not a high-priority item in the queue, dwarfed by the challenges of security, open source, digital rights management and the Longhorn evolution. These issues are rightly top-of-mind, but that doesn't mean RSS shouldn't be up there too.

First, RSS offers a powerful evangelism tool for your security efforts. For example, distributing Windows update information via RSS would let you annotate hot fixes and updates with timely information and tutorials about the reasons why the update should be accepted. Delivering the updates as RSS enclosures might mitigate the concerns of people who are concerned about unauthorized changes to their configurations.

Another opportunity presents itself in the instant messaging space, where important collaborative information is often lost to the ad hoc IM bit bucket. Instead, IM data could be pipelined into an RSS feed for archiving, auditing and indexing. RSS enclosures could speed the adoption of audio and video messages, as well as provide a persistent transport and collaborative synchronization for Tablet ink, OneNote meeting recordings, music and photo sharing.

But the biggest Microsoft opportunity is in the authoring space, where you could perform the same powerful ratifying effect you first rendered with SOAP. What if you were to authorize a freely redistributable runtime version of InfoPath that produced XHTML-ready RSS content? The tool would empower users to drag and drop RSS objects into the container, annotate and format them, then post them via an IETF-standardized API mechanism that you would participate in producing.

Not only would such a tool promote substantial adoption of well-formed XHTML, but it would also promote the use of RSS as an event mechanism in workflow apps and even calendaring and scheduling. RSS enclosures would be a convenient addition to InfoPath forms' e-mail distribution methodology to boot.

If InfoPath can't be opened in this manner, there's another prime candidate for RSS authoring: OneNote. As the strategic core (at least for me) of the Tablet platform, OneNote promises a terrific environment for rich text/ink/audio/video micro-content creation, management and routing. With an XML API waiting to be switched on for its second release, now would be the time to act to gain significant market share in the developer community where RSS is already well-seeded.

Steve, thanks for listening. RSS may appear to be just a niche technology, a hippie miracle cure for everything from information overload to e-mail dysfunction. But I'd like to see the data on relapsing from RSS. Once you kick the browser, it's very hard to go back to the old way of doing things. I look forward to hearing from you, perhaps via your own RSS feed. That's one channel I look forward to subscribing to.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1554846,00.asp


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Cornell University Hosts Computer Policy And Law Program

ITHACA -- The Institute for Computer Policy and Law will be held on the Cornell University campus from July 6-9. This intensive four-day program, which has become one of the nation's premier forums for discussing and learning about technology policies in higher education, will examine how the widespread use of the Internet impacts college and university policies, procedures and judicial systems.

It is designed for Webmasters, technology administrators, attorneys, judicial officers, risk managers, publication directors, public relations administrators and anyone else involved in developing, implementing or enforcing technology policies in higher education.

Through lectures, case studies and panel discussions, participants will explore topics including recent developments in computer policy, law and the Internet; laws that apply in cyberspace; developing technology policies; security and spam; Internet governance and liability; online privacy; copyright; and peer-to-peer file sharing.

For more information or to register, contact the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at 255-7259; e-mail: cusp@ cornell.edu; or visit their Web site at www.sce.cornell.edu/exec.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news...ws/148817.html


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Media Giants Need To Learn to Sing A New Tune
Leslie Walker

Lately I've been testing several new software programs, which together make me think no amount of suing by big-media kingpins can snuff out the creative flame sparked by the digital revolution.

Roll over Time Warner, tell Vivendi the news
The cut-and-paste clan has a new set of tools
Gonna write a little letter, gonna post it on my P2P
Got a rockin' DVD movie, I want my PC to play.

Lately I've been testing several new software programs, which together make me think no amount of suing by big-media kingpins can snuff out the creative flame sparked by the digital revolution.

One, called Onfolio lets you grab anything you find surfing online and store it in a database, then mix and match your Web gems to produce custom reports. With the click of a button, you can e-mail the reports, store them on your computer or publish them to the Web. Onfolio is deaf, dumb and blind to copyright law; any unprotected image or text you find on the Internet is fair game for this $30 scrape-and-store toolkit. Founder J.J. Allaire says he is pioneering a new category of software he calls a "search information manager" to help the Google generation organize stuff they find online.

Another new program, Easy Media Creator 7 from Roxio Inc., combines editing software usually found in separate programs into one unified menu. It lets people edit photos, sound and video, create fancy menus and special effects, then burn the results onto a DVD or CD. The goal of this $100 program is to simplify creation of personal movies, slide shows, multimedia business reports, video birthday greetings and the like.

At the same time I've been experimenting with this software, I've been reading the latest book by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, titled "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity." For those unfamiliar with Lessig's work, he's an intellectual firebrand who has long argued (in prior books such as "The Future of Ideas" and "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace") that the old guard of culture -- large media conglomerates -- is seizing control of the Internet to protect its interests in ways that threaten innovation. His new book closely examines copyright law, contending that today's media dinosaurs have been conspiring with Congress to expand the scope of copyright and make other legal changes that trample on our tradition of "free culture."

It is easy to succumb to Lessig's intellectual pessimism, especially as the Recording Industry Association of America continues its barrage of mass-action lawsuits charging young people with illegal song-swapping on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Just this week, the RIAA filed another round of legal actions against 532 file-sharers, including people at 21 universities, demanding that Internet providers cough up their names. Nearly 2,000 folks have been targets of the RIAA's legal rampage since it started last year.

Song-swapping is not the only copyright fire the music industry is fighting. Consider the cease-and-desist letter EMI Music issued last month to a small-time record producer demanding that he halt distribution of a clever musical mix he had made. Producer Brian Burton's "The Grey Album" electronically combined sounds from the Beatles' recording commonly known as "The White Album" with rapper Jay-Z's "The Black Album" -- without seeking permission from the artists or their labels. But the noteworthy part wasn't EMI's move against Burton. It was how quickly the Web rallied to his defense. More than 100 Web sites offered "The Grey Album" for unauthorized, free downloading as part of an ad-hoc "Grey Tuesday" protest on Feb. 24.

Today's digital technologies make repurposing all kinds of media much easier, and for all sorts of purposes, too -- promotional, artistic, even duplicitous ones. Consider the political snafu over the doctored photo that got zapped around the Internet in February, purporting to show Sen. John F. Kerry (D- Mass.), a presidential hopeful, sitting beside Jane Fonda at a 1971 rally against the Vietnam War. It took a few days for the media to realize the hoax - - that Hanoi Jane had been dropped into the vintage photo courtesy of an image editor.

The Kerry photo and "The Grey Album" dust-ups hint at bigger battles to come from a generation getting its hands on emerging technology that makes it a snap to sample and blend published photos with recorded music, digital books, live TV broadcasts and even -- can this be stopped? -- Hollywood's prized blockbuster films.

It is easy for me to envision all kinds of nefarious video hoaxes roiling politics and Hollywood, especially since lately I've also been testing a Gateway computer running Microsoft Corp.'s Media Center Edition operating system. For those unfamiliar with this son-of-Tivo technology, Microsoft's Media Center software runs on PCs equipped with TV tuners, allowing you to record TV shows to the computer's hard drive with the click of a remote control. You can also burn your recorded shows to DVDs in case you want to play them later on a TV or portable DVD player.

I happened to have recorded the Super Bowl halftime show while I was testing the Media Center PC, and it's easy for me to imagine creative ways to repurpose those few seconds of video.

My experiments have convinced me it is only a matter of time before millions of consumers will be doing things like creating custom concert videos of their favorite artists. They'll mix and match video from TV shows and DVD recordings which they (hopefully) will have acquired legally -- much as music fans have been creating custom music discs and tapes for years.

Record companies and Hollywood studios may not willingly cede control over how future fans watch stars perform, but it's hard to imagine how they could lock down digital video so tightly that clever youngsters won't eventually find ways around them. Already, the Internet abounds with freely available software that lets consumers circumvent copy-protection systems used on commercial DVD movies and concerts.

But as with music, it's also possible that the rip-and-mix generation will actually wind up buying more recorded video than before, all the better to fuel their digital creativity.

Roll over Time Warner, tell Vivendi the news.
http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=6647


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Industry Panel Debates File-Sharing Future

Head honchos of the entertainment industry met yesterday to discuss the shaky future of Internet file-sharing.
Jason Amirhadji, Cavalier Daily (University of Virginia)

(U-WIRE) WASHINGTON - Representatives from the file-sharing, film and recording industries are still at odds over the future of Internet downloading.

A group of industry executives -- including leaders from the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Verizon Communications and major file-sharing software companies -- and consumer advocates held a panel discussion yesterday at the D.C. Bar Association to an audience of over 40 members, mostly lawyers, to discuss the emerging landscape for content distribution over the Internet.

The panel was moderated by Robert Kasunic, the principal legal advisor for the U.S. Copyright office.

The discussion highlighted a fundamental rift between content industry and those representing file-sharing interests, panelists agreed.

As lawsuits continue to be filed against individuals accused of illegally sharing copyrighted works over the Internet, the RIAA is hoping to make a significant dent in the social acceptance of music downloading, said Stanley Pierre-Louis, the association's vice president for legal affairs.

"The suits are a means to an end," Pierre-Louis said. "People are responding positively to [the lawsuits], believe it or not."

He said the industry has been encouraged by the relative success of paid-distribution programs, such as Apple's iTunes software, which allows users to purchase songs protected with Digital Rights Management software.

When prompted by Adam M. Eisgau, executive director of P2P United, an alliance of five companies which distribute popular file-sharing programs, only one audience member agreed with Pierre-Louis in foreseeing the eventual demise of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as a result of current and future lawsuits and litigation.

Instead of such measures, Eisgau promoted an alternative approach of restructuring copyright law to meet the demands of modern Internet distribution, making it easier for content creators to be compensated for file-sharing activity.

"The question is how to [create] customers out of people who engage in file sharing," he said.

The suggestion was met with a cool reception by representatives from the music and film industries.

"We don't believe that this is a beneficial, productive way to compensate the content creator," said David E. Green, vice president and counsel for the MPAA.

Michael Goodwin, legal council for Public Knowledge, an organization which describes itself as an advocate for a fair and balanced approach to copyright and technology policy, offered what he considered to be the consumer's perspective as a middle-ground between both sides of the debate.

"Sharing music is an underlying design feature of human culture," he said. "I'd like to think in a democracy that trusting individuals with those prerogatives is the right thing to do."

Sarah B. Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon, an Internet Service Provider, agreed that regulation was stifling the industry. Deutsch offered the example of the printing press as another revolutionary means of distributing information that was initially opposed.

"ISPs are a conduit function," she said. "We shouldn't be in the business of monitoring this content."
http://www.datelinealabama.com/artic..._news_art.php3


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VLC Will Play iTunes Music Store Tracks
Cory Doctorow

My favorite media player is something called Video LAN Client, or VLC, which plays everything from Quicktime to Divx and RealVideo. It's free and open source, and improves steadily. Now, someone's hacked in support for M4Ps, the DRM format used by Apple for the iTunes Music Store singles. Alas, it requires that you be using a machine that's been authorized by Apple to play the tracks in question.

That's a pretty big problem for me. Let me tell you my iTunes horror story. I'm a great Apple customer. I buy a new Powerbook every ten months or so. I've convinced all my family members to buy Powerbooks. Wherever I go, I leave a wake of Apple customers behind me.

So last year, when the iTMS debuted, I was in Toronto, and I showed my Mom how to stream music off of my Powerbook. I even authorized her to play my iTMS tracks -- I spent about $50 in the first day that the store was online.

Then I got back to San Francisco, and everything was fine. Apple announced the Aluminum 15" Powerbook, and that day, I ordered one to replace my 10-month-old 12" Powerbook, which was dying and underpowered. The 15" machine died a week after it arrived. I sent it back to Apple as a lemon and it was broken up for parts and a new machine was sent to me. I restored my data to the new Powerbook's HDD and tried to authorize iTunes to play my music, but I was SOL: I'd already authorized my old 12", my mom's iBook, and the Powerbook that was now back in Apple's parts- stream. So I de-authorized the 12" and away we went.

The first run of Alumninum Powerbooks had a screen defect, the "white blobs" problem. I had it in spades: huge, distracting white blobs all over the screen. Once I had the time, I moved all my data over to the old 12" and send the new machine back to Apple a second time, this time to get a new screen. While the new machine was in Texas getting repaired, I was in San Francisco, and I attempted to use the iTunes on my 12" Powerbook, only to be prompted to authorize the machine to play my susbtantial, expensive library of iTMS tracks.

But I couldn't. Between my mom's iBook (3,000 miles away in another country), my original Powerbook (broken up for parts by Apple) and the replacement Powerbook (back in the shop due to a manufacturing defect), I'd done all the authorizations that Apple's "speed bump" DRM would allow me. The Help links on Apple's site went to pages with support forms that returned errors when I filled them in. So, the "FairPlay" system was punishing me for:

Buying so much iTMS music that burning it to CD and ripping it back as MP3 (and re-entering all the metadata) was too big a chore to contemplate
Buying a new Powerbook at full retail every 10 months
Buying new Powerbooks as soon as they are announced, before all the manufacturing bugs have been shaken out

Apple tells us that its DRM "keeps honest users honest." I'm a pretty honest user. Apple's DRM hasn't kept me honest, though: it's kept me angry with Apple. It's kept me feeling like a sucker for giving them my money. It's kept me in chains.

So I'm waiting for someone to hack support for unauthorized AACs into VLC, because I'm not confident in my ability to continue to authorize the machines I buy to play the music I pay for. Link (via Hack the Planet)

DVD Jon has written in with more info on this -- once you crack your music with VLC, you can play it on as many CPUs as you want
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/26...ay_itunes.html


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E-book Vendors Fail, Canadian Reader Left Without Easy Access To Books
David Rothman

The headline in the Montreal Gazette tells the story well: Versaware a casualty of Internet crash. Company went out of business in 2001, so software is no longer available to download on the Web. A Gazette reader complains of no longer being able to read the e-books he downloaded from an outfit called Xoom, which in turn relied on coding from Versaware. Both companies are apparently kaput after hard times or at least are very hard to find.

Would-be Microsofts and proprietary formats: Dangerous mix

Could similar disasters eventually happen to customers of Palm Digital Media or other e-book-related companies? Remember how invincible Gemstar's e-book operation once looked? Just wait until Microsoft wakes up from hibernation and really cares about e-books again. Readers trusting PDM and similar firms could well be the losers, not just the software people foolish enough to think they can beat Microsoft at its own proprietary game. With proprietary formats and DRM, you may well be renting a book, not buying it. Even if the software still exists, the hardware to read it from may not. It will be derelict of the e-book industry not to come up with a Universal Consumer Format (and if elements of the e-book files can be separately archived, then so much the better).

Still boycotting

So far I have yet to "buy" e-books in proprietary formats. The best way to be an e-book booster is to vote with your wallet and let the industry know that you won't put up with obvious consumer abuse. Many people grasp this instinctively. While e-book sales are growing rapidly, they're still a pathetic speck of p-book sales. When will the Open eBook Forum understand? People either want to borrow books from libraries or own them for real.

Advice for librarians: Do experiment with e-books but don't overdo it. Beware of gambling too much money on proprietay formats--at least not without assurances that your investments will be protected with replacements. Of course, that might play into the hands of outfits like OverDrive. OD is a major DRM-related vendor that juggles around four formats and perhaps will say, "Look, we're here to protect you"--when OverDrive itself is part of the problem.

Detail: A Xoom.com exists but apparently not as the same company. As for Versaware, some kind of site seems to be trying to come up, but won't display in either Internet Explorer or Netscape. A whois says that Versaware.com is owned by a company called The HolmesGroup. That site, in turn, does not mention e-books, just small appliances; apparently it just wanted the name "Versaware."

Noticed: The LawMeme at Yale, where they apparently like their books to last, has just blogged the above. Hey, Ernie, thanks for caring about this pathetically stunted industry!

Software tracks P2Pers and e-mailers

From a press release from Digital Containers, seller of "SuperDRM" The central concept of "Tracking Electronic Content" is that access to electronic content can be tracked as it passes from user to user, whether they use the Internet, peer-to-peer networks, e-mail or physical media. The tracking function is accomplished by sending and receiving notification information as each successive user accesses or attempts to access the electronic content. The notification information can include any of the following: --The user's name, email address or credit card number --Demographic data collected from the user interactively --System or network identification information derived from the user's computer. (Found via eBookAd.)
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2004_03...80138042298048


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Save the Orphans
Lawrence Lessig

So the Stanford Center for Internet and Society has filed an action on behalf of the Internet Archive and the Prelinger Archive challenging unconditional copyright restrictions that “orphan” works. Relying upon the silver lining in that dark cloud that was Eldred v. Ashcroft (“But when, as in this case, Congress has not altered the traditional contours of copyright protection, further First Amendment scrutiny is unnecessary”), this case challenges a fundamental change in the contour of copyright protection, and asks the district court to therefore provide “further First Amendment scrutiny.”

The fundamental change in the “traditional contours of copyright protection” is Congress’s abandonment (formally in 1976, but effectively only in 1992) of any formalities for copyrighted work, and in particular, the requirement that copyrights be renewed. In 1992, Congress passed the BCIA, extending the term of all works in their initial term in 1964 through 1978. The Sonny Bono Act then extended those terms in 1998. The CTEA was thus the first statute in the history of the US generally to extend the term of copyrights that did not, or would not, pass through the filter of renewal.

The case is described on the CIS site. The complaint is linked here.

Pundit watch: you’ll be able to identify a pundit who has not read either Eldred or the complaint when they suggest the case is the same as Eldred was. It is not. Indeed, the claims are fundamentally different. The only relation between the two is that Kahle/Prelinger v. Ashcroft follows the rules suggested in Eldred for challenging Congress’s transformation of the traditional contours of copyright law. Eldred said: tradition matters. This case says: the tradition was radically changed.

If the case were to prevail, Congress would have to reenact the Sonny Bono Act to protect non-orphaned works. Of course, there’d be more opposition now, so it’s not clear such a law would pass, but under Eldred, they’d be free to do so. Or, alternatively, Congress might moot the case by passing a law that effectively imposed a renewal requirement. Say, for example, the PDEA.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001796.shtml


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Nader Wins Priceless Fair Use Victory v. MasterCard
Jason Schultz

Back in 2000, Ralph Nader ran a bunch of ads critiquing the corporate interests behind the Bush and Gore campaigns. To make his point, he used the style and some of ideas behind MasterCard's "Priceless" ad campaign -- specifically calling out the dollar amounts that corporate interests paid to candidates to secure their positions on the issues.

MasterCard sued Nader and his campaign committee, claiming that use of the ads violated copyright and trademark laws. My old firm, Fish & Richardson, defended Nader claiming that any similarity to the ads was protected by the fair use doctrine. Mastercard moved for a TRO against Nader and lost but continued to press the case toward trial.

Today, after four years of discovery battles and summary judgment briefing, the trial court ruled that Nader's use was, in fact, fair. A strong victory against overzealous copyright and trademark ownership and for non-commercial political speech.
http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2...wins_pric.html


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Light Weight DRM?
Derek Slater

That's what Fraunhofer is calling their new project. See this fawning Wired article (gotta be a stringer) for the dumbed down version - the site is pretty straightforward.

The basics: Light Weight DRM (LWDRM) itself does not directly impede the manipulation and copying of copyrighted content. Instead, to make certain uses (as determined by copyright holders), users will have to include a certificate, provided by a third party, that both links the file to the user and includes the necessary decryption key. In addition, Fraunhofer intends to implement watermarks, though this seems like a minor part of LWDRM. Regardless, the point is to allow copyright holders to identify the origin of content distributed in an infringing manner. Those users could then be sued for infringement. LWDRM accepts and expects that infringement will still occur on a small scale, alongside perfectly legitimate copying for family and friends. Fraunhofer only expects that LWDRM will help stop large scale infringement, particularly over P2P networks.

Notably, Fraunhofer says that this will encourage people to share only with trustworthy parties - sound a lot like Clay Shirky's File-Sharing Goes Social (in addition to those saying "share with friends not with strangers").

Sounds good, at least at the outset, but it's got problems. Some may be technical - though I'm no expert, I know that at least watermarking is difficult (see summary in this interesting doc). The public key infrastructure part seems plausible and interesting, but everything is evadable (see Darknet paper). I can't imagine being much harder to evade than your typical music store's DRM. There are also some privacy issues, though Fraunhofer intends the key signing to be pseudonymous and all done with a "trusted" third party.

I'm also not sure how much it will actually achieve its aim. LWDRM's tries to stop infringement before the fact by enhancing the after infringement threat of a lawsuit. Just like other DRM, it does nothing to actually stop the spread of the copy once its on P2P; the only difference between this and other DRM is that LWDRM actually lets you spread a functioning copy over P2P. With this in mind, does this add anything to the current threat of lawsuits? Does the possibility of having downstream infringements traced back to you really add to people's fears? Moreover, it is unclear to what extent LWDRM would make it more likely that one could be successfully sued. Some uses that involve sharing with friends will be perfectly legitimate. If the first user's sharing is legitimate, but the receiving second user decides to share the file, it doesn't help that you know where the copy originated - the initial sharing could still be legit. There's room for some plausible deniability. Even if the first sharing was infringing, that does not necessarily make the the first user responsible for the second person's infringement, and thus LWDRM won't necessarily lead to enhanced penalties.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2004/03/23#a638


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When Copyright Law Meets The 'Mash-Up'

Sampling has spawned new art forms — and a complex battle over how to treat them.
Jon Healey and Richard Cromelin

Record producer Brian Burton knew he'd done something technically illegal when he electronically blended tracks from the Beatles' "White Album" and vocals from Jay-Z's "The Black Album" into a CD called "The Grey Album."

But he was so excited by the mix of Fab Four riffs and Jay-Z raps that he badly wanted people to hear it. "When I was finished, it was the biggest sense of accomplishment I've had over anything," he said. So in January, the Los Angeles-based Burton, who records as DJ Danger Mouse, made a couple of thousand copies of the disc and started mailing them out.

His wish to be heard has come true many times over, although not in the way he expected. On Feb. 10 the Beatles' record company, EMI Music, stopped Burton from distributing "The Grey Album." That action triggered an online revolt that led tens of thousands of people to download digital copies of the CD, generating enough buzz to draw reviews from such mainstream outlets as CNN.

EMI's move against Danger Mouse was a spectacular backfire in the war over what's fair when the muse runs afoul of copyright law in the Digital Age. Technology is making it easier than ever to sample and rework recordings, and to the chagrin of entertainment companies and some artists who hold copyrights, the public is showing little sympathy for their efforts to control original works.

Fred E. Goldring, a Beverly Hills-based music-industry lawyer, likened EMI's response to "The Grey Album" to the major labels' earlier mishandling of the Napster file-sharing service. "By creating a controversy and trying to shut it down, they actually attracted more interest in it," Goldring says. "They created their own hell." He adds, "It became probably the most widely downloaded, underground indie record, without radio or TV coverage, ever. I think it's a watershed event."

That's the dilemma faced by entertainment companies and other copyright holders in a sampling, file-sharing world. The law may be black and white, but among artists and audiences, the creative landscape has been remixed in shades of gray.

A landmark skirmish

The main force behind the online release of Burton's album was a loosely organized confederation of websites and online activists who believe copyright holders in general, and the major record labels in particular, have gone too far in trying to enforce their rights.

To them, "The Grey Album" epitomized how new digital tools allow artists to build on earlier works in unexpected ways, enriching society by turning old creations into new ones — this time by using the originals as raw material, not just inspiration.

It's not in the public interest to hold back that kind of creativity, argued the free-"The Grey Album" forces. So despite threats from EMI's lawyers, they recruited more than 150 websites to offer downloadable versions of the work on Feb. 24 as part of a protest called Grey Tuesday.

It was a landmark skirmish in a battle that dates to the mid-'80s, when digital recorders, or "samplers," found their way into studios. Soon hip-hop artists were routinely borrowing snippets of sounds from LPs without seeking permission from the artists who recorded them or from their labels.

Those freewheeling days didn't last long. Objections from R&B giant James Brown, among others, forced some samplers to pay for the material they used. Then, in 1991, a federal judge in New York staggered the sampling world by granting British songwriter Raymond "Gilbert" O'Sullivan's request for an injunction against rapper Biz Markie, who had built a song around samples from O'Sullivan's biggest U.S. hit, "Alone Again (Naturally)."

Not only did U.S. District Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy order the rapper's label to reclaim and destroy every unsold copy of the offending record, but he also referred the case to the U.S. attorney's office for possible prosecution. Biz Markie wasn't hauled back into court, but Duffy had sent a clear — and chilling — message to everyone in the field.

Today, most copyright experts say that the rule on sampling is pretty clear. With limited exceptions, artists can't use a recognizable sample from someone else's recording unless the copyright holder grants permission. The copyright holder is in the driver's seat, able to set the price for a sample (ranging from a few hundred dollars to a share of the revenue from the song) or to withhold permission entirely.

The Beatles, for one, have never given their approval to any sampling requests. Jay-Z, on the other hand, doesn't seem to mind. He released a vocals-only version of "The Black Album," which was widely viewed as an open invitation to people like Burton to use his work. (The Beatles did not respond to requests for comment on "The Grey Album." Jay-Z was not available but said through a representative, "I applaud creativity in any form.")

As Grey Tuesday organizers see it, the law gives copyright owners too much control, in part because getting permission to sample an existing work is rarely as simple as one artist calling another and asking. They tend to peg the artists' record labels as the bad guys and unsung musicians as the victims.

"Sampling is something that's been sort of made illegal by the major labels over the last decade and a half," says Nicholas Reville, co-founder of Downhill Battle, an independent-music advocacy group based in Worcester, Mass., that spearheaded efforts to distribute Burton's work.

"It sounds hyperbolic, but they really have banned an art form from the mainstream. This wasn't about getting whatever album for free just to defy the major labels, it was about making sure that they weren't able to censor this work of art and about [demonstrating] why there needs to be a reasonable and practical sampling right."

"Reasonable" and "practical," though, are somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Ask Dexter Holland, the lead singer of the Offspring, how he'd feel if someone mixed his band's hit album "Smash" with, say, Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde," and he says: "Honestly, I'd be flattered. I would think that would be a good thing. That's a tough line, like exactly how can you control your music in all ways and all respects?"

Of course, if someone sold that remix, "that would be a different story," the Huntington Beach-based musician says. "But in terms of just having it, putting it up for people to listen to, I think that's totally fine."
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedi...ll=cl-calendar


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P2P Telephones Illegal In South Africa, Monopoly Telcom Claims

Legal Threat to Skype Users
Rodney Weidemann


Johannesburg - People using peer-to-peer (P2P) 'network bypass' software to make cheap international telephone calls over the Internet may yet face action for illegal practices.

According to Andrew Weldrick, senior manager for media relations at Telkom, the incumbent is currently the only operator licensed to carry and land international voice traffic, although the second national operator (SNO) will have the same rights once it is granted its licence.

"As far as Telkom is concerned, 'network bypass' software is illegal and - although it is difficult to police - if we feel there has been a transgression in this regard, we can investigate and file a complaint with the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA), and it will then take the necessary legal action," says Weldrick.

It is estimated that thousands of South Africans have downloaded the Skype software program, which is available free and allows users to make international calls from the Internet at no extra cost, although the full extent of its use in SA is unknown.

Developed by the same people that created the KaZaa P2P music file-swapping network, Skype's only operating cost is for users to allow their computers to become part of the P2P network and provide processing time for the routing of other calls on the network.

Weldrick says that while this technology has not had any significant impact on Telkom's revenues at this point, the company will be keeping an eye on the issue and will seek legal redress if it feels this is necessary.

"Given that our revenue for outgoing traffic is not a large part of our overall revenue, we are not overly concerned at present, but in terms of a legal and regulatory perspective, this remains a key issue, as it is an infringement of our rights."

Laws need overhaul

Ray Webber, spokesman for the Communications Users Association of SA (CUASA), says that according to the law, this practice is illegal and anyone using this technology is doing so at their own risk, as the monopoly would be fully within its rights to take legal action.

"However, the realities of technology development mean that the law is, in effect, lagging behind and we feel the whole Telecommunications Act needs a serious rethink, because technology has moved on since the Act was promulgated," says Webber.

"CUASA is definitely in favour of this and we believe this is the point of the draft Convergence Bill - we hope the final Convergence Act will help to resolve a lot of the issues that surround new technology such as this."

He says people should be allowed to experiment with new technologies, and technology growth and development should not be stunted because of laws that are badly in need of an overhaul.

"People should have the choice of whether they want to use this technology or not. After all, if I invent a car that can run on half the petrol an ordinary one uses, I shouldn't be prevented from using it just because it will affect the revenues of the big petrol companies," he says.

"Ultimately, CUASA's position on this is that people should not use this technology now as it is patently illegal, but they should band together to lobby for changes to be made in legislation that would result in such programs being declared legal."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200403250016.html


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VoIP Provider To Block Eavesdroppers
Ben Charny

Net-phoning provider VoicePulse says it plans to use encryption to secure calls, part of an industry trend that could pull in business customers but raise problems for law enforcement wiretaps.

The company announced the move on Tuesday at the Spring 2004 Voice on the Net Conference & Expo here, where industry executives spoke on the growing adoption of encryption security as an added service feature.

VoicePulse said the new feature will prevent electronic or traditional eavesdropping on customers' phone calls. It encrypts the part of the
call that travels alongside other data on the public Internet, the first time this approach has been taken by a commercial voice over Internet Protocol service provider (VoIP), according to VoicePulse.

VoicePulse President Ravi Sakaria said he believes the company's competitors, which now include AT&T, will also make it standard to protect the data in calls from being captured by outsiders. He said it will ease privacy concerns, satisfying current subscribers and making voice calling over the Internet more palatable to potential business customers.

"Encryption will not cost extra, and we do intend to encrypt every call on all plans," Sakaria said. "As a service provider, we feel that providing encryption is a requirement, not an option."
http://news.com.com/2100-7352-5181428.html


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Ever hear his stuff?

Hatch's Legislative Acumen Exceeded Only By His Musical Talent
John Paczkowski

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who once said he favored developing new technology that would disable the computers of people who illegally exchange music and movie files over P2P networks (see "Orrin Hatch's staff makes quick appointment for medication review"), is in full manic mode again. On Thursday, Hatch introduced legislation that would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. Dubbed the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 200," (PIRATE), the bill would ensure hefty fines and prison time of up to 10 years for anyone convicted of file sharing. Hatch explained the inspiration for the bill in some remarkably alarmist declarations to the United States Senate:

"Recently, some unscrupulous corporations may have exploited new technologies and discovered that the narrow scope of civil contributory liability for copyright infringement can be utilized so that ordinary consumers and children become, in effect, 'human shields' against copyright owners and law enforcement agencies. Unscrupulous corporations could distribute to children and students a 'piracy machine' designed to tempt them to engage in copyright piracy or pornography distribution. Unfortunately, piracy and pornography could then become the cornerstones of a 'business model.' At first, children and students would be tempted to infringe copyrights or redistribute pornography. Their illicit activities then generate huge advertising revenues for the architects of piracy. Those children and students then become 'human shields' against enforcement efforts that would disrupt the flow of those revenues. Later, large user-bases and the threat of more piracy would become levers to force American artists to enter licensing agreements in which they pay the architects of piracy to distribute and protect their works on the Internet. Federal enforcement action is surely warranted if such 'business models' are driving the increasing ease of piracy on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. Such business models exploit children, cheat artists, and threaten the future development of commerce on the Internet."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...sv/8304740.htm


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Behind The Lawsuit Madness
Chuck Solitude

It is safe to say many know of a source to download material on the Internet. A plethora of programs exist, only keystrokes away from being downloaded to the dismay of the establishment. Who is right? Who is wrong?

Before the summer of 2003, those who downloaded never would have believed or conceived of being labeled a criminal. Today, one must be careful not to be caught offguard. Ever since the lawsuits have started to fly, many have sought ways to safeguard themselves and others from the wrath of the RIAA, and indications show the MPAA will soon join in suing those who share content over the Internet. It is their belief that file-sharing is stealing - without any excuses. So many times, articles are reported about “John Does” being sued.

As early as July 2003, warning signals were starting to appear.

The RIAA is in the beginning stages of a campaign to stamp out music piracy by bringing civil lawsuits against consumers. While many question the advantages of suing your customers, I would like to point out how this policy could potentially devastate innocent users. Source: http://clearstatic.org:2396/node/view/185

Yet they slipped up on September 15, 2003, in their initial stages of a campaign that looks more like a declaration of war.

The music industry could have been seen as a victim - a generations-old industry being robbed blind by thieves depriving hard-working artists of their livelihoods.

But the Recording Industry Association of America, representing the largest record labels in the world, sued Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old girl who lives with her single mother and younger brother in public housing in New York City. Source: http:// http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...ss/6775671.htm

On and on it goes. They still claim we are just thieves. Holding us all in the same light as those who reproduce copies for only one reason, profit. When will those enlightened realize a difference between one who downloads for personal use as opposed to those who download or copy for the sole purpose of profit? Would it make sense that those who download for personal use would buy that work at a later time?

Recently on February 26, 2003 the EFF proposed compulsory licenses here:

EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann, speaking as part of a panel on peer-to-peer music sharing, proposed that music fans pay a small monthly fee – perhaps $5 – to share files with impunity, using whatever software they like. The money could be collected by a central organization and then distributed among those who own the rights to the songs, based on popularity.

The idea has worked before. Broadcast radio stations paid a similar flat fee to ASCAP and BMI – organizations representing songwriters, composers and music publishers – to play their music as much as they wanted, he said.

David Sutphen, vice president of government relations for the RIAA, immediately pooh-poohed the idea. File sharers still would search out a way to download music for free, he said, and under the proposed system, all music would have the same value, which doesn’t make sense. One-hit wonder Vanilla’s Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” for example, would have the same value as The Beatles catalog.

He said these types of compulsory licenses are “not a wise or logical thing to do.” Source: http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/index.php?p=1366

The music industry has already been very clear that they see compulsory licensing in analog radio as having been one of their greatest setbacks/failures — and they made sure the DMCA took back as much as possible.

The record companies have seen the compulsory license in radio as a huge giveaway on their part, and the digital performance rights provisions in the DMCA are a specific effort to redress that "wrong." They’re not about to accept this, and they have aggressively tried to reframe the discussion around the idea that compulsory licensing is about putting a government agency in charge of something that should be the market’s business – an argument that failed when the 1976 copyright act bill was up for discussion, but has far more power in today’s political climate.

And yet the industry has lobbied for exemption from antitrust law.

Senator Orrin Hatch begins pushing legislation that would make the RIAA and MPAA exempt from anti-trust litigation. Hatch suggests the protection is needed due to certain "market realities".
Source: http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/11231

From the beginning, to win the battle over p2p, the RIAA and others in the industry have lobbied politicians, manipulated laws, and even filed improper proceedings in court to protect an outdated model of business. We are consumers are caught inside a vortex of greed and corruption only now becoming understood. The downloaders are scapegoats to an industry that has lacked vision and too full of pride to ride the wave of the future. Again the question is asked: Who is right? Who is wrong? Many forgot the oldest cliché of all in sales: The customer is always right.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=437


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Blur attacks BPI Music Download Warnings

Blur's Dave Rowntree has hit back at the BPI following the warnings it plans to issue to online song swappers.

The British Phonographic Industry is set to following the RIAA when they launch a new campaign threatening legal action against people who illegally use P2P or uploading music to the internet.

Its the first move by an industry trade association outside the US.

The BPI plan to send instant messages to peer-to-peer filesharing networks warning users that if they do not stop they may face legal action.

The drummer contacted NME following the news, he said "It's so difficult for artists to speak out without pointing fingers because artists make money from the sale of records and it's seen as if we want the best of both worlds."

"I'm certainly not saying 'File sharing is great but I also want to make a living out of selling records', Rowntree explained. "What I'm saying is if the BPI wanted to take a stand, then the time to take that stand was a number of years ago and do it in a kind of inclusive and grown-up way rather than now posturing and spitting like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. This will only lead to a bunch of 12 year- olds being taken to court as happened in the States which will serve nobody and nobody will make a penny."

Speaking about down P2P networks, Rowntree told NME.com "It's something that you can't un-invent. The time to have taken action would have been around the Napster time when Napster were holding out the olive branch - we should have taken it and started working with them to get models whereby people who downloaded music from the Internet paid for it so that it became commonplace from early on."

He added. "Since some bad decisions were taken then - now the whole industry is on the back foot."

"It's the musicians who generate the money - the record companies may think it's them but actually it's the musicians - so the will of the fans and the will of the musicians will out eventually, I have no doubt. But if the BPI want the bloody nose along the way fair enough, but as long as everybody's aware that it's not the performers who are doing this - it's the BPI."
http://www.dancefrontdoor.co.uk/article2776.html


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Note to self: don’t share crime data.

Crime Data On Cop's PC Accidentally Leaked To Net
Yomiuri Shimbun

Kyoto prefectural police announced Monday that names and addresses related to a criminal investigation that were saved on an officer's private laptop computer had mistakenly been circulated on the Internet.

According to police, the information was listed in 19 documents, including investigation reports and "wanted" lists that the officer, who works at a Shimogamo Police Station police box in Sakyo Ward, Kyoto, made for practice.

Twenty names were mentioned in the documents and 11 of them were names of actual persons, police said.

The information might have been circulated via peer-to-peer data-sharing software, according to police.

The police also suspect that a computer virus might have caused the distribution.

The officer saved investigation-related documents to a file on his private computer in 2002, according to Kyoto prefectural police.

As a way to practice making documents, the officer reportedly entered the names, birthdays, addresses and other personal data of people related to the crimes in the documents.

Detailed descriptions of the crimes were included in the documents distributed on the Internet, police said.

The officer had received permission to use his own computer for work.

A file of the 19 documents was saved to the hard drive and the whole file is believed to have been circulated on the Internet.

The Kyoto prefectural police suspect the information was spread when the officer logged onto the Internet at home or other places.

The police learned of the distribution on Friday morning when it was reported to the police's public relations division that the information was being circulated on the Internet.

The police have an internal regulation that prohibits officers from saving information that they learn in the line of duty to the hard drives of their personal computers.

The police are questioning the officer about the alleged violation.

Data exchange via a peer-to-peer data sharing software is not administered by any specific person.

Therefore, once data are circulated on the Internet via peer-to-peer data sharing software, they are virtually impossible to recover or delete.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040330wo27.htm


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Plumtree and Yahoo! Team to Deliver Instant Messaging for the Enterprise Web
Pres Release

Haynes and Boone Uses Real-Time Presence and Messaging in Its Enterprise Web Deployment

Enterprise Web leader Plumtree Software (Nasdaq: PLUM) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the integration of Yahoo! Messenger into Plumtree's Enterprise Web Suite. The new offering allows Plumtree customers to add presence awareness, instant messaging and application alerts into the service-oriented applications they create in their Enterprise Web deployments. By integrating IM into business applications, such as customer support or sales productivity applications, organizations can ensure that IM is used in a context that delivers business value in a secure and cost-effective way.
"Instant messaging is very popular in the enterprise market today, but until now, companies have not been able to use it as a corporate service embedded in their applications," said Glenn Kelman, vice president of marketing and product management at Plumtree. "What is most exciting about Yahoo! Messenger for the Enterprise Web Suite is that it combines the security and archiving of enterprise software with the low cost of ownership of a hosted service."

"Our combined service delivers business value unmatched in the marketplace, both in terms of functionality and quality," said Lisa Pollock Mann, senior director, Yahoo! Messenger. "The integration of Yahoo! Messenger with Plumtree's world-class Enterprise Web solution offers businesses an efficient and powerful new medium for real-time communication and sharing of key resources."
Haynes and Boone, LLP, an international law firm, added Yahoo! Messenger to its Enterprise Web deployment last November to accelerate collaboration on case work in both litigation and transactional practices. "We wanted to give our attorneys and staff the ability to communicate instantly and securely with one another and with clients through portal applications," said Thomas Wisinski, Chief Knowledge Officer of Haynes and Boone, LLP. "Yahoo! Messenger met our enterprise security requirements, and gives users instant access to collaborate in IM or through WebEx. The solution is useful as a back-channel communication tool and in the future we'll use it in a Virtual Helpdesk portal application."

Emphasizing the need to provide collaboration tools in the context of business applications, META analysts Matt Cain and Mike Gotta wrote that in the next decade, "Collaboration services such as instant messaging, Web conferencing and teamware will be ingrained in business processes, enabling a massive reduction in coordination costs across the enterprise ecosystem. Almost every business activity can be made more efficient by enabling users to plan, negotiate, brainstorm, and resolve conflicts within the context of a business process." (June 2003 report Collaboration and the Evolution of the Enterprise)
Instant messaging can be a core service of many Plumtree-powered applications. For example, a support application built with the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite and Yahoo! Messenger could allow customers to communicate directly with support technicians to resolve problems in real-time, logging and indexing the entire communication in the Enterprise Web's knowledge base. Or, in a research and development application, the IM solution could be used to facilitate collaboration between two pharmaceutical companies helping scientists see which of their peers are on line and communicate on research issues as they come up.

Integration and Availability

Yahoo! Messenger for the Enterprise Web Suite offers business-class features including administration, logging and integrated Web conferencing services in addition to text messaging and file transfer. The product includes 128 bit-encryption, spam control and virus scanning on incoming files, and allows for peer-to-peer messaging. As a hosted service with these features, Yahoo! Messenger gives organizations the encryption and control of a locally deployed instant messaging system without the hardware, deployment and administration costs of such a deployment.

The integration of Yahoo! Messenger into the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite also includes:

-- Unified user management: administrators manage one set of users for Plumtree and Yahoo! technologies;
-- Integrated activity rights management: administrators can govern instant messaging access alongside Enterprise Web privileges;
-- Contextual presence: online presence and user availability is embedded in several Plumtree applications; code samples jump-start the process of embedding presence into any customer application;
-- Notifications: event-driven alerts on documents, tasks and discussions within projects can be routed through Yahoo! Messenger, or to any mobile device;
-- Logging: Yahoo! Messenger conversations can be stored in projects and indexed for search; and
-- Presence: Status indication integrated throughout the Plumtree Enterprise Web solution.

Plumtree is now offering Yahoo! Messenger for the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite as a services engagement that includes one to two days of installation assistance from Plumtree Consulting Services, with a one-time installation fee of $5,000 plus a yearly per-user subscription to the instant messaging service*. Plumtree plans to standardize the integration between Yahoo! Messenger and the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite later this year.

Interested parties can see a demonstration and hear more details in an on-demand Web Seminar with registration available at www.plumtree.com/04/yahoo.
http://www.transformmag.com/news/pr_news.5i2.htm