Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Jan. 11th, ‘03

[JackSpratts]

3 For 3

By now it’s becoming more than just a little obvious even to the movie studios what’s been known to the rest of us for years - that the logic behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a seriously flawed piece of thinking. So flawed in fact that U.S. and European juries can’t understand why the things made illegal by the DMCA should actually apply to the people in the cases in front of them. No matter how much a prosecutor bellows that changing the DVD code to watch a movie is “tantamount to nothing less than wide scale, massive theft and fraud” the juries are thinking “wait a minute, how is it theft and fraud if the guy they sold the DVD to paid for it?” Not only have prosecutors failed in these arguments by losing the first two high profile cases brought before juries on all counts, but now in a well deserved slap to the faces of the evil twits responsible for this unfortunate piece of greedy legislation U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor just reversed her stay in a Texas/California case. Hollywood wants to be able to try anyone in a California court – no matter where a DMCA violation took place - whether in Hollywood, Texas or Katmandu. At first O'Connor inexplicably agreed with this sorry notion but upon reflection she’s backed away. Now short of getting the rest of the U.S. Supreme court to go along with a charade the studio lawyers will have to try each case in the location the violation occurred, and that’s a lot more expensive with results even more uncertain because the local juries aren’t necessarily inclined to buy into film industry rhetoric. Indeed they may be skeptical of it.

This isn’t the end, far from it – the D.M.C.A. is not D.E.A.D. - but it is a major crack in its armor.

Up until now Hollywood has won the legal battles even if they continue losing the actual war. In January they started losing the battles too. Three in a row.

Enjoy,

Jack.




'DVD Jon' Scores Huge Legal Victory

A Norwegian teenager who helped crack a code meant to protect the content of DVDs won full backing from an Oslo court on Tuesday. The court acquitted him on all charges, a ruling that comes as a crushing blow to public prosecutors and entertainment giants.

The case had been widely described as a "David vs Goliath" battle, pitting 16-year-old Jon Lech Johansen from a small town south of Oslo against huge corporations and organizations including the Motion Picture Association of America.

"David" clearly won.

Norwegian prosecutors, acting largely on a complaint from the powerful American entertainment industry, had maintained that Johansen acted illegally when he shared his DVD decryption code with others by putting it out on the Internet.

Prosecutors, who indicted Johansen after a raid on his bedroom three years ago, also had claimed the decryption code could enable pirate copying of DVDs. They seemed mostly interested in achieving victory in principle, rather than tough punishment for Johansen, and sought a sentence equivalent to three months on probation.

Instead, they lost badly. Johansen and his defense attorney Halvor Manshaus won on all counts, with the Oslo court ruling that Johansen did nothing wrong when he helped cracked the code on a DVD that was his own personal property.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/lo...ticleID=466519

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Mug’s the Word
Schwab

“Consider the reality of computers and digital media. Computers are machines that, among other things, make perfect copies of digital information. Indeed, computers as we understand them would not be able to function without this ability. Because of this, every computer is like a completely independent factory, fully capable of churning out artifacts identical in quality and characteristics to that of a "manufacturer." Thus, everyone who owns a computer possesses their very own fully-operational factory, which may be turned to whatever purpose its owner wishes. The distinction between a "user" and a "manufacturer", therefore, ceases to exist; all users are likewise manufacturers.

These characteristics have always been true of computers, nor have they ever been secret. Now, given this cold, hard reality, what kind of cretin would create a business model fundamentally based on their company being the sole source of manufactured artifacts, given that all their "customers" are also manufacturers?

It's a mug's game from the word, "Go," and anyone who tells you different has designs on your wallet.”
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=...ad&cid=5020042

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And the winner is ...
By Steve Gillmor

2003'S CHIEF disruptive technologist is a) Jack Valenti, b) Attorney General John Ashcroft, or c) Rob Lowe. OK, Rob Lowe is a bit harsh, letting a little thing such as his career get in the way of my fantasy alternate universe where Democrats roam the West Wing and Florida never happened.

But Valenti and Ashcroft are all too real. As head of the Motion Picture Association, Valenti has led the effort to criminalize fair use sharing and prop up the entertainment industry's fading business model. He has retarded the adoption of peer-to-peer decentralized technologies, advanced the DRM (digital rights management) lock-in strategy that proved unworkable in software copyright protection, and seeded draconian legislation that favors legacy stakeholders at the expense of emerging business models.

The attorney general has done his part to disrupt the IT revolution, opting out of individual liberties and into disbanding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to the Washington Post, Ashcroft's Department of Justice cited the Sept. 11 attacks in justifying a directive sent to federal FOIA officers.

As Ashcroft's deconstruction of the Bill of Rights gathers steam on Capitol Hill, Wi-Fi is coming under similar attack across the Potomac at the Pentagon. As InfoWorld reported, the Department of Defense is worried about possible interference between military radar systems and 5GHz frequencies in the 802.11a range, not the 2.4GHz range used by 802.11b devices.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op...106opcurve.xml

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Tech industry to launch new Washington lobbying effort
Heather Fleming Phillips

The high-tech industry plans to launch a sophisticated new lobbying campaign later this
month to strike back against Hollywood in a battle to shape rules of the road for new digital technologies.

The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project -- two prominent high-tech trade groups representing Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley heavyweights -- are forming a new coalition and working to enlist support from consumer and business groups.

They hope to convince Congress that strict copy-protection legislation setting technological mandates would stifle innovation, harm consumers and threaten an already-suffering tech industry.

``These things have a very big impact on our industry and on Intel,'' said Intel lobbyist Doug Comer. ``It's not just about, `Are we driving up the price of the chip?' It's about what kind of future is being created for digital consumers.''

The entertainment industry had the upper hand in the battle last year, with a carefully orchestrated lobbying campaign and bills introduced by powerful lawmakers. Hollywood-backed legislation filed by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Los Angeles, would embed copy protection into PCs and an array of consumer devices.

But the legislation had consequences that Walt Disney and other backers hadn't bargained for. It served as a rallying cry for consumer groups and tech companies to fight for consumers rights to make copies of CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, as they do with TV shows and audio tapes.

The political winds have shifted in Washington over the past year, and a Hollings-style bill isn't expected to get far in the new Congress.

``Nothing is going to go through without a great deal of public scrutiny,'' said Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, a public-interest advocacy group that promotes consumers' digital rights.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/4861776.htm

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They Buy all the Albums, but Trade Concert Bootlegs
Matthew Mirapaul

Marc Daniel added 1,400 albums to his compact disc collection last year. But he is not waging a campaign to reverse the music industry's declining sales. Almost all the titles he acquired, by groups like the Grateful Dead and U2, were live concert recordings that were never officially released. Nor did he buy them in record shops. Instead, he used the Internet to trade for them, swapping copies of his discs for recordings he desired. He said his CD trading with its questionable legality and exhilarating musical payoff was like "a coke run without any drugs."

While the Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam and other bands allow their shows to be recorded and freely exchanged, many do not. Trafficking in unauthorized sound recordings is a violation of federal copyright law as well as a felony in more than 30 states. Yet online traders don't seem troubled. Mr. Daniel said he copies about 90 discs a day to fulfill trades he has arranged. It's all about bliss. "I don't feel like a criminal," he said. "What I'm doing is bringing joy to people and bringing joy to me."

Bootlegs are unauthorized recordings, mostly of live performances, that were never meant to be released by musicians and their labels. Bootleg CD's are different from counterfeit CD's, which are illegitimate copies of official releases. There are markets for both.

Even in cases where bands do not sanction live recordings, traders rationalize their actions. First and foremost, they say, they do not cost the musicians any sales because they already own all their favorite band's official albums. More important, they argue that they are documenting musical history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/ar...rtne r=GOOGLE

nyt –
nick: bobbob
pass: bobbob

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More Cities Set Up Wireless Networks
John Markoff

Add urban renewal to the growing list of reasons to deploy wireless computing networks.

The city of Long Beach, Calif., plans to announce on Friday that it will make free wireless Internet access available in its downtown area as part of an effort to attract visitors and companies to the business district. The city will use the increasingly popular standard known as Wi-Fi, which lets personal computers and other hand-held devices connect to the Internet without wires at high speed.

The new service is one of the first examples of a city's setting up a free wireless Internet system. It is being supported in part by equipment donations from a group of companies, with the city underwriting the $2,500 annual cost of an Internet connection.

The project will initially provide wireless service to a four-block area around the city's convention district along Pine Street, but there are plans to extend the network to other Long Beach neighborhoods including the marina and the airport, said Bruce Mayes, the acting technology officer for the Long Beach Economic Development Bureau.

He said the city wanted to expand its high technology base and viewed the network as a good way to advertise its commitment.

Long Beach is one of a growing number of cities and community groups that are considering free wireless Internet access. A number of cities are exploring the idea of installing such networks in downtown areas or throughout entire communities; they include San Francisco; Seattle; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Lodi, Calif.

"You can think of these as urban renewal projects," said Douglas H. Klein, the chief executive of Vernier Networks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/te...gy/06WIFI.html

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Cleveland Library to Download Books
Ken Magill

The Cleveland Public Library announced plans yesterday for an electronic book-lending service it claims will be the first in the country to offer e-books readable on almost any PC or personal digital assistant.

The service, set to debut in March, will let patrons borrow e-book versions of the latest works of best-selling authors such as Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, Tony Hillerman, Clive Barker and Joyce Carol Oates, according to the Cleveland Public Library.

"In the past, e-books were loaded on a device and the device itself was loaned, or a lot of libraries had 'Netlibrary' or 'Ebrary' where you could download it to your computer, but you couldn't download it to your Palm ... and that's why e-books haven't taken off in libraries," said Sari Feldman, deputy director, Cleveland Public Library.

Another reason library e-book programs haven't taken off, she said, is "libraries had e- books nobody wanted to read."

Indeed, Cleveland Public Library's current e-book program offers CliffsNotes and other little-used business titles. It hopes to debut its new e-book program with about 1,000 titles.

To develop the service, the library bought a technology/service called Digital Library Reserve from OverDrive Inc. for a $50,000 set-up fee.

OverDrive, also in Cleveland, has digital distribution deals with HarperCollins Publishers, McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press, Scholastic Inc., John Wiley & Sons, Penton Technology Media and others, giving customers the option of buying e-books from those publishers or offering content of their own.

The service also allows consumers, or patrons in the case of a library, to download and borrow audio books.

After the loan period is complete, the e-book automatically becomes unusable. As a result, e-book borrowers don't have to worry about late fees.

Also, Digital Library Reserve offers publishers "digital rights management" by, for example, letting them disable printing, cutting, pasting and file-sharing functions on their e-books and preventing library patrons from printing them out.
http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artpre...ticle_id=22629

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Small Storage Devices Hit a Higher Capacity

Sony's Memory Stick and Secure Digital cards will soon offer 1GB of space, and Hitachi's MicroDrives are heading even higher.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108640,00.asp

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Country sales grow as other music declines
Jeanne Naujeck

Crossover artists' late releases boost album totals for 2002

Country music bucked the trend of declining album sales last year, posting a 12.3% gain, while sales in all music categories went down 8.7%.

If not for the strong country showing, overall album sales would have declined 11% for the year, according to sales figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan, which
tracks album shipments.

''Our younger buyers are telling us they are buying significantly less albums because they're finding what they want for free on the Internet,'' Rosen said.

But at least one analyst thinks the music industry is using digital piracy as a scapegoat.

Phil Leigh, vice president of technology research for Raymond James in St Petersburg, Fla., said a 9% sales drop could not be blamed on file sharing or CD burners.

''One, they continue to increase CD prices, and that always reduces units sold,'' Leigh said. ''Second, there was a pickup in DVDs and video game sales, so they're facing competition for entertainment dollars. Third, the record companies reduced the number of releases from their artists this year.
http://www.tennessean.com/local/arch...nt_ID=27302761

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“These fine students are training to fight a war in behalf of our country, and they should be allowed to listen to a little music in their spare time.”
Get a load of this: Arch conservative Phyllis Schlafly takes on the copyright mob!

Copyright extremists shouldn't control information

Copyright extremists are working to control as much information as possible. Almost every week we see a new example of how they are thwarting the free flow of information.

The leaders of the copyright lobby are the Hollywood movie distributors and the major music corporations known as music labels. The latter don’t create any music; they just market and distribute CDs with music after they acquire control of the copyrights.

The major music labels operate through a lobbying organization called the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to maintain their monopolistic interests and stifle the online distribution of music. Its five largest members, which sell 85 percent of all CDs, were found by the Federal Trade Commission in 2000 to have unlawfully kept the retail prices of CDs high.

The RIAA has pressured colleges into policing the computer networks used by their students. It has subpoenaed computer network providers in order to track people listening to music. The U.S. Naval Academy seized 100 student computers suspected of containing unauthorized music and threatened the Annapolis midshipmen with court-martial and expulsion. These fine students are training to fight a war in behalf of our country, and they should be allowed to listen to a little music in their spare time.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/p...20021231.shtml

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Dozens of Stations Go Silent
Victim of New Laws, Clear Channel Drops Support For Webbcasts

First came the fuss over double compensation for the radio-commercial actors. Then the flap over royalties for recording artists. Now the slap-happy Internet radio business is reeling from another hit, this time from the nation's most popular network of online stations.

Clear Channel last week ordered its stations to take on the cost of simulcasting radio broadcasts over the Internet, prompting about 150 of its 200 stations to switch off their Web feeds. As the number of webcasters continues to dwindle, survivors wonder if listeners will vanish, too.

"Stations dropping Web streams is pretty bad for everybody," said James Spath, webmaster for San Francisco rock station KFOG. "The lower the profile, the less people will use it as an option. That's why we're trying to keep on no matter what."

Maintaining streams won't be easy considering the medium's complications and expense. Traditional radio stations seem to be especially vulnerable.

"Right now, in any given city, less than half the stations will broadcast on the Internet," said Kurt Hanson, a radio consultant and newsletter editor. "Two years ago, it was probably getting to two-thirds or better."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57134,00.html

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Studios Using Digital Armor to Fight Piracy
Amy Harmon

Lying dormant in virtually every digital cable box in America is technology that can prevent viewers from recording certain programs to watch them later. Soon, several Hollywood studios are planning to tell cable operators to flip the switch.

People who have become accustomed to recording pay-per-view and video-on-demand shows will probably still be able to, the studios say — so long as they pay an extra fee.

The move is one of a range of new restrictions Hollywood is beginning to impose on digital movies, music and television. After years of battling online piracy in court, media executives are fighting technology with technology, locking up their products with the same types of digital tools that millions of people have used to get the products free over the Internet.

"We need to put in speed bumps to keep people honest," said Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which is lobbying federal regulators to require many devices to incorporate technology that prevents consumers from sending digital media files over the Internet. "If we don't, our future is bleak."

Besides inconvenience, some critics argue that digitally enforced restrictions on copying threaten an aspect of free speech rights that copyright law has traditionally respected. This "fair use" right to use snippets of copyrighted works for the purpose of parody or criticism or scholarship, they say, is essentially impossible to exercise if the material is protected with digital locks and federal law makes it illegal to unlock them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/business/05CONT.html

Analysis -
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000245.html

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Federal agency pulls web documents
Lisa M. Bowman

The Transportation Security Administration has quietly removed four password-protected documents about airport security from its Web site after reporters raised questions about locking up government data.

In a column last week, CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh speculated on whether he would be violating the contentious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if he viewed downloaded documents from the TSA's Web site after obtaining the password in an unauthorized manner (see excerpt immediately below). At the time, anyone could download the encrypted documents, but a password was required to open and read them.

The DMCA contains a provision that prohibits cracking protections on copyrighted works, or publishing information about how to do so, without permission from the owner--a ban that could include accessing data with an improperly obtained password. Violation of the statute could carry criminal penalties including fines and jail time. Government documents are not necessarily protected under the DMCA, but these particular reports were apparently prepared by an outside consultant and may have been subject to the law.

The incident raises questions about the scope of the DMCA and whether governments and corporations may increasingly remove data from the Web rather than maintain password-protected files that may spark murky legal situations.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978981.html

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Perspective: Will this land me in jail?
Declan McCullagh

It's not every day that I fret about committing a string of federal felonies that could land me in prison until sometime in 2008.

But right now I'm wondering about whether the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) means that I might get an all-expenses-paid vacation to Club Fed.

Our story starts with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Web site, which has an area called "Security and Law Enforcement" featuring four password-protected Microsoft Word documents. No password is necessary to download those encrypted documents, but a password is required to open and read them.

Anyway, a confidential source recently gave me what I believe is the correct secret password to the documents.

But here's the catch, and it's a pretty silly one: If I type the password into Microsoft Word or even tell you what it is, I could be liable for civil and criminal penalties under the DMCA. Section 1201 of the law contains two prohibitions: First, "no person shall circumvent a technological measure" that controls access to copyrighted information, and second, no one may publish information such as a password that's designed to circumvent "a technological measure that effectively controls access" to a copyrighted document.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-978636.html

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Acquisition of Software Maker Is Closed
Bloomberg News

The Sony Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and other investors said today that they had acquired about 93 percent of the InterTrust Technologies Corporation, a software maker, for $453 million.

The companies offered $4.25 a share in November to gain software that protects digital material like music and films.

Each remaining share in InterTrust will be converted into the right to receive $4.25, and the company will become a wholly owned unit of Fidelio. The European Union approved the acquisition last month.

InterTrust, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., holds 26 patents on hardware and software techniques. It makes programs that control how consumers buy, download and copy material. Users could, for example, be allowed to download a movie one or more times or be allowed to listen to music but not record it.

Record companies and filmmakers are trying to protect their copyrights as illegal downloading from the Internet cuts into sales.

Philips, Europe's largest consumer electronics maker, and Sony are also seeking to increase sales of the devices that are used to view and listen to the material. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/te...gy/04INTE.html

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Fewer People Downloading?

According to an Ipsos-Reid survey, 67% of online music file swappers had only accessed music online for free as of September 2002 -- down from 71% in July.
http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=3997

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Tightening the noose
Microsoft Moves to Strengthen Its Position in Digital Media
Amy Harmon

In a bid to secure a central place for itself in the new gadgets that are increasingly the preferred platform for digital media, Microsoft said yesterday that it would license its Windows Media technology to consumer electronics makers at lower prices and better terms than its main competitors do.

Makers of digital music players, for instance, can now license Microsoft's media encoding and decoding technologies for 50 cents for each device, about half of the licensing fee many now pay for MPEG 4 video, one of the dominant industry standard formats.


Will Poole, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows New Media Platform division, said the company's goal was not to reap huge profit on the royalties but to ensure that PC's that run the Windows operating system work well with devices like camcorders, DVD players and portable media players that consumers want to use with them.

"Strategically, what we get from this is that the consumer will have a better experience with compatibility with all these devices," Mr. Poole said.

Analysts said the deal was likely to be attractive to consumer electronics makers. "They've come up with a licensing program that is bound to shock the industry in the first hours of the Consumer Electronics Show," said Richard Doherty, research director for the Envisioneering Group, a technology market research firm in Seaford, N.Y., referring to the annual trade show that opens this week in Las Vegas.

Mr. Doherty said the reasons for Microsoft's move would be clear in the devices being shown at the show: PC's with media playback functions sell for about $1,500, while stand-alone devices that cannot process a spreadsheet but can play music and video cost far less.

The more prevalent its playback and security technology is on consumer electronics devices, the better position Microsoft is in when it tries to sell its technology — and Windows operating systems — to media companies that want to deliver material to consumers in digital form.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/bu...ia/07SOFT.html

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Creative Types: A Lot in Common
Kendra Mayfield

Roger McGuinn, founder of legendary folk-rock band The Byrds, has made over 25 albums in his recording career. But besides modest advances, he's never made money on record royalties.

When McGuinn decided to record new versions of traditional folk songs, he made these songs available as MP3s for free download on his website and on MP3.com. He's since made "thousands of dollars" from the sale of these recordings.

Like McGuinn, many artists are turning to the Web to maximize exposure, yet retain some control over their work. McGuinn is just one of the artists who will publish works under a new set of licenses that offer an alternative to conventional copyright.

On Monday, Creative Commons will release its collection of free, machine-readable licenses. The idea is to give copyright holders another way to get the word out that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions.

"Many of the authors, musicians, developers and other content creators we have spoken to want to be able to communicate to their potential customers that the customer can do more with their content than standard copyright law allows," said Bob Young, CEO of Lulu Press.

These licenses will "enable authors to communicate to users of their content how those consumers may use the content without requiring the user to contact the author each and every time," Young said.

"Right now there's no easy way for copyright holders to allow certain uses of their work while retaining their copyright," agreed Glenn Otis Brown, Creative Commons' executive director. "Our licenses are a best-of-both- worlds way to keep your copyright while sharing to the extent you want to. You can declare 'some rights reserved.'"

While industry organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America try to curtail the distribution of copyrighted works, Creative Commons' licenses will complement existing efforts to make online sharing and collaboration easier.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56704,00.html

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Music Biz: Compromise Is Key
Michael Grebb

As digital file sharing, webcasting and other new technologies proliferate, artists and industry officials meeting here said the music business is in jeopardy unless artists, record companies and consumers stop fighting and start compromising.

"People are always looking for what side to be on, and there isn't just one side," said Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, which sponsored this week's policy summit.

"I think we're looking for a kinder, gentler, more equitable model where more people can make a living off of this stuff," Toomey said.

While consumers want easier access to music over the Internet and on multiple devices, artists and record companies are seeking compensation for use of their material.

The tension between those goals has led to lawsuits and bad blood between consumer advocacy groups and industry trade organizations that some say have slowed the introduction of new technologies that could, potentially, solve the dilemma.

One oft-cited example is webcasting, which has been mired in disputes over royalty collection and other matters now before the U.S. Copyright Office.

"The parties are going to have to get some consensus on it," said David Carson, attorney general of the U.S. Copyright Office.

Disputed, among other things, is what technology to use when collecting data on digital streams, as well as how to deal with retroactive royalties, especially considering that many webcasters have never recorded their playlists.

Artists at the conference had mixed views on the file-sharing phenomenon.

"You all decide what it's worth," said musician/songwriter Bob Mould, who fronted the rock band Hüsker Dü. "If at the end of the day you think it's free, then make it free."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57104,00.html

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Web films - worth the wait?
Stanley Miller II

Downloading movies is becoming popular with people patient enough to endure the long wait.

The peer-to-peer file-sharing programs that replaced Napster let users trade all types of digital media, including popular first-run films that are sometimes available on the Internet before they reach theaters.

The quality of these downloads typically ranges from VHS-quality video to sketchy bootlegs that were obviously recorded in a theater with a camcorder.

And acquiring these movies over a file-sharing system can be frustrating and treacherous because downloading can be agonizingly slow, disconnections are frequent and files can be corrupt or tainted with viruses.

But an online movie rental service launched in November called Movielink LLC in Santa Monica, Calif., (www.movielink.com) is designed to be a safe, reliable and legal source of cinema on the Net. The service is owned by five Hollywood studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.

A high-speed Internet connection is needed to use the Web site, which performs a speed check as soon as you visit. Visitors set up accounts and then download a program that manages the movies that are downloaded from the Web site. Fees range from $1.99 for older movies such as "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to $4.99 for some new releases and popular films such as "Spider- Man."

After the movie has been downloaded, viewers usually have 30 days to play it. Once you've started watching the film, you have 24 hours to view it as many times as you want.

But downloading video files takes a lot of time, even with a high-speed Internet connection. The wide-screen version of "Spider-Man," which is 121 minutes long, was 626 megabytes and took about 45 minutes to download using a high-end Pentium 4 Windows XP machine and a cable modem connection. The Movielink software lets users pause and resume their downloads if they need to take a break.
http://www.jsonline.com/bym/tech/news/jan03/108542.asp

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200 Gigs on a CD Sized Disc? InPhase says “Soon”

"More new information is expected to be stored in 2002 and 2003 than in all of previous human history, according to a University of California at Berkeley study on information storage," said Lisa Dhar, vice president of media development at InPhase Technologies. "This heightens the demand for technologies that can store more electronic digital data in smaller spaces, and access it faster than ever before. Holographic technology presents a strong contender for the next generation of recording media."
http://videosystems.com/ar/video_inp...ogies_develop/

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A Victory For Common Sense In Piracy Case
Michael Himowitz

If 2002 wasn't a great year for the people who create and market technology, it was a banner year for the lawyers who represent them.

Often, cases about the right to make digital copies of a CD or movie don't raise much ruckus outside the tech world, but the decisions that arise from them will have a major impact on the way we use technology to work, play and communicate.

Most of the battles involve the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that set up new rules to protect copyrighted material - such as music, movies and books - in an age where technology makes it easy to make perfect digital copies.

The music and movie industries see the DMCA as their best weapon in a war against piracy. It's a war the music industry may have already lost, as millions of computer users swap digital copies of CD tracks over the Internet through file-sharing networks.

Civil libertarians, librarians, researchers and consumer groups see the DMCA as a one-sided piece of back-door legislation pushed through Congress by industry lobbyists to eliminate the rights that consumers have long held as "fair use" of copyrighted material.

For example, they note that it's legal to tape a movie for your own use, or make a digital copy of a CD track to play on your computer. Also, it's generally agreed that if you buy a CD or DVD, the law gives you the right to sell or give the original to someone else.
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedi...iscovery-print

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New Service Offers Made-to-Order CD's From TV Show
David Gallagher

Sony Pictures Television and a CD duplication company plan to introduce a Web site today that will allow fans of the television show "Dawson's Creek" to create and buy customized CD's of songs featured on the program.

Users of the site, www.dawsonscreekcds.com, will be able to select up to 14 tracks for their CD's from an initial pool of about 75. The discs, priced at $11.95, will be made by Mixonic, a CD customization and duplication company in San Francisco.

The new site comes as struggling music companies search for ways to combat the free online file-sharing services, which they largely blame for their woes. Last year, CD sales fell 8.8 percent, according to data compiled by Nielsen SoundScan.

"Dawson's Creek," which is produced by Sony and is in its sixth season on AOL Time Warner's WB, regularly uses songs by lesser-known acts. Paul Stupin, one of the show's executive producers, said the site was intended for viewers who are intrigued by some of the songs but might not be willing to buy a full-length CD by specific acts. The service provides them an easy way to buy just the music they want while also choosing a photo of cast members and a personal message to be printed on their individual CD labels.

Those involved with the project said that because the artists involved were eager for the exposure on "Dawson's Creek," the service managed to avoid much of the squabbling over music rights that doomed mix-CD start-ups like MusicMaker.com. But the site's introduction was still delayed by rights issues. Plans to include a song by Aimee Mann, perhaps the best-known artist on an early list of participants (Lori Carson and Vanessa Daou are among the others), were dropped because the rights had not yet been cleared, Mixonic said.

Peter Sisson, chief executive of Mixonic, said other mix-CD services had underestimated the appeal of allowing people to design their own professional-looking label. In Mixonic's experience, custom CD services are more attractive when they allow customers to design the label first and then pick the music.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Former KGB agents go to fight pirates
Richard Wray

A squad of former KGB operatives will emerge this month at the forefront of the battle against music piracy with the launch of a new technology which "watermarks" digital content.

Internet experts reckon the music industry is losing far more money through internet piracy than it is making from its own online distribution channels.

Although online music is seen as a big factor in the attractiveness of broadband services to consumers, music companies are wary of putting a significant proportion of their catalogues online because of the pirates.

This month, music distributor Apex Entertainment Group will introduce watermarking technology developed by former Russian spies in St Petersburg, in the hope of attracting more music companies on to the web.

"At the moment the music companies are protecting their copyright by saying to people 'you cannot use it' or allowing people to access only a small portion of their catalogue," said Apex boss Harry Maloney. "What we are saying is 'you can access anything because it can be watermarked'."

The former KGB agents work for Mazur Media, which North London-based Apex bought last year for several million pounds.

During the cold war the 40-strong St Petersburg team developed sensitive snooping equipment, encryption technology and tracking systems for tanks and MiG aircraft.

Following the collapse of communism the former spies started working with the music industry, digitally remastering old recordings using technology developed to spy on the west.

Having amassed a considerable catalogue of new digital recordings, the encryption experts developed a unique watermarking system to protect their new asset.

This watermark is woven into the digital data so, even if music is downloaded from the internet and then "burnt" on to a new CD, its origins can be traced.

Apex plans to introduce the system at the Midem music industry trade show in Cannes and is in talks with a number of telecoms companies which can provide the extensive web-hosting infrastructure needed for a full-scale offering of the service to the music industry.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/...869241,00.html

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"Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff"
Bob Dylan's debt to the hidden industry that he (unwittingly) helped create.
Steven Hart

Bob Dylan must be the first musician in history whose unreleased songs are as well known, and in many cases better, than his officially issued work. Certainly no other artist has been so bedeviled by underground recordings. The 40 or so albums that make up the official Dylan canon are all but lost in a sea of bootlegs so vast that collectors have organized them into subcategories, any one of which contains enough entries for months, even years of study.

After decades of failing to stop the bootleggers with complaints and litigation, Dylan and his record company decided to beat them at their own game by launching "The Bootleg Series" in 1991. The most recent installment, "Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue" (Columbia/Legacy), contains superb music, but it illustrates two uncomfortable facts. First, that for well over half his career, Dylan's art has been better served by the bootleggers than by his own label -- or, indeed, by Dylan himself. And second, that underground releases must get a good share of credit for sustaining interest in Dylan as a continuing creative force. The official Columbia releases are fine for charting the first incandescent phase of Dylan's career. But from the mid-1970s onward -- decades marked by long silences, artistic fumbling and a parade of bungled albums -- the real story of Dylan's artistry comes not from Columbia, but from bootleg labels with names like TMOQ, Swingin' Pig, Dandelion, Q, Crystal Cat, Rattlesnake, Wild Wolf and Scorpio.

Considering the twists and turns that have marked Dylan's career, it's only fitting that the man himself can be credited with sparking the subindustry that so irritates and benefits him. It all started when word got out that Dylan was refusing to release a batch of songs recorded in 1967 with the musicians who would become the Band. And so, in the summer of 1969, some enterprising souls issued a vinyl album of several Basement recordings, mingled with Dylan performances from the early folkie period, under the title "Great White Wonder." (Clinton Heylin's "Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry," is the indispensable record of how this happened.)
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/featu...ots/index.html

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Battle over copyrights brewing
Hiawatha Bray

Congress convenes this week, and if a war and a feeble economy weren't enough to keep the lawmakers busy, there'll also be a host of technology issues. There will be efforts to expand privacy protections for Internet users and crack down on unsolicited e-mail messages, the dreaded ''spam.''

But according to tech-industry watchers, the copyright wars between producers and consumers of digital entertainment products could provoke the most intense legislative action.

''There's a real clash shaping up,'' said Fred Von Lohmann, senior intellectual property counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group.

One flash point will be the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law designed to prevent unauthorized copying of digital products. Producers of digital software, music, and movies want the law to stand as it is.

''We think that the balance struck by Congress in that law is right,'' said Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance. ''We think it's premature to amend that law.''

But some lawmakers and consumer groups want to relax the law. They say it's legal for consumers to make copies of their music and video disks for personal use, and they want the digital copyright act to explicitly recognize that.

''I've introduced a bill that would give digital consumers the freedom to bypass that technology, as long as they're doing so for a lawful purpose,'' said US. Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat.

Meanwhile, a controversial bill proposed last year by US Senator Ernest Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, continues to reshape the terms of the debate, even though the legislation went nowhere. The Hollings bill would have required all makers of personal computers and other digital equipment to build features into their products to prevent unauthorized copying of software, music, or videos.

The legislation galvanized ferocious opposition from the nation's powerful computer and consumer electronics industries. But it also drove them to the bargaining table.

''Right now, we're sitting down with the computer people,'' said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, ''trying together in good faith negotiations'' to find a compromise.

However amicable the discussions, they're only happening because the electronics companies fear that legislation similar to the Hollings bill could someday become law.

''That's the big ax on the table for the entertainment industry,'' said Von Lohmann.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/00...brewing+.shtml

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Fair Use and Abuse
Gary Stix

The Big Red Shearling toy bone allows dog owners to record a short message for their pet. Tinkle Toonz Musical Potty introduces a child to the "magical, musical land of potty training." Both are items on Fritz's Hit List, Princeton University computer scientist Edward W. Felten's web-based collection of electronic oddities that would be affected by legislation proposed by Democratic Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina. Under the bill, the most innocent chip- driven toy would be classified as a "digital media device," Felten contends, and thereby require government-sanctioned copy-protection technology.

The Hollings proposal--the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act--was intended to give entertainment companies assurance that movies, music and books would be safe for distribution over broadband Internet connections or via digital television. Fortunately, the outlook for the initiative got noticeably worse with the GOP victory this past November. The Republicans may favor a less interventionist stance than requiring copy protection in talking dog bones. But the forces supporting the Hollings measure--the movie and record industries, in particular--still place unauthorized copying high on their agenda.

The DMCA has not only undercut fair use but also stifled scientific investigations. Felten and his colleagues faced the threat of litigation under the DMCA when they were about to present a paper on breaking a copy-protection scheme, just one of several instances in which the law has dampened computer-security research (see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's white paper, "Unintended Consequences": www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/ 20020503_dmca_consequences.html). The legal system should try to achieve a balance between the rights of owners and users of copyrighted works. An incisive debate is urgently needed to restore that balance.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...33809EC588EEDF

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Author says value of existing work shot up 40% when he offered some free on net.
http://www.wayner.org/modules.php?na...article&sid=11
http://www.wayner.org/books/ffa/

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Files see freedom 45 years earlier in Europe
John Borland

A difference between American and European copyright law threatens to carve out a free-swapping zone for popular decades-old music, hampering record companies' antipiracy efforts online.

European and Canadian copyright protections for sound recordings last just 50 years, compared with 95 years in the United States. As reported earlier in The New York Times, (see last week’s WIR – Jack) that means that a boomlet in sales of bootlegs of 1950s artists, ranging from Miles Davis to Elvis Presley, is becoming perfectly legal.

And it also means new headaches for record companies trying to shut down file-swapping services. As those popular older songs fall into the public domain overseas, people there are free to offer them on services such as Kazaa or Gnutella. Although it's still illegal to download the songs from the United States, it's much harder for copyright holders to find people who are downloading, as opposed to uploading, specific files online.

"There are some implications for enforcement, creating an additional wrinkle," said Neil Turkewitz, the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) executive vice president for international affairs. "But it doesn't affect the legality of a U.S. user accessing a foreign hard drive and downloading a file."

The expiration of copyrights overseas is just one piece of an antipiracy puzzle growing increasingly complex as the use of modern computer technology and high-speed networks increases around the world. Record labels and movie studios have fought periodic battles to shut down foreign Web sites that offer copyrighted material and to sue file-swapping companies such as Kazaa's Sharman Networks that are based overseas.

That's part of the reason the RIAA, along with other copyright holders, is pressing policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere to bring their copyright laws in line with those of the United States, Turkewitz said.

So far those efforts have met with little success. The most recent Europe-wide copyright rules, which have yet to be adopted by several countries, maintain the 50-year limit. However, copyright holders remain hopeful that individual countries will address the expiration dates as they periodically re-examine digital copyright issues.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979532.html

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Congress takes on spam, copyrights, taxes
Declan McCullagh

When the 107th Congress ended its work last November, politicians discarded dozens of technology-related bills that had been briefly considered but were never enacted.

Now that the 108th Congress has begun this week, some of those controversial proposals dealing with spam, copyright and Internet taxes will resurface--and some stand a better chance of becoming law.

Key changes to watch this session include:

• a policy switch by a major marketing trade group that could help break a longstanding logjam on anti-spam legislation;

• a reshuffling of a key committee in charge of copyright legislation that could help bring a stalled measure to mandate copy protection in consumer-electronics devices to a vote;

• renewed calls for enhancing privacy protections following a pendulum swing favoring security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

One issue that is sure to remain a flash point this session will be the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has been the focus of intense scrutiny and a number of lawsuits. Beloved by the entertainment industry, the DMCA broadly prohibits bypassing the kind of copy-protection technology used in DVDs, computer software and electronic books.

On Tuesday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and three other legislators reintroduced their bill from last year that would defang the DMCA. Their proposal, called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, would let Americans bypass copyright-protection schemes for legitimate "fair use" purposes.

"The reintroduced legislation will assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work," Boucher said.

"It wouldn't matter who was in power--Republicans can surely always be found who'll embrace Hollywood's vision of mandatory copy protection," Crews said Tuesday. "It's a bad idea, as is, on the other side of the coin, the extreme interpretation of Boucher's 'fair use' legislation...(Some people) will use it as a lever later to target all copy protection as violations of 'free speech.' That's as big a mistake as mandating copy protection."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-979623.html

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Techfocus Interview With Copyright Expert Fred Von Lohmann

We've conducted an interview with Fred Von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an membership organization that has spearheaded many technology-related causes and legal battles, with civil liberties being on the forefront. In cases such as the halt of US encryption method publishing, the 2600/DeCSS case, Morpheus, ReplayTV and constant clashes with the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been one of the most active organizations representing technology.

“The Copyright Act, like most of our laws, has been built on the premise that you go after the guy who actually breaks the law. Sure, sometimes we extend the reach of the law to get the wheel-man, too. But no one has ever suggested that Ford should be liable for every bank robbery committed with one of its cars. Yet the entertainment industries appear to want to let all the bank robbers run free and *only* punish the car makers.

It makes you wonder whether the fight is actually about piracy, or if it's instead about asserting control over new technologies.

If someone uses a PVR (or computer, or crow bar, or car, for that matter) to break the law, then by all means go after them. Find the guys who are distributing "the Sopranos" to their friends who don't pay for HBO. Once you've rounded those couple dozen PVR owners up, then leave the hundreds of thousand other, innocent American PVR owners alone. Stop calling them thieves, stop trying to cripple their cool gadgets, and stop threatening innovative companies like SonicBlue.

Oh, and by the way, once you've busted all the "Sopranos" sharers, don't be surprised if you see a drop in new HBO subscriptions, as you've ended up killing off a free, viral marketing channel that most consumer-products companies would have given their right arm for. But hey, it always pays to ignore your marketing staff and let the lawyers run the show, doesn't it?”
http://www.techfocus.org/modules.php...rder=0&thold=0

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Illegal music sites “here to stay”
Darren Waters

Illegal music download sites will never be eradicated, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has admitted.

Cary Sherman told BBC News Online that music would always be available for free somewhere on the net despite costly court battles to shut down illegal music sites.

He said the aim was to bring the proliferation of sites under control so that business were free to continue to make money.

"Our aim is not to completely eliminate music piracy or illegal peer-to-peer services altogether, " said Mr Sherman.

"As long as it is within a reasonable amount of control then we will be happy but we are still a long way from that."

Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter Research, agreed that the music industry would never fully be able to eradicate illegal file sharing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2636235.stm

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E-mailing music is doing it the hard way
Helpful Q&A
Mark Stachiew

Q: Is it possible to save a song from a CD or, if need be, the whole CD into a file and attach it to an e- mail? I have a CD drive on my PC, but no CD burner. Are there other ways to send a song easily?

A: The easiest way to save a song from a music CD is to convert the audio information of each track to MP3 files. The programs that accomplish this feat are known as CD rippers and there are countless numbers of them. One easy-to-use freeware program for Windows users is CDex. It can be downloaded at www.cdex.n3.net. You can also go to any shareware repository, such as Download.com, and try any of the myriad other CD rippers available.

You should keep in mind that sharing MP3 files with your friends is a copyright violation and, strictly speaking, illegal. That's why music publishers are taking steps to make it difficult to extract music from their CDs with ripper programs even though buyers of CDs have the legitimate right to create MP3 files for their own use.

MP3 files are relatively small, but sending them as e-mail attachments is not very practical since a typical song might run anywhere from 3 to 5 megabytes in size. That is too big for most mail servers. Trying to send an entire album is out of the question.

Many people turn to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, like Kazaa or Gnutella, to share music. Each person in the network is able to download files from anyone else connected to the Web using special client software. You can send music to your friends using one of these networks. You can find out more about them by visiting www.kazaa.com or www.gnutella.com.
http://www.canada.com/montreal/speci...E6FA0D84CA1%7D

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Backgrounder: Watermarking video in real-time

The ease of copying or modifying digital data, including audio, images, and video, coupled with the advent of high-speed Internet access and peer-to- peer networking, makes it difficult to protect copyrights and preserve the integrity of digitized multimedia content. Toward this end, digital watermarking is viewed by many - when encryption fails or is not practical - as the best barrier for copy-protecting content.

Digital watermarking can be used in several ways, such as to prevent illegal playing or copying and to trace illegal copies. It can also show modified parts of an image and invisibly carry information like the place and date of purchase, a document identifier, or the number of authorized viewings or copies.

During the last few years, research has focused mainly on creating attack-resistant watermarks for still pictures. In contrast, little attention has been paid to simplifying the platform needed to run the watermark algorithm. The platform is usually assumed to be a powerful Pentium-processor powered PC or a Unix workstation.

In the near future, however, more types consumer equipment will likely need to run watermark algorithms. Some MP3 players already do, with DVD players and recorders likely to follow soon. Ultimately, digital televisions and still cameras, set top boxes, and wireless appliances — indeed any device that can display or capture multimedia content — will likely include a watermark algorithm.

These algorithms are, for the most part, computationally intensive. Thus, for use in consumer products, they must do more than yield a robust watermark; that is, one that withstands manipulation, like JPEG compression. The watermark must have low visibility to preserve the look of the original content. It must also run on the host application platform, typically a 16- or 32-bit microprocessor, DSP or system-on-chip (SoC) having only a few hundred kilobytes of memory.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030106S0037

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In the mood for an old newsreel? Check out British Pathe. Downloads are free. http://www.britishpathe.com/flashintro.cfm

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EMC releases OnCourse
Press Release - EMC S

EMC has announced EMC OnCourse, a new EMC Celerra software solution that enables organisations to centrally manage and automate the movement of files and data across geographically dispersed locations.

Alex Robertson, country systems engineering and professional services manager at EMC SA, says the new software delivers increased organisation- and partner-wide information sharing efficiency and reduced operational costs.

"OnCourse represents an automated, policy-based alternative to the time- intensive, unreliable methods of manual and scripted file distribution most companies employ today," he adds. "It allows secure peer-to-peer file transfers between the Celerra family of NAS solutions, Windows powered NAS devices and servers, Unix servers, and Linux servers."

With data capacities doubling each year, companies across all industries are struggling to maintain efficient information management. EMC OnCourse is ideal for moving data from many servers to one, one server to many, or peer- to-peer replication of directories and files over IP.
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/soft...?A=HOME&O=FPIN

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Enterprise CTOs adopt disruption
Jack McCarthy

It's the million-dollar question: When do you bring a disruptive technology into your enterprise? Adopt too early, and the company becomes a guinea pig, bearing the costs while the technology is refined. Wait too long, and the company misses the opportunity to reap profits and increase market share by being one technical step ahead of the competition. In finding the balance, the CTO becomes corporate IT soothsayer, seeking to divine the moment when a technology evolves from high-geek-factor toy to something that could improve the corporate landscape. Here are insights from three CTOs at different points on the disruptive-technology adoption curve.

BOEING, THE WORLD'S LARGEST aerospace company, is realizing the promise of Wi-Fi, the wireless 802.11b Ethernet protocol, and is a champion for the technology's adoption within the enterprise. Two years ago, the Chicago- based company began Wi-Fi deployment in its manufacturing facilities, and in the process, ushered in a workplace revolution. Workers at Boeing's giant factories use Wi-Fi to communicate and access data dispersed throughout myriad shop floors. "It was an easy business case for us. It's saved our workers time," says Vaho Rebassoo, Boeing's CTO of IT services. "Our people are thrilled in the places where they have it."
"There is a very strong [return on investment] pull for this," Rebassoo says. "It was a [matter] of saving time. People would know where everything was so they wouldn't have to take a trip through the factory.
"The width of the facility is 500 or 600 feet," Rebassoo adds. "You can save several minutes at a trip. And whenever you can save a trip in the factory is a huge payback."

DIGITAL IDENTITY is a catch-all phrase at the heart of debates about DRM (digital rights management), individual privacy rights protections, and the development of security models.
But for Phil Wiser, CTO of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment, digital identity is an evolving concept, promising new ways to authenticate trusted users online and bring them together in communities under a viable business model. Wiser says corporate technology leaders need to embrace sophisticated technologies such as peer-to-peer file sharing and authentication and SSO (single sign-on) models to meet the increasing demand for better and faster data and content delivery. "Having a digital identity you can trust will provide you with flexibility [in participating in or developing] business models," Wiser says. "This identity will come."
http://staging.infoworld.com/article...one_story.html

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"The RIAA is a bloodsucking mechanism for big record companies," he said. "We're doing them a favor by giving exposure to this music."
CD-copying clubs burn record giants
Frank Green

The CDs arriving in Cory Freeman's mail these days are as esoteric as a rap version of "Rigoletto": Caribbean pop by Pato Banton and Tito Puente, alternative rock by the White Stripes and Stereolab, electronic music by fourhourwindow and Negativeland.

But don't rush out to the record store to buy your own copies.

Freeman is part of a CD-copying club known as BurnSter, whose dozen or so members download copyrighted material from the Internet and other sources, make custom discs replete with elaborate packaging, then distribute them to the entire group.

"You never know what to expect," said Freeman, a nurse who is compiling his first CD for the San Diego club, a compilation of songs by alternative-rock bands. "You get to experience music you otherwise would never have heard."

The recording industry, which has seen sales dip in recent years partly because of music piracy, has a new enemy: Highly organized groups of audiophiles who swap thousands of homemade CDs of popular songs, many of them burned from illicit file-sharing sites on the Internet.

It is difficult to estimate how many CD-burning clubs exist nationwide, although there are at least four in San Diego County with members busily duplicating the latest works by Fatboy Slim, Sleater-Kinney and kindred name acts.

"I compile and send out one CD every four months or so, and I get about 15 new ones back," said Paul, a restaurant manager who is a member of the CD-copying club CompSongs. "It's fun, and I usually learn something about other musical genres."

"We are familiar with such clubs across the country, and we want to put them on notice that the activity taking place is illegal," said Frank Creighton, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America. "We will take legal action against these clubs" if they can be found.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/b...b9cdclubs.html

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Subject: Music Biz: Compromise Is Key
Letter

The music industry is looking at the problem of illegal file sharing totally wrong (Music Biz: Compromise Is Key, Jan. 7, 2002). They think illegal file sharing is the sole reason sales have been dropping over the past few years. If they just looked harder, they would see that the reason I personally haven't bought a CD for over five years isn't because of programs like Napster, Kazaa or Morpheus.

I think the majority of people burn instead of buy because they are aware that record companies pump out CDs at very incredibly small costs. The general public thinks that, because they are newer and better, CDs should cost more. When in fact a CD costs less to make than cassette tapes. The day companies start selling their products at reasonable prices is the day I uninstall Kazaa and buy a CD.

The second reason record companies can't get me to buy a CD is the fact that the quality of music being put out in the last decade has seriously decreased. My parents got to hear groups like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Eagles. What do I get to listen to on the local stations? I get bands with members that met for the first time on a plane, don't write their own lyrics and become famous without ever playing a small gig at some local bar downtown (Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, etc.). Right now on the classic rock stations you get to hear really good songs -- songs that took talent to create and have withstood the test of time. Thirty years from now do you think those classic rock station are going to be playing N'Sync, Puddle of Mud or any other sellouts? No, because they are just that -- sellouts.

I guess I'm tired of listening to some national corporation, owners of 1000 station nationwide, deciding what is new, trendy and "sounds good."
http://www.wired.com/news/rants/0,2350,57139,00.html

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Mottola Resigns as Sony Music Head
Sue Zeidler

Record mogul Thomas Mottola, who helped guide the careers of veteran acts like Bob Dylan (news) and Bruce Springsteen (news) while overseeing the rise of Jennifer Lopez (news) and ex-wife Mariah Carey, resigned on Thursday as chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment to start his own label.

Mottola's contract with Sony had been set to run for another two years, but rumors of his departure had circulated following a reported fallout over his contract renewal amid a prolonged slump in the music industry.

Mottola reportedly had earned $7 million a year plus a percentage of Sony Music's revenue.

His exit comes after a turbulent year punctuated by the settlement of a bitter contract dispute with the Dixie Chicks, leading to release of their hit album and Sony's biggest commercial success, "Home," and a highly publicized rift between Sony and pop star Michael Jackson (news). Mottolla, 52, spent much of the past several months preparing Sony Music for an overhaul that he envisioned would take the label into the talent management business. He recently announced a promotional venture with Pepsi, a marketing deal between Celine Dion (news) and Chrysler and the acquisition of veteran rock band AC/DC's catalog.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ony_mottola_dc

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Flaw Found in Ethernet Device Drivers
Dennis Fisher

Security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability that may be present in many Ethernet device drivers that is causing the devices to broadcast sensitive information over networks.

According to the IEEE's Ethernet standard, packets transmitted on an Ethernet network should be a minimum of 46 bytes. If, as sometimes happens with protocols such as IP, a higher layer protocol requires less than 46 bytes, the Ethernet frames are supposed to be padded with null data. However, researchers at @stake Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., have discovered that many drivers instead pad packets with data from previously transmitted Ethernet frames.

This results in the device sending out sensitive information to other machines on the same Ethernet network. The type of data sent depends upon the device driver implementation, but it can range from data housed in the dynamic kernel memory, to static system memory allocated to the driver, to a hardware buffer located on the network interface card.

"This information leakage vulnerability is trivial to exploit and has potentially devastating consequences. Several different variants of this implementation flaw result in this vulnerability," the @stake researchers wrote in their paper on the flaw, released Monday. "The Linux, NetBSD and Microsoft Windows operating systems are known to have vulnerable link layer implementations, and it is extremely likely that other operating systems are also affected."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959...099TX1K0100487

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Sprint, Warner offer music service on cell phones
Reuters

Sprint Corp FON.N and Warner Music Group on Wednesday announced a deal to offer a streaming music clip subscription service on Sprint cell phones, underscoring the growing trend of joint ventures between recording companies and wireless firms.

Under the agreement, Sprint customers can now download ringtone and animated ringtone versions of songs, have an artist announce incoming calls, or sample clips of new music via the wireless streaming music clip subscription service on Sprint PCS Vision phones.

Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.

Reeling from a protracted sales decline following the recording industry's failure to capitalize on the Web before unauthorized file-sharing services like now-defunct Napster took hold, the world's big labels are trying to avoid the same fate in the wireless arena.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2011356

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Pulling the plug:

CBS, which is the leader in providing high-definition programming by offering all 18 of its prime-time comedies and dramas in the new format, is threatening to stop offering programming in HDTV before customers have even gotten a chance to buy the equipment to receive and display the signals.

Viacom, the parent company of CBS, recently told the FCC that unless the agency moves quickly to prevent Internet redistribution of broadcast signals, it would refuse to show HDTV programming in the 2003-04 TV season, according to Electronic Media Online.

"The potential loss in revenues for Viacom alone due to the unauthorized redistribution of broadcast television content and the resulting devaluation of broadcasting could reach hundreds of millions of dollars," Viacom said.

The movie and television studios want the FCC to approve a plan called the broadcast flag. If adopted, programming over the networks would contain a signal, called the broadcast flag, that would allow consumers to record a program for their own use. But it would prevent the programming from being sent over the Internet or by peer-to-peer file-sharing, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News. Sending television signals over the Internet is seen by some as the next logical step in fair use of broadcasting, a right that was upheld at the beginning of the era of home videocassette recorders.

For those of us who remember buying "cable-ready" televisions and VCRs over the last 15 years only to find that many of the channel-selection features were disabled by cable converters and scramblers, this is a scary thought. Many high-end TV monitors available now are sold as "HDTV- ready."

Can this promise really be upheld if the technology is continually changing?
http://www.cleveland.com/living/plai...9593153540.xml

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Lexmark invokes DMCA in toner suit
Declan McCullagh

Printer maker Lexmark has found an unusual weapon to thwart rivals from selling replacement toner cartridges: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

A federal judge in Kentucky has scheduled a hearing for Thursday in the case, which Lexmark filed against Static Control Components in an effort to slam the brakes on the toner cartridge remanufacturing industry. Lexmark is the No. 2 printer maker in the United States, behind Hewlett-Packard, and manufactures printers under the Dell Computer brand.

This lawsuit is the latest of several recent DMCA cases--both civil and criminal--that have tested the limits of the 1998 copyright law, in which Congress intended to limit Internet piracy. Eight movie studios wielded it to force 2600 magazine to delete a DVD-descrambling utility from its Web site, but the Justice Department lost a case last month against a Russian company that created a program that cracked Adobe's electronic books.

Lexmark claims that Static Control violated the DMCA by selling its Smartek chips to companies that refill toner cartridges and undercut Lexmark's prices.

Lexmark is asking U.S. District Judge Karl Forester to order Static Control to "deliver up for destruction" all Smartek chips and to cease selling them. Static Control could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco that's one of the chief critics of section 1201 of the DMCA, said she expected more cases like the one brought by Lexmark.

"We have long said that the DMCA's potential use as an anticompetitive tool has been great," Cohn said. "Now we're seeing it happen."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979791.html

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Company unveils satellite service for cars
Reuters

Satellite communications company KVH Industries hopes to put an end to back-seat bickering among grumpy siblings during long family car trips.

The Middletown-based company will introduce a satellite TV antenna that transmits movies, sports and news programming to sport utility vehicles (SUV), minivans, and luxury automobiles equipped with backseat entertainment systems.

Drivers throughout the continental United States can get more than 300 channels of DirecTV satellite TV movies, news, sports and live broadcast entertainment, as well as 50 channels of commercial-free radio. In the future, the antenna system will provide high-speed Internet access. DirecTV is a unit of Hughes Electronics.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/0...eut/index.html

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Copy protection is crossing boundaries
NewScientist

Anti-copying software designed to protect multiple music and video formats on different devices has been released by video streaming company Real Networks.

Digital rights management (DRM) technology restricts or entirely blocks copying of digital media. Record and music companies believe this is needed to prevent unauthorised copying. But the technology is also controversial because it can restrict legitimate copying or playback on computers.

Most other DRM systems are designed to protect a particular audio or video format, but Helix DRM, from Real Networks, provides a block against copying of numerous formats.

The technology works with the company's Helix media player and the company made the programming code for this player freely available in October 2002 to encourage its adoption on different hardware platforms, such as handheld computers and TV set-top boxes.

DRM technology is become more widely used, but some computer users complain that copy-prevention stops them making legitimate copies of material they have bought.

DRM technologies that are applicable across platforms and media formats may appeal to copyright owners by providing blanket coverage. But it may also mean that hackers need only break one system to be able to duplicate a large amount of content.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993250

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Perfect for your “can’t wait” iPod sneakernet transfers - Belkins new 21 song-per-second FireWire IEEE 1394b interface. 800Mbps! http://www1.internetwire.com/iwire/r...lease_id=50029

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A Firefight over Burning DVDs
321 Studios' software is simple to use. But the movie industry wants it off the market.

DVD x Copy from 321 Studios (www.dvdxcopy.com) is a nifty $99.99 program that lets you use a DVD burner on your Windows XP or 2000 computer to make a copy of movies or other DVDs. It's convenient, for example, to make a copy of a DVD to watch on your laptop during a long flight so you won't risk losing or damaging the expensive original. It's also handy for making a copy to give to a friend, and there's the rub: The movie industry thinks the program violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and wants a federal court to order it off the market.

The law on this subject is a muddle. There is a long-recognized "fair use" right under copyright law for individuals to copy material for their personal use. But the DMCA allows copyright holders to use "technological measures" to protect the content and makes it illegal, and under some conditions criminal, to tamper with those protections.

The company has made an effort to meet the objections of copyright holders. "We feel very strongly that what we are doing does not violate the DMCA," says 321 Studios President Robert Moore. Adds Boston intellectual property attorney Bruce D. Sunstein: "321 Studios is dealing with these issues in a responsible way."

The movie industry takes strong exception. After the Motion Picture Assn. of America last spring asked the FBI to investigate 321 Studios for possible criminal violation of DMCA, the Chesterfield (Mo.)-based company launched a preemptive strike. It asked a federal judge to declare that its software did not violate DMCA and that distribution of the programs was protected by first Amendment free-speech rights. The eight movie studios named as defendants, the MPAA, and the Justice Dept., which intervened in the case as a defendant, worked hard to get the case dismissed.

On Dec. 19, they abruptly changed their strategy by agreeing to let the case proceed and asking for an injunction barring the sale of both DVD Copy Plus and DVD X Copy. It is probably no coincidence that the change of heart came just two days after a federal court jury in San Jose, Calif., acquitted ElcomSoft, a Russian software company, on criminal charges of "trafficking" in software that allowed unauthorized copying of electronic books. The Justice Dept. had argued that the ElcomSoft case was an appropriate vehicle for a constitutional review of DMCA.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...2/b3815013.htm

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21,000 Tunes for the Home.
Where Hi-Fi Meets Wi-Fi: A Wireless Music System
Roy Furchgott

The big hurdle to wiring a home stereo system to play music in every room is the wiring. But today, Yamaha will unveil a server that can provide music wirelessly to as many as five locations at a distance of 150 feet.

Called MusicCast, the system is essentially a server with an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a built-in CD-R drive, which can load up to 1,000 CD's compressed as MP3's or 120 uncompressed CD's into an onboard music library. The server can also play music from external sources like a CD, tape or record player, or a computer connected to the Internet.

The server broadcasts the music to clients, or receiver stations, that contain their own 20-watt amplifiers. Any speakers can be attached. MusicCast uses the 802.11b wireless standard (also known as Wi-Fi), but Yamaha says the signal will not interfere with other Wi-Fi networks (like those connecting the computers around the house) because each receiver station has its own network address. That also lets MusicCast send different music simultaneously to different receiver stations, so Junior can play hip-hop in the den while Mom and Dad listen to jazz in the kitchen.

Each receiver station controls to adjust volume, bass and treble, and to order songs by artist, title, genre or playlist. In addition to five wireless receiver stations, the server can handle up to five hard-wired receiver stations, allowing it to work at locations more than 150 feet away, like a pool house.

A server and one receiver station will have a retail price of $2,080 without speakers; additional receiver stations will be $799 apiece. MusicCast should reach stores in May.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/te...ts/09yama.html

nyt –
nick: bobbob
pass: bobbob

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Who Needs TiVo? Cardless Kit Turns any PC Into a TV Recorder
J. D. Biersdorfer

Personal video recorders like TiVo are continuing their march into the living rooms of the land, but for TV fans who have nice big hard drives on their computers, the PC can become a personal video recorder itself. An all-in-one kit from Pinnacle Systems, PCTV Deluxe, effects that transformation, making it possible for viewers to record programs on their laptops or desktop computers and watch them whenever they want.

Using MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 formats for audio and video compression, PCTV Deluxe offers some TiVo-style functions like pausing live television shows and skipping commercials, and can even burn the recorded shows to DVD or CD.

It is not even necessary to have a TV tuner card in the computer with PCTV Deluxe; a small external box connects to a U.S.B. port on the computer and has jacks to plug in the TV cable or antenna and cables for composite video, S-video and audio input.

PCTV Deluxe has a suggested price of $200 and works with Windows Me and later. Full technical specifications and information on where to buy it are available on the PCTV Deluxe product page at http://www.pinnaclesys.com. The kit, which works with the U.S.B. 1.1 and 2.0 standards, also includes a remote control, a U.S.B. cable and several software programs for working with the digitized video.

The device can accept input from a number of video sources, including camcorders and VCR's, making it an option for digitizing old videotapes and burning them to DVD for posterity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/te...ts/09pinn.html

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An Exhibition That Borrows Brazenly
Chris Nelson

It sounds like a plan for drawing hordes of screaming lawyers to your door: create compilation CD's with sampled music from the likes of the Beatles, James Brown and Johnny Cash, not to mention the voice of Dan Rather; include as many songs as possible that have already sparked legal battles; do it all without getting permission from the copyright owners; and distribute the CD's at a nationally touring art exhibition.

Oh yeah, and give the music away online for the millions of people around the globe who can't make it to the show.

So far this operation has not sparked even a lawyer's angry voice mail, said Carrie McLaren, curator of the exhibition, "Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age," where the potentially inflammatory CD is available free, and of its Web site, illegal-art.org.

"They know it'd be like a minefield," said Ms. McLaren, who contends that the music, visual art and video pieces in the installation are protected by the "fair use" provision in copyright law that allows for parody and commentary. The exhibition, she says, takes the potentially illegal and makes it untouchable.

John Spelich, a Disney spokesman, said the company was looking into the exhibition. A representative from News Corporation, which owns "The Simpsons," did not return calls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/ar...l?pagewanted=1

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40 Below Zero!
Saunas, PC’s, Cause Power Crisis in Finland

Heavy use of saunas by Finns during a two- week long cold snap could lead to power rationing in the Nordic country.

Electricity consumption and prices have soared to record levels, so the government has called on citizens to give up one of their favourite national pastimes to cut costs.

"The suggested sauna heat is 70-80 degrees celsius," the ministry of trade and industry said.

"One hundred degrees, for example, adds up to 30% to energy costs," it said.

It also urged Finns to use wood for heating and turn off their computers.

"Playing card games and board games is the best kind of pastime for the family," the ministry said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2625255.stm





Until next week,

- js.



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Current Week In Review

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

[Fantom]

Very nice reporting Mr Spratts, thanks for your efforts!

The Cleveland library story is very cool, great news for an ebook junkie like me. Hope it catches on. And of course it will be interesting to see how effective their protection methods are

[theknife]

Great stuff, Jack

Your posts are like dispatches from a war correspondent...
...coming in from the front lines daily.

we're going into 2003 with a full head of steam...digital rights seem to have some momentum of late. a couple of legal victories, some good press, the DMCA continues to be tested and challenged, even an endorsement from Phyllis Schlafly (digital rights makes strange bedfellows)


all around, a good week

[TankGirl]

Excellent work, Jack, thanks again!

Originally posted by theknife
Your posts are like dispatches from a war correspondent...
...coming in from the front lines daily.

LOL I get the same feeling too - which is cool... p2p revolution needs its own frontline war correspondents!



- tg

[SA_Dave]

Thanks once again Jack! I like the fact that Napsterites is relatively free of duplicate news items, unlike some other sites.

And considering how slack TG is being (more of those acid flashbacks ? ), I'd just like to draw everyone's attention to the article on identities :

DIGITAL IDENTITY is a catch-all phrase at the heart of debates about DRM (digital rights management), individual privacy rights protections, and the development of security models.

But for Phil Wiser, CTO of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment, digital identity is an evolving concept, promising new ways to authenticate trusted users online and bring them together in communities under a viable business model.

Wiser says corporate technology leaders need to embrace sophisticated technologies such as peer-to-peer file sharing and authentication and SSO (single sign-on) models to meet the increasing demand for better and faster data and content delivery.

"Having a digital identity you can trust will provide you with flexibility [in participating in or developing] business models," Wiser says. "This identity will come."

The Liberty Alliance -- a group of major corporations, including American Express, United Airlines, and Wells Fargo -- is taking the first steps toward securing communities of users by developing industry standards for a universal online identity system, Wiser says.

Read the rest here.

Think of that story in terms of a community p2p app, no record companies allowed.

[theknife]

...digital identity is an evolving concept, promising new ways to authenticate trusted users online and bring them together in communities under a viable social model.

[SA_Dave]

Originally posted by theknife

Nice bit of paraphrasing, I do say!