Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – October 4th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quote of the week: “If users truly have the right to speak anonymously on the Internet, as the court held, then their ISPs must protect that right.” - Julie Hilden





Feeding The Hand That Bites Him

Interesting goings on this week in Washington. There’s a noisy P2P row in the Senate and of course the usual RIAA sponsored copyright extremists showed up to flog the party line. They even brought in a famous rapper who riffed on musicians getting a nickel from the new 99 cent downloads and how that would be better than getting nothing. He then asked Congress plaintively if Americans don’t deserve to earn even a small living. I wasn’t there but it sure sounded like good theater. It may have been heartfelt but if it’s come to this musicians are really in trouble with their record companies. Only a nickel? Talk about setting your sights down low. Sentiments like these truly miss the picture. Whatever file sharing appears to be right now the ultimate evolution of peer-to-peer will be the liberation of both the consumer and the artist from the media companies - it’s the fundamental result of file sharing. This artist may have meant well but he had it wrong. He shouldn’t be in congress giving away his legacy and selling himself short to prop up his label, they’re ripping him off. He should be urging lawmakers to get on with the future and do whatever it takes to eliminate parasitical media middlemen standing in the way of a real explosion of creativity and compensation, the likes of which has never been seen before and may very well usher in a golden age for both artists and listeners alike. The musician asking Congress to help the recording industry is like the turkey asking the pilgrim for Thanksgiving.

There’s a better way. Take a page from the independent record companies who’ve leveraged peer-to-peer into a powerful promo machine. These new labels are giving artists 50% of the take and doing well. Or better yet start a cooperative and hire your own people. With recording technology bringing the cost out of the stratosphere and down to earth and peer-to-peer doing the same for distribution it’s time artists took control of their destiny. Hire the help, pay them fairly but be your own boss. For once command your fate.

Then go hang with Congress if you feel like it. But you’ll be doing it because you want to, not because you need to.








Enjoy,

Jack.








Napster Marks Comeback with Oct. 9 Test Debut
Sue Zeidler

Napster, the pioneering song-swap service that was shut down for copyright infringement, is coming back next week to face the music as a paid site in a vastly changed online music arena.

Digital media company Roxio Inc., which bought Napster for $5 million last year, plans an Oct. 9 test launch for a new, legal version of the service called Napster 2.0, according to Napster spokesman Seth Oster.

Oster said the company also will unveil full details and the official launch date for Napster 2.0 at the service's "beta," or test, launch event in New York City, next Thursday, where over 200 members of the press and industry are invited.

A major recording artist will be featured at the event.

In the past Roxio had said Napster 2.0 would launch by Christmas, but sources familiar with the matter said the new Web site will be online and running no later than November.

Roxio bought the Napster assets in November 2002 touting the strength of the once popular brand name.

The strategy seems to be paying off as Roxio's stock has risen nearly four-fold from a low of $2.29 in late October last year to more than $9 currently. Roxio shares ended trading up 6.57 percent, or 57 cents, at $9.25 on the Nasdaq on Wednesday in a generally positive day for media stocks.

But while Napster commanded over 60 million users in its heyday before being idled for promoting unauthorized copying and free swapping of music, it now has to compete with a growing number of legitimate entrants to the online market as well as several renegade but popular swap sites like Kazaa that have sprung up in its wake.

Oster said Napster was confident it will be the strongest music service available by matching brand awareness with a superior product offering.

This past summer, Napster said it would be the only music Web site to offer consumers a choice between an a la carte download model or a premium subscription service.

Napster also will debut with a catalog of more than 500,000 songs, more than any other service to date.

By contrast, Apple Computer Inc's widely-touted iTunes music store offers Macintosh users the right to unlimited downloading only and plans to make the services functional on Windows- based competitors by the end of the year.

RealNetworks' Rhapsody is a subscription service which offers 79 cent downloads to subscribers, while BuyMusic.com launched its own music store in July and MusicMatch launched a download service earlier this week.

A few weeks ago, Napster and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd jointly announced they would offer a new digital audio player that will work seamlessly with Napster 2.0.

And on Tuesday, Napster and Microsoft Corp. announced a specially designed Napster 2.0 interface, which will be included on Microsoft's new media center product.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3542838


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Kazaa's Endgame: a Deal
Keith Girard

Alan Morris wants to deal. He says as much every chance he gets, including during his recent appearance before a Senate subcommittee examining the record industry's campaign against illegal music downloading.

Morris is executive director of Sharman Networks, the company that operates Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service that tens of millions of people use to swap copyrighted music over the Internet.

Kazaa is the most popular P2P network by far, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

"Operate," however, may be the wrong word here. The service has been carefully set up so that no one, technically, controls it. As such, Sharman can't be held liable for the activities of its users.

It's a very convenient arrangement, especially since the service owes its explosive growth and continued existence to illegal file sharing.

Last year, Kazaa boasted of having more than 100 million registered users, and this past May, its file-sharing software had become the world's most-downloaded program. More than 278 million copies have been loaded on computers.

At any given moment, more than 5 million users are online offering well over 1 billion files for copying through various P2P networks, according to Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's new chairman/ chief executive.

Out of that mix, more than 2.6 billion copyrighted files (mostly recordings) are downloaded every month, he notes.

No wonder the record industry is hurting, and that's just what Morris seems to be counting on. Judging from his testimony, Sharman's endgame is pretty clear: Let free downloading ravage the industry until it cries "Uncle." Then step in and cut a deal -- on its terms, of course. Morris said as much at the hearing.

"There is a clear path out of this dilemma for the entertainment industry," he told lawmakers. "Embracing peer-to-peer technology and creating a fair market for the licensing of its content."

Morris revealed that -- surprise! -- Kazaa actually can be configured to monetize the service and diminish piracy -- if the price is right, of course. His price is about 25 cents per song.

"But sadly," he continued, "the major music labels have rejected every approach we have made to them to license their content and to deliver it to users of the Kazaa Media Desktop."

That would be tantamount to "turning the business over to them," one top record executive says. And, that will never happen on his watch, he adds.

So the game continues -- in court, in Congress and in the marketplace. The question now is how much longer Sharman can keep up the pressure. As Billboard senior business writer Brian Garrity notes in a story this week, Napster, iTunes and other legitimate download services will hit the Windows PC market this month, offering cheap and easy-to-download music to the masses.

Then, we'll see how the game plays out. As always, the marketplace will have the final say, as it should.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=3556864


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U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling
Eric Lichtblau

The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.

The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said.

Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals — terrorists or otherwise. But critics of the administration's antiterrorism tactics assert that such use of the law is evidence the administration is using terrorism as a guise to pursue a broader law enforcement agenda.

Justice Department officials point out that they have employed their newfound powers in many instances against suspected terrorists. With the new law breaking down the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations, the Justice Department in February was able to bring terrorism-related charges against a Florida professor, for example, and it has used its expanded surveillance powers to move against several suspected terrorist cells.

But a new Justice Department report, given to members of Congress this month, also cites more than a dozen cases that are not directly related to terrorism in which federal authorities have used their expanded power to investigate individuals, initiate wiretaps and other surveillance, or seize millions in tainted assets.

For instance, the ability to secure nationwide warrants to obtain e-mail and electronic evidence "has proved invaluable in several sensitive nonterrorism investigations," including the tracking of an unidentified fugitive and an investigation into a computer hacker who stole a company's trade secrets, the report said.

Justice Department officials said the cases cited in the report represent only a small sampling of the many hundreds of nonterrorism cases pursued under the law.

The authorities have also used toughened penalties under the law to press charges against a lovesick 20-year-old woman from Orange County, Calif., who planted threatening notes aboard a Hawaii-bound cruise ship she was traveling on with her family in May. The woman, who said she made the threats to try to return home to her boyfriend, was sentenced this week to two years in federal prison because of a provision in the Patriot Act on the threat of terrorism against mass transportation systems.

And officials said they had used their expanded authority to track private Internet communications in order to investigate a major drug distributor, a four-time killer, an identity thief and a fugitive who fled on the eve of trial by using a fake passport.

In one case, an e-mail provider disclosed information that allowed federal authorities to apprehend two suspects who had threatened to kill executives at a foreign corporation unless they were paid a hefty ransom, officials said. Previously, they said, gray areas in the law made it difficult to get such global Internet and computer data.

The law passed by Congress just five weeks after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has proved a particularly powerful tool in pursuing financial crimes.

Publicly, Attorney General John Ashcroft and senior Justice Department officials have portrayed their expanded power almost exclusively as a means of fighting terrorists, with little or no mention of other criminal uses.

"We have used these tools to prevent terrorists from unleashing more death and destruction on our soil," Mr. Ashcroft said last month in a speech in Washington, one of more than two dozen he has given in defense of the law, which has come under growing attack. "We have used these tools to save innocent American lives."

Internally, however, Justice Department officials have emphasized a much broader mandate.

A guide to a Justice Department employee seminar last year on financial crimes, for instance, said: "We all know that the USA Patriot Act provided weapons for the war on terrorism. But do you know how it affects the war on crime as well?"

Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal group that has been critical of Mr. Ashcroft, said the Justice Department's public assertions had struck him as misleading and perhaps dishonest.

"What the Justice Department has really done," he said, "is to get things put into the law that have been on prosecutors' wish lists for years. They've used terrorism as a guise to expand law enforcement powers in areas that are totally unrelated to terrorism."

A study in January by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that while the number of terrorism investigations at the Justice Department soared after the Sept. 11 attacks, 75 percent of the convictions that the department classified as "international terrorism" were wrongly labeled. Many dealt with more common crimes like document forgery.

The terrorism law has already drawn sharp opposition from those who believe it gives the government too much power to intrude on people's privacy in pursuit of terrorists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/po...28LEGA.html?hp


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House Vote Stymies TIA Spy Plan
Declan McCullagh

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a spending bill that eliminates money for the Terrorism Information Awareness project, effectively putting an end to the controversial Pentagon antiterrorism plan, which sought to assemble computerized dossiers on Americans.

The 407 to 15 vote on Wednesday approved a conference bill drafted by a joint House-Senate committee. The approval vote is the result of a year of fierce lobbying by privacy advocates to eliminate TIA (formerly named "Total Information Awareness") and of Pentagon efforts to defend it against mounting public and congressional criticism. Adm. John Poindexter, who ran the U.S. Department of Defense's Information Awareness Office, which managed the TIA project, resigned last month.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who led opposition to the TIA project on Capitol Hill, said in a telephone interview that the "program that would have been the biggest and most intrusive surveillance program in the history of the United States will be no more. The lights are going out at the office."

Originally, only the Senate version of the annual Defense Department appropriations bill included the funding restriction, while the House bill did not. Members of the closed-door joint committee decided to keep the language that restricted the budget for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), saying they were "concerned about the activities of the Information Awareness Office, and direct that the office be terminated immediately."

Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for DARPA, said on Thursday: "I don't want to make a comment. The congressional language speaks for itself."

The legislation, which still must be approved by the Senate, does permit TIA or a similar system to be used for data mining-- as long as the targets are not U.S. citizens or residents. It says "the conference agreement does not restrict the National Foreign Intelligence Program from using processing, analysis and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence purposes."

Wyden stressed that provision would effectively curb the reach of TIA. "What they did say was that some of the technology programs can be used by some of the foreign intelligence programs," he said. "This is significant, because it ensures that American citizens on American soil will not become targets of TIA surveillance programs that could have seriously violated their privacy."

The National Foreign Intelligence Program is a broad term that covers the budgets of any federal agency with an intelligence-related mission, including the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Defense Department. Those agencies are defined in Executive Order 12333. In January, Defense Department Inspector General Joseph Schmitz acknowledged that the FBI was considering "possible experimentation with TIA technology in the future."

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Poindexter's resignation this summer indicated that TIA would not survive the conference committee.

"I think there was consensus from both Democrats and Republicans that TIA was poorly conceived and poorly executed," Rotenberg said. "The point is important, because people were reacting to the underlying premise that you would gather up this data, and the fact that people like John Poindexter were gathering up this stuff."

TIA became a lightning rod of criticism, in part because President George W. Bush chose Poindexter, who was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal, to run DARPA's Information Awareness Office. As a protest gesture, activists and critics of TIA posted Poindexter's personal information online, which may lie behind the removal of information from the TIA Web site on at least three occasions.

If it had been fully implemented, TIA would have linked databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor vehicle departments for law enforcement purposes in hopes of snaring terrorists. Although TIA was the subject of the most attention, the conference report appears to slice funding for other related projects at DARPA. These include Human ID at a Distance and database-related projects like Genisys, Genoa, and Genoa II.

The funding restriction is likely to pose problems for dozens of contractors--including the University of Southern California, Colorado State University, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and defense contractor Science Applications International--that had expected to receive millions of dollars for research that was aimed at implementing TIA.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029-5082253.html


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...&postid=195237
Tom the Dancing Bug (thanks tg!)


ACLU Accuses RIAA Of Illegalities
Declan McCullagh

The Recording Industry Association of America is facing a legal challenge to its anti-piracy tactics, even as it announces that it has reached settlements in dozens of lawsuits against individuals.

In a move that could complicate the RIAA's pursuit of peer-to-peer pirates, the American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday it had filed court documents accusing the trade association of illegally using thousands of subpoenas to unmask alleged copyright infringers.

The recording industry's subpoenas, filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violated due process and constitutional rights shielding Internet users' anonymity, the ACLU claims.

The subpoenas led to hundreds of lawsuits, filed earlier this month by the RIAA. In turn, those lawsuits prompted out-of-court settlements -- with unspecified payments to the RIAA -- that ended 52 of the 261 suits under way. An additional 12 settlements were struck in cases where no lawsuit had been filed.

"Americans increasingly understand our need to protect this global business and secure the jobs of those who work in it," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA. "The message that downloading or distributing copyrighted music files is illegal and can have real consequences is beginning to take hold in the consciousness of families across the country. This is an essential prerequisite for fostering an environment where legitimate online music businesses can flourish."

The RIAA said it has received 838 affidavits from file swappers who admitted they had violated copyright laws, but pledged not to do it again. Anyone signing the affidavit must admit that he or she engaged in "unauthorised noncommercial downloading, copying, or 'sharing'" on peer-to-peer networks.

Civil liberties groups, including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, have criticised the amnesty program, saying that the RIAA could still sue in some circumstances -- and that the person signing an affidavit could be prosecuted for criminal copyright infringement.

In its motion, filed Friday, the ACLU joined other nonprofit groups in opposing the RIAA. Last week, the American Library Association and other library organisations criticised the RIAA's attempts to shut down peer-to- peer networks through a lawsuit currently before a federal appeals court in California.

The ACLU is asking a federal judge in Boston to reject an attempt by the record labels to invoke the DMCA in a bid to unmask an alleged peer-to-peer user at Boston College.

"The consequences from this lack of procedural protections are far from trivial," the ACLU said in court papers. "In addition to being deprived of one's constitutional rights, there is nothing to stop a vindictive business or individual from claiming copyright to acquire the identity of critics."

David Plotkin, a Boston attorney who filed the motion alongside the ACLU, said in email that "the statute only allows for a subpoena when the copyrighted material at issue is stored on the ISP's system, but not, as in the case of Boston College and almost all other ISPs, when the material is stored on the Internet user's personal computer."

Plotkin also argues that the subpoena suffers from "procedural deficiencies" and violates the due process and free expression guaranteed in the US Constitution.

In another case, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., considered similar arguments and rejected them, ruling the DMCA was constitutional. That case, which pits Verizon Communications against the RIAA is on appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9116777,00.htm


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Innocent File-Sharers Could Appear Guilty
Will Knight

A research paper highlighting security weaknesses in a popular internet file-sharing network has raised concerns that innocent users could in theory be wrongly accused of sharing copyrighted music.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the largest US music companies, has already begun legal action against 261 file-sharers who are accused of sharing "substantial" amounts of copyrighted material through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

The RIAA carried out surveillance of P2P networks to determine the usernames of alleged copyright infringers. A subset of these users was then tracked down via their internet service providers.

So far, 52 have agreed to settle with the RIAA for a few thousand dollars each. A further 838 have admitted infringements and promised to destroy illegally obtained files in return for a legal amnesty. An estimated 62 million Americans are thought to have used P2P networks, though it is not known how many have illegally shared music.

The anonymous paper, Entrapment: Incriminating Peer to Peer Network Users, was posted to a free Australian web hosting service and suggests some users could claim that the evidence on which they are brought to trial is flawed. Experts contacted by New Scientist say the paper is a credible piece of work.

The document focuses on the Gnutella file-sharing network that forms the backbone of a number of widely-
used file-sharing clients including Morpheus and Bearshare.

It describes various techniques that could be used to make it appear to a third party on the Gnutella network as if an innocent user is hosting or searching for copyrighted files. It also describes methods for tricking users into inadvertently downloading copyrighted files so that they actually host these files.

Some of the methods described are made possible because peer-to-peer networks like Gnutella rely on users passing on requests for files and information about the files stored on users' machines. Manipulating these network messages can make it look as if a user is illegally offering files for download.

"These Gnutella-specific attacks seem reasonable at first glance," says Adam Langley, a UK-based peer-to- peer programmer. But the techniques described are not surprising, he says: "Gnutella was certainly never designed to resist an attack like this."

Others experts say the paper raises interesting issues about the ongoing legal furore. "The core point the
author is making - the unreliability of the 'evidence' used to sue file sharers - is valid," says Ian Clarke, who invented Freenet, a file-sharing network designed to provide anonymity for users.

Theodore Hong, a peer-to-peer networking researcher at Imperial College London, UK, comments: "It's interesting that these technical weaknesses may actually be a legal strength [for P2P users] by introducing doubt as to who is really doing what."

Langley says it is unclear whether other P2P networks might be similarly vulnerable to misuse. But he notes that there are other ways to incriminate an innocent party: "Most Windows users will run any old attachment you send them, so if you want to implicate someone you can just send them a Trojan."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/pri...?id=ns99994222

The Paper (pdf)


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Kazaa: Serve Consumers, Not Subpoenas
Roy Mark

Executives from the music and motion picture industries told a Senate panel Tuesday that until peer-to-peer (P2P) software companies begin to act responsibly and proactively to discourage copyright infringement on their services, there is little chance Hollywood will negotiate licensing agreements with the popular file-sharing networks.

Among the P2P reforms called for by Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which spent the summer filing information subpoenas and lawsuits against alleged infringers using P2P networks, were: "meaningful" disclosures to users that copyright infringement is a federal offense; filters to protect copyright content; and default settings so that users are not automatically uploading music from their hard drives.

"The law is clear. Yet understanding of the law is hazy. Why? In large part it's because the file sharing networks like Kazaa deliberately induce people to break the law," Bainwol told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations. "There is a brighter future around the corner if the operators of these networks just voluntarily execute these three common sense and easily implemented reforms.

Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks, which owns and distributes Kazaa, the world's largest file sharing network, countered that P2P is the most efficient way to distribute digital media but the music and movie studios refuse to discuss licensing agreements in order to control online distribution for their own profit.

"We believe the legal attack on individuals and technology providers on the grounds of protecting copyrights is really just a smokescreen to hide the real challenge confronting the entertainment industry -- moving beyond an outdated economic model that is being rejected by the marketplace to a model for which we have a well conceived upgrade path," Morris said.

Kazaa supports a technology developed by Altnet of Woodland Hills, Calif., that, according to Morris, "wraps a file," making it secure the first time a consumer downloads it and every other time a different consumer downloads it from a fellow peer. Morris said the wrap allows the content owner to define the terms of sale to the user.

In the Altnet search technology scheme, wrapped content is delivered in priority order, "ensuring that the user will always see rights managed content before any other content."

Derek Broes, executive vice president of Altnet, told the committee as more and more content is wrapped, or licensed, illegal files are driven deeper and deeper into the system to make them much more difficult to find.

"The model can be hugely profitable for the entertainment industry. But the entertainment industry and the peer-to-peer industry must work together if this dynamic new content distribution model is going to realize its potential," Morris said. "Wouldn't it be better to sell to them (consumers) rather than sue them?"

Originally conceived as an opportunity to examine the legality of the subpoena provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the hearing was expanded to include an overview of online piracy and the impact of technology on the entertainment industry.

In the days leading up to the hearing, the witness list grew to three separate panels and eventually included celebrities LL Cool J and Chuck D.

"I don't want to attack the fans who love the music," LL Cool J said. "I understand that some of the CDs were a little expensive, but are we just going to give it way? A lot of things are possible, but does that make it right? Don't we people in the entertainment industry have the same right as other Americans to earn a fair living?"

Chuck D, on the other hand, said he thought P2P meant "power-to-the-people."

"Technology giveth and tecnhlogy taketh way. I'm sure the railroads resented the business the airlines took away from them," he said.

Besides, the rapper added, "I never felt my copyrights were protected anyway. I've been ducking lawyers, agents and music publishers all my life. I trust consumers."
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3085711


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Point

Lawsuits Damp Down P2P Audience Reuters
Reuters

Lawsuits launched against individuals for illegal file-sharing appear to have tempered activity on the more popular peer-to-peer networks, new U.S. research released this week shows.

Nielsen//NetRatings, which tracks Internet usage, said on Tuesday it found a 41 percent drop over the last three months in the audience for Kazaa, the leading music file-sharing service.

On September 8, the Recording Industry Association of America, a group representing big labels like AOL Time Warner's Warner Music and Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, sued 261 people for illegal file-sharing.

"The RIAA is clearly sending a strong message to American Web users and the message appears to be working," said Greg Bloom, an analyst with Nielsen//NetRatings.

"With hundreds of individuals facing real lawsuits, the threat to music file-sharers is very serious," he said.

Since the week ending June 29, traffic to Kazaa has fallen 41 percent to about 3.9 million unique visitors from 6.5 million in the week ending September 21.

Traffic to Morpheus fell to 261,000 unique visitors in the week ending September 21 from 272,000 in the week ending June 29.

Meanwhile, the RIAA this week reached settlements with 64 people, including 12 with people not yet sued.

On Monday, several peer-to-peer networks unveiled a code of conduct to encourage responsible behavior among the millions of users and asked Congress to figure out a way record labels and other copyright holders can be reimbursed for the material traded online.

Meanwhile, other data released on Tuesday showed that as of August a vast majority of teens believed downloading music for free was morally acceptable.

The August 2003 Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing Youth Survey, a premium service offered by the Gallup organization, found 83 percent of 517 teens, aged 13 to 17, found downloading free music was morally acceptable.

Gallup officials noted the RIAA's lawsuits in September may have raised awareness of the issue.

"We have to be a little cautious in interpreting this, but it does show that off the top of their heads in August, the vast majority of teenagers said, 'Sure, why not? It's perfectly moral to download,"' said Frank Newport, editor-in- chief of the Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing.

"We do poll teenagers regularly and I think we'll use exactly the same question again soon and see if things have changed," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60654,00.html


Counter Point

Post Your Count

A public examination of usage trends with the Fasttrack system.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16779


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Anonymity Versus Law Enforcement:

The Fight Over Subpoenaing Alleged Downloaders' Names From Internet Service Providers
Julie Hilden

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in a landmark case that raises, among other issues, the issue of the scope
of anonymity rights on the Internet.

The case pits the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Verizon. It is part of the ongoing litigation, on so many fronts, over peer-to-peer file distributing and downloading.

The case began because the RIAA sent a subpoena to Verizon demanding the identity of a particular user. The user, according to the RIAA, had illegally downloaded - and thus infringed copyrights on - over 600 songs in a single day. Verizon refused to comply, and the RIAA sued.

The suit raises a number of important issues. In this column, I will concentrate on two. The first is how to interpret the subpoena power that is set forth in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The second is whether a user identity subpoena such as the one issued to Verizon - even if it were authorized by the DMCA - violates the First Amendment, and, in particular, the right to speak anonymously. For arguably, unless users can access the Internet anonymously, they cannot truly speak anonymously there.

In its second opinion in the case, the district court held that the First Amendment did not prevent enforcement of the subpoena.

In the end, by pretending to recognize anonymity rights, but then making these rights effectively meaningless, the district court did a disservice both to Verizon and its users. It also declined to reach a true compromise in the inevitable clash between anonymity rights and law enforcement goals.

Yet some compromise is necessary. The presence or absence of the option of anonymity on the Internet won't only affect illegal downloaders. It will affect every Internet user who believes that he or she might someday have something so important to say - or information so important to exchange - but fears there is insufficient protection online to speak anonymously. For along with its costs, anonymous speech has potentially immense benefits - a matchless candor on the part of the speaker, and the potentially highly beneficial revelation of secrets the public should know.

Until we balance these costs and benefits rationally, and work out a compromise between them, both our civil liberties and our security will be imperiled.
http://writ.findlaw.com/hilden/20031001.html


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P2P For People In Repressive Regimes

Alan Brown, inventor of the Red Rover anti-censor p2p information system, has joined p2pnet.net as Security Systems and Cyber Rights coordinator.

The original Red Rover was first announced in Moscow at Russia's first cyber-rights conference in the early part of 2001. It was subsequently introduced to the world later that year with the publication of Andy Oram's Peer-to-Peer - Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies.

A p2p strategy designed to overcome government-based information blocking, Red Rover's most important element is safety of use for people receiving information, backed by information integrity.

It's specifically low-tech and avoids those forms of cryptography and evasion which are easily detectible mechanically. Information is sent through a p2p process but collected without a p2p client - only email and the web are needed.

Brown and p2pnet.net founder Jon Newton now plan to develop it as a functioning system.

"Red Rover is meant primarily for people under any regime that permits web use," says Newton. "It'll allow them to receive reliable information via a p2p system which is far safer than the ones currently out there. To be involved with Alan in its development is tremendously exciting."

Brown, who's currently working on a revised description of Red Rover, says, "I'm thrilled Red Rover is now moving to its next stage. Jon sees what's important about p2p and it'll be great to work with someone who 'gets it'."

Brown will also contribute articles for p2pnet.net on high-level information dissemination through peer-to- peer applications, and organize regular guest columns from expert writers.

An up-front cyber rights activist at both national and international levels, Brown formerly taught mathematical logic while directing anti-censorship efforts for the first ACLU affiliate with a website. He's since worked with, and for, a number of rights organizations in the US and Russia and addressed both Hackers on Planet Earth (H2K2) and UNESCO.
http://www.p2pnet.net/article/8235


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Pushing Peer-to-Peer

The networking approach that threatens to make the recording industry obsolete could also bring about a more reliable Internet.
Simson Garfinkel

If I say peer-to-peer, you probably start thinking about those file-sharing services that let you get free music, movies, and pornography over the Internet. But peer-to-peer is about much more than violating the copyright of big record labels.

Indeed, although the term was coined just a few years ago, peer-to-peer is really how the Internet was originally designed to work. The theory was that all of the computers on the network would be first-class citizens, each capable of sharing resources or exchanging information with one another. Back then, a student at MIT might start typing on a computer in Cambridge and use it to log into a computer at Stanford. Meanwhile, another student at Stanford might use that same computer to log into the first system at MIT. Both computers would be simultaneously using and offering services to the network. The connections between them would be links between equals—that is, peer-to-peer.

As it turns out, most of the Internet didn’t become a peer-to-peer system. Instead, the Net evolved along a different model. Low-cost computers, called clients, were distributed onto people’s desks. These machines were used to access services offered by more expensive centralized computers—called, for lack of a better word, servers. Some of the earliest client-server systems let people share files by placing them on centralized file servers. The servers were also an ideal place to put electronic mail.

These days, the Internet’s clients are the desktop and laptop computers that we are all so familiar with. The servers are the Web servers, mail servers, instant messaging servers, and other servers that our clients rely upon. There are even more servers operating behind the scenes—things like DNS servers that operate the Internet’s Domain Name System, routing servers used for sending voice traffic through the Net (so-called voice-over-IP systems), and even servers for companies that want to back up their computers over the network. The client-server model has been so successful because it’s fairly easy to understand, set up, and maintain.

But there is a big problem with client-server architecture: it’s vulnerable. When a single server goes down, all the clients that rely on it essentially go down with it. You can minimize this problem by having multiple servers, but then you have to make sure that they all stay synchronized. In fact, the server doesn’t even have to go down—all you need is a break in the network.

Peer-to-peer is a fundamentally different way of thinking about the network—based not on the notions of clients and servers but on cooperation and collaboration. A peer-to-peer backup system might use all of the extra space on the hard drives throughout an organization to store extra copies of critical documents and personal e-mail; a peer-to-peer Web publishing system might use those same hard drives to store copies of Web sites. The theory here is that a thousand underpowered clients are still faster than the world’s fastest server.

Unfortunately, peer-to-peer systems can be difficult to put together. The simplistic way to build one is to have each node report its presence to a central server. People who want to join the network then log in to the central machine use it to find their peers. While this works, it’s not true peer-to-peer: shut down the central server, and the system collapses.

That's why most of the academic research on peer-to-peer systems has concentrated on building systems that work without any centralized control. This is harder stuff! Computers need to be able to discover new peers showing up, and be tolerant of peers that crash. Sometimes the network breaks into two or more pieces. Data needs to be stored in multiple locations. For an added challenge, try to handle potentially hostile peers that pretend to be good ones.

All of this experience could really pay off in ten or fifteen years. Consider these examples:

· One of the weakest points of the Internet right now is the domain name system, which is run by a loose confederation of name servers. Running DNS on top of a peer-to-peer system instead could dramatically improve its reliability.

· Today, if your business runs a small Web server and the site suddenly gets very popular, the server can crash from all of the extra traffic. But if all of the computers on the Internet were part of a global peer-to-peer Web cache, then small companies and individuals could publish their material to the multitudes. A good system would even prevent malicious modification of the Web page contents when they were served off other machines.

· In the event of a terrorist attack on the Internet’s infrastructure, a peer-to-peer system would be far more likely to recover than a system that depended on top-down control.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...nkel100303.asp


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Bee Gee Wars
William F. Buckley Jr.

A big battle is shaping up. The major players are musicians and the industry that retails their wares, and the people (mostly young) who love the music but don't want to pay for it. The musicians and their representatives argue that music is, really, a form of property. Nobody would object to the police coming in to prevent someone from stealing your Sony. So why should anyone object to the police approaching Jane Doe to take her to court for having recorded a thousand songs coming in over the Internet?

On this quarrel I have a singular credential. I am an entirely disinterested party. Perhaps not to the extent of my friend, a distinguished amateur musician and doctor. We met recently and exchanged sheepish confessions of ignorance. Was I, he wanted to know, familiar with any of the names published every day in the newspapers and magazines telling stories of things like the Bee Gees and the Hellzapoppins and the Fires on Earth? The answer was no. Although, I said with wistful thought of rehabilitation, I once wrote an entire book about Elvis Presley.

"Oh?" the doctor asked. "What was it called?"

To my dismay, I could not remember the title until a half-hour later, which was too late. On the other hand, my interlocutor confessed that he had not heard, before reading that morning's obituaries, the name of Johnny Cash.

Well, never mind us aliens. There is a throbbing demand for the music of the pop world. Enter the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites). The locus of the fight is Boston College and a student called by the authorities Jane Doe. Ms. Doe, we are given to understand, has a whole library full of music that she has taken off the Internet and, conceivably, passed on to friends and, perhaps inconceivably, sold to non-friends.

The prosecutors are asking about her pursuant to responsibilities vested in them by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (news - web sites), a law that gives copyright holders broad powers to pursue suspected infringers via Internet service providers. But the ACLU is objecting, on the grounds that there hasn't been any due process observed. To isolate the identity of a heady consumer of Internet music is not the equivalent of subpoenaing someone suspected of stealing private property, they argue.

It does sound as if it were, but professor Jessica Litman of Wayne State University deals nicely with the question. "She suggests," The New York Times reporter tells us, "that the comparison between privacy rights and property rights is the sort of thing that sounds good if you say it fast, but that breaks down under close scrutiny."

Ms. Litman scoffs at the idea that privacy rights protect any and all information privately amassed, denying, e.g., to Newsweek access to your subscription record to Time. "'Property law,' she said," the Times goes on, "'is largely intended to make it possible to sell property, not to keep it secure. The property framework does fit intellectual property because those rights help artists and their representatives trade their art for money.'"

The stuff being picked up on the Internet is certainly copyrighted. And the Millennium Act seeks to stress the point by authorizing law enforcers to move against what, thieves?

Only in America: a raft of organizations is at hand. They march under the banner of P2P United. That stands for "peer-to-peer." The general idea is that the browser who shoots out the latest Bee Gee to you is, really, just a "peer," talking friendly to a peer. An organization called Downhill Battle (downhillbattle.org) fights strenuously for the Jane Does of this world and helps to mobilize legal defense and a legal and moral armory of arguments.

Questions before the house -- and before the courts: (1) Is your right to the information you have generated, or amassed, the equivalent of your right to ownership of the music, or literature, you have written? And (2) do protections that are explicit or inhere in the Constitution shield you from the official (officious?) curiosity of the Justice Department (news - web sites)?

Jane Doe of Boston College, if ever we find out who she is, will edge us toward an answer to those questions. And who will provide her with music in jail? Who will be her peer, the faculty adviser or the warden?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...cwb/beegeewars


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ACLU Argument

Motion to Quash in RIAA v. Boston College et al. (pdf)

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Questions For Linus Torvalds

The Sharer
David Diamond

: You gave Linux, the operating system, to the world free, in effect jump-starting the open-source movement. Now this previously obscure company, SCO Group, claims ownership of some of the code and threatens to close the door on open source and Linux. I suppose it's to be expected that when you send your offspring out into the world, you have to be prepared for your kid to run with a crowd you don't approve of.

Oh, Linux has grown up, and it's running with a crowd that I certainly never expected, like I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard. That's not the issue. SCO is claiming parenthood of that child and now wants to make money off the earnings of that child. Even though SCO has refused to undergo the technical equivalent of DNA testing, and even though my (and other people's) DNA is probably all over Linux.

So does this issue matter to you personally?

I've tried to stay away from distractions. But especially since they have started threatening to send invoices to Linux users, it may eventually escalate to the point where I have to start taking legal steps.

Is file-sharing, which has the recording industry so up in arms, the ''dark side'' of open-source attitudes?

Sharing is certainly not bad in itself. In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved. What the recording industry is so worried about is obviously something totally different -- the ''sharing'' of stuff that isn't yours to share in the first place.

O.K. So what are your views on sharing music files?

I don't actually think about it much; I listen to the radio if I listen to music. What I do find interesting is how the file-sharing thing ends up changing how people think about computers and copyright law. Some of it is a bit scary: just the fact that your question equated sharing with something bad is a pretty scary statement in itself. What also bothers me is the apparent dishonesty of especially the R.I.A.A., claiming that file-sharing is destroying their business and that they are losing billions of dollars on it. There's been a number of studies done, and it looks like the major reason for the dip in CD sales ends up being lack of interest in the music produced. And let's face it -- how many boy bands can you try to sell before your revenues start dipping?

We've been getting hit with a lot of viruses and worms lately. What's your idea for ending the attacks?

When you have people who hook up these machines that weren't designed for the Internet, and they don't even want to know about all the intricacies of network security, what can you expect? We get what we have now: a system that can be brought down by a teenager with too much time on his hands. Should we blame the teenager? Sure, we can point the finger at him and say, ''Bad boy!'' and slap him for it. Will that actually fix anything? No. The next geeky kid frustrated about not getting a date on Saturday night will come along and do the same thing without really understanding the consequences. So either we should make it a law that all geeks have dates -- I'd have supported such a law when I was a teenager -- or the blame is really on the companies who sell and install the systems that are quite that fragile.

Since you moved to Silicon Valley from Finland in 1997, how has the region's aggressive approach to money-making affected you?

Oh, how I hate that question. I've actually found the image of Silicon Valley as a hotbed of money-grubbing tech people to be pretty false, but maybe that's because the people I hang out with are all really engineers. They came here because this is where the action is. You go out for dinner, and all the tables are filled with engineers talking about things that won't be available to ''normal people'' for a few years. If ever.

People position you as the nemesis to Bill Gates. He started Microsoft and you started Linux, the big competition to Microsoft's dominance of operating systems. Is that an unfair or inaccurate characterization?

The thing is, at least to me personally, Microsoft just isn't relevant to what I do. That might sound strange, since they are clearly the dominant player in the market that Linux is in, but the thing is: I'm not in the ''market.'' I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the ''evil Microsoft empire.'' Quite the reverse, in fact: from a technology angle, Microsoft really has been one of the least interesting companies. So I've never seen it as a ''Linus versus Bill'' thing. I just can't see myself in the position of the nemesis, since I just don't care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/ma...WLN104109.html


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File Sharing Or File Stealing?

Satellite fight offers guidance
Stephen Keating

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently filed lawsuits against 261 people, including 20 in Colorado, for allegedly using their personal computers as pirate jukeboxes, downloading copyrighted music files and sharing them with others.

If proven, such piracy could cost offenders dearly: $750 to $150,000 for each downloaded song. Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old New York City honors student, became one of the first targets named when her mother paid a $2,000 fine to settle the case.

"I got really scared," Brianna told the New York Post. "My stomach is all turning. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"

There are many troubling aspects to this situation, including the legal tactics used to track down offenders, the acknowledged piracy of copyrighted material, the future of intellectual property in a digital age, the openness of the Internet and the desire of computer users to engage in so-called peer- to-peer - or P2P - file sharing.

Yet, what's missing in this debate is the knowledge that we've been here before. And the lessons from that conflict may show how the P2P piracy issue may be defused.

The relevant history is that of the satellite TV industry, which now claims 20 million paying subscribers in the United States. In the mid-1970s, however, owners of home satellite TV dishes were the epitome of piracy. That black market arose when Home Box Office, the Christian Broadcasting Network, ESPN, C-SPAN and Ted Turner's networks, to name a few, began beaming their programming up to satellites for national distribution to cable operators.

At the same time, hobbyists like Stanford University professor Taylor Howard were pointing backyard satellite dishes toward the southern sky and pulling down that very same programming.

Simultaneously conscience-stricken and amused at having pirated HBO's signal in 1976, Howard wrote the network a letter and mailed it off. "I understand it's a pay service," he wrote. "I would like a monthly subscription." He never heard back.

Many people will pay for content, if given the opportunity. The online Apple iTunes service sold its 10 millionth song in September and is averaging 500,000 paid downloads per week, at 99 cents a pop. A version for Windows computers is promised soon.

Lawsuits are a means, not an end. The RIAA could file lawsuits now until the end of time and still not crush online piracy. The music industry's failure to embrace new download technology has spurred the pirates.

Congress should revisit the laws governing intellectual property and copyright in a digital age. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which the RIAA used as a basis for filing its lawsuits, may itself need an upgrade.

Disruptive communications technologies like satellite TV, P2P and whatever comes next should be embraced for the innovations they provide, not disdained for the headaches they cause along the way.

That last point has a history all its own. Every time new media has arrived on the scene, the old guard has cried foul, only to discover later that the human appetite for communication is ever-expanding and new markets are created. Radio feared the dawn of talking pictures. The movies feared broadcast television. Broadcast TV feared cable, which feared satellite TV. The movie studios feared VCRs, then found that a whole new billion-dollar market in home entertainment had been created.

Several years from now, when a new, legitimate industry of music, movie and media downloads has transformed the Internet, the music industry's current fusillade of lawsuits will sound like the echo of a fear unfounded.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...56552,00.html#


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LL Cool J And Chuck D Visit DC - But they were on opposite sides of the issue
Lee Bailey

*Tuesday, LL Cool J and Chuck D took their voices to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, alongside music industry executives and technology experts, to speak on downloading music and copyright issues.

The panel, titled The Privacy & Piracy: The Paradox of Illegal File Sharing on Peer-to-Peer Networks and the Impact of Technology on the Entertainment Industry, focused on the impact file sharing has had on the recording industry.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Senator Barbara Boxer, Mitch Bainwol, the Chairman & CEO of the RIAA, representatives from Kazaa, Altnet, college professors and a woman who is being sued by the RIAA testified. Some professors recommended more public service announcements explaining why downloading and file sharing is an issue and that lawsuits targeting consumers cannot stop the trend.

Some suggested lowering the price of CDs, increasing the quality of music and talent that's released, adding extra songs on releases and other incentives for consumers to start purchasing CDs again.

LL Cool J testified alongside RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol and Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti in support of the entertainment industry's lawsuits.

Public Enemy frontman Chuck D took the opposite side of the issue, pushing for business models that would include the use of legal file-sharing.

Alan Morris, VP of KaZaA parent Sharman Networks Ltd., and Lorraine Sullivan, a recipient of an RIAA subpoena, were also among the 11 witnesses scheduled at the hearing.

RIAA Pats Self On The Back Says out of court settlements are the bomb diggity, but not in so many words.

*The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said it has negotiated out-of-court settlements with 64 individuals accused of file-sharing, three weeks after the trade group revealed that it had filed copyright-infringement lawsuits against 261 users of peer-to-peer networks.

Of the settlements, 52 represent individuals sued earlier this month, while the remaining 12 were "pre-litigation:" individuals who had not been sued but were identified as significant infringers and whose personal information was subpoenaed from their Internet service providers.

"We are heartened by the response we have seen so far," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement.
http://www.eurweb.com/articles/headl...1610012003.cfm


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File-Sharing: Don't Blame Technology For People's Sins
Doug Bandow

THE recording industry seems to believe that there is no greater enemy of all that is good and wonderful than peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technologies - thus, the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) campaign to sue parents, grandparents or roommates of those who violate copyrights by swopping songs.

The RIAA is within its rights to challenge lawbreakers, no matter how minor. Not legitimate is its lobbying campaign in Washington to shut down the P2P business. Ultimately, individuals, not technologies, such as the KaZaA Media Desktop, are to blame for copyright violations.

Copyright violators have been around since copyrights were created. New technologies - photocopiers, tape recorders, VCRs, DVDs and P2P software - have simply made it easier to copy protected works illicitly.

The industry has occasionally demanded heavy-handed restrictions on and even prohibitions of technological innovation. But, more often than not, it has worked to increase awareness of and compliance with the law. Firms have also cut prices and developed new markets, such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, which charges for music online.

However, the RIAA blames a one-third decline in music sales over the last three years on file-sharing. In contrast, Forrester Research places the drop at about 15 per cent, only a third of which can be attributed to file-sharing.

Still, old-fashioned enforcement has its place. Of course, the RIAA's efforts might antagonise potential customers. And the campaign might be doomed over the long term. After all, we live in a 'downloading culture', observes Ms Katie Hafner of The New York Times.

Moreover, some systems already try to shield their users from outside prying eyes, plus programmers are working to 'improve' their file-sharing software through the use of encryption, among other techniques. Nevertheless, the RIAA is entitled to try.

But large recording firms have not stopped at attempting to enforce the law. They want to destroy a technology simply because it is used by some cheaters.

The RIAA might have a case if the technology served no function other than criminal. Yet, explains American University law professor Peter Jaszi, 'it's far too early in the day to conclude everything everyone does with peer-to-peer, even when it comes to copyrighted MP3 files, is conclusively infringement'.

Even now, P2P is used to share government publications and private works in the public domain or where the copyright holder has granted permission. The potential for using file-sharing to further improve computer communication and networking is vast.

Says Mr Lance Cottrell, president of a software firm: 'Music was just the first 'killer' application, but I think it will be the first of many.'
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/com...212436,00.html


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RIAA Moves Quickly To Slow Anti-DMCA Legislation - Will Notify P2P Users Before Suing
Bill Holland

Speaking during a Senate panel yesterday (Sept. 30), Recording Industry Association of America chairman/CEO Mitch Bainwol announced a major change to the group's peer-to-peer enforcement policies. From now on, he said the RIAA will give notice to alleged egregious P2P infringers prior to filing lawsuits against them.

In addition to encouraging settlement talks, the change is a response to one of the most common complaints about the RIAA's subpoena and lawsuit actions. The notification will alleviate some of the surprise or confusion reported by users, including those who claim to have had no knowledge that their computers were allegedly being used for illegal downloading.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are not required to notify users that their personal information has been turned over to a copyright holder. "We're going to let them know that we will be suing them," Bainwol told members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in his first appearance on the Hill as RIAA chief. "We are trying to be reasonable and fair and allow these cases the opportunity to be resolved without litigation."

Bainwol also said "lawsuits could be avoided" if operators of P2P networks took certain steps, such as instituting disclosure notices that "free" uploading and downloading is illegal; using available technology to filter and block such activity; and changing default settings so users cannot unknowingly upload material.

"Understanding of the law is hazy. In large part, it's because file-sharing networks like KaZaA deliberately induce people to break the law," he said.

After the hearing, subcommittee chairman Norm Coleman told Bulletin he feels that the prior-notice change is "a good first step, and I commend the RIAA for its action." Coleman said he still believes the DMCA should be changed "to include some sort of judicial review" before subpoenas and lawsuits are allowed. Currently, subpoenas can be granted by a court clerk. Coleman said, however, that "for the time being," he is not introducing legislation to change the DMCA.

Also at the hearing, rapper LL Cool J testified in favor of the industry's lawsuits. "We're the dreamers," he said of recording artists. "We need your help." Allowing people to download illegally, he said, "is anti-American." Public Enemy front man Chuck D, meanwhile, opposes the litigation policy. "P2P to me means 'power to the people,'" he said.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1990004


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Sharman Defends Makers Of File-Swapping Software
Staff

Australian-headquartered file-sharing software company Sharman Networks has filed papers with the US Court of Appeals urging it to uphold an order it made in April.

The order, by Judge Stephen Wilson found that Grokster and StreamCast, makers of peer-to-peer software, could not be held liable for the file-swapping shenanigans of their users. That ruling is under attack from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which claims the judge erred. Sharman, the makers of Kazaa, on Wednesday hit back on behalf of the software companies, claiming the RIAA's move threatens consumers and US citizen's right to freedoms afforded to them under the US constitution's First Amendment.

"The US entertainment industry's appeal to change copyright law... would inexorably extend their copyright monopolies, chill new technology development, and threaten First Amendment protections," a company statement read.

Wilson had found that file-swapping technology was similar to photocopiers or home video recorders -- technologies that have both legal and illegal uses. "[The] defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

A statement issued by Sharman says the RIAA's appeal also has potential to stifle innovation and development surrounding Internet-based technologies. In the statement, the company quoted the Computer and Communications Industry Association as saying the RIAA wants to introduce "new standards that would as a practical matter give the entertainment industry a veto power over the development of innovative products and services."

These sentiments are echoed by Sharman's chief executive, Nikki Hemming, who says the issue is bigger than the entertainment world. "This case is not just about the rights of the entertainment industry, but the rights of individuals to freedom of speech and expression, the right for P2P to exist, and ultimately, the right of any emerging technology to develop without the threat of myopic extinction," he said in a statement. "There is no justification for one stakeholder group to demand that its rights outweigh all others, nor should the desires of one industry attempt to shape the progress of technology."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9116804,00.htm


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Peer-to-Peer Defense Fund

Support the Families - Stop the Lawsuits

The Peer-to-Peer Defense Fund lets you donate money directly to one of the individuals or families being sued by the record companies. We use PayPal for our contribution system because it's the most trusted and widely-used online payment service. PayPal means you can make safe, secure contributions with your credit card, and the money goes directly from you to someone who's being sued (we don't take a cut). If you don't already have a PayPal account, it only takes a few minutes to set one up--this small effort will make a big difference to the person who receives your donation.

Tens of thousands of people will visit this page in the next few days. If everyone who thinks the record industry's lawsuits are wrong makes a small contribution, we can make a huge difference for these families and put up a real fight against these lawsuits.

Why Donate

Desperate to end filesharing, the major record labels have singled out 261 people and are trying to make examples out of them. Without warning, families and individuals are being slammed with enormous lawsuits that they can't possibly afford to defend themselves against.

We've created this Fund so that everyone who thinks the RIAA lawsuits are callous and unwarranted can donate to support the people who are being sued. Rather than collecting donations centrally like a traditional defense fund, our system lets you give money directly to someone who is being sued. More about the contribution system.

Some families want to fight the record companies in court--we can give them the means to defend themselves and to attack the legal basis of these lawsuits. Others just need a way out--we can relieve the financial burden of settling the suit and help them get on with their lives. Above all, if we rally around everyone who's been sued, the record companies' bullying will fail and we can stop these lawsuits.
http://www.downhillbattle.org/defense/


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Proprietary Software--Banned In Boston?
David Becker

Massachusetts has adopted a new policy that favors open-source software and adherence to open standards in government computing systems, a state official said.

Eric Kriss, state secretary of administration and finance, said the policy was articulated in an internal memo that circulated last week and was formalized in a state capital spending plan released Monday.

The policy says in evaluating new technology purchases, the state will give preference to open-source software and products that adhere to
open standards such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

"We're going to be evaluating all projects to ensure conformance to open standards as we move forward and to retroactively move legacy systems to open standards," Kriss said. "We want to make sure what we build is interoperable and interchangeable, so that different applications can use the same data, so we won't have to be constantly reinventing and rethinking basic functionality."

The state will also give preference to open-source software, although it will continue to purchase proprietary products if they are found to be superior technologically or otherwise, Kriss said. He identified state Web servers, which currently run on Microsoft's Internet Information Services software, as a potential early candidate for retrofitting. "We're taking a serious look at Apache as a Web server," he said.

Changes will happen gradually, as they can be fit into the state's information technology budget, which allocates about $80 million for capital spending next year, Kriss said.

"We're mindful you don't change something as complex as the IT infrastructure of the state overnight," he said. "This is the beginning of a long journey."

Massachusetts joins a growing roster of governments that are embracing non-Microsoft software. The German city of Munich announced plans earlier this year to shift 14,000 PCs to Linux, and Asian governments have formed a coalition to explore open-source options.

Microsoft said in a statement that the state policy could discriminate against many software makers.

"We are deeply concerned if this policy eliminates fair and open competition in Massachusetts," said the statement. "Microsoft, along with others in the industry, including the Business Software Alliance and other associations, continues to support neutral procurement rules that allow everyone to compete. We hope the state recognizes that this is potentially bad for the Massachusetts economy, hampering open trade and IT progress in the state."

Massachusetts has sought the stiffest sanctions against Microsoft among the states that are participating in the antitrust case against the software giant. Kriss said the new IT policy is "totally unrelated" to the antitrust action.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5084442.html


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Nearly 75% Of Music Buyers In A VH1 Poll Tell Music Industry: 'It's The Price, Stupid!'

Lower the price and we will come.
Press Release

That's what nearly three-quarters of the music buyers said in a recent VH1 poll about Universal Music Group's (UMG) coming price reduction and the overall value of music today in an industry vulnerable to downloaders. Of the music buyers, 72% said they liked the idea of the price break and that they would buy more CDs.

But the poll revealed that the word isn't exactly out about UMG's new pricing strategy. Only a quarter (26%) of those polled said they knew of UMG's price breaks coming October 1.

89% Say New CDs Are Not Priced Fairly

The VH1 poll found that 89% of music buyers think that CDs are not priced fairly. Only 8% said that a CD priced in the $14-$17 range was a fair price. Nearly half, or 46%, said that $10-$13 was fair, while 43% said that $6-$9 was in the fair range. The survey reveals that other music labels should pay close attention to UMG's price breaks. Close to half, or 48%, said they think the other music labels will soon follow suit with similar price decreases.

Cut the Price - And the Lawsuits

Of those surveyed overall, 20% have ever downloaded music, while 11% have downloaded music in the past six months. Of those who have downloaded, virtually all are aware of the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) lawsuits against downloaders. But their responses indicate that price breaks are much more likely than the threat of lawsuits to get them back to the music stores.

Of those who have downloaded music from the Internet, the majority at 58% said that price breaks such as UMG's would make them more likely to buy new CDs, 27% were neutral to the idea, while 13% said price cuts were unlikely to get them back into the stores.

But when the downloaders were asked if the threat of lawsuits would prompt them to buy new CDs, only 35% said it was likely, 21% were neutral -- and a hearty 45% said it was unlikely that the threats would get them to shop for CDs at retail.

This VH1 poll was conducted by telephone September 17-22, 2003 among a random national sample of 1,038 adults 18 and older. The results have a +/- 3.1% margin of error. Field work was done via the weekly Express omnibus survey, operated by TNS Intersearch of Horsham, Pa.
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=57492


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How Panic Spreads

Rockers Widespread Panic thrive by consistently offering 'nothing' to their absurdly loyal fans.
Joshua Hyatt

What's happening onstage at a Widespread Panic gig is only a small morsel from a big, flaky feast. Therein, dudes, lies the key to its ongoing profitability: In an era in which the piracy of recorded music has leeched away revenues, the band's ability to turn live shows into its primary distribution channel may turn out to be the wisest of business decisions.

"The band really puts a lot into what it does," proclaims 33-year-old Laura Kelly (75 shows), a bookkeeper. "The audience feels it and tries to give it back." Fans position themselves nose to nose, shouting the lyrics into each other's wide-open mouths; they throw rubber duckies and dance with alien balloons; they claw and punch the empty air. As for the pointing? Well, there's a lot of it—at the band members, at one another, between any two people who make eye contact—and it's so obviously random that only an especially self-conscious soul could misinterpret it as I did. Such aggressive gestures are just outlets for all the energy and the unity and the ... hey, what's that sweet smell?

Should the audience stop sensing those vibes, these guys are goners. Nobody's going to be begging them to reunite for a Hall of Fame induction either. In their 11-CD career, they've sold maybe two million discs. And you aren't going to catch their tunes blasting out of a passing radio. "I wish I could say they got airplay," says Buck Williams, 57, the band's co- manager and agent. "But radio is awfully narrow-minded and jaded."

That being the case, Widespread Panic doesn't sustain itself by selling a shrinkwrapped product. Like business consultants and tax attorneys, these folks make money only when they work—that is, up on stage providing "the soundtrack to this big party that's going on," as drummer Todd Nance puts it. Widespread Panic sells the experience of seeing its live performance, which is even airier than it sounds. "You're calling nothing something, and you're selling that," explains John Bell, the band's 41-year-old co-founder. "It's like Seinfeld."

Making money from nothing is harder than it looks. The band's company, Brown Cat, does have an official merchandising department (annual revenues: $500,000, with 20% margins) working out of its headquarters in Athens, Ga., selling everything from T-shirts to faux Georgia license plates. Even so, "people call us all the time looking for certain T-shirts that turn out to be bootlegs," says Paul "Crumpy" Edwards, one of three employees in merchandising. "You just can't snuff the stuff out." Unless you co-opt it. Don Hess (180 shows) was once a pirate but then became a licensee, making promotional merchandise like ultimate Frisbees for the band. "They busted us, but we've gone legit," says Hess, proud co-founder of Mountain High Productions (for more on other businesses that have sprung up around the band, see Something From 'Nothing,' right). The upshot for the group: better control over quality and higher profits.

One group Widespread Panic won't ever try to unplug is the amateur tapers. With the music industry suing individual fans for downloading songs over the Net, it's jarring to see a special section at the band's concerts reserved for these guys—right behind the soundboard, where they're out of the way of most Spreadheads. (To get closer, tapers have been known to mount tiny microphones on their eyeglasses.) These fans, the logic goes, create new acolytes by sharing their CDs with them. "The people who make tapes are responsible for us having great crowds the first time we went west of the Mississippi," recalls Schools, 39. He joined the fledgling group—which took its name from its late co- founder Michael Houser's bout with panic attacks—in 1984. "They figured out early what their fans wanted," says Williams, whose clients include REM. "And they catered to that." That's why Travis Tarr, for one, has taped about 30 shows since 1997. Today he has $6,000 of equipment stashed inside a green waterproof bag. "None of us make a dollar on this," says Tarr, 31, reassuringly slipping his arm around me. "The band just wants us to spread it out."
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/small...9773-1,00.html


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Iomega's New Mini USB 2.0 Drives Speeds Up File- Sharing

Iomega announced that it's new generation flash memory drives with transfer rates of up to 9MB per second is now shipping in the Asia Pacific.

The new drives use Hi-Speed USB

(USB 2.0) interface technology for fast file sharing, which is now standard on most new laptops and PCs.

With higher performance of up to 9MB/sec in reading files and 7MB/sec in writing files - or nine times faster than drives based on the USB 1.1 standard - the new drive is ideal for saving and sharing presentations, graphics, photos, music, and videos more portable and easily accessible.

Iomega's current Mini 128MB and 256MB USB drives have also been updated to the new USB 2.0 standard, with performance of approximately 8MB/sec (read) and 5MB/sec (write).

"We think the new Iomega Mini USB 2.0 drives stand out from competing products based on features and component quality," said Lim Chong Gee, director, product management, Asia Pacific, at Iomega Corporation.

Iomega Mini USB 2.0 drives hold up to 1GB of data, require no cables, power adaptors or batteries. They are as small as a car key, have no moving parts, and are plug-and-play compatible - no drivers required with Windows Me, 2000, and XP, Linux 2.4.1, and Mac OS 9.0 and above (Win 98/98SE and Mac OS 8.6 require a separate driver).
http://www.cmpnetasia.com/ViewArt.cf...id=7&subcat=49


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It Turns Out the Music Industry Is Actually Doing Pretty Well Given the Economic Climate
Jenny Levine

Lawsuits Damp Down P2P Audience

"Since the week ending June 29, traffic to Kazaa has fallen 41 percent to about 3.9 million unique visitors from 6.5 million in the week ending September 21." [Wired News]

Global Music Sales Tumble... Again

"The battle-weary music industry surveyed the wreckage of another dismal six months on Wednesday as global data showed music sales tumbled 10.9 percent, piling more pressure on music companies to do deals to survive." [MSNBC]

Maybe both drops are at least somewhat attributable to the lack of interesting new artists and music being released by the record labels. On the other hand, the schizophrenia continues and they can't make up their mind if there is a problem or not:

"Sales in Austria, Finland and Russia rose while UK album sales posted gains and Hong Kong and Australia made a recovery.

DVD music took off, accounting for more than five percent of sales, and legitimate online music broadened its reach."

I doubt these sale figures cover the period of time since the RIAA began suing individual file swappers, and these are numbers from outside the U.S. anyway. So if file sharing is such a rampant problem that is bringing the industry to its knees, why are there "bright spots" elsewhere in the world during a time of such dire hand-wringing and theatrics by the RIAA?
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/2.../01.html#a4709