Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Feb. 1st, '03 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 30-01-03, 11:04 PM

Some of us here in Connecticut are experiencing the 17th consecutive day of temperatures stuck at or below the freezing mark and since the all-time record for such a frigid event is 19 days straight we’re not that far off from a new one and that’s a bit of a bummer. Tuesday when the temp was exactly 11.1 Fahrenheit I punched up the memory on the digital thermometer and saw that the low had been exactly 0.0. Hmm, something mathematically interesting going on there I thought. Course it’s hard to square my direct observational experience with what the experts tell me, I mean how can it be so cold – if it’s getting so warm? Seems a reasonable question. The convoluted answers go nowhere in keeping my skin from tightening when I’m hit by these icy New England blasts. For the record climatologists say that “some areas will indeed get colder” even as the planet “gets warmer”, so to me that makes it “local warming”, not global, but I digress. My main problem is keeping enough pistachio nuts laid in for the evening “chewing episodes” that seem to increase in frequency in direct proportion to the dropping digits. Towards that end I’ve made a kind of a Spratts Pantsometor - I can judge the temp by how tight my pants fit. If they’re tight, it’s cold. Well, they’re tight and getting tighter.

Stayed inside last weekend playing scavenger hunt with the Napsterites. Came in a respectable 4th which isn’t too bad considering I was writing all the time. Members can revisit the hunt thread and see the zany posts.

One of the things that’s irritating me about the whole copyright situation is how damn shortsighted everyone is who’s supporting these draconian laws. Felonious conduct for DMCA violations, felonious conduct for file sharing, felonious conduct for CD swapping – it’s gotten unreal. Penalties for sharing a record with a few friends are higher than rape and manslaughter and that’s wrong. But the shortsighted part is what really gets me going. The internet doesn’t understand borders and neither does technology. While the West is busy jailing people to satisfy Valenti and Rosen, the rest of the planet is moving ahead to reinvent everything. It won’t be stopped. It can’t be stopped. We’ll wake up one day, and soon, and find the best new stuff will be owned and patented by other people from other countries who’ll be more than happy to lease it back to us on their terms and under their control. Stuff we could have, would have and should have invented ourselves – but didn’t - because our leaders deliberately wrote bills to keep us from doing so (won’t they hate their IP laws then). Will it happen? It’s likely. History is littered with great civilizations that atrophied and died when progress was stifled. When established institutions were favored over younger ones. When spring was outlawed and winter locked in. They probably didn’t think it would come to pass, but it did. And forever. Record cold ahead.

Enjoy,

Jack.

Who decides who's a digital criminal?
Bill Thompson

Sitting on a shelf in my flat are some videos of television programmes and movies that were recorded off-air by friends of mine and then given to me.

Next to my computer you will find a selection of copied CDs, and on the hard drive of the same computer are hundreds of MP3 files, many containing music ripped from CDs I do not own.

The copy of Microsoft Word on the laptop I am using to write this column is the same as the one installed on my desktop computer, and on occasion my daughter will be using one while I am using the other. I scanned my son's school photograph and sent a digital copy to my sister.

Some - or perhaps all - of this puts me on the wrong side of UK copyright law. Not only that, but I don't care.

Even where I am clearly infringing someone's rights I do not think I am doing them any real damage. After all, I am never going to buy a Norah Jones album, and listening to the ripped version a few times only served to convince me of this.

Fortunately the programme makers, music publishers, photographers and software developers whose intellectual property I have used (or abused) would find it very hard to track me down.

Indeed, if the makers of the James Bond movies which we have been assiduously taping tried going to court for a warrant to search my flat they would find it difficult to convince a judge.

Of course, if I were caught selling bootleg videos on Cambridge market then they would be on much stronger legal ground, because it would be obvious what I was up to.

But what if I send MP3s over the internet, or e-mail copyright material to friends? Am I in public or in private here?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2691977.stm

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Copyright decision scores against music performers
Shulgold:

The United States Supreme Court recently made it official: Music written 95 years ago remains under copyright protection. That's good news for living composers and the families of 20th-century music-makers no longer with us.

And not-so-good news for cash-strapped schools, conductors and musicians who pay royalties to perform those works.

"Hey, we just go on," said a disappointed Lawrence Golan, conductor of the orchestra at the University of Denver.

Despite the ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which let stand copyright extensions that protect a work 95 years after its publication, the conductor remains the lead plaintiff in a similar copyright case, Golan v. Ashcroft, to be heard by the Colorado Supreme Court.

His case is slightly different, he said, while admitting that the precedent has clearly been set by the Eldred decision. The result of that ruling requires that performance royalties for score rentals (and other creations outside public domain) must be paid for works dating back to 1908.

"We'll just continue to play music we can afford to play," Golan said. Trouble is, he has an annual score-rental budget of $1,000 - which doesn't go very far.

"The publishers do give discounts," he said, "but even those are sometimes not enough. We recently did Ives' Symphony No. 2, and the cost of renting the score was $650. Normally, it's $1,000."

On the other side of the issue, music publishers such as the New York-based Boosey & Hawkes are not complaining. "We were very pleased with the (court's) ruling," said Caroline Calett, director of business affairs at B&H.

"Naturally, it's difficult for us to be unprejudiced about the decision," she noted. "For years, we have worked to develop composers, and not just the last work they wrote. That may be true in the pop world, but we are anxious to promote and protect composers who are gone - to keep their work before the public."

While B&H deals with major orchestras and performing organizations with healthy artistic budgets, the company is mindful of the smaller coffers of universities and lower-echelon groups, she said. "Our rates are scaled to the particular company and size of the venue," Calett explained, declining to quote prices.

The ruling won't change much, she said, noting that "orchestras know our parameters. We're not an unreasonable company."

Publishers understand the needs of artists and ensembles with small budgets. On the other hand, "We still have to bring in income to keep our (rental) scores in good shape. It can cost $20,000 to print up a full score with (orchestral) parts."

Calett insisted that current economic problems are having a larger impact on spending decisions of performing groups than the Eldred ruling.

For Golan and other musicians, the court's upholding of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (which added 20 years to the period of protection from public domain) cannot change their mission to perform music of the past century.

"At each orchestral concert, I always do one short piece by a living composer. Those I work with directly usually charge me $200 to $300. We hope to continue that."

Though he must stand by the court's decision - while gearing for a possible similar result in his case before the state supreme court - Golan was intrigued by one comment that came out of the Eldred decision.

"Justice (Ruth) Ginsberg said that the court was intent on judging the constitutionality of the (Bono) law, not its wisdom. And I realize that's true. But it does make you wonder about her opinion of the original legislation."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...695471,00.html

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Anti-Copying Process Now For Macs
Peter Cohen

SunnComm Technologies Inc. has noted that its audio CD copy protection technology MediaMax CD-3 is now compatible with Macs. The technology is already working on Windows-based PCs. MediaMax CD-3 was officially unveiled earlier this month during a presentation by Microsoft Corp. at the MidemNet conference in Cannes, France.

SunnComm has positioned MediaMax CD-3 as a copy protection scheme suitable for audio CDs. The technology prevents users from uploading and copying protected music through peer-to-peer file sharing services. SunnComm offers a system it's coined "PLAY*MOVE*SHARE" to allow buyers of MediaMax CD-3 protected discs to use the discs themselves and to make authorized copies on their computer, as well as transport them on portable music players. SunnComm claims that MediaMax CD-3 works with all known CD and DVD players, too.

Apparently the first public showing of the MediaMax CD-3 technology is a forthcoming Sterling Entertainment release, Ike & Tina Turner's "The Early Sessions," expected to be released this quarter.

SunnComm CTO Eric Vandewater said that the Mac development of MediaMax CD-3 was "one of the last major pieces" to complete their audio CD protection puzzle. "The overall dependability and functionality of MediaMax CD-3 will now allow CD buyers to make authorized copies of music on their computer for their own personal use," he added.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...3.mediamax.php

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Liquid Audio Gets a Buyer for Its Assets
Laura Holson

In a move that could make it easier for record companies to sell and promote songs online, the music distributor for Wal-Mart has agreed to buy some of the assets of Liquid Audio, the troubled digital music pioneer.

Anderson Merchandisers, a privately owned company that is also the largest magazine wholesaler in the United States, is buying Liquid Audio's technology as well as other assets, including computers, for an undisclosed sum, according to company executives. Liquid Audio was at the forefront in developing technology to deliver music securely online but has been in financial straits recently and has suffered through a nasty boardroom fight. The new company, which has not been named, will be run by a Liquid Audio founder, Gerry Kearby, who said the company had licenses to distribute over 350,000 songs.

The acquisition, which is expected to be announced on Friday, signals that recording companies, distributors and retailers are taking the first steps toward working together to come up with ways to combat declining compact disc sales, which have been hurt by free online music-swapping. Anderson, based in Knoxville, Tenn., hopes to distribute music downloads through the Web sites of retailers, including Wal-Mart, though no deal has been worked out yet, an Anderson executive said.

Of course any new online music venture, like many that have preceded it, seems more like a gamble than a sure bet these days. Bertelsmann, the parent of one of the major record companies, invested in Napster several years ago with the hope that it might be a paid service one day. That effort failed. And the music companies' own online efforts have gotten less than rave reviews so far.

Still, Charlie Anderson, the company's chief executive, said, "This will strategically position retailers to participate in the industry's legitimate downloading future."

The company has relationships with all the major record companies largely because its job is to make sure that Wal-Mart shelves are stocked with music. The new venture is supported by the Universal Music Group, the world's No. 1 music company, which is aggressively trying to sell more of its music online through major retailers, like Best Buy and Circuit City. So far, 60,000 Universal songs are available.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...gy/24MUSI.html

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CORNING LOSS WIDENS TO $709 MILLION
Bloomberg News

The largest maker of optical fiber for carrying telephone calls and data, Corning Inc., said yesterday that its fourth- quarter loss widened to $709 million as sales fell 20 percent and it had costs for cutting jobs. The net loss was 60 cents a share in the period, which ended Dec. 31, compared with a loss of $655 million, or 69 cents, in the quarter a year earlier, a Corning spokeswoman, Monica Ott, said. Sales fell to $736 million from $917 million. The company has eliminated 18,800 jobs, or 44 percent of its work force, and is scaling back units like its fiber optic parts business. Plummeting demand for optical fiber, cable and gear has resulted in more than $6 billion in losses since June 2001. The shares fell to $4 in after-hours trading after the earnings announcement. They rose 29 cents, to $4.36, in regular trading. In the fourth quarter, Corning had $1.07 billion in after-tax expenses related to cutting jobs, shutting operations and the declining value of assets, the company said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...y/24TBRF1.html

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JDS SALES DROP BUT LOSS NARROWS
Reuters

The JDS Uniphase Corporation said yesterday that sales of its fiber optic equipment dropped for the eighth consecutive period in its second quarter, but its loss shrank as the company continued to squeeze costs. JDS, a supplier of fiber optic parts, reported a loss of $215 million, or 15 cents a share, in its second quarter, which ended Dec. 31. That is an improvement from a net loss of $2.1 billion, or $1.60 a share, in the period last year. Excluding one- time items, JDS posted a loss of $185 million, or 13 cents a share. The results included about $92 million in restructuring charges. On average, analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had expected an adjusted loss of 5 cents a share. The mean revenue estimate from 13 analysts was $152.5 million. Sales fell to $157 million from $193 million in its first quarter and from $286 million in the quarter a year ago. The company said it would cut its current work force of 7,000 even further.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/topnews/24TBRF4.html

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GATHERING ON NET TAXES
NYT

Lawmakers and tax officials from more than 30 states have gathered in Tampa, Fla., in an effort to create a groundwork for setting taxes on Internet sales and services. R. Bruce Johnson, head of the tax commission in Utah, said officials intended to try to define, in legal terms, how digital products like downloadable music, movies and software and other Internet services could be fairly taxed while the Web continued to evolve. States would have to update their tax codes to accommodate e-commerce, and Congress and the White House would have to approve legislation before a plan to tax online sales could be carried out. Internet retailers have opposed such taxation plans. Congress passed a ban on Internet taxes in 1998, and legislation is pending in the House and Senate to extend indefinitely a moratorium on such taxes. Governors and state officials argue, though, that millions of dollars are lost in taxes every year to online shopping.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...y/24TBRF3.html

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Sony
They Sold 36 Billion Dollars worth of hardware but didn't make a penny

Buying a movie studio was supposed to set them free. Instead the entertainment units have hobbled this once scrappy hardware powerhouse to the point where today, the hottest portable gadgets like the Archer and the iPod are coming out of other companies dream rooms - while Sony slowly "studies" the market.

An in depth Wired article points out just how much the company has changed and how much more they hope to.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony.html

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The 'New' Music Industry - according to Miles Copeland
Eric de Fontenay

I have to admit that I didn't quite know what to expect from Miles Copeland's keynote speech at January's Noorderslag seminar in the Netherlands. I know that I didn't see eye-to-eye with him on the 7 Year Statute and was always uncomfortable with his claim that music piracy was Osama Ben Laden's latest weapon in his war against western civilization. But this time, I believe he was right on target and the news is GOOD (the only part he never realized).

According to Miles, the music industry is in a state of utter shock, much like the victim of a violet car accident, and everybody is finally coming to the realization that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. So what was the nature of the crash that woke everyone up?
http://www.p2pnet.net/running/issues.html

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Music industry makes war plans
Reuters

Music industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday vowed to keep up the fight against online music swapping, piling pressure on Internet service providers (ISPs) to police their networks.

The issue of whether Internet and technology companies should be compelled to assist the major music labels in the fight against piracy, which is blamed for slumping CD sales, was headline news this week at the music industry's annual confab in the French resort town of Cannes.

At the conference, Internet executives reacted sharply to comments made by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Chief Executive Hilary Rosen who said ISPs should be held more accountable in monitoring illicit song-trading.

On Friday, Rosen said the RIAA would continue to work with lawmakers and the industry to root out song traders.

She said the trade body has no plans to develop compulsory licensing arrangements or impose fees on ISPs to recoup sales lost to file-trading. "That would be a dramatic departure (from the RIAA's strategy)," she said.

In Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade organization, has been waging a war of its own, battling to push forward the Copyright Directive, EU legislation that has stalled at the state level.

If passed, the Copyright Directive would require Internet service providers to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on ground that it puts them in the costly role of having to police their customers.

Only two of 15 EU member countries have ratified the directive. ISPs, telecommunications companies and now manufacturers of hardware devices such as CD-burners, have sought to have protections afforded by the directive limited, to the chagrin of the music industry.

"This directive was the subject of a hard-fought compromise at the EU level between all the players. It is really bad faith that certain parties are trying to renegotiate this directive at the national level," said Frances Moore, European regional director for the IFPI.

The IFPI said it faces the biggest opposition in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.

The recording industry believes it has little time to spare. CD sales are expected to fall again this year, the fourth consecutive year, as the popularity of so-called peer-to- peer (P2P) trading networks such as Kazaa and Grokster grows.

A study released on Friday by U.S. software firm Websense said file-sharing sites continue to proliferate with more than 130 unique P2P applications and 89,000 Web pages dedicated to file-sharing, representing a 300 percent rise from a year ago.

The industry did win a major victory in the United States this week when a federal court judge said telecoms giant Verizon Communications must identify a prolific song downloader, an individual who pulled more than 600 songs per day off file-sharing sites.

In Europe, the IFPI intends to step up pressure on state and EU lawmakers so that national laws are strengthened to curtail downloading practices.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne...c.online.reut/

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Survey says!
”Don't let Hollywood make the rules”
Jon Newton

"If allowed to make the rules, the entertainment industry will treat us all like criminals in their attempt to crack down on piracy" new survey.

And instead of worrying about online piracy, the US Congress' top priority should be protecting consumers fair use right to access, copy and enjoy content they acquire legally, said 60% of people who responded.

"More than 53 percent fear that Congressional mandates intended to limit piracy would only end up making an already complicated problem worse," said Scott Sutherland of marketing communications firm SutherlandGold, which conducted the survey.

Entertainment companies that argue the technology industry should do more to crack down on piracy get little support from consumers, said Sutherland, continuing that 54% also believe Congressional mandates might have the unintended consequence of stifling technological innovation and restricting law-abiding consumers access to entertainment content on the Internet.

"Much has been made of Hollywood's powerful lobbying voice in the Digital Rights Management debate," said Sutherland. "This survey shows that the technology community could greatly benefit from waking the real sleeping giant in this debate: consumers," said Lesley Gold.
http://www.p2pnet.net/running/study.html

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Network protocol, queing and social improvements
Frontcode Says WinMx Upgrades On The Way
Thomas Mennecke

WinMX has always been at the forefront of P2P technology. In the earlier stages of its life, WinMX was simply an OpenNap client. However, once OpenNap collapsed at the hands of the RIAA, WinMX was a client without a network. In response, FrontCode Technologies introduced their own decentralized P2P network. Since that time, the success of this network has been second only to FastTrack.

The last update from WinMX was back in October 2002, and little news has been heard since. Although things have been quite, WinMX development continues to forge ahead full steam. This time around, we didn't conduct a traditional Q&A interview, rather got right to the point about the current status and future of WinMX. We would like to thank Kevin Hearn, President of Frontcode Technologies, who took the time to respond to our questions.

Considering the long wait between releases, we first questioned when we could expect the next version of WinMX.

"We're working on some really exciting things for upcoming versions of WinMX, but progress is a bit slower than I expected. I expect the next release (v3.32 probably) to be within the next 6 weeks, possibly as soon as 2 weeks."

WinMX has always done an excellent job in finding high quality bitrate songs and provides tons of search results. However, one of the more vocal complaints stems from its long queues. The upcoming version hopes to lessen this problem.

"The most noticeable change in the next version will be the removal of the 'Auto Find Sources' and the 'Auto Enter Queue' features. We have replaced them with a much more intelligent version of the old 'Auto Complete' feature, which will do a much better job."
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/winmx.html

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Audio players get thinner
Winston Chai

Japanese electronics manufacturer Seagrand has upped the ante in the race to develop compact digital devices by introducing one of the thinnest audio players in the world. The business card-size Ravemetal CardRec audio player measures 77mm by 54mm and is 9.8mm thick. The device comes with three memory options--128MB, 192MB and 256MB.

For file transfers, the CardRec connects to Windows-based PCs through a USB (universal serial bus) connection and supports common music formats such as MP3 and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio. The gadget also sports a built-in microphone and functions as a digital voice recorder. The audio player will be launched in Japan next week, but availability for other regions is unclear. Details on pricing have yet to be confirmed.
http://news.com.com/2110-1040-982034.html

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DVD Player works with DivX files
Watch P2P downloads on the Living room TV

It took almost three years for the arrival of a standalone player that could show videos and movies in DivX (MPEG-4) format. Based on the REALmagic EM8500 chip, which essentially handles the MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding functions, the KiSS DP-450 is the first player in the world that fits into this category. This means that along with well-known media like DVD video, S-video CD and video CD, movies with DivX coding (MPEG-4) can be shown, too.

The same market development occurred with the MP3 audio standard. Anyone who has bought a DVD player without a DivX feature will probably be kicking himself. Here's why: a huge variety of feature films is already available on the Internet and through file sharing tools. One can only hope that many manufacturers will soon go with the encoder chip from REALmagic.

KiSS Technologies is showing real courage vis-à-vis the Hollywood film industry. When the popular MP3 codec for audio was introduced, the recording industry shackled the first manufacturers with legal action. But in the end, it was all in vain: MP3 made it on a broad front. The same thing will most likely occur with MPEG-4/ DivX, because customer demand will open up new markets.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/consume...124/index.html

Edgereview forum (reading all the way down tells a good story of the bugs and the upgrades):
http://www.edgereview.com/ataglance....y=Video&ID=390

Toshiba drive mod:
http://www.firmware-flash.com/~hijacker/kiss/#Download

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Buyers Outpace Renters
Tim Race

The DVD continues to transform the home video market. In 2002, for the first time, annual sales of home videos in the United States surpassed money spent on rentals, according to the market research firm Alexander & Associates. And overall consumer spending on prerecorded home videos — whether in the DVD or VHS format, including sales and rentals — set a record in 2002, at $28.5 billion. That total was up 15 percent from a year earlier.

Bob Alexander, president of the research firm, credits the tremendous popularity of DVD players and the industry’s relatively low pricing of DVD’s, for both the booming growth of the home video market and the trend that has put purchases ahead of rentals.

The best-selling DVD title in 2002, according to Mr. Alexander’s preliminary estimates, was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with 9.8 million units sold, followed by “Monsters Inc.,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Spider-Man” and “Shrek.”

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Streaming Video Continues to Make Web Inroads
Saul Hansell

One powerful network that intends to push the limit of Internet distribution is the Starz Encore Group, the cable movie service of John Malone's Liberty Media. This spring, it will offer a service, in conjunction with RealNetworks, that will let users watch full-length movies through their computers. To have sufficient quality, users will have to download the movie in advance, which can take a half-hour or more. But the result, Starz says, will be a picture that is as good as cable television, if not quite as good as a DVD's. For $6 to $10 a month, users will be able to watch any or all of 100 movies each month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/te...gy/27STRE.html

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The Race to Kill Kazaa
The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users - 60 million of them - are everywhere around the world. The next Napster? Think bigger. And pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug.
Todd Woody

On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous "supernodes." There is no plug to pull.

Nor, as attorneys would soon discover, was there even a single outfit to shut down. That's because on a January morning three months after the suit was filed, Amsterdam-based Kazaa.com went dark and Zennström vanished. Days later, the company was reborn with a structure as decentralized as Kazaa's peer-to-peer service itself. Zennström, a Swedish citizen, transferred control of the software's code to Blastoise, a strangely crafted company with operations off the coast of Britain - on a remote island renowned as a tax haven - and in Estonia, a notorious safe harbor for intellectual property pirates. And that was just the start.

Ownership of the Kazaa interface went to Sharman Networks, a business formed days earlier in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, another tax haven. Sharman, which runs its servers in Denmark, obtained a license for Zennström's technology, FastTrack. The Kazaa.com domain, on the other hand, was registered to an Australian firm called LEF Interactive - for the French revolutionary slogan, liberté, égalité, fraternité.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa.html

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The new jailbird jingle
Declan McCullagh

If you've ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, chances are pretty good you're guilty of a federal felony.

It doesn't matter if you've forsworn Napster, uninstalled Kazaa and now are eagerly padding the record industry's bottom line by snapping up $15.99 CDs by the cartload.

Be warned--you're what prosecutors like to think of as an unindicted federal felon.

I'm not joking. A obscure law called the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act that former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed in 1997 makes peer-to-peer (P2P) pirates liable for $250,000 in fines and subject to prison terms of up to three years. (You may want to read it, since you'll likely be hearing more about it soon.)

That's a long time to spend cooling your heels in Club Fed.

Yet something strange is going on here. So far the Justice Department has made precisely zero prosecutions of peer-to-peer users under the NET Act.

This odd delay is not because peer-to-peer piracy is legal. It's not. The NET Act covers people who willfully participate in the "reproduction or distribution" of copyrighted works without permission, when that activity is not covered by fair use rights.

The law even grants copyright holders the right to hand a "victim impact statement" to the judge at your trial, meaning you can expect an appearance from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Business Software Alliance (BSA), depending on what kind of files were on your hard drive. You'll no longer have it, of course, because it'll have been seized by the FBI, and you'll be in jail.

Fretting that not enough peer-to-peer pirates are already there, a band of congressmen asked Attorney General John Ashcroft last July to begin some NET Act prosecutions, pronto. Their letter complained of "a staggering increase in the amount of intellectual property pirated over the Internet through peer-to-peer systems." The 19 politicos--including Sen. Joseph Biden, D- Del., Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.--urged Ashcroft "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer neworks."

It didn't take long for the Justice Department to respond.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-982121.html

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Company Addresses Network Congestion
Press Release

Enterprise IT managers need help identifying bandwidth and application performance hogs and the tools to control and allocate network resources to match business objectives

Allot Communications, a premier provider of policy-based networking solutions, today announced two new entry-level NetEnforcer(R) models designed to help enterprise information technology (IT) professionals manage problems associated with increasing network congestion as a result of the popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and streaming video files.

Today's businesses are running business-critical and time-sensitive applications that require guaranteed bandwidth allocation and performance. Simply buying more wide area network (WAN) bandwidth does not solve the problem of network congestion. Without the traffic shaping functions offered by the NetEnforcer or other policy-based networking devices, latency-sensitive applications, such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP), video conferencing and business-critical client-server systems such as Citrix, ERP and CRM would still have to compete for bandwidth resources with non-critical applications such as file transfers and P2P.

"Enterprise IT professionals need solutions that will help them understand how different application behave and that can let them set policies that reflect their business needs," said Azi Ronen, executive vice president of marketing, Allot Communications. "Allot's NetEnforcer policy-based networking devices allow them to monitor network applications, users and servers and to define policies that will guarantee the performance of business-critical applications in private networks, Internet connections and VPNs."

The new NetEnforcer AC-102 and AC-202 models make it practical for corporations to deploy policy-based quality of service (QoS) devices across the enterprise, even to their small remote offices.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...270216&ticker=

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Faster, Smaller, Opera. 7’s Up http://www.opera.com/

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Jordan's minister of IT and communications says project will facilitate peer-to-peer communications framework.
State Sponsored P2P Underway In Jordan, Elsewhere

Eight Arab and foreign countries have agreed to take part in a Jordanian initiative to set up an information technology (IT) network to bolster their economies, the Jordan Times reported Monday.

Bahrain, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Ireland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates rallied to the Jordanian initiative on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum underway in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, the daily said.

A declaration to formalise the so-called Information Technology in Emerging Markets (ITEM) initiative is expected to be signed in Amman within the next few months, the newspaper added.

"The main goal of the ITEM is to enable countries with unique similarities to benefit from each other's experience by opening channels of communications among them," Jordan's minister of information technology and communications said.

Fawaz Zohbi was quoted as telling a working group in Davos that the project will "facilitate a peer-to-peer communications framework, enabling easy and timely access to IT" as well as help expand businesses.

Jordan launched in 1999 a five-year IT strategy dubbed REACH aimed at putting the kingdom on the IT world map.

But late last year, officials said their ambitious goal of creating 30,000 IT-related jobs and attracting 500 million dollars in annual IT and software exports by 2004 was too optimistic and that targets would be lowered.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=4136

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Now you can festoon your own home with cables
DIY broadband via television
Competition for customers is starting to cut the cost of connecting up to broadband internet services.

Cable firm Telewest has announced a self- install package for its Blueyonder broadband service that costs only £12.50. The self-install pack does away with the need to buy a separate cable modem as it uses a television set-top box as the connecting point for the high-speed service. Eventually Telewest said it will provide wireless links to make it easy to link up home computers with its network.

Many of the set-top boxes that people use to watch cable TV have a modem inside that can be used to connect up to the high-speed services offered by Telewest and NTL. Telewest's self-install package does away with the need for a visit by one of the company's engineers and lets existing customers swiftly switch on a broadband service. Currently Telewest offers two broadband services. By itself the 512mbps service costs £29.99, but customers of other Telewest services get it for £25 a month. The higher speed 1mbps service is £39.99 for broadband only and £35 per month when combined with other Telewest services. Before now both have needed a visit by technicians to wire up homes and get domestic computers authorised to use to Telewest network.

Telewest's network currently passes 4.9 million homes and it currently has 1.76 million households as customers.

Cable firm NTL already offers a broadband service via its set-top boxes.

Existing customers will be able to get the service working quickly though new customers will still require a visit to connect them up. The installation fee costs up to £50.

The numbers of people signing up for high- speed services via phone lines leapt when BT made a self-install package available.

The self-install package uses wires to link set top box with the computers in customers' home, but eventually Telewest said it will provide wireless connectors to make installation even easier.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2698041.stm

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Intel chief puts faith in wireless
Alfred Hermida

The head of the world's largest chip maker, Intel's Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett, has bleak news for the technology industry. He has said that he can not yet see a way out of the economic troubles that have hit the tech sector. "The last two years have been the toughest two years the hi-tech industry has seen overall," he told BBC News Online. "The two-year recession has been very difficult for the industry and I don't think anyone clearly sees what the results are going to be for the next 12 months." The company is now investing in wireless technology which it hopes will help boost sales.

Mr Barrett has faced a tough task leading Intel since he took over as CEO in 1998. Faced with declining demand for computers and competition from other chip makers, he has steered the company beyond the desktop with an aggressive move into the communications market. "Intel is focusing on both the computing sector and the communications sector and that includes everything from telecoms infrastructure to handheld devices like cellphones and Pocket PC devices," he said. The company has invested $9bn in building up a communications business during possibly the worst period in the history of the telecoms industry.

But Mr Barrett is still optimistic that the future lies in communications. He is now putting his money on wi-fi technology that allows machines to talk to each other without wires. The wireless home networking market has been growing rapidly, and analysts expect sales of wi-fi equipment to reach 33 million by 2006.

Intel's next-generation chip, called Centrino, comes with a wireless module built-in to take advantage of the boom in mobile computing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2691411.stm

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UK users flocking to broadband

Record numbers of UK households and businesses are signing up for broadband Internet services, telecoms regulator Oftel has announced. Industry figures show almost 30,000 subscribers a week are switching to broadband, taking the total number in the UK to more than 1.4 million.

When Oftel announced the number of homes and businesses with broadband had reached 500,000 last May, new subscriptions were running at around 20,000 a week. Separate research conducted by Oftel found a big rise in the number of people aware of the benefits of broadband.

Last February, 32% of people already connected to the Internet - but not with a broadband connection - knew about the new technology. In the same survey of just over 2,300 users last November the figure had risen to 70%.

Around 42% of UK households are connected to the Internet, either with a standard or broadband connection.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology

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Retailers form digital music venture
AP

Six retail record store chains - hurting from competition from CD burning, on-line music and large discount stores - are teaming up to offer consumers digital music downloads in their stores and over the Internet.

The stores have formed a joint venture called Echo that will provide technology and allow them to offer individual tracks for downloading to portable devices and computers.

The stores are Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment Group, Wherehouse Music, Hastings Entertainment Inc. and Trans World Entertainment Corp., operator of FYE, Strawberries and Coconuts stores.

"We're trying to make digital music work in a mass market way, for millions of people," said Dan Hart, chief executive officer of Echo. "That hasn't happened yet."

Mr. Hart said he believes the Echo model can work where the recording industry-sponsored services have not.

"I think consumers will pay, but you have to provide the greater level of value," he said. "We're the traditional trading partner of the labels. We understand marketing and how to provide value to consumers."

Others, however, think retailers may have come too late to the game.

"So many consumers are now thinking about Internet music in terms of an Internet destination site than in terms of a terrestrial brand transplanted to the Internet," said Phil Leigh, digital music analyst with Raymond James Associates in St. Petersburg, Fla.
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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Broadband Pow Wow In Ottawa
Allison Dunfield

The federal government has committed $2.4-million toward projects aimed at introducing high-speed Internet service to First Nations, rural and Northern communities.

Each of 89 applicants, representing 1149 communities, will receive up to $30,000 to develop business plans outlining how each community would use the broadband service.

"Broadband access has the potential to enhance the quality of life for all Canadians — especially for rural, Aboriginal and northern residents," Industry Minister Allan Rock said in a statement Friday.

"This phase of the Broadband Pilot Program is a significant step forward in our commitment to delivering broadband services to all Canadian communities by 2005."

Mr. Rock took over the broadband initiative begun by his predecessor, Brian Tobin. Mr. Tobin, who resigned from politics last January, lobbied hard for the program, one of his pet projects.

Mr. Tobin's vision was to have see every Canadian hooked up to the Internet by 2004. But his $1-billion plan was shut out of the last budget by former finance minister Paul Martin.

This latest $105-million pilot program, announced on Sept. 5 by Mr. Rock, is aimed specifically at allowing those living in native and rural communities to use the Internet.
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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Over & Out. Overnet connects to eDonkey. New beta is out. http://www.edonkey2000.com/index.html

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Supreme Court Rejects Mattel Appeal on Barbie Song
Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal by Mattel Inc. over its lawsuit against MCA Records Inc. claiming the 1997 pop hit "Barbie Girl" had infringed on the toy maker's doll trademark.

Without comment, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling dismissing the lawsuit on the ground the song by the Danish band "Aqua" was parody and social commentary covered by the U.S. Constitution's free-speech protections.

Mattel, the world's largest toy maker which has made the doll since 1959, sued MCA Records, its parent and other units of Universal Music, a subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi Universal . MCA produced, marketed and sold "Barbie Girl."

The song featured a doll-like female voice impersonating Barbie, calling herself a "blonde bimbo girl" and saying "life in plastic, it's fantastic." A male singer, who called himself Ken, exhorted Barbie to "go party."

Mattel, based in El Segundo, California, argued the song, which sold more than 1.4 million copies in the United States, could confuse consumers and dilute the power of the Barbie brand.

MCA defended the song as "social commentary," saying the album "Aquarium" that included the song also featured a disclaimer noting the song was not sanctioned by the maker of Barbie dolls.

Mattel appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the appeals court cast aside the command of Congress in the Lanham Act to protect consumers against unauthorized use of trademarks in ways likely to cause confusion.

MCA replied that the appeal should be denied, saying it had "put out a classic form of parody in a light-hearted pop song that poked fun at one of the most famous and ubiquitous 'cultural icons' in the world."

The appeals court and a federal judge in California determined the song's title was not misleading and that consumers would not be confused, MCA told the justices.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2116906

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Lindows tackles DVD, music
David Becker

Linux software maker Lindows took another crack at Microsoft on Tuesday with a package intended to mimic the software giant's Windows XP Media Center.

Idot, a small PC maker specializing in direct online sales, will sell a Lindows Media Computer model that incorporates some home entertainment functions such as DVD and digital music playback. The company plans to begin selling the PCs early next month, with prices starting at $330 without a monitor.

The goal is to offer a low-cost PC that can take the place of several home entertainment appliances, Lindows CEO Michael Robertson said in a statement. "For under $350 retail, consumers can have a DVD player, CD player and personal computer in every room of the house or office," he said.

The media PCs appear to be a scaled-back response to Microsoft's heavily touted Windows XP Media Center, a version of the operating system that focuses on digital entertainment functions. The Lindows PCs lack several basic functions found in the Windows version, such as the ability to record TV programs and a remote control.

The Idot PCs are based on budget processors from Via Technologies and are similar to low-cost Lindows PCs sold by Wal-Mart, with the addition of a DVD drive and accompanying software. Lindows uses software maker Elegent's etDVD program to enable DVD playback.

Linux has had a contentious history with DVDs. The lawsuit-plagued DeCSS software, which government and movie-industry figures have attacked as a tool for illegally copying DVDs, originally was created as a way for Linux users to be able to play DVDs on their PCs.

Robertson, founder of MP3.com, started Lindows two years ago with the aim of offering a simplified, consumer-oriented version of the open-source Linux operating system. The company was promptly sued by Microsoft for allegedly misappropriating the Windows trademark.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-982468.html

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BearShare 4.2.0 Released. Magnet links and more. http://www.bearshare.com/help/whatsnew.htm

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Connect, They Say, Only Connect
Emily Eakin

The whiteboard in Duncan J. Watts's office at Columbia University was a thicket of squiggly blue lines, circles and calculus equations. Mr. Watts, an associate professor of sociology, had just begun a passionate disquisition on the virtues and liabilities of scale-free networks when the telephone rang. It was Alfred Berkeley, the vice chairman of Nasdaq, hoping to chat about the exchange's design.

Mr. Watts, 31, is a network theorist. And these days that means fielding frequent calls from powerful admirers like Mr. Berkeley — Wall Street moguls and government officials eager to tap into a nascent academic science that few understand but that many think may hold the key to everything from predicting fashion trends to preventing terrorism, stock market meltdowns and the spread of HIV.

Never mind that Mr. Watts's new book on the subject, "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age," which will be published by W. W. Norton next month, is littered with the arcana of theoretical physics as well as charts and graphs that appear to require an advanced degree in math in order to decipher. Network theory is hot. Two other recent books on networks, "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (Perseus, 2002) by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and "Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks" (W. W. Norton) by Mark Buchanan, have already sold tens of thousands of copies.

And that's not counting sales in the burgeoning genre of consumer studies, where network science terms and concepts are invoked with near religious fervor. From Malcolm Gladwell's three-year-old best seller, "The Tipping Point," to just-published analyses like "The Influentials" and "Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers," the shelves at Barnes & Noble are laden with books alternately applauding and deploring the importance of things like hubs, connectors, mavens and influencer teens for creating fads, cementing brand loyalty and swelling profits.

"Network theory has become a bit of a fad," Mr. Watts conceded after hanging up the phone. "I spend half my time telling people I think it's relevant to a lot of problems people care about and half my time trying to tone down the hype."

Network scientists study networks: collections of people or objects connected to each other in some way. Think of the 1.5 million Manhattan residents or the 30,000 genes inside a human cell. Such networks, scientists argue, behave in ways that can't be understood solely in terms of their component parts. Without knowing what every single person or object within the network is doing, they say, it's nevertheless possible to know something about how the network as a whole behaves.

Stated that way it sounds simple. But as an intellectual approach, network theory is the latest symptom of a fundamental shift in scientific thinking, away from a focus on individual components — particles and subparticles — and toward a novel conception of the group. As Mr. Barabasi, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, put it: "In biology, we've had great success stories — the human genome, the mouse genome. But what is not talked about is that we have the pieces but don't have a clue as to how the system works. Increasingly, we think the answer is in networks."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/arts/25WATT.html

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Time to Dump the DMCA
Anne Chen

It's only January and already, there's been enough activity surrounding the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to last a lifetime. Just this week, Verizon Inc. was ordered to give-up the identity of a customer who reportedly used its network to make unauthorized copies of several hundred songs available online.

Then there's the Chamberlain Group, an Elmhurst, Ill., automatic garage door opener manufacturer, which is trying to use a provision of the DMCA to force Skylink Technologies to stop distribution of a universal garage door remote. Chamberlain claims Skylink is circumventing a security code system that controls access to the software in its products.

Is there anyone or anything untouchable by the DMCA?

Congress has at least two good chances to right this wrong. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) announced intentions earlier this month to reintroduce the Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002. The bill would allow consumers to bypass technological copy protections built in to copyrighted work if the intent is to make a copy for personal use. And, on January 7, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) reintroduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which he is co-sponsoring with Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), Patrick Kennedy (D- RI), and Spencer Bachus (R-AL).

Reps. Lofgren and Boucher aren't the only ones taking a stand. Last week, advocacy groups and technology giants including Microsoft Corp., Dell Computer Corp., and Motorola Inc., announced the Alliance for Digital Progress, a new lobbying organization formed to combat Hollywood in its attempts to control all digital media. The organization's take is that requiring anti-copying technology in digital entertainment devices will crimp product innovation. Naturally, consumer rights are what these companies are fighting for. Keeping product sales up has nothing to do with it.

It's too early to place bets on what other wild misuses of the DMCA companies will come up with. But I'm not expecting that computer and consumer electronics companies find a way to handle the distribution of online and physical media that protects the rights of both the copyright holder and consumer anytime soon. What I do hope, though, is that all parties will realize that violating online privacy by forcing the release of customer information is not the answer.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,844563,00.asp

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Recording industry shows some cunning
Hiawatha Bray

It's an article of faith among the digital elite that the entertainment business is run by morons. After all, the recording industry and the movie studios still think that they can somehow prevent us from copying and swapping our favorite digital amusements, without compensation or permission. Dream on, the enlightened ones say.

Surely the enlightened ones are right. So far, no one has conceived a practical strategy against digital piracy. And yet, you can hardly blame the entertainment companies for trying. Piracy is costing them billions; they must at least try to slow it down.

Besides, the events of the last couple of weeks should dispose of any illusions that the amusement moguls are just a pack of fools. The Recording Industry Association of America has shown itself a cunning strategist, able to learn from its errors. And a court ruling last week has put it in a position to do some real damage to those who steal recorded music.

Just under two weeks ago, the RIAA did a deal with a group representing eight of the nation's top computer companies. Included in the deal was a pledge to oppose mandatory anti-copying hardware for personal computers.

You'll remember that Congress briefly considered such legislation last year. RIAA never embraced it, possibly because it recalls a time when the organization really did behave stupidly. In 1998, it asked a federal court to ban the first portable MP3 digital music player. Luckily the RIAA lost, and we can all listen to our Apple iPods in peace.

The RIAA seems to have taken the hint. By opposing the anti-piracy hardware plan, it went some way toward draining the reservoir of bitterness it's built up among the tech crowd.

Just as well, because a few days later RIAA won a court victory that'll bring the company a whole new set of enemies. A judge in Washington ruled that the Internet service provider Verizon Communications must provide the RIAA with the identity of a customer who used the network to swap illegal music files.

Unless a higher court overturns the ruling, music companies need only present the most minimal evidence of a violation to a court, which will automatically issue a subpoena. An Internet provider must then hand over the customer's name and address, tearing away his shield of privacy and exposing him to the tender mercies of an enraged multinational corporation.

Of course, millions of Americans swap illegal files. Will AOL Time Warner or Sony sue them all?

They won't have to. Nailing a few dozen or a few hundred will chill many of the others. Let a few of them be fined, at up to $150,000 for each offense, and you'll likely see many casual swappers fall away.

Still, that leaves many thousands of perps out there, and even Sony can't go after them all. Jonathan Zittrain, assistant professor at the Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center on Internet and Society, thinks Sony doesn't want to and won't have to. It'll hand off the job to the Internet providers.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/02...cunning+.shtml

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Ad-aware 6 released. Pro ver$ion now, free version to follow. http://lavasoft3.element5.com/support/download/

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After high court ruling, erosion in public domain feared
Anick Jesdanun

Playwright Wayne Frank's show can't go on.

After failing to obtain stage rights to "The Sun Also Rises" beyond Milwaukee, Frank thought he only had to wait a few more years, when the book by Ernest Hemingway was to have entered the public domain.

Instead, Congress extended copyright terms for another 20 years, a decision affirmed this month by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, Frank laments that the public will be denied his reinterpretation of an American classic first published in 1926.

"Why should the publishers have exclusive rights to this almost forever?" Frank said. "For (an) author to be compensated while he or she is alive is legitimate but to extend this down to their great- grandchildren is a fraud."

Elsewhere, music directors worry they won't have ready access to the songs of Irving Berlin and other composers. Also dashed are Internet publishers' hopes for making many more works accessible through online libraries.

Many critics believe the high court's decision hinders access to knowledge for the economically disadvantaged -- especially as more literature, music and images go digital.

"The technology is all dressed up right now with no place to go," said Jonathan Zittrain, who co- directs an Internet law center at Harvard University.

All in all, the copyright extension could freeze for the foreseeable future the intellectual commons from which artists can draw inspiration and raw materials for new creations.

"Imagine the kid who wants to take a chunk out of `Schindler's List,' put it in a report on the Holocaust and post it on the Internet," said Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor behind the Supreme Court challenge.

Using the video in such a multimedia report, he said, would be a copyright infringement, as would a museum's setting up an online exhibit with 1930s images, sound and text on the New Deal.

Content providers don't deny that the Supreme Court decision will hurt the public domain. What they dispute is its wider impact.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/topsto...2_BC_Copyright'sVictims&&news&newsflash-topstory

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Copyright gets sweeter for big business
Happy Birthday song rights belong to AOL Time Warner Canadian laws are not yet as restictive as in the United States
Judy

At York University's film school, students making their 8-mm short films are cautioned not to create any birthday party scenes in which participants sing "Happy Birthday To You." They may substitute "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," since that is not under copyright in the United States. "I try to alert our students to copyright issues because they might be considering entering their work in student film festivals in the U.S.," says Jim Fisher, who teaches film production at York. It's just a small example of how the near-perpetual copyrights granted by U.S. law affect Canadian creators, be they filmmakers, authors, composers or visual artists, who naturally want to bust out of the relatively small Canadian market. (Copyright laws differ here, protecting work for 50 years after the creator's death.) Many of the most lucrative U.S. copyrights on works of the imagination are held not by creative people or their descendents but by giant entertainment conglomerates waging a war to protect their properties. Last week, Big Entertainment won a major victory when the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that Congress has the right to extend copyrights as often as it sees fit (there have been 11 extensions in the past 40 years), even though the country's Founding Fathers foresaw copyright as lasting for only 28 years. The ubiquitous "Happy Birthday," whose tune was composed by Mildred Hill, a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, in 1893, was copyrighted in 1934 by her sister Jessica Hill, after the ditty with new lyrics attached appeared in the Broadway musical The Bank Wagon and had been used by Western Union for its singing telegram. Rights to the song changed hands several times and today they are owned by Summy-Birchard Music, which in turn is owned by AOL Time Warner, for which it earns $2 million a year in royalties for public usage. (Don't worry about singing it around your dining table; AOL Time Warner has not figured out how to collect on that yet.) "Happy Birthday" was due to come into the public domain after 75 years in 2010 until Congress — having been heavily lobbied by the Disney Corp. — passed what's satirically referred to as the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act in 1998, adding another 20 years to all existing copyrights for works created between 1923 and '63. (After 1963, the U.S. copyright regime for future work changed so that it's dependent on the date of death of its creator, as in Canada, not the date of its creation.) The song now won't be in the public domain till 2030, while Mickey Mouse, created in 1928, is protected until 2024. According to a recent story in Fortune magazine, Mickey earns his parent company $1 billion (U.S.) in annual revenues, as does Winnie the Pooh, to which Disney also holds the merchandising rights. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, rejoiced after the ruling: "The law has long recognized that copyright, whose aim it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in the public interest," he said in a press release. The situation is replete with irony, since Walt Disney himself borrowed from a Buster Keaton silent film called Steamboat Bill, Jr. as well as from the conventions of minstrel shows to dream up his white-gloved black rodent.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969483191630

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Effort to Protect Recordings Begins
Elizabeth Olson

The Library of Congress, in its first step to preserve American sound recordings that span the last century, said today that it had selected 50 recordings to start a national registry.

Choosing only 50 was a difficult task and is not meant to be "another Grammy Awards or `best of' list," said James W. Billington, the librarian of Congress. Among the familiar choices are "Stars and Stripes Forever" from 1897, the first recording of John Philip Sousa's march; ragtime music that Scott Joplin played in the early 1900's for piano roll sales; and Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio "Fireside Chats" from 1933 to 1944.

The recordings, chosen from public submissions and internal recommendations, include jazz from Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as recordings from Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan. There is also a rap track, "The Message," a 1982 hit by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

While rap is not a favorite of Dr. Billington — unlike Enrico Caruso's popular 1907 recording of the aria "Vesti la giubba," which is also on the list — he said it was part of the American cultural heritage.

The registry was mandated by Congress in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 and is modeled on the Library of Congress film project to preserve important American movies. At least half the recordings on wax cylinders between 1888 and 1920 have been lost, Dr. Billington said.

"You can't clean off the mold and hear the recording," said Dr. Billington, holding up a decrepit cylinder. "The wax has eaten through," causing treasures like 1890 recordings by Mark Twain to be irretrievable.

A foundation to be headed by William Ivey, past president of the National Endowment for the Arts, will try to find the best recordings of the 50 selections and copy the original master. The library, which has 2.6 million recordings, is converting to a digital preservation system.

More information can be found at www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/arts/28SOUN.html

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The 'Appliancizing' of Technology
Assistant Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, discusses technology, the law and automatic dog washers.
Harvard Law Today

How did your interest in technology and the law develop?
It crystallized when I was 12 or 13. I got a 300-baud modem and logged into CompuServe, which was a proprietary information service--one paid $6 or $12 or $24 an hour depending on the time of day--and loved it. What I loved most about it was the ability to connect with other people whom one normally would not meet at all. As the service grew and the population of users became more heterogeneous, more diverse viewpoints emerged. [Debates about] how to have a dispute over something, the role of those who run the communities in setting up rules for what's in bounds and what's out of bounds, were just innately fascinating. It's a question of how to govern ourselves, and that's a question asked in almost every civil procedure class.

Do you think laws currently do enough to protect our electronic privacy?
People naturally tend to place physical security above all. These days one often hears a paraphrase of Justice Jackson's protest that the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact--that a concern for civil liberties must ultimately yield to national or maybe even individual survival. The terrorist attacks have been a serious and politically uniting spur to make a quantum leap in the use of technology in law enforcement and national security surveillance. It's reminiscent of the space race. We honed 1960s technology to land on the moon, and we haven't revisited it much since. So the state of technology for lunar landings is not even 1980s, much less 21st century. That's been the state of overall government surveillance as well--last booming in the '50s and '60s during the Cold War, then penned in by Watergate-era worries about government abuse of a panopticon. Other than trying to maintain the status quo of government power to surveil in the face of new private technologies to cloak, there hasn't been intensive effort to deploy massively integrated databases to form a comprehensive surveillance regime. That's now changed. As it's happening, I fear we're not properly considering and building in protections so that it can't readily be abused. The point of law is to make sure that it's not just at some government official's indulgence or good grace that we're not being wronged.

Is there any way to stop the proliferation of electronic trading of protected intellectual property?
The publishing industry has by no means given up, and they still hold some strong cards. As we move to an appliance model of computing, something like a TiVo [digital video recorder] can become the place to store one's digital data--rather than a PC, which from a consumer point of view gets sick with viruses all the time, is in an inconvenient location in the house and is constantly going obsolete. As we go to an appliance model, it's much, much easier to control users' behaviors. I think we may look back and see the PC as an anomaly--how strange to run anything ending in ".exe." You don't normally get to write your own software for your coffeemaker or for your refrigerator or your lamp or your television or your VCR. So as we go to an appliance model that gives people more stability and predictability and longevity, I think we're going to lose the anarchic quality currently associated with PCs and the Internet.

And do you think that would be a loss?
Yes. So much of the staggering innovation that's taken place in the past 15 years has been thanks to generic computing platforms that anyone can write software for. The big innovation over the past 15 years has not been that we went from Word 3 to Word 6. It's that Gnutella happened and instant messenger happened and the Web happened. If we close that [innovation] off--either by having more gatekeepers within the network or by appliancizing the PC so that you need to be an accredited software developer to generate code--all that innovation vanishes, and we'll merely be going from Word 6 to Word 9.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/toda...5zittrain.html

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Wow. Only commercial piracy is criminal under European Commission proposal
Joris Evers

The European Commission has presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry.

The proposed directive is meant to harmonize intellectual property rights enforcement laws in the 15-nation European Union (EU). It aims to strike "a fair balance" between interests of right holders and the opportunities the Internet offers to consumers, according to Commission documents.

Criminal sanctions apply only when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes, the Commission said.

A consortium of industry groups, including representatives of the tech industry as well as music companies, declared the proposal "inadequate."

They still have time to lobby for tougher sanctions. The Commission's draft directive has to pass the European Parliament and the European Union's Council of Ministers before it is officially adopted.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109148,00.asp

JackSpratts · 30-01-03, 11:06 PM

Net Cafe Loses Music Download Dispute - Owner Plans Appeal
Bernhard Warner

Reuters - A High Court judge Tuesday found the EasyInternet Cafe chain guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet and copy it onto a CD for $8.16.

The summary judgment brings to a close an 18-month feud between the major music labels and the popular Internet cafe chain built by Greek entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of low-cost airline easyJet Plc.

The UK trade group, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), with member music labels Sony Music, EMI and Universal Music, took the Internet chain to court last year, charging it with copyright infringement.

EasyInternet suspended the commercial service in September 2001. In court it said it should not be held liable for customers downloading copyright-protected materials, a defense rejected by the judge, Justice Peter Smith.

The music industry, which has been fighting an all-out war on illicit CD-copying and Internet downloading, blaming it for falling CD sales, hailed Tuesday's decision.

"Illegal copying jeopardizes the livelihoods of artists and song writers, as well as putting at risk the thousands of jobs directly and indirectly created by the recording and publishing of music," Peter Jamieson, BPI Chairman, said in a statement.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2122494

BBC News - Mr Haji-Ioannou has signalled his intention to appeal against the judgement.

He told BBC News Online he believed the judge sitting in the case had ignored a defence just because it would "open a can of worms" for the music industry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2702071.stm

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Kazaa strikes back at Hollywood, labels
John Borland

Sharman Networks, owner of the popular Kazaa file-swapping software, has launched a legal counterstrike against the major record labels and Hollywood studios, asserting that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

In a lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, Sharman claims that major entertainment companies have colluded to drive potential online rivals out of business. The conduct should preclude the industry from being able to defend its copyrights in court, at least until the behavior is corrected, Sharman contends.

The lawsuit is a counterstrike by Sharman, which has been sued for allegedly contributing to massive online copyright infringement. Last week , a federal judge ruled that record companies and movie studios could proceed with their lawsuit against Sharman.

The entertainment industry considers Sharman to be as much an outlaw as Napster and Aimster, two file-sharing services that have been shuttered. But Sharman executives say their business is fundamentally different because the company was created to take advantage of legal online distribution.

“What the industry is incapable of doing is realizing that Kazaa is different,” said Sharman attorney Rod Dorman. “Now (they) have got to face the legal consequences.”

The lawsuit marks a significant development in the most critical online copyright case since the disappearance of Napster. Sharman is being sued along with Grokster and Morpheus parent Streamcast Networks. The popularity of Kazaa, the leading file-trading service in the United States, has brought it to the top of copyright holders’ list of online enemies.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982344.html

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New group wants Congress to oppose Hollywood technology mandates
Jon Newtron

MPAA boss Honest Jack Valenti's feelings are deeply hurt.

Why's that?

Because nearly 30 ungrateful tech firms, consumer groups and trade organizations have banded together as
the Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) to fight attempts to, "force the government to design and mandate technology solutions to digital piracy".

"I am shaking my head in wonderment at this million-dollar campaign to deride us," said Jack in a statement.

And why should that be?

Many of the proposals the ADP are against would allow US government minions to decide precisely what 'anti- piracy' technological measures would be used for consumer electronics systems, including computers.

Cynics believe 'anti-piracy' is actually a euphemism for packages such as Broadcast Flag largely dreamed up by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) - not to mention the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Rather than stopping piracy, they think, the techologies would in fact allow Hollywood to control what consumers see, here and do, make sure they can only do it on entertainment industry approved systems AND provide the industry with hitherto confidential data on what, where, how and when consumers are using their entertainment products.
http://www.p2pnet.net/running/adp.html

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How the net leaves itself open to attack
BBC Technology

The net is making itself unnecessarily vulnerable to crippling attacks, warn experts. Analysis of the queries sent to one of the net's core address books show that 98% of them could have been handled by other parts of the network. Dealing with these queries on the outer reaches of the net rather than at its core could help limit the damage of concerted attacks on key servers say experts.

The report and advice comes as the net recovers from the damage wrought by the Slammer worm that exploited holes in Microsoft software.

Your computer knows where to go to get the webpage you want by consulting one of 13 root servers. These translate the text address you type into your browser into a numerical one the net understands. These fast, powerful computers possess lists of the location of other servers holding records of the exact location of the net's many websites. As the master address books the 13 servers are an obvious choke point for the net and have already had been attacked en masse.

Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have analysed traffic received by one root server on 4 October last year and found that it spent most of its time dealing with unnecessary queries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2699071.stm

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Pirates copy Oscar judges' DVDs
BBC News

Pirated copies of the latest Lord of the Rings DVD are flooding into the UK after they were made from a disc sent to Oscar judges. Voters for the Academy Awards are sent copies of all the films in the running, but it is under the strict condition that they are not copied in any way.

More than 10,000 illegal reproductions of the fantasy film have already been seized in Britain, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said. Fact said these direct digital copies were a much better quality than traditional pirated movies, which are usually made using a handheld video camera to record the film during a screening.

The only thing which gives their origins away is a "for your consideration" Academy Award message that pops up every 15 minutes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...lm/2699357.stm

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DivX software delivers movable media
Stefanie Olsen

DivXNetworks unveiled a new version of its compression technology that promises to let Internet users shrink video files on the PC to play back on a range of consumer electronics devices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982771.html?tag=fd_top

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Developer to revive iTunes P2P
Matthew Broersma

The developer of a peer-to-peer file-sharing plug-in for Apple Computer's iTunes music application has decided to give the software a new lease on life, after it was put out of commission by the computer maker's lawyers earlier this month.

Two weeks ago, Apple ordered developer James Speth to return his iTunes software developer kit and to stop distributing the iCommune plug-in for iTunes. The plug-in allowed iTunes to play or download music from other Macs via a network or Internet connection, potentially giving the music player a peer-to-peer feature.

In a recent message sent to iCommune users, Speth said that he will honor Apple's request to stop distributing his software, but he will build the same features into a standalone application. The next version of iCommune will work with iTunes and potentially other digital music players and will use Rendezvous, Apple's implementation of a protocol for automatic discovery of network-connected devices.

Speth also said that the new version will be open source under the General Public License, the same license used by the GNU/Linux operating system. Open-source software can be freely modified and redistributed, as long as the modified code is returned to the community.

"I'm going to get the basics of the next version done, then get it out the door, with source. Hopefully, from there it will take on a life of its own and get even better," Speth said in the message.

Apple itself has publicly demonstrated the use of Rendezvous to allow iTunes to access other playlists across a network, but has given no indication of when such a version of iTunes might appear. The current version 3 of the program shares playlists with other version 3 "iLife" applications, such as iMovie, iDVD and iCal.

ICommune differs from Apple's concept, however, in that it enables music downloads. Services such as Napster, Aimster, Morpheus and Kazaa have incurred the legal wrath of the music industry for enabling users to trade song files, which record companies say has resulted in mass piracy and declining CD sales.

However, Apple has said that legal fears played no part in its decision to pull the plug on iCommune. The proprietary iTunes software developer kit used by Speth was intended only for making iTunes connect to hardware devices, not to other Macs, according to Apple.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-982441.html

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First Taxis, Now Finnish Music Industry Wants Kindergartens to Pay
Erik, Section Articles

According to an AFP report (German derivative work thereof - http://www.welt.de/data/2003/01/22/35015.html), the Finnish music industry is asking kindergartens to pay about 20 €uros per month in royalties for singing and performing copyright-protected songs. Marja-Leena Karjula of the national copyright agency Teosto is cited: "Royalties have to be paid for every work that is performed outside of private homes." In a similar vein, last year the Finnish music industry had forced taxi drivers to pay royalties for music played while driving (because passengers might be listening!).

Of course, copyright is not about freedom of speech at all. Those damn kindergarten thieves could always write their own songs. Gotta teach them about copyright while they're still young. Teosto probably took their lessons from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers which, in 1996, tried to force Girl Scout Camps to pay royalties for singing copyrighted songs -- such as "Happy Birthday" and "This Land is Your Land".
http://www.infoanarchy.org/story/2003/1/29/02755/7928

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Piracy not the burning issue in CD sales slide: ARIA
Colin Kruger

While Australian music sales dropped last year, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) concedes that online song-swapping and CD burning may not be to blame.

The message is a significant one from the music industry body, given that its international counterparts say piracy is the primary cause of a predicted 6 per cent fall in global CD sales this year - the fourth consecutive annual decline.

But the industry's statistics and rhetoric are starting to be challenged, with a range of experts finding a number of factors to blame for the down-turn - including the music industry itself.

On the surface, it looked like the global contagion of music piracy may have finally hit Australia, with CD sales dropping almost 5.5 per cent to just under 47 million for the 2002 calendar year.

The overall value of the music market (excluding DVDs and video) fell by 8.9 per cent from $629 million to $573 million. This compares with double-digit sales growth of CDs the previous year, and revenue growth of 8.4 per cent.

Music piracy certainly warranted a mention, but ARIA cited economic conditions and increased competition for the consumer's entertainment spend as culprits. And the proof was more conclusive.

ARIA chief executive Stephen Peach conceded that the industry had recorded a decline as recently as 1996, followed by some flat years since. On top of that, mobile phones and gaming systems have become expensive rivals to the music industry's crucial teenage market.

"I think it's important to recognise that there are other legitimate commercial pressures [on music sales]," Mr Peach said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...534039320.html

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Research project to develop light-speed nets

Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, will launch the Agile All-Photonic Networks Research Network on Jan. 30. The AAPN Research Network is aimed at providing the benefits of all-photonic, fibre optic networks to the telecommunications industry and eventually to all users of the Internet. It has been created by a grant from the government of Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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Open Content Network Bows P2P Distribution

The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver large, freely- downloadable content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge "virtual web server" that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened web sites.

Using various web browser plug-ins, users can download open source and public domain software, movies, and music at incredibly fast speeds from this global, distributed network.

Using a new Peer-to-Peer technology, called the "Content-Addressable Web", indviduals will be able to help distribute free content by donating their spare bandwidth and disk space to the network.

Note: Contrary to what some articles may say, the OCN is not a file sharing network like Kazaa. Rather, it is a controlled content delivery network for legitimate freely-distributable content.
http://open-content.net/

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New Week, New Bug Fix. http://locut.us/

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"Xupiter is the worst thing I've ever personally encountered on the Internet,"
Sneaky Toolbar Hijacks Browsers
Michelle Delio

It's the most evil thing on the Internet, according to some of its victims. But it's not a virus, a scam or a raunchy porn site.

It's a browser toolbar that some swear is doing "drive-by downloads" -- installing itself without users' permission -- then taking over their systems and making it impossible to uninstall.

"When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I'd be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears," fumed one of Xupiter's many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.

Xupiter is an Internet Explorer toolbar program. Once active in a system, it periodically changes users' designated homepages to xupiter.com, redirects all searches to Xupiter's site, and blocks any attempts to restore the original browser settings.

The program attempts to download updates each time an affected computer boots up, and has been blamed for causing system crashes. Several versions of Xupiter also appear to download other programs, such as gambling games, which later appear in pop-up windows.

Some said that Xupiter has taken over their browsers.

"Random words and characters now appear when I attempt to enter info on search sites or other forms. It's as if there's a ghost in my machine," New York resident Beth Vanesky said.

Xupiter is also being bundled along with at least one peer-to-peer file sharing program. And the toolbar will install itself automatically when Internet Explorer's security settings aren't set to the highest level.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,57467,00.html

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Software innovator David Gelernter says the desktop is obsolete
Company looking at desktop software with P2P capability
Jack Vaughan

David Gelernter's Mirror Worlds Technologies Inc. recently announced the beta version of software aimed at vastly improving the end user's computer experience. Under development since Mirror Worlds was formed in 1997, and now available free for download, Scopeware Vision Professional is a visual information management system that resides above the OS and native file system, allowing users to use quick keyword searches to find ''stuff.''

Finding ''stuff'' may sound like a minor undertaking, but it is not. Finding stuff is becoming the biggest problems for users of desktop PCs. Early efforts to organize computer work, designed around development project software and desktop and file cabinet metaphors, may have reached the end of usefulness. So says Yale University computer scientist Gelernter, who has given the matter special attention.

In fact, the plague of ''unfindable stuff factor'' is gaining wider attention. The fact was observed last fall by none other than Bill Gates on a Comdex-week appearance on Charlie Rose's TV show. Gates told Rose he had set marching orders for Microsoft applications developers to improve the lot of the end user ferreting about for files.

Developers know the problem too well, and a slew of often-expensive development tools has grown up to meet just this need. These tools -- along with the famed Xerox Parc desktop metaphor -- formed the basis, said Gelernter, for the filing solutions we have today. But the metaphor or paradigm -- pick your favorite term -- is overtaxed.

''The icons, the windows and the mouse were great in 1978. They were still good in the early '80s, and they were still hanging in there with Windows 3.0 in 1990,'' said Gelernter. ''But now [this approach] is just outclassed and overwhelmed.''

''As e-mail and the Web became a big thing, it was clear that the hierarchical file systems and tools we've inherited from the '70s would not work,'' he continued. ''Stuff was sloshing around.''
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7187

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Audio and video material the 'carrot' for home networking

Audio and video material is likely to be what draws the average consumer into home networking, according to a new report from In-Stat/MDR.

The report predicts that DVD players that can access PC video content to be played over the television will be the first mass market products to enable video-based home networking. Leading technologies in the home entertainment network area can expect to see exponential growth over the next three years.

In-Stat/MDR go on to warn, however, that in terms of devices, it is not yet clear whether the PC or consumer electronics cluster will take the leading role in the unfolding market for multimedia home entertainment.

It is also unclear which of the plethora of multimedia home network wiring and standards – including Wi-Fi, ethernet, power line, ultra wideband and phone line – will come to predominate. Brian O’Rourke, Senior Analyst of In-Stat/MDR, believes that given the need for high bandwidth, quality-of-service guarantees and content protection "It is extremely unlikely that multimedia, or Audio/Video, home networks will depend on only one of these options."

The education of consumers is also seen by the report as a key to the success of selling multimedia home entertainment networks. The report states that solutions will have to be simple enough for average consumers to install, or networking companies will have to work with service providers for installation.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14661

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MPEG-4 on road to rights management
Stefanie Olsen

A streaming-media consortium set a schedule this week for finalizing technical specs for MPEG-4 security and rights management--components that are key to the open standard's adoption among content owners.

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA)--a global group of companies including Apple Computer, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems--formulated steps to advance MPEG-4 into its final stages. MPEG-4 is a standard for compressing large audio and video files for delivery over digital multimedia platforms including Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group, the same group that designed MPEG-2 for digital television and MP3 for music files.

First, the ISMA will open for review its technical specifications for the encryption and authentication of MPEG-4-compatible files at the National Broadcasters Association annual convention in April. It plans to set the standard by the end of the second quarter. Second, it will introduce a certification program that lets companies obtain an ISMA trademark proving that their products are interoperable with the standard.

Finally, it has formed a content advisory board, which will direct the specification for digital rights management, one of the biggest hurdles to clear before content owners freely embrace the emerging standard. Members of the board have yet to be announced, but ISMA president Tom Jacobs said the group has talked with all the major Hollywood studios and the Motion Picture Association of America about the specification.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982467.html

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AOL loses Ted Turner and $99 billion
By Jim Hu

Ted Turner is resigning as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner, capping a tumultuous year for the beleaguered media giant.

The announcement came just shortly after the company reported a net loss of $98.7 billion for 2002. Those results included a $45.5 billion fourth-quarter charge related primarily to depreciation in the value of its America Online (AOL) unit, as well as a first-quarter charge of $54 billion in accordance with accounting rules changes that took effect last year.

Revenues for the fourth quarter increased 8 percent to $11.4 billion from the same period last year, compared with Wall Street estimates of $11.2 billion, according to a consensus of analysts polled by First Call.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBIDTA) for the quarter rose 16 percent to $2.8 billion, on the strength of double-digit growth at all of the company's divisions, except for AOL, where EBITDA declined. EBIDTA is one of the most closely watched measures of the performance of media companies.

In a surprising turn of events, the company said Turner would step down in May, joining a long list of executives who've departed in the two years since AOL took over Time Warner. Intended to create a powerhouse of old and new media, the deal instead set off a bitter corporate struggle between the two sides when much-hyped "synergies" failed to materialize.

AOL founder Steve Case earlier this month said he would step down as chairman, also in May, under pressure from unhappy investors including Turner, sources close to the company have said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982648.html

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EarthLink to cut 25 percent of jobs
Ben Charny

Internet service provider EarthLink said Tuesday that it plans to lay off a quarter of its work force.

The United States' third-largest ISP plans to make the 1,300 job cuts in "technical support and customer service," the company said in a statement posted on its Web site. It currently employs about 5,100 people.

In the statement, the ISP said it plans to close call centers in Dallas, in Sacramento, Calif., and in Seattle from Feb. 21 to March 23. A facility in Pasadena, Calif., will also be shut down, though the company did not disclose a schedule for this.

"We are regularly faced with new business challenges in an increasingly competitive environment," EarthLink CEO Garry Betty told employees in an e-mail message seen by CNET News.com. "To be successful, we must continually evaluate our business alternatives and be willing to make the decisions necessary to ensure the long-term growth and profitability of EarthLink."

In recent months, EarthLink has lost momentum in its core dial-up business while concentrating heavily on broadband, and critics have questioned whether it has lost the tight focus on quality that established its original reputation.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-982487.html

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EFA outraged over possible ISP liability changes

Electronic Frontiers Australia has expressed outrage over media reports suggesting that the US may pressure the Australian government to remove recently-enacted legislative protection for ISPs.

The report, which appeared in American publisher Ruper Murdoch's national daily, The Australian, indicates that the US considers the matter of ISPs being held liable for the material carried via their services is "on the table" for discussion as part of a free trade agreement "harmonising" "key legislation on commerce" between Australia and the US.

Recently, an American ISP was ordered by a court to provide the name of one of its subscribers who was alleged to have downloaded music via the P2P software, Kazaa. The court order was issued following pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America.

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides (in part) that ISPs can be held legally liable for content carried via their services unless they act to remove or block access to the content upon receipt of a complaint, which can be issued by any person or company that claims the content violates their intellectual property rights.

"In the four years since the DMCA became law in the United States, it has become a tool of censorship and harassment in the hands of big business," said EFA board member Dale Clapperton.

"By making ISPs legally liable unless they comply with demands to remove material from their networks, it encourages a 'delete first,

ask questions later' policy, which can sometimes see entire web sites deleted on the basis of frivolous, vexatious or unjustified complaints."

The EFA said recently major US chain stores, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart, used complaints under the DMCA to have merchandise pricing for their Thanksgiving sales removed from a web site.

"ISPs are not experts in copyright law, and should not be required to make judgements on the merits of a claim of copyright infringement, especially where inaction could mean a lawsuit against the ISP itself," Clapperton said.

"There exists ample recourse under existing Australian copyright law for intellectual property holders to prevent the publication of material which they claim violates their rights. The proper venue for these types of complaints is a court of law, and the proper remedy is an injunction against publication of the content."

"There is simply no justification for a 'ten-minute takedown' such as the DMCA provides. It only encourages frivolous, vexatious and specious claims of copyright infringement," he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...804451214.html

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Lossless Open Source Music Compressor

Many moons ago, the Ogg project started with a codec called 'Squish.' Squish was an attempt to build a royalty-free lossless audio codec. Someone had a trademark on the word 'Squish,' so the name was changed to 'Ogg Squish.' This was an extremely minor setback, but there was another obstacle to the project on the horizon.

In September of 1998, Fraunhofer IIS sent out 'letters of infringement' to several MPEG audio layer 3 development projects, and focus quickly changed to develop an alternative to mp3. The Ogg Vorbis project was born.

Back To The Future

While we were busy working on our own stuff, several projects popped up to embrace different aspects of open and free multimedia. One of the most impressive was FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC does what Squish was supposed to do. More importantly, with version 1.1.0 now released to the universe, it's a more-than-capable full- featured codec that's ready for prime-time.
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/flac.html

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I’ll take mine with a twist. AquaLime, a Limewire Lite, has released v2.86b. http://fileportal.sprycha.com/module...rder=0&thold=0

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Marketing Tool May Explain Affirmative Action
Could also help P2Ps
Virginia Postrel

DECIDING which shampoo or toothpaste to buy seems a long way from the emotionally charged debate over affirmative action. But an analytical tool developed by marketing scholars to analyze how consumers make brand choices can in fact illuminate that debate.

People have limited time, memory and attention. So when they make buying decisions, they simplify their choices.

"On the shelf you may have 30, 40 brands of shampoo, or 20, 30 brands of toothpaste," explained Jagdish N. Sheth, a marketing professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. But consumers don't take the time to examine every possible choice.

Rather, they reduce their selection to a smaller set of options, based on experience and exposure. "Through learning over time, consumers are really efficient in terms of reducing their transaction costs," Professor Sheth said.

In the 1960's, he and John A. Howard, the Columbia University marketing scholar who died in 1999, developed the idea of the "evoked set" to describe this process of selection.

"The way this information is recorded in memory can influence consumers' preference for brands, and whether the brand will be considered for purchase," Barbara E. Kahn and Leigh McAlister, two marketing professors, wrote in "Grocery Revolution" (Addison Wesley, 1997).

If, for instance, a store arranges yogurt first by brand (like Dannon and Yoplait) and then by flavor within each brand, consumers will tend to select their flavors from the same brand.

On the other hand, the authors write, "If the products had been displayed with all the strawberry yogurts together, then all the lemon-lime yogurts, and so forth, consumers would most likely choose which flavors they wanted first, and then choose which brand name they would most like for that particular flavor."

Similarly, American supermarkets display meats by animal type — beef, chicken, pork, etc. — and then by cut. In Australia, by contrast, grocers arrange meats by the way they might be cooked, and stores use more descriptive labels, like "a 10-minute herbed beef roast." The result is that Australians buy a greater variety of meats.

How we classify goods changes how we make consumer choices. "The composition of the set of final possibilities can have subtle effects on choice," write Professor Kahn of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor McAlister of the University of Texas at Austin. As a result, "brand choices can be influenced without changing the actual preference for a brand per se, but merely by changing the content of the consideration set."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/business/30SCEN.html

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Mr. Bernard acknowledged that there was something odd about transferring digital music files to a physical format, then using one of the world's oldest and slowest communications systems to send it out.
For the Mix Tape, a Digital Upgrade and Notoriety
David Gallagher

THREE or four times a week, Joshua Bernard opens his mailbox and finds a package sent to him by someone he has never met. Inside are homemade CD compilations of music that he often knows little about. The discs have featured big bands, death metal and even some Hawaiian music. The ukuleles did not scare him off.

"You know, it was great," said Mr. Bernard, a Web designer who lives near Boston. "I'm not going out to get the entire Don Ho box set or anything, but it was a refreshing exposure to music that I wouldn't necessarily go out and look for."

That kind of personal introduction to new sounds is a big part of the appeal of mix-CD swapping, an increasingly popular hobby that has spawned an online subculture. Mr. Bernard is the organizer of a typical group of swappers. It has 13 active members who are each assigned a month in which they are to send a mix to the rest of the group. The result is something like file sharing meets pirate radio, transmitted by the Postal Service.

Homemade mixes have long been a part of pop music culture. For many music fans past their college years, the mere sight of a mix on cassette tape can be enough to bring back memories of old crushes and road trips. But now the cassette is on its deathbed, CD burners are standard equipment on many PC's and hard drives are loaded with digital music files ready for burning. This may be the golden age of the mix CD.

Of course, this is also the golden age of copyright infringement, and the music industry is using technological and legal measures to crack down on piracy. The industry views most forms of copying as theft, and it sees little difference between making a mix CD for a friend and copying an entire album to sell on the street.

Frank Creighton, who directs antipiracy efforts for the Recording Industry Association of America, said that money did not have to be involved for copying to be illegal. While mixes on cassette tapes may not have inspired the wrath of the record industry in the past, Mr. Creighton said, digital mixes have better sound quality. And given the proliferation of CD burning for friends and relatives, "it would be naïve of us to say that we should allow that type of activity," he said.

Mix makers counter that they are not hurting the music industry and are perhaps even doing it a favor by helping lesser-known artists get heard. Some fear that in its zeal to stop piracy, the industry could take away freedoms that music buyers have enjoyed for years, possibly hurting itself in the process.

"The mix CD is really a great promotional opportunity for bands that aren't going to be on the radio," said Fred von Lohmann, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which campaigns against limits on digital technologies. Mr. von Lohmann, who is a member of two mix-swapping groups, said he recently bought a CD by a band called the Donnas and found that the disc's copy protection prevented him from playing it on his computer. That meant he was unable to put the band's music on a mix.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30mixx.html

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Eclectic Favorites of a Mix Master

Jim Januszewski selected a few favorites from among the thousands of mix CD's that visitors have contributed to his site, Art of the Mix (artofthemix.org):

A Warped Romance

Theme: Song titles form a mini-drama.

Mix maker: Jere Chandler, Birmingham, Ala.

Sample tracks: The Smiths, "What Difference Does It Make?"; The Darling Buds, "It Makes No Difference"; Archers of Loaf, "What Did You Expect?"; Roxy Music, "More Than This."

Twenty Mortal Murders:

Macbeth

Theme: A mix that follows the plot of "Macbeth." Quotations from Orson Welles's 1948 film adaptation are interspersed between the songs.

Mix maker: Randy Gatley, Vancouver, B.C.

Sample tracks: Richard Hell and the Voidoids, "Betrayal Takes Two"; Howlin' Wolf, "Moanin' at Midnight"; The Clash, "Somebody Got Murdered"; The Fall, "There's a Ghost in My House."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30fave.html

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Always online? See if your copy of XP is susceptible to “Messenger Service” spam. www.mynetwatchman.com/winpopup.asp.

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No baloney
Record Performance at Sony - Profits Double
Ken Belson

The Sony Corporation reported today that its profits doubled, to a record, in the October-to-December quarter as sales of its PlayStation 2 video games and a string of hit movies offset lukewarm demand for its electronics.

The company's prospects this year, though, are clouded by a potential downturn in consumer spending in the United States and other big markets and continued pressure from competitors to cut prices of digital cameras, computers and other gadgets. Analysts also warn that Sony's movie studio and games operations are unlikely to continue their record performance in 2003.

Last year, though, Sony's fortunes were lifted by a strong showing during an otherwise lackluster holiday season. Sony sold 42 percent more PlayStation 2 game consoles in North America during November and December as cumulative sales worldwide topped 50 million. Sony's movie studio also had record ticket sales of $2.75 billion last year thanks to hit movies like "Spider- Man" and "Men in Black II." Sony also earns a royalty when the movies are sold as DVD's and videos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/bu...9CND-SONY.html

Citing Health, Sony Chief Steps Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/bu...ss/29SONY.html

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The dinuclear ruthenium done it.
Make up your mind. Two-Tone LEDs glow different colors. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30next.html

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Kewl. New Printer Does Discs
Ian Austen

High-speed CD-ROM drives provide faster data transfers, but they can run into trouble with self-adhesive CD labels. At high rotational speeds, the weight of the labels can throw the discs off balance, causing unpleasant vibration or even damaging the drive. Advised by manufacturers to avoid stick-on labels, most people have reverted to scribbling on their discs with a marker.

Soon users of Epson's Stylus Photo 960 printer ($349) will be able to apply their artwork and typography to home-burned CD's without worry. The Photo 960, which already had an unusual flat paper path, is to include a tray that will accept a single CD or DVD for printing. (The discs, of course, do not bend.)

The printer, which includes software for creating the labels, will be shipped with the CD attachment starting in March. People who now own the Photo 960 printer or who buy one before the CD kit is included will be able to obtain the parts and software at no charge from Epson by contacting the company through its Web site, www.epsonstore.com.

There is a catch. Parker Plaisted, Epson's product manager for photo imaging, said the system works only with special inkjet-printable discs, which tend to be more expensive than ordinary discs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30prin.html

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What’ll it be, Bub?
Movies or Music Files? A Jukebox Does Double Duty
J.D. Biersdorfer

First there was audio and then there was video. As television followed radio, the personal jukebox, once a mere music player, has progressed from spinning out MP3 tunes to playing video clips. The Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20 comes with a color liquid crystal display screen right on the front to display digital photographs and play video clips in the MPEG-4 format.

The Multimedia Jukebox 20, which has a built-in microphone and ports for stereo inputs, can both play and record MP3 files. Its rechargeable battery can play up to seven hours of music between charges. Its color screen, which measures 237 by 234 pixels, can display photographs in the JPEG and BMP formats. The unit can also be connected to a television set for viewing the stored pictures on the big screen.

The jukebox, which works with most Windows and Macintosh systems, is 4.3 inches high by 3.1 inches wide and is about 1 inch thick. It has a suggested price of $390 and can be bought in stores or at www.archos.com. The jukebox has a 20-gigabyte hard drive, enough for 5,000 MP3 songs or up to 40 hours of video - which should be enough to keep one entertained through even the longest waits in the airport or doctor's office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30vide.html

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Kewl, 2
Follow Me Audio
Jim Dalrymple

Difusi Corp. on Thursday announced a new line of products the company will produce in time for Macworld Conference & Expo in New York this coming July. Difusi, best known to Mac users as the company that makes Speaker Grilles for various Mac systems, is developing a technology codenamed FMA or Follow Me Audio.

Difusi is making an audio appliance that utilizes the Bluetooth wireless spectrum to distribute digitally encoded audio streams to a decoding application. Difusi President Michael Wright says the company's appliance has been developed to accept audio streams from a variety of Bluetooth compliant devices such as cell phones, personal computers, MP3 players and others.

Difusi has been developing its proprietary audio code to include a separate encode/decode or I/O that will communicate back to the Bluetooth enabled device and offer a variety of sound level, peer-to-peer control features and enhancements that enable devices to transmit audio over a range of multiple speakers that can be added to the application.

Wright explained how the system would work with a portable MP3 player. "To illustrate the features, picture walking into a room with an MP3 player and hearing your music playback without wires while the audio follows you room to room, fading out from one set of speakers and fading in seamlessly to another, that are set to receive and decode the audio stream," Wright said.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0301/30.difusi.php

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In Japan
Music file-sharing on Internet illegal, court rules

TOKYO — The Tokyo District Court said in an interim ruling Wednesday that an online music file-sharing service by MMO Japan Ltd has violated the Copyright Law, supporting the Japanese music industry's stance.

The decision follows the court's April 2002 injunction, which banned the Tokyo-based company's Internet file-swapping service in favor of the defendants — the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and 19 member labels.
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content...at=2&id=247605

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Australia
What’s left of copyright?
Lynne Spender

The battle lines are being drawn between copyright and copyleft proponents—but what are they fighting about?

Behind the seemingly rational, if slow, changes to copyright law to accommodate new technologies, tensions are now beginning to run high. At issue is the copyright owners’ right to control their works in the digital environment and the public’s right to have access to them.

In the copyright corner are the big publishing and production companies that are increasingly using watermarking, encryption, and other forms of security like embedded zoning systems in DVDs to restrict access to digital works and prevent piracy. In the copyleft corner are creators who want people to have free access to their work and users who are concerned that technological security measures will seriously damage the free flow of ideas. They point out that new technologies are undermining copyright law’s fair dealing provisions that have previously allowed access to copyright works for purposes such as research and study, criticism, and review.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ent...0271643,00.htm

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Embrace file-sharing, or die
A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.

Editor's note: John Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee. On Thursday night, he submitted the following paper to NARAS.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Snyder and Ben Snyder

Feb. 1, 2003 | The following was written in response to a discussion by the board of governors of the New York chapter of National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) regarding the position NARAS should take with respect to a new public relations campaign proposed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) condemning those who download music from the Internet.

The subject of digital rights, and the position NARAS should take with respect to it, is near and dear to me. I've read a great deal about it. If I may, I would like to offer a few thoughts:

I. Intellectual Property

Irrespective of what we think should be done, it is still currently illegal to download copyrighted music that you didn't buy. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. The statistic discussed in the December meeting that there were 3 billion downloads the previous month shows that the law is going to have to be changed, unless you take the position that downloaded music is stealing and thereby criminalize the society. But how can 50 million people (over 200 million worldwide) be wrong? How do we reconcile the reality of downloaded music with the idea of intellectual property?

Intellectual property has not always been defined and protected as it is today. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the philosophical considerations:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

The above quote appeared in John Perry Barlow's excellent essay, "The Economy of Ideas," published first in the March 1994 issue of Wired magazine. Barlow writes:

"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?

"Since we don't have a solution to what is a profoundly new kind of challenge, and are apparently unable to delay the galloping digitization of everything not obstinately physical, we are sailing into the future on a sinking ship.

"This vessel, the accumulated canon of copyright and patent law, was developed to convey forms and methods of expression entirely different from the vaporous cargo it is now being asked to carry. It is leaking as much from within as from without.

"Legal efforts to keep the old boat floating are taking three forms: a frenzy of deck chair rearrangement, stern warnings to the passengers that if she goes down, they will face harsh criminal penalties, and serene, glassy-eyed denial.

"Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to contain digitized expression any more than real estate law might be revised to cover the allocation of broadcasting spectrum..."

The entire concept of intellectual property needs to be reexamined, and ways of protecting it need to reconsidered. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry has, by legislative crook and judicial hook, obtained a 20-year copyright extension. The Supreme Court recently upheld the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)" that extended the life of existing copyrights an additional 20 years. This, in the face of Justice Steven G. Breyer's estimation that only 2 percent of works copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 are available to the general public. The Supreme Court case pitted the public against Disney, whose early Mickey Mouse cartoons were to enter into the public domain in 2003, and for whom Congress drafted the legislation in the first place.

This is a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself. So, instead of creating new content and allowing long-standing laws to work, the entertainment business frantically seeks to manipulate the process to its own ends. And it does this with the obsequiousness of penurious politicians and a supinely acquiescent Supreme Court. That is the best the establishment has to offer, and it has nothing to do with progress or the good of the society.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ing_manifesto/

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Ain’t making it up
Carriers Face 'Britney' Dilemma

It's a dilemma facing all of today's mobile operators: How do you handle the charging and billing process if a customer downloads a video clip, or some other content, that crashes half way through or is incomplete when played back?

This headache is so common, it seems, that is has been given its very own term. "It's known in the business as the 'Half of Britney' problem," according to John Aalbers, director of next-generation solutions business at mediation and settlement company Intec Telecom Systems plc.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=27599

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One small step for a teleporter, a giant leap for teleportation.
Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber
Kenneth Chang

Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.

Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.

The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.

"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."

The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.

"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.

Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they cannot be copied somewhere else.

Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message.

Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons almost all peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50 miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/science/30TELE.html

Top 10 downloads, Music

Source:Bigchampange

Until next week,

- js.

Current Week In Review

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

SA_Dave · 01-02-03, 04:54 AM

Hi Jack!

I must say that I find it interesting that most Australians seem to have steadfast and very practical viewpoints! That's a good thing, as some first world government has to take a firm, contrariwise position before any progress can be made in the "battle for consumer rights." Anyway, them Australian ISPs, record labels and consumer-rights activists deserve commendation.

Quote:

Piracy not the burning issue in CD sales slide: ARIA
ARIA chief executive Stephen Peach conceded that the industry had recorded a decline as recently as 1996, followed by some flat years since. On top of that, mobile phones and gaming systems have become expensive rivals to the music industry's crucial teenage market.

"I think it's important to recognise that there are other legitimate commercial pressures [on music sales]," Mr Peach said.

We all know it's true. Considering that revenue is still in the billions, it's ridiculous that the industry has the cheek to chastise and police their customers, whilst refusing to offer any value-for-money alternatives. They deserve to be worse off than they are!

Let's hope that the industry will have as "successful" a year as AOL/Time Warner did...

Quote:

EFA outraged over possible ISP liability changes
"In the four years since the DMCA became law in the United States, it has become a tool of censorship and harassment in the hands of big business," said EFA board member Dale Clapperton.

"By making ISPs legally liable unless they comply with demands to remove material from their networks, it encourages a 'delete first, ask questions later' policy, which can sometimes see entire web sites deleted on the basis of frivolous, vexatious or unjustified complaints."

The EFA said recently major US chain stores, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart, used complaints under the DMCA to have merchandise pricing for their Thanksgiving sales removed from a web site.

"ISPs are not experts in copyright law, and should not be required to make judgements on the merits of a claim of copyright infringement, especially where inaction could mean a lawsuit against the ISP itself," Clapperton said.

"There exists ample recourse under existing Australian copyright law for intellectual property holders to prevent the publication of material which they claim violates their rights. The proper venue for these types of complaints is a court of law, and the proper remedy is an injunction against publication of the content."

This DMCA situation is completely ludicrous. Clapperton's completely correct in that the media giants are seeking to censor and control digital distribution channels, bypassing due process mechanisms to boot! The whole point of the DMCA is that it was meant to be a compromise, no matter how flawed, between ISPs and the media cartels. Taking the law to this extreme is desperate, and the copyright Nazis should be punished for their lack of foresight, not rewarded.

I had to laugh when reading the Recording industry shows some cunning article. They may have some legal and intimidation tricks up their sleeves, but they're completely clueless when it comes to the technology of p2p. I found the wired article on Sony quite interesting. In contrast, Sony seems to have the right ideas, but sadly the old fogies in the boardrooms don't see eye-to-eye with the technologists of today.

It's evident that the war for consumer-rights is beginning to heat up. Copyright decision scores against music performers and After high court ruling, erosion in public domain feared (BTW if you have a working link to the full nola.com article, I'd appreciate it.

I couldn't find it anywhere on the site.

) outlined some more of the downsides to the CTEA. The Canadian system seems much more logical and it's a pity that cases such as Golan's haven't been combined into a class-action litigation. New group wants Congress to oppose Hollywood technology mandates is an excellent article!

I'm surprised that Jack Valenti has barely even batted an eyelid about it, considering that Microsoft, the BSA, IBM and digital consumer groups are all on the same side! {Although I shouldn't really be surprised considering that Mr. Valenti isn't an admirable human specimen, if he is one at all!

)

Quote:

Connect, They Say, Only Connect
Network scientists study networks: collections of people or objects connected to each other in some way. Think of the 1.5 million Manhattan residents or the 30,000 genes inside a human cell. Such networks, scientists argue, behave in ways that can't be understood solely in terms of their component parts. Without knowing what every single person or object within the network is doing, they say, it's nevertheless possible to know something about how the network as a whole behaves.

The approach of looking at the behaviour of the whole, while understand the components, reminds me a bit of lattice theory (eg. in salt crystals.) It's a very interesting concept.

Similarly, understanding and cataloguing every peer interaction in a p2p network would be futile and resource intensive. Being able to interact with a small subsection thereof (preferably a relevant one) and having the ability to view the whole is a much more important and attainable goal.

Quote:

Developer to revive iTunes P2P
Speth also said that the new version will be open source under the General Public License, the same license used by the GNU/Linux operating system. Open-source software can be freely modified and redistributed, as long as the modified code is returned to the community.

"I'm going to get the basics of the next version done, then get it out the door, with source. Hopefully, from there it will take on a life of its own and get even better," Speth said in the message.

Good news!

Mac users are traditionally left with limited choices when it comes to p2p, even though the situation has improved somewhat.

Quote:

Software innovator David Gelernter says the desktop is obsolete
''Instead of information management growing from the machine up, Mirror Worlds wanted it to grow from the user down. I want my information management software to have the same shape as my life, which is a series of events in time. I do something and then something else. I want the story of my life to be in software. I want the flow to determine the shape of the picture I see on the screen. I don't want to worry about directories, subdirectories or devices,'' he said.

...But, he noted, the company is looking at beta versions of desktop stream software with a P2P capability. ''In the long view, we see the stream running on a lot of machines around the world simultaneously.'' This would let you look at documents that represent a community of which you are part, he said.

Do you sense the possibilities here TankGirl? Are you tingling with anticipation like I am?

Quote:

One step Closer To Teleportation
Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber
The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.

"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.

LOL.

I'd hate to be the guinea pig for any "organic trials."

Ðiego · 01-02-03, 10:19 AM

Quote:

In the earlier stages of its life, WinMX was simply an OpenNap client. However, once OpenNap collapsed at the hands of the RIAA, WinMX was a client without a network.

OpenNap? Collapsed by the RIAA? Hardly..

Ð

30-01-03, 11:04 PM	#1
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,017	Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Feb. 1st, '03 Some of us here in Connecticut are experiencing the 17th consecutive day of temperatures stuck at or below the freezing mark and since the all-time record for such a frigid event is 19 days straight we’re not that far off from a new one and that’s a bit of a bummer. Tuesday when the temp was exactly 11.1 Fahrenheit I punched up the memory on the digital thermometer and saw that the low had been exactly 0.0. Hmm, something mathematically interesting going on there I thought. Course it’s hard to square my direct observational experience with what the experts tell me, I mean how can it be so cold – if it’s getting so warm? Seems a reasonable question. The convoluted answers go nowhere in keeping my skin from tightening when I’m hit by these icy New England blasts. For the record climatologists say that “some areas will indeed get colder” even as the planet “gets warmer”, so to me that makes it “local warming”, not global, but I digress. My main problem is keeping enough pistachio nuts laid in for the evening “chewing episodes” that seem to increase in frequency in direct proportion to the dropping digits. Towards that end I’ve made a kind of a Spratts Pantsometor - I can judge the temp by how tight my pants fit. If they’re tight, it’s cold. Well, they’re tight and getting tighter. Stayed inside last weekend playing scavenger hunt with the Napsterites. Came in a respectable 4th which isn’t too bad considering I was writing all the time. Members can revisit the hunt thread and see the zany posts. One of the things that’s irritating me about the whole copyright situation is how damn shortsighted everyone is who’s supporting these draconian laws. Felonious conduct for DMCA violations, felonious conduct for file sharing, felonious conduct for CD swapping – it’s gotten unreal. Penalties for sharing a record with a few friends are higher than rape and manslaughter and that’s wrong. But the shortsighted part is what really gets me going. The internet doesn’t understand borders and neither does technology. While the West is busy jailing people to satisfy Valenti and Rosen, the rest of the planet is moving ahead to reinvent everything. It won’t be stopped. It can’t be stopped. We’ll wake up one day, and soon, and find the best new stuff will be owned and patented by other people from other countries who’ll be more than happy to lease it back to us on their terms and under their control. Stuff we could have, would have and should have invented ourselves – but didn’t - because our leaders deliberately wrote bills to keep us from doing so (won’t they hate their IP laws then). Will it happen? It’s likely. History is littered with great civilizations that atrophied and died when progress was stifled. When established institutions were favored over younger ones. When spring was outlawed and winter locked in. They probably didn’t think it would come to pass, but it did. And forever. Record cold ahead. Enjoy, Jack. Who decides who's a digital criminal? Bill Thompson Sitting on a shelf in my flat are some videos of television programmes and movies that were recorded off-air by friends of mine and then given to me. Next to my computer you will find a selection of copied CDs, and on the hard drive of the same computer are hundreds of MP3 files, many containing music ripped from CDs I do not own. The copy of Microsoft Word on the laptop I am using to write this column is the same as the one installed on my desktop computer, and on occasion my daughter will be using one while I am using the other. I scanned my son's school photograph and sent a digital copy to my sister. Some - or perhaps all - of this puts me on the wrong side of UK copyright law. Not only that, but I don't care. Even where I am clearly infringing someone's rights I do not think I am doing them any real damage. After all, I am never going to buy a Norah Jones album, and listening to the ripped version a few times only served to convince me of this. Fortunately the programme makers, music publishers, photographers and software developers whose intellectual property I have used (or abused) would find it very hard to track me down. Indeed, if the makers of the James Bond movies which we have been assiduously taping tried going to court for a warrant to search my flat they would find it difficult to convince a judge. Of course, if I were caught selling bootleg videos on Cambridge market then they would be on much stronger legal ground, because it would be obvious what I was up to. But what if I send MP3s over the internet, or e-mail copyright material to friends? Am I in public or in private here? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2691977.stm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Copyright decision scores against music performers Shulgold: The United States Supreme Court recently made it official: Music written 95 years ago remains under copyright protection. That's good news for living composers and the families of 20th-century music-makers no longer with us. And not-so-good news for cash-strapped schools, conductors and musicians who pay royalties to perform those works. "Hey, we just go on," said a disappointed Lawrence Golan, conductor of the orchestra at the University of Denver. Despite the ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which let stand copyright extensions that protect a work 95 years after its publication, the conductor remains the lead plaintiff in a similar copyright case, Golan v. Ashcroft, to be heard by the Colorado Supreme Court. His case is slightly different, he said, while admitting that the precedent has clearly been set by the Eldred decision. The result of that ruling requires that performance royalties for score rentals (and other creations outside public domain) must be paid for works dating back to 1908. "We'll just continue to play music we can afford to play," Golan said. Trouble is, he has an annual score-rental budget of $1,000 - which doesn't go very far. "The publishers do give discounts," he said, "but even those are sometimes not enough. We recently did Ives' Symphony No. 2, and the cost of renting the score was $650. Normally, it's $1,000." On the other side of the issue, music publishers such as the New York-based Boosey & Hawkes are not complaining. "We were very pleased with the (court's) ruling," said Caroline Calett, director of business affairs at B&H. "Naturally, it's difficult for us to be unprejudiced about the decision," she noted. "For years, we have worked to develop composers, and not just the last work they wrote. That may be true in the pop world, but we are anxious to promote and protect composers who are gone - to keep their work before the public." While B&H deals with major orchestras and performing organizations with healthy artistic budgets, the company is mindful of the smaller coffers of universities and lower-echelon groups, she said. "Our rates are scaled to the particular company and size of the venue," Calett explained, declining to quote prices. The ruling won't change much, she said, noting that "orchestras know our parameters. We're not an unreasonable company." Publishers understand the needs of artists and ensembles with small budgets. On the other hand, "We still have to bring in income to keep our (rental) scores in good shape. It can cost $20,000 to print up a full score with (orchestral) parts." Calett insisted that current economic problems are having a larger impact on spending decisions of performing groups than the Eldred ruling. For Golan and other musicians, the court's upholding of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (which added 20 years to the period of protection from public domain) cannot change their mission to perform music of the past century. "At each orchestral concert, I always do one short piece by a living composer. Those I work with directly usually charge me $200 to $300. We hope to continue that." Though he must stand by the court's decision - while gearing for a possible similar result in his case before the state supreme court - Golan was intrigued by one comment that came out of the Eldred decision. "Justice (Ruth) Ginsberg said that the court was intent on judging the constitutionality of the (Bono) law, not its wisdom. And I realize that's true. But it does make you wonder about her opinion of the original legislation." http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...695471,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anti-Copying Process Now For Macs Peter Cohen SunnComm Technologies Inc. has noted that its audio CD copy protection technology MediaMax CD-3 is now compatible with Macs. The technology is already working on Windows-based PCs. MediaMax CD-3 was officially unveiled earlier this month during a presentation by Microsoft Corp. at the MidemNet conference in Cannes, France. SunnComm has positioned MediaMax CD-3 as a copy protection scheme suitable for audio CDs. The technology prevents users from uploading and copying protected music through peer-to-peer file sharing services. SunnComm offers a system it's coined "PLAYMOVESHARE" to allow buyers of MediaMax CD-3 protected discs to use the discs themselves and to make authorized copies on their computer, as well as transport them on portable music players. SunnComm claims that MediaMax CD-3 works with all known CD and DVD players, too. Apparently the first public showing of the MediaMax CD-3 technology is a forthcoming Sterling Entertainment release, Ike & Tina Turner's "The Early Sessions," expected to be released this quarter. SunnComm CTO Eric Vandewater said that the Mac development of MediaMax CD-3 was "one of the last major pieces" to complete their audio CD protection puzzle. "The overall dependability and functionality of MediaMax CD-3 will now allow CD buyers to make authorized copies of music on their computer for their own personal use," he added. http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...3.mediamax.php ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Liquid Audio Gets a Buyer for Its Assets Laura Holson In a move that could make it easier for record companies to sell and promote songs online, the music distributor for Wal-Mart has agreed to buy some of the assets of Liquid Audio, the troubled digital music pioneer. Anderson Merchandisers, a privately owned company that is also the largest magazine wholesaler in the United States, is buying Liquid Audio's technology as well as other assets, including computers, for an undisclosed sum, according to company executives. Liquid Audio was at the forefront in developing technology to deliver music securely online but has been in financial straits recently and has suffered through a nasty boardroom fight. The new company, which has not been named, will be run by a Liquid Audio founder, Gerry Kearby, who said the company had licenses to distribute over 350,000 songs. The acquisition, which is expected to be announced on Friday, signals that recording companies, distributors and retailers are taking the first steps toward working together to come up with ways to combat declining compact disc sales, which have been hurt by free online music-swapping. Anderson, based in Knoxville, Tenn., hopes to distribute music downloads through the Web sites of retailers, including Wal-Mart, though no deal has been worked out yet, an Anderson executive said. Of course any new online music venture, like many that have preceded it, seems more like a gamble than a sure bet these days. Bertelsmann, the parent of one of the major record companies, invested in Napster several years ago with the hope that it might be a paid service one day. That effort failed. And the music companies' own online efforts have gotten less than rave reviews so far. Still, Charlie Anderson, the company's chief executive, said, "This will strategically position retailers to participate in the industry's legitimate downloading future." The company has relationships with all the major record companies largely because its job is to make sure that Wal-Mart shelves are stocked with music. The new venture is supported by the Universal Music Group, the world's No. 1 music company, which is aggressively trying to sell more of its music online through major retailers, like Best Buy and Circuit City. So far, 60,000 Universal songs are available. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...gy/24MUSI.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CORNING LOSS WIDENS TO $709 MILLION Bloomberg News The largest maker of optical fiber for carrying telephone calls and data, Corning Inc., said yesterday that its fourth- quarter loss widened to $709 million as sales fell 20 percent and it had costs for cutting jobs. The net loss was 60 cents a share in the period, which ended Dec. 31, compared with a loss of $655 million, or 69 cents, in the quarter a year earlier, a Corning spokeswoman, Monica Ott, said. Sales fell to $736 million from $917 million. The company has eliminated 18,800 jobs, or 44 percent of its work force, and is scaling back units like its fiber optic parts business. Plummeting demand for optical fiber, cable and gear has resulted in more than $6 billion in losses since June 2001. The shares fell to $4 in after-hours trading after the earnings announcement. They rose 29 cents, to $4.36, in regular trading. In the fourth quarter, Corning had $1.07 billion in after-tax expenses related to cutting jobs, shutting operations and the declining value of assets, the company said. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...y/24TBRF1.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ JDS SALES DROP BUT LOSS NARROWS Reuters The JDS Uniphase Corporation said yesterday that sales of its fiber optic equipment dropped for the eighth consecutive period in its second quarter, but its loss shrank as the company continued to squeeze costs. JDS, a supplier of fiber optic parts, reported a loss of $215 million, or 15 cents a share, in its second quarter, which ended Dec. 31. That is an improvement from a net loss of $2.1 billion, or $1.60 a share, in the period last year. Excluding one- time items, JDS posted a loss of $185 million, or 13 cents a share. The results included about $92 million in restructuring charges. On average, analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had expected an adjusted loss of 5 cents a share. The mean revenue estimate from 13 analysts was $152.5 million. Sales fell to $157 million from $193 million in its first quarter and from $286 million in the quarter a year ago. The company said it would cut its current work force of 7,000 even further. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/topnews/24TBRF4.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GATHERING ON NET TAXES NYT Lawmakers and tax officials from more than 30 states have gathered in Tampa, Fla., in an effort to create a groundwork for setting taxes on Internet sales and services. R. Bruce Johnson, head of the tax commission in Utah, said officials intended to try to define, in legal terms, how digital products like downloadable music, movies and software and other Internet services could be fairly taxed while the Web continued to evolve. States would have to update their tax codes to accommodate e-commerce, and Congress and the White House would have to approve legislation before a plan to tax online sales could be carried out. Internet retailers have opposed such taxation plans. Congress passed a ban on Internet taxes in 1998, and legislation is pending in the House and Senate to extend indefinitely a moratorium on such taxes. Governors and state officials argue, though, that millions of dollars are lost in taxes every year to online shopping. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/te...y/24TBRF3.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sony They Sold 36 Billion Dollars worth of hardware but didn't make a penny Buying a movie studio was supposed to set them free. Instead the entertainment units have hobbled this once scrappy hardware powerhouse to the point where today, the hottest portable gadgets like the Archer and the iPod are coming out of other companies dream rooms - while Sony slowly "studies" the market. An in depth Wired article points out just how much the company has changed and how much more they hope to. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The 'New' Music Industry - according to Miles Copeland Eric de Fontenay I have to admit that I didn't quite know what to expect from Miles Copeland's keynote speech at January's Noorderslag seminar in the Netherlands. I know that I didn't see eye-to-eye with him on the 7 Year Statute and was always uncomfortable with his claim that music piracy was Osama Ben Laden's latest weapon in his war against western civilization. But this time, I believe he was right on target and the news is GOOD (the only part he never realized). According to Miles, the music industry is in a state of utter shock, much like the victim of a violet car accident, and everybody is finally coming to the realization that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. So what was the nature of the crash that woke everyone up? http://www.p2pnet.net/running/issues.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Music industry makes war plans Reuters Music industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday vowed to keep up the fight against online music swapping, piling pressure on Internet service providers (ISPs) to police their networks. The issue of whether Internet and technology companies should be compelled to assist the major music labels in the fight against piracy, which is blamed for slumping CD sales, was headline news this week at the music industry's annual confab in the French resort town of Cannes. At the conference, Internet executives reacted sharply to comments made by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Chief Executive Hilary Rosen who said ISPs should be held more accountable in monitoring illicit song-trading. On Friday, Rosen said the RIAA would continue to work with lawmakers and the industry to root out song traders. She said the trade body has no plans to develop compulsory licensing arrangements or impose fees on ISPs to recoup sales lost to file-trading. "That would be a dramatic departure (from the RIAA's strategy)," she said. In Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade organization, has been waging a war of its own, battling to push forward the Copyright Directive, EU legislation that has stalled at the state level. If passed, the Copyright Directive would require Internet service providers to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on ground that it puts them in the costly role of having to police their customers. Only two of 15 EU member countries have ratified the directive. ISPs, telecommunications companies and now manufacturers of hardware devices such as CD-burners, have sought to have protections afforded by the directive limited, to the chagrin of the music industry. "This directive was the subject of a hard-fought compromise at the EU level between all the players. It is really bad faith that certain parties are trying to renegotiate this directive at the national level," said Frances Moore, European regional director for the IFPI. The IFPI said it faces the biggest opposition in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. The recording industry believes it has little time to spare. CD sales are expected to fall again this year, the fourth consecutive year, as the popularity of so-called peer-to- peer (P2P) trading networks such as Kazaa and Grokster grows. A study released on Friday by U.S. software firm Websense said file-sharing sites continue to proliferate with more than 130 unique P2P applications and 89,000 Web pages dedicated to file-sharing, representing a 300 percent rise from a year ago. The industry did win a major victory in the United States this week when a federal court judge said telecoms giant Verizon Communications must identify a prolific song downloader, an individual who pulled more than 600 songs per day off file-sharing sites. In Europe, the IFPI intends to step up pressure on state and EU lawmakers so that national laws are strengthened to curtail downloading practices. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne...c.online.reut/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Survey says! ”Don't let Hollywood make the rules” Jon Newton "If allowed to make the rules, the entertainment industry will treat us all like criminals in their attempt to crack down on piracy" new survey. And instead of worrying about online piracy, the US Congress' top priority should be protecting consumers fair use right to access, copy and enjoy content they acquire legally, said 60% of people who responded. "More than 53 percent fear that Congressional mandates intended to limit piracy would only end up making an already complicated problem worse," said Scott Sutherland of marketing communications firm SutherlandGold, which conducted the survey. Entertainment companies that argue the technology industry should do more to crack down on piracy get little support from consumers, said Sutherland, continuing that 54% also believe Congressional mandates might have the unintended consequence of stifling technological innovation and restricting law-abiding consumers access to entertainment content on the Internet. "Much has been made of Hollywood's powerful lobbying voice in the Digital Rights Management debate," said Sutherland. "This survey shows that the technology community could greatly benefit from waking the real sleeping giant in this debate: consumers," said Lesley Gold. http://www.p2pnet.net/running/study.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Network protocol, queing and social improvements Frontcode Says WinMx Upgrades On The Way Thomas Mennecke WinMX has always been at the forefront of P2P technology. In the earlier stages of its life, WinMX was simply an OpenNap client. However, once OpenNap collapsed at the hands of the RIAA, WinMX was a client without a network. In response, FrontCode Technologies introduced their own decentralized P2P network. Since that time, the success of this network has been second only to FastTrack. The last update from WinMX was back in October 2002, and little news has been heard since. Although things have been quite, WinMX development continues to forge ahead full steam. This time around, we didn't conduct a traditional Q&A interview, rather got right to the point about the current status and future of WinMX. We would like to thank Kevin Hearn, President of Frontcode Technologies, who took the time to respond to our questions. Considering the long wait between releases, we first questioned when we could expect the next version of WinMX. "We're working on some really exciting things for upcoming versions of WinMX, but progress is a bit slower than I expected. I expect the next release (v3.32 probably) to be within the next 6 weeks, possibly as soon as 2 weeks." WinMX has always done an excellent job in finding high quality bitrate songs and provides tons of search results. However, one of the more vocal complaints stems from its long queues. The upcoming version hopes to lessen this problem. "The most noticeable change in the next version will be the removal of the 'Auto Find Sources' and the 'Auto Enter Queue' features. We have replaced them with a much more intelligent version of the old 'Auto Complete' feature, which will do a much better job." http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/winmx.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Audio players get thinner Winston Chai Japanese electronics manufacturer Seagrand has upped the ante in the race to develop compact digital devices by introducing one of the thinnest audio players in the world. The business card-size Ravemetal CardRec audio player measures 77mm by 54mm and is 9.8mm thick. The device comes with three memory options--128MB, 192MB and 256MB. For file transfers, the CardRec connects to Windows-based PCs through a USB (universal serial bus) connection and supports common music formats such as MP3 and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio. The gadget also sports a built-in microphone and functions as a digital voice recorder. The audio player will be launched in Japan next week, but availability for other regions is unclear. Details on pricing have yet to be confirmed. http://news.com.com/2110-1040-982034.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DVD Player works with DivX files Watch P2P downloads on the Living room TV It took almost three years for the arrival of a standalone player that could show videos and movies in DivX (MPEG-4) format. Based on the REALmagic EM8500 chip, which essentially handles the MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding functions, the KiSS DP-450 is the first player in the world that fits into this category. This means that along with well-known media like DVD video, S-video CD and video CD, movies with DivX coding (MPEG-4) can be shown, too. The same market development occurred with the MP3 audio standard. Anyone who has bought a DVD player without a DivX feature will probably be kicking himself. Here's why: a huge variety of feature films is already available on the Internet and through file sharing tools. One can only hope that many manufacturers will soon go with the encoder chip from REALmagic. KiSS Technologies is showing real courage vis-à-vis the Hollywood film industry. When the popular MP3 codec for audio was introduced, the recording industry shackled the first manufacturers with legal action. But in the end, it was all in vain: MP3 made it on a broad front. The same thing will most likely occur with MPEG-4/ DivX, because customer demand will open up new markets. http://www6.tomshardware.com/consume...124/index.html Edgereview forum (reading all the way down tells a good story of the bugs and the upgrades): http://www.edgereview.com/ataglance....y=Video&ID=390 Toshiba drive mod: http://www.firmware-flash.com/~hijacker/kiss/#Download ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Buyers Outpace Renters Tim Race The DVD continues to transform the home video market. In 2002, for the first time, annual sales of home videos in the United States surpassed money spent on rentals, according to the market research firm Alexander & Associates. And overall consumer spending on prerecorded home videos — whether in the DVD or VHS format, including sales and rentals — set a record in 2002, at $28.5 billion. That total was up 15 percent from a year earlier. Bob Alexander, president of the research firm, credits the tremendous popularity of DVD players and the industry’s relatively low pricing of DVD’s, for both the booming growth of the home video market and the trend that has put purchases ahead of rentals. The best-selling DVD title in 2002, according to Mr. Alexander’s preliminary estimates, was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with 9.8 million units sold, followed by “Monsters Inc.,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Spider-Man” and “Shrek.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Streaming Video Continues to Make Web Inroads Saul Hansell One powerful network that intends to push the limit of Internet distribution is the Starz Encore Group, the cable movie service of John Malone's Liberty Media. This spring, it will offer a service, in conjunction with RealNetworks, that will let users watch full-length movies through their computers. To have sufficient quality, users will have to download the movie in advance, which can take a half-hour or more. But the result, Starz says, will be a picture that is as good as cable television, if not quite as good as a DVD's. For $6 to $10 a month, users will be able to watch any or all of 100 movies each month. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/te...gy/27STRE.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Race to Kill Kazaa The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users - 60 million of them - are everywhere around the world. The next Napster? Think bigger. And pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug. Todd Woody On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous "supernodes." There is no plug to pull. Nor, as attorneys would soon discover, was there even a single outfit to shut down. That's because on a January morning three months after the suit was filed, Amsterdam-based Kazaa.com went dark and Zennström vanished. Days later, the company was reborn with a structure as decentralized as Kazaa's peer-to-peer service itself. Zennström, a Swedish citizen, transferred control of the software's code to Blastoise, a strangely crafted company with operations off the coast of Britain - on a remote island renowned as a tax haven - and in Estonia, a notorious safe harbor for intellectual property pirates. And that was just the start. Ownership of the Kazaa interface went to Sharman Networks, a business formed days earlier in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, another tax haven. Sharman, which runs its servers in Denmark, obtained a license for Zennström's technology, FastTrack. The Kazaa.com domain, on the other hand, was registered to an Australian firm called LEF Interactive - for the French revolutionary slogan, liberté, égalité, fraternité. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The new jailbird jingle Declan McCullagh If you've ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, chances are pretty good you're guilty of a federal felony. It doesn't matter if you've forsworn Napster, uninstalled Kazaa and now are eagerly padding the record industry's bottom line by snapping up $15.99 CDs by the cartload. Be warned--you're what prosecutors like to think of as an unindicted federal felon. I'm not joking. A obscure law called the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act that former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed in 1997 makes peer-to-peer (P2P) pirates liable for $250,000 in fines and subject to prison terms of up to three years. (You may want to read it, since you'll likely be hearing more about it soon.) That's a long time to spend cooling your heels in Club Fed. Yet something strange is going on here. So far the Justice Department has made precisely zero prosecutions of peer-to-peer users under the NET Act. This odd delay is not because peer-to-peer piracy is legal. It's not. The NET Act covers people who willfully participate in the "reproduction or distribution" of copyrighted works without permission, when that activity is not covered by fair use rights. The law even grants copyright holders the right to hand a "victim impact statement" to the judge at your trial, meaning you can expect an appearance from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Business Software Alliance (BSA), depending on what kind of files were on your hard drive. You'll no longer have it, of course, because it'll have been seized by the FBI, and you'll be in jail. Fretting that not enough peer-to-peer pirates are already there, a band of congressmen asked Attorney General John Ashcroft last July to begin some NET Act prosecutions, pronto. Their letter complained of "a staggering increase in the amount of intellectual property pirated over the Internet through peer-to-peer systems." The 19 politicos--including Sen. Joseph Biden, D- Del., Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.--urged Ashcroft "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer neworks." It didn't take long for the Justice Department to respond. http://news.com.com/2010-1071-982121.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Company Addresses Network Congestion Press Release Enterprise IT managers need help identifying bandwidth and application performance hogs and the tools to control and allocate network resources to match business objectives Allot Communications, a premier provider of policy-based networking solutions, today announced two new entry-level NetEnforcer(R) models designed to help enterprise information technology (IT) professionals manage problems associated with increasing network congestion as a result of the popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and streaming video files. Today's businesses are running business-critical and time-sensitive applications that require guaranteed bandwidth allocation and performance. Simply buying more wide area network (WAN) bandwidth does not solve the problem of network congestion. Without the traffic shaping functions offered by the NetEnforcer or other policy-based networking devices, latency-sensitive applications, such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP), video conferencing and business-critical client-server systems such as Citrix, ERP and CRM would still have to compete for bandwidth resources with non-critical applications such as file transfers and P2P. "Enterprise IT professionals need solutions that will help them understand how different application behave and that can let them set policies that reflect their business needs," said Azi Ronen, executive vice president of marketing, Allot Communications. "Allot's NetEnforcer policy-based networking devices allow them to monitor network applications, users and servers and to define policies that will guarantee the performance of business-critical applications in private networks, Internet connections and VPNs." The new NetEnforcer AC-102 and AC-202 models make it practical for corporations to deploy policy-based quality of service (QoS) devices across the enterprise, even to their small remote offices. http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...270216&ticker= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Faster, Smaller, Opera. 7’s Up http://www.opera.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jordan's minister of IT and communications says project will facilitate peer-to-peer communications framework. State Sponsored P2P Underway In Jordan, Elsewhere Eight Arab and foreign countries have agreed to take part in a Jordanian initiative to set up an information technology (IT) network to bolster their economies, the Jordan Times reported Monday. Bahrain, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Ireland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates rallied to the Jordanian initiative on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum underway in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, the daily said. A declaration to formalise the so-called Information Technology in Emerging Markets (ITEM) initiative is expected to be signed in Amman within the next few months, the newspaper added. "The main goal of the ITEM is to enable countries with unique similarities to benefit from each other's experience by opening channels of communications among them," Jordan's minister of information technology and communications said. Fawaz Zohbi was quoted as telling a working group in Davos that the project will "facilitate a peer-to-peer communications framework, enabling easy and timely access to IT" as well as help expand businesses. Jordan launched in 1999 a five-year IT strategy dubbed REACH aimed at putting the kingdom on the IT world map. But late last year, officials said their ambitious goal of creating 30,000 IT-related jobs and attracting 500 million dollars in annual IT and software exports by 2004 was too optimistic and that targets would be lowered. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=4136 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now you can festoon your own home with cables DIY broadband via television Competition for customers is starting to cut the cost of connecting up to broadband internet services. Cable firm Telewest has announced a self- install package for its Blueyonder broadband service that costs only £12.50. The self-install pack does away with the need to buy a separate cable modem as it uses a television set-top box as the connecting point for the high-speed service. Eventually Telewest said it will provide wireless links to make it easy to link up home computers with its network. Many of the set-top boxes that people use to watch cable TV have a modem inside that can be used to connect up to the high-speed services offered by Telewest and NTL. Telewest's self-install package does away with the need for a visit by one of the company's engineers and lets existing customers swiftly switch on a broadband service. Currently Telewest offers two broadband services. By itself the 512mbps service costs £29.99, but customers of other Telewest services get it for £25 a month. The higher speed 1mbps service is £39.99 for broadband only and £35 per month when combined with other Telewest services. Before now both have needed a visit by technicians to wire up homes and get domestic computers authorised to use to Telewest network. Telewest's network currently passes 4.9 million homes and it currently has 1.76 million households as customers. Cable firm NTL already offers a broadband service via its set-top boxes. Existing customers will be able to get the service working quickly though new customers will still require a visit to connect them up. The installation fee costs up to £50. The numbers of people signing up for high- speed services via phone lines leapt when BT made a self-install package available. The self-install package uses wires to link set top box with the computers in customers' home, but eventually Telewest said it will provide wireless connectors to make installation even easier. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2698041.stm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Intel chief puts faith in wireless Alfred Hermida The head of the world's largest chip maker, Intel's Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett, has bleak news for the technology industry. He has said that he can not yet see a way out of the economic troubles that have hit the tech sector. "The last two years have been the toughest two years the hi-tech industry has seen overall," he told BBC News Online. "The two-year recession has been very difficult for the industry and I don't think anyone clearly sees what the results are going to be for the next 12 months." The company is now investing in wireless technology which it hopes will help boost sales. Mr Barrett has faced a tough task leading Intel since he took over as CEO in 1998. Faced with declining demand for computers and competition from other chip makers, he has steered the company beyond the desktop with an aggressive move into the communications market. "Intel is focusing on both the computing sector and the communications sector and that includes everything from telecoms infrastructure to handheld devices like cellphones and Pocket PC devices," he said. The company has invested $9bn in building up a communications business during possibly the worst period in the history of the telecoms industry. But Mr Barrett is still optimistic that the future lies in communications. He is now putting his money on wi-fi technology that allows machines to talk to each other without wires. The wireless home networking market has been growing rapidly, and analysts expect sales of wi-fi equipment to reach 33 million by 2006. Intel's next-generation chip, called Centrino, comes with a wireless module built-in to take advantage of the boom in mobile computing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2691411.stm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UK users flocking to broadband Record numbers of UK households and businesses are signing up for broadband Internet services, telecoms regulator Oftel has announced. Industry figures show almost 30,000 subscribers a week are switching to broadband, taking the total number in the UK to more than 1.4 million. When Oftel announced the number of homes and businesses with broadband had reached 500,000 last May, new subscriptions were running at around 20,000 a week. Separate research conducted by Oftel found a big rise in the number of people aware of the benefits of broadband. Last February, 32% of people already connected to the Internet - but not with a broadband connection - knew about the new technology. In the same survey of just over 2,300 users last November the figure had risen to 70%. Around 42% of UK households are connected to the Internet, either with a standard or broadband connection. http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Retailers form digital music venture AP Six retail record store chains - hurting from competition from CD burning, on-line music and large discount stores - are teaming up to offer consumers digital music downloads in their stores and over the Internet. The stores have formed a joint venture called Echo that will provide technology and allow them to offer individual tracks for downloading to portable devices and computers. The stores are Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment Group, Wherehouse Music, Hastings Entertainment Inc. and Trans World Entertainment Corp., operator of FYE, Strawberries and Coconuts stores. "We're trying to make digital music work in a mass market way, for millions of people," said Dan Hart, chief executive officer of Echo. "That hasn't happened yet." Mr. Hart said he believes the Echo model can work where the recording industry-sponsored services have not. "I think consumers will pay, but you have to provide the greater level of value," he said. "We're the traditional trading partner of the labels. We understand marketing and how to provide value to consumers." Others, however, think retailers may have come too late to the game. "So many consumers are now thinking about Internet music in terms of an Internet destination site than in terms of a terrestrial brand transplanted to the Internet," said Phil Leigh, digital music analyst with Raymond James Associates in St. Petersburg, Fla. http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Broadband Pow Wow In Ottawa Allison Dunfield The federal government has committed $2.4-million toward projects aimed at introducing high-speed Internet service to First Nations, rural and Northern communities. Each of 89 applicants, representing 1149 communities, will receive up to $30,000 to develop business plans outlining how each community would use the broadband service. "Broadband access has the potential to enhance the quality of life for all Canadians — especially for rural, Aboriginal and northern residents," Industry Minister Allan Rock said in a statement Friday. "This phase of the Broadband Pilot Program is a significant step forward in our commitment to delivering broadband services to all Canadian communities by 2005." Mr. Rock took over the broadband initiative begun by his predecessor, Brian Tobin. Mr. Tobin, who resigned from politics last January, lobbied hard for the program, one of his pet projects. Mr. Tobin's vision was to have see every Canadian hooked up to the Internet by 2004. But his $1-billion plan was shut out of the last budget by former finance minister Paul Martin. This latest $105-million pilot program, announced on Sept. 5 by Mr. Rock, is aimed specifically at allowing those living in native and rural communities to use the Internet. http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Over & Out. Overnet connects to eDonkey. New beta is out. http://www.edonkey2000.com/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Supreme Court Rejects Mattel Appeal on Barbie Song Reuters The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal by Mattel Inc. over its lawsuit against MCA Records Inc. claiming the 1997 pop hit "Barbie Girl" had infringed on the toy maker's doll trademark. Without comment, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling dismissing the lawsuit on the ground the song by the Danish band "Aqua" was parody and social commentary covered by the U.S. Constitution's free-speech protections. Mattel, the world's largest toy maker which has made the doll since 1959, sued MCA Records, its parent and other units of Universal Music, a subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi Universal . MCA produced, marketed and sold "Barbie Girl." The song featured a doll-like female voice impersonating Barbie, calling herself a "blonde bimbo girl" and saying "life in plastic, it's fantastic." A male singer, who called himself Ken, exhorted Barbie to "go party." Mattel, based in El Segundo, California, argued the song, which sold more than 1.4 million copies in the United States, could confuse consumers and dilute the power of the Barbie brand. MCA defended the song as "social commentary," saying the album "Aquarium" that included the song also featured a disclaimer noting the song was not sanctioned by the maker of Barbie dolls. Mattel appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the appeals court cast aside the command of Congress in the Lanham Act to protect consumers against unauthorized use of trademarks in ways likely to cause confusion. MCA replied that the appeal should be denied, saying it had "put out a classic form of parody in a light-hearted pop song that poked fun at one of the most famous and ubiquitous 'cultural icons' in the world." The appeals court and a federal judge in California determined the song's title was not misleading and that consumers would not be confused, MCA told the justices. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2116906 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lindows tackles DVD, music David Becker Linux software maker Lindows took another crack at Microsoft on Tuesday with a package intended to mimic the software giant's Windows XP Media Center. Idot, a small PC maker specializing in direct online sales, will sell a Lindows Media Computer model that incorporates some home entertainment functions such as DVD and digital music playback. The company plans to begin selling the PCs early next month, with prices starting at $330 without a monitor. The goal is to offer a low-cost PC that can take the place of several home entertainment appliances, Lindows CEO Michael Robertson said in a statement. "For under $350 retail, consumers can have a DVD player, CD player and personal computer in every room of the house or office," he said. The media PCs appear to be a scaled-back response to Microsoft's heavily touted Windows XP Media Center, a version of the operating system that focuses on digital entertainment functions. The Lindows PCs lack several basic functions found in the Windows version, such as the ability to record TV programs and a remote control. The Idot PCs are based on budget processors from Via Technologies and are similar to low-cost Lindows PCs sold by Wal-Mart, with the addition of a DVD drive and accompanying software. Lindows uses software maker Elegent's etDVD program to enable DVD playback. Linux has had a contentious history with DVDs. The lawsuit-plagued DeCSS software, which government and movie-industry figures have attacked as a tool for illegally copying DVDs, originally was created as a way for Linux users to be able to play DVDs on their PCs. Robertson, founder of MP3.com, started Lindows two years ago with the aim of offering a simplified, consumer-oriented version of the open-source Linux operating system. The company was promptly sued by Microsoft for allegedly misappropriating the Windows trademark. http://news.com.com/2100-1040-982468.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BearShare 4.2.0 Released. Magnet links and more. http://www.bearshare.com/help/whatsnew.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Connect, They Say, Only Connect Emily Eakin The whiteboard in Duncan J. Watts's office at Columbia University was a thicket of squiggly blue lines, circles and calculus equations. Mr. Watts, an associate professor of sociology, had just begun a passionate disquisition on the virtues and liabilities of scale-free networks when the telephone rang. It was Alfred Berkeley, the vice chairman of Nasdaq, hoping to chat about the exchange's design. Mr. Watts, 31, is a network theorist. And these days that means fielding frequent calls from powerful admirers like Mr. Berkeley — Wall Street moguls and government officials eager to tap into a nascent academic science that few understand but that many think may hold the key to everything from predicting fashion trends to preventing terrorism, stock market meltdowns and the spread of HIV. Never mind that Mr. Watts's new book on the subject, "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age," which will be published by W. W. Norton next month, is littered with the arcana of theoretical physics as well as charts and graphs that appear to require an advanced degree in math in order to decipher. Network theory is hot. Two other recent books on networks, "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (Perseus, 2002) by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and "Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks" (W. W. Norton) by Mark Buchanan, have already sold tens of thousands of copies. And that's not counting sales in the burgeoning genre of consumer studies, where network science terms and concepts are invoked with near religious fervor. From Malcolm Gladwell's three-year-old best seller, "The Tipping Point," to just-published analyses like "The Influentials" and "Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers," the shelves at Barnes & Noble are laden with books alternately applauding and deploring the importance of things like hubs, connectors, mavens and influencer teens for creating fads, cementing brand loyalty and swelling profits. "Network theory has become a bit of a fad," Mr. Watts conceded after hanging up the phone. "I spend half my time telling people I think it's relevant to a lot of problems people care about and half my time trying to tone down the hype." Network scientists study networks: collections of people or objects connected to each other in some way. Think of the 1.5 million Manhattan residents or the 30,000 genes inside a human cell. Such networks, scientists argue, behave in ways that can't be understood solely in terms of their component parts. Without knowing what every single person or object within the network is doing, they say, it's nevertheless possible to know something about how the network as a whole behaves. Stated that way it sounds simple. But as an intellectual approach, network theory is the latest symptom of a fundamental shift in scientific thinking, away from a focus on individual components — particles and subparticles — and toward a novel conception of the group. As Mr. Barabasi, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, put it: "In biology, we've had great success stories — the human genome, the mouse genome. But what is not talked about is that we have the pieces but don't have a clue as to how the system works. Increasingly, we think the answer is in networks." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/arts/25WATT.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Time to Dump the DMCA Anne Chen It's only January and already, there's been enough activity surrounding the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to last a lifetime. Just this week, Verizon Inc. was ordered to give-up the identity of a customer who reportedly used its network to make unauthorized copies of several hundred songs available online. Then there's the Chamberlain Group, an Elmhurst, Ill., automatic garage door opener manufacturer, which is trying to use a provision of the DMCA to force Skylink Technologies to stop distribution of a universal garage door remote. Chamberlain claims Skylink is circumventing a security code system that controls access to the software in its products. Is there anyone or anything untouchable by the DMCA? Congress has at least two good chances to right this wrong. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) announced intentions earlier this month to reintroduce the Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002. The bill would allow consumers to bypass technological copy protections built in to copyrighted work if the intent is to make a copy for personal use. And, on January 7, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) reintroduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which he is co-sponsoring with Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), Patrick Kennedy (D- RI), and Spencer Bachus (R-AL). Reps. Lofgren and Boucher aren't the only ones taking a stand. Last week, advocacy groups and technology giants including Microsoft Corp., Dell Computer Corp., and Motorola Inc., announced the Alliance for Digital Progress, a new lobbying organization formed to combat Hollywood in its attempts to control all digital media. The organization's take is that requiring anti-copying technology in digital entertainment devices will crimp product innovation. Naturally, consumer rights are what these companies are fighting for. Keeping product sales up has nothing to do with it. It's too early to place bets on what other wild misuses of the DMCA companies will come up with. But I'm not expecting that computer and consumer electronics companies find a way to handle the distribution of online and physical media that protects the rights of both the copyright holder and consumer anytime soon. What I do hope, though, is that all parties will realize that violating online privacy by forcing the release of customer information is not the answer. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,844563,00.asp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Recording industry shows some cunning Hiawatha Bray It's an article of faith among the digital elite that the entertainment business is run by morons. After all, the recording industry and the movie studios still think that they can somehow prevent us from copying and swapping our favorite digital amusements, without compensation or permission. Dream on, the enlightened ones say. Surely the enlightened ones are right. So far, no one has conceived a practical strategy against digital piracy. And yet, you can hardly blame the entertainment companies for trying. Piracy is costing them billions; they must at least try to slow it down. Besides, the events of the last couple of weeks should dispose of any illusions that the amusement moguls are just a pack of fools. The Recording Industry Association of America has shown itself a cunning strategist, able to learn from its errors. And a court ruling last week has put it in a position to do some real damage to those who steal recorded music. Just under two weeks ago, the RIAA did a deal with a group representing eight of the nation's top computer companies. Included in the deal was a pledge to oppose mandatory anti-copying hardware for personal computers. You'll remember that Congress briefly considered such legislation last year. RIAA never embraced it, possibly because it recalls a time when the organization really did behave stupidly. In 1998, it asked a federal court to ban the first portable MP3 digital music player. Luckily the RIAA lost, and we can all listen to our Apple iPods in peace. The RIAA seems to have taken the hint. By opposing the anti-piracy hardware plan, it went some way toward draining the reservoir of bitterness it's built up among the tech crowd. Just as well, because a few days later RIAA won a court victory that'll bring the company a whole new set of enemies. A judge in Washington ruled that the Internet service provider Verizon Communications must provide the RIAA with the identity of a customer who used the network to swap illegal music files. Unless a higher court overturns the ruling, music companies need only present the most minimal evidence of a violation to a court, which will automatically issue a subpoena. An Internet provider must then hand over the customer's name and address, tearing away his shield of privacy and exposing him to the tender mercies of an enraged multinational corporation. Of course, millions of Americans swap illegal files. Will AOL Time Warner or Sony sue them all? They won't have to. Nailing a few dozen or a few hundred will chill many of the others. Let a few of them be fined, at up to $150,000 for each offense, and you'll likely see many casual swappers fall away. Still, that leaves many thousands of perps out there, and even Sony can't go after them all. Jonathan Zittrain, assistant professor at the Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center on Internet and Society, thinks Sony doesn't want to and won't have to. It'll hand off the job to the Internet providers. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/02...cunning+.shtml ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ad-aware 6 released. Pro ver$ion now, free version to follow. http://lavasoft3.element5.com/support/download/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After high court ruling, erosion in public domain feared Anick Jesdanun Playwright Wayne Frank's show can't go on. After failing to obtain stage rights to "The Sun Also Rises" beyond Milwaukee, Frank thought he only had to wait a few more years, when the book by Ernest Hemingway was to have entered the public domain. Instead, Congress extended copyright terms for another 20 years, a decision affirmed this month by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, Frank laments that the public will be denied his reinterpretation of an American classic first published in 1926. "Why should the publishers have exclusive rights to this almost forever?" Frank said. "For (an) author to be compensated while he or she is alive is legitimate but to extend this down to their great- grandchildren is a fraud." Elsewhere, music directors worry they won't have ready access to the songs of Irving Berlin and other composers. Also dashed are Internet publishers' hopes for making many more works accessible through online libraries. Many critics believe the high court's decision hinders access to knowledge for the economically disadvantaged -- especially as more literature, music and images go digital. "The technology is all dressed up right now with no place to go," said Jonathan Zittrain, who co- directs an Internet law center at Harvard University. All in all, the copyright extension could freeze for the foreseeable future the intellectual commons from which artists can draw inspiration and raw materials for new creations. "Imagine the kid who wants to take a chunk out of `Schindler's List,' put it in a report on the Holocaust and post it on the Internet," said Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor behind the Supreme Court challenge. Using the video in such a multimedia report, he said, would be a copyright infringement, as would a museum's setting up an online exhibit with 1930s images, sound and text on the New Deal. Content providers don't deny that the Supreme Court decision will hurt the public domain. What they dispute is its wider impact. http://www.nola.com/newsflash/topsto...2_BC_Copyright'sVictims&&news&newsflash-topstory ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Copyright gets sweeter for big business Happy Birthday song rights belong to AOL Time Warner Canadian laws are not yet as restictive as in the United States Judy At York University's film school, students making their 8-mm short films are cautioned not to create any birthday party scenes in which participants sing "Happy Birthday To You." They may substitute "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," since that is not under copyright in the United States. "I try to alert our students to copyright issues because they might be considering entering their work in student film festivals in the U.S.," says Jim Fisher, who teaches film production at York. It's just a small example of how the near-perpetual copyrights granted by U.S. law affect Canadian creators, be they filmmakers, authors, composers or visual artists, who naturally want to bust out of the relatively small Canadian market. (Copyright laws differ here, protecting work for 50 years after the creator's death.) Many of the most lucrative U.S. copyrights on works of the imagination are held not by creative people or their descendents but by giant entertainment conglomerates waging a war to protect their properties. Last week, Big Entertainment won a major victory when the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that Congress has the right to extend copyrights as often as it sees fit (there have been 11 extensions in the past 40 years), even though the country's Founding Fathers foresaw copyright as lasting for only 28 years. The ubiquitous "Happy Birthday," whose tune was composed by Mildred Hill, a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, in 1893, was copyrighted in 1934 by her sister Jessica Hill, after the ditty with new lyrics attached appeared in the Broadway musical The Bank Wagon and had been used by Western Union for its singing telegram. Rights to the song changed hands several times and today they are owned by Summy-Birchard Music, which in turn is owned by AOL Time Warner, for which it earns $2 million a year in royalties for public usage. (Don't worry about singing it around your dining table; AOL Time Warner has not figured out how to collect on that yet.) "Happy Birthday" was due to come into the public domain after 75 years in 2010 until Congress — having been heavily lobbied by the Disney Corp. — passed what's satirically referred to as the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act in 1998, adding another 20 years to all existing copyrights for works created between 1923 and '63. (After 1963, the U.S. copyright regime for future work changed so that it's dependent on the date of death of its creator, as in Canada, not the date of its creation.) The song now won't be in the public domain till 2030, while Mickey Mouse, created in 1928, is protected until 2024. According to a recent story in Fortune magazine, Mickey earns his parent company $1 billion (U.S.) in annual revenues, as does Winnie the Pooh, to which Disney also holds the merchandising rights. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, rejoiced after the ruling: "The law has long recognized that copyright, whose aim it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in the public interest," he said in a press release. The situation is replete with irony, since Walt Disney himself borrowed from a Buster Keaton silent film called Steamboat Bill, Jr. as well as from the conventions of minstrel shows to dream up his white-gloved black rodent. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969483191630 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Effort to Protect Recordings Begins Elizabeth Olson The Library of Congress, in its first step to preserve American sound recordings that span the last century, said today that it had selected 50 recordings to start a national registry. Choosing only 50 was a difficult task and is not meant to be "another Grammy Awards or `best of' list," said James W. Billington, the librarian of Congress. Among the familiar choices are "Stars and Stripes Forever" from 1897, the first recording of John Philip Sousa's march; ragtime music that Scott Joplin played in the early 1900's for piano roll sales; and Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio "Fireside Chats" from 1933 to 1944. The recordings, chosen from public submissions and internal recommendations, include jazz from Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as recordings from Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan. There is also a rap track, "The Message," a 1982 hit by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. While rap is not a favorite of Dr. Billington — unlike Enrico Caruso's popular 1907 recording of the aria "Vesti la giubba," which is also on the list — he said it was part of the American cultural heritage. The registry was mandated by Congress in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 and is modeled on the Library of Congress film project to preserve important American movies. At least half the recordings on wax cylinders between 1888 and 1920 have been lost, Dr. Billington said. "You can't clean off the mold and hear the recording," said Dr. Billington, holding up a decrepit cylinder. "The wax has eaten through," causing treasures like 1890 recordings by Mark Twain to be irretrievable. A foundation to be headed by William Ivey, past president of the National Endowment for the Arts, will try to find the best recordings of the 50 selections and copy the original master. The library, which has 2.6 million recordings, is converting to a digital preservation system. More information can be found at www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/arts/28SOUN.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The 'Appliancizing' of Technology Assistant Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, discusses technology, the law and automatic dog washers. Harvard Law Today How did your interest in technology and the law develop? It crystallized when I was 12 or 13. I got a 300-baud modem and logged into CompuServe, which was a proprietary information service--one paid $6 or $12 or $24 an hour depending on the time of day--and loved it. What I loved most about it was the ability to connect with other people whom one normally would not meet at all. As the service grew and the population of users became more heterogeneous, more diverse viewpoints emerged. [Debates about] how to have a dispute over something, the role of those who run the communities in setting up rules for what's in bounds and what's out of bounds, were just innately fascinating. It's a question of how to govern ourselves, and that's a question asked in almost every civil procedure class. Do you think laws currently do enough to protect our electronic privacy? People naturally tend to place physical security above all. These days one often hears a paraphrase of Justice Jackson's protest that the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact--that a concern for civil liberties must ultimately yield to national or maybe even individual survival. The terrorist attacks have been a serious and politically uniting spur to make a quantum leap in the use of technology in law enforcement and national security surveillance. It's reminiscent of the space race. We honed 1960s technology to land on the moon, and we haven't revisited it much since. So the state of technology for lunar landings is not even 1980s, much less 21st century. That's been the state of overall government surveillance as well--last booming in the '50s and '60s during the Cold War, then penned in by Watergate-era worries about government abuse of a panopticon. Other than trying to maintain the status quo of government power to surveil in the face of new private technologies to cloak, there hasn't been intensive effort to deploy massively integrated databases to form a comprehensive surveillance regime. That's now changed. As it's happening, I fear we're not properly considering and building in protections so that it can't readily be abused. The point of law is to make sure that it's not just at some government official's indulgence or good grace that we're not being wronged. Is there any way to stop the proliferation of electronic trading of protected intellectual property? The publishing industry has by no means given up, and they still hold some strong cards. As we move to an appliance model of computing, something like a TiVo [digital video recorder] can become the place to store one's digital data--rather than a PC, which from a consumer point of view gets sick with viruses all the time, is in an inconvenient location in the house and is constantly going obsolete. As we go to an appliance model, it's much, much easier to control users' behaviors. I think we may look back and see the PC as an anomaly--how strange to run anything ending in ".exe." You don't normally get to write your own software for your coffeemaker or for your refrigerator or your lamp or your television or your VCR. So as we go to an appliance model that gives people more stability and predictability and longevity, I think we're going to lose the anarchic quality currently associated with PCs and the Internet. And do you think that would be a loss? Yes. So much of the staggering innovation that's taken place in the past 15 years has been thanks to generic computing platforms that anyone can write software for. The big innovation over the past 15 years has not been that we went from Word 3 to Word 6. It's that Gnutella happened and instant messenger happened and the Web happened. If we close that [innovation] off--either by having more gatekeepers within the network or by appliancizing the PC so that you need to be an accredited software developer to generate code--all that innovation vanishes, and we'll merely be going from Word 6 to Word 9. http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/toda...5zittrain.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wow. Only commercial piracy is criminal under European Commission proposal Joris Evers The European Commission has presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry. The proposed directive is meant to harmonize intellectual property rights enforcement laws in the 15-nation European Union (EU). It aims to strike "a fair balance" between interests of right holders and the opportunities the Internet offers to consumers, according to Commission documents. Criminal sanctions apply only when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes, the Commission said. A consortium of industry groups, including representatives of the tech industry as well as music companies, declared the proposal "inadequate." They still have time to lobby for tougher sanctions. The Commission's draft directive has to pass the European Parliament and the European Union's Council of Ministers before it is officially adopted. http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109148,00.asp

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