Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 13th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quote Of The Week


"RIAA Sues 10 Year Old" - WiR














RIAA Sues 10 Year Old

Music piracy suits hitting home
Patrick Danner

When he bought his 10-year-old a computer, Antonio Morrell was just trying to help the boy get ahead in school. Now the Miami construction worker is being sued by the music industry, which has brought its battle against Internet piracy to South Florida for the first time.

More than a dozen record companies have sued 30 South Florida residents, accusing them of illegally downloading music and making it available for others to copy.

Some of those named in the lawsuits told The Herald the record companies have offered to settle for about $4,000 each.

Morrell said he never downloaded any songs. Yet he's named in a lawsuit, he said, because his son, Alessandro -- who was 10 when his father bought him a computer two years ago -- downloaded about 1,000 songs and opened the door for others to copy them.

''I don't see how I could be paying somebody $4,000 for something I didn't do,'' Morrell said. ``I bought the computer for schoolwork. I'm sure he didn't know he was doing anything illegal.''

Morrell said he separated from his wife over a year ago and wasn't around to monitor his son's computer activity.

`Totally Shocked'

Emorine Ebanks of Pembroke Pines was similarly surprised. She said her 15-year-old son, Chad, downloaded more than 600 songs. Now her husband, Howard, is facing a lawsuit filed by Virgin Records America, Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and three other recording companies.

''We were totally shocked,'' Emorine Ebanks said. ``We didn't know downloading music was illegal.''

Morrell and Howard Ebanks are among 6,200 people across the country who have been accused of illegally downloading and sharing music since September 2003, according to Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group based in Washington.

When computer users download a copyrighted song, file-sharing software automatically makes it available for other Internet users to download, too.

About 1,260 of the individuals have settled, Lamy added. Published reports have put the average settlement at about $3,000.

The local copyright-infringement lawsuits were filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. They don't seek specific dollar amounts in damages.

The South Florida suits were filed by Karen Stetson of Miami's Broad and Cassel law firm. She referred a call to Lamy.

The parents facing suits have an obligation to know what goes on at home, particularly if they are arranging for Internet access, said Roy Oppenheim, a Weston lawyer specializing in intellectual property. But he considers the suits heavy-handed because they were slow to introduce services allowing music to be legally downloaded.

''I never appreciate Goliath beating up David,'' Oppenheim said. ``The fact that they were sleeping at the switch wasn't the public's fault.''

An Open Digital Door

Not every defendant is a parent. Aurelie Bredent, a 23-year-old student at Florida International University, said she has agreed to pay $4,500 to settle her lawsuit.

Among the songs that put Bredent in the cross hairs of record companies: LL Cool J's Phenomenon, Santana's Do You Like the Way, and Sade's Smooth Operator.

Bredent said her mistake was not in downloading the music but rather in allowing others access to the songs through file-sharing software.

''Basically, my computer was open to the world,'' she said.

Record companies obtained the names of alleged offenders by filing lawsuits against ''John Does,'' then filing subpoenas against Internet service providers to obtain names.

The record companies sent those people settlement offers. The lawsuits were filed after recipients failed to respond to the letters or refused to settle.

That's what happened in Ebanks' case. She said her family ignored the letter, figuring it was a scam.

The family has removed the music files from their computer, she said.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10133324.htm?1c


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Death Knell Sounds for Nullsoft, Winamp
Nate Mook

The last members of the original Winamp team have said goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the Nullsoft era, BetaNews has learned.

Only a few employees remain to prop up the once-ubiquitous digital audio player with minor updates, but no further improvements to Winamp are expected.

Winamp's abandonment comes as no surprise to those close to the company who say the software has been on life support since the resignation of Nullsoft founder and Winamp creator Justin Frankel last January.

The marriage of Nullsoft and AOL was always one of discontent. After AOL acquired the small company in 1999 for around $100 million, the young team of Winamp developers was assimilated into a strict corporate culture that begged for rebellion. Although Nullsoft was initially given a long leash by AOL, It wasn't long until the two ideologies collided.

Frankel and his team were accustomed to simply brainstorming ideas over coffee and bringing them to the masses without approval. So when Frankel and fellow Nullsoft developer Tom Pepper devised a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing system, dubbed Gnutella, parent AOL was left in the dark.

Gnutella was unveiled in March 2000, much to the chagrin of an unprepared AOL; executives feared the program would encourage copyright infringement and damage the company's pending merger with Time Warner. AOL quickly clamped down on Gnutella, but not before the software's source code leaked. Gnutella-based alternatives soon followed, igniting a peer-to-peer land grab that has yet to subside.

But AOL knew it had to protect its investment and turn a profit from the freely available Winamp. Frankel and crew found themselves in hot water numerous times, but always escaped with little more than a proverbial slap on the wrist.

However, growing displeasure reached a boiling point with Nullsoft’s unsanctioned release of WASTE -- an encrypted file- sharing network -- in June 2003. Frankel threatened to resign after AOL removed WASTE, but remained with the company long enough to finish Winamp 5.0.

Frankel's departure followed AOL layoffs and the closure of Nullsoft's San Francisco offices in December 2003.

With AOL struggling to stave off declining subscriber numbers and 700 additional layoffs planned for next month, the company’s focus has shifted away from supporting acquisitions such as Winamp.

Despite the somber farewell, Nullsoft's former masterminds are proud of their accomplishments. Winamp helped start a digital audio revolution and boasts an incredible 60 million users per month.

After a disappointing Winamp3, Nullsoft developers returned to the drawing board and completed long-standing goals with the release of Winamp 5.0 in late 2003.

Nullsoft's Shoutcast, which pioneered audio streaming over the Internet, is called "the Net's best secret" by its creator Tom Pepper and has reached 170,000 simultaneous users accounting for 70 million hours of listening each month.

For its part, AOL says it remains committed to Winamp, stating it is "a thriving product that AOL continues to support and will continue to support."

But without those who poured their heart and soul into building the software, Winamp seems destined to meet a fate similar to fellow audio player Sonique, after Lycos saw the departure of its development team. Sonique has stagnated for years, and development ceased altogether last March.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Deat...amp/1100111204


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P2P Use Increases as Students Return to Campus
Scott Banerjee

America's students are back to school, but it seems they have yet to learn their lesson about file sharing.

Despite the efforts of digital music services, record company litigation, "spoofing" technology and legitimate offerings at various universities, illegal file sharing on peer-to-peer networks has risen since college students returned to their high-speed Internet connections this fall.

According to Los Angeles-based P2P market research firm BigChampagne, the back-to-school months coincided with the typical spike of usage on file-swapping networks, with average simultaneous peak users totaling 5.7 million in the United States in October, edging up from 5.4 million in October 2003.

A recent study by the University of California at Riverside and the Cooperative Assn. for Internet Data Analysis also revealed that P2P traffic has not declined.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America, however, has been steadfast in its approach, recently issuing 750 lawsuits against music file sharers, bringing the total to 6,191 since September 2003.

Changing Landscape

As the landscape of illegal file sharing changes, the RIAA has been able to adapt its strategy.

"We routinely base lawsuits on multiple platforms and will evolve our strategies as circumstances change," RIAA president Cary Sherman says.

File-trading service eDonkey has surpassed Kazaa as the P2P leader, according to BigChampagne and Los Gatos, Calif.-based BayTSP, which monitors P2P use on behalf of entertainment companies. This change is partially attributable to the effectiveness of interdiction companies flooding Kazaa with spoofed, or fake, files.

"We have directed more of the lawsuits to eDonkey users recently, and we'll continue to go where the problem is worst," says Sherman, who also is mindful of file sharing at smaller, under-the-radar networks that are harder to detect.

"Increasingly people are finding a way to bypass inefficiencies like hunting and pecking for songs (on P2P) in favor of instant (messaging), private chat rooms or 'hot swapping' hard drives," says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne. Hot swapping involves the direct transfer of music files from one hard drive to another.

Garland adds that such practices thrive in situations where young people live in "close communities," such as college campuses.

Sherman sees an upside to this development.

"The more that you drive (activity) underground, the better off you are overall," Sherman says. "That means that people are aware that this is illegal behavior."

Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP, adds that the rise of closed networks "minimizes the damage because you're not sharing files globally. We would like to stop the internal trafficking, but it's more difficult to monitor."

'Enormous Progress'

One major difference from a year ago is the growth of legal alternatives on college campuses. Napster, Rhapsody and Cdigix -- which is powered by MusicNet -- each have brokered deals with numerous universities across the nation to provide legitimate download and subscription services for students.

Napster and Rhapsody do not break out their numbers, but Cdigix reports that roughly 150,000 songs were downloaded in the first week the service was launched this semester at Purdue University. The service also reports 2,600 subscription sign-ups at the Indiana school.

"There has been enormous progress over the last year, and the university community has woken up to this issue; there has been a sea change in the university digital music landscape," Sherman says.

At Penn State University, which offers legal streaming and tethered downloads through Napster, university president Graham Spanier reports that 20,000 students have signed up for the service.

"These students are collectively streaming or downloading 170,000 songs a day -- more than 1 million per week. We expect several thousand additional students to sign up during the year as the service becomes even better known. Several professors are also using Napster in their courses in music, theater, popular culture and integrative arts," Spanier says.

Spanier adds that "takedown notices have decreased significantly" at the school. Further, he says, "We have also installed a system of firewalls on campus, as part of a larger effort to manage viruses and other IT-related problems."

Another major institution, UCLA, has begun discouraging piracy through technology, using Automated Copyright Notice System. The system sends notices of copyright infringement to students via e-mail and restricts their network access until the illegal file has been deleted.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6734151


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BitTorrent - P2P Ruler?

A file-sharing program called BitTorrent has become a behemoth, devouring more than a third of the Internet's bandwidth, and Hollywood's copyright cops are taking notice.

For those who know where to look, there's a wealth of content, both legal -- such as hip-hop from the Beastie Boys and video game promos -- and illicit, including a wide range of TV shows, computer games and movies.

Average users are taking advantage of the software's ability to cheaply spread files around the Internet. For example, when comedian Jon Stewart made an incendiary appearance on CNN's political talk show "Crossfire," thousands used BitTorrent to share the much-discussed video segment.

Even as lawsuits from music companies have driven people away from peer-to-peer programs like KaZaa, BitTorrent has thus far avoided the ire of groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America. But as BitTorrent's popularity grows, the service could become a target for copyright lawsuits.

According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages.

"I don't think Hollywood is willing to let it slide, but whether they're able to (stop it) is another matter," Bram Cohen, the programmer who created BitTorrent, told Reuters http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=v...e=news&ID=3806


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Titan Media Wins More Copyright Cases
Tom Musbach

People who download and share gay porn online without paying for it better not mess with Titan Media -- that's the message from two recent court rulings in favor of the San Francisco-based gay adult media company.

In separate decisions from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, judges imposed large fines on individuals who illegally used images owned by Titan Media.

In one case, the owner of the Web site AreaGay.com published six Titan-owned images and was fined $49,500 for damages and online willful copyright infringement. In the other case, an individual was fined $41,250 for using five Titan images in a CD photo collection that he sold via online auction site eBay.

The court decisions follow a similar one announced in September, when Titan Media was awarded $418,000 in a ruling against another Web producer who stole and republished the company's adult images.

Like some companies in the U.S. recording industry, Titan Media has been fighting the illegal downloading and sharing of electronic files since the piracy issue exploded a few years ago with peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing sites, such as Kazaa, eDonkey and Grokster.

"It takes only one person to rip off a DVD and put it into P2P networks, 'sharing' it with 50-plus million of their 'closest friends,'" said Keith Webb, vice president for Titan Media.

The company has eight other cases currently in litigation, with a few others in negotiation. There are also "several hundred cases sitting in our filing cabinets waiting for their turn," he said.

Protecting children is one of the motivations behind Titan Media's vigilance, according to Webb. Stolen online files stored on P2P networks can be accessed by underage computer users. To help prevent this and other types of illegal usage, Titan Media uses an automated "spidering" system that scans P2P networks and Internet auctions sites for stolen Titan property.

In addition, the company has an amnesty program that offers violators a chance to avoid prosecution by either buying the stolen property or surrendering it, along with a $75 fee. Webb told the PlanetOut Network the program has been a "lemons into lemonade" success.

"We have turned hundreds of unwitting infringers into happy and satisfied customers," he said.
http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2004/11/05/4


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Postal Service Tale: Indie Rock, Snail Mail and Trademark Law
Ben Sisario

About two and a half years ago, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard began to make music together despite the distance between them. Mr. Tamborello, who makes electronica with a group called Dntel, lived in Los Angeles, while Mr. Gibbard, who sings in the emo band Death Cab for Cutie, lived in Seattle. They sent each other music through the mail, completing songs bit by bit, and after about five months, they had finished an album.

In honor of their working method they called themselves the Postal Service. Their album, "Give Up," was released by the Seattle-based Sub Pop Records in early 2003 and became an indie-rock hit, eventually selling almost 400,000 copies, the label's second biggest seller ever, after Nirvana's "Bleach."

Then they heard from the real Postal Service, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter.

"It was really polite," said Tony Kiewel, an artist and repertory representative at Sub Pop who works with the band. "It said that the Postal Service is a registered trademark of the United States Postal Service, and that though they were very, very flattered that we were using the name, they need to enforce their copyright."

The letter arrived in August 2003, and for months the label and the band fretted over the consequences: Would the band have to change its name? Would Sub Pop have to destroy its stock of the album?

The outcome was as unusual as the band itself: this week the United States Postal Service - the real one, as in stamps and letters - signed an agreement with Sub Pop granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CD's on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office.

The group also agreed to perform at the postmaster general's annual National Executive Conference in Washington on Nov. 17. The attendees might not realize what a rare treat they are in for since the Postal Service does not play many gigs. Mr. Tamborello and Mr. Gibbard are busy with their regular bands: Dntel, with its atmospheric electronic dance music, and Death Cab for Cutie, which has become a college rock favorite for its heartfelt, jangly punk rock known as emo.

Gary Thuro, a manager of communications for the United States Postal Service who handles licensing and promotion, said the publicity would be valuable.

"We're always looking for ways to extend our brand and reach into areas we don't typically reach," he said, "like teens and people in their 20's, who are typically doing business online and are not familiar with the Postal Service."

Not familiar with the Postal Service?

"I have three kids, and they do most of their correspondence online," Mr. Thuro said.

He said the post office had been looking to promote its brand through popular culture tie-ins and cited the campaign for the 2003 film "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat." The post office is ending its sponsorship of Lance Armstrong's cycling team at the end of this year.

The agency's only concern, Mr. Thuro said, was that a rock band might prove an inappropriate mascot for a federal agency. But when executives met with Mr. Tamborello and Mr. Gibbard in Los Angeles earlier this year, they were set at ease. Soft-spoken, well groomed and unusually polite, they are two of the least offensive rock stars imaginable, and their music - bubbly yet pensive electronic pop with earnest vocals by Mr. Gibbard - is unlikely to dissuade anyone from buying stamps.

Mr. Tamborello, 29, said the band was happy to comply with the agreement.

"Doing promos for the post office seems a little bit weird," he said. "But it's a funny story for them to have - it's a good story of how you can still use normal snail mail."

He noted that the regular mail is inexpensive and easy to use, and that packages containing their working discs arrived in a couple of days, a comfortable margin for their unhurried schedule - although when finishing the album, they did use Federal Express a couple of times.

"Just to get it back and forth as quick as possible," he said. "It saved a day."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/ar...jegy9umZOZxZ0A


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One Internet, Many Copyright Laws
Victoria Shannon

ROJECT GUTENBERG, the volunteer effort to put the world's literature online, may be the latest victim in the Internet battle over copyright.

Earlier this year, the Australian affiliate of Project Gutenberg posted the 1936 novel "Gone With the Wind" on its Web site for downloading at no charge. Last week, after an e-mail message was sent to the site by the law firm representing the estate of the book's author, Margaret Mitchell, the hyperlink to the text turned into a "Page Not Found'' dead end.

At issue is the date when "Gone With the Wind" enters the public domain. In the United States, under an extension of copyright law, "Gone With the Wind'' will not enter the public domain until 2031, 95 years after its original publication.

But in Australia, as in a handful of other places, the book was free of copyright restrictions in 1999, 50 years after Mitchell's death.

The case is one more example of the Internet's inherent lack of respect for national borders or, from another view, the world's lack of reckoning for the international nature of the Internet, and it is also an example of the already complicated range of copyright laws.

The issue of national sovereignty over the Internet has not been firmly established, either by trade agreement or by court precedent, some legal experts say, and conflicts continue to be settled individually. But there are much bigger copyright battles looming as more material, including songs by Elvis Presley and the Beatles, approach public domain in countries around the world.

"I don't think we're alone with this problem,'' said Thomas D. Selz, a lawyer with Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, the New York law firm that represents the Stephens Mitchell Trusts, which owns the copyright to "Gone With the Wind."

Already the copyright battle is brewing in Europe, where the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, a trade group in London for record companies, is urging the European Commission to extend copyright protection for performers from 50 years to 70 years, or even to the 95 years generally given to sound recordings in the United States.

Without that extension, recordings from musical artists of the 1950's and 1960's will start entering the public domain in the 20 European Union nations this decade and next, allowing anyone to profit from them without paying performer royalties.

The first prominent rocker to be affected, according to the federation, is Elvis Presley, whose 1954 single "That's All Right'' is set to become copyright-free in the European Union in January.

More important - at least to EMI Records - the Beatles catalog would begin to fall into the public domain in the European Union starting with "Love Me Do" in 2013, although the publishing rights would remain intact. In the United States, performer rights are protected for 95 years.

Terry Carroll, an intellectual property lawyer who teaches copyright law at Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, Calif., said there was no clear legal trend in resolving Internet copyright conflicts.

This is not the first time that "Gone With the Wind" has been at the center of copyright action. The Mitchell estate took the Houghton Mifflin Company to court in 2001 over the publication of "The Wind Done Gone," a novel by Alice Randall set on the same plantation but told from the perspective of a slave. After an initial legal victory for Houghton Mifflin, that copyright infringement case ended with an out-of-court settlement with the Mitchell estate that allowed the book to be published.

Mr. Selz, the lawyer with the firm that represents the Stephens Mitchell Trusts, said the law firm and the estate were still exploring what action to take in the Australian case.

He said his firm had merely exchanged e-mail messages with Project Gutenberg and was surprised to hear that the "Gone With the Wind" text was no longer accessible. The project's founder, Michael Stern, did not reply to e-mail messages requesting comment.

But in a radio interview this year, Col Choat, the coordinator of Project Gutenberg in Australia, said that about 300 books on his site were free of copyright protection in Australia but not in the United States. Among them were Hitler's "Mein Kampf," "My Brilliant Career" by Miles Franklin, "1984" by George Orwell and the Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Those texts were still at www.gutenberg .net.au last week.

"It may be that just the threat of pressure was enough incentive to get it removed," Mr. Carroll, the California lawyer, said. "Project Gutenberg is made up of volunteers and doesn't have deep pockets."

Another reason for the quick removal of the book may be a trade agreement, expected to be ratified by the United States and Australia this year, that would require Australia to enforce a copyright limit of 70 years after the death of the author.

That duration would be stronger than existing Australian law, but not as protective as current United States law and would put "Gone With the Wind" back under restrictions in Australia until 2019.

The world's protection of creative content may eventually settle at around the same level, say, life plus 70 years, Mr. Carroll said. The danger, he added, is that the most restrictive governments will be the ones setting that level.

"National laws are going to infringe on copyrights around the world," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/te.../08newcon.html


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Iran Jails More Journalists and Blocks Web Sites
Nazila Fathi

Iran has continued its crackdown on journalists, with two arrests in the past week, and has moved against pro-democracy Web sites, blocking hundreds of sites in recent months and making several arrests.

Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, the editor of the magazine Farzaneh and an advocate of expanded rights for women, was arrested Nov. 1 after she returned from London, where she had attended the European Social Forum.

Fereshteh Ghazi, a journalist for the daily newspaper Etemad, who also writes about women's issues, was arrested four days earlier after she was summoned to court to answer questions, said her husband, Ahmad Begloo.

Ms. Ghazi wrote a letter in support of a woman who had been sentenced to death for killing a senior security official whom the woman accused of trying to rape her.

As part of its crackdown, the government has blocked hundreds of political sites and Web logs. Three major pro-democracy Web sites that support President Mohammad Khatami were blocked in August.

A university in Orumieh in northwestern Iran shut down its Internet lab, contending that students had repeatedly browsed on indecent Web sites.

The crackdown suggests that hard-liners are determined to curtail freedom in cyberspace. Many rights advocates had turned to the Internet after the judiciary shut down more than 100 pro-democracy newspapers and journals in recent years.

The number of Internet users in Iran has soared in the last four years, to 4.8 million from 250,000. As many as 100,000 Web logs operate, and some of them are political.

The move to block Web sites has the support of a senior cleric, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, who declared in September in the hard-line daily newspaper Kayhan that Web sites should be blocked if they "insult sacred concepts of Islam, the Prophet and Imams," or "publish harmful and deviated beliefs to promote atheism or promote sinister books."

When the most recent wave of arrests began in September, authorities arrested the father of one Web technician, Sina Motallebi, who has taken refuge in the Netherlands. Mr. Motallebi had his own Web log and helped run one of the political Web sites. The father, Saeed Motalebi, was held for 11 days and then released.

"It seems that they do not want to deal with political figures who are behind the Internet sites and are willing to pay a price for what they are doing," said Alireza Alavitabar, a political scientist who is involved in the Emooz Web site.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/in...st/08iran.html


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Microsoft to Pay $536 Million to Novell to Settle Antitrust Dispute
Paul Meller

Microsoft said today that it had reached legal settlements with two of its biggest adversaries in the software industry, Novell and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, agreeing to pay $536 million to Novell and an undisclosed amount to the trade group to resolve antitrust complaints.

Novell and the association were two of the most prominent organizations pushing competition regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to take antitrust action against Microsoft. Their withdrawal from the legal fight against Microsoft follows similar settlements with Sun Microsystems in April and Time Warner in May last year.

Microsoft hopes that with fewer big companies opposing it, the European Union's antitrust case against the company will be weakened.

Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, said that after today's settlements, "There is clearly less need for the European Commission to persist with litigation on behalf of competition, when virtually all the competitors are now saying that their issues have been resolved to their satisfaction."

But the European Union's competition regulator vowed to continue its fight, which is now in the appeals stage. In March, the European Commission found Microsoft guilty of abusing the dominant position of its operating system Windows and ordered the company to change the way it sells the program and pay a fine of 497 million euros ($641 million at current exchange rates).

Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the commission in Brussels, said today that the settlements "don't change any elements of Microsoft's conduct in the market."

She said that the withdrawal of Novell and the Computer and Communications Industry Association from the appeal would not affect the way the court would judge the case, and added that competition officials would continue a separate investigation into Microsoft's Windows operating system, which was fueled by a complaint filed by the Washington-based association.

"Antitrust enforcement by the commission does not hinge upon complaints by individual parties, but is geared towards protecting the consumer's interests," Ms. Torres said.

Real Networks, which makes software that competes with Microsoft's Media Player, is still supporting the European Commission in its legal case. Dave Stewart, Real Networks' deputy general counsel, said today that "Microsoft's payments to Novell and the CCIA don't change the anticompetitive conduct condemned by the commission." He said Real Networks was not talking to Microsoft about reaching a similar settlement.

The legal settlement with Novell does not oblige Microsoft to license or share any of its technology or intellectual property rights with Novell, nor does it include any admission of wrongdoing, Microsoft said in a statement from its Redmond, Wash., headquarters.

Novell, which is based in Waltham, Mass., said its settlement involved only litigation concerning its operating system NetWare, and that it would continue legal action against Microsoft for the harm caused to its word processing program Word Perfect, which was overpowered by Microsoft's rival Word program.

"We are pleased that we have been able to resolve a portion of our pending legal issues with Microsoft," said Joseph LaSala, Jr., Novell's senior vice president and general counsel. He added that "despite our best efforts, we were unable to agree on acceptable terms" in separate litigation over Word Perfect.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it was settling for the good of the industry, adding that Microsoft had now joined the trade group that it battled with across courtrooms for so many years. "We expect that our relationship with Microsoft and others will enable us to address important issues impacting millions of people and the future of our industry," said Edward Black, president and chief executive of the association.

With Microsoft on board, the association said it could be more effective in promoting greater Internet access around the world. It added that it could now strengthen support for research and better fight computer viruses and spam e-mails.

The withdrawal of Novell and the Computer and Communications Industry Association from the European Commission's bench in the continuing appeal might influence the way the court views the case.

But the commission may find new allies, according to Thomas Vinje, a competition specialist in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance, who has represented the association for the past five years.

"I may not represent the CCIA anymore, but there are several other companies who intend to continue fighting," he said. He declined to identify them because he said he was still in the process of signing them up as clients. "They plan to put significant resources into this fight. I don't think the game is up by any means."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/08/news/msft.html

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Joining Forces on Quakes

Earthquake engineering will take a grand leap forward next week with the official opening of a collaborative network of laboratories around the United States. The 10-year project, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, links 15 university labs with large-scale experimental equipment like shake tables, tsunami wave basins and centrifuges to help engineers study what happens to buildings, bridges and other structures and soil during quakes.

The labs will be linked through Internet 2, the high-speed networking project developed by a consortium of more than 200 universities. The connections will enable them to share data and simulation software. Researchers at different labs will be able to collaborate in real time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/science/09obse.html


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F.C.C. Rules on Internet-Based Phone Services
AP

U.S. regulators ruled Tuesday that providers of Internet-based phone call services fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government, exempting them from some key regulation by states.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 in favor of Vonage Holdings Corp. of Edison, N.J., which had asked the agency to declare the company's product an interstate service, giving the FCC regulatory control.

Vonage has been battling public utilities officials in Minnesota who want the company to register in the state as a telecommunications service, subjecting it to rate regulation and other state rules.

The FCC ruling applies to cable, phone and other companies offering an Internet phone service similar to the one Vonage provides. The decision does not, however, preclude states from imposing some taxes and fees. It also does not address access charges, which are fees paid to local phone companies for completing calls sent via the Internet to conventional phones.

Vonage also had asked the commission to certify it as an information service, instead of a telecom company. Such a move would have a profound impact on the industry because it would mean providers of Voice over Internet Protocol, known as VoIP, wouldn't have to pay the taxes and fees that traditional phone companies do. The commission did not rule on that request.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell said streamlining regulation of VoIP companies is key to growth of the fledgling industry.

``To subject a global network to disparate local regulatory treatment by 51 different jurisdictions would be to destroy the very qualities that embody the technological marvel that is the Internet,'' Powell, a Republican, said.

The two Democratic commissioners on the panel expressed concerns the decision didn't go far enough to address other issues facing VoIP providers. Among them: universal service fees for bringing telephone service to rural areas and emergency 911 services.

``The commission's constricted approach denies consumers, carriers, investors and state and local officials the clarity they deserve,'' said Commissioner Michael Copps. ``These issues can't be ducked and they can't be dodged if we are truly serious about these technologies.''

There are more than 600,000 subscribers to VoIP services in the United States, up from about 130,000 last year, according to The Yankee Group. The Boston-based communications research firm projects about 1 million subscribers by year's end.

VoIP technology shifts calls away from wires and switches and instead uses computers to convert sounds into data and transmit them via the Internet.

With a special box, Vonage subscribers can use their conventional phones and existing broadband connection to make calls over the Internet. The company offers unlimited calls in the United States and Canada for $25 a month and has more than 300,000 subscribers.

Vonage argued its service is interstate because it lets customers make calls from any place that has a high-speed Internet connection. That means there's no way to tell if a customer who has a billing address in Minnesota is making a call from that state or another one, the company said.

In February, the FCC exempted pulver.com's Free World Dialup from regulation. The service lets consumers make calls to other members without using a regular telephone. Special numbers rather than 10-digit phone numbers route the calls.

A few months later, the FCC ruled that an AT&T service in which some calls were routed over the Internet resembled a traditional telephone service more than a VoIP service and therefore should pay access fees.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...132EST0539.DTL


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Thank the man for copying

The Found Treasures of a Great Pianist
Daniel J. Wakin

When the 31-year-old pianist William Kapell, one of the last century's great geniuses of the keyboard, was killed in a plane crash in 1953, he was returning from a concert tour in Australia. Now, a cache of privately made recordings from that tour has surfaced, a find that music lovers are calling an incalculable treasure, given Kapell's legendary status and dozen-year flicker of a career.

"It's as if somebody were to find a dozen new paintings by Rembrandt or a lost film of Charlie Chaplin," said Daniel Guss, director of the classical catalog for BMG Music, the successor to RCA, for which Kapell recorded.

The emergence of these more than three hours of recorded music is a tale of serendipity, of a collector's passion and of a music lover's act of selflessness. And when the recordings, preserved on three 16-inch acetate discs, are turned over to Kapell's widow at a New York restaurant tomorrow, a new chapter will begin: the question of whether they will be commercially released.

For now, the few in the piano world who know about the recordings' existence are savoring the idea of hearing not only new versions of works Kapell recorded commercially but also performances of works entirely new to his discography, whether on RCA or in pirated editions.

Kapell, while not widely known today, is revered by pianists of all stripes, and his death hit the classical-music world with the force of the plane crash that killed the pop musicians Richie Valens and Buddy Holly. He joined the realm of postwar musical meteors cut down in youth, like the conductor Guido Cantelli (36), the tenor Fritz Wunderlich (35) and the pianist Dinu Lipatti (33), who all now live frozen in preciously guarded recordings.

Born in New York and raised on the Upper East Side, Kapell was the leading light of a crop of great American pianists who emerged after World War II, including Gary Graffman, Eugene Istomin, Byron Janis, Van Cliburn and Leon Fleisher.

Harold C. Schonberg, the late New York Times critic, wrote in his book "The Great Pianists" (1963) of Kapell's "spectacularly honest technique (never any bluff or coverup), a forthright musical approach and a fierce integrity."

"His playing had that indefinable thing known as command," Schonberg added, " and he was well on his way to being one of the century's important pianists." His greatness came from completeness, in the view of critics - not just phenomenal technique, acute attention to detail and profound rhythmic security but a deep sense of lyricism and passion in his playing and integrity in his musicianship.

Mr. Graffman, who was friendly with Kapell, said, "He was the No. 1 - there was no question about it - pianist of his time."

The recordings are very much part of a personal drama for Kapell's widow, Dr. Anna Lou Kapell-Dehavenon, an anthropologist. Dr. Kapell-Dehavenon, 76, who as a young pianist fell in love with Kapell and was married to him for five years before his death, has carefully tended the flame of her husband's musical memory, never begrudging the release of bootleg recordings.

"It's breaking me to pieces," she said of the discovery of the discs, which she has heard in an elementary CD dub. "When I listen to these performances, it's as if he's alive and in front of me. You can imagine what this does to me 50 years later. He was inseparable from the music."

Virtually all Kapell's commercial recordings and some noncommercially recorded works appeared in a nine-CD set issued by BMG Classics' RCA Red Seal line in 1998.

Mr. Guss said it was too early to determine whether BMG would release the new recordings. The pending merger of BMG and Sony's recording arm has created uncertainty over future projects. But Mr. Guss said he would like to see the music issued. "We've missed out on 50 years of recordings," he said. "This is just a small payback." To judge from the dub, he added, the quality is uneven, but restoration appears possible.

The cache, which is being delivered by old college friends of Dr. Kapell-Dehavenon who happened to be traveling in Australia, includes versions of pieces Kapell had already recorded, like the Prokofiev Concerto No. 3, Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," the Bach A minor Suite (BWV 818) and a Chopin E flat Nocturne (Op. 55, No. 2).

The new renditions are invaluable, given Kapell's rapid development as an artist, piano experts said.

"His maturing was exponential in the last couple of years," said Allan Evans, a historian of the piano tradition, a teacher at the Mannes College of Music and an informal adviser to Dr. Kapell-Dehavenon. "He was shedding his past as an interpreter of Russian war-horse pieces, like Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and deepening his study of Beethoven and Bach, Mozart and Schubert.

"Above all, Kapell was at his absolute best in concert."

But the jewels are works never heard in Kapell recordings. These are said to be Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, Debussy's "Suite Bergamasque," Mozart's entire Sonata in B flat, K. 570 (a second movement is in the RCA set) and two pieces by Chopin: the Barcarolle (Op. 60) and the Scherzo in B minor. There is also what is said to be a spectacular version of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3, although an earlier, inferior live performance was briefly on the market.

"He was a very great artist in his prime, playing at his best, before his career was tragically interrupted," Mr. Evans said. "This is great music, and he was plugged into its spirit. Any manifestation of this is invaluable for the sake of culture and our understanding of what this music is all about."

The recordings were preserved thanks to a retired department store salesman and manager in Melbourne named Roy Preston. Starting in the late 1940's, Preston obsessively recorded concerts transmitted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the radio, using a home recording machine with a needle that cut grooves into acetate discs.

Preston, as a founding member of the Theater Organ Society in Australia, befriended a junior member, Maurice Austin. In a recent telephone interview, Mr. Austin described how his friend meticulously indexed the recordings and even made his own polyethylene sleeves for the discs.

Mr. Austin said he had tended to Preston, who had no children and lived alone, as his health declined, driving him to concerts, putting him in a nursing home and cleaning out the house. He was eventually given the collection of more than 10,000 LP's, CD's, 78's and acetate discs.

Mr. Austin said that one of his friend's stories had intrigued him. Preston said he had given away an acetate disc to someone and was later tickled to discover music from it on a bootleg CD in a record store. It was a piece from Kapell's last concert, on Oct. 22, 1953: Chopin's "Funeral March" Sonata. Mr. Austin searched through the collection and found the other Kapell discs, and he decided they belonged with Kapell's family.

"There's a person at the other side of the world who is alive, has a close relationship to these recordings, and it was just right," Mr. Austin said of his motivation.

He searched the Internet for the Kapells and finally managed to get an e-mail through to a Kapell grandson, Joshua Kapell. Mr. Kapell said he received the e-mail on Oct. 29, 2003, exactly 50 years after his grandfather's plane crash on the approach to San Francisco. Mr. Preston died two months later, at 88.

Mr. Austin, who has since struck up an e-mail frienship with Dr. Kapell-Dehavenon, said almost apologetically that he felt proud to have done what he did and that he had no interest in compensation. He said he asked only one thing.

If the music is ever released commercially, he wants a copy of the CD.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/ar...l?pagewanted=2


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Even Digital Memories Can Fade
Katie Hafner

The nation's 115 million home computers are brimming over with personal treasures - millions of photographs, music of every genre, college papers, the great American novel and, of course, mountains of e-mail messages.

Yet no one has figured out how to preserve these electronic materials for the next decade, much less for the ages. Like junk e-mail, the problem of digital archiving, which seems straightforward, confounds even the experts.

"To save a digital file for, let's say, a hundred years is going to take a lot of work," said Peter Hite, president of Media Management Services, a consulting firm in Houston. "Whereas to take a traditional photograph and just put it in a shoe box doesn't take any work." Already, half of all photographs are taken by digital cameras, with most of the shots never leaving a personal computer's hard drive.

So dire and complex is the challenge of digital preservation in general that the Library of Congress has spent the last several years forming committees and issuing reports on the state of the nation's preparedness for digital preservation.

Jim Gallagher, director for information technology services at the Library of Congress, said the library, faced with "a deluge of digital information," had embarked on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar project, with an eye toward creating uniform standards for preserving digital material so that it can be read in the future regardless of the hardware or software being used. The assumption is that machines and software formats in use now will become obsolete sooner rather than later.

"It is a global problem for the biggest governments and the biggest corporations all the way down to individuals," said Ken Thibodeau, director for the electronic records archives program at the National Archives and Records Administration.

In the meantime, individual PC owners struggle in private. Desk drawers and den closets are filled with obsolete computers, stacks of Zip disks and 3½-inch diskettes, even the larger 5¼-inch floppy disks from the 1980's. Short of a clear solution, experts recommend that people copy their materials, which were once on vinyl, film and paper, to CD's and other backup formats.

But backup mechanisms can also lose their integrity. Magnetic tape, CD's and hard drives are far from robust. The life span of data on a CD recorded with a CD burner, for instance, could be as little as five years if it is exposed to extremes in humidity or temperature.

And if a CD is scratched, Mr. Hite said, it can become unusable. Unlike, say, faded but readable ink on paper, the instant a digital file becomes corrupted, or starts to degrade, it is indecipherable.

"We're accumulating digital information faster than we can handle, and moving into new platforms faster than we can handle," said Jeffrey Rutenbeck, director for the Media Studies Program at the University of Denver.

Professional archivists and librarians have the resources to duplicate materials in other formats and the expertise to retrieve materials trapped in obsolete computers. But consumers are seldom so well equipped. So they are forced to devise their own stop-gap measures, most of them unwieldy, inconvenient and decidedly low-tech.

Philip Cohen, the communications officer at a nonprofit foundation in San Francisco, is what archivists call a classic "migrator." Since he was in elementary school, Mr. Cohen, 33, has been using a computer for his school work, and nearly all of his correspondence has been in e-mail since college.

Now Mr. Cohen's three home computers are filled with tens of thousands of photos, songs, video clips and correspondence.

Over the years, Mr. Cohen, who moonlights as a computer fix-it man, has continually transferred important files to ever newer computers and storage formats like CD's and DVD's. "I'll just keep moving forward with the stuff I'm sentimental about," he said.


Yet Mr. Cohen said he had noticed that some of his CD's, especially the rewritable variety, are already beginning to degrade. "About a year and a half ago they started to deteriorate, and become unreadable," he said.

And of course, migration works only if the data can be found, and with ever more capacious hard drives, even that can be a problem.

"Some people are saying digital data will disappear not by being destroyed but by being lost," Dr. Rutenbeck said. "It's one thing to find the photo album of your trip to Hawaii 20 years ago. But what if those photos are all sitting in a subdirectory in your computer?"

For some PC users, old machines have become the equivalent of the bin under the bed. This solution, which experts call the museum approach to archiving, means keeping obsolete equipment around the house.

Simon Yates, an analyst at Forrester Research, for example, keeps his old PC in the back of a closet underneath a box. The machine contains everything in his life from the day he married in 1997 to the day he bought his new computer in 2002. If he wanted to retrieve anything from the old PC, Mr. Yates said, it would require a great deal of wiring and rewiring. "I'd have to reconfigure my entire office just to get it to boot up," he said.

Peter Schwartz, chairman of the Global Business Network, which specializes in long-range planning, says that a decade or two from now, the museum approach might be the most feasible answer.

"As long as you keep your data files somewhat readable you'll be able to go to the equivalent of Kinko's where they'll have every ancient computer available," said Mr. Schwartz, whose company has worked with the Library of Congress on its preservation efforts.

"It'll be like Ye Olde Antique Computer Shoppe," Mr. Schwartz said. "There's going to be a whole industry of people who will have shops of old machines, like the original Mac Plus."

Until that approach becomes commercially viable, though, there is the printout method.

Melanie Ho, 25, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been using computers since elementary school. She creates her own Web sites and she spends much of her day online.

Yet she prints important documents and stores a backup set at her parents' house 100 miles away.

"As much as a lot of people think print will be dead because of computers," she said, "I actually think there's something about the tangibility of paper that feels more comforting."

Proponents of paper archiving grow especially vocal when it comes to preserving photographs. If stored properly, conventional color photographs printed from negatives can last as long as 75 years without fading. Newer photographic papers can last up to 200 years.

There is no such certainty for digital photos saved on a hard drive.

Today's formats are likely to become obsolete and future software "probably will not recognize some aspects of that format," Mr. Thibodeau said. "It may still be a picture, but there might be things in it where, for instance, the colors are different."

The experts at the National Archives, like those at the Library of Congress, are working to develop uniformity among digital computer files to eliminate dependence on specific hardware or software.

One format that has uniformity, Mr. Thibodeau pointed out, is the Web, where it often makes no difference which browser is being used.

Indeed, for many consumers, the Web has become a popular archiving method, especially when it comes to photos. Shutterfly.com and Ofoto .com have hundreds of millions of photographs on their computers. Shutterfly keeps a backup set of each photo sent to the site.

The backups are stored somewhere in California "off the fault line," said David Bagshaw, chief executive of Shutterfly.

But suppose a Web-based business like Shutterfly goes out of business?

Mr. Bagshaw said he preferred to look on the bright side, but offered this bit of comfort: "No matter what the business circumstances, we'll always make people's images available to them."

Constant mobility can be another issue.

Stephen Quinn, who teaches journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., moves frequently because of his work. He prefers to keep the amount of paper in his life to a minimum, and rarely makes printouts.

Dr. Quinn has a box in the bottom drawer of his desk that contains an eclectic set of storage disks dating back to the early 1980's, when he started out on an Amstrad computer.

All of Dr. Quinn's poetry ("unpublished and unpublishable" he says) and other writings are on those various digital devices, along with his daily diaries.

At some point, he wants to gather the material as a keepsake for his children, but he has no way to read the files he put on the Amstrad disks more than 20 years ago. He has searched unsuccessfully for an Amstrad computer.

"I have a drawer filled with disks and no machinery to read it with," Dr. Quinn said.

That is becoming a basic problem of digital life. Whatever solution people might use, it is sure to be temporary.

"We will always be playing catch up," said Dr. Rutenbeck, who is working at pruning his own digital past, discarding old hard drives and stacks of old Zip disks.

"It feels really good to do," he said, "just like I didn't keep a box of everything I did in first grade."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/te...icle_popular_5


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A Fable of False Hope, Hubris and Tinseltown
A. O. Scott

In 1997 Troy Duffy, a transplanted New Englander working as a bartender in Los Angeles, became a minor celebrity when Miramax offered him $1 million for a screenplay. News of the deal, which reportedly included a promise that Miramax's co-chairman Harvey Weinstein would help Mr. Duffy purchase the bar where he worked, made headlines not only in the trades, but also on local television news and even on the front page of USA Today. It was another heartwarming Hollywood success story about a scrappy, talented outsider hitting the big time.

That was certainly how Mr. Duffy saw it, at least according to "Overnight," a new documentary directed by Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana. The filmmakers were associates of Mr. Duffy in his other creative endeavor, a rock band called the Brood, and were eyewitnesses to the train wreck that his career quickly became. Like just about everyone else who came into contact with him, Mr. Smith and Mr. Montana were subjected to Mr. Duffy's bullying, arrogant tirades - and their film's objectivity is compromised by an intimation of payback.

Not that you can feel much sympathy for Mr. Duffy, who comes across as an arrogant blowhard whose only unequivocal talent is for overestimating his own gifts. "This is something nobody in the history of the world has ever achieved," he says more than once, referring to the film and record deals that never quite pan out the way they are supposed to. An enthusiastic drinker, he celebrates every success with loud, boozy nights at his favorite bar, and his working life veers between intoxication with his own accomplishment and grouchy, hung-over resentment of everyone who is trying to stymie and betray him.

Which is just about everyone. There is something both infuriating and sad about the way Mr. Duffy mistakes money and entertainment-industry curiosity for real power and actual achievement. His stubborn refusal to heed good advice is matched by an angry belief, born out of unacknowledged impotence, that studio and record- company big shots are secretly afraid of him. He has fallen into the fallacy, endemic among aspirants to post-modern show business glory, that a contract or a big advance means at least as much as a good album or an interesting movie. Some people are no doubt motivated by a desire to make records or movies, but the raw urge to make it big - whatever "it" may be - makes for a better story, with a clearer moral.

But it must be asked: whose interest does this fable serve? It is easy to laugh at Mr. Duffy's staggering self-delusion, and it is the same laughter evoked by the hapless amateurs from "Project Greenlight," who won the right to make god-awful movies under the auspices of real-life Hollywood professionals (Miramax executives among them). The lessons of "Greenlight" and "Overnight" are the same: the big guys know best, and the little guys are jerks, whiners and amateurs who receive their comeuppance when their movie projects go into turnaround or their CD's sell fewer than 700 copies in six months (which happened to the Brood).

Any movie that makes you root against the underdog, though, is cause for suspicion, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Montana, perhaps aware of this, try belatedly to restore Mr. Duffy's status as a victim. But their equivocation comes too late. We have already had our laugh at his expense, and this laughter conveniently enables us to forget about all of the other artists, with greater talent and better manners, who are chewed up by an entertainment industry that could hardly care less about what they do.

'Overnight'

Opens today in Manhattan.

Written, produced, directed and edited by Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana; director of photography, Mr. Smith; music by Duotone Audio Group; released by ThinkFilm. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of the Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 81 minutes. This film is not rated.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/11/1...overnight.html


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Privacy, Piracy And Due Process
Anita Ramasastry

(FINDLAW) -- Since 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been suing peer-to-peer (P2P) file swappers and downloaders. The RIAA alleges, in its suits, that P2P file swapping and downloading, when it involves pirated files, violates copyright law -- and, at times, also the Digital Music Copyright Act (DMCA).

The RIAA's first set of suits -- 261 in all -- was filed September 8, 2003. On September 30 of this year, the RIAA filed 762 suits. This October, it filed 750 more. In total, the RIAA has filed more than 6,200 such suits.

Here's how the RIAA typically proceeds. It files a "John Doe" lawsuit based on an Internet Protocol (IP) address connected to P2P trading via Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire, or another, similar system. The suit is often filed in the jurisdiction where the relevant Internet Service Provider (ISP) is located.

Once the suit is filed, the RIAA subpoenas the ISP to force it to disclose the real name of the "John Doe" associated with the IP address. That person, however, is not necessarily the file trader -- it may instead be a relative, college roommate, or landlord. And neither that person -- nor the file trader, if he or she is a different person -- is given prior notice and a chance to fight the subpoena.

Fortunately, however, that may change. In late October, a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania developed what I believe is a sensible and pragmatic approach to protect the Due Process and privacy rights of persons whose names are sought by of RIAA (and similar) subpoenas to their ISPs.

The need to protect copyrighted works must be balanced against the need to protect constitutional rights. The district court's order strikes just such a balance.

Elektra Case: Court requires notice to the John Doe defendants

The Pennsylvania case is a civil copyright infringement action filed in March 2004, and entitled Elektra Entertainment Group et al v. Does 1-6. The plaintiffs, various record companies, subpoenaed the relevant ISP -- the University of Pennsylvania ("Penn) -- for the names of the six "John Doe" defendants - as well as, for each defendant, their address, telephone number, e-mail address, and Media Access Control address.

But the court held that before revealing the "John Does'" information, Penn must first alert the John Does; explain what has happen; and explain how they may contest the charges against them. The court also provided a model notice attached to its order for Penn to use -- which included a resource list of attorneys and organizations assisting individuals whose ISPs have received this kind of subpoena.

(It turns out there are many such resources -- such as the Web site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Indeed, there is even a specific Subpoenadefense.org website, which bills itself as a "resource for individuals seeking information on how to defend themselves if their identity has been subpoenaed by a private third party seeking to enforce their copyrights on the Internet," and also for individuals who have received RIAA subpoenas. But the subpoena targets -- who, again, could easily have been the actual user's grandparents -- are not necessarily aware of them.)

Finally, the court held that the John Does will remain anonymous for 21 days from the date of the notice -- by which point, they must either file a motion to quash the plaintiff's subpoena to the ISP, or have their identities revealed. In addition, if they do file a motion to quash the subpoena, they will remain anonymous while the motion is pending.

Prelude to Elektra: D.C. Circuit's Verizon decision

Even before the recent Elektra ruling, important -- but partial -- progress was made in honoring the constitutional rights of "John Does" in RIAA suits.

On December 19, 2003, in RIAA v. Verizon Internet Services, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that it was not sufficient for the RIAA to simply send an ISP a form subpoena demanding the identity of a particular Internet subscriber -- as the RIAA had claimed was proper under the DMCA.

Rather, the court held, the RIAA had to first file a civil lawsuit against the "John Doe" defendants, and then seek a subpoena. The DMCA subpoena procedure, it ruled, only applied to materials hosted by an ISP -- such as information stored on its servers -- not materials for which the ISP merely acts as a conduit, such as P2P exchanges.

The Elektra decision builds on the Verizon decision by ensuring that the John Does have notice and an opportunity to contest the subpoenas to the ISPs, seeking their names. Previously, a customer's name would be disclosed before he or she even had a chance to challenge the subpoena to the ISP seeking the name.

Virtue of the Elektra ruling: Protecting anonymous speech

Ultimately, the truly hard questions for courts will arise when they must confront the motions to quash the subpoenas to the ISPs. What Elektra wisely did was to ensure that "John Does" have a chance to file such motions. But it remains to be seen how the motions will be resolved.

Resolving some such motions will be simple -- subpoenas may be quashed based on IP address mix-ups. But resolving the others may be very difficult.

On one hand, there are important First Amendment rights implicated by file swapping and other communications on the Internet. A fear that online speech is not truly anonymous could stifle multiple types of expression and investigation - many of them very valuable. (For instance, a teen abuse victim who is not ready to go to the police, might at least be ready to seek help anonymously in an online chatroom, or to search online for possible resources to help her.) Anonymity has encouraged candor throughout American history -- even since the Founders used pseudonyms to communicate their views on the U.S. Constitution.

On the other hand, complete anonymity in cyberspace could allow Internet users to violate copyright laws with impunity. Worse, it could also make far worse crimes - such as terrorist acts -- far easier.

The trick is to try to allow free speech to flourish, without making the Internet a safe harbor for terrorism. In the end, some balance is necessary.

That question isn't likely to go away anytime soon. But hopefully, the P2P question will someday.

With 60 million Americans using file-sharing software, despite the RIAA lawsuits, P2P sharing doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon more. The record industry may do better talking to file sharers, than suing them. It is time for a truce.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/11/11/ra...file.swapping/


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Hollywood, Values, and P2P Lawsuits
James L. Gattuso and Norbert J. Michel, Ph.D.

If exit polls can be believed, issues of moral values were among the most important factors in last week’s presidential elections. Pundits are still weighing the meaning of that vote and what it means for public policy. Yet buried beneath the election news, the values issue was also raised last week in a much different context, the fight against the theft of intellectual property on the Internet. Ironically, the motion picture industry—rarely seen as a hotbed of traditional morality—is leading this fight. It announced that it will file lawsuits against individuals found illegally trading copyrighted movies over the Internet.

At issue is the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material off the Internet, without payment to the owners. Typically, such downloading is done through “peer-to-peer,” or P2P, networks, such as “eDonkey.” These networks allow users to share files on their individual PCs with other network users. In this way, music, movies, and virtually anything else that is digital can be quickly and costlessly distributed to millions of other P2P users. According to one estimate, as of June of this year some eight million users were on P2P networks at any given time, sharing 10 million gigabytes of data.[1]

The result is a massive theft of intellectual property, as users obtain works without authorization from— or payment to—their creators. So far, the main target of P2P downloading has been music, for the simple reason that digitized songs are smaller than digitized movies and can be more easily downloaded. But the rapid proliferation of high-speed Internet access, combined with new technology to shrink the size of movie files, has put the film industry at risk as well. Video files accounted over 30 percent of all P2P files transmitted in March 2004, up from 16 percent the same time in 2003.[2] As many as 150,000 movies may be being traded on the Internet each day.

Starting last year, the music industry—through the Recording Industry Association of America, its trade association—has been filing suits against individuals using P2P networks to share music files. The movie industry, on the other hand, opted to focus on public awareness efforts and launched a broad campaign to educate consumers that downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is wrong.

On Thursday, however, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade association for the movie studios, announced that it would file civil lawsuits against individual offenders. The first suits will be filed on November 16. If found liable, offenders face fines of as much as $30,000 for each movie copied or distributed over the Internet, or as much as $150,000 if the infringement is found to be “willful.”

Filing lawsuits is a controversial strategy for Hollywood, and the demagoging has already begun—for example, as MPAA out it, “Suing 13 year olds and taking their college money isn’t the best approach.”[3] Yet few question the legal liability of downloaders under copyright law. And the stakes are high for the industry and consumers: the billions in revenue lost through Internet downloading could mean higher prices for law-abiding movie fans or could discourage production of financially risky pictures.

Moreover, direct legal action against infringers is far preferable to many of the other approaches to the P2P download problem that have been discussed in Washington. Many, for instance, have urged federal regulation of PCs, DVDs, and other devices that could be used to copy movies and music, in order to make infringement more difficult. Other proposals would extend legal liability to manufacturers of these devices. Policymakers, however, should be extremely wary of such a regulatory approach. Any regulation of the fast-changing world of the Internet and consumers electronics would likely hinder valuable innovation, as well as increase costs to consumers.

Of course, lawsuits by themselves are unlikely to solve the P2P download problem. Continued education also needs to be pursued so that potential file-swappers understand why the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material—like other forms of theft—is wrong. Another part of the solution is likely to be development of new technologies that allow copyright holders to make copying protected works more difficult.

Stemming the tide of illegal downloading will not be easy, but going after the worst offenders now, before movie downloads surpass music downloads, could prove to be a wise choice. Protecting property rights without imposing undue limits on private markets will involve many difficult choices. However, suing individuals engaged in theft of intellectual property through file swapping is not one of them.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Regulation/wm609.cfm


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Streamcast and Grokster File Supreme Court Brief

Peer-to-peer (P2P) software companies StreamCast Networks and Grokster Ltd. today filed a joint brief urging the US Supreme Court to leave undisturbed the landmark MGM v. Grokster ruling handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.


Washington, D.C. - The case pits the world's largest music and movie studio companies against StreamCast and Grokster, two small start-up companies responsible for the Morpheus and Grokster P2P file-sharing software products. The entertainment companies have been seeking to hold StreamCast and Grokster liable for copyright infringements committed by the users of their software. In April 2003, a federal district court in Los Angeles rejected that claim, reasoning that the Morpheus and Grokster software products have many noninfringing uses, much like photocopiers and VCRs. That ruling was upheld by a unanimous 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2004. But in October, the entertainment industry asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court rulings.

StreamCast and Grokster filed their brief in response today, emphasizing several reasons the Supreme Court should not take this case. They argue that the Ninth Circuit correctly applied the clear rule set out by the Supreme Court 20 years ago in the Sony v. Universal case (also known as the "Sony Betamax" case) that protects technologies with noninfringing uses. The Ninth Circuit ruling is also consistent with other federal rulings in P2P cases, including the 2003 Aimster ruling, since the Aimster defendants had not shown noninfringing uses. Finally, if copyright laws need to be adjusted in light of new P2P technologies, that is a job best left for Congress, rather than the courts.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Charles Baker of the Houston law firm of Porter & Hedges represent StreamCast Networks (Morpheus) in the case, joined by StreamCast's General Counsel, Matthew A. Neco, on the opposition brief, while the San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest represents Grokster Ltd.

"The Ninth Circuit got it right and applied the Supreme Court's own precedent in the Sony Betamax case," said senior EFF staff attorney, Fred von Lohmann. "There is no reason to revisit the unanimous ruling of the Ninth Circuit and insert judges into the design rooms of technologists across the nation."

The case is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, Supreme Court Docket No. 04-480. The Court is expected to decide whether it will take the case before the end of the year.
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories...View/sid/4269/


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States, Artists Urge Top Court To Hear P2P Case
John Borland

A broad list of copyright owners, artists, law professors and state attorneys general on Monday asked the Supreme Court to hear a controversial case on the legality of file- swapping software.

A federal appeals court ruled last August that peer-to-peer software developers, including Morpheus parent StreamCast Networks and rival Grokster, were not liable for the actions of people who used their products to thwart copyright laws. Record labels and Hollywood studios want the nation's top court to overturn this ruling.

More than 30 copyright and professional associations, about 20 artists, several music and movie subscription and download services, and 40 state attorney generals offices all submitted "friend of the court" briefs Monday asking the Supreme Court to hear the appeal of the file-swapping case.

StreamCast, which is being supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed its own brief, arguing that the high court should not hear the case, because Congress is already wrestling with the issue.

"Congress...is at this moment considering the very question (of) whether and how copyright law should be altered to address the challenges and opportunities created by new Internet technologies, including peer-to-peer file sharing," StreamCast's attorneys wrote in their brief. The studios and record labels "ask this Court to pre-empt the legislative process and substitute judicial policy-making."

The attempt to shut down peer-to-peer networks has been one of the centerpieces of record industry and movie studio efforts to cut down on the rampant file-swapping they say is cutting into their revenues. But after victories against Napster, Aimster and others, the copyright companies have run into a hurdle.

A federal court judge ruled in April that peer-to-peer software was legal to distribute without copyright liability, as long as the company making the software didn't have direct control over what was happening on the network.

"Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights," federal Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in that ruling.

A federal appeals court upheld Wilson's ruling in August.

In the meantime, record labels and movie studios have moved to sue individuals who are trading copyrighted works. The Recording Industry Association of America has filed more than 6,000 suits, while the Motion Picture Association of America said last week that it would launch its own cases later this month.

Monday was the deadline for "friend of the court" briefs on the case. The Supreme Court is not expected to decide whether to hear the case for several months.
http://news.com.com/States%2C+artist...3-5443812.html


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Hollywood Can’t Stop The BitTorrent

Movie and record industry executives want America’s highest court to review a ruling legitimizing peer-to-peer software, but file-sharing networks won’t give up the fight.

Fearing a new technology that could let file swappers download feature-length movies in two hours instead of twelve, Hollywood wants the Supreme Court to make the nightmare go away.

The companies sued by the record and movie industries – Grokster and StreamCast – filed their own request yesterday, asking the Supreme Court to ignore Hollywood’s last-ditch effort at control.

Experts say neither the entertainment industry nor the Supreme Court can block technology’s progress. The technology that frightens movie execs most: BitTorrent, a simple and powerful tool that allows Internet users to get huge files, and fast.

BitTorrent’s inevitable entry into file sharing is just around the corner, industry insiders say.

Those in the know believe the Supreme Court is unlikely to step in on behalf of the entertainment industry, which filed a request asking the court to reverse a ruling earlier this year that that favors file swappers.

“Their chances are slim to none,” said StreamCast attorney Charles Baker, one of the lawyers defending peer-to-peer networks against the movie and recording industry’s lobbying efforts. Based in Los Angeles, StreamCast is one of several companies developing file-sharing software.

Yesterday, 41 attorneys general lent their weight to Hollywood’s war, claiming that criminals, like child pornographers, use the peer-to-peer networks to sell and swap smut.

“My primary concern deals with the child porn that is so pervasive on peer-to-peer,” said Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general. “This file-sharing software has become a major problem for us.”

Mr. Shurtleff supported the request to reverse the ruling so he can hold file-sharing networks accountable for “allowing” child pornography to pass through their gates.

“In looking at the possibility of potential prosecutions,” said Mr. Shurtleff. “I’m concerned that if the court doesn’t overturn the Grokster decision, we may have trouble going after the software people.”

But attorneys don’t believe StreamCast and similar companies can be blamed for criminal use of the Internet.

“The notion that somehow the court decision must be reconsidered in order to prevent child pornography from spreading further on the web is preposterous,” said John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “There are plenty of laws that outlaw trafficking in child pornography.”

Mr. Palfrey said the reason four judges have ruled in favor of the peer-to-peer companies is simple: the file-sharing networks cannot be shut down for the sins of their users.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.as...onomyAndPolicy


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Underground Is Good: RIAA
Eric Garland, p2pnet.net News

"America's students are back to school, but it seems they have yet to learn their lesson about file sharing," states Billboard in a story intro which might have come straight from RIAA president Cary Sherman.

"Despite the efforts of digital music services, record company litigation, 'spoofing' technology and legitimate offerings at various universities, illegal file sharing on peer-to-peer networks has risen since college students returned to their high-speed Internet connections this fall," it goes on.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has so far sued 6,191 people since September 2003, claiming its efforts are having a marked effect in reducing online file sharing via the p2p networks.

Billboard quotes p2p market research firm Big Champagne as saying the back-to-school months coincide with the typical spike of usage on file-swapping networks, with average simultaneous peak users totalling 5.7 million in the US in October, up from 5.4 million from the year before.

Big Champagne statistics for August and September in 2004 and 2003 confirm a significant rise, not decline, in file sharing. They were:

· August, 2003, 3,847,565 - August, 2004 6,822,312
· September, 2003 4,319,182 - September, 2004 6,802,130

These stats are further bolstered by two academic studies, one Canadian and the American.

The Canadian report states music lovers are undeterred by Big Four record label cartel attempts to sue them into abandoning file sharing on the p2p networks. The US study says the cartel's sue 'em all war notwithstanding, p2p file sharing is going strong.


"We routinely base lawsuits on multiple platforms and will evolve our strategies as circumstances change," Billboard has RIAA president Cary Sherman saying.

It also says entertainment industry p2p scalp-hunter BayTSP claims one of the reasons Kazaa has been overtaken by eDonkey as the commercial p2p app of choice is because of the effectiveness of "interdiction companies" flooding Kazaa with spoofed, or fake, files.

But, according to Sherman - who's also, "mindful of file sharing at smaller, under-the-radar networks that are harder to detect" - the RIAA is now targetting more and more eDonkey users and will, "continue to go where the problem is worst".

While the RIAA issues patently misleading (to be charitable) statements about its successes against file sharers, people continue to exchange music files with near-impunity.

Some 61 million people in the US regularly share music online and the US academic study said:

"In general we observe that P2P activity has not diminished. On the contrary, P2P traffic represents a significant amount of Internet traffic and is likely to continue to grow in the future, RIAA behavior notwithstanding."

And, "The risk tied to Internet file-sharing is almost zero despite entertainment industry claims to the contrary, says the Canadian consumer report.

In the meanwhile, Big Champagne ceo Eric Garland points out the p2p networks aren't the only game in town.

Hot-swapping, which by-passes the Net altogether, is becoming more and more popoular, he says.

Under it, music fans swap files by physically hooking an external hard drive (or player, like an iPod) to a friend's machine so they can 'download' songs, he told p2pnet.

In the Billboard piece, Garland is quoted as saying practices such as Hot Swapping thrive where young people live in close communities such as college campuses.

And in typically disengenuous RIAA reasoning, Sherman spins this as a positive development.

"The more that you drive (activity) underground, the better off you are overall," he told Billboard.

"That means that people are aware that this is illegal behavior."

And BayTSP ceo Mark Ishikawa says the rise of closed networks, "minimizes the damage because you're not sharing files globally," according to Billboard.

He avoids the vexing issue of how the files got on the hard drives in the first place, adding: "We would like to stop the internal trafficking, but it's more difficult to monitor."
http://p2pnet.net/story/2939


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New DVDs

I, Pee-wee
Dave Itzkoff

IT was two days before Halloween, and Paul Reubens was one of the few people in Los Angeles without a costume. Seated in his publicist's office, in flannel shirt and corduroy pants too big for his slender frame, the 52-year-old actor and comedian looked like someone without much interest in playing dress-up or pulling pranks. He looked an awful lot like an adult.

It's been more than 13 years since Mr. Reubens last performed in the full regalia of Pee-wee Herman, the manic man-child with the too-small suit and the too-big voice, a character he portrayed not only in stand-up routines, movies and television shows, but in almost two decades' worth of interviews, talk show bookings and public appearances. Even now, as he prepares for the DVD release of his 1980's-era Saturday morning series "Pee-wee's Playhouse," Mr. Reubens had to acknowledge how unusual it was to be playing himself. "It's weird," he said in his normal speaking tone, just a shade above a whisper, "because I had that whole character to hide behind - now I'm kind of like this: putting people to sleep. But that was always the weird dichotomy of it all."

From the time Mr. Reubens created him in the 1970's, as a member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, there has been an uneasy duality about Pee- wee Herman. In the 1981 HBO special "The Pee-wee Herman Show," adapted from Mr. Reubens's nightclub act, the character was a stunted adolescent with some very grown-up curiosities, who hypnotized women into taking off their shirts and taped mirrors to his shoes to see up their skirts. But it was a kinder, gentler (though no less hyperactive) Pee-wee whom audiences saw in his film debut, the 1985 "Pee-wee's Big Adventure"; the kid-friendly story of his quest for a missing bicycle (directed by a then-unknown Tim Burton) was a surprise hit that grossed over $40 million.

Even before the movie's success, CBS approached Mr. Reubens about bringing Pee-wee Herman to the network's Saturday morning lineup in a cartoon show; instead, he gave them a live-action series more animated and colorful than anyone could have anticipated. On the air from 1986 to 1991, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was a vibrant and relentlessly inventive half-hour that was equal parts dollies and Dali, whose every frame was crammed with pop art, vintage toys and talking furniture. In the spirit of "Captain Kangaroo" and "The Howdy Doody Show," Pee-wee and his entourage of humans and puppets spoke directly to the screen; each episode offered simple instructions - how to behave at the breakfast table, why stealing is wrong - tempered with a giddy anarchy that would never fly on "Sesame Street." "I tried to be responsible in teaching kids things I thought were good lessons," Mr. Reubens said, "all in the context of, 'It's O.K. to be wild and have a good time.' "

With a then-unheard-of budget of $425,000 per episode and no creative interference from CBS, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" soon attracted an audience beyond its target demographic, and its cast and crew got swept up in the show's spirit of make-believe. "I would go on commercial interviews and be labeled as a woman over 40," recalled Lynne Marie Stewart, the actress who played Pee-wee's perky neighbor, Miss Yvonne. "Then I would go to my day job, where I got to be a storybook princess."

But the fantasy unraveled in July 1991, when Mr. Reubens was arrested for exposing himself in an adult theater in Sarasota, Fla. By coincidence, the five-year run of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was ending that month, and many viewers assumed CBS had canceled the series. (In fact, the network pulled just two remaining reruns.) "In my mug shot I had like hair down to here and a big giant beard," Mr. Reubens said. "It was almost two years away from having filmed that show."

For the next few years, Mr. Reubens earned good notices in supporting movie roles: a sarcastic ghoul in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in 1992, a flamboyant hairdresser in the 2001 "Blow." But he was arrested again in November 2002, after a 2001 police raid seized some 30,000 vintage erotic artworks from his Hollywood Hills home. Last March, he pleaded guilty to possessing obscene material and was fined $100 and sentenced to three years' informal probation.

Despite his recent legal troubles, Mr. Reubens still lives in a Pee-wee-centric universe: he is planning a museum show of the "Playhouse" sets and props, which he still owns. He is also pitching two new Pee-wee film scripts, one based on the CBS show and another that could be seen as a satire on Mr. Reubens's own predicament. ("It's about Pee-wee Herman becoming famous," he explained, "and fame, let's say, doesn't agree with him.") And on Nov. 16, all 45 episodes of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" will be released on DVD for the first time. (He is pitching television projects as well, including a half-hour comedy Western and what he described as a "combination variety-talk-Ernie Kovacs show.")

But it is the Pee-wee DVD venture that Mr. Reubens is most excited, and most anxious, about. To produce it, he had to wait several years for the home video rights to "Pee-wee's Playhouse" to revert back to him. (The original company he licensed them to, MGM Home Entertainment, released the show on VHS in 1996 but opted not to publish it on DVD.) He then spent nearly two more years poring over packaging and box art that he felt lived up to the series's eye-popping visual standards.

But Mr. Reubens cannot ignore the fact that the publicity campaign he is planning for the DVD, one that includes bookings on David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and the "Today" show will invite unwanted scrutiny of his private life. Still, Mr. Reubens understands that this uncertainty is the price he will continually have to pay if he wants to keep the legacy of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" alive. "I have a huge stake in this, and it's not back on television, so I love the idea that a new generation of kids and the parents who grew up on it can buy it," he said. And he was guardedly optimistic that there were still enough Pee-wee fans out there who would do just that. "We'll know soon," he said. "If you go to Best Buy and they're marked down two for $2, I think we'll know the answer to that question."

Ms. Stewart, the "Playhouse" performer who has known Reubens since his Groundlings days, said there was a simple explanation for his dedication to the Pee-wee persona. "He had 10 to 15 other characters that also happened to be brilliant," she said. "This one just happened to take off. There's a lot of Pee-wee in Paul, in the fact that he loves gadgets and he loves toys, and he loves anything intricate. That's part of him, and that became part of Pee-wee."

Mr. Reubens recognizes that he cannot live his own life free from judgment, and that he will probably have to face it whenever he tries to express himself. "That is what happens," he said. "But your choice is, do you stop working? No. Then they, whoever they are, win."

Mr. Reubens added: "I remember making 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure,' and reading somewhere, 'It's a five-minute sketch on David Letterman - how's it going to be a movie?' I'm not trying to say everyone's wrong but me." For a moment, the old Pee-wee irreverence crept back into his voice. "But they are."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/ar...wanted=2&8hpib


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China

First Game Software Copyright Case Heard In Beijing

Beijing Haidian District People's Court last week accepted its first lawsuit that involves game developers' accusations against their employer.

Two plaintiffs, Mr. Wang Shiying and Mr. Fang Liangyan, were former employees of Softstar Technology (Shanghai) Company. They had participated in the development of a game called "Xian Jian Qi Xia San Wai Zhuan", but when the game was launched to the public, they found that their names were not put among the game developer contributors' list.

The two men believe the company has violated their copyright in failing to give them name recognition for their work, and they have asked for an undisclosed sum of money. A final judgment on the case has not been made.

The two men participated in the development of the game in July 2003, and they resigned from the company in March 2004.
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.p...e=news&id=2085


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Copyright vs. the people

Regulation To Protect Copyrights On Networks
Cui Ning

The National Copyright Administration will soon implement a draft regulation on administrative protection of copyrights on information networks, to better protect Internet-based work and prevent piracy.

The draft regulation, worked out by the administration and the Ministry of Information Industry, aims to further bring China's copyright protection closer to international standards, sources from the administration said at a hearing yesterday in Beijing.


China amended its Copyright Law in 2001 to add provisions that entitled authors, performers and audio and video producers to dissemination rights on Internet-based networks. The law also stipulates that protection of these dissemination rights will be additionally stipulated by the State Council. The Legislative Affairs Office under the State Council has listed the protection of Internet-based dissemination rights in its legislation plan for next year, according to the administration's official Wang Ziqiang.

"Even before the State Council's regulation is worked out, the above draft regulation will be effective before the end of this year, to help prevent piracy," said Wang.

The draft regulation applies to the administrative protection of dissemination rights on Internet-based services. And these services refer to loading, saving, transmitting, linking, searching and other functions through the Internet, the draft regulation states.

In 1996, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) set down two conventions based on new technology development - the WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty - to specify the Internet-based copyright of authors, performers and audio and video producers.

This regulation on administrative protection of copyright on infor-mation network, is based on WIPO's two conventions and relevant laws in a number of developed countries.

Yesterday's meeting attracted dozens of representatives from governmental departments, firms and some websites. They offered their opinions and suggestions for implementing the draft regulation.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english...ent_388857.htm


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Finland

Cell phones similar. Imagine that.

Nokia Files Copyright Suits

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, said on Thursday it had filed copyright infringement lawsuits against two of its competitors, Sagem of France and Spain's Vitelcom.

Sagem is a leading French technology firm and maker of mobile phones, which in the first nine months of this year shipped some 15 million handsets, about 10 percent of Nokia's total during the same time.

It is particularly Sagem's top-of-the-line myX5-2 phone that Nokia says bears a semblance to their 6000 series of handsets.

"It is especially the look of the phone and certain of its features, so we have sued Sagem to stop the design infringement and asked them to pay damages," Rita Maard, a spokeswoman for Nokia, said.

She declined to specify the amount Nokia was seeking from Sagem.

Nokia earlier this year set up a special unit to pursue infringements of its design rights, and the case against Sagem is the first result of the move.

Previously Nokia mostly went after the illicit use of its technology but has now stepped up the protection of its design rights too, Maard said.

"Nokia is investing a lot of money in both design and technology ... we want to be more active on this (design) protection side as well," she said, noting that similar cases were likely in the future.

In a separate move Nokia said it had also sued the small Spanish handset maker Vitelcom on Thursday for using the Finnish firm's GSM and GPRS technology without authorisation and paying licensing fees.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/...?oneclick=true


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More than 4,500 North Carolina Votes Lost Because Of Mistake In Voting Machine Capacity
AP

More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.

Officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.

Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. "If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes," said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board.

Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost.

Jack Gerbel, president and owner of Dublin, Calif.-based UniLect, said Thursday that the county's elections board was given incorrect information. There is no way to retrieve the missing data, he said.

"That is the situation and it's definitely terrible," he said.

In a letter to county officials, he blamed the mistake on confusion over which model of the voting machines was in use in Carteret County. But he also noted that the machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots.

"Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked," he wrote.

County election officials were meeting with State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett on Thursday and did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

The loss of the votes didn't appear to change the outcome of county races, but that wasn't the issue for Alecia Williams, who voted on one of the final days of the early voting period.

"The point is not whether the votes would have changed things, it's that they didn't get counted at all," Williams said.

Two statewide races remained undecided Thursday, for superintendent of public instruction, where the two candidates are about 6,700 votes apart, and agriculture commissioner, where they are only hundreds of votes apart.

How those two races might be affected by problems in individual counties was uncertain. The state still must tally more than 73,000 provisional ballots, plus those from four counties that have not yet submitted their provisionals, said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the state elections board.

Nationwide, only scattered problems were reported in electronic voting, though roughly 40 million people cast digital ballots, voting equipment company executives had said.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...es-lost_x.htm#


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Hot wax

Pirated U2 Album Hits Net

Pirated versions of U2's new album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" have emerged on Internet file-sharing networks two weeks before it goes on sale, throwing into question its official release date.

A London spokeswoman for the band on Monday would only say that U2 was aware of the illicit copies, but that no decision had yet been made on changing the release date.

The Irish rock band has been due to release the album on Nov. 22 in Europe and the following day in the United States. It is the first studio album in four years for the band signed to Island Records, a unit of Universal Music.

Earlier this summer, a tape containing rough tracks from the upcoming album went missing from a studio in Nice, France where the band was recording. At the time, the band said it might move the release date if the tracks appear online first.

The online appearance of unsanctioned versions of an album before the official release has dogged many music acts.

Record labels fight back by sending copy-proof promotional copies to radio stations and journalists, and hiring companies to flood file-sharing networks with "spoof" tracks with poor sound quality, which crowd out better-sounding pirated versions.

"With any major release, the record companies start about a week in advance flooding the networks. That way users are more likely to download a spoofed copy," said Jim Graham, a spokesman for California-based online piracy tracking firm BayTSP.

"But over time, the pirated versions win out. It's very cat and mouse. It's like the cold war," he added.

In the past month, release dates for American rap artist Eminem and hip-hop star Snoop Dogg, both signed to Universal's Interscope Records, has been pushed forward by a few days due to the appearance of pirated tracks online.
http://news.com.com/Pirated+U2+album...3-5443143.html


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Local news

Feds Charge Man With Selling Windows Code

A Connecticut man was arrested on Tuesday on charges that he illegally sold a secret source code used for Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 programs, federal prosecutors said.

The Manhattan United States Attorney's Office said William P. Genovese Jr., 27, was charged with unlawfully distributing a trade secret, a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine if he is convicted.

Genovese was not immediately available for comment.

Prosecutors alleged in the criminal complaint that Genovese had posted a message on his Web site offering to sell the source code, which had previously been stolen by others. Access to a software program's source code can allow someone to replicate the program or find vulnerabilities.

In February 2004, prosecutors said, an investigator hired by Microsoft downloaded a copy of the source code from Genovese's site after making an electronic payment. On another occasion, an undercover FBI agent also made an electronic payment to Genovese and downloaded a copy of the code, according to the complaint.
http://news.com.com/Feds+charge+man+...3-5445287.html


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May we help you rip us off?

Least Developed Countries Agree On Importance Of Intellectual Property

Ministers from least developed countries (LDCs), meeting under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Seoul, agreed on the importance of intellectual property as a tool for development and pledged their commitment to intellectual property (IP) institution-building to serve their development objectives.

In a final declaration, the Ministerial Conference on Intellectual Property for Least Developed Countries expressed "the importance of addressing the main problems facing our countries on IP institution building with a renewed sense of common concern, purpose and objectives, by seeking opportunities to strengthen regional and international cooperation for using intellectual property for promoting national development."

The Seoul Ministerial Declaration on Intellectual Property for the Least Developed Countries recognized the specific problems faced by LDCs including shortage of resources and a weak intellectual property infrastructure despite their efforts to build national IP institutions. The Declaration also recognized that the creation, protection, management and use of intellectual property rights would contribute to economic development through facilitating the transfer of technology, increasing employment and creating wealth. The declaration further reaffirmed the vital importance and desirability of improving the institutional and policy framework for the modernization and development of the IP systems and institutions in LDCs.

WIPO Director General Dr. Kamil Idris set up a Division in 1998 to provide assistance to LDCs to address their specific IP needs. This Division provides extensive assistance to LDCs in building intellectual property infrastructures and integrating intellectual property matters into a wider national policy framework. Delegates in Seoul urged WIPO to strengthen and enhance its assistance to LDCs in meeting all their intellectual property objectives and expressed their full support of the efforts of WIPO to promote further development of the international intellectual property system.

Participants thanked the Government of the Republic of Korea for hosting this event. They were especially appreciative of the opportunity to see a case study of successful use of intellectual property in a non-African country which forty years ago was at a similar stage of development to that of their own countries.
http://www.managinginformation.com/n...ll.php?id=3275


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Microsoft To Back Customers In Infringement Cases
Ina Fried

Borrowing a line from Allstate Insurance, Microsoft says it wants customers to know they are in good hands when they choose its software.

The software maker announced on Wednesday that it will indemnify nearly all its customers against any claims that their use of Microsoft software infringed on any intellectual-property claims. The company said the protection extends to current and older versions of its software, including its Windows operating system, Office desktop software and SQL Server database.

The company already offers unlimited protection to its volume license customers but is adding the indemnity for customers who buy its key products in other ways, such as from a computer maker or even off a retail shelf.

"When we looked at things, there was no reason not to provide that coverage to all those folks as well," said David Kaefer, director of intellectual-property licensing for Microsoft. The protection covers four main types of claims: patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark.

The protection extends to nearly all of Microsoft's products, with the main exception being embedded versions of Windows, largely because customers are able to modify the code.

Of course, it's not just altruism that motivates the software maker. The company plans to make indemnity a new plank in its "Get the Facts" campaign, which touts the advantages of Windows over Linux.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer talked about indemnity as a key differentiator during Tuesday's shareholder meeting.

"We enhance the intellectual-property indemnifications we give our customers," Ballmer said at the meeting. "We can stand behind our products in a way that open source can't because they have no one standing behind them."

Kaefer said the argument is resonating with some customers who are concerned about liability. "More and more customers are realizing you don't get what you don’t pay for," he said.

Hewlett-Packard and Novell have offered liability protection to some Linux customers, but both Microsoft and analysts note that most of the protections from the Linux vendors are more limited.

Last year, Microsoft lifted a cap for its volume-licensing customers that had limited the dollar amount of protection Microsoft offered its customers against intellectual-property claims resulting from their use of Microsoft software.

Microsoft has been beefing up its own intellectual-property portfolio, a move that Kaefer said does make it easier for Microsoft to offer such protections.

"The reason we are able to do this at all is because we have done some of the things that you have to do earlier in the process," he said.

As part of the announcement, Microsoft highlighted two customers--Regal entertainment and ADC Telecommunications--that said that indemnity was key to their choice of Windows over Linux.

"We simply aren't interested in having to worry about potential legal risks of deploying Linux in this environment," ADC Telecommunications manager Jamey Anderson said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+bac...3-5445868.html


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Skype Ready For Both Telephone Worlds
Ben Charny

An adapter made by Siemens to extend Internet access to cordless phones is now loaded with Skype Net phone software, allowing the same phone to make calls using the Internet or the traditional phone network.

The coupling of Internet and traditional telephony in a single phone is hard to find now, but it could become more common in years to come if, as expected, more calls flow over the unregulated Internet rather than heavily taxed traditional phone networks.

For decades, the only way to sell local phone services was over the local phone network, which is privately owned. But Skype is among a wave of new companies offering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which uses the Internet to make calls. By using VoIP technology, any broadband connection, whether cable, satellite, cell phone, Wi-Fi or WiMax, can become a home phone line.

While there are several jury-rigged methods out there that could achieve the same results, the Siemens-Skype adapter stands out nonetheless because of the pedigree of those involved in its creation. Siemens is among the largest phone manufacturers in the world, and Skype is the most popular VoIP service provider in the world, with more than 1 million users.

"Siemens is delivering a giant step forward for Internet telephony for the residential market," Niklas Zennstrom, Skype's chief executive, said in a statement.

As with most other Internet phone service providers, Skype is also trying to be compatible with as many Internet-enabled devices as possible. VoIP started on PCs, which aren't always well-suited for phone calling. Personal digital assistants and cell phones are a new favorite target of many VoIP providers. Zennstrom said he believes Skype's effort regarding cordless phones is a pioneering one.

The adapter is not for the price-sensitive and is available only in Europe for now. The Siemens Gigaset M34USB adapter is $129, while the six compatible Siemens Gigaset phones cost between $65 and $260. To spur sales, Siemens offers the adapter along with 120 minutes of SkypeOut, a Skype service that lets people place calls to traditional phones from their own high-speed Internet connections. Skype phone calls that are made among PCs and which stay on the Internet are free.

In another major development, Skype on Tuesday also made public a method for programmers writing applications to involve Skype software in some way. "We are keen to watch the world's innovative developer community integrate the Skype application," Zennstrom said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/Skype+ready+for+...3-5445922.html


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Bad news for Bluto

Spinach Power Adds Muscle to Batteries
Katie Zezima

PARENTS and doctors have long talked up the powerful properties of spinach.

Now an unlikely group has joined the chorus: researchers seeking to put more oomph in batteries.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee, the United States Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have found a way to harness the energy that plants use during photosynthesis to convert light to energy. They are using the process to extend the life of batteries in cellular phones, laptop computers and other portable electronic devices.

While the research is still at an early stage and scientists say commercial applications are years away, they add that the discovery chips away at the barriers between nature and technology.

"This really shows that there is a way of using biologically produced molecules and coupling them directly into applied electronic circuitry," said Barry Bruce, an associate professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and one of the scientists working on the project. "This opens up a gateway for applied application, whether you want to make DNA wires or enzymatically based reactor cells."

This is the first time scientists were able to extract "something as fundamental as an electrical current" from photosynthesis, Professor Bruce said. While previous efforts have produced currents that lasted for a few hours, this group of scientists produced an electrical current that lasted for three weeks.

Earlier efforts to extract a current from photosynthesis failed because the proteins that capture energy from sunlight died without water. But Shuguang Zhang, associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at M.I.T., was able to create a peptide detergent from amino acids that stabilized the protein and allowed it to channel energy.

Professor Zhang said the researchers liquefied spinach in a centrifuge. They extracted the protein and placed it, heads up and with spaces between each protein, on the chip. The peptide detergent was inserted in the spaces, and in an example of a process known as self-assembly, the two parts locked like fingers holding hands, Professor Zhang said.

The mixture was wedged between layers of plastic, gold and indium-tin oxide, a transparent semiconducting material. The resulting chips are durable and easy to repair: more protein can easily be injected if one stops working.

So far the chips have been built with only one layer of the spinach solution, and thus can produce a negligible amount of electricity. But scientists are planning to add additional layers to harness more power.

"It's like building a building," Professor Zhang said. "It gets more complete with each floor."

The device, which looks like a square microchip about a half-inch on a side with green liquid visible inside, won't be able to power electronics on its own, Professor Zhang said. Rather, it will wrap around a battery much like a leather case envelops a cellular phone, using the power of light to prolong the life of the battery.

"If we can put it on three dimensions, we can get some use from the juice," Professor Zhang said.

Scientists chose spinach both for its high chlorophyll content, which makes it dark green, and its low price. Green peas would have served as well, but spinach is cheap, plentiful and readily available. Scientists usually have to grow and fertilize their own fresh peas.

"You can buy nice bags of washed baby spinach, and you can get that year-round," Professor Bruce said.

Scientists also hope to use the chips for transistors and memory elements, according to Marc Baldo, a professor of electrical engineering at M.I.T. who worked on the project. Professor Zhang said, however, that devices based on the group's discovery will not be available commercially for about a decade.

There may be a better detergent to be found, and scientists must figure out how to build chips with additional layers of spinach matter, among other things. But vegetables could eventually power your electronics.

"It will take some time," Professor Zhang said, "but we have broken the barrier for the concept."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/te...Lj43MhrabbA2Kw





A Sailor Man, 75, Gets a Digital Nip and Tuck
Michel Marriott

POPEYE, the spinach-dependent cartoon sailor man who never could muster the muscle to marry his love-struck "goil," turned 75 this year. And King Features Syndicate, his agent, decided it was time not for retirement but for an extreme makeover.

This week, Popeye made his debut as a computer-generated 3-D character in a 44-minute movie called "Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy," available on DVD ($20). A 22-minute version of the film, the first Popeye animation in 15 years, is to be broadcast on Dec. 17 on Fox.

Applying digital technologies to iconic figures born on the comics pages of the 1920's was far from simply translating hand-drawn animation to computer-driven modeling and motion. Part of the challenge was capturing the kinetic style of Popeye's theatrical cartoons, said Frank Caruso, vice president and creative director at King Features.

Fleischer Studios, which gave Popeye his big screen shot (with Betty Boop) in 1933, lent the Popeye universe a surreal touch, enthusiasts say. Some of the effect, said Mr. Caruso, a former freelance cartoonist, was achieved with a style of animation in which everything always seemed elastic and in motion.

"Whether a bird was flying by or a character was just standing, they were bobbing at their knees," he said. "Even a chair was breathing."

Mr. Caruso said he and Mainframe Entertainment, the Canadian company that did the computer-generated animation for the Popeye project, were determined to recreate that effect with little or no trace of the mechanical movements often present in computer-generated imagery, or C.G.I.

"The last thing we wanted to do was step outside Popeye's world," Mr. Caruso said.

That required Mainframe's animators to depart from the usual approach to designing digital characters, especially those basically modeled on human anatomy: two legs, two arms, trunk, torso, hips and head.

Consider Olive Oyl, said Zeke Norton of Mainframe, the film's director.

If Popeye's girlfriend were flesh and blood she would stand 5 feet 10 inches tall, weigh 96 pounds and have serpentine arms and legs best described as long. More daunting, her limbs are missing most joints, like elbows, Mr. Norton said.

That forced Mainframe to create a virtual skeleton - routinely a part of digital modeling for computer-generated characters - that contained lots of joints, so she could move in much the same loopy way she did in her prime, before "Popeye" joined the gallery of assembly-line cartoons that characterized many of the made-for-television efforts of the 1970's, Mr. Caruso said.

And for all the innovation in computer-animated movies like "Finding Nemo," "Shrek" and this week's box-office champ, "The Incredibles," Mr. Caruso contends that bringing Popeye and his co-stars into the digital age was a singular challenge. "It's a tougher task," Mr. Caruso said. "These characters, Popeye specifically, are so established in the way they move."

Glenn Ross, president of Lions Gate Entertainment's Family Home Entertainment, the distributor of the film, said digitizing Popeye would enable a new generation to "come to see and appreciate him."

"My son has really grown up on C.G.I.," Mr. Ross said of his 6-year-old. "Many kids in his age group expect to see Popeye in 3-D animation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/te...ts/11pope.html


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Valenti's Successor, but Not His Clone
Sharon Waxman

He's about as bland as Jack Valenti is colorful. A navy blue blazer and a comb-over. A long face with puffy eyelids that have yet to feel the sharp edge of Beverly Hills' finest technicians.

One look at Dan Glickman and you think: Peter Sellers meets 24 years of government service.

But he's in Hollywood now. Mr. Glickman, the genial, mild-mannered new president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America who replaced Mr. Valenti in September, has been busy meeting industry players, bonding with studio chiefs, racing from a speech to a lunch to a news conference announcing lawsuits against movie thieves.

And despite his glamour-free physical appearance (it's hard, somehow, not to regret Mr. Valenti's cowboy boots, the bouffant white hair, the French Legion of Honor rosette), Mr. Glickman has some changes in mind.

"New guy, new manager, new team," he says, drowning his egg-white frittata in hot sauce during breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel here. "It would defy logic to think I would not review the organization and make changes." Two months into the job, Mr. Glickman, 59, has lost the striped, Washington-issue tie, at least for the day, and has been quietly putting his stamp on the organization, the studios' trade group.

For starters last week, Mr. Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas and ex-secretary of agriculture, gathered the heads of the seven major studios - the association's members - for the first board meeting in many months. He plans on having such meetings every few months, rather than continuing Mr. Valenti's ad hoc phone and one-on-one diplomacy.

He has also established monthly meetings of the companies' Washington-based lobbyists, who are sometimes on opposite sides of major issues. He hired Stacy Carlson, director of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Washington office, to head global government affairs, an apparent nod to Republicans angered by Hollywood's hiring of a Democrat to represent it in the capital.

Mr. Glickman complains that there are not enough actual lobbyists working for the movie industry. "The heart of any trade association is its ability to interface with the government," he said, noting that there are only about eight full-time lobbyists at the association.

And he is focused on defining a long-term strategy for the group, which many believe must prove its relevance in a new world of multinational, multimedia corporations for whom movies are only one area of concern.

"The overlying issue is piracy and how we fight it," Mr. Glickman said, a day after announcing plans to sue people who illegally download movies off the Internet, a provocative way to begin his stewardship. "I still believe lawsuits are only one part of the strategy. Education and awareness and embracing new technologies is part of it. It's important that we be seen embracing technology."

Mr. Glickman is currently spending at least a week each month in Hollywood but says he also wants to get to know the technical side of the entertainment industry.

It seems obvious that given his Democratic pedigree, he will also need to spend time building bridges in a Republican-controlled Washington. After all, how many M.P.A.A. candidates listed President Bill Clinton as a reference on their résumés?

In Washington, rumors still swirl about Republican retribution. In early October, Republican negotiators in the House killed a provision in a tax bill that would have provided a $1 billion credit to television and movie companies amid word that they were angry over Mr. Glickman's appointment.

"I think that partisan politics regarding me was a very small part, if at all," Mr. Glickman said. "I would hope members of Congress support successful American industries that create lots of jobs"

But he says he is used to building consensus, both from his years representing a heartland state in Congress and from serving a heavily conservative industry as a cabinet secretary. "If you live long enough you learn people are pretty much the same if you treat them nicely," he said. "But I do think my background can be helpful in building bridges for this industry in various parts of the country."

He doesn't look like a good old boy. But as he said: "I'm no redneck. Or if so, I'm a Jewish redneck. But I do have my small-town roots."

Mr. Glickman was born in Wichita, Kan., the grandson of immigrants from Belarus and Ukraine who made a living in the scrap-metal business. His father was an independent oil and gas operator.

In Kansas, most folks were Republicans, and so were the people for whom the young, politically active Mr. Glickman worked. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his law degree from George Washington University Law School. Eventually his opposition to the Vietnam War led him to become a Democrat.

After winning a seat on the local school board, he ran for Congress in 1976, defeating the Republican incumbent.

He earned a reputation as a low-key worker bee. "It takes awhile to appreciate your father beyond being your father, but he really is about as egoless a person as you can find, given what he does for a living," said his son, Jonathan Glickman, a producer at Spyglass Entertainment. "He came to Congress in 1976 with a lot of hotshot superstars - Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt - and he just did his job. It's all about the work."

On a personal level, Mr. Glickman became known for a self-deprecating sense of humor, once publicly singing a version of the Beatles' "Fool on the Hill" at a Democratic Party event in the 1980's, changing the lyrics to make himself the fool.

Mr. Glickman served in Congress for 18 years, racking up a record as a moderate, if not a conservative, representative of his largely agricultural state. After losing the 1994 election to a Republican who attacked his stance on gun control and associated him with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Glickman was named agriculture secretary by the president.

For six years, he tramped through soybean fields and traveled the world to negotiate international treaties related to farm subsidies and trade. After Mr. Clinton left office, Mr. Glickman served as director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, before being appointed to take over the Motion Picture Association of America.

"We felt he was the best candidate for the job," said Barry M. Meyer, chairman of Warner Brothers, which belongs to the association. "He had a history of crossing partisan lines on many occasions in his career, especially at agriculture. And this is not a job for one administration. We felt we should be choosing the best person for the job."

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, 20th Century Fox's parent company, said: "Certainly his personal style is extremely attractive. From the first time I met him I felt that this is a guy who's very comfortable in his own skin. Determined, not particularly showy, and anxious to put his head down and do the hard work of the organization."

Not that governance alone will bring the seven studios - Warner, 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM, Paramount, Sony and Universal - into line. By all accounts, Mr. Glickman will need all his skills in creating consensus to succeed in the job. And just a few days after the election, here was Mr. Glickman downplaying the notion that the vote had further distanced two Americas, culturally distinct and ideologically at odds.

"I'm from Kansas," he said. "I got this job. I've had more calls from people from Kansas asking, 'Can you get me into the Academy Awards?' "

He added: "My feeling is once the election is over and certainty settles in, people of all stripes will feel more secure, we'll move on nicely. There's red and blue in all of us."

And apparently, there's a little Hollywood in him too. After the antipiracy news conference last week with the heads of the industry's guilds, Mr. Glickman turned privately to Gil Cates, secretary-treasurer of the Directors Guild of America and producer of this year's Academy Awards, and asked: "Good?"

"Good," Mr. Cates responded.

"Good enough?" Mr. Glickman asked.

"Good enough for what?"

"You know for what," said Mr. Glickman, who was hoping for a spot as a presenter at the Oscars. Later, he sighed: "He didn't commit. For all I know I'll turn on the television and see Jack there up on stage."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/movies/11glic.html


















Until next week,

- js.
















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"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[DeadMan]

Just a note about the 10 year old story. Not that it makes a big difference. Father says he bought the computer for his child 2 years ago when he was 10 so that would make the child about 12 right now. I'm just being picky though

[JackSpratts]

these so-called ''john doe'' subpoenas take some amount of time to work through the various legal proceeedings to get to the point where an actual paper is delivered to a defendant. the date of alleged violations have to be specified by the petitioner of course and while i'd doubt they'd go back very far they will go back a bit, to when the boy was 11 say, possibly even 10. the article didn't make it exactly clear but yes, he wouldn't be 10 anymore.

- js.