Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 26th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"I can imagine years from now something being distributed through cellphones, BlackBerries, computers, whatever. [That video should] only go through a TV set is as archaic as the thought that music can only be distributed on a CD." – Robert F. X. Sillerman


"She's not even a fan of my music. If the song's not about her, she doesn't care. I've started telling her they're all about her so she'll like them." – Mark Oliver Everett


"It's so nice not having to wait for other people to show up. It's a very lonely process, and you miss the gregarious interaction you'd have with musicians. But the flip side of that is your equipment doesn't argue with you, so it's easier being a megalomanical home studio despot." – Moby


"TiVo is God's machine, the iPod plays our own personal symphonies, and each device brings with it its own series of individualized rituals. What we don't seem to realize is that ritual thoroughly personalized is no longer religion or art. It is fetish. And unlike religion and art, which encourage us to transcend our own experience, fetish urges us to return obsessively to the sounds and images of an arrested stage of development." – Christine Rosen


"Over the last year, all the major labels agreed on specifications for the DualDisc, and no one label will control it. The logo will probably be licensed by the Recording Industry Association of America." – Robert Levine















Drive-sharing picking up speed

Music Sharing Evolves Again
Paul Roberts

Music industry litigation may be creating a harder-to-police file sharing underground, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Lawsuits against file swappers and peer-to-peer (P2P) software companies may be forcing Internet users onto informal networks to exchange songs and videos, the researchers said.

A Pew survey of 1,421 US adult Internet users found that informal file-sharing networks are used by 19 per cent of music and video downloaders, with MP3 players, email and instant message products popular mediums for transferring files between friends and family. The survey results suggest that litigation is shifting file swapping to other online avenues, even as file-sharing activity recovers from recent declines, Pew said.

People share music

Around 27 per cent of Internet users surveyed by Pew said they downloaded either music or video files over the Internet, and 48 per cent of all those who downloaded said they use sources other than P2P networks or premium online services, such as iTunes, to get music or video files. Pew estimates that about 18 million Americans are swapping files using nontraditional means based on the survey results.

Approximately 19 per cent of the adult Internet users in the survey admitted to downloading files using a music player. That translates into about 7 million adults, and is surprising, because products like the iPod are not designed to support file sharing between devices, said Mary Madden, a research specialist at Pew who wrote the report.

Exchanging music and video files over email or instant message networks was even more common. Twenty-eight per cent of downloaders, or an estimated ten million adult Internet users in the US, said they got files that way. Other alternative sources included music and movie sites, blogs and online review sites.

Persistent sharing

The informal file-sharing on networks that also serve other purposes is harder to monitor and show that Internet users are just finding workarounds and alternative ways to trade files, Madden said.

"With the everyday use of email and messaging, it's interesting to see that around one in four downloaders get their files that way," she said.

File sharing through those means doesn't approach the scale of swapping on P2P networks, but does show that those who want to share songs or get a file are persistent, she said.

"People aren't sending entire albums, but if they hear a song and want to share it with a friend, they might be more comfortable sending it over IM (than using P2P software)," she said.

P2P use declines

However, movie and music industry lawsuits and legal online music services may be dampening illegal P2P file trading. Almost twice as many survey respondents, 43 per cent, said they use paid online music services compared with just 24 per cent in a similar survey in 2004. The survey found that file downloaders are actually more likely to say they use paid services than P2P, Madden said.

About 30 per cent of respondents who said they were former file swappers admitted giving file sharing up because of fears about getting in trouble or RIAA lawsuits. But those who took the survey were divided on the legal questions that surround file swapping on the Internet, she said.

Who is responsible?

49 per cent of survey respondents said firms that own and operate file-sharing networks should be held responsible for the pirated music and movie files traded on the networks. However, a majority were divided about whether individual file traders or a combination of companies and individuals should be held responsible. 18 per cent of those surveyed said they didn't know who should take the blame for pirated music and video content.

Madden said: "What this study shows is that people download music and video files from a wide array of sources. One thing that technology companies fear is that their products will get caught in the crossfire if the court rules in favour of the entertainment industry," she said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...ge=1&pagePos=2


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It’s official

Music Sales Rise In United States

After years of decline, sales of recorded music and music-video products appear to be stabilizing in the United States as the industry continues to battle piracy and promote authorized online music services, according to data released Tuesday by the industry's major trade and lobbying groups.

The number of CDs and other music products shipped from record labels to retail merchants rose 2 percent last year, to 814 million units, the first annual increase in five years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

The shipments carried an estimated value of $12.2 billion, a rise of 2.5 percent, the trade organization said. The figures refer to albums and products shipped to retailers and mail-order clubs, not actual sales to consumers.

A separate report Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global trade group, said that worldwide sales of recorded music products were essentially flat last year.

In a case scheduled for the Supreme Court next week, justices are being asked to decide whether the file-sharing companies Grokster and Morpheus can be held liable for any copyright infringement by their users who may engage in trading music and video files free.
http://news.com.com/Music+sales+rise...3-5631698.html


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Study: Majority of DVR Owners Like Them

percent of Americans own a TiVo or other digital video recorder and another 6 percent plan to buy one in the next year, a study finds.

The overwhelming majority of DVR owners - 81 percent - say they "love" or "like" them, according to the joint study from Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research. More than half say the DVRs have had a "big impact" on their lives.

Among all recorders of television shows, including VCR owners, 29 percent cite the ability to skip ads as the primary reason for recording shows, while 52 percent want to watch shows at a more convenient time.

Those who don't record shows are evenly split between who say it's too difficult or time consuming and those who cite an unwillingness to decide ahead of time what they want to watch.

The study also finds that a quarter of Americans have watched video on the Internet and a similar number have used pay-per-view or other on-demand services offered by their cable or satellite provider.

The findings were based on interviews with 1,855 teens and adults from Jan. 13 to Feb. 2. Participants were identified mostly through a random sample of Arbitron's diary keepers for radio audience ratings, which in turn were identified through random telephone dialing. Additional participants came from a separate random phone sample.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Voting On P2P-Shared Files May Thwart Spammers
Celeste Biever

The first peer-to-peer software allowing users to vote on the reliability of a file could thwart spammers - but it might also help illegal file sharers dodge decoys deployed by the record and movie industries.

"It targets anything that the users find disagreeable," explains Emin Gun Sirer of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US, who wrote the new software. "I suspect that people will be equally repelled by spam and decoys, and vote against both with comparable fervour."

Named Credence, the software is embedded in Limewire - a popular open-source peer-to-peer (P2P) network - and it already has over 150 users. "Ebay has a great rating system," explains Sirer. "Our goal is to develop one for peer-to-peer."

Credence asks users to vote on whether downloaded files are what they purport to be and then ranks the files. When peers download new files, they are directed to highly-ranked files first, which are less likely to be spam or decoys.

Spammers will not be able to subvert the system by voting for their own files, says Sirer. Votes are only counted if they are submitted by people whose votes you have agreed with in the past. "If spammers deploy robots to vote for themselves, they will all be highly correlated with each other, but they would not correlate well with people voting honestly," he explains.

Decoys and spam

P2P networks allow groups of strangers to share large files over the internet. While they have attracted attention because they enable the illegal distribution of copyrighted movies and music, they also have legitimate uses in providing access to un-copyrighted content.

But recently file-sharing has become less appealing due to an increase in spam files, which appear to be music but in fact hawk bogus goods, and decoy files, which look like ordinary MP3 music files but are actually corrupted and unplayable.

In the last six months, spammers have stepped up their onslaught, often creating the names of spam files dynamically - instantly tailoring them to match a search request. Sirer says that every time a user searches for a file on a network, at least one of the entries on the list of results is spam.

The music and movie industry is also making illegal file-sharing increasingly difficult - a group at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York, US, estimates that 50% of the files on the networks are now decoys.

"Noble attempt"

P2P networks can also harbour malicious software, which Credence could help users avoid. "It's definitely a big problem," says Andy Salo, of security company TippingPoint in Austin, Texas, US. "And this is a noble attempt to solve it."

But not everyone believes that Credence will help illegal copyright infringers spot decoy files. Marc Morgenstern, of Overpeer, a New York-based company that seeds P2P networks with decoys, says even if the program did catch on with enough users, "it will be very difficult for that type of technology to have an effect on our ability to protect copyrighted content".

For example, he says, Overpeer is constantly injecting new files into P2P networks, making it harder for their decoys to accumulate negative rankings.

While Sirer and his colleagues were embedding credence within Limewire, they discovered two vulnerabilities that could have given any member of the P2P network access to another member's entire hard drive, not just the files they wanted to share. The team alerted the owners of Limewire, which has since patched the vulnerabilities.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7179


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Appeal Filed in Apple Trade Secrets Suit
Rachel Konrad

Online journalists who published secrets about Apple Computer Inc. filed an appeal Tuesday in a case that could have broad implications for the media.

A California judge ruled March 11 that three independent online reporters may have to provide the identities of their confidential sources and that they weren't protected by "shield laws" that usually protect journalists.

In December, Apple sued 25 unnamed individuals, called "Does" and believed to be Apple employees, who leaked specifications about a product code-named "Asteroid" to Monish Bhatia, Jason O'Grady and another person who writes under the pseudonym Kasper Jade. Their articles appeared in the online publications Apple Insider and PowerPage.

The Cupertino-based company said the leaks and the published documents violated nondisclosure agreements and California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Company attorneys demanded that the reporters identify their sources.

The reporters sought a protective order against the subpoenas, saying that identifying sources would create a "chilling effect" that could erode the media's ability to report in the public's interest.

But Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled in Apple's favor earlier this month, saying that reporters who published "stolen property" weren't entitled to protections.

On Tuesday, attorneys representing the journalists filed an appeal, as expected. They argued that the judge's ruling violated the First Amendment and that Apple should first subpoena its own employees or use sophisticated computer forensics to determine the sources of the leak before subpoenaing the journalists.

"The California courts have a long history of supporting and protecting the freedom of the press," said attorney Kurt Opsahl of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the journalists. "The Court of Appeal will now get the opportunity to correct a ruling that endangers all journalists."

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined specific comment on the appeal, but said: "Apple's DNA is innovation, and protection of trade secrets is crucial to our success."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Yahoo Adds Search For 'Flexible' Copyright Content
Matt Hines

Yahoo has added the ability to search specifically for content with unconventional copyright arrangements.

The search giant launched the new function Thursday, giving Web surfers the ability to scour content hosted by Creative Commons, a nonprofit group aimed at carving out new ways to share creative works.

The search tool was produced in order to help promote Creative Commons' efforts to advocate the use of nontraditional copyright arrangements between digital content developers and people interested in licensing those individuals' work. The group said that most of the content available through the Yahoo search can be licensed for free under required attribution or noncommercial usage guidelines.

Yahoo introduced a dedicated interface for the Creative Commons search, which it said links to millions of Web pages featuring the unconventional content licensing agreements. The new approach to sharing original work is being pushed by Creative Commons because the group believes the current patent process has become too inflexible and often awards too much protection to ideas that aren't genuinely unique.
http://news.com.com/Yahoo+adds+searc...3-5633649.html


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Noose tightens round necks of file- sharers worldwide

Canada Re-Writes Lawbook, Swedes Make First Arrest
Paul Hales:

The Canadian Government said it is setting about re- writing its copyright laws in order to "address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet".

In a joint statement yesterday, the Canadian ministers of industry and women said the government would shortly introduce legislation to implement the provisions of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaties, clarify liability for Internet service Providers and facilitate the use of the Internet for educational and research Purposes.

Minister responsible for Status of Women Liza Frulla, issued a call to "strengthen the hand of our creators and cultural industries against the unauthorized use of their works on the Internet."

She said the government wanted to show, "how we intend to build a copyright framework for the 21st century."

The minister responsible for the status of men wasn’t able to comment because he doesn’t exist.

File-sharers on Canada have been happily downloading whatever they like from P2P networks in the knowledge that they had the protection of the law. Now, they’ll risk prosecution like the rest of us.

In a related development, a 27-year old man became the first Swede to be prosecuted for with illegally sharing files over the Internet, according to a Swedish paper, The Local. Investigators say they found him sharing a copy of a film called Hipp Hipp Hora from his PC.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22130


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France

News Agency Sues Google, Testing Fair Use
Anick Jesdanun

In a case that could set limits on Internet search engines, the French news agency AFP is suing Google Inc. for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.

Agence France-Presse said the "Google News" service infringes on AFP's copyrights by reproducing information from the Web sites of subscribers of the Paris-based news wholesaler.

The issues raised by the case have profound implications for the Internet, where anyone can be a publisher and Web journals, or blogs, are becoming more frequent destinations for seekers of news.

The lawsuit's outcome will likely hinge on whether Google can persuade the courts that Google News constitutes permissible "fair use" of copyright material. Legal scholars say Google could argue that it adds value by significantly improving the news-consuming experience without greatly harming AFP's ability to sell its service.

But in seeking at least $17.5 million in damages, AFP says Google adds little because its news site looks much like those of AFP subscribers, albeit one where software and not human editors determine the placement of stories on a page.

The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., where the lawsuit was filed Thursday, will ultimately have to balance search engines' desire to give consumers convenience, selling ads in the process, and copyright owners' rights to control their works.

"The story (of the Internet) from day one has been one of waves of liberalization followed by attempts at control," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard law professor. "It's rightly up to the courts and the government to figure out where the lines should be drawn."

It's possible, though, for the courts to skirt key issues given Google's promise this week to remove the AFP items in question, though technically that's not something that can be done overnight.

AFP lawyer Joshua Kaufman said the lawsuit would nevertheless proceed because damage already has been done.

The Google News service, which debuted in 2002, scans some 4,500 news outlets and highlights the top stories under common categories such as world and sports.

Many stories carry a small image, or thumbnail, along with the headline and the first sentence or two. Visitors can click on the headline to read the full story at the source Web site.

Yahoo Inc. has a similar service, though it uses human editors and pays some news sources, including AFP and The Associated Press, for rights. (Google wouldn't comment on any similar financial arrangements.)

In a statement, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said Web sites can request removal though most "want to be included in Google News because they believe it is a benefit to them and their readers."

In fact, AFP's own Web site includes a "robots.txt" file that spurns search engines, essentially telling them to avoid indexing its news pages.

But the case is complicated by the fact that the stories come not directly from AFP but from its subscribers, some of which might want the rest of their sites indexed to generate ad-boosting referrals.

The fair use argument will likely draw upon a 2002 appeals court ruling that thumbnail images serve a different, transformative function as compared to full-size originals - and thus constitute fair use.

But Charles D. Ossola, who handled that appeal on behalf of the copyright holder, said that ruling may not apply to the use of text, given that summaries can be rewritten whereas images cannot for search purposes.

A 1985 Supreme Court ruling on a non-Internet copyright dispute found that small excerpts can constitute infringement if they represent the heart of the work. AFP argues that the headline and the first sentence of a story constitute such an essence.

"They capture the reader's attention and describe what the rest of the article is about," the lawsuit said.

AP spokesman Jack Stokes came out in AFP's support, issuing a statement that AP believes "intellectual property laws protect news. That protection is important to ensure that organizations such as the AP can afford to collect news."

That said, facts cannot be copyrighted, and Google may have a claim on such citations if they are mostly based on facts not expression, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco.

Von Lohmann said a ruling against Google also could harm the free exchange of ideas on blogs, which often cite and link to news stories.

The AFP case is not the only lawsuit challenging a search engine's practices. A Web site that sells nude photos of women has sued Google, accusing it of distributing links and passwords. Several companies also have sued Google and others over the use of trademarks as keywords for triggering a rival's ads.

"They are becoming multimedia centers rather than simply indexing information for consumers," said Ossola, who represents Geico Corp. in one such trademark case against Google. "The argument of convenience and benefits to consumers only goes so far when it runs into what are the legitimate rights" of intellectual property owners.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Google Loses French Trademark Appeal, Ordered to Pay $100,300 in Damages to Two Companies
AP

A French appeals court upheld a ruling against Google's advertising policy in a decision published Wednesday, ordering the Internet search engine to pay euro75,000 (US$100,300) in damages to two companies whose trademarks it infringed.

The court in Versailles, west of Paris, found that Google Inc. was guilty of "trademark counterfeiting" and ordered it to pay the damages originally awarded to French travel companies Luteciel and Viaticum, as well as costs.

The companies' founder, Fabrice Dariot, filed the suit because Google users carrying out searches on the names of their registered trademarks including "Bourse des Vols" -- which means "Flights Marketplace" -- were offered ads for rival companies such as low-cost airline easyJet.

In October 2003, the lower court had ordered Google to stop showing rival 'sponsored links' in response to searches on Dariot's trademarks and later fined Google when it failed to comply in time.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050316/franc...demarks_1.html


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Google Faces French Competition

President Jacques Chirac has told France's national library to draw up a plan to put European literary works on the Internet, rivalling a similar project by U.S.-based Web search engine Google.

Chirac gave the go-ahead for research into the project after Jean-Noel Jeanneney, who heads the national library, expressed concern that Google's plan to put books from some of the world's great libraries online would favour the English language.

Chirac asked Jeanneney and France's culture minister to look at ways "in which the collections of the great libraries in France and Europe could be made more widely and more quickly accessible by Internet", Chirac's office said in a statement on Wednesday.

Chirac would seek support among other European countries in the coming weeks for a bigger, coordinated push to get Europe's literary works online.

Jeanneney, who met Chirac on Wednesday, said last month Google's choice of works was likely to favour Anglo-Saxon ideas and that he wanted the European Union to balance this with its own programme and its own Internet search engines.

His views made waves among intellectuals in France, where many people are wary of the impact of American ways and ideas on the French language and culture.

California-based Google said last December it would scan millions of books and periodicals into its popular search engine over the next few years. Its partners in the project are Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library.

Google says the project will promote knowledge by making it more easily and widely accessible. It aims to make money by attracting people to its Web site and to its advertisements.

Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres said the French move was not a direct challenge to Google's project. "It is simply the wish for a diversity of influence," he said.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050316/80/feem0.html


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Free Speech

Woman Cleared in Mass Obscene E-Mailings

A death penalty opponent who sent e-mails laced with obscenities and references to Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden to a pro-death- penalty Web site was not guilty of a crime, a judge ruled.

Police charged Rachel L. Riffee with misdemeanor electronic harassment after they traced to her two e-mails and three Web site postings sent to a pro-death penalty site run by Frederick A. Romano, the brother of a murder victim.

On Monday, Circuit Judge J. Barry Hughes acquitted Riffee, 34, of Sykesville, ruling that state law protects political speech. He said the Web site invited discussion, and a few e-mails do not constitute a pattern of harassment.

Prosecutor Jennifer L. Darby, who refused to read the communications in the courtroom, said Romano felt threatened by the vicious tone of the e-mails and postings.

But defense attorney Andrew M. Dansicker said Riffee did not know the communications expressing her strong anti-death penalty views would go to Romano himself, any more than someone sending a message to Microsoft would assume "Bill Gates would get it."

"They're angry, they're vulgar, they're curse words - and they're not directed at Mr. Romano," Dansicker said.

Romano's Web site focused on Steven H. Oken, who was executed last June for killing Romano's 20-year-old sister, Dawn M. Garvin, in 1987. Oken also was convicted of killing two other women during a 15-day spree.

The e-mails and postings were sent around the time of the execution.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT


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Holland

Occasionally Freedom Of Speech Can Prevail Over Copyright

Today, Attorney-General Verkade delivered his opinion regarding the Scientology case to the Dutch Supreme Court. In this case the Church of Scientology accuses Karin Spaink of copyright infringement for making parts of their course material available on her website. By publishing this material, Spaink wants to inspire a public debate about the nature of the cult.

According to his 82 page opinion, Verkade is of the opinion that under certain circumstances freedom of speech, as protected by art. 10 EDHR, prevails over copyright. To quote Verkade: "Although copyright resides under Article 1 of the First Protocol of EDHR and can therefore be regarded as a human right, this does not exempt copyright from being balanced against the right to freedom of information."

The opinion also contains essential remarks about the right to quote, especially with regard to the question of whether a work that is quoted from has been legally published. According to the Attorney-General it is not necessary for the author of the work to have given his consent to publication. In this particular case, making a work available to the public by a court library, as happened with the Fishman Affidavit, is sufficient for the work to have been legally published. Hence it may be quoted from by third parties.

If Supreme Court follows the advice of its Attorney-General, the ruling in appeal will stand. The Supreme Court will rule on July 8, 2005.
http://www.xs4all.nl/nieuws/bericht.php?id=625&taal=en


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First Swede Prosecuted For Sharing Files On Net

A man in Västerås has become the first Swede to be charged with illegally sharing files via the Internet. But prosecutors say that unless the case results in a prison sentence, other cases of web piracy might never get to court.

The 27-year old at the centre of the case is accused of having the film Hipp Hipp Hora on his computer, which he allowed others to download. If convicted, he could face up to two years imprisonment.

The case was brought after a tip off from Antipiratbyrån (APB), a lobby organization set up by the media industry to combat illegal downloading in Sweden. Since the man was reported APB has found itself in hot water, with an Internet company accusing the organization itself of illegally downloading films and games.

Uppsala prosecutor Katrin Rudström says that this is a vital test case, and that the result will have big implications for future prosecutions. She told Aftonbladet that if the case resulted only in a fine, it was unlikely that other file sharers would be prosecuted in the future. This was partly due, she said, to the fact that police would not have the right to demand information about which computers were sharing their files if the crime was only punishable by financial penalties.

“As these cases do not involve criminals, but instead quite ordinary people who share their files, any prison sentence would certainly be suspended,” Rudström said.

The case comes as Sweden’s legislators prepare to debate a new copyright law that would make it clearer that unauthorised downloading of copyrighted material is illegal. Yet Justice Minister Thomas Bodström has made it clear that enforcing the new law will not be a priority area for the police.

Meanwhile, the opposition Center Party has said that downloading should be allowed, and the law should focus on those who spread material rather than those who download it.

“It is, for example, a breach of copyright laws to copy a music book, but it is not illegal to receive or use the copied book,” said the party’s legal affairs spokesman, Johan Linander. “It should be no more complicated than that in the digital arena,” he added.

The Center Party will not be able to block the law on its own, although Linander said that he would argue his case when the centre-right alliance to which the party belongs meets in April.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=1172


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Sweden To Introduce Tougher Download Laws

The Swedish government has proposed changes to the country's copyright law which would make it illegal to download, as well as distribute, music and films on the internet without the copyright owner's permission.

But justice minister Thomas Bodström said on Thursday that the tightened law was not intended to be used against individuals downloading material for their own private use.

"With this new law we want to fight against those who earn serious money by spreading copyright-protected material," he said.

"But the idea isn't that the police will charge into homes hunting teenagers who are sitting there downloading."

The government's 600-page proposal comes in the middle of a controversy over the actions of Sweden's anti-piracy organisation, Antipiratbyrån (APB), which last week raided an internet supplier, Bahnhof, and confiscated machines holding 450,000 sound files, 5,500 games and 1,800 films.

Thousands of people have now reported APB, which is an interest group for the film and computer games industries, to the Swedish Data Inspection Board. Among them are internet entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson and the founder of mp3 company Jens of Sweden, Jens Nylander, who say that the organisation has broken personal data laws by checking and registering "IP addresses", unique identifiers for every computer on the internet, before reporting downloaders to the police.

The Data Inspection Board says it will launch an investigation after Easter.

"I'll put the coffee on," said APB lawyer Henrik Pontén. "They're welcome. It's natural that they want to see what we're doing after the debate around this."

Pontén, who has been the subject of a hate campaign by disgruntled downloaders, may need to make extra coffee: Sweden's National Post and Telecom Agency has also said that it will look into whether APB has broken laws governing electronic communication.

Dagens Nyheter met three self-confessed downloaders who attempted to explain why "copyright is a meaningless word".

"If the copyright owner doesn't get paid, that's not my problem," said Ibi Botani.

"Music came before copyright. If I take milk from you, you don't have any milk left. But if I download a film, you still have the film. You haven't lost anything."

His friend Sara Andersson agreed.

"Technology has run away from the rules. The law has become irrelevant," she said.

Despite such opposition, justice minister Thomas Bodström said he believes the new law will be effective.

"You shouldn't underestimate people's attitude towards the law. The majority don't want to be criminals. Now we've sorted out the lack of clarity in the law, so ordinary people know what the deal is."

Bodström added that he hoped the industry would react by making it possible to download a song for ten kronor.

"Then you won't have to buy an expensive album in the record shop," he said.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?I...&date=20050317


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Bahnhof Blames APB Insider For Illegal Files
Alex Tanner

The illegal file-sharing case against Swedish ISP Bahnhof has taken a bizarre twist, with the company accusing Antipiratbyra (APB), Sweden's anti-piracy agency, of planting files on its servers.

The APB raided Bahnhof's offices earlier this month. After the raid the APB's lawyer Henrik Ponten admitted that the agency had used a paid infiltrator to gather the evidence.

However, Bahnhof has now completed its own internal investigation and has responded with claims that the infiltrator had himself conducted 68,000 uploads and downloads.

Bahnhof also claims that the infiltrator went so far as to purchase new hardware for the servers to ensure there was enough memory to store all the files.

"It's like handing out matches and petrol to a pyromaniac and then reporting him to the police when he burns a house down," said Bahnhof MD Jon Karlung.

The ISP has released copies of its log files to the media, which it is using to support its claims, and is considering reporting the matter to the police which could potentially see charges brought against the APB.

The APB is already being investigated by the Swedish Data Inspection Board and the National Post and Telecom Agency following accusations that it breached laws covering the protection of personal data and those governing electronic communication.
http://www.netimperative.com/2005/03...orruption/view


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Corporations pleased, people less so

India Alters Law on Drug Patents
Donald G. McNeil Jr.

India, a major source of inexpensive AIDS drugs, passed a new patent law yesterday that groups providing drugs to the world's poorest patients fear will choke off their supply of new treatments.

The new law, amending India's 1970 Patent Act, affects everything from electronics to software to medicines, and has been expected for years as a condition for India to join the World Trade Organization.

But because millions of poor people in India and elsewhere - including by some estimates half the AIDS patients in the Third World - rely on India's generic drug industry, lobbyists for multinational drug companies as well as activists fighting for cheap drugs had descended on New Delhi to try to influence the outcome.

The law, which passed by a voice vote in Parliament's upper house yesterday after days of wrangling over amendments in the lower house, was in the end not as restrictive as the drug activists had feared.

"It's very disappointing, but it could have been worse," said Daniel Berman, a coordinator of the global access campaign for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. "All generics could have been removed from the market."

Instead, all the generic drugs already approved in India can still be sold, though sellers must now pay licensing fees. There are also provisions allowing companies that make generics to copy drugs in the future.

But there are relatively tough criteria for such copying, and activists predicted that prices for newly invented drugs will be much higher, because drug makers will have the same 20-year patent monopolies as they have in the West. As AIDS patients develop resistance to old drugs, new treatments will become less affordable, they said.

In addition, it is unclear whether makers of generic drugs in other countries, like Brazil, China and Thailand, will fill any increasing demand for cheaper medicines.

But India's governing Congress Party, which sponsored the bill, disputed the contention that prices would soar. "The government will have enormous powers to deal with any unusual price rise," said Commerce Minister Kamal Nath.

All Western countries grant "product patents" on new inventions. Since 1970, India has granted "process patents," which allow another inventor to patent the same product as long as it was created by a novel process. In pharmaceuticals, that has meant that a tiny tweak in the synthesis of a molecule yields a new patent. Several companies can produce the same drug, creating competition that drives down prices.

Before 1970, India's patent laws came from its colonial days, and it had some of the world's highest drug prices. Process patents on drugs, fertilizers and pesticides have extended life expectancy and ended regular famines.

In Africa, exports by Indian companies, especially Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, helped drive the annual price of antiretroviral treatment down from $15,000 per patient a decade ago to about $200 now. They also simplified therapy by putting three AIDS drugs in one pill. Dr. Yusuf Hamied, Cipla's chairman, called the new law "a very sad day for India."

But some other Indian drug makers, along with multinational companies, praised it. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a Geneva-based lobbying group, called the law "a significant step" that would let India "take a leading role in global pharmaceutical research and development."

S. Ramakrishna, chief lobbyist for Pfizer India, a subsidiary of the world's largest drug maker, said the bill's passage abandoned "the utopian concept that every invention should be as free as air or water," according to The International Herald Tribune.

In the United States, Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobbying organization for the American drug industry, said the new law would be "good for India and good for Indian patients," but cautioned that his group was "still measuring the impact on the overall bill of several last- minute amendments."

Some multinationals had refused to invest in India without stronger patent protection, and Indian companies that do original research were also eager for it.

But Mr. Berman said a "mailbox" created by the government two years ago in which drug makers could deposit patents they hoped to file when the law was amended had 1,500 proposals from Indian companies - and 7,000 from foreign ones, suggesting the new law would benefit foreign companies more.

Under the new law, a maker of generics can apply to copy a patented drug, but only after it has been marketed for three years. In addition, the patent owner can object.

Also, the generic's maker must pay a "reasonable" royalty, although the law does not define reasonable. Two years ago, Mr. Berman noted, the London-based company GlaxoSmithKline demanded 40 percent of the sales proceeds of an AIDS drug it licensed to a South African company. (Under pressure from South African regulators and activists, it later licensed it to three rival companies for only 5 percent.)

In 2003, the Swiss drug maker Novartis forced Indian competitors to stop making generic versions of its leukemia drug Glivec, which the Indian companies sold for $2,700 a year. Novartis then priced its version at $27,000 a year, while giving free treatment to a few poor patients.

If a drug is desperately needed, the new law allows the government to declare an emergency and cancel its patent. But Mr. Berman said India had never declared such an emergency, and for years resisted admitting that it had an AIDS problem.

Most governments, including the United States, have such patent powers, though they use them sparingly. When the Bush administration thought it needed huge supplies of the expensive antibiotic Cipro during the 2001 anthrax scare, it threatened to cancel Bayer's patent if the company did not cut its price. Other countries permit generic versions of AIDS drugs, but none have been as aggressive as Indian companies about getting them approved by the World Health Organization and exporting them. Generics made by companies in Brazil go mostly to Brazilians. China makes generics, but also has problems with counterfeiting and, like India, is under pressure to comply with W.T.O. rules.

The Indian bill was amended to prevent "evergreening," in which patent owners try to get a new 20-year monopoly by patenting a variant on the same molecule. To win a new patent, the applicant will have to prove the variant works better.

An editorial in The Business Standard of India said the law is "better put together than seemed possible a month or two ago."

But Loon Gangte, who runs a program in India for people with AIDS, criticized the new law, saying: "I am using generic AIDS drugs because I can afford the price. Since the bill has passed, when I need new drugs, I won't be able to afford them. I could become one of the casualties."
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/p...386/1004/LOCAL


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Microsoft Criticized For 'IPv6-like' Patent
Ingrid Marson

An antipatent organization has criticized Microsoft for filing a patent that's allegedly similar to IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol.

The Public Patent Foundation, or Pubpat, an organization that works to protect the public from damage caused by the patent system, claims that a patent that Microsoft filed a few years ago is invalid because it failed to disclose prior work done by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The U.S. patent, number 6101499--titled "Method and computer program product for automatically generating an Internet Protocol (IP) address"-- was issued to Microsoft in 2000 after being filed in 1998.

Daniel Ravicher, the executive director of Pubpat, said that although he is not worried that Microsoft will assert its right over the patent, this may stop companies from using IPv6.

"Microsoft won't ever assert this patent--they know it's worthless," Ravicher said. "But there will still be people who are afraid of it--if someone has a gun and promises not to shoot it, it's still scary."

"This is yet another example of how patents can kill or inhibit standards," he said.

Pubpat was made aware of the patent when it was contacted by a "few large companies" that had been told about it by Microsoft.

Ravicher claims that a "significant number" of prior-art references were not disclosed to the U.S. Patent Office when Microsoft applied for the patent. These include documents from the IPv6 committee of the IETF. The Microsoft employees named as the inventors of the patent were on the IPv6 committee, according to Ravicher.

Because Microsoft has allegedly not disclosed the prior-art references to the patent office, the patent may not be enforceable.

Pubpat is urging Microsoft to throw out the patent. "The right thing for Microsoft to do is to abandon the patent and acknowledge that it should never have been granted in the first place," Ravicher said.

Microsoft was not available for comment.

The news comes only a week after Microsoft demanded reform of the U.S. patent system. Brad Smith, general counsel of the company, said at the time that there needed to be an improvement in patent quality.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+critic...3-5632062.html


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Australia

Closing Arguments Begin in Kazaa Trial
Meraiah Foley

The owners of global file-sharing company Kazaa told a court Wednesday they should not be held liable for copyright infringements by network users because the company cannot control how the software is used after it is downloaded.

A group of Australian record labels is suing the makers of Kazaa, Sharman Networks Ltd., and the company's directors in the Federal Court in Sydney for copyright infringements by the network's estimated 100 million members worldwide.

The record companies claim Kazaa users freely download up to 3 billion songs and music files each month, costing the industry millions of dollars in unpaid royalties.

In closing arguments Wednesday, lawyers for Sharman Networks acknowledged that some Kazaa users engage in illegal copying, but said the software's creators could not be held responsible.

Lawyer Tony Meagher told the court that once Kazaa was downloaded onto users' computers, the company had "no power to control" its use - just as the makers of photocopiers and video recorders could not control or be held responsible for illegal copying on their machines.

As a result, Meagher said, the main issue in the case was whether Kazaa, in effect, authorized its users to download copyright protected material.

"We tell these users in our Web site and we tell them in our license that they cannot use this (software) for infringing copyright," Meagher told Judge Murray Wilcox.

By consenting to the terms of the license agreement, the users were exempting Kazaa's owners from liability for copyright infringement, Meagher said.

Grinning, the judge interrupted Meagher's submission to ask if it was "unduly cynical" to assume that most people don't read software licensing agreements.

"One is entitled to use one's general experience that most people don't read through legal documents unless they regard them as critically important," Wilcox said.

Meagher responded that users were required to confirm that they had read the license agreements before using Kazaa to download any materials, copyright- protected or otherwise.

Lawyers for the record industry argue that Kazaa not only enables but encourages users to infringe copyright.

The lawyers also said the company collects information about its users that would enable them to control their use of the software.

Record industry lawyer Tony Bannon told the court that Sharman Networks monitors Kazaa users and sells information about them to advertisers, saying the company's claim that it had no control over the software was "completely mind boggling."

The record companies want Sharman Networks and its directors declared liable for copyright breach and loss of earnings in the civil case.

If they succeed, a case next year would likely set the damages the owners have to pay.

The trial, which is being heard before a judge with no jury, is expected to wrap up late Wednesday. A verdict is expected within six weeks.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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US After Aussie On Piracy Charges
Simon Hayes

US authorities have moved a step closer to extraditing Australian Hew Raymond Griffiths over his alleged leadership of the infamous Drink or Die internet piracy ring.

The Federal Court has ruled Mr Griffiths "eligible for surrender" to the US to face charges of criminal copyright violation.

He now has to decide whether he will seek leave to appeal to the High Court

Should the extradition proceed, Mr Griffiths – who arrived in Australia from Britain as a child and never took Australian citizenship – could face eventual deportation to Britain.

Mr Griffiths, 42, of Berkeley Vale on the NSW Central Coast, was indicted by a grand jury in the US state of Virginia in 2003 over allegations he headed a "highly structured criminal organisation devoted to the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted software over the internet".

US authorities alleged Drink or Die was responsible for pirating software worth $50 million, and that Mr Griffiths was a member, and later the leader, of the organisation.

After a series of police raids in 2001 under the name Operation Buccaneer, the organisation was dismantled and many of its members charged.

In the US 20 defendants have been convicted, and prosecutions have also taken place in Finland, the UK, Norway and Sweden.

The last two Britons charged were convicted at the Old Bailey last week and are awaiting sentencing.

Sydney legal sources said extradition would be "unusual", since all the other defendants faced trial in their home countries.

Mr Griffiths's solicitor, Antony Townsden, earlier described his client as "a man of no means whatsoever" who would have difficulty representing himself in a US court.

The indictment – filed by the US Attorney's Office – claims Mr Griffiths ran the organisation, controlled membership and arranged to reward high-performing members with computer parts.

In court documents, US authorities alleged Mr Griffiths taunted law enforcement in an online interview, claiming: "I cannot be busted, I have no warez here."

The indictment alleges that authorities caught up with him after he asked another member, US citizen James Cudney (who later became a prosecution witness in the US cases), to deliver computer parts to his home address.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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BitTorrent Case To Test FTA Laws
Andrew Colley

THE music industry's legal assault on BitTorrent file sharing is set to provide the first major test of new laws designed to limit ISPs' liability for copyright breaches carried out by their customers.

In the Federal Magistrates Court in Sydney, lawyers representing ISP Swiftel argued that the new laws would play a key role in defending the ISP from recent allegations of copyright infringement.

A consortium of music industry interests, including Warner Music Australia, is suing the Swiftel for copyright infringement for hosting web sites that support the file sharing platform.

Preliminary hearings in the case follow raids by industry copyright enforcer Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) on Swiftel last week. MIPI secured "Anton Piller" orders from the Federal Magistrates Court in order to obtain evidence to support its allegations.

Barrister Stephen Burley, under instruction from Clayton Utz, asked Federal Magistrate Rolf Driver to move the case to the Federal Court in order to deal with complex legal issues that the new provisions threatened to raise.

Mr Burley said that there was "a very real danger that this case is about something broader and we don't know what that is".

In handing down his findings, Justice Driver said that the case may require interpretation of the new copyright legislation, but said that the Magistrates Court shouldn't "shy away" testing new areas of law.

Justice Driver declined the application, leaving the Magistrates Court free to establish legal precedents based on the new legislation.

The new laws were introduced as part of the US Free Trade Agreement. Clayton Utz solicitor John Collins said the case would provide a partial test of the legislation.

Mr Collins said the issue had been touched on by the music industry's law suit against the operators of MP3 enthusiast site mp3s4free.net. However, he said the arguments that surfaced in the case were limited to questions of damages.

"If these people want to make a test case we're very confident of the outcome and we believe we're in the right court for the legislation to be tested," MIPI general manager Michael Speck said.

Mr Collins said Clayton Utz was happy with the outcome of the hearing.

He said the interlocutory regime placed on Swiftel was far less onerous following today's hearing.

Justice Driver ordered material seized in the raids to be returned to Clayton Utz within 28 days and that it was only to be used to discover new respondents in the case.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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U.K. Man Threatened With BitTorrent Lawsuit
Graeme Wearden

A British man who runs a Web site that allegedly once supported the BitTorrent peer-to-peer application is facing the threat of being sued by four major U.S. movie studios.

Kevin Reid has been accused of copyright infringement by Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros. The studios filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court earlier this month claiming that copyright-protected films have been uploaded and downloaded from bds- palace.co.uk, which Reid runs.

Reid has not yet been formally named as a defendant in the lawsuit. However, lawyers representing the four labels have served him with legal papers asking him to reach a settlement. Reid, though, said he plans to fight the legal action.

"This complaint is entirely without foundation. Mr. Reid has behaved entirely properly in running his Web site," said David Harris, an IT and intellectual property lawyer at UKITLaw.com, who is representing Reid and describes the lawsuit as "cynical and premature."

"BitTorrent is an innovative and lawful technology, and while some visitors to the site may have engaged in copyright infringement, Mr. Reid had no role in this. His site did no more than provide a forum for the public to discuss movies and current events relating to films. Mr. Reid deplores copyright infringement, and when made aware of unlawful sharing he immediately removed torrents," Harris added.

With BitTorrent, a single file is broken up into many small fragments which are distributed among computers. To download a file, a person first downloads a "torrent" file which contains a link to a tracker server, which has a log of users who have copies of the relevant BitTorrent fragments on their PCs.

Torrent files may have been shared at bds-palace.co.uk, but Reid apparently removed files that could have been unlawful. Supporters of BitTorrent argue that tracker servers don't violate copyright law as they do not host content themselves, in the same way that a search engine merely points to information.

Reid is at least the second British person to be hit by a BitTorrent-related lawsuit this month. The Register, an IT news site, reported earlier this week that these four music studios also had served a lawsuit against Alexander Hanff, who is involved with a site that the movie companies claim is a BitTorrent tracker server that has been used to distribute copyright-protected films.

Some people who ran BitTorrent tracker servers have closed them down in the face of legal threats from the movie industry, but Reid apparently plans to instead fight back.

"The movie studios are not interested in preventing copyright infringement so much as killing an innovative technology used primarily lawfully but which frightens them because of its potential for abuse," Harris said.

"The studios could have chosen to work with our client and assist him in policing the site; instead they have chosen to posture with meritless litigation," Harris said. "Our client will fight this case aggressively and prevail."
http://news.com.com/U.K.+man+threate...3-5626029.html


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Firms Facing File Sharing Probes
Dan Ilett

Employers whose staff run peer-to-peer applications over their corporate networks could soon face investigation by legal authorities looking for illegal file sharers in UK companies, according to IT services and telecommunications firm Energis.

Security experts at Energis have noted an increase in the amount of network scanning over the Internet and say they have started to see the likes of the FBI looking for people copying movies and music online from work.

"The FBI was definitely one of them," said Malcolm Seagrave, head of security strategy for Energis. "We started looking at bandwidth saturation. It was people scanning trying to find out who is downloading all the stuff illegally. They’ve started investigating. I suspect that companies are going to get hit soon."

After seeing this, Energis started to carry out its own networ"What it means is you have the choice of suing the employer, who has lots of money, or the employee. Chances are you will choose the employer.""What it means is you have the choice of suing the employer, who has lots of money, or the employee. Chances are you will choose the employer."k scanning. It found one company had as much of 33 percent of its bandwidth consumed by file sharing.

As well as the FBI, the Recording Industry Association of America and an organisation called MediaDefender were also scanning networks, Segrave claimed. "When we spoke to the FBI they said they were trying to find out where the legal liability lay. It was all about the legality and breach of copyright," he said.

Employers are often unaware that their staff use file sharing programs, but they could soon given a nasty shock if organisations like the RIAA start to sue them for copyright issues. However, employees could also be in for a rough time.

"The potential vicarious employer liability does not get the employee off the hook," said Mark Smith, solicitor for Olswang. "What it means is you have the choice of suing the employer, who has lots of money, or the employee. Chances are you will choose the employer."

Smith also warned that peer-to-peer programs can spread spyware.

"[It's] a massive source of spyware and that passes on all sorts of risks," Smith said. "Peer-to-peer can be a lot of stuff, but I'm surprised that the FBI is involved."

Copyright infringement is typically a civil offence, although in some parts of the world it can result in criminal penalties. In May 2003, James E. Farnan, deputy assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a US congressional committee that the FBI was "working closely with private industry" on the intellectual property implications of peer-to-peer networks.

Last month the RIAA filed law suits against 11 people accused of illegal file sharing on university networks. They were said to have used the programs KaZaa, eDonkey and Grokster.

The FBI was unable to respond in time for the publication of this article.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/sec...9192583,00.htm


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3D Printer To Churn Out Copies Of Itself
Celeste Biever

A self-replicating 3D printer that spawns new, improved versions of itself is in development at the University of Bath in the UK.

The "self replicating rapid prototyper" or RepRap could vastly reduce the cost of 3D printers, paving the way for a future where broken objects and spare parts are simply "re-printed" at home. New and unique objects could also be created.

3D printing - also known as "rapid prototyping" - transforms a blueprint on a computer into a real object by building up a succession of layers. The material is bonded by either fusing it with a laser or by using alternating layers of glue. When it first emerged in the mid-1990s, futurists predicted that there would be a 3D printer in every home.

But they currently cost $25,000 (£13,000) and so have not caught on as a household item, says Terry Wohlers, an analyst at Wohlers Associates, a rapid prototyping consulting firm in Fort Collins, Colorado, US. Instead, they are used by industry to develop parts for devices such as aircraft engines, spaceships and hearing aids.

Plummeting prices

Now Adrian Bowyer hopes to change that by making the first 3D printer capable of fabricating copies of itself, as well as a wealth of everyday objects. He reasons that prices would plummet to around $500 if every machine was capable of building hundreds more at no cost beyond that of the raw materials.

Better still, the machines could evolve to be more efficient and develop new capabilities, says Bowyer. Once he has the software to guide the self-replicating process, he plans to make it freely available online, allowing users to contribute improvements, just like the open-source Linux computer operating system, he says.

Bowyer dreamt up the idea of the RepRap in February 2004. But now he has he figured out how to print conducting materials in three dimensions without using a laser, a key step if the machine is ever to make copies of itself.

"We are very constrained in our access to materials," he explains. They must be sturdy enough to make up the body of the machine and yet simple enough to be fabricated entirely by the machine. "We have to avoid any design needing lasers and high precision measuring systems," he explains.

Tepid metal

3D printers normally build circuits by fusing together a powdered metal with a laser. But Bowyer plans instead on using a low-melting point metal alloy of bismuth, lead, tin and cadmium that can be squirted from a heated syringe to form circuits.

Bowyer has already produced an electronic circuit by squirting the alloy inside a plastic autonomous robot, which itself was created using a commercial 3D printer. Because the heated syringe he used is very similar to the nozzle that deposits plastic layers in the printer, he envisions squirting both plastic and metal from the same nozzle in future self-replicating machines.

The machine need not be capable of assembling itself, he says, only producing all the necessary parts, with the exception of the microprocessors and the lubricating grease. These could later be added and the various parts clipped together, Bowyer says. "People are quite capable of assembling things if they want to," he adds. "I am not interested in self-assembly, just self-copying."

Whether such a machine would work has experts sharply divided. "I think Dr Bowyer's idea is very plausible," says Matt Moses, a consultant who has built a small self-replicating robot and advises NASA on research into self-replicating machines for space.

But Wohlers disagrees: "[Bowyer] is referring to something that does not exist and has not been demonstrated. Will it develop in the future? Unlikely."

He adds that even if all its components could be replicated by the machine, the concept does not make economic sense. "Many of the components could be produced much faster and cheaper by other machines," he says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7165


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To Cut Online Chatter, Apple Goes to Court
John Markoff

In the fall of 1981, Paul Freiberger, a reporter for the weekly computer industry newspaper InfoWorld, was preparing to run a story that Apple Computer was engaged in two secret development projects. But first, he listened as company co-founder Steven P. Jobs shouted at him over the phone that revealing the code names of products would offer a crucial advantage to the computer maker's Japanese competitors.

In the end, the paper got its scoop - Apple's new projects were called the Lisa and the Macintosh - and the company still managed to handily trounce its competitors.

During the ensuing 24 years, the relationship between the press and Mr. Jobs has remained remarkably consistent: while fostering intense secrecy both at Apple and at Next Inc., the company he sold to Apple in 1996, he has at the same time become a master of orchestrating new product buzz.

Now, however, increasingly concerned about losing control of his product story in the face of the Internet's echo chamber, Mr. Jobs has chosen to sue several sites that traffic in Apple news in an effort to determine if his employees are leaking product information.

Because the lawsuits could potentially force courts to define what a journalist is and to broaden trade secret protection for corporations, Mr. Jobs has been bitterly opposed by public interest groups and some reporters, who cite Apple's status as an underdog in the computer industry and the company's role in creating new avenues for electronic media.

But Mr. Jobs's decision to go after the operators of the small Internet fan sites is not surprising to many Silicon Valley veterans, Apple enthusiasts and former executives of the quirky computer-maker, which is based in Cupertino, Calif.

He has always had a reputation for being iconoclastic and confrontational. As a result, despite Apple's tradition of positioning the Macintosh as "the computer for the rest of us," some Apple watchers said the move could actually serve to strengthen Mr. Jobs's marketing magic by deepening the secrecy - and thus the buzz - he has always tried to maintain around the company's future products.

"He's a master at creating the mystique," said Regis McKenna, a Silicon Valley marketing executive who began working with Mr. Jobs shortly after Apple was founded. "His problem is how to continue to innovate out of the limelight."

In the first of the Apple cases, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge ruled earlier this month that three operators of independent Web sites devoted to publishing information about Apple must divulge their confidential sources to the company. Apple said that it was seeking the source of information it claims is protected under trade secret law. That ruling is being appealed by lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the three, who had argued they should be protected as reporters.

In the second case, Apple charged Nicholas M. Ciarelli, the Harvard freshman who operates the Web site Think Secret, with illegally attempting to induce Apple employees to violate their confidentiality agreements with the company.

Mr. Jobs, who refused comment for this article, has long turned conventional product announcements into part of the Apple mystique. Since his return to Apple in 1997, he has often unveiled new hardware and software while sitting at a computer keyboard much like a performing concert pianist in front of cheering crowds. "Steve might as well have invented the term 'event marketing,' " said Stewart Alsop, a former Silicon Valley editor and conference promoter who is now a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates. "You focus everything on a moment in time and then persuade everyone to anticipate that moment."

Apple's marketing wizard has deftly used speculation about his next commercial move as an essential component of each new product introduction. The company's customers spend countless hours chattering about whether the company's next new portable computer will include the G5 chip or if an Apple cellphone or media center is just over the horizon. And while Mr. Jobs has fired and even sued his own employees in the past for leaking information, the first news about some Apple introduction has frequently appeared in a news account, on a Web site or, occasionally, in business newspapers in China or Taiwan where the company's products are manufactured.

In the personal computer industry, where Mr. Jobs's company still has a tiny market share, his ability to attract a disproportionate share of media attention has long irritated his competitors. Once, shortly after Mr. Jobs introduced a new version of his iMac consumer PC, his rival, Bill Gates of Microsoft, groused that Apple's innovation was confined to colored plastic.

One measure of Mr. Jobs's effectiveness as a company evangelist is the Web traffic on Think Secret, the Apple rumor site run by Mr. Ciarelli since 1998. During periods when Apple has product introductions, Mr. Ciarelli said that his site receives as many as five million page views a month. That is a level of Internet popularity roughly equal to that of a typical suburban newspaper.

To be sure, the strategy of tight secrecy and surprise was not always an Apple trademark. Between 1985 and 1997, while Mr. Jobs was in exile from the computer maker he founded in 1977, many reporters in Silicon Valley would laughingly refer to Apple as a "ship that leaks from the top."

Indeed, during the late 1980's and early 1990's many of the company's executives seemed to enjoy playing what has long been Silicon Valley's favorite spectator sport - sharing gossip about what the "Next Big Thing" from Apple might be.

Raines Cohen, who worked as a reporter at the MacWeek trade paper, recalled how the staff of the paper would occasionally send "Mac-the-Knife" coffee mugs to random Apple executives. The rationale was that having so many mugs spread throughout the office would make it harder for Apple to figure out which employees were actually talking to the publication.

A co-founder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users' Group, Mr. Cohen said he believed that Apple's fans would be unlikely to be driven away from the company by Mr. Jobs's heightened secrecy obsession. The company's critics were more likely to be computer users who do not use Apple products, such as devotees of the freely developed Linux operating system.

"I've seen a backlash, but it's coming from the open-source community that will criticize Apple at the drop of at hat," he said.

Despite stringent secrecy prohibitions at Apple and an insistence that only a handful of the company's executives speak to the press or public, Mr. Jobs seems to have done a reasonable good job of maintaining employee morale. Several Apple employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Jobs was good at convincing his workers of the need for the computer maker to speak with one voice.

The strategy makes sense to many former Apple employees as well. "He's in the fashion business," said Randy Komisar, a former Apple executive. "He has to have a new hit every quarter or he goes out of business. The speculation is worth tens of millions of dollars of public relations."

Mr. Jobs's unique approach to marketing was highlighted last week at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association meeting in New Orleans, when the Motorola Corporation attempted to explain to reporters why its cellphone version of the iPod had not been introduced at a European trade show as expected.

"The first thing you're seeing here is a merger of two different industries with different ideas of launching products," Ron G. Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile phone division, told analysts and reporters at a news conference, according to Reuters. "Steve's perspective is that you launch a product on Sunday and sell it on Monday."

Moreover, nobody expects Mr. Jobs's marketing machine to unravel any time soon. Indeed, the MacWorld exhibitions held in San Francisco in January remain a highly anticipated event for the Macintosh faithful, where as many as 5,000 fans engage in an annual ritual of adulation for the computer maker and its co-founder.

Mystery, anticipation and surprise all lie at the heart of the events, and Mr. Jobs will occasionally tease his audience, pretending to walk off stage, before returning and saying, "Oh! One more thing ..." and then unveiling some new product.

"It's a classic part of a Jobs keynote," said Steven Levy, author of "Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything" (Penguin, 2000) and a forthcoming book on Apple's iPod. "It's a treat. It's not as much fun for people if they know what it is."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/te...y/21apple.html


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Apple Disables iTunes Hack
John Borland

Apple Computer has closed a security hole that allowed an underground program to tap into its iTunes Music Store and purchase songs stripped of antipiracy protections.

The PyMusique software, created by a trio of independent programmers online, emerged last week as a copy protection-free back door into the popular iTunes store. One of the creators was Jon Johansen, the Norwegian programmer responsible for releasing DVD-copying software in 1999.

Apple released a statement Monday saying the problem had been fixed, and that some iTunes customers would need to upgrade their software.

"The security hole in the iTunes Music Store which was recently exploited has been closed, and as a consequence the iTunes Music Store will now sell music only to customers using iTunes version 4.7," the company said in a statement.

Like all other digital music companies, Apple has been dealing continually with hackers intent on finding ways around the antipiracy protections that are added to songs as they are sold online. The company has upgraded its iTunes software several times to block unauthorized programs' access.

Johansen has been one of the most persistent of those programmers, releasing several tools that have helped others tap into the inner workings of the iTunes software, and even remove the copy protections.

PyMusique itself was the creation of several different programmers, including 17-year-old Pennsylvania high school student Cody Brocious, who last week said he was simply trying to create a way for Linux-based computers to use the iTunes store.

A test of PyMusique on Monday morning showed that it was still able to preview songs in the iTunes music store, but no longer able to purchase music.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company is considering legal action on the issue.

Only about 15 percent of iTunes users would be affected by the need to upgrade to the latest version of the software, the company said in its statement.
http://news.com.com/Apple+disables+i...3-5628616.html


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He’s back

'DVD Jon' Reopens iTunes Back Door
John Borland

A group of underground programmers has posted code online they say will reopen a back door in Apple Computer's iTunes store, allowing Linux computer users to purchase music free of copy protection.

The release comes just a day after Apple blocked a previous version of the program, called PyMusique, in part by requiring all iTunes customers to use the latest version of Apple's software.

In a blog posting, Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen, who was previously responsible for releasing software used to copy DVDs online, said he had been successful at reverse engineering the latest iTunes encryption.

Cody Brocious, a Pennsylvania high school student working with Johansen, said they saw the project as "necessary for the Linux community," despite Apple's opposition.

The programmers' work has been one of the most persistent projects targeting Apple, whose iPod and iTunes Music Store have drawn consistent attacks and experiments by people eager to extend the capability of the products, or simply disarm copy protection.

The cat-and-mouse response is a familiar one in the technology world, as programmers have often sought to write software compatible with larger or more popular applications. Instant messaging companies such as America Online, Yahoo, Microsoft and Trillian have long feuded, blocking and reopening access to each other's software.

The PyMusique programmers say they are primarily interested in allowing people using Linux computers to purchase music from the iTunes store, explaining their goals in a blog posting online. Their software requires users to have an iTunes account and pay the ordinary price for music.

They say they weren't aiming at creating a tool for stripping iTunes copy-protection off songs. However, Apple's system adds the layer of copy- protection inside the iTunes software itself, and so they didn't need to add it in their own version, they said.

Apple's software already allows customers to create an unprotected version of a song, by burning an iTunes purchase to a CD. That file can be ripped into an ordinary MP3.

While Apple has made no public legal threats against the programmers, the iTunes terms of service bars the use of any unauthorized software to access the store. Copyright lawyers have previously said that the PyMusique system, which evades Apple's intention to wrap all purchases in copy protection, may well cross legal lines.

"The work I do is completely legal in my country," Johansen said in an e-mail interview. "Of course, I know very well that not doing anything illegal doesn't mean you won't be prosecuted (or) sued."

Johansen was prosecuted in Norway for releasing the DeCSS code in 1999, but was ultimately cleared of charges.

An Apple representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

Brocious said the updated version of PyMusique would only be available for Linux, and that the programmers would not make a Windows version this time.
http://news.com.com/DVD+Jon+reopens+...3-5630703.html


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U.S. Art-House Movie Chain To Be First With Sony Digital Projectors
Saul Hansell

Landmark Theaters, the U.S. art-house chain controlled by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, will become the first chain to install a generation of high-quality digital projectors developed by Sony that show movies at twice the resolution of previous digital projectors.

Landmark will buy six projectors when they become available in July and over the next few years will install others in all 58 of its theaters, Cuban said.

Hollywood has been discussing the use of digital projectors, which show movies without using film, for several years, but fewer than 100 are now used in theaters to show full-length features.

Big questions remain both about the projectors' technical merits and, more important, about who would pay for them. The main advantage of digital projection is the potential to save movie studios the expense of copying movies on film, which can cost more than $1,000 a print. Theater owners are waiting to see if the studios will find a way to subsidize the cost of the projectors, which can be $100,000 each when the costs of the other needed hardware and software are included.

Landmark, however, chose to pay for the projectors itself, largely because it is building a business model different from that of most theater chains. Cuban said Landmark was paying more than $100,000 for each projector and related equipment, about double the cost of lower-resolution digital projectors.

Cuban and Wagner, who together created Broadcast.com, an Internet media site that they sold to Yahoo for about $6 billion in 2001, are building a series of companies related to independent film and high-definition television. In addition to Landmark, they control HDNet, a cable network devoted to high-definition programming, and several companies involved in producing and distributing films.

Cuban, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said the projectors would give his theaters flexibility to show a broader variety of programming, including broadcasts of live events like concerts and sports events. Moreover, digital projection ability will allow Landmark to show works by independent filmmakers who are starting to use the inexpensive high- definition cameras coming to the market.

Landmark chose the new Sony model because it can display images at a resolution of 4096 by 2160 pixels.

Cuban said it took a trained eye and a seat close to the screen to see the difference between the types of projectors, but he said he felt that the new projectors were worth the investment.

Cuban said Landmark was paying more than $100,000 for each projector and related equipment, about double the cost of lower-resolution digital projectors.

Landmark's announcement raised eyebrows among digital cinema specialists, who noted that Sony's technology was under development and that the shipping of the projectors had been delayed several times.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/...ness/sony.html


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As Sony Wobbles, Samsung Rises
James Brooke and Saul Hansell

Korean electronics firm becomes the new 'factory of ideas'

In 1997, the year Howard Stringer joined Sony, Japan's premium electronics company took little notice of Samsung Electronics, a South Korean television maker fighting a life or death battle to survive the Asian currency crisis.

Less than a decade later, Samsung has twice the market capitalization of Sony, which this week named Stringer as its new chairman.

Samsung also is no longer Sony's only rival. Apple Computer now dominates the market for portable music players. Silicon Valley companies have led the way in digital gadgets like the PalmOne personal organizers and TiVo's digital video recorders.

Sony is even facing strong competition from Eastman Kodak and Canon for digital cameras, a product category it invented.

Samsung has become what Sony could once claim - the competitor with both the breadth of products and the appeal of a premium brand.

This rapid reversal of fortunes illustrates the highly competitive world of consumer electronics that Stringer, a media man, is entering.

Complacency and coasting on best-selling products have contributed to a nearly 75 percent decline in Sony's stock value since its peak on March 1, 2000.

The invincible "factory of ideas" founded almost six decades ago by Akio Morita, the company that brought the world the transistor radio, the Walkman and the Trinitron television tube, seems to have lost its way.

"Samsung is now the anti-Sony," George Gilder, a visiting American technology analyst, said in an interview in Tokyo on Wednesday. "Sony is layered with bureaucracy," he added.

Samsung, by contrast, has kept a lean corporate structure, with authority increasingly delegated to front-line managers around the world, and almost a quarter of the far-flung staff of 88,000 dedicated to research and development.

But in the boardroom purge Monday, Sony demoted the one engineer credited with developing a new, world-beating product line, the PlayStation game consoles.

Ken Kutaragi remains chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment, but he loses supervision of Sony's consumer electronics and semiconductor business just as it is preparing the Cell Chip, a superchip that is to run the next generation of game machines and also high-definition televisions. With the hand-held PlayStation Portable selling well since it was released here in December, the next PlayStation is scheduled to come out next year, in time to compete with a new Xbox console by Microsoft and a new console by Nintendo.

In the past three years, Sony's electronics division has dragged down company profit. With the division forecasting a loss for 2004, Sony is expecting about $1 billion in profit for the year ending in March, about 1.5 percent of revenue of about $69 billion. By contrast, Samsung, in the year that ended in December, had $10 billion in net income on sales of $52 billion.

A high profit allows Samsung to invest billions in research and development, maintaining 15 laboratory complexes around the world.

"Last year we spent $7 billion in capital spending, the largest for any information technology company in the world," Chu Woo Sik, a spokesman for Samsung Electronics, said by telephone from Seoul. This year, Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of memory chips, will invest $10 billion.

Samsung also has a huge capacity to build raw components like memory chips and display panels, lowering production costs.

Samsung was once a back-of-the-store brand with bulky televisions and boom boxes. After the Asian currency crisis, Samsung upgraded its product lines to compete directly with Sony for the premium market, leaving cheaper electronic goods to new companies in China. After spending $3 billion a year in advertising, including extensive Olympics sponsorships, Samsung's $12.6 billion brand value now rivals Sony's, according to Interbrand, the brand consultancy.

Samsung is such a leader in flat screens that Sony swallowed its pride last year and joined Samsung in building a huge factory in South Korea.

With the price of panels for the screens quite volatile, executives of both companies said the deal helped reduce the risk.

Sony, for its part, had clung too long to its innovative Trinitron picture tube technology, and it paid the price at Christmas.

In the last quarter of 2004, Sony's television sales rose 5 percent, but profit fell 75 percent from a year earlier. No longer able to command the premium prices associated with proprietary technology, Sony increasingly competes with high-volume, low-cost producers.

On Tuesday, Stringer met with Japanese reporters and vowed that Sony would be cool again.

But on Ginza, Japan's bellwether shopping street, the cool store was not Sony's showcase building. It was the five-floor Apple store.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, crowds entered the Apple store to inspect the latest iPods, using computer terminals to book appointments with Apple's sought-after technical advisers.

Sony was caught flat-footed with a late introduction of an Internet version of its 25-year-old Walkman, and profit from world audio sales fell 48 percent in the final quarter of last year.

"Samsung is like the old Sony," said Gilder, who edits the Gilder Technology Report. "Samsung has much of the spirit of Sony 10 years ago."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/...s/samsung.html


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P2P: Music's Death Knell or Boon?
Michael Grebb

Somewhere between the live music showcases on Sixth Street and the endless schmoozing that ran well past midnight, the deep-fried drunkfest known as South by Southwest also squeezed in some discussion of technology and how it's changing the music industry.

In the tradition of the annual Austin music festival, which ended Saturday, panels covered both the industry and artistic side of the music game. Labels and managers, after all, are just as interested as the artists themselves in how the internet, digital downloading and other technologies are turning the music business on its head.

In some cases, talk focused on opportunities. But in many other instances, panelists warned about the perils and uncertainty that face both the artistic and business sides of the industry -- especially when it comes to peer-to-peer file sharing.

"It's stopping new artists from coming forward, and it's killing mid- level artists across the board," charged Jay Rosenthal, a music attorney at Washington, D.C.-based Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe and a board member of the Recording Artists Coalition. "There has never been an issue that has been so galvanizing."

But Wendy Seltzer, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said lawsuits against those who trade or enable the trading of copyright music files online will continue to have little effect on P2P traffic.

She said the Grokster case now before the U.S. Supreme Court could very well determine the future shape of copyright law as it relates to the internet. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for March 29.

"We feel the future of technology development is at stake here," she said.

Finding business models that capitalize on file sharing is "the next logical step" for artists and labels, said Seltzer, who suggested collective licensing schemes and other mechanisms that would allow copyright holders to get paid when people use P2P networks.

But Rosenthal said most artists are still skeptical that P2P-based models will ever appropriately compensate them.

"I don't think the majority of artists, or even a minority of artists, believe that this is a business model that's going to help them in the future," he said.

Rosenthal said the Grokster case could hinge on whether Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is suffering from thyroid cancer, will be healthy enough to participate in the decision.

Rosenthal noted that Rehnquist was among the dissenters of the court's Betamax decision, which has become a bedrock of copyright law in the United States.

That 1984 ruling held that products that enabled people to infringe copyrights were legal as long as they also had substantial non-infringing uses. Technologists have credited the Betamax decision with ushering in two decades of innovation ranging from the VCR to the MP3 player.

"No matter which way it goes in the Grokster case, we're going to end up back in Congress anyway," said Rosenthal, noting that one side or the other will likely seek legislation clarifying copyright law even after the decision.

In another panel, Eric Garland, CEO of media research firm BigChampagne, said "there's certainly cause for concern" with P2P because it's fast becoming a primary distribution channel.

"Most of the music people consume most of the time is not generating revenue for anyone," he said. "Music is free right now."

"Break out the hemlock," joked Chris Castle, senior vice president of legal affairs and general counsel of Snocap, which has developed audio-fingerprinting technology to help copyright owners track and potentially collect fees for music trading on P2P networks.

Castle said that even capturing a small portion of P2P traffic could be a boon to record companies and artists. "If you could monetize 10 percent of those tracks, that would be a phenomenal increase in revenues," he said.

Indeed, South by Southwest wasn't all gloom and doom on the technology front as artists anxiously learned about new revenue streams.

One growing market is mobile-phone ring tones. Scott Andrews, senior director of internet and mobile entertainment for royalty collection agency BMI, said ring-tone revenues are expected to double from $250 million in 2004 to $500 million in 2005. "This is a business that has scaled very quickly," Andrews said.

He added that potential synergies with other mobile technologies such as Bluetooth wireless could create even more opportunities for artists.

"Can you imagine being at a concert and saying, 'OK, everyone turn on your Bluetooth. We're going to send you a ring tone for free just for being here at the concert'?" Andrews said.

Furthermore, as the market transitions from polyphonic ring tones, which are essentially a series of beeps designed to mimic a song, to "master tones," which are an actual clip of the song derived from its original master recording, mobile phones could fast become a major music platform.

"This mobile space is going to be the biggest, if not one of the biggest players," said Donald Passman, an attorney with Los Angeles-based Gang, Tyre, Ramer and Brown. "Why do I need to carry around an iPod when I can just dial it up and listen to it?"

At one point, Mark Frieser, CEO of New York City-based mobile-research firm Consect, held up his mobile phone to the audience. "This is your new point of sale," he said. "Forget about record stores."

As artists, record labels and other music players at the Austin conference tried to figure out technology's impact on the music business, a prevailing sense of gradual progress on several fronts seemed to buoy their mood.

"We're at an inflection point here where we have a real chance to change the way the music business works," said Ted Cohen, senior VP of digital development and distribution for EMI Music. "We're interested in making sure everyone survives. I think this will be an interesting year and a turning point."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66959,00.html

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File-Sharing Is A Lot More Than Stolen Music
Andrew Kantor

On March 29, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in what's been tagged the "Grokster" case. A full 28 entertainment companies filed suit against several makers of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software, including one called Grokster, claiming that, because that software can be used for illegal purposes — spreading pirated copies of songs, movies, and software — it should be banned.

By that logic, knives, baseball bats, and guns should also be outlawed.

Grokster and friends won this suit when it was heard before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (in MGM v. Grokster). The court held that the software — like knives, bats, and guns — has substantial noninfringing uses.

That's the key phrase, and it ties back to the 1984 "Betamax" decision by the Supreme Court (Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios). It said that if a tool was "capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses" it was A-OK. (I'm paraphrasing. Justice Stevens was somewhat more detailed.)

But now we're back to the Supreme Court, this time with file-sharing instead of VCRs.

Central files

For a lot of people, the whole concept of file sharing is a vague notion: "People can trade files over the Internet." But there's more to it than that, and besides, the whole concept of P2P is interesting and new.

For a long time the only way you got a file on the Internet was to download it from a server, usually run by a company. Someone has the file and "serves" it from their computer so you (and lots of other people) can get a copy — you got the latest copy of Adobe's Acrobat Reader from adobe.com, for example.

There are two problems with this. First, it means that the company offering something has to be ready for potentially thousands of people downloading it; the server has to handle requests from all of them. Just like at a big restaurant with a single waiter, that server is going to be overwhelmed; service will suck.

The other problem is that by having a centralized system you can become a target of someone who doesn't want you to distribute whatever your distributing for political or legal reasons. Call it the Pearl Harbor model — having all your eggs in one basket invites trouble.

That's what killed Napster, one of the original and best-known file-sharing networks. More in a second.

Peer-to-peer file sharing is different. It doesn't use central servers to hold files. Instead, every computer on the network can be a server and send or receive files. You can offer anything you want to other people on the Net, and you can download anything of theirs they make available.

With P2P you don't have to find an "official" server of some sort. All you need is someone else, somewhere on the Net, who has what you want.

Generation gap

The rise of P2P came with the rise of the MP3 music format. Before MP3, individual songs were so large that even with high-speed connections it took a long time to send them to one another. It was impractical to share songs. But the MP3 format shrinks files down to a fraction of their original size, and suddenly music sharing was doable.

This did not make the Recording Industry Association of America happy, because it meant that people were sharing music, not (they claim) buying it.

The first P2P program to hit the public consciousness was Napster. But Napster had a fatal flaw: It required a central server (run by Napster) to keep track of who had what to share. And yes, most of it was music.

This meant the RIAA had a clear target, and it made a convincing case — here was the company running a service that was being used to illegally share music. It eventually drove Napster out of business.

Peer-to-peer users and programmers were smart, so they created the next generation of P2P software with Napster in their minds. This software that didn't require a central server. Without napster.com, Napster couldn't work. But as long as this new P2P software exists, the networks will exist.

So today we have nebulous networks of users who can share their files without being tied to a particular site.

And today, file sharing is huge. Despite claims that its is on the way out, it's getting bigger and bigger. Not too long ago I found almost 600 million files — more than 4.5 million gigabytes (that's 4.5 petabytes) — on a single P2P. Holy wow.

Working knowledge

Most P2P software uses one of three major "networks." Each network has several of clients you can use to access it (kind of the same way both Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Netscape are all clients for viewing the Web). Some clients free, some are supported with ads, and some are commercial software.

big guns are the FastTrack network (with clients that include Kazaa and Grokster); the Gnutella network (with clients that include BearShare, Gnucleus, LimeWire, and Morpheus); and the BitTorrent network, which is a somewhat different model (clients include the original BitTorrent, BitTornado, and my favorite, Yet Another BitTorrent Client).

FastTrack and Gnutella work in similar ways. When you start your client, it uses various methods to find other users on the network — they’re called nodes. Each of those other nodes, because they’re already connected, has a list of other nodes, which it passes on to your software.

In a few seconds you’re connected to dozens of other machines. (It could be hundreds or thousands, but the software sets limits so the network isn’t overwhelmed.)

Let’s say you want to search for the Marc Lindsay’s 1970 song “Arizona.” You enter “Arizona” into the software’s search field and choose “Music” or “Audio,” lest you find things like maps of the state.

Your client then sends your request to the nodes nearest you. If they don’t have the song, they pass your request on to other nodes, until you’ve searched thousands of machines. Hopefully one or more has the song, which will then show up in your search results list. Tell your software to download it, and one or more of those other nodes will start sending it.

(In fact, if more than one computer has it, P2P software can do a “swarm” download, in which it gets different pieces of the same file from different nodes. That means no one node has to supply the whole thing — think of it as spreading the labor.)

At the same time that you’re searching and downloading, the files on your machine are available to others. Not, obviously, all your files — your P2P client has a list of which ones you’re willing to share.

When you set up the software, you would have told it what you want to make available. So while you’re downloading “Arizona,” you might notice someone else downloading something from your machine.

BitTorrent is a little different. Someone who wants to share something first creates another file — a .torrent file — that describes what he’s sharing. (There is special software for this.) He can post that .torrent to his Web site, for example. People who click on that .torrent link will download that file.

The big difference is that BitTorrent clients don’t have a search function. You don’t search the network for a file; you have to find a .torrent for it, using sites such as isoHunt, TorrentReactor, and TorrentSpy which are databases of .torrent files out there on the Net.

BitTorrent clients connect with your Web browser so clicking on a .torrent link starts the download process.

The beauty of BitTorrent is that the people who are downloading something become sources of that file as well. So what starts off as one person sharing (which can eat a lot of his bandwidth) can quickly become a lot of people sharing the same thing. An ad hoc distribution network emerges as long as the .torrent file is out there.

Note, too, that I said “the people who are downloading it become sources of that file…” in the present tense. With BitTorrent, you start sharing a file soon after you begin downloading. It works on a tit for tat basis — “Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return,” as the site puts it. It encourages you not to “leech” by forcing you to upload to others as you download.

Forward, march

Whether FastTrack, Gnutella, or BitTorrent, that’s how P2P works: Everybody shares. The RIAA’s nightmare is that one person buys a CD (shelling out $15 for two good songs), then “rips” those songs into MP3 files and makes them available via a P2P network.

In theory, 10 people who download 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” are 10 people who don’t buy his album “The Massacre.” Eventually the guy’s gonna have to sell one of his Escalades to pay one of his mortgages, and the RIAA doesn’t want to see that happen.

But without a central server like Napster’s, there’s no convenient target for lawsuits. That’s why the RIAA is going after individual file sharers one at a time.

And it’s not just the RIAA. You can download movies via P2P networks as well (a 4 GB DVD of “The Incredibles” can make its way to you via BitTorrent overnight), not to mention software valued in the thousands of dollars.

But pirated music, movies, and software is only one reality of file sharing, and yes, it’s out there. But a lot of people use P2P networks for legal reasons — to share large files without taking a big hit on their servers. In fact, the Internet was built on a similar idea — that decentralization means robustness.

In fact, a fairly large chunk of what’s out there is completely above board. Folks put their photos on P2P networks. Ad agencies release videos that quickly spread over the Net. Smaller software companies that can’t afford huge bandwidth charges put their products out on P2P networks so users can help distribute them just by leaving their computers connected.

Substantial noninfringing uses? You bet.

But even though it may seem that there’s a ton of illegal content out there, getting it, as I discovered, is not quite so simple. That story next week.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...6-kantor_x.htm