Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – November 8th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week: “It is probably not a coincidence that Janelly Fourtou, the MEP who is pushing the current draft directive forward, is married to Jean-Rene Fourtou, the Chairman of Vivendi, one of the world's largest media corporations.” - Bill Thompson, analyzing the European Parliaments anti consumer copyright stance.


MIT Pulls Plug On File-Sharing Alternative
Justin Pope

Two MIT students who thought they'd found a way to give their fellow students access to a huge music library without running afoul of copyright law hit a snag Friday when the school shut down the service in the midst of a licensing dispute.

The "LAMP," or "Library Access to Music" system officially went live Monday, pumping music into dorm rooms over the school's cable television network. By sending the music over cable, rather than swapping files over the Internet, the system avoided making an exact copy of the music and was expected to face lower copyright law hurdles.

The students, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, said they had negotiated for the Harry Fox Agency, the mechanical licensing arm of the National Music Publishers Association, to grant a license to a Seattle-based company called Loudeye to sell the school thousands of MP3s for the system.

But even last week as the system prepared to go live, there was confusion. The Harry Fox Agency said no such license was complete, while Loudeye insisted it was.

On Friday, MIT issued a statement saying it was shutting down the system at least temporarily while it pursued clarifications with Loudeye and make sure the system was legal.

"We have taken it down temporarily to show good faith and because the whole point is to be very, very careful and obey the copyright law," said Winstein, 22, adding he was confident the situation could be resolved.

In its statement, MIT said it was assured by Loudeye that the company was authorized by the record labels to sell the music. But after the service was launched, "Loudeye informed us that some of their assurances may have been mistaken," the statement said.

A Loudeye spokesman said the appropriate company official to comment could not immediately be reached. Laurie Jakobsen, a spokeswoman for The Harry Fox Agency, said the agency's position hadn't changed.

"We have not issued licenses to either MIT or Loudeye," she said. "We are continuing discussions with them."

MIT said Universal Music Group, a record label, raised objections with Loudeye over the arrangement. MIT then began discussing the matter directly with other record labels, and decided to put the system on hold.

UMG, a division of Vivendi Universal, issued a statement Friday saying: "It is unfortunate that MIT launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians, and record labels. Loudeye recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the MIT service, and MIT acted responsibly by removing the music.

"MIT has now contacted us and apparently recognizes its responsibility to compensate creators for the use of their works. Universal looks forward to discussing how to make that possible."

MIT said the school "continues to be committed to developing a fully licensed service."

The students planned to share their plan with other schools, whom they said could emulate the project and give their students access to music while potentially sparing them from lawsuits like those being filed by the recording industry to try to combat illegal file-swapping.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/techn...-7316882c.html


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Consumer Groups Call FCC's "Broadcast Flag" an Expensive Hollywood Flop, Say Scheme is "Burdensome" to Consumers and Industries
Press Release

The Federal Communications Commission's decision today to impose a "broadcast flag" scheme may throttle innovation for a wide range of industries, leaving consumers with far less flexibility and choice, said public-interest groups Public Knowledge and Consumers Union.

"We commend the Commission for deviating from the movie studios' proposal, by offering more time for manufacturers to develop Flag-compliant technologies. But we are troubled that the FCC unfurled the Flag at all. Consumer advocates will need to be vigilant to ensure that Hollywood isn't able to lock in all of the anti-consumer features they tried to get in the first round. And consumers will need to be vigilant to make sure the Flag doesn't tread on their reasonable uses of content," said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.

The "broadcast flag" is a single bit added to the datastream of broadcast digital-television programming. By itself, the bit does not protect content. As a result, the broadcast flag scheme requires a law or regulation mandating that digital devices examine all incoming data to see if the broadcast flag is present.

"Having just given big media companies more control over what consumers can see on their TV sets by lifting media ownership limits, the FCC has now given these same companies more control over what users can do with that content, leaving consumers as two-time losers," said Sohn.

"There's another big problem for consumers," said Chris Murray, legislative counsel for Consumers Union. "More than 40 million DVD players in consumers' homes today will not be able to play content they record on new `flagged' devices, making them at least partially obsolete. Technology always marches on, but that's normally because new devices offer consumers better features and more flexibility to woo buyers in the marketplace, not because government fiat has rendered a particular technology obsolete. This time, the FCC's `upgrade' will be a downgrade for consumers," said Murray.

"Digital broadcast receivers and anything that connects to them will be required to check for the presence of the flag." said Mike Godwin, senior technology counsel for Public Knowledge. "Computer scientists and engineers have noted that any proposal that requires all devices to determine whether content is to be protected, instead of simply protecting the content itself, is a leaky scheme with too many 'holes' to plug."

Godwin added that one such hole is the "analog hole," which results when digital content is output to analog devices such as most current TV displays, speakers, and recorders. Such devices ignore the broadcast flag, as do all HDTV sets that have already been sold, or that are likely to be sold in the next year.

"It's as if you decided to protect your house from burglary not by locking your door or installing a burglar alarm, but by drafting all your neighbors into the police force. Instead of a scheme that actually protects content, the Flag forces manufacturers to go back to the drawing board and make all their devices monitor for Flagged content," Godwin said.

"The FCC and MPAA won't have to pay for this scheme - consumers will," Murray said, "not only because devices will be more costly, but because of the loss in innovation when computer and electronics manufacturers have to rebuild their products to meet the demands of movie studios. And this is just the beginning of a bad trilogy-they'll be back, demanding that the FCC terminate the analog hole and their peer-to-peer problem. That's when consumers lose big time."

"Fixes" Inadequate; Legal Challenges to Scheme Likely

"It's clear that the Commission and its staff have long recognized significant problems with the broadcast-flag approach," Sohn said. "While we respect the effort the Commission and its staff have made to improve this inherently costly and ineffective approach to protecting broadcast content, no amount of fixing can turn this bad idea into a good one." she said.

In the absence of express authorization by Congress, Public Knowledge and Consumers Union argue, the Commission lacks jurisdiction to craft this sweeping regulation. "That the Commission is overreaching its authority with the broadcast-flag scheme," Sohn said, "simply compounds the problem that it is bad policy to begin with."
http://www.publicknowledge.org/artic...311040001.html


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Lawmaker Gives Thumbs-Up To RIAA Clampdown
Declan McCullagh

The head of the U.S. House of Representatives panel that oversees copyright law on Friday applauded the music industry's recent lawsuits against peer-to-peer file swappers. "The legal action taken by the recording industry is necessary to protect intellectual property rights from being violated," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property.

In his remarks to the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Smith also said peer-to-peer networks permit "the widespread and massive distribution of digital music, movies, and software files." The remarks come one day after the Recording Industry Association of America filed 80 more lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers, bringing the total to 341. They also signal his continued support for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's controversial subpoena process, which Verizon Communications and privacy advocates had hoped that Congress might modify.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5100867.html


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Music Industry Shortsighted, Tech Group Says
Steve Tanner

Electronic Frontier Foundation launches campaign challenging RIAA's file-sharing lawsuits

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a 13-year-old nonprofit organization in San Francisco that promotes civil liberties and privacy in the digital age.

EFF recently launched a public relations campaign calling into question lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America against hundreds of individuals trading music on file-sharing networks such as KaZaA. Ads promoting file-sharing as a positive phenomenon have appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe, PC Gamer and other magazines.

Biz Ink reporter Steve Tanner met with Shari Steele, EFF's executive director, to discuss alternatives to lawsuits, the state of the online music business and the fact that copyright infringement is, after all, illegal.

What has been the response to your ad campaign against the RIAA's lawsuits?

It's hard for us to isolate what has come in from the ad campaign and what has come in as a result of RIAA lawsuits, because they're happening at the same time, which is perfect.

But we have seen a surge in membership, and the number of people who join each day coming in through our Web site has gone up significantly.

When people sign up as EFF members, do they specify their interests?

They do; we have a form they can fill out. A lot of people have been saying [they're joining] because of the lawsuits and because the RIAA is trying to keep them from being able to share their music. In a general sense, there are a lot of people saying that.

Also, people are signing up for traditional civil liberties reasons -- they don't like government surveillance or the Patriot Act. But there has been a whole lot that has been going on around the whole file-sharing area.

How do you reconcile concerns about the RIAA suing its customers who freely duplicate copyrighted material, which is illegal?

The problem is the compensation mechanism isn't there. So rather than having a discussion about shutting down the technology, we should be having discussions about how we get the copyright holders compensated.

The way to do that is to come up with methods that require payment from the people who are downloading. I don't think that will work with file-sharing on a per-song basis. We're going to need some sort of a licensing mechanism, requiring payment for downloading songs.

I don't know exactly what that might look like. We have a bunch of different ideas of how that might look on our Web site. But the answer of suing your own customers, trying to shut down the technologies and suing the technologists who create them is not the right answer.

The right answer should be: "OK, this is what the people want, this is a great mechanism for distributing music and it gets to the people quickly. Let's figure out where the money can come from and how we can turn it into a revenue stream."

Do you think the RIAA's high-profile crackdown of first Napster and now KaZaA (through lawsuits against its users) has backfired, actually creating more users of file-sharing technology?

I think it's irrelevant. I think there are a lot of people justifying their file-sharing by saying, "Well, the music industry is behaving badly and that's why I'm doing this."

But I don't think that's really why people are file-sharing. I think people are file-sharing because they like being able to choose their songs, they like to have particular cuts from an album and don't want the entire album, they like being able to create their own mixes, they like being able to get their music instantaneously over the Web.

There are a lot of advantages to doing it digitally, and I don't think the behavior of the RIAA -- in the beginning, at least -- is what drove people to it. It's just the fact that they like getting their music that way.

Do you think the music industry is benefiting from file-sharing networks in a way they either don't realize or won't recognize?

Absolutely. If the industry simply took advantage of what they're learning [about music consumers, via file-sharing networks], they could really improve their services. They could take a look and see, "Hey, some of our best customers, people who really like music, like to receive it this way. Let's figure out how to get it to them this way and find out a way to get money out of that."

Instead their knee-jerk reacation is, "Well, if it's not our traditional model of how we get compensated, then it's got to be evil. Let's shut it down." Their reaction is not, "The customer is always right." Instead it's "Our customers are evil and let's shut them down."

There are several online music services now, including Roxio's Napster 2.0 and Apple's iTunes. Aren't the record companies making a concerted effort to offer online music?

I'm excited to see that at least there are some companies able to put something out there. I think it's bad that they must get pre-approval by the record industry to be able to do it, so that the recording industry gets to decide which technologies are acceptable and which aren't. I think the consumers should be deciding that, not the recording industry.

Also, I think all of these offerings -- while a step in the right direction -- are woefully inadequate, and that's the reason why they aren't stopping people from using peer-to-peer [file-sharing] systems. The amount of songs available is extremely limited, and you can't get things that are out of print or that are really unique.

Beyond that, many of these [legal services] are limiting how you can use the songs once you download them with various types of digital rights management, so you can't make a copy on more than two CDs or you can only get access to the songs as long as you're paying your monthly fees.

What's wrong with a two-CD limit on burning? Is it reasonable to assume users might need more than two copies for personal use?

Users should have the ability to make unlimited copies if it's for personal use. It shouldn't be up to somebody to come up with an arbitrary number. It's a matter of principle.
http://www.svbizink.com/otherfeature...id=325&naviid=


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For Many, It's Still No Sale
Daniel Rubin

The music industry needs to clone Ryan Dixon.

The Cabrini College senior started downloading free music off the Internet even before Napster put file-sharing on the map way back in 1999. When Napster went down, Dixon graduated to Kazaa.

Now the 21-year-old from Newtown Square pays for all his digital songs. Tuesday, he picked up an EP from the band Maroon5 and a live Jason Mraz track for 99 cents each on iTunes, Apple Computer's online service. That makes 675 songs he has bought legally since April.

He is virtually alone.

For every Ryan Dixon, there are thousands of others who prefer getting things for free. They have balked at the high price of CDs, and they don't want anyone limiting what songs they can own or what they can do with them. They feel they will never get caught.

This is digital music's "pregnant moment," said Josh Bernoff, senior analyst for Forrester Research, which tracks technological trends. The music industry, after years of blaming file-sharing for plummeting sales, has struck back, with such big names as Napster, Dell, Sony, America Online, RealNetworks and Musicmatch introducing or planning pay-per-song alternatives. The services are aimed at those who want to spend less and are spooked by copyright-infringement lawsuits.

But will it work?

Many industry observers say the new services will provide little lift for the beleaguered record business. In fact, they say, the pay services will only steer more people toward the freebies.

"Apple legitimizes Kazaa," said Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "It is telling the world that downloading is the right way to get music."

More people shared free music files last month than the month before, and more are sharing this year than the year before, said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne.com, which monitors traffic on the largest peer-to-peer networks - including Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster - accounting for about 85 percent of file-sharing.

"While watching these pay services evolve, we've only seen one trend in file-sharing behavior: more people sharing more and more files," Garland said.

The 4.4 million people that BigChampagne counted sharing files in September constituted a 45 percent increase from the year before - and it was in September that the Recording Industry Association of America put a scare into some by suing 261 people, alleging that they stole copyrighted music via the Net.

"The selection and availability and the quality offered on file-sharing networks is still superior," Garland said.

Apple, the market leader for online music thus far, aspires to sell 100 million songs by April, its first anniversary. That many songs change hands for free on file-sharing networks in a matter of days.

But the new services should make the industry some money. Apple pays about two-thirds of what its service takes in to the record labels for rights to offer the music online. The labels have deals with all the services. But not all labels participate. Beatles music, for instance, is still not available online - unless one goes to something like Kazaa.

The recording association's strategy of suing those it suspects of stealing music has had some effect. Nielsen/NetRatings has reported that the number of people using Kazaa, the most popular software for trading free music, fell by about 40 percent between June 29 and Sept. 21.

But Nielsen based its estimates on how many times members of its user panel loaded Kazaa software, and measured U.S. Internet-account owners in their homes, according to Garland. BigChampagne measures use of the networks, and takes in foreign downloaders, college students and teens - the most active traders.

Teen Research Unlimited, the Skokie, Ill., market-research group that concentrates on the habits of young people, has found that they are unlikely to stop taking free stuff off the Web.

"The teens we've spoken to recently haven't curtailed their downloading in the last six months," said Michael Wood, TRU's vice president. "They feel invincible. They kind of laugh at the industry's attempt to shut them down."

He said teens rationalized their actions. "So they'll buy [Eminem's] Shady brand of clothing, but won't feel the need to support Eminem by buying his music," Wood said.

"The only way [for the labels] to win the war is to change the rules of combat," Wharton's Fader said.

That means adding value, such as helping fans learn about songs they might not know. His experience on subscription services such as Rhapsody suggests to him that for the first time since music went online, the consumer's experience is shifting from gathering to hunting.

The new services provide skilled guides for collectors, Fader said, letting them know what others with similar tastes are listening to, and what staff music obsessives suggest.

All this will be moot in five years anyway, Fader adds.

By then, we'll be walking around with cell-phone-size wireless players that will allow us to receive whatever we want to hear. We'll pay by the month, say, and won't need to own or store vast amounts of music: We'll get what we want on demand.

With this magic jukebox, "you can punch up any song or genre or playlist you've stored and let the music wash over you," Fader said. "So you won't have to worry which song to put on the device today."

By then, maybe the Beatles will play along, too.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/e...nt/7158618.htm


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Patent Ruling Tugs At Net Downloads
Stefanie Olsen

SightSound Technologies, a digital media company, has won a ruling in its patent case against Bertelsmann subsidiaries that could have wide-reaching effects on the business of Net music and video downloads.

Mount Lebanon, Penn.-based SightSound holds three patents related to the sale and download of digital music and video over the Internet. In 1998, the company sued the Internet site CDNow, owned by media titan Bertelsmann, for infringement of patents filed in the late 1980s. The case is the first and only test so far of the validity of SightSound's intellectual property holdings.

Last Thursday, a federal judge in the Western District Court of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh granted SightSound's motion for summary judgment against Bertelsmann's divisions, paving the road for the 5-year dispute to go to jury trial. The court also dismissed Bertelsmann's request to avoid trial, which was based on the assertion that SightSound had not filed the proper information with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

"We are very pleased with the Court's thorough and well-reasoned opinion and we look forward to taking this case to trial," said SightSound's lead counsel William Wells, of law firm Kenyon & Kenyon.

CDNow's parent company Bertelsmann could not be immediately reached for comment.

If a jury decides that SightSound has a right to enforce the patents, it could affect almost any business that sells downloadable music or video online, including the major record labels and music studios. This is increasingly important, as a number of download services emerge to offer people a legal way obtain video and music content online.

The patent ruling, while not final, is a sign that more of the most basic technologies and techniques underlying online media may be privately "owned" than previously thought. For example, Acacia Media Technologies has claimed it owns patents on the process of transmitting compressed audio or video online--one of the most basic multimedia technologies on the Net. So far, it has signed up licensees such as Mexican satellite telecommunications company Grupo Pegaso and Radio Free Virgin, the online music division of Richard Branson's Virgin group of companies.

The patents--granted to SightSound in 1992--give the company control over a technique for "electronic sales and distribution of digital audio or video signals," specifically over a "telecommunications line." SightSound is suing to stop CDNow from pursuing "any infringing activities," as well as to claim unspecified damages.

Read in a business environment 10 years after the patents were granted, the language is broad. They don't cover a specific technology for encoding or transmitting data; instead, they outline a basic model for sending a digital audio or video signal from one place to another over telecommunications lines, in which a copy of the audio or video is stored on a consumer's computer and a credit card is used for payment.

CDNow had contended, amongst other myriad objections, that this description didn't cover Internet transmission. But in almost every case, the judge's ruling on the scope of the patents agreed with SightSound's contentions.

A pretrial and settlement conference between the parties is scheduled for Nov. 12. A full trial could take place within the next year, unless the parties settle.
http://rss.com.com/2100-1025_3-5101490.html


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File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech
John Schwartz

Forbidden files are circulating on the Internet and threats of lawsuits are in the air. Music trading? No, it is the growing controversy over one company’s electronic voting systems, and the issues being raised, some legal scholars say, are as fundamental as the sanctity of elections and the right to free speech.

Diebold Election Systems, which makes voting machines, is waging legal war against grass-roots advocates, including dozens of college students, who are posting on the Internet copies of the company’s internal communications about its electronic voting machines.

The students say that, by trying to spread the word about problems with the company’s software, they are performing a valuable form of electronic civil disobedience, one that has broad implications for American society. They also contend that they are protected by fair use exceptions in copyright law.

Diebold, however, says it is a case of copyright infringement, and has sent cease-and-desist orders to the students and, in many cases, their colleges, demanding that the 15,000 e-mail messages and memorandums be removed from each Web site. “We reserve the right to protect that which we feel is proprietary,” a spokesman for Diebold, David Bear, said.

The files circulating online include thousands of e-mail messages and memorandums dating to March 2003 from January 1999 that include discussions of bugs in Diebold’s software and warnings that its computer network are poorly protected against hackers. Diebold has sold more than 33,000 machines, many of which have been used in elections.

Advocates and journalists have mined the trove of corporate messages to find statements that appear to suggest many continuing security problems with the software that runs the system, and last-minute software changes that, by law, are generally not allowed after election authorities have certified the software for an election.

Some colleges, like Swarthmore, have bowed to the pressure and removed the x documents from their networks. But in doing so last month, the dean, Robert Gross, maintained that Swarthmore supported the students in spirit. “We believe their actions express the values of the college, including its commitment to prepare students to be engaged, socially responsible citizens,” he said in a statement. Swarthmore has encouraged the students to keep up the debate and is providing legal advice about how to respond to the Diebold letters, a Swarthmore spokesman, Tom Krattenmaker, said.

Last week the advocates’ efforts to keep the documents online took another step as Freenet, an international anticensorship organization that promotes the anonymous distribution of files, obtained copies of the Diebold documents. The technology that the network uses is a peer-to-peer service, and is similar in many ways to the software behind file-trading companies like Kazaa and the original Napster.

Legal scholars say that the online protest and the use of copyright law by Diebold have broad implications and show that the copyright wars are about more than whether Britney Spears gets royalties from downloaded songs.

“We’re so focused on the microview — whether EMI is going to make a buck next year — but there is so much more at stake in our battle to control the flows of information,” including issues at the core of free speech and democracy itself, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor in the department of culture and communication at New York University.

Nelson Pavlosky, a sophomore at Swarthmore from Morristown, N.J., who put documents online through the campus organization Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons said the cease-and-desist letters were “a perfect example of how copyright law can be and is abused by corporations like Diebold” to stifle freedom of speech. He said that he and other advocates wished the college had decided to fight instead of take down the files.

“We feel like they wimped out,” Mr. Pavlosky said.

But with each takedown, the publicity grows through online discussion and media coverage, and more and more people join the fray, giving Diebold’s efforts a Sorcerer’s Apprentice feel. The advocates, meanwhile, are finding that civil disobedience carries risks. One student who posted the documents and has received a letter, Zac Elliott of Indiana University, said, “I’m starting to worry about the ramifications for my entire family if I end up in some sort of legal action.”

Copyright law, and specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are being abused by Diebold, said Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. Copyright is supposed to protect creative expression, Ms. Seltzer said, but in this case the law is being evoked “because they don’t want the facts out there.”

The foundation is advising many students informally and helping them to find legal aid, and it is representing the Online Policy Group, a nonprofit Internet service provider that got a cease-and-desist letter from Diebold after links to the documents were published on a news Web site that the group posts.

Diebold has become a favorite target of advocates who accuse it of partisanship: company executives have made large contributions to the Republican Party and the chief executive, Walden W. O’Dell, said in an invitation to a fund-raiser that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.’’

He has since said that he will keep a lower political profile. Diebold has been trying to stop the dissemination of the files for months with cease and desist letters, but the number of sources for the documents continues to proliferate. Then in July, the first evaluation of the purloined software from recognized authorities in the field — a team involving experts and Johns Hopkins University and Rice University — found several serious holes in the software’s computer security which, if exploited, could allow someone to vote repeatedly, or to change the votes of others. A later review of the software for the State of Maryland agreed that the software flaws did exist, but that in the practice of real elections, other safety nets of security would keep the vulnerabilities in the code from being exploited. Diebold has said it has been working to fix problems.

As Diebold continued to deal with the headache resulting from its leaked code last week, hackers released software from another of the three major high-tech election companies, Sequoia Voting Systems. Reports of that leak first appeared in the online news service of Wired magazine, which suggested that the company’s software also suffered from poor security design.

A spokesman for Sequoia, Alfie Charles, said that the software that had been taken was an older version that had been substantially modified. Possible security flaws in that software, which were discussed in the Wired account do not constitute an actual threat to security, he said.

Mr. Charles also emphasized that his company’s leak was unlike that of Diebold, which had left much of the purloined data unprotected on its own site. The Sequoia software was taken from the servers of a “grossly negligent” contractor to Sequoia, and not from the company itself, he said.

That defense does not sway Prof. Rebecca Mercuri, an specialist in election technology who teaches computer science at Bryn Mawr College. The fact that the software of both companies was not protected raises questions about their security, she said.

“Are these companies staffed by folks completely ignorant of computer security,” she said, “or are they just blatantly flaunting that they can breach every possible rule of protocol and still sell voting machines everywhere with impunity?”

Mr. Bear of Diebold said the election security and the virtual walls around his company’s computer network are different; “You’re looking at apples and oranges,” he said. Of the security breach, he said, “We acknowledge that was unfortunate that that occurred.” But the “security and sanctity of the election process,” he said, has been proved by the Science Applications International Corporation report.

Mr. Bear said that Sequoia planned to submit its software to Aviel D. Rubin, a computer security researcher at Johns Hopkins and the leader of the team that analyzed the Diebold code. Mr. Rubin said he was optimistic that the relationship with Sequoia would be less adversarial.

“It’s very different from the way that Diebold has been doing things.” Mr. Rubin, who has received a cease-and-desist notice from Diebold because of his research, said, “The solution is to stop selling insecure voting machines and not to continue threatening students who are only trying to protect our democracy.”

Voting companies emphasize that their products undergo rigorous testing and independent review required by federal laws for certification.

“Judging from the majority of news coverage, one might think that companies just throw software together and start selling equipment and running elections, when the reality is just the opposite,” Mr. Charles of Sequoia said.

Some observers of the fight say it is having an effect beyond ones and zeroes and virtual forms of hanging chad. Bev Harris, who is writing a book on the electronic voting industry, was among the first people to place the Diebold files online.

She said that when she began her research, young people tended to tell her that voting was irrelevant to their lives. That is changing, she said; “What more important thing can we do so that we can get them involved, and see how important voting is?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/bu.../03secure.html


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Web Patent Critics Spotlight Old Technology
Paul Festa

The Web community is rummaging desperately through dusty technology archives, in a bid to overturn a sweeping patent verdict that could force major changes on the Internet's most popular software products.

Companies and standards bodies are hoping to unearth technology that predates the patent and performs essentially the same functions--a legal concept known as "prior art."

If Web technologists can find the right example, they believe they can help set aside a federal jury's recent finding that Microsoft had violated a patent held by tiny Web developer Eolas Technologies. The so-called '906 patent describes a way that a Web browser can call up a separate application from within a Web page.

Prior art has been key to the case since its inception, but the issue is once again on the front burner, after an unusual filing by the leading Web standards body this month to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The filing, from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), asks the USPTO to re-examine the Eolas patent in light of HTML+, which is technology previously considered by the judge in the Eolas case as potential prior art but barred from evidence at trial.

"In view of the invalidity of (Eolas') claims and the considerable adverse impact the '906 patent will have on the larger World Wide Web community, a Director-initiated re-examination is appropriate," the W3C said in its Oct. 23 filing.

Eolas gained international attention with its $521 million patent infringement victory over Microsoft, a judgment that has focused the attention of the software industry in a way few other patent cases have. Microsoft has already detailed plans to change its Internet Explorer browser, which could force countless Web developers to rewrite their Web pages.

Fear of the implications of the patent has inspired vendors of plug-in technologies--including Macromedia and Sun Microsystems--and Microsoft's direct competitors in the browser market to rush to Microsoft's defense.

The case has brought together not only people who are professionally dependent on Internet Explorer and the way it handles plug-in applications, but also entities--activist groups, companies and standards bodies alike--that have taken up a philosophy that is restrictive of patents, if not outright hostile to them.

The W3C, for one, recently underwent a lengthy, public and polarizing re-evaluation of its patent policy, opting in the end to severely restrict the use of patented technologies in its recommendations.

Calls to restructure the patent system led this week to recommendations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that patents be made easier to challenge--in part through changes to rules on the consideration of prior art.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5100693.html


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Saving Seeds Subjects Farmers to Suits Over Patent
Adam Liptak

Homan McFarling has been farming here all his life, growing mostly soybeans along with a little corn. After each harvest, he puts some seed aside.

"Every farmer that ever farmed has saved some of his seed to plant again," he said.

In 1998, Mr. McFarling bought 1,000 bags of genetically altered soybean seeds, and he did what he had always done. But the seeds, called Roundup Ready, are patented. When Monsanto, which holds the patent, learned what Mr. McFarling had sown, it sued him in federal court in St. Louis for patent infringement and was awarded $780,000.

The company calls the planting of saved seed piracy, and it says it has won millions of dollars from farmers in lawsuits and settlements in such cases. Mr. McFarling's is the first to reach a federal appeals court, which will consider how the law should reconcile patented food with a practice as old as farming itself.

If the appeals court rules against him, said Mr. McFarling, 61, he will be forced into bankruptcy and early retirement.

"It doesn't look right for them to have a patent on something that you can grow yourself," he said.

Janice Armstrong, a Monsanto spokeswoman, said the company invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the seed. "We need to protect our intellectual property so that we can continue to develop the next wave of products," she said.

Were farmers allowed to replant the seed, the company said in its appeals court brief, "Monsanto would effectively, and rapidly, lose control of its rights."

That is because one bag of the patented seed can produce about 36 bags of seed for use in the next growing season. The number grows exponentially. By the third season, the single bag of seed could generate almost 50,000 bags.

Ms. Armstrong said that there are about 300,000 soybean farmers in the United States, and that Monsanto has disputes with only about 100 of them a year. Most disputes are resolved quickly and informally, she said.

Farmers here said the company's efforts to investigate the replanting of saved seeds have been intrusive, divisive and heavy-handed.

"They hired the whole city of Tupelo's night police force," said Mitchell Scruggs, 54, who is a defendant in another saved-seed lawsuit. "They bought a lot across the street from me for surveillance. They're spending all this money on airplanes, helicopters, detectives, lawyers."

"They told a federal judge that it wasn't a monetary issue," Mr. Scruggs said over the roar of three cotton gins at his farm here. "They wanted to make an example of me. They want to destroy me to show others what could happen to them."

In this respect, the seed lawsuits resemble the record industry's actions against people who share music files on the Internet. There, too, the goal is not primarily to recover money from particular defendants but to educate the public, and perhaps to scare other potential offenders.

Ms. Armstrong acknowledges that Monsanto must walk a fine line.

"These people are our customers," she said, "and we do value them. But we also have to protect our intellectual property rights."

Legal experts say Monsanto is likely to win its appeal, in part because Mr. McFarling signed a standard contract when he bought the seed. He said he did not read the contract at the time and it had never occurred to him, until Monsanto contacted him with a $135,000 settlement offer, that he had done anything unlawful. He had paid about $24,000 for 1,000 bags of seeds, including a "technology fee" of $6.50 per bag.

The contract, which Monsanto calls a technology agreement, said buyers could use the seed "only for a single season" and could not "save any seed produced from this crop for replanting."

One judge, dissenting in an earlier appeal that upheld an injunction against Mr. McFarling, wrote that the boilerplate contract did not give Mr. McFarling a fighting chance.

"The terms printed on the reverse of the technology agreement are not subject to negotiation and Monsanto's billions of dollars in assets far exceed McFarling's alleged net worth of $75,000," wrote Judge Raymond C. Clevenger III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The same court is hearing Mr. McFarling's second appeal.

"Even an attorney reading the technology agreement might not understand that it purports to subject one to patent liability in Missouri," where Monsanto is based, Judge Clevenger continued. Someone versed in the specialized decisions collected in law books might have understood it, he wrote, "but we may presume that few feed stores stock the Federal Reporter on their shelves."

Lawyers for the farmers here have worked hard to frame defenses that might work in court. Mr. Scruggs, for instance, promises to attack the validity of the patents themselves and to show that the company's practices amount to a violation of antitrust laws.

Mr. Scruggs said that unlike Mr. McFarling, he did not sign the technology agreement. Even without it, though, legal experts said the case against him was strong. The idea that planting saved seed amounts to patent infringement, they said, follows inexorably from two United States Supreme Court decisions allowing patents for life forms.

Monsanto's soybean seeds account for at least two-thirds of the American soybean harvest. The seeds are called Roundup Ready because they are resistant to a popular herbicide called Roundup, which is also a Monsanto product.

Mr. McFarling and Mr. Scruggs have been forbidden by court orders to use Monsanto's products. They said that conventional seed was perfectly good, but that effective herbicides had become hard to find.

Mr. Scruggs said the courts should find a way to weigh traditions almost as old as humanity against fostering high-technology innovations.

"It's a God-given right that farmers were given when they were born to save these seeds," he said. "All we are is farmers trying to scrape a living out of this dirt."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/national/02SEED.html


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Music-Sharing Service at M.I.T. Is Shut Down
John Schwartz

It was hailed as ingenious: a way to listen to music on demand while avoiding the legal battleground of file sharing. Best of all, the music was fully licensed, so there would be no legal trouble.

But it was not, and there is. On Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it would temporarily shut down its groundbreaking Library Access to Music System until the licensing rights can be worked out.

The music service had its official start one week ago but within hours, music companies, including the Universal Music Group, complained that they had not granted - or been paid for - the required legal permission to make the copies of their songs used by the system.

The creators of the new service, M.I.T. students Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, were dumbfounded by the industry move, since they had paid Loudeye, a company in Seattle, to fill a hard drive with licensed songs. Mr. Winstein and Mr. Mandel said that they thought the contract with the company guaranteed that the copyright issues had been resolved.

"So far as I know, we bought this music fair and square," Mr. Winstein said.

He called the decision to suspend the service crushing, but he hoped it would only be temporary.

"The prudent thing to do, the good faith thing to do, is to take it down while we feel out where we stand," he said.

The music library idea is a clever blend of technology and law. Its creators built the system within the school's cable TV network; the analog TV network would, the students thought, help sidestep the expensive and restrictive laws and regulations that have grown up around the copying and sharing digital copies of music.

It was supposed to resemble the analog world of radio, in which stations pay performance fees to artists representatives like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers but do not pay royalties to the music labels. Because students could listen to the music without making or trading copies, the system's creator thought that they only had to make sure they had legally purchased the music and would not require further payments to the labels.

But the situation has swiftly devolved into a festival of finger pointing. Universal Music Group, a division of Vivendi Universal, issued a statement on Friday saying, "it is unfortunate that M.I.T. launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians, and record labels." Loudeye, the company said, "recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the M.I.T. service, and M.I.T. acted responsibly by removing the music."

M.I.T., however, issued a statement on Friday that stressed that the system "was designed to operate in full compliance with the law and to respect the rights of all copyright holders," and said that Loudeye had not made good on its promises.

"We have been working with Loudeye on obtaining content since October 2002 and Loudeye assured us on multiple occasions that the content they provided to us was prepared fully under authorization from the record labels and on behalf of the publishers."

For its part, Loudeye seems to be claiming that M.I.T. had misunderstood its contract. The company did not return calls seeking comment, but a spokesman told The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the conflict, "We provided content to M.I.T.," but "we did not provide licenses for them to issue that content."

That would appear to contradict what the company had said in a news release the day that the program started, which referred to "approximately 48,000 licensed digital music tracks.'' In the same Loudeye news release, the company quoted Mr. Winstein as saying, "As far as we know, Loudeye is the only company in the country with all the rights and permissions in place to provide this service." That news release has since been removed from Loudeye's Web site.

Getting the legal issues worked out was more complex than the technical ones, Mr. Winstein said. In a paper about the system that he wrote last May, he said that the M.I.T. project raised issues that the industry licensing organizations had never considered, even though they might apply to radio as well. "We were not willing to purchase recordings from Loudeye until we could receive permission from the songwriters and music publishers," he wrote. They approached the Harry Fox agency, which licenses music for the National Music Publishers Association, about clearing the rights. "Five months after first receiving our request for a license to buy these CD's (on a hard disc) from Loudeye, the Harry Fox Agency concluded that no license was necessary. Four hours later, Harry Fox's New Media Coordinator "called me back to say they had changed their mind and decided Loudeye did need a license from them." (The company did not respond to calls seeking comment.)

To Jonathan Zittrain, who teaches Internet law at Harvard and is a director of the university's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, that incident shows that the world of copyright has grown so arcane that even the major players do not even understand it. "It doesn't seem that M.I.T. was trying to steal anything, but rather to simply hew to the letter of the law in an incredibly byzantine area," he said. "Good faith and technical genius alone doesn't make it work."

Now a whiff of conciliation albeit still a bit barbed, is in the air, according to the Vivendi statement: "M.I.T. has now contacted us and apparently recognizes its responsibility to compensate creators for the use of their works. Universal looks forward to discussing how to make that possible."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/te...gy/03mitt.html


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At Sea With MP3's, Boomers Buoy Struggling Record Industry
Chris Nelson

Beyoncé Knowles and 50 Cent have two of the best-selling albums so far this year. Nonetheless, when Borders Books & Music recently redesigned the layouts of the music sections in its more than 420 superstores, the CD's from these and other young hit-makers were booted from prime browsing display space in favor of albums from the likes of Rod Stewart, Sting and Barbra Streisand.

The rearranging proved prescient, as the release of the latest Billboard top 200 albums chart demonstrated. While Clay Aiken, runner-up in the most recent "American Idol" contest and no hipster himself, took the top spot with his debut album, "Measure of a Man," Mr. Stewart finished second with "As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook Vol. II."

New releases from Ms. Streisand and the Eagles also landed in the Top 10. All told, artists over the age of 40, like Bette Midler, Van Morrison, Michael McDonald and Simon and Garfunkel, held 11 of the top 50 spots in the Billboard chart. In the same week last year, 7 baby boomers finished in the Top 50.

The growing success of albums by older artists — and of singers like Norah Jones, who appeal to less cutting-edge tastes — offers some solace to an industry mired in a three-year sales slump. Record executives are desperate for any hopeful sign, even if it comes from people with more wrinkles than tattoos.

The record labels have placed most of the blame for the decline on the file-sharing networks on the Internet, and have sued or threatened to sue hundreds of people for illegally distributing free music online.

But the older audience, typically more affluent consumers who grew up buying their music on vinyl LP's, seldom uses the free file-sharing sites, according to Forrester Research. And because they account for a growing segment of the record-buying public, labels are increasingly tailoring their releases and their marketing, particularly on television, to reach them.

"Adults like music, too, and they're underserved," said Will Botwin, the president of Sony Music Entertainment's Columbia Records, which released the albums by Ms. Streisand and Ms. Midler. "And they're starting to get served."

It's not as if the historically strong youth market is melting away. The biggest-selling album of the year is expected to be the rapper 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," according to Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts.

But adult buyers are increasingly making their presence known in the industry. Last year, shoppers over the age of 40, who tend to gravitate to graying artists, bought more than 35 percent of all units sold, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Ten years ago, they accounted for 22.6 percent of all sales.

Some of the sales spurt can be attributed to a staple of the music industry: the never-ending repackaging of golden oldies. The Eagles have already released two volumes of greatest hits, not to mention a boxed set. But that did not stop Time Warner's Warner Strategic Marketing label from releasing a double CD of "The Very Best Of" on Oct. 23. The album sold 162,000 copies, and finished third in its first week on the charts.

Elvis Presley's "Elvis: 2nd to None" and "The Essential Simon & Garfunkel" also made strong showings on the chart. But shoppers are also buying albums of vintage stars recording tried-and-true songs. Mr. Stewart, a long way from his "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" days, now croons classics like "As Time Goes By" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (a duet with Cher), and sold 212,000 copies of his new album in the first week. (His 2002 volume of standards leapt from 95 to 46 on this week's chart and has sold 1.8 million copies so far.) Ms. Streisand's "The Movie Album," Mr. McDonald's "Motown" and "Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook" also follow the concept.

"It is a voice matched with material where they know every song on the album, they are well-chosen, and there is a chemistry and magic that is appealing to the public," said Clive Davis, chairman of BMG's RCA Music Group, whose J Records label produced both of Mr. Stewart's collections.

Even better for the music industry, these fans actually pay for the music. "We feel like we're losing less sales to file sharing" on albums by older artists, as well as those by younger artists who appeal to baby boomers, like Ms. Jones, John Mayer and Josh Groban, Mr. Botwin, of Columbia Records, said.

"From Discs to Downloading," an August report by Josh Bernoff, principal analyst for Forrester Research, bolsters Mr. Botwin's file-sharing thesis. The report found that while one-half of consumers ages 22 and younger use file-sharing software, only one in nine people ages 23 years old and older do so.

The recent success of some television advertising campaigns for new albums is also likely to inspire copycats. Until recently, the major labels rarely used television advertisements to drive music fans to stores, content to leave the airwaves to the direct marketing purveyors of schlocky compilations like K-Tel.

That began to change in 1999, when the Universal Music Group created UTV Records to sell compilation albums and single-artist retrospectives through television advertisements. The new label has issued compilations from Tom Petty, the Bee Gees and Kiss.

"The adult market is out there; they just have to be marketed to," said Kevin Gore, executive vice president for sales and marketing at Warner Strategic Marketing. Aggressive television advertising campaigns, like the one for the Beatles' "1" compilation in 2000, can turn what would have been a modest-selling album 10 year years ago into a chart-topper today, he said.

Warner Strategic Marketing began airing spots for the Eagles' "Very Best Of" on networks like CNN, MSNBC, MTV and VH1 a month before the album was released.

Television marketing has broadened both the types of artists labels can push, as well as the consumers they can reach.

In the past, the labels turned to radio and MTV to drive music sales, said Bruce Resnikoff, the president of Universal Music Enterprises, part of Vivendi Universal. But as radio stations narrow their playlists of songs, fewer artists can reach fans over the airwaves.

It is equally hard to get musicians, particularly older ones, on MTV. General television advertisements allow labels to reach older potential buyers, Mr. Resnikoff said. Label executives hope that when older fans see an ad for an Elton John disc on NBC's "Today" show, they will pick up the disc while shopping in Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, or Barnes & Noble — the stores they frequent more often than record stores.

The growing importance of older fans has led to this month's arrival of a music magazine called Tracks. Leaving the younger set to magazines like Rolling Stone, Blender and Spin, Tracks plans to cater to the musical tastes of adults over 30.

All these signs of a surge are contributing to a long-awaited feeling of optimism in the music industry. The latest Billboard chart represents the seventh week in a row that weekly sales in 2003 have bested sales in the corresponding week last year.

But any rejoicing may be premature. Even with the recent spurt, sales in 2003 are still off 6.2 percent from the comparable period in 2002. And if the record-buying habit is not passed down to a generation raised on Napster, the current troubles of the music business will seem as mild as Barry Manilow.

"It would be dangerous to say, O.K., the kids have gone away and all that's left are the adults," said Billboard's Mr. Mayfield. "That hasn't totally happened. And we ought to get scared if kids do lose interest in paying for music."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/business/02MUSI.html


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Paying the Piper, Round 2: The Repertory Grows
David Pogue

IT'S the wacky parlor game that's sweeping the country: Design That Business Model!

You're a recording-industry executive. You believe that those crazy kids, with their long music and loud hair, are eating into your profits by swapping digital music files online. Your goal is to design a music downloading service that they can use instead - but this time, one that they'll pay for.

In the first round of this game, which was played on the national stage over the last year, some contestants charged a monthly fee just to let you listen to the songs online without actually downloading them. Others let you download songs, but when you stopped paying the monthly fee, your music collection self-destructed. Sooner or later, somebody would surely have charged a monthly fee just to let you hum your favorite songs in the bathroom.

The winner of Round 1 was Apple. The business model of its iTunes Music Store was so obvious and simple, no record company executive could ever have thought it up: $1 a song. No monthly fee. You buy 'em, you own 'em. You can copy the songs to your laptop, to your iPod music player or to a CD for the car.

To nobody's surprise except the music companies', Apple sold 13 million songs in six months - 70 percent of all online music sales - even though the service worked only on Macs.

This has been a busy season for the music-download business. Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled a Windows version of its service and software, and as of yesterday, three copycat services had opened their virtual doors for business: MusicMatch, BuyMusic and Napster 2.0, formerly PressPlay.

(A few remaining services haven't yet adopted Apple's business model. EMusic offers unlimited downloads of non-copy-protected MP3 files for $10 a month, but stocks primarily little-known independent artists; MusicNow still requires a monthly fee; and Listen.com doesn't let you download songs to your PC. America Online will soon tap into Apple's music store.)

All of the new services are infinitely superior to the ludicrous rent-a-song plans of their predecessors. (Note to the six people who actually signed up the monthly-fee services: Those plans will continue as an alternative to the à la carte program.)

With only slight variations, the services are the same. You download a free jukebox program that can play, search and organize your music collection. This program is also your window to the online music store.

You can browse or search a collection of several hundred thousand pop songs. You can double-click on a song's name to listen to a 30-second preview. If it sounds good, you click on a Buy button to transfer it to your PC. Your cost: $1.

Each downloaded song is copy-protected, but so intelligently that you might not even notice. You can burn songs onto blank CD's, play them on up to two other computers or download them to a music player. You just can't share them through free file-swapping services like Kazaa.

BuyMusic offers by far the least satisfying music-store experience. Instead of offering a free jukebox program like its rivals, BuyMusic requires that you do your searching and buying online, at buymusic

.com. After buying your tunes, you're supposed to use Windows Media Player to manage, play and copy them.

When the service was introduced in July, BuyMusic's hook was that its songs cost "as little as 79 cents" - a questionable phrase if there ever was one.

In fact, the prices vary, and most of the good stuff costs $1.14 a song. The rights are weirdly inconsistent, too. You're offered 30-second previews of Phil Collins, but not Sting's latest. You can buy individual Barbra Streisand songs, but you have to buy the entire album of Metallica's "Garage Inc.,'' and can't preview any of its songs. Sometimes you're allowed to transfer a song to two other computers, sometimes to none at all. Sometimes you can burn three CD's, sometimes an unlimited number, sometimes none. And on and on it goes.

BuyMusic seems to have missed the point that simplicity and reliability are an essential part of the experience. It's like discovering that every third McDonald's is out of buns.

Napster 2.0, which opened just yesterday, seems to have been named to exploit music fans' fond memories of the original Napster and its free downloads. But don't be fooled; this is a $1-a-song site. As the unproofread online help puts it, "Music you purchase is your's to keep."

Napster claims to have 500,000 songs in its library. Oddly, though, it lacks a lot of material that its rivals have on hand. There's nothing from Billy Joel or Clay Aiken, the "American Idol" star, for example. You won't find much from Madonna, Led Zeppelin or the Beatles, either; none of the music services have secured rights to those and certain other recalcitrant artists.

Otherwise, Napster works well as a music-download service. Articles, message boards, Billboard hit lists from past decades and even crossword puzzles liven up the proceedings.

Napster isn't very good as a jukebox program, though. Unlike the Apple and MusicMatch programs, it can't rip CD's you already own (that is, copy their songs to your hard drive). And unless you switch into Windows Media Player, you can't transfer the songs you've bought to a portable music player unless it's Napster's own $400 player, developed with Samsung.

In that regard, MusicMatch is a better bet. It's the same popular jukebox program that millions of PC fans already enjoy, with the music store grafted on. You don't have to switch into another program to burn a CD or rip your own CD's. And you can dress up the screen with any of hundreds of "skins" - downloadable graphic overlays for its windows.

The music store is consistent and easy to use. It can recommend bands based on a list of your favorites, and you can browse the store by era or by type of music.

The software itself could use refinement: the list of songs huddles in the bottom third of the nonadjustable window, for example, and there's no Maximize button to expand the window to fill your screen, an eccentricity shared by Apple's iTunes.

Note, too, that you can "authorize" up to three computers to play your downloaded songs, exactly as with iTunes and Napster. But if you de-authorize one MusicMatch PC, it can't be re-authorized. That's a draconian anti-piracy tactic that could someday render your main PC incapable of playing your $1,000 music collection.

The best music store-jukebox is Apple's iTunes, for a list of reasons as long as a Wagner opera. Its copying policies are by far the most liberal: unlimited iPod copies, unlimited burns to CD as long as you rearrange the song order after every 10 copies, easy re-authorizing. It's the only service to offer pleasant extras like audio books (5,000), spending limits (are you listening, parents of teenagers?) and gift certificates.

ITunes also offers a Shopping Cart that lets your song choices pile up as you shop; the software doesn't actually download them until you give the word. It's an essential feature for people with slow (that is, dial-up) Internet connections, and a safety net against impulse buys. Only iTunes, furthermore, can play uninterrupted music as you move from screen to screen. After all, when better to listen to your tunes than when you're shopping at a music store? Best of all, iTunes for Windows - a brushed-metal pixel-for-pixel clone of the Macintosh version - is a best-of-breed jukebox. It burns and rips CD's much faster than the free version of MusicMatch, which is deliberately crippled so that you'll buy the $20 Plus version. ITunes can share your music on a network (with Macs or PC's in other rooms, for example), create cross-fades between songs during playback, and display a wild laser-light show pulse to the music - an essential feature for people with huge flat-panel screens in exposed-brick SoHo loft apartments.

Apple's iTunes is the only choice if you have an iPod, the best-selling player. (Rival services can transfer your music only to certain "WMA-compatible" players, which the iPod isn't.) ITunes is also, of course, the only choice for Macs.

Unfortunately, iTunes for the PC requires Windows XP or 2000. If you're running Windows 98 or Me, download MusicMatch instead. You may prefer MusicMatch anyway if you've already got your life's music organized in a previous version.

Now, ordinarily in this kind of product roundup, readers must take a reviewer's word for the results. Few people run out to buy all seven plasma TV's in a review, for example, for some testing of their own.

Just this once, however, sampling all of the rivals yourself requires no commitment. The software is free, and there's no monthly fee; you can flit as freely between music services as you might between breakfast cereals on successive mornings.

The new, buck-a-track services are light-years more attractive than the rent-a-song schemes of 2002. Of course, even taken together, they may not make much of a dent in the illegal free-song trade. But they're more reliable than Kazaa, and easier to navigate - and using them is a good deal less likely to result in recording-industry summonses in your mailbox.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/te...ts/30stat.html


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A Set-Top Box With 100 Rentable Films
Michel Marriott

Could renting a movie be much simpler than it already is? The Walt Disney Company is betting it could be with a new service called MovieBeam that includes a no-fuss set-top box that arrives in your home loaded with 100 DVD-quality feature films that can be rented with a press of a remote control.

The rental cost of the films, produced by several studios and in most popular genres, is $4 for new releases and $2.50 for older titles. MovieBeam has been introduced in Salt Lake City, Spokane, Wash., and Jacksonville, Fla., and is expected to spread across the country in coming months. More information will be available at electronics retailers and at www.moviebeam.com.



Made by Samsung Electronics, the receiver is basically just a 160-gigabyte hard drive with a small antenna that automatically downloads 10 new movies a week using a wireless signal, replacing 10 other titles. That signal is tucked into broadcast signals from TV stations owned by ABC and from PBS National Datacast. The receivers are not for sale; a $7 monthly fee is charged once users sign up for the service and the receiver is delivered.

Once rented, a film can be viewed as often as users wish for 24 hours, said Salil Mehta, a Disney business development executive, and will then simply become unavailable (unless it is reordered). MovieBeam users can bid goodbye to late fees and, if they like, to trips to the video store.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/te...ts/30beam.html


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P2P Without A Network
Edwin Yapp

GREEN Packet Inc, a developer of mobile Internet infrastructure, has launched what it claims to be a unique wireless networking solution that enables mobile devices to connect with each other without the need for wireless access infrastructures.

Dubbed the SONbuddy, the software platform enables WiFi devices to seek, organise and maintain a peer-to-peer (P2P) or a peer-to-multi-peer (P2MP) self-organising network (SON) with each other. Members within the network may join in or terminate their links at any time.

According to Green Packet Malaysia’s director and country manager Nik Mat Ismail, a typical scenario would see users connect to other users without the use of a WiFi access point.

“A user would only need to load SONbuddy on his/her laptop or Pocket PC- based handheld device and wait for other SONbuddy users to come into range to start forming a ‘virtual’ community,” said Nik.

He added that for the users to hook up, they should be between 50m and 100m of each other.

SONbuddy uses a patent-pending multi-hop, self-organising technology that turns each wireless device into intelligent routers, allowing for the formation of a true ad-hoc network, he told In.Tech after the launch ceremony.

“When device A communicates with device B, it multi-hops over other intermediate device to create a self-organising connection,” he said, adding that the multi-hop capability also increases the range of a typical WiFi connection.

Nik said that with SONbuddy, typical applications such as file swapping, instant messaging, gaming, voice over WiFi and resources sharing are some of the things users are able to do. SONbuddy, can also act as a gateway to an intranet, an external network connection, or the Internet, he added.

SONbuddy is currently available for devices running on Microsoft Windows, and in the near future, Pocket PC-based devices, such as HP iPAQs.

The price for SONbuddy on a Windows platform costs US$49 (RM186) for a single user licence. The price of SONbuddy for the Pocket PC-based devices has not yet been revealed. For more on Green Packet’s offerings, surf to www.greenpacket.comor call (03) 8996-6022.
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology


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Winning Over The Pirates

As the music industry and the owners of KaZaA square up for a battle over illegal file sharing, Graham Stewart reports on the future of music acquisition

If it's digital and it's being transferred illegally across the net, you can bet that Allan Morris will get the blame. He's executive vice- president of Australian software company Sharman Networks, owner of KaZaA - the world's leading file sharing service, and scourge of the record industry.

Both Sharman and KaZaA's users have been getting battered by litigation by the US record industry and now, in return, Sharman is pursuing a counter claim alleging anti-competitive behaviour and unfair business practices.

Against this backdrop you'd imagine that a keynote address to the music industry - at last week's MusicWorks conference in Glasgow - would generate a sour note. But it's not as it seems, according to Morris. They're really all on talking terms.

"We've talked and we continue to talk regularly to the senior executives of the record labels and they've always been very enthusiastic," he insists. "The attorneys and others that drive the litigation are the problem.

"Our counter claim is rather muted and that was deliberately the case. We don't seek a fight but we aren't going to stand by and get beaten-up".

Morris, who runs Sharman's US and European operations, is well aware that KaZaA is being used to illegally distribute copyrighted material. But he claims that Sharman's purchase of KaZaA last year was intended precisely to reverse that trend. "We acquired the application in order to be the most effective distributor of licenced content. What we're offering the record companies is the most powerful way of monetising file sharing."

Morris is referring to Sharman's partnership with Altnet, whose TopSearch technology offers users an alternative to pirated files. Search results in KaZaA prioritise Gold Icon files, which represent high quality files provided by professional content creators such as record companies. Most of these files are digitally rights managed (DRM) and typically offer users a range of choices, from limited free trials to various purchasing options.

Already KaZaA is the number one provider of Microsoft DRM technology, mainly through downloads of computer games and music by emerging artists. What's missing is licensed content from the major record companies.

"It's very interesting to hear all of the emphasis being on the licensed files," says Andrew Yeates, director general of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) - the record industry's trade body in the UK. "But let's be realistic. We all know that these services have far more unlicensed files being transferred than licensed ones at the moment, and that's the issue for us."

Many believe the record industry has only itself to blame for this, having been too slow to come up with a compelling and legal alternative to Napster. With a generation now accustomed to acquiring music for free, the genie may be out of the bottle for good. But Morris is more optimistic.

"The evidence we've seen with independent artists on KaZaA is that when people have the chance to acquire a guaranteed quality, virus protected, endorsed song for a relatively small price, then sufficient people in large numbers will do that."

It's an argument proven by the success of Apple's iTunes Music Store which, unlike KaZaA, has the support of the majors. Despite this, Morris isn't about to ditch KaZaA's peer- to-peer (P2P) technology, which he says is the antithesis of iTunes' centralised, tightly controlled model.

"iTunes is a cool site, but yesterday's technology," says Morris. "P2P networks are much more bandwidth efficient than website delivery and they have a viral quality which fosters the creation of online communities.

Some of these communities have been in the spotlight this week after the Guardian reported on Scotland Yard claims that the scale of P2P traffic in illegal images of children now dwarfs almost any other paedophile network they have encountered.

Morris is surprised by this, pointing to recent contrary evidence from the US Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. They discovered that the availability of illegal pornographic material through websites and chat rooms far exceeds what's available on P2P.

"With responsible P2P operations such as KaZaA, no user is truly anonymous from legitimate law enforcement agencies. So someone has got to be really dumb to distribute paedophile material on KaZaA," claims Morris.

"With responsible P2P operations such as KaZaA, no user is truly anonymous from legitimate law enforcement agencies. So someone has got to be really dumb to distribute paedophile material on KaZaA," claims Morris.

"KaZaA has zero tolerance for child pornography. We readily cooperate with law-enforcement agencies worldwide and are ready to support the British authorities in reducing the problem even further, if they contact us."

"As far as music is concerned, if you look at the way in which it is recommended, people already share files by instant messaging and email, saying 'hey, check this out'. They also use SMS and blogs to spread the word. We're working on how we can offer ways of distribution and promotion that match that. Already KaZaA users can create and share playlists with other users."

With last week's beta release of KaZaA v2.6, Sharman has added features designed to attract users away from illegal downloads. The launch of "KaZaA Kapsules," for instance, enables artists to offer value-added content with music, video, lyrics and promo material wrapped in a single digital package.

But what if, despite these incentives, illegal downloads continue to flourish? Wayne Rosso, chief executive of Madrid-based Optisoft, a competitor to KaZaA, believes the structure of the record industry needs to be turned on its head.

"Record companies need to understand they're not in the business of selling CDs anymore. Their business is the transfer of data between high-speed networks and devices. Ninety nine per cent of downloads from iTunes are still too expensive, particularly when compared with free. We'd like to see the same business model as radio where we'd pay a share of our revenue. But it's up to the rights holders to get their act together. Frankly, that's not our job. We just provide the pipes."

One innovative approach being trialled in the UK at the moment is PlayLouder, the world's first ISP network to licence from music companies the right for its subscribers to operate within a private file sharing network.

Much like a radio station, payments will be paid to MCPS-PRS, the licensing body responsible for collecting royalties on behalf of music publishers and songwriters.

For around £25 per month, the bundled service will comprise broadband internet access and rights to download and stream music owned by supporting labels including Beggars Group, XL Recordings and V2 Music. PlayLouder is hoping some of the majors will be on-board for the launch of the service early next year.

Andy Heath of Beggars Group says: "What we're working on at PlayLouder is the notion of perceptively free at the point of consumption, a bit like radio. Of course, everybody listening to the radio is actually paying for it, but the consumer doesn't feel that they're paying for it."

Morris says it's difficult to predict what form of payments the industry will eventually settle on, but thinks we might end up with a hybrid.

"We'll go through a transition phase, and to get hung up on that phase and the way it works is pointless when we all know we're going to get to the right place in the end. I think we'll look back on this period and say that these discussions were rather quaint."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...078364,00.html


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Swarthmore Phoenix

ITS Increases Bandwidth
Christina Temes

Information Technology Services announced this week that it had renewed its contract with Yipes, the college’s Internet Service Provider, with an increase in the amount of bandwidth shared among members of the Swarthmore community.

The new contract, a product of several months of negotiation, increases the amount of bandwidth shared from 10 Mbps to 15 Mbps for the same price as the contract that was previously in place. The increase means the total amount of traffic the network can support increases by 50 percent, according to ITS Networking and Systems Manager Mark Dumic.

The change will support increased usage, as “the average amount of traffic of faculty, students and staff is going up,” Dumic said. He also noted the increased usage of traffic-intensive applications, like those involving graphics.

ITS Client Services Manager Robin Jacobsen likened bandwidth to the concept of money, saying that, like money, we spend the amount of bandwidth that we have. According to Jacobsen, students have been using all the bandwidth for a while, and the increase in bandwidth would most likely run out quickly.

“Rather than using disks and CDs, people are using bandwidth to store information,” Jacobsen said. She also said this trend would most likely continue as the ways to deliver information become more technologically advanced.

Since the problem with peer-to-peer applications involved the number of connections opened by such applications rather than the amount of bandwidth available, Jacobsen said, the increase in bandwidth would most likely not affect bringing back peer-to-peer applications.

She emphasized that ITS’s main goal was to keep the network stable at this time and that the fate of P2P applications was still unknown.

Students are questioning how much the increase in bandwidth will aid the network. “For the same price, I think it’s valuable to have a larger connection … but, if you have more bandwidth, people will find more ways to use it,” ITS Help Desk Assistant Chase DuBois ’07 said.

The new contract took effect Nov. 1 and will remain in effect for the next two years.
http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2003-11-06/news/13406


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Lab Rat: Swapping Gets Legit

P2P schemes make the big leap into the corporation.

Mention peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and most people immediately think of scores of renegade music buffs illegally swapping scores of bootleg tracks. But the checkered reputation of P2P may soon change as corporations legitimize P2P as a simple, yet efficient, scheme for sharing data across large, distributed networks. The move is propelled by a growing group of researchers in labs around the U.S. - including teams at IBM, Sun Microsystems, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford - who are working to make the content within P2P networks more secure.

One notable effort got its start four years ago near San Francisco. The assistant director of Stanford’s HighWire Press Vicky Reich was informally talking with software engineer David Rosenthal, who had worked at Sun Microsystem’s Labs and startups like Nvidia and Vitria Technology, about the problem of trying to secure electronic journals at Stanford University’s libraries.

Ms. Reich, who oversees the publishing of numerous online science and medical journals, could not guarantee Stanford librarians and other subscribers that the files would be secure and accessible. A big concern was whether a virus could infect a file and potentially corrupt its integrity. What would happen if the Web site or subscription policies changed when a journal was sold and acquired by another publisher?

The pressing data security and access challenges piqued Mr. Rosenthal’s interest. But the idea of having a central database of the journals with a backup, similar to the system used at the Library of Congress, seemed too risky. If something happened to these databases, the entire system would collapse and the journals would be lost.

Mr. Rosenthal sought a more distributed solution and designed a secure P2P digital preservation system that could support Stanford’s online publishing efforts. By March 2000, the first true P2P protocol for file sharing – Gnutella – was out in public view. Upon seeing the programming marvel of Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper, Mr. Rosenthal “immediately understood Gnutella was a much more robust system – truly decentralized and truly P2P – than Napster, which still required centralized servers.”

Mr. Rosenthal affectionately called his distributed system LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). To build the system, he secured funding from Sun Microsystems Labs, the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Stanford Libraries. Sun Labs was interested in the project because it also was exploring new ways to implement distributed file sharing and other networked services, Mr. Rosenthal says.

Mr. Rosenthal understood the paramount business and technical challenge of the project: create a low-cost system that is secure and easy to use.

LOCKSS mirrors the way the librarians share their print archives. Each library keeps its own collection but borrows from the others to make a copy if a particular publication is missing or replaces it if damaged. If a library wants to join LOCKSS, it only needs the software client installed on a PC and a network connection to both the library’s local network and the Internet. Once installed, LOCKSS automatically creates a permanent cache, or local database of the journal articles. Unlike other caches that are deleted after a day or so, the LOCKSS cache is never deleted. However, it can only store copies of the journals for which a particular library has valid subscriptions.

While a year’s worth of the largest science journal, the weekly phone-book-size Journal of Biological Chemistry, is about 2.5 GB, others typically are much smaller -- usually less than 100 MB. At the current cost of about $120 for 120GB of disk storage, storing 48 years worth of the JBC is relatively inexpensive.

To keep files in the permanent cache secure, LOCKSS continually runs an auditing process that compares the same journal articles stored in the various caches of computers throughout the network. If an outsider intends to corrupt or remove an article, that person would have to target each of the hundreds or thousands of copies in a way that would not allow the system to replace the damaged article. However, the auditing process is slow: it takes about a day to verify a year’s worth of a journal, and any given page is audited about once every three months.

For now, P2P systems work well for documents that are static and need to be stored for long periods of time, Mr. Rosenthal says. He also is investigating the use of LOCKSS technology to preserve static government documents.

The challenge going forward, Mr. Rosenthal says, is “to make a system that is hard for the bad guys to interfere with, without requiring that secrets – such as passwords and encryption keys – be kept secret for long periods of time.
http://www.redherring.com/article.as...20gets%20legit