Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – January 3rd, 2004 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 01-01-04, 11:50 PM

Pop Pop Fizz Fizz

Celebrate much? Heh heh. There may be some reading this who are shall we say, in recovery from Wednesday nights affairs. Here in Connecticut many of the towns, mine included, had their own parties that rang in the New Year with magic, music and fireworks. There was a special emphasis on activities for families with children, so naturally getting as smashed as possible wasn’t a major priority. I went to one of those. My total consumption for the entire evening consisted of two beers. One at dinner and one later on during a movie I watched at home, from a tape I made off an old movie channel. Funny thing about that. It’s perfectly legal to tape all you want off TV, and share the tapes with pals. I do so at every opportunity to the delight of my friends. Doing the exact same thing with a computer can get you in hot water. Although getting in hot water for that became a lot less likely this year, it is nevertheless one of those strange things in life that make little sense. It’s all kind of silly. Movie sales to the home are skyrocketing, the industry is healthy, indeed sales to the home now bring in more cash than ticket sales at theaters. Even the music biz is OK. It’s nowhere near as shaky as it’s whining front men wail. Pop sales for the year continue to fizz, at just a slightly slower pace. U.S. results for the year are expected to be less than two percent lower than last. No catastrophe there. In other parts of the world things are actually looking great. England and Australia continue to see sales increases for another year, in spite of rampant file sharing. And even in the U.S. some sectors of the business will see sales jumps. Some genres will experience boosts of over 10 percent, some indie labels will enjoy increases that will double their output and sales of singles are shooting through the roof. People are asking a legitimate question: If it’s true, as some record executives insist, that file sharing causes sales declines, then is it also true that file sharing causes sales increases? How can one spend four bitter years claiming one without rejoicing the other? I guess if you’re the RIAA anything’s possible. But the RIAA has little voice in this column today, and it shouldn’t have the loudest voice in this very public P2P debate - about what it means for people to share their own culture and about where that culture is heading. Will it be open for all to create and consume or will it be locked down and dribbled out by powerful interests under threat of fine and imprisonment? I see the RIAA’s days passing, its credibility stained by its own narrow self-interest and continuous war with the public. This is a view I don’t carry alone, not by any means. Besides hundreds of millions of file sharers who agree by the billions of files each week, the courts are sharing these very ideas I’ve touched on over the last twelve months as well. It may be that the RIAA can exploit Congressional weakness and ignorance and get laws passed that run counter to nearly all the ideals the founding fathers incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, or used as the foundation for this government, or wrote in their own personal letters to each other. It’s another thing entirely getting the courts to ride along. So far these courts are proving very reluctant passengers. 2003 saw them diverge in major ways from what the RIAA thought was good for their members but tried to pass off as good for the world. Here’s to a new 2004 bringing more of the same.

Enjoy,

Jack.

RIAA Plans New Lawsuits Soon
W. David Gardner

Undaunted by a court decision making it more difficult to file lawsuits against Internet users suspected of illegally downloading songs, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is vowing to file more lawsuits "in the near future."

Although the RIAA will have to go to greater and more expensive lengths to target suspected violators, an association spokesman said Monday that the RIAA will go ahead with new lawsuits. What it can't do in the wake of a decision by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is force internet service providers -- like Verizon -- to reveal the identity of any of its subscribers the RIAA is suspicious of.

While the Court was sympathetic to the RIAA's attempts to protect its members -- recording artists and companies primarily -- it ruled that attempts by the RIAA to subpoena records from Verizon was an unlawful invasion of privacy.

In its ruling, the Court seemed to invite RIAA to go back to Congress and seek a revision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which the RIAA used to hit more than 300 consumers with subpoenas to investigate alleged file swapping. The DMCA was approved by Congress before online file-swapping of music was contemplated.

The RIAA spokesman said the association had made no decision on whether to appeal the Court of Appeals decision or to revisit Congress for more protective legislation.

In its decision, the Court of Appeals said: "It is not the province of the courts, however, to rewrite the DMCA in order to make it fit a new and unforeseen Internet architecture, no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry or threatens being to the motion picture and software industries. The plight of copyright holders must be addressed in the first instance by the Congress."

The judges reversed an earlier decision by a federal court judge, who said Verizon must turn over the identities of its customers the RIAA suspected of engaging in illegal music-swapping. The Appeals Court said: "had the Congress been aware of P2P technology, or anticipated its development," then it might have drafted the DMCA more generally to cover P2P.

Cary Sherman, RIAA president, said the court's decision was "disappointing... but it only changes the process by which we will file lawsuits." The new procedure means the RIAA will have to file against Internet users whose identity will be revealed after laborious legal procedures.

The decision was hailed by Verizon and by Kazaa, leading P2P provider. Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel said: "This decision removes the threat of a radical, new subpoena process that empowers copyright holders or anyone merely claiming to be a copyright holder to obtain personal information about Internet users by simply filing a one-page form with a court clerk...Copyright holders seeking personal information about Internet subscribers will now have to file a traditional lawsuit."

And, Sharman Networks, which represents file-swapping Kazaa, hailed the decision saying the entertainment industry "has lost its way, choosing a path of endless litigation against its own customers." In a statement, Sharman urged the entertainment industry to adopt peer-to-peer technology to distribute content.
http://www.crn.com/sections/Breaking...rticleID=46858

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It's Official: Searches for P2P Music Tool KaZaa Top Harry Potter, Britney Spears as Number One Search Term on Yahoo! in 2003

Rumors of Human Cloning and War in Iraq Top News Searches; American Idol and Survivor Top Reality TV Searches

Yahoo! Inc. a leading global Internet company, today revealed the most popular search terms of 2003. Based on insight into searches conducted by Yahoo! Search's millions of users worldwide, the top searches of 2003 are a benchmark of consumer interests and trends this year.

Find the full list of top searches in 2003 including Top Rumors, Arnold Schwarzenegger Misspellings and more at http://search.yahoo.com/ top2003.

The Yahoo! 2003 Top 10 Searches:

1. KaZaa

2. Harry Potter

3. "American Idol"

4. Britney Spears

5. 50 Cent

6. Eminem

7. WWE

8. Paris Hilton

9. NASCAR

10. Christina Aguilera

Music and multimedia continue to dominate America's online mindshare as KaZaa, the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program, took first place followed by a spate of pop singers. The world's favorite wizard, Harry Potter took honors as the second most popular search term for the year, whizzing up from No. 10 in 2002 and beating out heavy-hitters such as Britney Spears and "American Idol".

Erik Gunther, an editor of Yahoo! Search, points out that three of this years' top searches -- Harry Potter, Britney Spears and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), have held spots in Yahoo!'s Top 10 for three years in a row, but notes several new entries.

"The newcomers to the Yahoo! Search Top Searches of 2003 continue to show the strength of breakouts from year to year. This year's newcomers include Paris Hilton -- buoyed by notoriety and a reality TV show -- and Christina Aguilera, who has made the list after several years in the shadow of Ms. Spears."
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en

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ANNO 2003: Legal Peer-to-Peer Solution Will Ignite New Web Boom

Payshare delivers legal, protected and profitable online distribution
Press Release

Anybody can sell their own digital content -- such as music, movies, software or electronic books -- legally and profitably with Payshare, a new digital distribution service that legitimises peer-to-peer. Payshare, developed and patented by software house ANNO 2003, will revolutionise the way digital content is distributed. "Payshare combines the anarchy and community of peer-to-peer file sharing with the rights-to-profit and free market ideals of capitalism," says Norbert Boehnke, sales director, ANNO 2003.

The Payshare distribution model allows anyone to profit by copying and promoting digital goods, and gives original content owners a far higher profit margin than traditional distribution models. Payshare model Original content owners register their digital content with Payshare and make the product available online. Purchasers buy the product and have the option to register with Payshare as a 'co-publisher'.

Co-publishers distribute the content (through, for example, a website, or a peer-to-peer network) and receive a percentage of the retail price. The percentage a co-publisher receives is set by the original content owner. "Payshare undermines traditional distribution models. Anyone -- from home movie makers to unsigned bands or established artists -- can sell their content digitally, at no risk of piracy and with a higher profit margin. Traditional music labels or movie distributors suddenly have little value to offer," says Boehnke.

First product

The first product to be distributed using Payshare is ANNO 2X, video-compression software from ANNO 2003. ANNO 2X can squeeze four hours of DVD-movies into just 630 MB at broadcast television standard. "ANNO 2X is a tool for archiving DVDs to a hard disk drive. But, more important, it helps people sell their own movies online as it lets purchasers download, and resell, content faster. For that reason, and to demonstrate Payshare, we decided to make ANNO 2X the first product available through Payshare, says Boehnke. "The web gave everyone the right to publish. Payshare gives them the right to profit too," says Boehnke.

Notes

ANNO 2X is available to journalists free of charge, who can become co-publishers. More information: http://www.payshare.net/news/

Key Payshare benefits -

-- Secure online shares
-- Original content owners get higher sales margin
-- Create revenue for anyone that co-publishes
-- Eliminates piracy
-- Leverages peer-to-peer networks legally and profitably

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+04:00+AM

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Online Music Finally Starts To Rock 'N' Roll

Industry punishes downloaders while getting into the act itself
Benny Evangelista

In 2003, the struggling record industry found two ways to get consumers to pay for online music -- by enticing them with new, licensed Web services or scaring a chosen few to settle potentially expensive lawsuits.

The success of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, which has sold more than 25 million songs, set off a new Internet gold rush of online services that had even mainstream retailers like Wal-Mart joining the stampede.

But the recording industry also turned to litigation to try to discourage millions of people from using the popular file-sharing networks. With subpoenas and lawsuits, the industry's copyright infringement dragnet snared hundreds of people, from teenagers to grandparents.

The result was a tumultuous year that experts say marked the dawn of a new era for the recording industry, one that will have ripple effects across all of entertainment.

In 2002, the music industry wasn't convinced there was money to be made from online music, at least while file-sharing networks like Kazaa, Grokster and LimeWire offered songs for free. But with the industry's two-pronged attack this year of offering new and improved licensed music services while taking legal action against individual file sharers, 2003 became the year that the record industry started to believe.

"Finally, for the first time we have legitimate services and online music stores that consumers are using," said Matt Kleinschmit, director of Ipsos- Insight, a Minneapolis research firm that monitors consumer attitudes about online music.

Although the increasing number of online music services could surpass consumer demand, Kleinschmit said that after years of fits and starts, it's clear the online music market -- like rock 'n' roll -- is here to stay.

Same old story

The creation of iTunes and the Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits against 382 people were the two biggest stories of 2003 in digital entertainment. But at the beginning of the year, it was the same old story -- the record industry was losing its battle against the popular file- sharing programs. Despite shutting down Napster in 2001, the labels faced new song-swapping networks that attracted even more users.

More than 60 million people in the United States have downloaded songs from the Internet using file-sharing programs like Kazaa, Grokster and LimeWire, which do not have licensing agreements to distribute songs controlled by the Big Five labels -- Universal, Sony, BMG, Warner and EMI. (It may be the Big Four next year because Sony Music and BMG are proposing a merger.)

Millions more people around the world went online in 2003 to share billions of digital songs without having to pay for them.

The $14 billion U.S. recording industry has blamed online file sharing for a 31 percent drop in CD sales compared with three years ago. Critics of the music industry say there are other factors to blame, such as stiff competition for the entertainment dollar from video games and DVDs, fewer hit songs or artists and the high price of CDs.

The ubiquity of home computers with recordable CD drives also had an impact. Technology has made it possible for almost anyone to create their own custom CDs with only their favorite songs. For many consumers, that meant no longer having to pay $18 for a prerecorded CD that contained only two or three songs they were really interested in.

"Customers who have become accustomed to managing their recorded music from a centralized digital library on their PCs are no more likely to abandon the practice than any of us would voluntarily exchange our color TVs for black- and-white ones,'' analyst Phil Leigh wrote in a recent report, "Online Music Starts Rocking.''

In April, Cupertino's Apple Computer capitalized on that consumer trend when it opened the iTunes Music Store, a Web site offering downloads for 99 cents each or $9.99 per album. Apple officials say that iTunes customers are buying an average of 1.5 million songs per week, but that the profit margin from selling songs for 99 cents is "razor thin."

Apple is closely tying iTunes, both in marketing campaigns and in how the software works, to its hot-selling iPod portable digital music players, which retail for $300 to $600.

Time magazine even proclaimed the iTunes Music Store the "invention of the year.'' Technically, the iTunes Music Store was not an invention, but a new application of an e-commerce Web site, offering songs instead of groceries or pet supplies.

Simplicity is key

What was groundbreaking, however, was that Apple created a site that was as easy to use as the free file-sharing networks. ITunes includes a broad selection of songs that can be downloaded and copied onto CDs almost without restrictions and without requiring a subscription. Even the two music services that the record labels had ownership in, Pressplay and MusicNet, did not offer that same level of flexibility.

Credit the persistence of Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, who spent more than a year trying to convince skeptical music executives that his technology would protect their catalogs of songs from piracy, and make them money.

Apple's iTunes Music Store sold 1 million songs in its first week, even though it was then available only to Macintosh users.

"Apple broke the logjam,'' analyst Leigh said. "They deserve credit for negotiating the terms they got, but we have to remember one reason they could was the labels could consider (the service for Apple users) a closed experiment.''

Windows wants its iTunes

But within two weeks, the labels were hearing from other major companies eager to get the same licensing deals that Apple had so they could open their own virtual music storefronts for the larger market of computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system.

In October, Apple released a version of iTunes for Windows. Even Jobs noted the irony of Apple promoting an application for its rival operating system, proclaiming "Hell froze over.''

By that time, iTunes had competition in the Windows world from BuyMusic. com, Musicmatch and MusicNow.

In addition, Roxio Inc. of Santa Clara earlier in the year bought Pressplay, an unsuccessful online music joint venture between Sony and Universal. Pressplay became the backbone for a new online music service with a familiar name -- Napster 2.0 -- which also began in October.

Tech giants such as Sony, Microsoft, Amazon.com and Hewlett-Packard also began contemplating their own online music sites.

Even Liquid Audio of Redwood City, which sold its digital music technology in January, returned from the sidelines two weeks ago as Liquid Digital Media. The firm is providing the technology for a test run by the online division of Wal-Mart, which plans to sell downloadable songs for 88 cents each.

And Rhapsody, a subscription music service started in 2001 by San Francisco's Listen.com, also began to pick up steam.

"It's an exciting time after the ups and downs of the last couple of years,'' said Sean Ryan, the former CEO of Listen.com. Ryan is now head of the online music division for Seattle's RealNetworks Inc., which bought Listen.com earlier this year.

Taking legal action

2003 was also a busy time for music industry lawyers.

In a stunning ruling after the introduction of iTunes in April, a Los Angeles judge said that the two companies distributing the file-sharing programs Grokster and Morpheus couldn't be held liable for copyright infringement, even if users were illegally sharing songs.

That ruling meant the strategy that shut down Napster Inc. wouldn't work against its successors.

So the Recording Industry Association of America, the Washington trade and lobbying group representing the world's biggest record labels, started going after individual file sharers.

The association went after people who offered a large number of music files stored on their computers for others to download. The association used a provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act that let copyright holders issue subpoenas without a formal civil suit or a judge's approval to force Internet service providers to reveal names of subscribers suspected of illegal song swapping.

The first of an estimated 3,000 subpoenas came during the summer, and the first of 382 lawsuits was filed in September. In all, 220 people who were either sued or were warned of possible legal action chose to settle rather than face costly legal fees and civil penalties that ranged from $750 to $150, 000 per violation.

Critics such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused the record association of heavy-handed misuse of copyright laws and of threatening the legal rights of all Internet users.

Setback for the RIAA

On Dec. 19, a Washington, D.C., judge dealt the recording association a major blow when he ruled it could not use the subpoenas to force ISPs to divulge private information about its subscribers.

Association President Cary Sherman said the group will continue with the more protracted and expensive legal process of filing lawsuits against suspected file sharers, naming John Doe defendants and asking judges to force ISPs to turn over their identities.

Still, Sherman said "lawsuits are a very potent form of education'' and have already created a national dinner-table dialogue about the legal and moral implications of downloading free music.

Data from Neilsen/NetRatings indicates that use of Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing program, has gone from 4.4 million users the week before the lawsuits were filed to 2.3 million the week ending Dec. 14, a 46 percent drop.

But Sharman Networks, the Australian company that distributes Kazaa, claims the program is still the most downloaded software in history. More than 308 million copies of the program have been downloaded, according to Cnet Networks Inc. , the San Francisco Internet media firm. On one day last week, users logged on to the Kazaa network were sharing 441 million files, which included songs, movies, games, software and photos.

File sharers like Alexander O'Neal of Belleville, Ill., said he wasn't worried about the lawsuits.

"If anything, it has made me feel a greater contempt for the major labels and made me download more out of spite,'' O'Neal said in an e-mail.

By the numbers

-- 308,000,000

Number of downloads for Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing program

-- 25,000,000

Number of songs sold through Apple's online music store

-- 4,467,000

Number of Kazaa users in September (just before the RIAA filed its lawsuits against users)

-- 2,330,000

Number of Kazaa users as of Dec. 12

Source: Chronicle research

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...UGQV3V3L01.DTL

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2003 'Difficult' Transitional Year For Music Industry
Brian Garrity

For the global recorded music business, 2003 was a year like no other - and one the industry hopes never to see again.

In the past 12 months, record companies went to war with their consumers, gave in to pressure on CD pricing, turned to DVD and video-game features to sell albums, laid off thousands of employees, proposed mergers, sold manufacturing divisions and other assets and watched thousands more music retailers close their doors.

Of course, not all the news was bad. After a prolonged labor, a new format was born within the business - the paid digital download.

The drivers of all this activity were eroding album sales and continuing unlicensed, peer-to-peer file sharing and CD burning.

"It was a difficult year," says Doug Morris, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group. "But when you look back in history, this will be the big transitional year."

He notes that many of the developments in 2003 came as the industry confronted the impact of piracy and digital distribution.

"It was another tumultuous 12 months for the record business, from Internet issues to new business models and mergers," says Sony Music Entertainment chairman/CEO Andrew Lack.

The music industry endured its third consecutive down year. For the full year, sales were expected to be down 4 percent to 6 percent from 2002. That's not as severe as the more than 10 percent sales dip in 2002. But it is more substantial than the 2.8 percent decline in 2001.

As bad as a year-over-year drop is, the general sentiment within the industry is that it could have been worse.

That sales deficit stood at a more daunting 8.5 percent at the end of the summer. At its lowest ebb, the current year's album volume trailed the previous year by 13.6 percent, in the week ended Feb. 2.

The industry also saw other signs of hope - small though they may be - that the worst of its sales funk is over.

Late in the year, weekly album sales totals began to improve over the same period in 2002. Going into Christmas week, 12 times in 14 weeks CD sales beat those of the same weeks in 2002.

Meanwhile, for the first time consumers began buying digital music en masse with the debut of new services like iTunes from Apple Computer in April and Napster from Roxio in November. Other music and computer companies were quick to announce plans to enter the digital fray in 2004.

By late summer, digital tracks began outselling physical singles by a growing margin - a sign that consumers are increasingly embracing the brave new world of for-pay downloading.

But the estimated figure of more than 30 million downloads sold does not a comeback make.

In addition to piracy, the industry also continued to face stiff competition for media and entertainment dollars from DVDs, games and cell phones, amid a shaky economic climate.

In response to poor sales, the major labels attempted to slash costs by eliminating thousands of staffers, selling assets and consolidating wherever possible.

In November, Sony and BMG announced plans, pending regulatory approval, to merge their recorded music businesses in a new 50-50 joint venture called Sony BMG. Two weeks after the Sony BMG news, Time Warner agreed to sell the Warner Music Group for $2.6 billion to an investment group fronted by Edgar Bronfman Jr. The move meant the rejection of an offer from EMI Recorded Music, which also sought a merger with WMG.

In the face of industry consolidation and declining sales, UMG, the world's market leader, announced in October plans to drop front-line CD prices in the U.S. to $12.98 from $18.98.

The company also will drop catalog list pricing starting Jan. 1.

The new pricing, announced Sept. 3, will result in "a dramatic increase in sales," UMG president/COO Zach Horowitz told Billboard at the time.

The gambit electrified industry discussion about pricing. The UMG makeover strikes at the heart of the current business model and changes it in profound ways beyond pricing.

For the plan to work for UMG, Billboard estimates the company will have to enjoy an album unit sales gain of about 15 percent to recapture the revenue lost to the lower pricing structure.

UMG executives would not specify what kind of sales increase they need or how the price cuts are expected to affect company revenue. With its broad sweep, the UMG initiative raises an array of concerns.

For music merchants, it appears to be the fuel for a heightened price war. That could be a disaster for music specialty retailers.

It is unclear whether the other majors will follow UMG's lead.

Meanwhile, the shift to Internet sales began in earnest in 2003.

As of late in the year, digital tracks were outpacing physical single sales by a 5-to-1 margin.

Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital download sales during the summer, and in July Billboard debuted its newest chart, Hot Digital Tracks.

This growth spurt for sales of music in digital form comes at the end of five years of plodding development, frustration and false starts.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...534048,00.html

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Today's Grocery List: Milk, Bread, Music
Jeanne Anne Naujeck

When Mike Olsen opened his Kroger circular and saw the ''Napster music card'' for sale, he knew the digital era had arrived.

That the cards, which are redeemable for song downloads, are sold along with milk, tuna and eggs floored Olsen, who is president of Compendia Music Group, a Nashville-based independent record company.

''The whole idea that a prepaid card could be so ubiquitous might mean we sell more music,'' said Olsen. ''You'd better embrace it now because the future is here.''

It's a good symbol of just how mainstream downloading became in 2003 — and it may be a long-awaited sign of hope for the music industry.

Last December, there was widespread gloom along Music Row about the steady slide in CD sales and the growing problem of people sharing music free. Overall music sales were down 13.2% at this time last year, and record retailers such as Tower, CD Warehouse and Musicland were closing branches and filing for bankruptcy as though music was, well, going out of style.

It wasn't, but CDs were. Tired of paying $17.99 for discs, young people were swapping songs over the Internet and stuffing them onto portable plastic devices called iPods. And they didn't like the industry's own sites where consumers could pay to download songs — probably because they were funded and designed by record companies and favored certain artists, said Rich Peluso, co-president of Chordant Distribution Group, a division of EMI Christian Music Group.

''To the consumer, the artist is the brand. The consumer wanted an easy, simple way to access all artists,'' he said.

Then came Apple Computer, the arbiter of cool in technology. Its iTunes Music Store boasted easy, fast, cheap (99 cents a song) downloading, and its splashy product introduction positioned Apple founder Steve Jobs to be as much of a rock star as the artists with whom he posed in ads.

''Steve Jobs is a marketing genius,'' said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

''He has a tremendous sense of how to make news and get people excited about his products. He also has an incredible technology.''

Peluso said iTunes' instant success — it has sold more than 25 million singles since its April launch — had energized the music community in a less tangible but equally important way.

''In '02 and early '03, as we saw peer-to-peer file sharing grow exponentially, there was a lack of hope,'' he said.

''Apple launched a phenomenal service with all artists and a consumer brand that people could trust. It got traction. When we saw millions of songs being sold, it brought back hope.''

As of Dec. 21, overall music sales were down only 4.6%, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That doesn't include paid downloads, which the service began reporting in July. Including those, sales are down just 2.2%.

Consumers also have a wider and better array of online music stores such as Musicmatch, Rhapsody, MusicNet, MusicNow, Buymusic, the now-legal Napster and Walmart.com, most selling downloadable singles for less than a dollar apiece (Wal-Mart is cheapest at 88 cents). Next year, Coca-Cola, MTV, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others plan to launch branded services.

''It's certainly a legitimate channel now,'' said Adam Mirabella of Warner Music Group's sales and retail marketing arm WEA Corp. ''A year ago it was a much more clouded view as to whether it would be successful.''

Within five years, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff predicts, a third of music sales will come from downloading. This year, Peluso figures, tallies will show 1% of music sales were from downloads — about as much as CDs and DVDs made the first year each was introduced.

Digital music has an even greater advantage in that computer sales penetration is so high that most people already have the hardware they need to download.

''A year ago … downloading, ripping and burning were scary terms to almost the entire U.S. population, and now they're familiar,'' an upbeat Peluso said. ''The potential for upside on digital music is very good.''

While downloading hasn't made much money yet, SoundScan reports extremely rapid growth. More than 1.4 million songs were downloaded the week ended Dec. 21, and 1.3 million the week before, the service said.

All the major record companies are offering their music on most of the well- known online stores, including country music by artists signed to their Nashville labels. An Apple spokeswoman said that more than 200 independent labels also had signed up with iTunes.

Costs to the labels associated with making their catalogs available online include copyright clearance, digitizing and encoding the music. Most record companies have dedicated some of their staff or hired new people to deal specifically with online retail.

''More than anything, it just costs time,'' Olsen said. Compendia started out by posting its 25 or 30 best-selling (out of 500) titles.

''On one hand, it is the future and we need to be part of it. On the other hand, it's no great source of income yet for anyone. There's no question we want to be there, but let's match our efforts with potential rewards.''

At this point, music downloading is far from ubiquitous, especially among the demographic most drawn to country and Christian music and the adult audience for most of Compendia's music. The vast majority of downloading — 88% — is done by people younger than 23. A Forrester Re-search report showed that nearly half of consumers ages 12-22 downloaded music in July. And half of downloaders said they now bought fewer CDs. No one in the music industry wants to miss the boat.

''Why not?'' said Nick Hunter, president of Audium Records, a Nashville-based independent with an artist roster that includes Robert Earl Keen, Charlie Daniels Band, Dwight Yoakam, Sammy Kershaw and Daryle Singletary. ''It doesn't cost you anything, and it makes your music available to more people. There's no reason not to.''

Though Hunter notes that SoundScan download charts carry few Nashville acts (Apple's Top 100 singles Friday included only two country songs — Toby Keith's I Love This Bar at No. 72 and Alan Jackson's Remember When at No. 76), the country music business has to take advantage of any outlet for music as retail shelf space shrinks. The online space also offers unlimited room for inventory — which could increase sales of an artist's older albums — called ''catalog'' in music industry parlance.

Friday, Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire was No. 8 on the country download chart, I Walk the Line was No. 19. Roger Miller's classic King of the Road was No. 20.

''We're selling several of every song or album, which shows the consumer is responding to the depth,'' Peluso said. ''The upside is to get your catalog online.''

EMI CMG has 40,000-50,000 songs in its catalog, but only about 10% are cleared for online sales. The goal is to get every song cleared by March 31.

''The availability of content is the biggest roadblock right now. It is one of the most important key issues in the short term for our company,'' Peluso said, comparing the flow of music to online distribution as a trickle that will turn into a flood.

''2004 will be the year of swallowing the elephant.''

Christian music got its first dedicated site last month with the opening of LifeWay Christian Stores' online retail download site. It offers not only contemporary Christian rock and pop but another market segment — well-known church music and hymns that can be downloaded as singles.

''Artists with higher visibility (such as Evanescence and Jars of Clay) do well in mainstream channels,'' said Terry Hemmings, president and CEO of Provident Music Group, a part of BMG.

Just like his counterparts in the secular world, Hemmings has worried about the effects of file sharing on Christian music sales. But he's cautiously optimistic about the future.

''If (illegal file sharing) just levels off, I think we will have made great strides, but I'm not looking for online to grow significantly for the next few years. And we want to help it develop properly.''

Sherman, of the RIAA, said the trade group's high-profile lawsuits this fall against egregious file-sharers significantly stemmed illegal downloading, citing one study that showed a 53% drop in traffic on file-sharing site KaZaA. Lawsuits will continue despite last week's federal court decision that Internet service providers do not have to provide RIAA with names of individual file-sharers, he said.

Despite that setback, the year is ending on an upbeat note, Sherman said. ''Sales improved over the last quarter, and that is a dramatic change. CD sales are picking up, downloading is booming and major new entrants into the downloading business will be getting online.''

''Illegality of file sharing is becoming well known and is resulting in behavioral changes. And that is all very good news for an industry that hasn't seen a lot of good news in the past few years.''
http://www.tennessean.com/business/a...nt_ID=44647746

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RIAA Unwittingly Helping Users Be More Secure
Tony Bradley

The RIAA (Recording Industry of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Assocation of America) have been doing battle with P2P (peer-to- peer) file sharing networks such as Napster, Kazaa and Morpheus for years now in an attempt to stop users from sharing and downloading illegal copies of songs and movies.

I don't have industry sales facts and figures in front of me, but I have seen a few references to CD sales actually declining after litigation basically caused Public Enemy #1 - Napster - to shut down. This would fit with the model of how I personally used Napster.

I am not particularly interested in stealing music from the record company or the artist who created it. However, I am interested in getting value for my money. Often times a really great song on the radio prompts me to buy that artist's CD only to find out that it was their only good song. So- for $18 I get one song worth listening to and 10 or 12 songs that are junk.

By downloading more songs on a service such as Napster or Kazaa I could make more informed buying decisions. In the end, I would either buy the artist's CD or I wouldn't. In either case I would delete the song once my "research" was complete.

Obviously there are users who aren't like that. I don't know if its the minority or the majority but obviously some users see P2P networks as a way to acquire all the music, movies and software they want without having to pay for it. Many rationalize the theft away as if they are modern-day Robin Hoods- "these big conglomerate companies make billions anyway and the artists don't make much from CD sales" goes the traditional mantra. That line of thinking conveniently ignores that its illegal whether the record companies are rich or not, and that by stealing the music the artists get nothing- at least they get something from CD sales.

I don't know what they are teaching now, but when I was in high school the RIAA was not in my government class as a part of legislative branch of government. Yet, in recent years the RIAA and the MPAA have exerted what I perceive to be an inordinate amount of influence over the legislative process in getting laws passed that are favorable to them being able to hunt down and prosecute the P2P offenders. I have no problem with the RIAA and MPAA getting the money that is rightfully theirs and / or prosecuting those who steal from them, but I despise lobbyists and lobbying and I believe that they should get their money and prosecute the thieves following the same legal rules and processes as the rest of us.

So, that is the end of my rant and now we can move on to the main topic of this article (consider it a very long introduction). Because of the success of the RIAA and MPAA in influencing the legislative process and their zeal for hunting down and prosecuting offenders recently, they are unintentionally helping to improve Internet security. As users look to find new and creative ways to avoid detection (and hence litigation) by the RIAA or the MPAA- they have taken to adopting encryption.

I don't recommend using encryption as a means of hiding illegal activity- in fact that only helps to support those who feel the interests of "national security" (or bubblegum pop song theft) demand that the government be allowed to hold the keys to all encryption. The more that they can show that encryption is primarily used by terrorists and illegal file swappers the stronger the case will be to outlaw any encryption scheme the government can't break.

But, the other side of this coin is that encryption in general is a good thing. Assuming you're not using it to plot an attack or to hide your download of the latest Lord of the Rings movie or Justin Timberlake song, it is generally wise to ecnrypt communications to hide them from prying (and possibly malicious) eyes. Standard email is sent in clear text so anyone who may intercept the messages will be able to read them. Internet communications as well may be intercepted and read. Anything you can do to scramble your communications so that only the intended recipient can decypher and read it will help you be more secure overall.
http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/gene...a/aa122603.htm

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TV producer "OK" with pirates.

'Lost' Episodes Offer Afterlife For Canceled TV Shows
Anthony Breznican

There are three stages of afterlife for a dead TV show, and a program's fate can be decided by its unaired episodes.

Heaven is a DVD release -- a kind of immortality for a series like Fox's "Firefly" or "The Tick," which had devoted viewerships that were too small for network advertisers but large enough to justify selling a boxed-set of discs.

Then there are the fallow summer months, a bitter purgatory where many as-yet-unseen installments of canceled shows are dumped in a last-ditch effort to fill the schedule with anything but reruns. Look for the remains of ABC's recently axed "L.A. Dragnet" to turn up here.

Hell, in this scenario, is never to be seen nor heard from again. Among the damned -- deserving or not -- are Fox's porn drama "Skin," ABC's supernatural thriller "Miracles" and the NBC version of the British sitcom "Coupling."

"Firefly," a sci-fi Western fusion series from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, is one canceled show whose unfinished season led to a happy ending.

The program, about a hardscrabble space crew 500 years in the future, lost its bid for survival on Fox's fall 2002 schedule after 11 episodes, with three more finished but unaired. Whedon and crew wanted their work on those episodes shown somewhere, anywhere -- and fans wanted that, too.

But Whedon resisted the idea of burning off those installments as summer filler.

"Fox still owned the property and could maybe fill a summer slot or something," Whedon said. "But then it became an advantage. If they never aired these, then we could put them on the DVD as something that made it more exciting."

There were three unaired episodes -- one about a bordello beseiged by a ruthless warlord, another about a dead body who returns to life and a third involving the crew's heist of an antique laser-gun. The four-disc set including all 14 episodes was released in stores last month.

Whedon currently is writing the script for Universal Pictures to turn the "Firefly" story line into a feature film. Successful sales of the DVD could help spur that project.

But overall, summer exposure is better than nothing. In some cases, it can even rejuvenate a program teetering on cancellation.

"Seinfeld" -- originally titled "The Seinfeld Chronicles" -- was a low-rated pilot in summer 1989. NBC held onto the remaining four installments for another year before dumping them in the summer. But -- surprise! -- they became hits and the series evolved into one of the most successful sitcoms in history.

ABC is hoping for similar luck with "Karen Sisco," its comedic-thriller starring Carla Gugino as a sexy federal marshal. The show was placed on hiatus recently with three episodes still unaired.

The network plans to air those shows in March in a new time slot, and its producers supported the idea of banking the unseen installments until then; it was better than letting the show continue to languish.

"We were going to be off the air sooner or later and what we are presented with now is a shot at having a life, and it was pretty obvious from the (debut) numbers that that wasn't going to happen," said John Landgraf, an executive producer of "Karen Sisco." "But no one is saying, 'Gee, we like the show and just hope they get it right.' There's pretty much a sense that there's a great show here."

Even when a show is canceled outright, the unaired episodes are rarely destroyed. In some rare cases, that dead TV show can become valuable again years later.

The Trio cable channel has had success showcasing these kinds of shows on its "Brilliant But Canceled" series, which highlights well-regarded programs that never found a major audience, like the recent "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" and the 1970s occult series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."

But cult-fan demand isn't always enough to loosen a network or studio's grip.

ABC's "Miracles" starred Skeet Ulrich as a priest who investigates supernatural mysteries that may be messages from God ... or the devil.

The show was canceled last spring. Only six of the 13 episodes made it to the air, and a fervent group of angry "Miracles" junkies have lobbied unsuccessfully for the DVD release of the other seven.

The show's creator, Richard Hatem, said he doesn't expect any miracles. The touchy subject matter of the series -- a blend of horror and religious iconography -- made executives nervous at ABC's parent, the Walt Disney Co.

But the more a network buries such unaired shows, the more some fans want to see them.

"For them to simply not air the episodes came across to us as malicious," said Angela Mitchell, a 36-year-old publicist in Hollywood, Fla., who helped organize the "Save 'Miracles"' campaign. "I felt like someone wanted to kill the show."

Many fans have taken to bootlegging the lost installments, making copies from foreign- market broadcasts and sharing tapes through the mail.

And for once, piracy has the support of a producer.

"Since there aren't aggressive efforts to make a profit from the show, the loss is pretty minor," Hatem said. "I'm never going to see another dime off 'Miracles,' but if people are watching and enjoying it, I'm more than happy."
http://www.canoe.ca/Television/dec31...isodes-ap.html

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AOL Offers Low-Cost Internet Service
Reuters

Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit has launched a preliminary version of a lower-priced Internet service it can pitch to subscribers who call to drop the flagship service for a cheaper rival.

The modem dial-up service, which debuted this month under AOL's Netscape brand, will cost $1 a month until the end of February. It will cost subscribers $9.95 a month beginning in March, compared with $23.95 for the full-fledged AOL service.

The new service is a stripped-down and lower-cost version of AOL's flagship service, minus extras such as original programming and high-speed Internet music videos.

AOL is offering a cheaper alternative after watching millions of subscribers flee to lower-cost rivals such as the Juno and NetZero services owned by United Online Inc.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology

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Web Serving -- P2P Style -- With BadBlue

BadBlue: Web server based on a peer-to-peer networking architecture
Aaron Weiss

When the original release of BadBlue hit the market in 2000, peer-to-peer (P2P) networking was on the ascent, embodied by the spirit of Napster and Gnutella. At the time, P2P proponents argued that the technology could be useful for activities other than mass copyright infringement. And it's true that wide and shallowly distributed networks could provide utility in enterprise environments, in parallel with conventional, centralized narrow and deep topologies. However, public relations for P2P technology have not improved much since 2000, especially in light of the recording industry's wave of lawsuits against users.

BadBlue tried from the start to define a niche outside of anonymous, masked file sharing, to bring the power of a distributed network to "legitimate" environments. BadBlue is essentially a hybrid between a Web server and peer-to-peer file sharing that lets users build an ad-hoc network among BadBlue servers, thus the P2P angle. Access to the network is handled entirely through a Web browser and mediated by BadBlue's built-in Web server. As a Web server, it supports scripting languages, such as PHP, making BadBlue's behavior extendable.

One of BadBlue's attractive features is its lightweight nature. The download is under 500 KB, and the whole ball of string squeezes into less than 1 MB when installed. The installer is simple and straightforward, and organizations using BadBlue can be up and sharing files in a matter of minutes.

Since its original release, a number of enhancements have been added to BadBlue's sharing. Office documents can be "published" on the shared network, along with photo albums. Users can perform full-text searches on popular document formats. LiveSQL allows dynamic database data to be published on the BadBlue network. All of these additions make a BadBlue-based network more useful.

This ease-of-use, though, has a dark flip side. Security is always a major concern when sharing data, and BadBlue's latest features seem to have the enterprise in mind. BadBlue now has security controls -- user accounts that limit access to specified folders and data, and bandwidth throttling and download limits to help thwart abuse.

But -- and there's always a but -- all of this may prove cold comfort in the enterprise environment. While BadBlue has made an admirable effort to cover its security bases, the very nature of P2P architecture is also its Achilles' heel. By distributing the network shallow and wide, workstations become servers, and the owners of those workstations thus take on responsibility for security -- a delegation likely to make the spine of any network administrator tingle .

BadBlue's optimal market is the home or small business interested in casual sharing. It's ease-of-use is laudable, and the Web- based search interface has been much improved since its original release. Dynamic DNS support enables users without static IP addresses to join a BadBlue network. The ability to easily publish Office documents and live databases to the network could indeed be very useful in a small business. But in a large, enterprise workplace, it's difficult to recommend taking the risk that BadBlue brings with it -- not because of any fault particular to BadBlue, but because of the nature of P2P file sharing itself. Simply put, the more links in the P2P chain, the greater the exposure to risk.

Pros: Lightweight application; Fast deployment; User friendly search network
Cons: File sharing's bad reputation for abuse; Low "must have" factor; Security concerns, particularly for enterprise-class deployments
http://www.serverwatch.com/sreviews/article.php/3293751

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'Pirate' Crew Walks Plonk To Celebrate Internet Top Spot
Kirsty Needham

A small Sydney office has beaten Harry Potter, American Idol, Paris Hilton and rapper 50 Cent in grabbing the attention of internet users worldwide this year.

The search engine Yahoo! has named its top 10 searches in 2003 and at number one is Kazaa, the "peer-to-peer" software program controversially used to share pirated music online.

Despised by the American music industry, which has unsuccessfully tried to have it shut down through the courts, Kazaa is run out of the Sydney suburb of Cremorne by Sharman Networks, with 30 staff.

"It really shows the overwhelming consumer endorsement for Kazaa and peer-to-peer technology," said head of marketing Michael Liubinskas, 29, of the Yahoo! result.

"We hope this year Australia becomes increasingly proud of what we are doing. We are proud of what we do."

Sharman snapped up Kazaa in 2002, when its Swedish inventor had to offload it quickly after an adverse music piracy court ruling in Europe.

Since then, the software has been developed also to allow the trade of licensed music, computer games and films. The company says it is intent on going legitimate.

Mr Liubinskas said Kazaa would distribute more full-length feature films next year, and there were plans to package music with video.

But the major music labels refuse to deal with Kazaa, or any peer-to-peer software, while mass piracy continues.

Internet Industry Association of Australia chief executive Peter Coroneos said: "They have created a service which many associate with unlawful use.

"The success of Kazaa is really testament to the failure of the traditional music industry."

This would change in 2004, as the music industry introduced legal, alternative forms of online sale in response to consumer demand, he said.

Music fans would pay for them if the price was right.

"The magic tipping point is around 49 cents a song," Mr Coroneos said.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...546532872.html

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Haitians Sue Game Maker
AP

A lawsuit that claims a top-selling video game is dangerous to society and asks that it be removed from store shelves will be decided in a U.S. federal court.

Haitian civil-rights groups filed the lawsuit because the game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, instructs players to "kill the Haitians" and awards points for each kill.

The New York-based Rockstar Games Inc. has agreed to remove the offensive line from future versions of the award-winning video that has sold 11 million copies.

But the Haitian organizations, led by the Haitian-American Coalition of Palm Beach County, have also asked for more than $15,000 (U.S.) in damages.

The suit was filed Dec. 23 in state circuit court in Palm Beach County. Attorneys for Rockstar Games opted to move the case to federal court, and that motion was granted Tuesday. No hearing dates were immediately set.

The lawsuit takes on heavyweights in the video game industry, including Rockstar Games, its parent company Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment, the Microsoft Corp., and retailers Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

The manufacturer of the game, in which a former convict is hired to recover stolen drug money in the streets of Miami, has been harshly criticized for its portrayal of Haitians.

Earlier this month, about 100 Haitian-Americans demonstrated outside a Wal-Mart store in nearby Boynton Beach chanting, "Stop Vice City."

Attorneys for the Haitian organizations and the video game manufacturer did not return phone calls late Wednesday.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/

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With CD Sales Slipping, the DVD Steps In
Chris Nelson

What music industry executives would love to see in the new year is a magic bullet to end the three-year sales slump that they say is mostly the fault of Internet music trading.

But since a miracle cure is about as likely as Eminem performing with the Boston Pops, executives at the music labels are aiming to make up lost ground in more modest ways, like pushing music video DVD sales.

Sales for music video DVD's in 2003 jumped 102 percent over 2002 sales, to 17.2 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Total sales are expected to climb higher still for the coming year.

"The entertainment dollars tend to be going more toward visual media," said Jordan Katz, senior vice president for sales at Arista Records. "With music it's a very potent combination."

The model for music DVD's is "The New Breed" by the rapper 50 Cent. It has sold 645,000 copies since April, making it the best-selling music DVD of the year. And because the release included a bonus audio CD with four songs, it was ranked No. 2 at its debut on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart.

Despite the spurt, sales of music DVD's still do not come close to sales of traditional CD's. "Get Rich or Die Trying," a CD by 50 Cent, has sold more than six million copies. And aside from "The New Breed," the only other DVD to sell more than a half million units this year was the "Led Zeppelin DVD," which has sold 525,000 since May.

The industry is hardly settled on how best to entice customers with DVD's. In addition to stand-alone packages, 50 Cent and the rocker Tom Petty have released DVD sets with bonus audio discs. Many more artists, from Metallica to Alicia Keys, have offered bonus DVD's with their traditional CD albums.

Even the packaging is still in flux. The hip-hop duo OutKast, for instance, issued their recent DVD collection, "The Videos," in both the jewel boxes used for CD's and the clamshell case used for movie DVD's.

Label executives hope to find clues in these numbers on how to drive DVD sales in the new year.

"Because of the plethora of releases this year, there's certainly a lot of data which we're in the middle of combing over now to make some decisions about what we're going to be doing," Mr. Katz said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/29/bu...pagewanted=all

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Duel Of The Dual-Layer DVD Formats
Ed Frauenheim

One side of the ongoing recordable DVD format battle is expected to be first with products that nearly double the amount of data held on one disc. But that victory may not put an end to the feud.

The DVD+RW camp, which includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Philips, plans to put so-called "double-layer" DVD recording devices on the market by next spring. Discs on these systems are expected to hold 8.5GB, or four hours of DVD-quality video (16 hours of VHS-quality video). That's about the same amount as the DVDs studios use to issue movies.

But the so-called "dash" camp promoting the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats also is working on dual- layer recording, which involves writing data on two separate surfaces, layered like coats of paint, on a DVD. And unlike in the videotape-standard battle between VHS and Betamax, "plus" and "dash" may be able to coexist for some time to come, observers say.

"I would put my money on the plus camp" in bringing out dual-layer DVD recording first, said Pete Gerr, an analyst with research firm Enterprise Storage Group. But when it comes to the overall format struggle, "it continues to be a skirmish for as long as Pioneer wants to stay in it," Mr. Gerr said. Pioneer is a major advocate of the dash format.

"I do believe that the plus guys are going to get there first," said Robert DeMoulin, marketing manager for branded optical products at Sony Electronics. Sony, like some other manufacturers, makes DVD recorders that combine both plus and dash technology.

Mr. DeMoulin pointed out there are plenty of older dash recorders on the market. "I just don't see that the dash format is going away any time soon," he said.

The skirmish began a few years ago, when a group of companies did not like the recordable DVD technologies developed by the DVD Forum standards body. The DVD Forum approved formats called DVD-RAM and DVD-R, for write-once recording. Later, the DVD Forum added the DVD-RW rewritable standard for the ability to record, erase and record again on the same disc.

The dissident companies formed the DVD+RW Alliance, which put out its own technology for write-once and rewritable recording. As a result, seemingly countless recordable drives and disc media types are on the market, creating potential confusion for consumers. For example, a DVD- R/-RW drive cannot record on +R or +RW discs. In theory, discs that are recorded using +R, +RW, -R and —RW media all can be read by DVD players. But a recent U.S. government study found that DVDs and DVD drives are compatible only 85 per cent of the time.

The move from single-layer to double-layer recordable DVDs, rather than resolving the fight, just extends it to another battleground.

Single-layer recordable DVDs — or digital versatile discs — hold up to 4.7GB and can be used to store data or up to two hours of digital video. Their popularity is growing quickly. The number of write-once recordable DVDs sold worldwide is expected to climb from 55 million in 2002 to more than 300 million this year, according to research firm Santa Clara Consulting Group.

Retail movies sold on DVDs typically come with data written on two layers. But the commercial process involves "stamping" the discs rather than burning spots with a laser, the method used by DVD writers. Dual-layer recording has not been available to the average consumer in the past. The new technology will give consumers the ability to cram much more data onto discs burned at home.

"Dual layer is a great sort of incremental turn of the technology crank," Mr. Gerr said.

Both the plus and dash groups have created prototypes of dual-layer recording technology. Neither side has an official specification, but the plus group has a more aggressive schedule. It has finished writing up the details of a dual-layer, write-once standard for recording data at up to 2.4 times the normal playback speed (2.4x).

Dual-layer DVD recorders slated for PC use are expected to emerge by spring, with dual-layer recorders targeted at the consumer electronics market available later in the year, according to Hans Driessen, global communications manager for Philips' Optical Storage division.

Dual-layer DVD-R products are slated to come out some time next year, said Andy Parsons, senior vice-president in the business solutions division of Pioneer Electronics USA. But he said dual-layer recording, no matter what the format, faces hurdles. One is the importance of fully recording both layers of a dual-layer disc, he said. If that doesn't occur, Mr. Parsons said, some DVD players might behave unpredictably, for instance by causing a momentary interruption of the program.

Fully recording an 8.5GB dual-layer disc could increase the time needed to make a recording, according to Mr. Parsons. "That's what we're thinking about now," he said. "One must be careful not to rush things to market."

The dual-layer DVD+R specification does not require the entire disc to be recorded. Philips' Mr. Driessen said that if one layer of a dual-layer DVD+R has a recorded signal at a particular point on the disc, the other layer must have a matching signal; otherwise, a player may detect an error. For example, if one layer has 4GBs of data recorded, the other layer must have 4GB as well. But he said blank space may be left at the edge of the DVD without any playback problems.

Arranging for both layers to be recorded in equal amounts is relatively easy in the case of data files of a known size, Mr. Driessen said. When a user records a television broadcast of unknown length, however, the drive may need to add "dummy" data in order for the disc to be readable in DVD players. This could mean a finalization process of up to 25 minutes, Mr. Driessen said. "Future write speed improvements (such as 4x) will reduce this finalization time," he said.

The dual-layer DVD+R recording prototype created by Philips and media-maker Mitsubishi Kagaku Media uses focused light to mark areas on two dye surfaces stacked on top of each other. For each dye layer, reflective material sits underneath to send back light to the lens, which interprets the signal. One challenge is getting light to stop and record on the closest layer, and also to pass through it to record data on the subterranean surface.

Plus and dash can each claim victory in some regard. Sales of recordable DVD media using the plus format increased from 2 per cent of the U.S. retail market in July 2001 to 55 per cent in July 2003, according to market research firm NPD Group.

But the dash format has been holding steady around the world. According to Santa Clara Consulting Group, the combined factory sales of —R and —RW blank media amounted to 61 per cent of the total worldwide market share in the third quarter. DVD+R and +RW blank media accounted for 37 per cent, while DVD-RAM media sales made up 2 per cent. Dash media's worldwide market share hovered at about 60 per cent for the first three quarters of the year, according to the research firm.

The end result will likely be uneasy coexistence. Mr. Parsons said he used to think the dash forces would triumph, but no longer. The term "victory" isn't relevant any more, he said, because the price of dual-format drives soon will be close enough to that of single-format drives that few people will choose just one format. Pioneer has shifted to drives that can work with both plus and dash formats.

"I think they're both going to coexist for a long time," he said. "There's room for everybody."
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/

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Battle Over Next DVD Format
Ken Belson

When Hisashi Yamada pulls back his bow, he thinks of only one thing: Hitting the bull's-eye 92 feet away.

"When I concentrate on the target," said Mr. Yamada, a champion archer who demonstrates his skill dressed in the traditional blue-and-white hakama, "I forget about everything else."

In his regular job, Mr. Yamada, a 60-year-old electrical engineer, is putting that same single-minded focus to work for the Toshiba Corporation, which is battling like a Japanese samurai warrior of old in a fight to the finish over whose format will be used in the next generation of DVD's.

The discs, which have been under development for several years, will hold four to five times more digital video and audio data than those now on the market. They are needed because broadcasters and movie studios are planning to take advantage of the spread of high-definition television screens to produce more digital programming with multitrack sound and much better resolution.

The new discs and their players will not be widely available until at least 2005, but already the world's largest electronics, computer and entertainment companies are embroiled in a multibillion-dollar fight over whose technology will become an industry standard.

The arguments are in many ways reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS showdown in the 1970's and the clashes over digital audiotape, compact discs and the original digital videodiscs released in 1997. As in those battles, technology is just the starting point for debates filled with emotion and industry politics.

Beyond the technical details like tracking speed and tilt is a serious tussle over how to divide - and protect - the billions of dollars in royalties from the licensing of this technology and the content sold on the discs. Also at stake is an effort by electronics makers to prevent emerging Chinese rivals and well-established Silicon Valley computer makers from making significant inroads into the home entertainment business.

"This is a very intense conflict over intellectual property," said Warren N. Lieberfarb, a driving force behind the development of the original DVD format. It has the added overlay, he said, "of the Japanese, Korean and European consumer electronics industries fearing China's aggressively emerging consumer electronics industry as well as the PC industry."

At the technological level, the combatants are divided roughly into two camps. Under Mr. Yamada's leadership, NEC and Toshiba have formed a group that has developed the HD (high definition) DVD, a disc that is 0.6 millimeter thick and made with machinery similar to that used for today's DVD's. On the other side is the 10- company Blu-ray Group, led by Sony and Matsushita, whose best-known brands are Panasonic and JVC. That group has developed a disc only 0.1 millimeter thick that can hold more data but needs additional investment to be produced. Information on the discs can be overwritten after it is recorded, something that is not possible with the HD DVD's now.

At 12 centimeters in diameter, both discs are similar to today's offerings, though Sony's discs are protected from fingerprints, dust and scratches by square plastic cartridges when not in use. The HD DVD group has developed a single lens that emits red and blue rays to read both current and next-generation discs. The Blu-ray machines require two separate lenses.

While the discs are still at least a year away from mass production, both sides are expected to be out in full body armor trying to win new allies at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 8 through 11, where they are planning to show prototypes of their devices.

There are many battles left to fight, though, before these new DVD's hit the shelves, and it is entirely possible that the camps will never reach a consensus, forcing consumers, retailers, movie studios and others to adapt, at least initially, to two competing standards.

In the Betamax-VHS war, one standard ultimately triumphed. That is an important reason the two chief antagonists in that fight - Sony, the loser, and Matsushita, the winner - are now allies. In the wake of other format conflicts, including the one over the first generation of DVD's, multiple standards co-exist, with the differences papered over by machines that can play several formats. But in other cases, including the development of higher-quality music discs, the disputes seem to have scared away consumers and retailers caught in the middle.

The ideal, everyone involved insists, is for one format to emerge as the winner so costs can be kept to a minimum. But as Mr. Yamada knows, that is about the only thing on which people can agree. In addition to his role at Toshiba, he is chairman of the powerful Technical Coordination Group at the DVD Forum, a six-year-old group of more than 200 companies that is trying to decide on one format.

In November, the HD DVD camp's specifications were endorsed by the forum's steering committee. The victory was significant, but tellingly contentious. The format was not approved until the third ballot, and only after voting rules were changed and several companies abstained. The Blu-ray Group did not submit specifications for a read- only disc, which Hollywood is eager to have for movie sales and rentals.

Mr. Yamada called the negotiations "very delicate," and said the Blu-ray Group was trying to prevent the HD DVD from becoming the industry standard because it does not yet have a solid alternative.

"They don't want to approve HD DVD in the forum, but since they only have rewriteable discs, they can't say theirs is better than ours," said Mr. Yamada, who argues that his goal is to produce an open format that all companies can share. The Blu-ray Group, he said, "wants to control the technological standards themselves."

The HD DVD group may get an additional lift in February, when the Walt Disney Company, Microsoft and Sanyo are expected to take over leadership of the DVD Forum. The three companies have not sided with either format, but are seen by some as friendlier to the Toshiba-NEC group.

Though the two camps produce discs that store similar amounts of data, manufacturers say that the HD DVD discs cost only 15 percent more to produce than current discs, a fraction of what they say the Blu-ray discs will cost. Stamping out prerecorded discs cheaply is the key to wooing Hollywood studios, which want to keep their retail prices low in a business that now brings in more money than movies in first-run theaters. Retailers also want one standard so they do not have to stock two versions of every movie.

"What Hollywood cares about is cost," said Kanji Katsuura, the chief technical officer at Memory-Tech, the second-largest maker of DVD's in Japan. "They basically want the same price as discs now."

Sony and its allies dismiss claims that their technology is too expensive, saying that the cost per disc will naturally fall as production takes off. They also say their rewriteable discs are what consumers really want because they can be used not only to play movies but also to record high-definition digital television programming, now available selectively in the United States and offered on a limited basis in Japan starting this month.

"What we are striving for with Blu-ray is the next stage in the evolution of this technology," said Yukinori Kawauchi, a manager in the planning and control division at Sony's broadband network unit. Such a leap happens only "every 10 or 20 years, like the transition from CD's to DVD's," he said. In April, Sony started selling Blu-ray DVD recorders in Japan, where they cost 378,000 yen, or $3,500, and take discs that sell for 3,000 yen, or about $27. Sony does not release sales figures, but industry sources said only a few hundred players had been sold so far.

Mr. Yamada said Toshiba wanted to introduce DVD recorders in 2005 that cost less than $2,000 and players priced below $1,000. They would be much cheaper than machines using the competing format, but would still be aimed mostly at the early adopters, who are the first to try new technologies. As in the past, the new formats are not expected to take off in the mass market until the price falls sharply.

"The battle really depends on the price level," said Yuki Sugi, a consumer electronics analyst at Deutsche Securities in Tokyo. "When the price falls to 120,000 yen ($1,080), it will catch on. This is a kind of magic number for high-priced electronics."

History indicates that the magic number might be reached earlier than anticipated. Sales of DVD discs and players gathered steam when production began in China, pushing prices lower. But some manufacturers worry that their technology could be used by Chinese rivals, legally or otherwise. This fear, some critics say, is why the Blu- ray group has kept a tight lid on its technology instead of sharing more of its specifications with other members of the DVD Forum. Striking back, nine Chinese companies have said they plan to develop their own DVD formats.

Copyright infringement is another worry. After the rapid spread of illegally copied DVDs, Hollywood is pushing both technical groups to come up with new security measures to protect their movies. Neither group has developed a prototype that satisfies the movie industry - a major impediment to a commercial launch.

"We are very much focused on both picture quality and content protection," said Peter Murphy, senior executive vice president and chief strategic officer at the Walt Disney Company, which has about one-fourth of the home video market. "The consumer electronics manufacturers can come up with the technical standards for the next- generation discs, but unless we also agree on the content protection standards, many of the studios may choose to wait before releasing content in the new format."

Also lurking nearby are giants like Microsoft, I.B.M. and Intel, which are eager to work their way into family rooms by promoting their technology for use in set-top boxes, DVD players and digital video recorders with hard disk drives. American computer makers, adept at producing hardware on thin margins by building sophisticated global supply chains, could also develop competing products, turning television into just another function of the home computer.

"Younger generations are completely happy working with a mouse, which is better than a 1,000-button remote," said Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research in Carmel, Calif. "Microsoft can dominate in ways that Sony or Toshiba can't."

Some analysts contend that high-speed Internet connections will ultimately make discs less relevant as consumers download more music and movies, though this is a more distant threat.

For now, discs remain the medium of choice, and the decision on a format will ultimately be up to Hollywood. Some movie executives are leaning toward the HD DVD format because it is seen as the cheaper of the two. But others are still weighing the technological and financial arguments from both groups.

Many in the industry say the worst case would be an endless fight, forcing the public to wrestle with two formats.

If that happens, said Mr. Lieberfarb, the developer of the original DVD format, "everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/29/te...pagewanted=all

JackSpratts · 02-01-04, 01:54 PM

Ripper of the Week

FreeRip
Jack Spratts

This CD ripper does a lot. It copies tracks to your hard drive, it encodes to MP3 or OGG or WAV, it finds and titles all tracks and it even fills out those id3 tags and ogg vorbis info panels and does it all automatically. It will rip, encode and title an entire CD, one track after the other with just a click. Load it, set it and forget it. It’s fast and it’s free.

http://www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml

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From Vinyl to Digital, Hold the Crackle
Roy Furchgott

SEARCH the Gnutella Network as you may, some recordings are so scarce or of such limited appeal that you cannot find them anywhere, except maybe in your own vinyl collection. But your rare 45 of Blondie's "Little GTO" need not be a stranger in the land of the CD player. Technology is available that will not only enable you to turn your hot wax into digital tracks, but will also let you clean up the static that separates your favorite Bruce Springsteen bootleg from its glory days.

To turn LP's into CD's, you will need some hardware: specifically a turntable, a preamplifier and a computer. You will also need software to digitize the analog signal, edit the digital recording, clean it and burn it to a CD or DVD.

Any turntable with a line-out connector will do, although you can also digitize other analog sources, like a radio broadcast, reel-to-reel tape or 8-track player (if you rescued yours from the Gremlin before you sold it).

To record from a turntable to a computer, the signal must first go through a preamplifier that will boost it to a recordable level. You can use a stereo receiver (most have preamp-out or phono-out connections), or you can buy a no-frills phono preamp for about $30 at an electronics hobby shop.

You will also need to connect the preamp to your computer. The most common way to do that is with an adapter cable with two male RCA plugs at one end that attach to your preamp and a one-eighth-inch stereo phono jack at the other that connects with your computer. But different equipment makers use different connectors, so you might need another kind of adapter.

If sound quality is a big concern, consider investing in a preamp with an audio-to-digital converter. These devices incorporate a computer chip dedicated to converting analog signals to digital ones. In theory, the computer's main processor is always busy carrying out other tasks, so using a separate chip for conversion delivers better sound. In practice, the degree of improvement will vary with the quality of the converter. One such device is a preamp sound card, like the Phono PreAmp from Terratec ($100, www .terratec.net), which puts a preamp with an analog-to-digital converter chip inside your computer.

Some LP restoration software suites, including Pinnacle Clean Plus ($100), come with an external preamp that plugs into a U.S.B. port and works with your existing sound card. (Clean Plus and other software choices are described in more detail in the accompanying article.) There is also the iMic from Griffin Technologies ($40, www.griffintechnologies.com), a small input device that converts analog signals to digital outside of the computer, eliminating the possibility of electronic interference from other computer components.

Once the signal has been amplified and digitized, your computer takes over. Recording the signal and cleaning it up require extensive processing, so a powerful chip is needed to do it efficiently. The makers of most cleaning software recommend at least a 500-megahertz processor.

You also need lots of hard-drive space, because sound files occupy about 10 megabytes per minute; that would be almost a gigabyte for all 77 minutes of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's "Trout Mask Replica."

Three basic steps are necessary to get the digitized music ready and onto a disc. A recording program, sometimes called a ripper, captures the sounds. You can edit the digital recording, reducing static and other analog noise with filtering software and trimming excess lead-in time and adding fade-ins and simple effects with a wave form editor. Then you need a burning program to put the final product on a disc.

There are hundreds of individual sound-editing programs, from $15 shareware to professional-quality software costing $1,000 and up (see www.hitsquad.com for a list). Most consumer software costs $40 to $150, and often everything you need is bundled in a single suite. PC users can choose all-in-one products like Audio Cleaning Lab from Magix or Clean from Pinnacle, both of which are good for importing and cleaning.

For Mac users, things are a bit more complicated. There is only one moderately priced suite - Roxio's Toast 6 Titanium ($100 list price, but available for less) - and it has limited filters for reducing noises. Much improved over the previous version, Toast 6 is more than sufficient for converting a reasonably well-maintained record collection.

There are plenty of other programs you can use to make your own suite, like Peak from Bias for recording and editing and Ray Gun from Arboretum Systems for cleaning. But the actual recording and cleaning will require more work. With those two programs, for example, you would have to record and edit the file in Peak, then save it as a generic sound file. You would then have to import it into Ray Gun, clean it and re-export it as a generic recordable sound file.

The ripper software, at least, is simple. It works just like a tape recorder: you drop the needle onto a record, adjust the ripper's volume meters on your computer screen to the optimum level and click the Record command. It will capture the music in real time, producing a faithful copy that includes scratchy surface noise. Some audio purists like the noise, which lends authentic analog warmth. If you are in that camp, and you have recorded a well-cared-for album, your job is done, unless you want to use your editor to trim excess dead space at the beginning or end of a song or add a fade-in for a little flourish.

But if you want to get rid of static, the next step is to use cleaning software.

These programs rely on algorithms to sort noise from music. The simplest ones make some assumptions what a music signal looks like, then eliminate everything else. Some programs have automatic analyzers that check for static, then suggest appropriate filter settings.

But these programs are not as accurate as a pair of ears. Even the best cleaning programs can benefit from some manual adjustment. Some allow you to sample a particular sound - say, a pop heard with each rotation of your platter - and remove just that sound.

While experts spend more for their hardware and software than the typical home user, the restoration techniques they use are the same. Brian Slack, co-founder of Widget Post Production in Culver City, Calif., uses a $40,000 cleaning device from Cedar in combination with stacks of third-party software to restore about 250 movie soundtracks a year, like "West Side Story'' and the Pink Panther series.

Mr. Slack said that although some software offers preset corrections, say for 78 r.p.m. discs or tape, you are best off listening carefully and making your own settings. "For the most part, you want to sit down and do it on a record-by-record basis, sometimes on a track-by-track basis," he said.

He also recommended keeping a raw copy of your recording as a backup and saving a copy of the recording at each step as you work on it, so you can go back a step without starting over.

Do not overscrub. "There is definitely a point of diminishing returns where you can remove so much noise that you are removing the music as well," Mr. Slack said.

Finally, rippers can copy music at different sample rates. Generally, the higher the rate, the better the fidelity. For a CD that will be played on a home or car system, the standard settings are 44.1 kHz and 16 bits resolution. Higher sampling rates will not play on regular home CD systems, but will play on electronic devices (like an iPod). To capture the best sound possible, set the ripper at a higher level, like 24, 96 or even 192 bits resolution, which is what professionals use, and then play it through a hard drive.

Recordings made at higher sampling rates can always be converted to lower rates later if you want to burn them to a CD.

If you want to try professional quality software, Waves offers a spectacular freebie with its Restoration Bundle. You can download its $1,200 filters for removing static at no charge for a two-week trial. These filters work as add-ons, called plug-ins, with most sound editing programs.

To commit your work to CD, you need burning software. One program is about as good as the next, although there are subtle differences that will mean something to the technologically advanced.

One word of caution: not all burner software plays well together. If you use a software package that adds new burning software to your computer - like some of the suites discussed here - the new burner software may fight with the old software for control of your CD drive. Sometimes the program you want to use loses, and you cannot burn a disc. The simple solution to this problem is to get rid of all the burner programs except the one you like best. Uninstall the rejects carefully, though, so they will not leave behind pieces that could continue to bedevil your burner.

Cleaning up digitized recordings can take some practice. But won't you be pleased to be the only one on your block with a mix CD that includes Robert Ellis Orrall's "Call the Uh Oh Squad"?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/te...ts/01basi.html

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Firm Releases MPEG-4 Digital Recording Software

Public beta available

A US FIRM, PC DTV Technologies, has claimed a first by releasing HDTV MPEG-4 digital recording software for Windows multimedia PCs.

It said that it is shipping a beta public version of its Countdown HD software today.

The software, it claims, will give users of hardware decoded HDTV tuner boards to record two hours of HDTV to one 4.7GB DVD disk using the MPEG-4 compression format.

The software includes a digital video transcoder that will convert between MPEG-2 and MPEG4, direct transcoding burning to DVD-R/W, DVD+R/ W, DVD RAM or CD-R/W drives, and direct transcoding to PC hard drives.

The software includes a DiVX Pro 5.1.1 Codec, support for Windows Media 9, Xvid/Koepis COdec support, background trancoding, and crpping and resizing of videos.

The firm doesn't say when the full version is available, but is charging $150 for the public beta, which it said will be available today.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13406

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BitTorrent, 'Gi-Fi,' and Other Trends in 2004
Ryan Naraine

Thanks to a never-ending supply of sharp minds and energy in the information technology industry,
innovation will keep on marching ahead in 2004 -- good economy or bad. (But a good economy sure helps.) Editors from internetnews.com and across Jupitermedia have compiled a list of ideas/trends/ innovations to watch in 2004.

BitTorrent - The Next Wave of P2P
The original file-swapping site Napster made peer-to-peer networking a star. Later, swap sites Kazaa and Morpheus found ways to market it. Now comes BitTorrent to push peer-to-peer (define) technology to new heights in 2004. In the enterprise IT sector, where bandwidth wastage hurts the bottom line, BitTorrent adds a new twist to the upload/download technology.

Instead of just allowing file-sharers to grab content from each other's systems, BitTorrent targets the bandwidth nightmare by stripping digital files into tiny shreds. When multiple users request and trigger a download, the pieces of the files are then uploaded around the network and reassembled locally by the recipient's machine, much the same way the red-hot VoIP (define) technology works.

Early adopters see BitTorrent as an excellent solution because it provides very fast downloads while consuming a relatively small amount of server resources. Instead of things slowing down as more and more people are using the system, it actually speeds up. In 2004, we'll see a major spike in BitTorrent usage as software vendors, movie companies, and online gaming sites embrace the new peer-to-peer concept to large file transfers.

The next wave of P2P technologies won't stop with BitTorrent. Look for open-source P2P streaming standards and technologies to evolve and cut the costs for businesses.

DRM-Protected Online Music:
Finally, after years of stumbling around in search of a business model for online music, the record labels and technology partners appear to have struck gold. Apple's (Quote, Chart) iTunes, Roxio's (Quote, Chart) Napster 2.0, RealNetworks' (Quote, Chart) Rhapsody and a host of smaller players have discovered a gold mine in hawking DRM-protected downloads or fee-based subscription services.

In 2004, look for increased activity in digital music with Loudeye's (Quote, Chart) new off-the-shelf technology creating virtual music stores on just about every high-traffic Internet destination. Think of Loudeye's move as the music equivalent of the popular matchmaking business where companies like Spring Street Networks have put online personals services on hundreds of third-party sites.

The increased buzz around online music (and digital content) will lead to new hardware/software offerings to take advantage of consumers' acceptance of DRM (define). The music labels will grudgingly make additional concessions to sweeten the pot for retailers. But some problems with DRM compatibility, particularly in the networked home, will hurt the sector.

Micropayments - Is This The Year?
The micropayments sector has been in a state of flux since the late 1990s. Business models have been chopped and changed more times than an NFL roster and the dot-com bust has seen its share of micropayment victims. Yet, through it all, the likes of eBay-owned PayPal (Quote, Chart), smaller electronic payments providers BitPass and Peppercoin have carved a niche as legitimate players in the micropayments space. The skeptics continue to pour cold water on the micropayments concept but the concept keeps proving itself, in smaller ways, that are adding up, year after year.

With the success of online music and the gradual trend to push Web content behind the premium curtain, the micropayment market is opening up at a dramatic pace. With some minor tweaks, micropayments technology providers could flourish in 2004, or at least see some revenues start to add up.

Wi-Fi Gets (More) Mobile
Now that the hype has faded somewhat and strong business models are emerging in the Wi-Fi (define) space, look for new laptops, PDAs and cell phones to integrate the wireless standard in 2004. The dramatic growth in Wi-Fi will come in the first quarter when mobile phones with embedded Wi-Fi capabilities hit the market. On the enterprise side, a single device integrating a telephone, Web and e-mail access, contacts and meetings -- all connected by Wi-Fi will be a godsend. Look for Research in Motion and Palm's (Quote, Chart) HandSpring to make the most noise when Wi-Fi goes mobile.

On the consumer side, 2004 will see a gradual decline of the fee-based Wi-Fi hotspots (define) due to slowing demand. On the flip side, high-speed ISPs and telcos like Verizon, EarthLink, T-Mobile will move towards freeing up Wi-Fi access as a customer service/retention tool.

Is There Room for 'Gi-Fi'?
In November 2003, technology researchers at NewLans Inc. presented a tutorial to the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee Plenary Meeting outlining a new standard to cover the potential use of millimeter wave frequencies for use in enterprise WLANs (define) with gigabits-per-second capacities. NewLans, headed by serial entrepreneur Dev Gupta, plans to use a frequency range recently opened up by the FCC on the 56GHz band to offer 2 Gbps on a wireless LAN.

If Gupta succeeds, the 'Gi-Fi' protocol could make big news in 2004 as enterprises come to grips with the reality of what 2 Gbps can offer in comparison to the Gig-E wired LANs deployed today. Think of the wireless possibilities: file transfers, video- on-demand, high-resolution video conferencing, data mining, and on and on.
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news...le.php/3294271

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Give The Money Back !
P2PNet

Downhill Battle says the RIAA should return the money it's collected from individuals and families it accused of p2p filesharing.

"The RIAA obtained these names illegally, and it's time for them to return the money that they've extorted from hundreds of families," says DB's Holmes Wilson.

The call comes in response to a federal appeals court ruling, issued today, which states that the RIAA may not force ISPs to reveal the names of individuals that the major record labels suspect of filesharing.

"These lawsuits have literally pushed families into bankruptcy, and now the basis of the suits has been invalidated," says the site's Nicholas Reville.

Downhill Battle is a music activism project dedicated to making the music industry fairer for artists and fans. It'as received widespread attention for its Peer to Peer Legal Defense Fund, which as of today has raised $3,394.17 for victims of the RIAA lawsuits.

Downhill Battle's whatacrappypresent.com is currently the most linked to site on the Internet according to popdex.com and blogdex.net, which track weblog links.

Its in-store guerrilla stickering campaign puts anti-RIAA stickers on CDs inside stores like Walmart and Best Buy.
http://p2pnet.net/ez/index.php/news/...6/?eZSESSIDnew

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Media, File Sharing & Messengers Beat Browsers

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that three out of every four home and work Internet users, or 76 percent of active Web surfers, access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application. Media players, instant messengers and file sharing applications are the most popular Internet applications.

The total unique audience using Internet applications reached 106 million during the month of November 2003, an increase of 11 percent from the same period last year. Internet users spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes per month using Internet applications.

The top five applications are Windows Media Player, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger Service and Real Player. Of these top five applications, Windows Media has the largest active user reach at 34 percent. AOL Instant Messenger was next at 20 percent, followed by Real Player also at 20 percent, MSN Messenger Service at 19 percent and Yahoo! Messenger Service, which reaches 12 percent of the active user base.

"With 76 percent of Web surfers using Internet applications, functionality has grown beyond the browser to become a fundamental piece of the overall desktop," said Abha Bhagat, senior analyst Nielsen//NetRatings. "It's become harder to distinguish when you're on the Internet, blurring the lines between what's sitting on the desktop and what's coming from the World Wide Web."
http://www.in-sourced.com/article/articleview/1104/1/1/

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99-Cent Songs, Lawsuits Marked Watershed Year In Ongoing Downloading Wars
Angela Pacienza

Since about 1980, dictionaries have been defining downloading as the transfer of data from a large computer to the memory of a smaller one. For most of us, the term meant nothing until the late 1990s, when Napster hit the scene and downloading became a national pastime for thousands of kids.

The notion of all-you-can-download music took some dramatic twists and turns in 2003 with the advent of the 99-cent song and criminalization of uploaders.

Having taken substantial hits in sales over the past four years, the global recording industry had been eager to curb the ease with which people could access the musical buffet of services like KaZaA, which facilitates the download of close to three billion songs monthly.

In Canada, the solution was education - teach everyone through a series of TV and radio commercials that good boys and girls don't steal from hard working musicians. The conservative approach also included sending electronic warnings to major offending file-sharers.

The U.S. wasn't so gentle, and launched an aggressive campaign to discourage piracy. After months of threats, they started filing copyright lawsuits in July against Internet users who trade songs online. Those users included a 12-year-old New York girl living in subsidized housing and a 79-year-old retired man who said he didn't even own a computer.

That move meant a watershed year for companies like Apple's iTunes.com and Moontaxi's Puretracks.com, legal downloading websites based on a 99 cent per song model.

Fearing lawsuits, people started experimenting with such sites.

"There were a lot of eyes on our launch," said Derek van der Plaat, one of the co-founders of Puretracks. "It was a first for Canada."

In fact, in its first week of operation in October, Puretracks became the victim of its own success when high-volume traffic crippled its operation less than 24 hours after its launch.

"It really put us front and centre in the minds of people looking for a legitimate high quality alternative," said van der Plaat, who wouldn't divulge statistics of Puretracks' success citing that it's a private company. "We always felt there was a substantial opportunity. We never thought we'd be a 100 per cent replacement. It takes a significant amount of time to change the landscape."

Making up the landscape are millions upon millions of music lovers who take part in file-sharing networks using software that makes it simple for computer users to locate and retrieve virtually any song by any artists within seconds - all free of charge.

Internet users broadly acknowledge that trading music online is illegal, but the practice has flourished nonetheless since copyright statutes are among the most popularly flouted laws online.

"Copyright law is in flux all over the world," says Paul Chwelos, a professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an expert in the management and economics of information technology.

In Canada, the law's application in the online world has never been tested in the courts.

Copyright law allows people to make personal copies of music, which currently includes downloading from the Internet for non-commercial purposes. Levies on blank CDs and cassettes have been collected for three years now, and are distributed to artists and music makers. So far, $54 million has been made.

The motivation behind copyright law is to give an economic incentive to make sure people create new works.

"It's not to guarantee that artists or record companies get a fair return," said Chwelos. "The point is not to make individuals or business better off, it's to make sure society is better off by making sure we have enough creative content out there."

To that end, new technologies are challenging the ability of record companies - and more recently movie companies - to control the production and distribution of their content, he added.

There are plans by government to revamp Canada's copyright laws, although a firm date has not been set.

Industry insiders like Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, are livid about current copyright laws.

"The act is entirely out of date," he said in a recent interview.

But rather than wait for government to update the rules, his organization has been mobilizing its own plan of action to curb downloading. According to CRIA, the Canadian music industry has been hit harder than other countries by illegal file sharing. Its numbers show that retail sales are down by more than $425 million since 1999.

In 2003, CRIA's actions included aggressive campaigns to support CD singles and teach people about the value of music as well as add bonus products to CDs like DVDs and concert tickets.

"We've been reacting as positively as we can," said Robertson.

But the gentle giant will soon turn savage as the Canadian record industry makes plans to emulate the U.S. lawsuit campaign.

"We've been encouraged at the results of that campaign. There seems to have been a 40 per cent drop in peer-to-peer file sharing since that campaign started," said Robertson, whose association represents all the major record labels and the manufacturers of CDs.

In September, CRIA sent instant messages to more than 500,000 Canadian users of the KaZaA network informing them that their actions were illegal and damaging to artists - basically, putting them on notice for future legal action.

It's the first step towards what will undoubtedly be a long litigation process.

"We've got to the point whereby we've gone through the education process," said Robertson. "We invested over $1 million in that process and it doesn't appear to be the route to go from an ongoing point of view."

The plan, he said, would be to go after the uploaders, those who host thousands of songs on their computer hard drives.

"These people are serial infringers who are not really music lovers at all. They're just trying to destroy artists and destroy their music. These are the individuals that if a decision is made, will be the principle target."

Robertson, and other music industry leaders, are hoping they won't have to endure too many lengthy - and pricey - legal battles. They're hoping services like Puretracks and Apple's iTunes, which is coming to Canada in the new year, will capture enough of the market to balance the music buying scale.

But industry analysts say those legal music downloading services will be put to the test in 2004.

"It's probably going to be a make or break year for a lot of the fledgling services that have been introduced over the last 12 months to allow people to legitimately download music," said Rick Broadhead, a Toronto-based technology analyst and author.

"By and large most people in Canada have not been frightened off (the illegal sites). The number of people downloading and the overall traffic on these services continues to rise."

As well, with new companies sprouting up almost monthly, companies like Puretracks will be tested. Already, a price war is happening in the U.S. with the recently launched Wal-Mart music site selling songs at 88 cents, compared to iTunes at 99 cents.

"Not all of them are going to make it. The market isn't big enough," said Broadhead. "Next year is going to be a vital year for the legal services. It was too early to tell this year."

But as those services duke it out for music sales, an entirely different model for downloading songs could be in the works.

The organization representing Canada's songwriters is taking its fight against Internet piracy to the Supreme Court of Canada, arguing service providers (ISPs) should begin paying tariffs for Canadian music downloaded by the public anywhere in the world.

The case, which could have far-reaching implications worth millions, has the potential to change how artists are compensated, how far a country can go to extract payment, what gets put on the Internet and how recording companies serve buyers.

No matter the outcome, some analysts believe the industry has no choice but to solve the Internet piracy problem with licence levies applied at the ISP level.

"It'll be closer to a TV cable model where you pay a cable provider so much a month," said Paul Hoffert, a music professor at Toronto's York University and author of several books on information technology.

When you pay your cable bill, explains Hoffert, you pay not just for the technology but for the programming.

"It allows you to consume as much or as little as you want," said Hoffert, who also approaches the issue as a musician who scored dozens of films and served as a keyboardist for the '70s band Lighthouse. "That's how people are going to want to consume music. They're not going to want to pay for every little thing that they do."
http://www.canada.com/technology/sto...2-E4D3273B052B

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A Wary Eye on Sites for Music Sharing
Neil Strauss

The last year has seen an explosion of pay music-downloading services. Some have been successes, like Apple's iTunes Music Store, with 1.5 million downloads a week. Others, like BuyMusic, are plagued by complaints from users. But there is another site that has iTunes Music Store and BuyMusic beat: Easy Music Download, which has a greater profit margin than iTunes Music Store and probably a greater percentage of dissatisfied users than BuyMusic.

On its Web site, Easy Music Download offers unlimited downloads from a catalog of more than 700,000 songs for an annual fee of $21.95. Theoretically, one could own tens of thousands of songs for the same price as just 22 tracks from the iTunes store. If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.

"When everything hit the fan about people being charged for illegal music found on their machines, that was just the get-up-and-go I needed to fork out the cash for the files I wanted," Angela Tennant, a 25-year-old student from South Carolina who subscribed to Easy Music Download, said in an interview conducted via e-mail. "I just ended up paying up to the wrong people, and now I'm just aggravated, downright jaded, and it won't happen again."

What Ms. Tennant and others found when they subscribed to Easy Download Music was not a song-selling service at all, but merely information on how to download file-sharing services like Kazaa, which provide access to the unrestricted swapping that Ms. Tennant was hoping to avoid.

Roderick Dorman, chief litigation counsel for Sharman Networks, which owns the Kazaa Media Desktop, said that Easy Download Music was issued a cease-and-desist letter.

Many of the services state in their terms of service that the subscription pays for recommendations and technical support for free, easily available software. Easy Music Download is not alone in this market: at least a dozen other sites, like mp3perfect.com, mp3entertainment .com, mp3downloadhq.com and my-free-music.com, also sell access and help with free file-sharing services. All these sites look similar, and some have even copied text from other sites. But they vary in the extent to which they inform customers about the service they provide: some are designed to look like legitimate subscription-music services while others clearly state upfront that subscribers are paying for information and assistance only.

"Since August of 2003 we've been identifying what we view as scam sites, which are trading on the technology and offerings of Sharman Networks and in our view defrauding consumers by failing to disclose the actual service they provide," Mr. Dorman said. Several other cease-and-desist letters had been sent, he said, and he is "exploring with governmental authorities whether the conduct of these sites is criminal and is the appropriate subject of criminal law enforcement."

Through an e-mail address provided by an Internet consultant who did not want to be identified, the owner of Easy Music Download was reached. He identified himself as Ganesh Singh, and said he was from Hyderabad, India. "We tell people our Web site shows how to use file-sharing software," he wrote. "Other Web sites do not, so they are misleading." He declined to say how many users Easy Music Download has.

To learn more about these sites and their intended purpose, e-mail messages were sent and phone calls made to the owners of seven similar sites. Most e-mail messages remain unanswered; at mp3perfect.com, a flustered man answered the phone, listened to the questions, and said his superior should answer them. But his superior never called back.

The seventh e-mail message led to a telephone interview with a 25-year-old woman from Florida, who owns the subscription services imusicshare.com and mp3run .com. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she provided some perspective on the Web sites.

She said that she worked at an Internet billing company, and conceived of her file-sharing-support sites when she noticed that such sites did well financially. She started iMusicShare three months ago, she said, and gets 20 to 30 new subscribers a day.

That site is not meant to be at all misleading, she said. "It's for people who have no clue what to do on the Web as far as downloading," she continued. "They don't know what to do and how to begin, so they're willing to pay for help."

So the service provides subscribers with links to download free programs like WinMX and iMesh, supplies them with user guides to these programs, and gives 24-hour technical support, which few file-sharing services offer reliably.

She said that about 15 percent of her imusicshare subscribers request refunds. It is in a company's best interest to keep refunds and complaints to a minimum, she said, because they will affect a merchant's online reliability rating. "I think that there are a lot of people out there who really depend on us," she said. "There are people who are 70 and 90, and have no clue how to download."

Depending on one's perspective, sites like Easy Music Download are angels of file-sharing mercy, providing an easy way for Internet neophytes to navigate the morass of song- and movie-swapping sites, or they are clever parasites, feeding off the good intentions of those wishing to pay for their music.

One result for those who hold the latter view is that the services may be driving people back to Kazaa. "Web sites like easymusicdownload .com make honest people feel as if they are punished for trying to do the right thing," Ms. Tennant said. "And how have I gotten my music since I have been scammed? Let's just say I don't risk being hung out to dry anymore."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/ar...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Western Show Ends With A Whimper

Much Smaller Booths, Less Floor Space, Fewer Attendees Mark Final Anaheim Confab
Alan Breznick

Despite the big hopes of convention organizers to stage one last memorable affair, the cable industry's 36th and final Western Show went out with a whimper rather than a bang last month.

The California Cable & Telecommunications Association (CCTA), which sponsored the convention in Anaheim as always, said it drew a mere 6,150 attendees for the four-day confab. That's way down from about 10,000 in 2002, 17,000 in 2001 and a record 33,000 in 2000, when the show was last staged in downtown Los Angeles. Indeed, attendance at what had long been the industry's second biggest annual convention was not much higher than that enjoyed by several of the largest regional cable shows.

Similarly, the total number of Western Show exhibitors plummeted to 150 from 240 last year, a 38% dropoff. Even with the addition of 44 new exhibitors on the floor, the falloff was substantial as such major tech vendors as Cisco Systems and Broadcom and many smaller ones either stayed home or hosted hotel hospitality suites and private meetings.

Moreover, the total exhibit space declined dramatically again this year, dropping to 30,000 square feet from 80,000 square feet last year, as those vendors that did attend cut back drastically on their booth sizes. Only a few tech stalwarts such as Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta maintained reasonably large exhibits. And the cable programming networks were scarce on the convention floor, with the notable exception of Starz Encore.

In a sign of how much the total exhibit area shrunk this time around, CableNet, the tech expo organized by CableLabs that is usually just a blip on the convention floor, took up a full one-third of the total exhibit space. CableNet's exhibits also appeared to generate more buzz and activity than anything else on the floor, except for possibly the Motorola and S-A booths. Thanks to CableNet's enduring popularity, NCTA and CableLabs will move CableNet to the National Show, starting with the next convention in New Orleans in early May.

Show organizers boasted that the 31 educational sessions drew plenty of conventioneers, in some cases playing to standing-room-only crowds. In particular, the first morning general session attracted an overflow crowd in the convention center auditorium, prompting organizers to peel back the sliding back wall and place 200 more seats in the 750-seat meeting space. But, in years past, general session crowds filled the entire auditorium without the need for sliding walls to slice the room in half.

In other signs of the Western Show's steep, sad decline, there were few, if any, blowout parties or otherwise standout evening events. Show organizers didn't even bother with a flashy montage of highlights from great shows of the past. Mostly, cable executives just paid tribute, perhaps somewhat guiltily, to long-time CCTA President & General Counsel Spencer Kaitz, who announced his retirement at the show.

Despite the show's disappointing sendoff, tech vendors and cable operators did make some news in Anaheim and there was still plenty to see. Our Western Show news roundup follows.

Service Control Solutions

Start-ups in the IP service control category -- Allot Communications, Ellacoya Networks and P-Cube Inc. -- were also active in Anaheim.

Allot and Northland Cable Television said the cable operator is using Allot's traffic management system, NetEnforcer, to manage bandwidth for the MSO's 80 headend sites in Alabama, California, Georgia, Idaho, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Texas and Washington. With NetEnforcer, Northland said it can now manage peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic and restrict aggregate peak bandwidth usage in particular areas. Separately, Allot debuted its new NetEnforcer AC-1020, which tracks, classifies and shapes network traffic up to Layer 7.

Ellacoya inked a non-exclusive pact with Arris that will allow Arris to distribute and sell Ellacoya's bandwidth management systems to cable operators throughout the world. Ellacoya's system consists of its 4000 and 16000-series IP switches and its Service Logic Software. The deal adds another feather to Arris' cap while Ellacoya gains access to Arris' worldwide sales and support network. The two companies said Arris has already installed Ellacoya's service management system with "several" undisclosed North and South American cable operators.

P-Cube introduced Engage 2.0, a network traffic optimization system designed to enable cable operators to scrutinize P2P traffic faster and more efficiently. It's also aimed at supporting new VoIP protocols and applications, such as SIP and Skype. In addition, Engage 2.0 offers enhanced abilities for cable operators to protect themselves against DDOS and worm attacks. P-Cube said the new software, crafted to work in conjunction with DOCSIS, extends the service control functionality across the entire HFC network.
http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/jan04/jan04-7.html

Cable Eyes A Quantum Leap In IP Access

Besides VoIP, MSO Chiefs Consider 50-Mbps Cable Modem Connections and Video Telephony
Alan Breznick

Although voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) may be the next frontier for cable operators, it's far from the final one. As a number of MSO and tech vendor executives stressed at the Western Show in Anaheim last month, cable's IP future extends beyond the current data and prospective voice offerings to a variety of new services, including video telephony, broadband gaming and telecommuting offerings.

Speaking on a general session panel of top MSO executives, Comcast President/CEO Brian Roberts created a stir when he suggested that the industry consider boosting cable modem speeds by a factor of more than 10. Roberts said Comcast, which is now doubling its data download speeds on many cable systems to 3 megabits per second (Mbps), is seeking to go much faster in the near future. "Our advantage is to stay ahead," he said, fresh from a visit to Silicon Valley with other top cable CEOs the day before. "Just like we planned on 500 channels, we're planning on 50 megabits per second."

Similarly, on a separate general session panel, Bob Miron, chairman and CEO of Advance/Newhouse Communications, gushed about the possibilities of expanding high-speed data services into new areas. Following the same CEO jaunt to Silicon Valley, he said cable operators could reap great benefits from boosting data speeds much higher and offering video telephony service, among other things. "We're going to go way up" from 3 Mbps, he said. "We're going to make the user experience much more friendly and exciting."

Miron noted that his company now uses just one or two of the more than 100 6-MHz channels on its cable systems for high-speed data, yet gets 10% to 20% of its total revenue from the service. He indicated that Advance/Newhouse will devote more channels to data in the future as its analog bandwidth frees up, enabling it to hike transmission speeds and offer other new IP services.

In another Western Show session, panelists agreed that cable could achieve such fast data delivery soon. They predicted that cable operators could deliver such high speeds in no more than 2 years if customers really demand it.

"That is definitely technically feasible," said Tom Cloonan, CTO of Arris Inc.'s broadband division. "The silicon out there today supports it. If people ask for it, it certainly can be provided in a year or two."

Cloonan and other speakers urged cable operators to create speed and service tiers to serve cable modem customers better, manage heavy traffic loads from peer-to-peer (P2P) users, control soaring data operational costs and rake in more revenue. For example, Terry Shaw, director of network systems for CableLabs, said speed-based and consumption-based tiers "can be a very effective bandwidth management tool." He noted that on cable systems without such tiers, 50% of the bandwidth is typically devoured by just 6% of data subscribers.
http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/jan04/jan04-3.html

New Trade Group Sees Cable As Model For Online Music Sales

DCIA Invites Cable Broadband Players to Help Build Music Download Subscription Business
Alan Breznick

Call it "downloading for dollars." In a novel move, a recently formed computing industry trade group is seeking to turn the emerging online music download business into the latest version of the cable TV business.

In a prospective economic model presented at last month's final Western Show in Anaheim, the new Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) calls on the music industry to drop its fierce resistance to all peer- to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications. Instead, the DCIA proposes that the record labels start actively selling their content to all cable modem and other broadband subscribers who use such popular free music file-sharing software as Kazaa. And, with cable accounting for the lion's share of broadband consumers, the group wants cable operators to play a big role in tracking, managing and promoting music-file use and sales.

"We really need the cable MSO broadband ISP to help," said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty, a cable and broadcasting veteran, speaking on a show panel about digital lessons from Kazaa. "Cable operators understand the content management business." He said part of his mission is to bring MSOs into the fold.

Similar to the tried-and-true cable video business model, the DCIA's proposed economic model calls for imposing a flat universal subscription fee of about $5 a month on all broadband subscribers who use music file- sharing software. For this fee, broadband consumers would receive access to basic music content. Music rights holders would reap most of the revenues, but the broadband ISPs and P2P software firms would also share in the bounty.

As presented by Lafferty, the model then envisions levying optional pay cable-like fees for special packages of broadcast-encrypted genre-and- theme music channels. Cable modem and DSL users would pay perhaps an extra $1 per month for each premium music package they took, on top of the $5 monthly fee for basic access and their standard broadband subscription charge.

Lastly, the DCIA model calls for charging small, a la carte fees for downloads of the latest individual music tracks. Lafferty is thinking of charging broadband users about 50 cents to $1 per track for hot new music releases. "It's the cable model of basic, pay and pay-per-view (PPV)," he said.

With at least an estimated 60 million music file sharers worldwide, Lafferty argues that this business model would help curb the 2.6 million unauthorized music downloads from the Internet each month. So far, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the music labels, has mainly focused on suing consumers for alleged copyright infringements, including some cable modem customers.
http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/jan04/jan04-6.html

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For the Discerning Eye, Crisper Images on the Screen
J. D. Biersdorfer

The increase in high-definition broadcast and cable programming has prompted more consumers to buy high-definition television sets. But once one gets used to the sharp, clear look of HDTV programming, video from other devices - like a DVD player - can take on a decidedly old-fashioned fuzziness.

To improve the look of images from video sources that are not high definition, ADS Technologies has created the HDTV Upconverter, a box that scales up standard video signals into the higher resolutions that HDTV sets were designed to display.

Standard television and video images typically consist of 480 horizontal lines, but HDTV resolutions can go up to 1,080 lines, producing a much more detailed picture.

The HDTV Upconverter reformats and displays video from satellite and cable television systems, VCR's, DVD players and video game consoles at the higher HDTV resolutions.

A list of retail stores that carry the $599 HDTV Upconverter, along with more information and technical specifications, is available in the Products section at www.adstech.com.

The Upconverter has enough jacks on the back to accommodate nine video and audio sources, so in addition to an enhanced picture, you may finally be able to plug in all your home entertainment components and still have room for the PlayStation 2.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/te...ts/01conv.html

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Ohio Man Pleads Guilty In Internet Piracy Sting
AP

An Ohio man on Friday became the 15th person to plead guilty to federal charges in an Internet piracy ring that sold million of dollars worth of stolen computer software, games and movies.

The Internet piracy ring dubbed ``Rogue Warriorz'' included 21 people from 14 states and Canada.

Eleven pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, a federal prosecutor said. As part of their plea agreement, each agreed to surrender copyrighted works, pay restitution, cooperate with the investigation and turn over computer equipment used in the scheme.

Each faces a sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella said Friday. They were scheduled for sentencing in March before U.S. District Court Judge James C. Mahan.

The indictments were revealed in June after undercover federal agents said they obtained more than 8,434 computer application and utility software programs, and 356 movies and 432 computer games.

``This was a large-scale operation that transferred millions of dollars worth of pirated software, games and movies,'' Parrella said. Authorities have put the combined value of the programs at more than $7 million.

Some movies cited in the indictment included ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'' ``Legally Blonde,'' ``Zoolander,'' and ``American Pie 2.'' Software programs included Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Adobe Page Maker and Audiowriter version 1.4.

The prosecutions stemmed from a wider two-year national Internet piracy investigation based in Las Vegas dubbed ``Operation Bandwidth.''

In the ``Rogue Warriorz'' probe, FBI, federal Environmental Protection Agency and Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigators spent six months in 2001 obtaining copyrighted software, movies, and games from what authorities called illegal online warehouses. None of those charged lives in Nevada.

``These crimes not only harm the manufacturers and distributors of the products,'' U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said in the statement, ``but they harm the general public because of the higher costs that consumers are eventually forced to absorb.''

After pleading guilty Friday, David Lowe, 42, of Akron, Ohio, said outside the courtroom that Internet swapping and selling of software, movies and games is common, and that the law under which he was charged is flawed.

``I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I got caught,'' he said in a brief interview. His sentencing was scheduled March 24.

Pleading guilty Thursday were Wolf Bachenor, 52, Park Slope, N.Y.; David Brandt, 36, Wake Village, Texas; Alexander Castaneda, 21, Federal Way, Wash.; Jacob Paul Clappton, 30, Livermore, Calif.; Jonathan Dow, 35, Ilion, N.Y.; Jorge Garcia, Jr., 30, Reddick, Fla.; Mark Konarske, 42, Flat Rock, Minn.; Timothy J. Lastoria, 25, Brecksville, Ohio; Christopher Mastrangelo, 32, Toms River, N.J.; Suzanne Peace, 38, Lombard, Ill.; and Elisa Sarino, 28, San Jose, Calif.

John J. Amorosi, 23, of Falls Church, Va., previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 12.

Lindle Romero, 38, of Houston, Texas, pleaded guilty Sept. 26 to a felony for failing to report illegal activity, and was scheduled for sentencing March 15.

Lukasz Doupal, 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced April 7. More information was not immediately available Friday, said Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office.

Joseph Yano, 35, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was due for trial next month in Saskatoon, Parrella said. Four defendants -- Bryan Ray Harshman of St. Joseph, Mo., Jeffrey Sasser of Charlotte, N.C., Peter Semadeni of Overland Park, Kan., and Dean Wuestenberg of Donahue, Iowa -- were due for trial Feb. 17 in Las Vegas, he said.

One defendant, Michael Meacham, 34, of Barberton, Ohio, died this year, the prosecutor said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/7532822.htm

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Move Over Internet2 -- Here Comes Internet3

While New Zealand pokes along on dial up and faux-broadband connections plagued by popup advertisements and spam, Internet 2, a research network running parallel to the world wide web -- the wide area network most netizens think of as the internet -- provides blazing connections for users at most of the world's leading universities, hospitals and other main research outposts.

New Zealand does not have access to Internet 2 because the government has not yet found the million or so dollars it takes to hook its research entities into the system.

Now, even Internet 2 is being left behind by a specialised ring that will connect Chicago, Amsterdam, Moscow, Siberia, Beijing and Hong Kong at speeds able to handle the demands of super computers.

Finishing touches are being applied to the multi-million project, which is scheduled to go live on 05 January.

Russian and US scientists have had direct computer linkage for about five years, but Russia and China often exchange scientific information by meeting in Chicago, Greg Cole of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, one of the leaders of the Little GLORIAD project, told the AP.

Data will flow over the ring at 155 million bytes per second.

The US National Science Foundation contributed $US2.8 million to support the project for the next three years. Russia and China invested similar amounts, Cole said.

"Little Gloriad" is an acronym for Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development.

The ring will allow scientists and educational researchers to work together on computationally intensive issues such as responding to natural disasters, safeguarding nuclear material, monitoring earthquakes or joint space exploration.

They also could collaborate to remotely monitor or control high-tech equipment and even get together face-to-face by video conferencing over the network, Mr Cole told the AP.

'This is specifically so our scientists and educators can work together more easily,' Mr Cole said. 'The technology is really rather amazing.'

The fiber optic connection between China and Russia that makes the network possible was completed a few months ago, Mr Cole said.

Meanwhile, Internet 2 now counts 204 US universities on its network, along with 70 corporations, such as Ford and AT&T, and about 40 organizations and federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation.

Internet2 is a US-led project, but one that is extemely international in scope, enabling collaborative research around the world.

Taiwan linked up to the international service earlier this month, for example, installing a 2.5 Gbps (gigabits per second) connection to the Pacific Wave International exchange point at the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in Seattle. Connections of 1Gbps and 622 Mbps will also be extended from Seattle to Chicago's Starlight facility, according to Pacific Business News.

The country joins dozens of others who have signed on to the project through one or more of its various super speed sub-networks.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_art...ame=Technology

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Future of TV Looks A Lot Like Broadband
Dan Gillmor

If the future of television is taking shape here, our choices of programming appear to be nearly infinite. But whether we have flexibility and
freedom in how we use those choices will be someone else's decision.

If a new digital age of television is emerging, it may look a lot like ``Now Broadband TV,'' a service launched earlier this fall by PCCW, Hong Kong's dominant telecommunications company. By year's end, it should have more than 200,000 subscribers, and could have as many as half a million in 2004.

Hong Kong is probably the world's most competitive telecommunications market, and Now Broadband TV is one of several television operations here looking to compete in the pay-TV arena. But this service has some distinct advantages, not least its backing by PCCW, which sees it as an add-on more than a stand- alone offering.

The PCCW broadband-TV service, one of the first in the world , doesn't use cable-television lines. It uses the copper phone lines in people's homes, most of which are capable of truly high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) data connections. Unlike the United States, where DSL customers are limited to speeds well below a megabit per second, the vast majority of Hong Kong's DSL subscribers have connections at 6 megabits per second.

That's fast enough to devote 4.5 megabits to a TV channel and still leave ample Web-surfing capacity. That's just what PCCW has done, guaranteeing TV- quality service for the channels it offers. The company reconfigured its own central offices and is requiring broadband-TV customers to install special set-top boxes.

In most of the world, cable systems have large numbers of customers and negotiate with programmers on an all-or-nothing basis. They've trained viewers to believe the best way to get programming is to pay a flat fee for a grab bag of channels chosen by the company.

A la carte

By contrast, the PCCW service, which launched with 23 channels including some U.S.-based programming (a few more have been added), is entirely a la carte. Customers don't buy a package of channels for a monthly price. They buy whichever channels they want, and pay a monthly price for each.

Channels range in price from about $1.30 to $5 a month, and higher in a couple of cases. PCCW and its content providers share the revenues in a formula that isn't disclosed.

It was done this way partly out of necessity, says Mike Butcher, PCCW's chief operating officer. Now Broadband TV was a new entrant in the market, with fewer channels than the local cable company could offer in its package -- which included some popular channels that the cable operator controls exclusively by contract for the next two or three years. Making the best of the situation meant providing the installation and set-top boxes at no extra costs, and the pick- your-own-channels service gave Now Broadband TV customers a way to start using the system at a relatively low cost.

This approach is appealing in many ways. First, it gives the choice to the customer. Second, it allows the operator of the system to slice programming into some smaller niches where the audience might be smaller but where there's still a way for everyone to come out with what they want -- revenues for the programming company and the delivery service (which is what PCCW becomes with this system) and, of course, cost savings for the home customer.

PCCW has enough capacity on its own systems to offer hundreds of channels. If the company is smart, it'll encourage local media entrepreneurs to create niche channels, including some public-service channels.

I can easily imagine a Hong Kong-oriented channel devoted solely to the city's cultural scene, or its phenomenal food. Or maybe the schools and universities could team up on a channel for showcasing student concerts, plays and other events; perhaps parents would be willing to pay a dollar or two a month for that. This is an entirely different model from trying to get onto a cable-TV operator's system. And it might produce true variety in programming.

No recording

But for all the possibilities, PCCW's service is burdened by some of the most stringent control-freakery I've seen in the TV world. If you want to tape one of the TV programs to watch later, forget it. You can't. Period.

The set-top boxes, based on DVD technology (many contain DVD players), have digital and analog outputs. But because the providers of the programming have been so paranoid about copying, PCCW has turned off customers' ability to make even personal copies, whether digital or analog, of anything on any of the channels.

``It was a significant factor with a number of the content providers in giving them increased security of intellectual property, particularly in this part of the world,'' Butcher says.

High-profile programmers, including an MGM movie channel, said they wouldn't do a deal if any copying was allowed. Maybe, with some future channel, the conditions won't be so strict, Butcher says.

PCCW's lockdown prompted a letter of complaint to the editor of the South China Morning Post. The correspondent wrote: ``Recording is essential to many viewers as it is generally difficult for busy Hong Kong citizens to watch TV according to broadcast schedules.''

I'm with the letter writer. Denying customers the flexibility to make even a lower-quality analog recording of shows takes away much of the value of the a la carte programming model.

But this is the way Hollywood and the copyright robber barons want the future to work. We'll get to watch what they produce on their terms, or not at all. To imagine that analog copies from Hong Kong TV systems are anything remotely like the threat of DVD factories stamping out thousands of counterfeit disks per day is absurd, but Hollywood puts them on the same plane, and the little guy loses what should be routine.

So, one and a half cheers for PCCW's broadband television experiment. It's a breakthrough technologically, and offering programming in more thinly sliced ways is a win for customers. Too bad their freedom ends there. If this really is the way digital-age TV will work, we may end up losing as much as we gain.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/san...gy/7435555.htm

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A Crowded Bandwagon Yields Music Without Worries
J.D. BIERSDORFER

SEVERAL companies have jumped onto the legal-music bandwagon (with more to come), and most have followed the trail blazed by Apple Computer with its iTunes Music Store last spring: thousands of songs available, freedom to play the music on multiple computers and portable audio players, and the ability to burn the purchased tracks onto a compact disc.

Compared with services that allow only streaming - the digital equivalent of hearing a song on the radio any time you wish - a file-download service is more like buying the single and taking it with you to play wherever you go.

A high-speed Internet connection is advised, and if you want music on the go, an MP3 player that can play song files encoded with Windows Media Digital Rights Management software is needed for many of the PC-based services. That's because they use features of the Windows Media Audio format to restrict unauthorized copying and sharing of song files, the practice that got the original Napster and other file-sharing services into legal hot water.

MusicMatch
www.musicmatch.com
FILE FORMAT Copy-protected Windows Media Audio (W.M.A.) files. PRICES About 99 cents per track or $10 per album. SUBSCRIPTION Not required, but available for $5 a month for streaming and music-finding services. FEATURES Catalog of 360,000 songs, which can be burned onto a CD and downloaded to many compatible Creative, Dell and Rio portable audio players. Three computers at a time can play the purchased tracks. (For Windows 98SE and later.)

Napster 2.0
www.napster.com
FILE FORMAT Copy-protected W.M.A. files. PRICES Tracks are 99 cents each; albums cost around $10. SUBSCRIPTION Not required, but offered as a streaming service for an extra $10 a month. FEATURES Once the first name in illegal downloads, it has been reborn as a legal service with half a million songs, which can be played on three PC's and burned to disc. Downloading to a portable player is easiest if you have the $350 Samsung Napster YP-910GS 20-gigabyte jukebox; otherwise you need Windows Media Player software. (For Windows 2000 and later.)

Wal-Mart
musicdownloads.walmart.com
FILE FORMAT Copy-protected W.M.A. files. PRICES 88 cents per song; about $9 for an album. SUBSCRIPTION None. FEATURES Relies on Windows Media Player 9 to play the music once downloaded. Songs can be played on three computers, burned to CD and transferred to compatible audio players. As with CD's sold in Wal-Mart stores, edited versions - songs with explicit lyrics removed - are often available. (For Windows 98SE and later.)

BuyMusic
www.buymusic.com
FILE FORMAT Copy-protected W.M.A. files. PRICES Songs begin at 79 cents, albums at $8. SUBSCRIPTION None. FEATURES Uses Windows Media Player 9 as the jukebox program for managing the music. Thousands of major-label songs, but legal rights (like whether you can burn songs to a CD or transfer them to a portable player) vary according to record label, frustrating many users. (For Windows 98 and later.)

Rhapsody
www.listen.com
FILE FORMAT No downloads; streaming music and CD burning only. PRICES 79 cents per song to burn onto a disc. SUBSCRIPTION Required; $10 a month, including unlimited streaming. FEATURES Rhapsody is not so much an online store as a virtual concert hall where you listen to the company's 400,000 songs as often as you want. Not all songs are available for CD burning. (For Windows 98SE and later.)

iTunes Music Store
www.apple.com/itunes
FILE FORMAT Copy-protected Advanced Audio Coding (A.A.C.) files. PRICES 99 cents per song; album prices start at $10. SUBSCRIPTION None. FEATURES The site, an integrated part of Apple's iTunes jukebox software, offers 400,000 tracks, 5,000 audio books from Audible.com and allowance accounts for those too young for credit cards. Songs can be played on up to three computers, burned to a CD and downloaded to any portable player as long as it is an iPod. (For Macintosh OS X and Windows 2000 and later.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/te...ts/01tune.html

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P2P Wrap-up for 2003
Thomas Mennecke

Although file-sharing went through some its greatest challenges during 2003, it once again emerges as one of the greatest Internet driving forces. While some still long for the golden age of file-sharing under Napster, 2003 proved to be just as productive in its own right.

January

The beginning of 2003 proved to be no better for the RIAA than its end. On January 6, the RIAA website suffered perhaps its greatest hack. The message the hackers left was so well written that at first glance many felt the RIAA had actually surrendered. No such luck, unfortunately.

Also on January 6, the P2P community welcomed the arrival of Piolet. After months of stagnation, Pablo Soto released his spyware/adware-free version of his Manolito Client. The Manolito network has since grown to well over 200,000 simultaneous users and is considered one of the better networks for accessing a wealth of music files.

February

In the early stages of the RIAA/Verizon lawsuit, the telecommunications giant was seeking a compromise. Verizon was willing to give up the names of several file- traders if the RIAA would agree to certain conditions, such as the volume of subpoenas. The RIAA refused. The rest is history.

Although IRC is the god-father of modern P2P networking, DALNet announced on Feburary 5 they will enforce their "no file-sharing" policy. After this announcement, coupled by a series of crippling DOS attacks, DALNet's population remains a shadow of its former self.

March

On March 9, Janus Friis, one of the co-founders of Kazaa, admitted to Slyck that certain aspects of FastTrack did indeed require a central server. However, Janus pointed out these servers (host cache server) were used by older clients that required an IP address to connect to the network.

Steve Griffin, CEO of StreamCast networks (Morpheus), resigned on March 15. Plagued by a spiraling userbase, StreamCast rehired former CEO Michael Weiss. Micheal Weiss was the original CEO of StreamCast when it was known as "MusicCity" (under OpenNap) and during Morpheus’ reign as the lead FastTrack client.

April

The month of April reinforced the concept that CD sales were not improving any time soon. Countries such as Japan and Germany witnessed an exceptional decline of nearly 9%.

April 25 proved to be an important day in P2P history as StreamCast and Grokster defeated the RIAA in court. Similar to the ruling from the Netherlands, the judge ruled that neither company was responsible for the actions of its users.

May

May was a bit quiet for the P2P world; however it would prove to be the calm before the great storm. One news piece of particular interest was Kazaa's success in becoming the most downloaded piece of software ever, with nearly 300,000,000 downloads.

June

Although this news came as little surprise, the RIAA announced on June 25 they will begin suing individual members of the file-sharing community. In the long run, this botched campaign to terrorize the American people would prove to be their greatest fallacy.

July

As the RIAA began suing the American people, the last thing the file-sharing community did was stand by and watch. Read Slyck's interview with MetaMachine's Paul Reinheimer on July 11 and with FileTopia on July 16.

On July 29, the RIAA chose former Republican big wig Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to replace Hilary Rosen as CEO and Chairman.

August

Some good news began to appear in August 2003. While the mainstream media painted a gloomy P2P picture, file-sharing remained steady despite numerous lawsuits.

Additional positive news came on August 8 when a Massachusetts District court judge gave MIT and Boston College the OK to reject the subpoenas issued by the RIAA. The judge cited that the subpoenas had to be filed in the state in which the alleged violation occurred. While the music industry was quick to brush this ruling off, it would prove to be one of the first cracks in the RIAA's armor.

September

The full scope of the RIAA's terror campaign is realized when a 12 year old girl, named Brianna LaHara was sued by the RIAA. The event is a public relations nightmare for the now embattled RIAA.

In an attempt to prevent movie piracy, the MPAA decides to ban "screener" distribution. Screener movies (varying quality, some are about VHS standard, while others are near-DVD) are sent to film critics prior to award ceremonies, such as the Oscars. As news of this broke, independent film artists reacted, stating their movies would be pushed out of competition against Hollywood. Their protests would prove fruitful as a New York City judge blocked the MPAA's ban.

October

Sandvine, a network research firm, reported on October 14 that FastTrack was facing stiff competition in foreign markets. While FastTrack is the most popular network in North American, Europeans favor the eDonkey2000 network.

WinMX 3.31 celebrated its one year anniversary on October 19. It is the only client to survive without an update and still draw an enormous userbase.

BitTorrent proves it is a force to be reckoned with, as its popularity continues to soar. Although this network was primarily used to trade TV shows and movie files, it resourcefulness has expanded to music and applications.

November

AltNet, the elusive shadow network that resides within FastTrack, announced that it plans to enforce its patent on "hashing" technology. Hashing technology is a method of creating a unique code that identifies a particular file. This is particularly useful in the fight against corrupt or false files. Little from AltNet has been heard since.

The GAO, or Government Accounting Office, released a report that greatly favors the existence of P2P networking. While many members of Congress have been quick to go on the data provided by the RIAA, the report provided by the GAO threw a very large wrench in the music industry's information campaign.

December

December would prove to be one of the greatest months in the history of file- sharing. The beginning of this moth did not bode well for P2P lovers; nearly all download resources of Kazaa Lite were eliminated, and the RIAA’s “sue ‘em all” campaign was in high gear.

However, a series of terrific reverses against the RIAA brought their world crumbling down. Befuddled and defeated, the RIAA is attempting to save face by clamoring the lawsuits will go on.

As modern file-sharing enters it fourth year of existence, despite its ups and downs, it has proven that the P2P world is a resilient, observant and adaptable community. Nearly every obstacle the music industry has thrown at us has been defeated. We’re looking forward to similar results in 2004.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=360

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In Chasing Movie Pirates, Hollywood Treads Lightly
John Schwartz

When Tim Davis got caught trading songs, it made him semifamous. Davis, an artist who teaches photography at Yale, was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America last September and was featured in news articles around the world.

Since then, he has made his plight a public cause to help recoup the $10,000 he spent on his legal defense and to settle the lawsuit. He sold "Free Timmy" T-shirts and held a fund-raising party at his studio. Visitors to his Web site, davistim.com, can leave a donation in an online "tip jar." The lawsuit, he said, is "an insane kind of disproportionate response" to his musical sins.

Then there is Jeff, who trades movies online. Jeff, who lives in New York and discussed his situation only on the condition that his full name not be used, received a letter from his cable company explaining that New Line Cinema had found a copy of "Freddy vs. Jason" available for sharing through his Internet account. The letter noted that the movie industry did not know his identity but could go to court to discover it and might eventually sue him. "It gave me a little scare," he said.

There are many more music traders than movie traders, but there are many more Jeffs than Tims these days. While the recording industry has made headlines with a few hundred lawsuits, the movie industry has been sending out hundreds of thousands of threatening notices via e-mail messages each week to the people who make its products available on the Internet.

The music industry's approach has contributed to a decline in downloading but has also produced a powerful public backlash, angering millions of its customers. That is one reason, among others, that Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that his industry would not be following the music companies' path any time soon.

"I'm not ruling out anything, but at this moment we don't have any specific plans to sue anyone," Valenti said. "I think we have learned from the music industry."

The gentler threat works, said Mark Ishikawa, the chief executive of BayTSP, a company that helps the industry track down file sharers by scanning the Internet for movies and issuing the e-mail notices automatically. Fully 85 percent of those contacted "do not come back," Ishikawa said. "We never see them again," with no headlines and no public relations blowups.

"The movie studios," he said, "are trying to prevent themselves from becoming the next music industry."

But executives at the technology companies that serve both industries say that the movie industry, while avoiding some of the record industry's pitfalls, has not yet made enough progress on other fronts to head off a Napster-like disaster.

The different approaches to the problem of copyright infringement, they say, are--more than anything else--about timing.

The music industry is pursuing a late, desperate, rear-guard action against an army of tens of millions of downloaders. Meanwhile, legitimate online alternatives to file trading are only now becoming established. The movie industry, by comparison, estimates that it has at least 18 months before high-speed Internet access and high-capacity hard drives make grabbing a movie almost as quick and easy as grabbing a song.

Valenti says Hollywood is doing everything it can to get ahead of the coming storm. Along with the warning letters, the movie industry is paying for consumer education programs and technology research, and pushing for laws and regulations that executives hope will protect their wares. At the industry's urging, for example, California recently passed a law making it illegal to use a camcorder in a movie theater.

Yet experts in digital technology say Hollywood is fooling itself if it believes that its current steps will be enough, or even that they will take the industry in the right direction.

Gary Johnson, the chief executive of PortalPlayer, a company that makes the technology that helps consumer products like Apple Computer's iPod play music within the boundaries of licensing agreements and copyright law, was particularly blunt.

"We're not sure the lessons that were learned in the music industry have been picked up yet" in the world of video, he said.

The most important thing for Hollywood to do now, Johnson said, is to move faster to develop the kinds of licensing agreements and protective technology that can make digital video services easy to use and worth paying for.

Michael Maia, the vice president for sales and marketing for PortalPlayer, said: "It's all about the rights."

Send lawyers, tools and money
In other words, the biggest challenge for the video industry lies not with pirates, but with bytes, cash and lawyers.

What the industry needs, technology executives say, is to look harder for tools and contracts that allow people to get the movies they want at a competitive price, rather than concentrate on actions that restrict access.

"The film industry has a tremendous opportunity in front of it, and the bar is very low," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a company that tracks file-trading activity for the entertainment industries.

Movie companies can prevent the free swapping of their wares from mushrooming into a mass phenomenon, Garland said, by offering easy-to-use services with broad selection that will shape the consumer experience, instead of trying to change bad behavior after the fact.

The movie industry, he said, has to ask itself what the music industry should have asked years ago: "Why do they want to steal from us?" The answer, he said, is simple: "Because you won't sell them what they want." The technologists say that what went wrong with the music industry can easily go wrong for movie companies, too.

Steve Perlman, a longtime executive in the technology industry who co-founded WebTV, said that because music companies had resisted online trends and did not make their wares readily available, "a pirate way of accessing content became the best way of accessing content."

People seeking a legitimate way to download music found nothing much, while Napster and its offspring became magical jukeboxes in cyberspace that offered every conceivable song. "They've got to make it so the best choice is legitimate content," Perlman said.

When a movie first appears, illicit copies show up online for the taking almost instantly. "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,'' which was released on Dec. 17, is already available on several peer-to-peer services. Many videos, though, are poor-quality copies made by people who bring camcorders to a theater.

Most of the higher-quality copies come from within the industry, often copied from "screener" discs sent out during the annual awards season.

Current attempts to sell movies online, like the industry-sponsored Movielink, are still limited in selection and ease of use. But Valenti, the movie industry's powerful lobbyist in Washington, said the problems were temporary.

"We're experimenting with all of this," he said. "This isn't anything that is a finished game." Technology and selection will improve, he pledged. "There's no expectation of keeping these films in a vault."

The path to a successful service has to involve the kind of technology that protects copyright unobtrusively, said Paul Kocher, president of Cryptography Research. Kocher, whose San Francisco company helps clients in the cable and satellite industries foil piracy, said that hard-to-design but simple-to-use technologies could solve problems that might otherwise seem intractable.

"In the end, if people are stealing your stuff," Kocher said, "the technology has failed." Hand in hand with developing legal digital services, he recommends the kind of tough security that is built into satellite television equipment, so that the companies "make it not worth stealing" because the bar has been raised too high.

A cable thief, said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, "can't say, 'I didn't realize it was wrong to climb up a pole, connect a wire, run it to my home and hook it up to my TV.' "

The costs of adopting the wrong strategy will be high. Jeff, the movie swapper, says that despite his scare he has not changed his ways. He has gone deeper underground instead, renaming files so that movie titles would not be as easy to find with industry search software, he said. (Ishikawa of BayTSP said that the strategy would not work against his service, however.)

Jeff also says that he does not make his own trove of movies available to the world as readily. "I just watch them and delete them instead of leaving it out there," he said. "I don't leave the network on 24 hours a day the way I used to."

But Davis, the former song trader, has changed his habits. He dusted off his turntable, bought a new needle and started haunting the bargain vinyl bins in junk shops, where he has discovered some treasures for a dollar a record.

"I'm really very excited about it,'' he said, "because there isn't much new to buy out there, is there?"
http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5133522.html

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VERBATIM

Screeners? Guard With Your Life

Things seem to have neared the airport-security level on the movie screener front. If you're a film critic preparing to receive a copy of a movie, you'll have to sign an agreement that you won't copy or loan it, and please — no jokes about piracy. It's almost certain, from the tone of the agreement below, that laxness, or levity, will not be appreciated.

NSFC AGREEMENT ON SCREENERS

I, the undersigned, herein confirm that I will adhere to the official policy of the NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS (NSFC) on receiving copies of movies ("screeners") from any source in any format, as set forth below.

Receiving screeners does not give me any underlying intellectual property rights to said films. Ownership of each screener remains the property of the company that supplied it.

Screeners cannot be sold or loaned to anyone.

Screeners cannot be circulated outside my home or office.

Screeners cannot be copied or reproduced in any fashion.

I will maintain possession of all screeners and not give them to anyone or any company except to return them to the company that provided them or to have them destroyed by an MPAA-approved recycling company.

I understand my responsibility to protect any screeners I receive from unauthorized use. I agree that if I violate this agreement I may be expelled from the NSFC and I may be subject to civil and criminal penalties….

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology

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God Considers Smiting Bible Pirates
Kristian Werner

Vatican City - God did not rule out smiting as a final measure against those who share his most famous work, the Bible, on the Internet. This marks the first time a deity has spoken on IT-related questions since Steve Jobs was temporarily Enlightened when touching the One True iMac some years ago.

Authorized Version?
Citing misuse of His word, misquotation, and putting hardworking Bible printers out of work, God said he would now start hunting Bible pirating around the globe. "I have to defend both my world-famous brand - the Bible and its distinctive likenesses - and the livelihood of those who create and distribute legal copies of it. Sure, they live not by bread alone, but website hits - someone else's website mind you - don't pay the bills for these folks."

Since large portions of the Bible are many centuries old, many people believe the work to be in the public domain. Not so, said God. "Look, most copyright laws are based on something like the author's lifetime plus, let's say, 15 years. News flash: I'm still here."

" I am a jealous God," He said, "but I am by no means unreasonable. If the person will stop distributing My copyrighted materials, there will be no further consequences. Like I've said before: hate pirating, love the pirate."
Ironically, some of those most likely to be hit by these measures are among God's biggest fans. The Reverend Alfred Jackson is a minister at the church of St. Cecilia in Kansas City. In his spare time, he maintains the Bible study website "eChapter and eVerse," which cross-references large parts of the bible with commentary from clergy and laypeople from around the world.

God said that 'spreading the Gospel' was not a valid defense for distributing copyrighted materials. "Rev. Jackson has published at least 35% of My word electronically, where anyone with an internet connection can download it. Thrice did I call on him to repent; thrice did he ignore me or refer me to the EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation]."

Jackson said he had had several emails from someone claiming to be the Deity, but had first dismissed them as pranks. When he received the second 'cease and desist’, Jackson contacted the EFF and asked for advice.
Marie Dang, an attorney with EFF said smiting was clearly an unreasonable response to alleged copyright infringement. "I realize that legal text often spells out all the details and ramifications right from the start. But mentions of smiting and damnation are hardly suitable for a first letter," said Dang.

Responding to widespread criticism over perceived misuse of omnipotence, God said people had misunderstood Him. "I repeat: Smiting would only be a last resort against the unrepentant. True, neither My Son nor I thought of electronic piracy when I sent him to earth. However, we have decided to include it as a 'sin' for purposes of forgiveness. I don't know who put in that 'damnation' stuff."

When asked what His next step might be, God was reluctant to discuss specifics. He stressed that He would consider the effect of His actions on the meek. "Let's make one thing clear," He said, "I may be omnipotent, but I'm not crazy: It's not like I think I'm Jack Valenti."
http://bbspot.com/News/2003/12/bible_pirates.html

Until next week,

- js.

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Current Week In Review.

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December 27th, December 20th, December 13th, December 6th

Jack Spratt’s Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts at lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.

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