Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 2nd, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"You've purposely destroyed P2P networks with bogus files--ones that, once downloaded on a user's machine, search out other copyrighted files on the hard drive and destroy them." – Michael Weiss, Streamcast


"That has nothing to do with us. We make it difficult for people to access that file without paying for it." – Marc Morgenstern, Overpeer


"You destroy the music; just admit it." – Lee Jaffe, Altnet


"They all had big advances from record companies. They were all stoned. They all said, 'We've got to have one of these.' " – Trevor Pinch


"If I have to, I will lock up all of the key parties in a room until they come out with an acceptable bill that stops the bad actors and preserves technological innovation." – Republican senator Orrin Hatch


"But there's another side to file-sharing. It's about the only way that an independent band can get national exposure. This promotion is essential to groups that aren't signed by a major record label." - Kris Sosa, concert organizer




















Judge Strikes Down Anti-Bootleg Law
Erin McClam

A federal judge Friday struck down a 1994 law banning the sale of bootleg recordings of live music, ruling the law unfairly grants "seemingly perpetual protection" to the original performances.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. dismissed a federal indictment of Jean Martignon, who runs a Manhattan mail-order and Internet business that sells bootleg recordings.

Baer found the bootleg law was written by Congress in the spirit of federal copyright law, which protects writing for a fixed period of time — typically for the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death.

But the judge said the bootleg law, which was passed "primarily to cloak artists with copyright protection," could not stand because it places no time limit on the ban.

Baer also noted that copyright law protects "fixed" works — such as books or recorded music releases — while bootlegs, by definition, are of live performances.

A federal grand jury indicted Martignon in October 2003 for selling "unauthorized recordings of live performances by certain musical artists through his business."

The business, Midnight Records, once had a store in Manhattan but now operates solely by mail and Internet. It sells hundreds of recordings, specializing in rock artists, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin.

An e-mail message to Martignon from The Associated Press was not immediately returned Friday, and a phone number could not immediately be located.

Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney, said federal prosecutors were "reviewing the decision and will evaluate what steps ought to be taken going forward."

The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that fights piracy and bootlegging, also disagreed with the ruling.

The decision "stands in marked contrast to existing law and prior decisions that have determined that Congress was well within its constitutional authority to adopt legislation that prevented trafficking in copies of unauthorized recordings of live performances," said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA.

The bootleg law calls for prison terms of up to five years for first offenders and 10 years for second offenders, plus fines. It requires courts to order the destruction of any bootlegs created in violation of the law.

The law did not apply to piracy, which is the unauthorized copying or sale of recorded music, such as albums.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...mu/bootleg_law


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Judge Strikes Down Section of Patriot Act Allowing Secret Subpoenas of Internet Data
Julia Preston

A federal judge struck down an important surveillance provision of the antiterrorism legislation known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ruling that it broadly violated the Constitution by giving the federal authorities unchecked powers to obtain private information.

The ruling, by Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, was the first to uphold a challenge to the surveillance sections of the act, which was adopted in October 2001 to expand the powers of the federal government in national security investigations.

The ruling invalidated one piece of the law, finding that it violated both free speech guarantees and protection against unreasonable searches. It is thought likely to provide fuel for other court challenges.

The ruling came in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against a kind of subpoena created under the act, known as a national security letter. Such letters could be used in terrorism investigations to require Internet service companies to provide personal information about subscribers and would bar them from disclosing to anyone that they had received a subpoena.

Such a subpoena could be issued without court review, under provisions that seemed to bar the recipient from discussing it with a lawyer.

Judge Marrero vehemently rejected that provision, saying that it was unique in American law in its "all-inclusive sweep" and had "no place in our open society."

He ordered that his ruling would not take effect for 90 days, to give the Bush administration time to appeal.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U., called the ruling a "stunning victory against John Ashcroft's Justice Department." He said it would reinforce arguments the group had made in a separate challenge in Michigan to another surveillance section of the act.

The ruling does not affect many sections of the act, which is more than 350 pages long, that give the government enhanced powers to control immigration, conduct searches and investigate financial support for terrorism. It comes as Congress is debating additions to the Patriot Act.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/na...30patriot.html


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3 years in jail for a shared folder

House Votes To Target P2P Pirates
Declan McCullagh

In a move that takes aim at file-swapping networks, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to boost penalties for online piracy and increase federal police powers against Net copyright infringement.

By voice vote, politicians on Tuesday approved a sweeping copyright bill that would make it easier for the FBI and federal prosecutors to investigate and convict file swappers. Other sections criminalize unauthorized recordings made in movie theaters and encourage the Justice Department to target Internet copyright infringement.

"Millions of pirated movies, music, software, game and other copyrighted files are now available for free download from suspect peer-to-peer networks," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who heads a copyright subcommittee. "This piracy harms everyone, from those looking for legitimate sources of content to those who create it." The bill enjoys the strong support of the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Opponents had mounted an unsuccessful, last-ditch campaign earlier in the day to urge House leaders to remove the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act from the floor schedule.

Letters signed by groups including four library associations, the American Conservative Union, the National Taxpayers Union, and Public Knowledge argued that the measure would "radically expand the scope" of copyright liability and divert $15 million in federal funds from the war on terror to "protecting Hollywood's and Big Music's parochial interests."

The most controversial section of the bill punishes Internet users who offer "for distribution to the public" $1,000 or more in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000. If it became law, prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were actually downloaded; they would need to show only that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder.

An existing law called the No Electronic Theft Act already permits federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against individual copyright infringers, though no such prosecutions have taken place so far. About the closest the government has come to that politically charged possibility is the announcement last month that a specific file- swapping group called the Underground Network is being investigated.

With Tuesday's vote, the legislation now goes to the Senate, which has not yet held hearings on it.
http://news.com.com/House+votes+to+t...3-5387682.html


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Senate Weighs Bill Targeting P2P Sites

Passage would make it easier for studios to sue
Andy Sullivan

After weeks of negotiations, the U.S. Senate could take action this week on a bill that would make it easier to sue "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and LimeWire that allow users to copy music and movies over the Internet.

The bill would give a boost to recording companies and movie studios, which so far have been unable to shut down the online file- trading networks in court.

But it must overcome fierce opposition from copyright activists and technology companies, which worry that makers of iPods and photocopiers could be held liable as well.

"This is absolutely critical, it threatens the survival of our industry," said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Only a few short weeks remain in the legislative session but Shapiro and opponents worry that the measure's powerful backers, who include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Tom Daschle, could slip it into one of the giant spending bills that Congress must approve before it adjourns.

The Senate Judiciary Committee could take up the bill on Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said.

The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act would hold liable anyone who "induces" others to reproduce copyrighted material.

The recording industry over the past year has sued thousands of people for distributing songs through peer-to-peer networks.

The industry has had less luck against the networks themselves, which claim their decentralized architecture prevents them from controlling user behavior.

U.S. courts have held that the networks cannot be held liable because, like VCR makers, they do not commit copyright infringement but merely make it possible.

Thus, while teenage music enthusiasts empty their bank accounts to settle copyright suits the companies that profit from their behavior get away scot-free, a recording-industry official said.

"We don't want them having American kids doing the dirty work for them," said Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations for the Recording Industry Association of America.

Consumer-electronics makers have nothing to fear because the behavior in question must be intentional, he said.

A new version of the bill released after months of negotiation also contains carve-outs for venture-capital investors, advertisers, reviewers, and nonprofits.

Still, the new version seemed to win few converts.

"Although this new draft may appear on the surface to be more friendly to technology and innovation than were past drafts, in fact it is not," said Gigi Sohn, president of the nonprofit policy group Public Knowledge.

"The stakes here are chilling what drives America's economy, which is technical innovation, both in the marketplace of products and the marketplace of ideas," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a trade group for several peer-to-peer networks.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6117166/


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New Induce Act Prompts Old Complaints
Roy Mark

A fourth rewrite of the Induce Act is proving as controversial as its much-maligned predecessors. The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 (S. 2560) would permit individuals or corporations to be held liable for infringing acts that "they intend to induce."

Written by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the committee's ranking Democrat, the bill, the authors say, is aimed at the rampant music piracy on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Critics, however, contend the legislation goes far beyond targeting the file swapping networks to include consumer electronics manufacturers and Internet service providers that induce copyright theft.

Groups opposed to the legislation fear that the bill would allow content owners to sue companies such as Apple with its popular iPod for making equipment that encourages users to engage in copyright infringement.

Hatch and Leahy's latest rewrite includes exceptions for manufacturers "so long as such use is private and noncommercial, such use is not for financial gain and any copies of phonorecords resulting from such use are not made publicly available."

"Although this new draft may appear on the surface to be more friendly to technology and innovation than were past drafts, in fact it is not," Gigi B. Sohn, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said in a statement.

As currently drafted, the bill states, "Whoever intentionally induces [copyright violation], by manufacturing, offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking in any product or service, any violation . . . shall be liable as an infringer." The legislation says the inducement must be "intentional" and defines that as "conscious and deliberate affirmative acts which a reasonable person would expect to result in widespread violations."

Yahoo (Quote, Chart), Google (Quote, Chart), SBC (Quote, Chart) and Verizon (Quote, Chart) and a number of other organizations including the Consumer Electronics Association, TechNet and the U.S. Internet Industry Association have also aligned themselves against the latest working draft of the bill, which is scheduled to be heard Thursday at a Judiciary Committee meeting.

The allied groups said in a Monday letter that even though Hatch and Leahy have "recognized and attempted to address many of our concerns, [the new draft] underscores the fact that adding any new cause of action to the Copyright Act is a daunting undertaking that requires carefully nuanced drafting to prevent adverse impacts on the many sectors of the economy that copyright law reaches."

Public Knowledge further contends if the Induce Act is implemented as an amendment to the Copyright Act, "this bill would constitute the greatest threat, to date, to the innovation processes that the copyright and patent laws were intended to promote."

Of greatest concern to Public Knowledge is that Induce Act would undermine the landmark 1984 U.S. Supreme Court Betamax decision, which found that the manufacturer of a technology, in that case a VCR, could not be held liable for infringing uses of a product as long as the product also has non-infringing use.

In August, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco used the technology neutral principles established in the Betamax case in deciding that P2P networks such as Kazaa, Grokster and StreamCast Networks (owners of Morpheus) were not liable for the copyright infringements of their users.

"[The Induce Act] would seem to subject all who invest, manufacture, or 'traffic' in legitimate home, personal recording and Internet products to a new and unquantifiable risk of litigation," the Monday industry letter to Hatch and Leahy states. "There seems a substantial likelihood that staple hardware and software products that are considered legal today would be found illegal tomorrow. "

At a July hearing on the bill, Hatch said, "Just as the Sony Court never intended to allow the substantial-non-infringing-use rule to be misused as a license to enter the copyright piracy business, I do not intend to allow S. 2560 to be misused against legitimate distributors of copying devices."

The Senate Judiciary Committee did not respond to a Tuesday inquiry about the legislation.
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3414241


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UCLA To Stop Short Of P2P Snooping
Stefanie Olsen

The University of California at Los Angeles is using technology to discourage Net piracy of films or music, but it's holding off on playing campus snoop, a school official said Monday at the Digital Hollywood conference here.

As previously reported, UCLA has implemented a technology system to give notice and warnings to students who have been fingered by Hollywood studios or record labels as perpetrators of digital copyright theft.

An implementation of the Automated Copyright Notice System, or ACNS--an open-source notification software--the system lets UCLA instantly send notices of copyright infringement to students by e-mail and restrict their network access until they have removed the offending file.

Meanwhile, other universities and content providers are increasingly embracing technology from Audible Magic and others to attach digital fingerprints to copyrighted works and keep tabs on students' file-swapping--technology backed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

"That technology is not attractive to us, because what students are doing is private. But we're encouraging a behavioral shift," said Jonathan Curtiss, of UCLA Student Services, at a panel of educators and technologists discussing entertainment and IT in the university.

Still, Curtiss said UCLA's student surveys during the first month of classes this year revealed that students would rather continue to find a way to steal copyrighted content, because the cost of movies and music is still too high.

Despite efforts by Hollywood to curtail peer-to-peer file-swapping at universities, some IT administrators are excited by file-sharing technology. For example, the University of Southern California, also in Los Angeles, is testing a music file-sharing portal that lets students remix or loop music on a shared network; and the school can do this legally under a creative commons license, according to Todd Richmond, managing director for the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC.

"We're very interested in peer-to-peer technology and the ability of individual computers to seamlessly transfer data around--in a legal way," said Richmond.

Universities are testing several video-on-demand services for their students. Cflix and Ruckus are just two of the companies courting schools with VOD services. USC is also testing a program with Hollywood studio-backed Movielink to make some free downloadable movies available to students in the dorms, Richmond said.

Other technology initiatives at colleges include Duke University's giveaway of Apple Computer iPods to 1,650 freshman, who have access to their class schedules on the devices. USC has also developed a technical specification for allowing students and educators to share information on events with the use of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS.

USC's Richmond also said that next semester the university plans to make wireless access available to classrooms to encourage more participation with Internet access. He said that educators have complained that Internet access has disrupted the classroom experience because students will mindlessly surf the Web and ignore discussion. But he said USC's strategy going forward is to encourage students to log on wirelessly during class and use Google or another search engine to research what professors say and bring more questions to the debate.

"We want wireless uniformity because then someone can Google what the professor says and question it. And this opens a dialogue in class," said Richmond, who added that "professors don't like the idea."

"This is the future and we want to poke people with sharp sticks," Richmond said.
http://news.com.com/UCLA+to+stop+sho...3-5387859.html


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Conservative Group Savages Anti-P2P Bill
Declan McCullagh

The nation's oldest conservative group has become the latest and most vocal critic of an anti- file-swapping bill that foes say could target products like Apple Computer's iPod.
The American Conservative Union (ACU), which holds influential Republican activists and former senators on its board of directors, is running newspaper and magazine advertisements that take a humorous jab at the so-called Induce Act--and slams some conservative politicians for supporting it.

"This is the Hollywood liberals trying to crush innovation," said ACU deputy director Stacie Rumenap. "What's sad is that they've got Republicans on their side." A Senate committee vote on the bill is scheduled for Thursday.

The original version of the Induce Act said that anyone who induces any violation of copyright law could be legally responsible, a phrase that has alarmed Silicon Valley manufacturers and led Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to say he would consider less sweeping alternatives. A version that Hatch's office privately circulated on Friday afternoon, seen by CNET News.com, clarifies that a company must engage in "conscious and deliberate affirmative acts" of inducement to be found liable.

But technology companies were skeptical that it would eliminate their concerns. "The problem is that it doesn't look like they're willing to preserve the Sony Betamax standard for the cause of action of inducement," said Markham Erickson, associate general counsel for NetCoalition, which represents companies including Google, Yahoo, and CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.

In the 1984 Supreme Court decision referred to as the Betamax ruling, the court said VCRs were legal to sell because they were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses." Technology companies worry that by targeting operators of peer-to-peer networks, the Induce Act could erode the legal protections that shield other hardware and software makers from legal liability.

Mitch Glazier, the chief lobbyist for the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a recent interview that the concerns about the iPod being imperiled were unfounded: "The original Induce Act focused on the totality of the circumstances. There's no way that a company that produces great digital rights management for a licensed product is ever going to be shown to want to profit from piracy."

The ACU's advertisement claims the Induce Act "attacks consumers' right to use technologies" and enriches "Hollywood fat cats." It is running in conservative-leaning publications including the Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and National Review.

On Monday, it will be joined by an ad from NetCoalition that says "Don't Let Congress Make Him Your Next Portable Music Player" alongside a photograph of a traveling musician outfitted with an absurd amount of musical gear. It will run in the political publication Roll Call and then local newspapers.

Republican supporters of the Induce Act include Hatch and Tennessee Sens. Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander.
http://news.com.com/Conservative+gro...3-5381593.html


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Illegal File-Sharing Blocker Hits Europe
Claire Woffenden

Technology that can block the spread of illegal copyrighted material on peer-to- peer networks is coming to Europe.

Overpeer's technology helps copyright holders flood popular P2P networks with spoof files that mimic genuine music tracks, games and software files.

Digital media company Loudeye, which owns Overpeer and European music firm OD2, said it currently protects more than 60,000 digital entertainment titles and blocks hundreds of millions of attempted downloads each month.

Marc Morgenstern, vice president of Loudeye's asset protection and promotion business, said: “Our proprietary systems and technology are designed to interdict illegal peer-to-peer traffic, blocking illegal transmission of copyrighted material and helping content owners take control of piracy.”

“These systems have been highly effective for our customers in the US and Asia. We're pleased that we can launch these services in Europe with our OD2 partners.”

OD2 has digital music distribution rights to more than one million licensed tracks from 70 label partners including the five major labels and many independents. It powers popular music sites including Coca Cola, MTV, MSN, Virgin, Tiscali, Wanadoo and HMV.

Charles Grimsdale, OD2 co-founder, said: "We look forward to working with European content owners to protect their content from rampant piracy and provide valuable data on the usage of their content across peer-to-peer networks.”
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/news.php?id=58442


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Digital Hollywood Erupts Over File-Sharing
Stefanie Olsen

At the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica, California, the debate over peer-to-peer technology is raging--literally.

On Wednesday, executives from P2P software companies, along with audience members from a panel at the Digital Hollywood conference, openly argued--Jerry Springer-style--about whether sharing and downloading copyrighted film and music files over distributed file networks is legal.

Panel members--from companies including P2P technology makers Altnet and Morpheus, software giant Microsoft and copyright-protector Overpeer--even fired off insults at one another during more heated moments.

"You've purposely destroyed P2P networks with bogus files--ones that, once downloaded on a user's machine, search out other copyrighted files on the hard drive and destroy them," said Michael Weiss, CEO of Morpheus-owner StreamCast Networks, to co-panelist Marc Morgenstern, vice president and general manager of Overpeer, whose technology helps protect record labels' copyrights.

Morgenstern replied: "That has nothing to do with us. We make it difficult for people to access that file without paying for it."

Yet Lee Jaffe, president of Altnet, persisted: "You destroy the music; just admit it." And an audience member added to the tension by directly asking Morgenstern whether his company spoofs the hashes, or encryption techniques, on Altnet files to limit the copying of copyrighted music.

"This is a discreet activity authorised by the content owners," Morgenstern said, without answering directly. "We're engaged in legal activity."

P2P technology was the topic of several discussions during the three-day Digital Hollywood conference because of its immense potential to promote artists' work, disseminate content to consumers economically via a distributed network, and foster new business models for technology and copyright holders, according to industry executives. But peer-to-peer technologies still carry a stigma in Hollywood for their ability to allow what the industry considers massive theft of copyrighted songs and films through users sharing digital files.

Hollywood has fought the P2P networks with lawsuits, charging that makers of file-swapping technologies are liable for copyright theft perpetrated on their networks. In one such case, the court ruled in favor of Morpheus.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America are also backing bills that would criminalise some forms of file swapping. One such bill, known as the Induce Act, is expected to face a Senate committee vote this week.

Nevertheless, new P2P services are emerging with business models that seem to take advantage of the distributed medium without offending copyright holders. iMesh, an Israeli-based peer-to-peer company that settled copyright lawsuits for US$4.1 million, plans to launch a new service that will give content owners a means of collecting money, according to panelists. Fox executive Ron Wheeler said Tuesday the studio is in talks with iMesh over potentially working together.

Although no executive on the panel disputed the potential P2P technology holds for new-media distribution, they all questioned how to make money from the services and ensure that artists and rights holders get paid for the downloading of copyrighted works.

So-called digital rights management (DRM) tools are deemed essential for assuaging Hollywood's fears about P2P piracy. DRM is considered crucial for new digital-entertainment services, giving studios, record labels and others powerful tools for protecting their copyrighted works and laying the groundwork for profitable new ways to sell their products.

"Kids today find new music on P2P networks, and we need to find a way to monetise that," said Elizabeth Brooks, executive vice president of Buy Music.

Andy Moss, Microsoft's director of technical policy, said artists and record labels are beginning to think about how to use P2P networks, and companies such as Intent are using blanket digital rights management technology to wrest money for downloaded films on P2P networks. Ronald Gertz, CEO of Music Reports, said there needs to be compulsory licensing pools that ensure that money from downloaded or shared files turns into royalties for artists.

"P2P is a digital archive, and it's a door to the Information Age," said StreamCast's Weiss.

Still, the group openly argued about whether P2P file swapping is legal, given that no final decision came from the courts in the Recording Industry Association of America v. Napster case.

"Taking and sharing are two different things," Jaffe said. "Sharing is not piracy. No one has ever challenged the RIAA lawsuits."

In reply, someone from the audience yelled, "Give me that jacket! We need to share it."

Richard Doherty, president of research firm Envisioneering Group and moderator of the panel, weighed in by saying that Western copyright law establishes that making unlimited copies of copyrighted works for the purposes of sharing with strangers is unlawful.

StreamCast's Weiss said with regard to consumer behavior on P2P networks that "the toothpaste is out of the tube" and that the industry has to develop a working business model to take advantage of consumer demand, which would probably include offering some content free, some paid--with a compulsory license that creates a monetary pool for artist royalties.

Weiss said Morpheus has experimented with a company called Weed to give people limited access to songs from the rock band Heart before requesting that the file swapper buy the music. Money from the purchases is then given to the band.

Weiss also said Morpheus plans next week to launch a third generation of its P2P software, called Neopet, which will improve users' ability to find files on a network of millions of users.

Still, before there's a detente between Hollywood and P2P companies, the entertainment industry wants to see networks like Morpheus filter out copyrighted works. Executives from Fox and Sony Entertainment at panels on Tuesday echoed this idea. But Weiss said that because it's network is distributed among millions of users--and doesn't run on a centralised server--filtering is not possible.

Still, Weiss said that in the next year, he'd like to have sealed a deal with a major entertainment company and see the Induce Act quashed. Jaffe said that within six months, he'd like to see P2P turned into the radio model, where content is sponsored by advertisers but kept free.

"We've got to separate peer-to-peer distribution technology from the bad actors," Gertz said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39161203,00.htm


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762 Song Swappers Sued
Andy Sullivan

A recording-industry trade group says it has filed a new round of lawsuits against 762 people it suspects of distributing its songs for free over Internet "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa and eDonkey.

The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued roughly 5,400 people over the past year in an effort to discourage the online song copying that it believes has cut into CD sales.

"We want music fans to enjoy music online, but in a fashion that compensates everyone who worked to create that music," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement on Thursday.

Among those sued were students at 26 different colleges and universities, where the prevalence of high- speed networks and cash-poor music fans has led to an explosion of peer-to-peer traffic.

Under pressure from the RIAA, many schools have taken steps to limit file sharing and at least 20 schools give students free access to industry-sanctioned download services like Roxio's Napster.

The RIAA does not yet know the names of those it has sued, only the numerical addresses used by their computers. The trade group typically finds out suspects' identities from their Internet service providers during the legal proceedings.

In addition to those sued anonymously, the RIAA said it had sued 68 defendants whose identities had been discovered and who had declined offers to settle.

The RIAA typically settles copyright-infringement suits for around $5,000 each.

Though the recording industry has successfully sued thousands of individuals, it has had less luck with the peer-to-peer networks themselves.

Courts so far have held that networks cannot be held liable because, like VCR makers, they do not commit copyright infringement but merely make it possible.

The RIAA has pushed Congress to lower that standard. A bill currently being considered in the Senate would hold liable anyone who "induces" others to reproduce copyrighted material.

Objections by librarians, conservative groups and the technology industry have prevented the bill from advancing so far, but Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said earlier Thursday that he would take it up again next week.

The RIAA represents the world's largest record labels, such as Warner Music, EMI Group and the music arms of Bertelsmann, Sony. and Vivendi Universal.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle...section= news


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Welcome to the party pal

UK Swappers Next
Tony Smith

The UK music industry has been threatening local file-sharers with Recording Industry Ass. of America-style lawsuits since late last year (http:// http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12...swap_lawsuits/), but it finally seems to be gearing up to take action.

Industry sourced cited by today's Times newspaper claim that the writs will start to fly within the next month as the UK's answer to the RIAA, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) targets "the most flagrant users of peer-to-peer Internet file- sharing sites", as the paper puts it.

It's hard to see what's taken the music biz so long, given how much time its members have bemoaned the alleged P2P-driven downturn in world music sales. "Benign neglect", is how one unnamed industry executive described the business' policy here. Certainly, the UK music industry has been hit far less than other nations' recording business. Possibly they were waiting to see how the situation turned out in the US.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) today said that the decline was slowing. World music sales totalled $13.9bn in the first six months of 2004, just 1.3 per cent down on the H1 2003 total, $14.1bn. H1 2003, by contrast, was 10.7 per cent down on H1 2002. Shipments were up 1.7 per cent between those two periods, to 1.22bn units.

In other words, people are buying more music these days, not less. The revenue dip is almost certainly the result of falling unit prices, which is one of the likely motors for rising shipments.

Has the RIAA's litigious behaviour helped? Certainly, US music sales were up 3.9 per cent between H1 2003 and H1 2004. Japan and the UK, the world's next two biggest music markets saw sales dip by very low sub-percentage figures. Germany and France showed were IFPI and co. should be turning their attention, perhaps: sales were down 5.2 per cent and 21.9 per cent, respectively. Sales in Spain were down 11 per cent.

The IFPI has brought action against file-sharers in continental Europe (http:// http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03...kes_p2p_jihad/), though the scale of its efforts here has been dwarfed by the volume of lawsuits instigated out by the RIAA, which has targeted thousands of named and unnamed alleged music sharers since commencing such action in September 2003.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10...music_pirates/


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Accused Uploaders Turn To Bankruptcy
Peter Shinkle

Eddie Nicholson, a school bus driver, has made ends meet in recent years by serving as a disc jockey at parties. He calls the business Fast Eddie's Karaoke & DJ Show.

He got some ominous financial news in June, when a sheriff's deputy delivered a summons to Nicholson's trailer home in Marion, Ill. BMG, a music industry giant, was suing him in federal court for downloading music over the Internet. Representing BMG was Bryan Cave LLP, a large law firm based in St. Louis.

Nicholson turned to attorney Bradley Olson, a solo practitioner in Carterville, Ill. Olson filed a bankruptcy case on Nicholson's behalf two weeks later, a move that automatically blocked BMG's suit.

Then Olson asked a bankruptcy judge to bar BMG from collecting the $5,435 claim. BMG filed no response, and on Sept. 8, Judge Kenneth Meyers dismissed the case in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in East St. Louis.

This is the latest, and perhaps grittiest, phase of the music industry's campaign to stamp out what it says is an epidemic of illegal copying of recorded music over the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America has announced waves of lawsuits against alleged copyright violators. But once the cases hit the courts, music industry attorneys sometimes run into tough battles.

Still, the recording industry group suggests it is winning the war. Since September last year, music companies have sued 4,679 alleged music downloaders, according to the Washington-based association. So far, 1,024 people have settled their cases, it said.

In St. Louis, BMG, Sony and other music giants have sued 603 alleged downloaders.

The broad effect of the campaign has been to dissuade consumers from downloading music illegally, the industry association says. Instead, recorded CD sales are rising after a four-year decline, and legitimate online music sites are thriving, it says.

Nicholson said he considers the industry's tactics unfair. He said he had nothing to do with downloading music, as a neighborhood child had downloaded the music for Nicholson's daughter.

BMG's suit showed that the big company had concluded Nicholson was guilty without even talking to him, he said. BMG sent him a letter threatening to make him pay as much as $350,000, he said.

The experience has left him bitter and angry, he said. "This is not the land of the free any more. It's the land of - how much can you pay?"

He said he bought all of the CDs for his business legally, but now he's been forced to hire a lawyer, file for bankruptcy and make payments to work out his bankruptcy plan.

Consumers aren't the only ones who have resisted the lawsuits. The industry also has clashed repeatedly with someone its own size - Charter Communications Inc., a cable television and Internet service provider based in Town and Country.

Last year, the recording industry group issued subpoenas seeking identifying information on about 200 Charter customers. The association knew them only by the Internet Protocol numbers that identified their computers on the Internet. The subpoenas were used to put names and addresses with those numbers.

The association issued the subpoenas to Charter under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Charter resisted, saying the subpoenas violated its customers' privacy. The dispute is pending in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

After another federal appeals court ruled in December that such subpoenas were illegal, the industry changed its strategy. Individual companies began filing suits against "John Doe" defendants identified only by the Internet Protocol number. Under federal court Rule 45, the filing of the suits first legitimized the use of subpoenas.

Charter has had little choice but to comply. Its senior vice president and associate general counsel, Tom Hearity, said, "Where we have grounds to oppose a Rule 45 subpoena, we will do so, but that generally isn't the case." Hearity said Charter tells targeted customers first.

With identifying information now flowing, the music companies have filed suits against 334 named defendants nationwide since May, according to the industry association. Those include just six in the court's eastern Missouri district, and one in Southern Illinois.

Nicholson, the defendant in court at East St. Louis, is not the only one to file for bankruptcy. Victoria Summers, a car dealership employee who lives in Cape Girardeau, Mo., was sued July 20 by Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and other music companies. They claim she downloaded music, or made it available for downloading by others, in violation of the copyrights.

On Aug. 12, Summers filed for bankruptcy. She reported earning $1,887 per month, noting she is divorced and has two children. The filing led to an automatic stay of the lawsuit.

Summers could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Benjamin Lewis, declined comment.

Not all defendants turn to bankruptcy. Mark Kelly, of Chesterfield, has not responded to a lawsuit BMG and other companies filed against him July 20. In a telephone interview, Kelly said, "It's a situation where I didn't even know this was going on, and my children were involved in it, and I can't figure how the kids were doing what they did."

He said his children were 15 and 17 years old at the time of the suspected activity. He referred other questions to a lawyer, who could not be reached.

On Sept. 20, attorneys for BMG and the other music companies filed a motion seeking a default judgment for damages, noting that Kelly had failed to respond. They are seeking $7,500.

A judge has yet to rule on the request for damages.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...to+bankruptcy+


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PassAlong Jump-Starts eBay Music Effort
Matt Hines

Online auction giant eBay is entering the music download business with a service that will market content from major record labels.

The digital music service, which is powered by start-up PassAlong Networks, officially debuted Thursday. PassAlong, which also launched Thursday, is the first company to peddle songs from major labels on eBay's nascent music storefront.

PassAlong has the rights to sell downloads of the entire music catalogs of top-tier recording companies EMI Group, Sony, BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The company, based in Franklin, Tenn., will offer the music files through both its own Web site and a newly created section on eBay.

As of late Thursday, PassAlong had only posted an auction for a promotion offering a phone conversation with singer Avril Lavigne. But the company's chief executive, Dave Jaworski, said that some 200,000 songs will be made available through both sites by the end of the week. Jaworski said PassAlong has plans to offer more than 500,000 tracks for sale.

"The eBay community has come to expect a reliable, safe environment for doing business, and we're hoping to offer the same kind of quality for music downloads," Jaworski said. "This effort with eBay will offer consumers an opposite of unprotected and illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing networks."

PassAlong differs from many other music download sites in that it allows its paying customers to share music files with others and offers rewards, such as discounts on further downloads, to those who successfully encourage additional people to pay for its content.

The PassAlong debut on eBay marks the first significant step in bringing the auctioneer's emerging digital-music plans to life. eBay's current beta test of its online download marketplace has remained largely unused since its launch in mid-July, causing some industry watchers to wonder where the project stood.

Up until now, eBay's Digital Downloads section has only offered auctions hosted by Warner Bros. Records for cell phone ring tones based on music by the band Green Day, and only one independent musician has been selling his work on that part of the site.

eBay is allowing a select group of pre-approved companies and musicians to sell downloads as part of its initial entry into the online-music space.

"This is part of our ongoing pilot program to test whether the eBay community sees (eBay) as a viable marketplace for the buying and selling of digital music downloads," said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman.

The PassAlong announcement comes after weeks of speculation that eBay was planning to join the red-hot digital music download space. The company, based in San Jose, Calif., is hoping to compete with established players such as Apple Computer's iTunes, which has already sold more than 125 million songs, and Microsoft, which launched a test version of its MSN Music service earlier this month. A number of other companies have rushed to get their own music download services on the market, including Napster, Sony, RealNetworks and Yahoo.

Digital music profits muted
eBay's cautious approach to the download market speaks volumes about digital music's profit potential. Despite selling such a staggering number of downloads, typically for 99 cents per song, Apple has indicated that iTunes is not a major source of revenue. For companies like Sony and Apple, the idea is to spur sales of hardware, such as Apple's iPod device, that are used to listen to digital content.

Microsoft and RealNetworks sell media software, but the ability for retailers to make money by selling digital music singles alone--each of which may have only a few pennies of profit--remains uncertain.

According to Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, eBay faces plenty of competition, but its community of more than 150 million users worldwide represents a significant opportunity. Bernoff said that while it seems as if every major IT company has expressed some interest in digital music, eBay's situation is unique.

"eBay's biggest asset remains its community of users," Bernoff said. "Attracting people is the first step, and they've already got a sizable audience to work with."

Bernoff believes that eBay can become a major download center if its policies allow sellers to make enough money off the transactions to make their businesses feasible. The analyst said that many of the other companies hoping to join the music download market may face more significant challenges.

"The atmosphere is similar to the early e-commerce days, with everyone trying to grab a piece of the action," Bernoff said. "When the dust settles, there will likely be three or four successful services, not a dozen. eBay is in a position where they don't want to be left out, but it will still be hard to profit immensely off of 99-cent deals."
http://news.com.com/PassAlong+jump-s...3-5379801.html


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It’s only been 5 years

Sony Embraces MP3 in Ploy To Please Public
Jay Lyman

Although a number of different formats -- Microsoft's WMA, Apple's ACC, Sony's Altrac and others -- compete in a variety of digital music devices, support for MP3 is becoming a required ingredient for any successful portable player. Some would argue Apple's iPod is an exception, but the proprietary-format player is likely to see more competition from MP3-capable devices.

HP Mobility Solutions remove the obstacles to successful mobile deployment. Our mobility solutions are scalable, secure, offer lower costs and integrate seamlessly into your existing IT environment. So when you're ready for proven wireless solutions, HP is your best choice.

Sony Electronics, maker of the first portable music device in the Walkman cassette player, has switched course on the format of its latest digital players, which will now support the consumer format of choice: MP3 .

Sony's MP3 move is a departure from supporting only its own Atrac format, which is among a number of proprietary alternatives that, while technically superior in some respects, do not offer MP3's portability between home, auto, mobile and other music devices.

At the same time Sony announced it was going to build support for both its own Atrac and the more universal MP3 format, industry researcher IDC reported that MP3 player sales are booming, reinforcing analysts' opinion that MP3's ability to deliver the same digital content on different devices makes it the favorite format of consumers.

Sony's Slow Switch

"MP3 is the ultimate in terms of inter-device compatibility," Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman told TechNewsWorld. "One of the most important things for consumers is portability and transferability and you are lacking in any of those areas with the proprietary formats."

Analysts agreed that Sony made a major mistake by previously announcing it would only support its own, proprietary format. The electronics giant is now indicating that its players will be supporting MP3 from now on.

Goodman said the switch in strategy is Sony's effort to find the fastest and easiest way to meet consumers' demands for interoperability.

"It should have been done from the start," Goodman said. "When you look at a typical user's collection, the vast majority [of files] are MP3."

Gartner research director Mike McGuire said the MP3 support from Sony was an acknowledgement of the popularity of the music format, but added it was "fairly late in coming."

"Really, all it does is get them to some level of parity with the rest of the world," McGuire told TechNewsWorld.

De Facto Default

Although a number of different formats -- Microsoft's WMA, Apple's ACC, Sony's Altrac and others -- compete in a variety of digital music devices, support for MP3 is becoming a required ingredient for any successful portable player.

Some would argue Apple's iPod is an exception, but the proprietary-format player is likely to see more competition from MP3- capable devices, according to analysts.

McGuire said that although MP3 is also a format that is popular on peer-to- peer (P2P) networks and is vilified by some copyright owners such as the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), it is the most likely candidate to be a standard format.

"There are so many file formats out there," McGuire said. "MP3 is probably going to be the default for a lot of people. This is something content companies are just going to have to live with. The market is going to force interoperability."

Transfer Trumps Tech

Yankee's Goodman said that while other, proprietary formats feature better compression and copyright protection technology , the portability of MP3 is more important to the people who buy players.

Sony's move "just re-affirms the support customers have for MP3," Goodman said. "All the others have better compression, but MP3 offers one thing those formats don't offer and that's cross- device compatibility."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/S...lic-36889.html


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Twister 2.5.8

Added by: A^C^E
Platform: Windows
Category: File Sharing

Twister is a free program for finding and downloading MP3s and other music files on the Internet. Twister doesn't use a peer-to-peer network such as Gnutella, Kazaa, or WinMX. Instead, it uses the best search engines available on the Internet.

Just enter the name of an artist or song and then click the Search button. In just a few seconds the found MP3 files will appear on your screen and the verification process will start. All files marked with a green dot can easily be downloaded with the integrated download manager. In the playlist you can play, rename, and delete your music files.

Twister is fully compatible with all major music players, such as Windows Media Player and Winamp. Version 2.3.2 reflects a recent change in some major search engines and therefore brings you more search results. It also has enhanced parsing and better presentation of search results.
http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=downloadfile&ID=2577


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Get In Sync At Home And In The Office
Nicky Blackburn

When entrepreneurs Tal Barnoach and Sharon Carmel decided to set up a company together, they were looking for a simple and effective product that would prompt users to say "Wow, why didn't anyone think of that before?" Two years later, they believe they have done just that.

In August, their Tel Aviv start-up BeInSync released the first version of its product of the same name that ensures files, documents, and e-mails are always synchronized between different computers shared by the same end user.

In today's world, this is an important tool. How many times have you left the office, planning to continue working at home only to discover that you left a vital piece of data on the office PC?

How many times, too, have you spent valuable time sending off e-mails of your files to your laptop or your home PC, or using USB memory keys?

BeInSync does away with all that by enabling you to create a personal peer-to-peer (P2P) network between two or three computers, automatically synchronizing whatever you specify, be it text files, e-mails, pictures, calendar info, or Internet favorites. Every time a file is opened, updated, or deleted, the changes will automatically be reflected on all your other computers as well. The program, which was designed to be simple to install and use, creates a secure, coded P2P connection via the Internet. If changes are made offline, the software simply synchronizes the files the moment the user logs back online. The updates are carried out in the background, and do not interfere with the user's work.

In addition, the software, which is designed for home users or small businesses, enables users to get secure access to their data using remote Web access; and also allows users to share synchronized files with colleagues, partners, or friends.

"The idea is very simple," says Barnoach, the CEO of BeInSync, formerly DataPod. "Once you have downloaded the software, you don't need to do anything. There are no buttons to press, you do not have to configure anything.

As soon as you make any changes, these will be automatically synchronized on your other computers."

Barnoach and Carmel first met each other in April 2000, when Barnoach, the chairman of Orca Interactive, a specialist in developing applications for interactive TV, sold the company to Emblaze Systems for $33m.

Carmel was a founder of Emblaze. At the start of 2002, both men had recently left their jobs and Carmel suggested that they work together to create a new start-up of their own. They spent the next few months thinking of ideas, and in August 2002 finally set up BeInSync.

Two years later the first version of BeInSync was released. At present the software, which can be downloaded from the company's Web site, is free, but from the end of November the company will start charging customers $5.99 a month. This charge is for all the computers used on the P2P network, says Barnoach, adding that rival remote access solutions charge customers $20 a month per computer.

In addition, the company intends to continue offering a free version, which will offer a more limited service.

The company, which employs 20, now plans to begin an aggressive marketing campaign, advertising on all the major Internet sites such as Google and Yahoo. In addition, it is negotiating OEM agreements with Internet Service Providers and large telecom companies, which plan to offer the technology to subscribers under their own brand name.

The company is now in advanced negotiations with players in the US and Europe, and Barnoach says he expects revenue sharing agreements to be signed by the end of November.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1095914101729


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Interview

BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen
Ratiatum.com/p2pnet.net News

Ratiatum.com: Although everyone seems to agree that BitTorrent is the most efficient P2P protocol ever created, you've already begun to work on its successor, BitTorrent 2. What are the weaknesses of BT that you expect to address with this new protocol?

Cohen: Fairly technical things. Mostly, the amount of bandwidth used by the trackers can be dramatically reduced.

Ratiatum.com: What do you think of alternative BT clients such as Azureus, BitComet, or ABC?

Cohen: ABC is basically mainline with a fancy UI slapped on it. I don't know much about BitComet. Azureus is a completely different codebase, and doesn't have as good a core, but has a fancier interface than mainline.

The next release of mainline is going to have a lot of the advanced features people want, by the way.

Ratiatum.com: Before BitTorrent became what it is, you worked on Mojo Nation, a p2p network with very smart concepts to encourage file sharing. Unfortunately it quickly vanished. Is it something you would like to revive?

Cohen: No. Mojo Nation had a huge number of technical problems.

Ratiatum.com: According to your own words, "Mojo Nation incorporated many interesting cryptographic techniques". Do you plan on adding cryptotography mechanisms to protect privacy with BT 2?

BC: There might be some minimal encryption, but there hasn't been any call for it, and the kind of threat model which could possibly be defended against is kind of lame.

Ratiatum.com: You have been hired by Valve Software (Half-Life's creators). What can you tell us about this collaboration?

Cohen: I was working on steam, which is improving.

Ratiatum.com: Have other companies approached you to create their own content distribution system?

Cohen: A few have asked vaguely, but in general I just tell people that they can use BitTorrent.

Ratiatum.com: BitTorrent is exclusively used to distribute files, but p2p architectures are now used in many other domains, such as VoIP or network gaming. Do you have any project involving these kinds of data distribution?

Cohen: No.

Ratiatum.com: How do you see the development of p2p in the future, both under technical and policy points of view?

Cohen: It's always hard to predict what's coming up next. My main guess is that content creators will increasingly start using BitTorrent to distribute their own work directly.

Ratiatum.com: Finally, will you demonstrate your juggling skills at CodeCon 4.0? :-) (CodeCon is "a technical conference for peer to peer hackers and cypherpunks" organised by Bram Cohen)

Cohen: If asked, I did juggle during the opening comments at an earlier one.
http://p2pnet.net/story/2548


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Music Sites Ask, 'Why Buy If You Can Rent?'
Saul Hansell

Long before Sir Richard Branson dreamed of becoming the latest billionaire with a reality TV show, before he started his cellphone company, his airline and his record label, he sold music from the Virgin Record Shop on Oxford Street in London. When he began in 1971, of course, music was presented as grooves pressed into a vinyl disk.

Today, Sir Richard starts a new music store, VirginDigital.com, this time selling music as streams of bits to be downloaded from the Internet. Virgin, a unit of the Virgin Group, becomes the first major music retailer to enter the download market, which has been dominated by Apple Computer and other technology companies.

What's interesting is that Virgin is putting its biggest emphasis on its subscription service, rather than on selling songs one at time for 99 cents a track, as Apple and Microsoft do. It is betting that new customers will join its Virgin Music Club for a $7.99 monthly fee to listen to an unlimited amount of music from Virgin's one-million- track library on their computers.

A premium subscription service that will allow those tracks to be moved to a portable music player, for a slightly higher monthly fee, will be introduced soon.

Several years ago, subscription services were seen as the music industry's best response to illegal song downloading, and several services were introduced, including RealNetworks' Rhapsody; MusicNet on America Online, which is owned by Time Warner; and a legal revival of Roxio's controversial file-sharing service, Napster. But Apple's simple à la carte store where customers can buy single songs has proved to be far more popular with consumers.

Jupiter Research estimates that 2.1 million people pay for music subscription services, including the cheaper Internet radio services. By contrast, 8.5 million people have paid to download a music file. (All of that is still dwarfed by the 23.4 million people who said they downloaded files free from sharing services like Kazaa in the month of July, according to a survey by the NPD Group.)

That track record does not scare Zack Zalon, the president of Virgin Digital. "Two or three years out, subscriptions will overtake à la carte because it is a much more interesting proposition," Mr. Zalon said. "It has just been difficult to articulate to consumers what it is."

Of course, the difficulty of explaining subscription plans to consumers is exactly why Apple chose the path it did. "Consumers have been buying music for 50 years," said Eddy Cue, the vice president of Apple in charge of its iTunes online music store. "They want to replicate that experience online."

Mr. Cue said that Apple might consider a subscription service in the future, but it has no plans to do so now. "Customers are speaking loudly with their wallets."

Though that may be true, it is far more profitable for online companies to offer subscription services. Typically, an online store pays 65 or 70 cents to the record companies for each 99-cent track sold. But with subscription services, the online services split the fees 50-50 with the record labels after deducting certain expenses.

That fee-splitting cost structure is leading to what may turn into a price war among music subscription services, which generally cost just under $10 a month. AOL offers a subscription service to its members for $8.95 a month. Now Virgin is $1 cheaper than that.

And in the next few months, several other subscription services will be introduced at prices as low as $5 a month, said Ellie Hirschhorn, the chief operating officer of MusicNet, a company that provides the technology and music licenses for the subscription services of AOL, Virgin and, soon, several other companies.

Mr. Zalon said that Virgin did not plan to compete mainly on price. For example, it is selling tracks at 99 cents, not matching Wal-Mart's online music store which sells songs for 88 cents. Rather, he said, Virgin seeks to differentiate its online store and subscription service with content and merchandising.

Virgin will emphasize less popular genres like jazz, blues and classical music, he said. And it will provide features like "ask the expert" to give users the old-fashioned experience of talking to a veteran record store employee. Site users can send questions by e-mail and get responses from staff members hired away from Virgin Megastores.

One big question for Virgin and others is how to set prices for subscription services that allow users to move songs from their personal computers to their portable music players. Until now, the only legal way to put most songs from major record labels on a portable player has been to buy them from stores like iTunes or to convert them into MP3 format from CD's.

New technology from Microsoft, which is being adopted by most major electronics makers like Samsung, Rio and iRiver (though not by Apple) will allow devices to play songs downloaded in a special format from subscription services.

The songs will be programmed to expire on a set date, but that date is automatically extended when users connect their players back to the music software on their computers. If the user does not continue paying the monthly subscription bill, the songs will not play.

The music industry has argued that the price for being able to download songs - even temporarily - from subscription services should be substantially higher than simply listening to the song on a computer.

"There is an increased functionality and there should be an increased value to that," said Ted Cohen, a senior vice president for digital development and distribution with the EMI Group.

He said that while the music industry initially felt the best way to fight piracy was through subscription services, it had been pleasantly surprised at the popularity of download sales.

Currently, the only subscription service with the ability to allow songs to be downloaded to portable devices is a test version of a Napster service called Napster To Go, which uses the Microsoft technology. (A new legal subscription service bought the Napster name after courts shut down the original.) It costs $14.95, compared with $9.95 for the regular Napster subscription service.

Chris Gorog, the chief executive of Napster, said the record industry is pushing for a price closer to $20 a month. But he argues that the record industry will be well served by keeping the price affordable.

"The portable subscription is the single greatest defense against piracy because it most replicates the illegal experience of unlimited access to music," Mr. Gorog said. Moreover, he said research showed that the average revenue to record labels from an active CD buyer was $4.82 per month, less than they would receive from a subscription service sold to consumers at $15 a month.

Then again, as with the first version of subscription services, consumers may not find these new portable services as attractive as the specialists think they will.

Sean Baenen, a managing director of the consumer research firm Odyssey, said surveys show that people are wary of subscription services for music because they are angry at the music industry for charging so much for CD's.

"I already think I am paying too much and getting too little, and I don't want to subscribe to something," Mr. Baenen said, referring to what might be a typical consumer response. "I want to buy the single I am looking for, then get out."

Others in the industry point out that surveys a decade ago said that cable subscribers preferred pay-per-view movies to subscription channels like HBO, but the channels turned out to be far more popular.

Moreover, Richard Wolpert, the chief strategy officer of RealNetworks, which offers the Rhapsody subscription service, says the idea that people buy music once and own it forever has not held true over the last few decades.

"I bought the Eagles 'Hotel California' on vinyl," he said. "Then I bought it on 8-Track, really, then on a CD, and now I've bought it as a download."

"What I really wanted," Mr. Wolpert added, "was to be able to listen to the album wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/27/te...usic.html?8dpc


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3 Myths About the Recording Industry Debunked
Alec Hanley Bemis

When emotion drove stock-market prices to absurd new highs during the ’90s tech boom, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan famously said the financial markets were going through a period of “irrational exuberance.” The flip side of this is periods of groundless pessimism. Right now, the music industry is at the tail end of one of those periods.

The media haven’t helped. Since 1999, there has been an unyielding stream of stories talking about the music industry’s ill health — “Burn, Baby, Burn” (Time, May 20, 2002); “Fight Back or Death Rattle?” (The Economist, March 31, 2004); “iTunes and Lawsuits: The Labels Still Don’t Get It” (Newsweek, May 3, 2004). These stories have given many people the impression that the industry is in a death spiral.

Yet the business has been restructuring itself in insanely positive ways. Here are a few myths about today’s record business:

MYTH NO. 1: The prevalence of file-trading services and free music on the Internet indicates that recorded music may no longer be an economically viable business.

FACT: Among the only long-term truths we know about downloadable music is that people have such an instinctual desire for it that file trading spread before there was an infrastructure to support it. The major labels have been trotting out p2p file sharing as the rationale for their difficulties for years now, but no one believes it. In April, two business-school professors — Harvard’s Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf from the University of North Carolina — even released a study showing there was no statistical relationship between file sharing and subsequent dips in sales.

Another thing we know is that music is one of a trio of forms that’s expanded quickly across the Web — the others being pornography and games. This raises a question: If free downloading damages the music industry’s ability to make money on music, why doesn’t all the free pornography on the Web have the adult industry up in arms? What’s the difference between rock & roll, pervy movies and Tetris?

The difference is public relations. In a pre-Web world, music was already the most visible (or audible) form of entertainment. When p2p file trading arose, music’s former associations with street parties and boomboxes lost ground to associations with obscure computer programs like BearShare, BitTorrent and Kazaa v2.6.3. Overnight, music went from being a cool, highly visible medium to a type of surreptitious computer file hoarded by tech geeks.

By contrast, pornography went mainstream. Where it was previously the reserve of video-store back rooms, scrambled TV channels and the high shelf at the local magazine shop, now you could check the history tab on a Web browser and learn that your boyfriend, your dad and even your priests enjoyed JPEGs of girl-on-girl action.

This might lead you to believe that porn was growing ubiquitous while music was receding from the public’s imagination, but the truth is more tricky than that. The adult entertainment industry’s effort to go mainstream has been well served by highlighting its Web-borne popularity. It’s lent porn stars like Jenna Jameson the respectability to pen a best-selling autobiography. It gave the porn industry the credibility it needed so that even The New York Times magazine parroted its $10-billion-to-$14-billion-a-year revenue estimates in a 2001 story (later disputed by Forbes). By contrast, the music industry has been well served by making a lot of noise about its struggles, which has allowed it to gain leverage with regulators and legislators, cry wolf during a period of receding sales and prime the pump to make even more money down the line.

MYTH NO. 2: Record sales are down. The situation is only growing worse.

FACT: The music-industry lobby would have you believe that sales are down and sinking — as would the general tenor of the media’s industry coverage. But this just isn’t true. In 2004, record sales plainly seem to be rising. Soundscan has registered 252 million records sold in 2004 to date. Compare this with 235 million sold in the same period of 2003, and that’s an increase of over 26 million units, or 6.35 percent.

The RIAA might argue that this is direct result of the 1,500 lawsuits they’ve brought against file traders since September 2003. There’s some basis for that. In January, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey that said 17 million fewer Americans admitted to downloading from file-sharing services than did so in a similar poll conducted in 2003. However, it seems unlikely that those former downloaders are responsible for the 26 million additional CD sales we’ve seen in 2004. Most likely the increase in record sales is due to 26 million people wanting new releases by Norah Jones, the Beastie Boys and Prince that weren’t available the year before.

MYTH NO. 3: Musicians no longer need the record industry. The Internet and other new technologies make this a new era of “do it yourself.”

FACT: There are more opportunities than ever for musicians to find a niche in the industry, but “doing it yourself” — through the Internet or any other means — is harder than ever.

Technically, some things have gotten easier for artists over the past decade. Digital recording makes it more possible than ever to produce high-quality recordings on the cheap. The Internet makes it easier than ever to publicize music of any stripe. And judgment-blind yet heavily trafficked outlets like CDBaby.com enable literally anyone to distribute their work.

Unfortunately, all this really means is that now there’s an infrastructure to support everyone’s delusions of stardom. As any episode of American Idol will tell you, there are many people who want to be heard. If all 100,000 of your fellow artists can now make and market records, the main thing that’s been created is a lot more competition and noise. If you analyze things from a businessman’s perspective, it’s hard to see how artists are gaining much from the newfound ability to cut bad records, erect a Web site and put their crap on sale. Does anyone really care about Dan J. Schulte’s new release, Halloween Returns to Haddonfield: The Official Halloween 25th Anniversary Convention soundtrack, available now on CDBaby? Does anyone even know it exists?

Sure, it’s a lot easier nowadays for artists with a fan base to market their wares. Teen-pop has-beens Hanson, crooner Michael Bolton and earnest folkie Natalie Merchant each declined major-label deals in the past year to release their own records. But it’s safe to say these are not the kinds of artists punks were thinking of when they popularized the term “DIY.” It’s an outmoded notion in 2004; a better one is “Who should I associate myself with?”

Community is important to cut through the noise, and like it or not, those communities are often organized around the industry trying to make money off music — record labels, clubs, promoters, magazines et al. While artists know best how to make art, businesspeople know best how to build relationships and gain leverage. So unless you’re an artist with an already robust career or an admiration for the marketing savvy of P. Diddy and Malcolm McLaren, it’s more important than ever to figure out how to interact with the music biz.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/44/features-bemis2.php


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E-mail Turns To P2P Technology
BBC

Peer-to-peer technology has been used to create an e-mail network said to be free of spam, viruses and snoopers.

The .safe e-mail service is the idea of a Leeds-based start-up, with users paying an annual fee to use it.

Jeftel says it keeps messages away from the net's usual e-mail infrastructure, protecting them from spammers, malicious hackers and prying eyes.

Initially the service is aimed at legal and financial firms keen to keep client messages confidential.

Community checks

The idea for the service emerged while Jeftel was doing work for high-profile law firm Mishcon de Reya, said Robert Barr, the company's head of development.

"We were doing some work on Voice Over IP and developed the whole idea of using the same transport technology for e-mail," he told BBC News Online.

Anyone paying the annual £25 fee must download a small program before they can send messages to other members of the Jeftel network. The downloaded program works alongside Microsoft's popular Outlook e-mail program.

He said Jeftel had worked hard to make its e-mail service easy to use and install as many other encryption and security systems for mail were too tricky for most people to get to grips with.

Users of the service get an e-mail address ending with .safe.

Mr Barr said the Jeftel service lets users create small communities that can exchange messages that will not be plagued by the problems suffered by e-mail sent via the net.

"Most people only communicate with 25-30 people on a regular basis," he said, answering the charge that it is only going to be useful once a lot of people have adopted it.

"If you want communication between you and these people you are not worried about the rest of the world."

Instead of messages travelling through numerous e-mail post offices as they cross the net, Jeftel messages go direct to their intended recipient and no copies are made.

Mr Barr said a future version will allow people to keep copies of messages to let legal and financial firms comply with regulatory guidelines.

He added that to stop abuse of the e-mail system both parties to a message were authenticated before the e-mail travels.

"Normal e-mail travels by the motorway," he said. "But we have a private railway that carries your e-mail and no-one else can get on it."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/3694974.stm


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I.B.M. Supercomputer Sets World Record for Speed
John Markoff

An I.B.M. machine has reclaimed the title of world's fastest supercomputer, overtaking a Japanese computer that had caused shock waves at United States government agencies when it set a computing speed record in 2002.

Supercomputing technologies were widely viewed as indicators of national industrial prowess in the 1980's and 1990's. They are used extensively in weapons design.

More recently, federal officials have become concerned that lagging investment in high-performance computing could leave the United States vulnerable to competition in industries ranging from biotechnology to materials science.

The International Business Machines computer is based on a computing technology, called BlueGene/L, that takes an approach radically different from that used by the Japanese supercomputer, called the Earth Simulator.

The Japanese machine, which was built to analyze climate change patterns, uses fewer processors than the I.B.M. machine, but they are specialized and faster.

The I.B.M. supercomputer has surpassed the Earth Simulator, built by the NEC Corporation, in running the Linpack benchmark, a test program that solves a dense system of mathematical equations. I.B.M. announced yesterday that the Blue Gene/L system had attained a sustained performance of 36.01 trillion calculations per second, or teraflops, eclipsing the top mark of 35.86 teraflops reached in 2002 by the Earth Simulator in Yokohama. The new speed was reached during internal testing at I.B.M.'s production center in Rochester, Minn.

"This is notable because of the fixation everyone has had on the Earth Simulator," said Dave Turek, I.B.M.'s vice president for the high-performance computing division.

The new system is notable because it packs its computing power much more densely than other large-scale computing systems. BlueGene/L is one-hundredth the physical size of the Earth Simulator and consumes one twenty-eighth the power per computation, the company said.

The BlueGene/L will have wide commercial applications, first in the petroleum and biotechnology industries, Mr. Turek said.

A large-capacity version of the BlueGene/L system is scheduled to be installed early next year at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. That machine will have about 130,000 processors, compared to the 16,000-processor prototype that set the speed record.

Computer scientists said that increases in speed like that provided by the BlueGene/L would probably have a significant impact on science.

"It's again an exciting time to be involved in high-performance computing," said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee who tracks the 500 fastest computers in a biannual ranking. "For some computational scientists, it's like a Hubble telescope."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/te...9computer.html


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Academics Release P2P Source Code

Plans for secure, high-powered, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology for academia has come one big step closer to fruition when today Penn State and Internet2(R) announced the release of open source code for their collaborative software project, LionShare.

Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LionShare merges electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools into one dynamic application.

Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology said, “This is a technology that promises to significantly improve the way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic endeavors, while simultaneously ensuring a secure authenticated computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing capabilities."

This week's LionShare source code release will provide all interested programmers and developers with the opportunity to contribute valuable feedback and suggestions. At the same time, Lionshare partners including: Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will continue to fine-tune the project software which is slated for official beta release for universities and institutions this upcoming January.

"We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated,” commented Michael Halm, the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations from around the world have contacted us with questions about the technology and requests for the open source code release date, and many groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the code is now available."

Several educational and research institutions have expressed interest in Lionshare’s unique capabilities for resource exchange - including its ability to transfer audio, video, scientific simulations, text, documents, research papers, Web resources and a variety of other learning activities.

“LionShare has enormous potential," remarked Loukas Kalisperis, professor of architecture at Penn State. "With this single application, collaborating faculty can build digital repositories such as 3-D architectural image collections, Web-based video archives and art collections. Faculty will also have a range of tools at their fingertips for managing and exchanging their own personal collections, in addition to having access to large-scale data repositories throughout the United States and Europe."
http://www.lightreading.com/document...g&doc_id=60137