Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – October 9th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"I don't have any real hard numbers, but it seems like people who download the songs are the ones that eventually buy the albums." – Mark Borders, record exec


"Unlike currently existing P2P technologies, NEOnet allows users to search the entire spectrum of the network, what we call horizonless search." – Ben Wilken, program architect


"Mr. Munster and his research team also found that illegal file sharing is still very popular among teenagers. 65% indicated they downloaded music on a regular basis. Of that number, 73% have used an illegal file sharing site such as Kazaa or Limeware." – Macobserver staff


"Orrin Hatch wouldn't know a computer if it hit him." – Mark Cuban
















Inducing Labor

Any efforts spent convincing Washington the Induce act would be Bad Law is time well spent. The man behind this bill has been actively and neurotically demonizing file sharers for ages. He’s the guy a couple of years ago who wanted to destroy computers by using armed web bots to search out "unauthorized" content and then kill the PC's it was on - all automatically and without any sort of trial or due process. He talks about this stuff constantly, loudly and often, any chance he can get – he’s a small-minded, angry man on a mission, a failed recording star – but hmmm, it turns out he himself is a copyright violator. Isn’t that always the way? It's no surprise I’ve never heard him so much as whisper that fact - no honest mea culpas there. So mostly I think he’s just unstable. Mind you I don't know the guy personally, I’m just going by the furious brittle behaviors I see him engaged in month after month. Last week for instance he threatened to "lock up" people he felt were hindering his bills progress until they came around to his pro big-media point of view, despite the fact that other, bigger tech industry people were telling him his bill would hurt them, their shareholders, employees and America more than doing nothing would hurt the media companies. Those media outfits are doing pretty well it turns out, and are mostly non-American it also turns out, which is a little weird when you consider this guy’s an American politician who is supposed to represent his states’ citizens first, all Americans second and foreigners, well, I’m not sure they even make the list. I don’t recall his oath of office mentioning the UN at any rate.

Most of this korporate kleptocracy would die an unmourned death if a surprisingly small number of Washington insiders suddenly found themselves out of office and forced to earn an actual living in the real world (and hey, they might even be a little bit more receptive to P2P if that were to happen). Be great wouldn’t it, but until such a wondrous time comes to pass we’re going to have to increase our labors convincing the moderates and the prescient in Washington that there is no political future in pissing us off. There’re 3 or 4 international record syndicates now, but there’s like a hundred million of us swapping files right here in North America. Those are some seriously bad odds to be on the wrong side of. Nobody needs to go back to school to understand that. Oh wait. Maybe they do.

We’ve got the power baby. We’ve got the mass. Let’s use it and STOP THE INDUCE ACT NOW!
















Enjoy,

Jack














D.C. Showdown Looms Over File Swapping

High noon for swapping?
John Borland

Technology companies and the record industry are nearing a last-minute showdown on Capitol Hill over a controversial bill aimed at quelling file swapping.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and dubbed the "Induce Act," was introduced earlier this year, in large part as a response to court rulings that have said that file-sharing software companies were not liable for copyright infringement by their customers.

A round of negotiations between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and technology organizations closed this week without reaching compromise, according to people familiar with the talks. As of late Wednesday, Hatch's Judiciary committee was scheduled to vote on a version of the bill Thursday morning. That prospect prompted a flurry of last-minute protest letters from technology and consumer organizations.

"The recording industry (proposals) would effectively put at risk all consumer electronics, information technology products, and Internet products and services that aren't designed to the industry's liking," read one letter sent Wednesday and signed by lobby groups representing technology companies, including News.com publisher CNET Networks. "We urge you not to move forward now."

The issue has become a key rallying point for many in Silicon Valley who fear that the legislation might have impact well beyond the file-swapping world. The result has been a relationship between technology and content companies at its most tense since bitter battles over Hollywood-sponsored antipiracy proposals in 2002.

The RIAA is taking a conciliatory approach toward the technology industry, saying it is solely interested in stopping file-swapping companies that profit from copyright infringement. The group has said it is open to changing the legislation in whatever way necessary to achieve that goal.

"In a short period of time, there has been remarkable progress," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. "A coalition of groups and members of Congress have coalesced around the core proposition that the 'bad actors' deserve to be held accountable. No one is defending the parasitical business model of the illegitimate peer-to-peer networks. The remaining issues are definitional and we continue to work through those."

Rolling back Betamax?
At the core of the RIAA's push--and of much of the technology industry's fear--is an effort to change the way that a 20-year-old court decision affects copyright law.

In 1984, the Supreme Court said that the Sony Betamax videocassette recorder was legal to sell, despite being widely used to copy movies and television shows. The court reasoned that the device could not be banned outright because it had a number of uses that did not involve copyright infringement. That rule, later known as the Betamax doctrine, now protects virtually all products that can make copies as long as they too have "substantial noninfringing uses."

This has proven a key part of the legal defense for peer-to-peer software companies such as Grokster and Streamcast Networks against charges of copyright infringement by the record industry and Hollywood studios. They've said, and federal courts have agreed, that the file-swapping networks can be used for legal purposes despite the widespread song and movie piracy they allow.

However, judges in those cases said that if content companies didn't like those decisions, they should take it up with Congress--and that's just what the RIAA has done.

Hatch and the record industry group have said they want to focus heavily on behavior, rather than on specific technology. They say that the file- swapping companies are "inducing" illegal behavior on the part of their customers and should be held liable for that action.

Technology companies and consumer advocates say this threatens to roll back the Betamax doctrine and expose to liability a wide variety of companies--from Web browser makers to iPod maker Apple Computer.

The senator outlined his goals for the bill in a letter to Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, who has supported the bill. In the letter, Hatch wrote that he wants a "technology-neutral bill directed at a small set of bad actors, while protecting our legitimate technology industries from frivolous litigation."

Reports from the participants in negotiations this week were mixed. Recording industry sources said that substantial progress had been made, although the parties remained split on how to define peer to peer. Consumer groups said the gap remained wide.

The technology groups pressed Hatch on Wednesday to put a hold on the bill's progress, citing the need for more public scrutiny of the bill's language, which remains in flux.

"Every one of the half-dozen drafts proposed would make fundamental changes to copyright law, with potentially enormous impact on innovation, creativity, and competition," the Center on Democracy and Technology wrote in a letter to Hatch on Wednesday. "Given the short period over which (the bill) has been discussed, the absence of hearings on the new language, and the overall lack of opportunity for the public to comment, we believe it would be in the best interests of all parties to allow a more orderly process to go forward."

If the bill faces a vote as scheduled on Thursday in the Judiciary Committee, it still could be changed before it faces a full vote in the Senate. Participants said that the vote could be delayed at the last minute, however, given the fluidity of the situation.

Congress will return in November to vote on budget bills after the election, and most observers expect the bill to be taken up again then.

In the meantime, technology executives are rallying people to contact Congress to express their displeasure over the bill, which was a hot topic of conversation at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week.

HDNet founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban summed up the fears of many of the event's attendees. "If you're at this conference, your livelihood is at risk if the Induce Act passes," he said.
http://news.com.com/D.C.+showdown+lo...3-5400128.html


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Hollywood Asks Top U.S. Court to Weigh File Trading
Andy Sullivan

Movie studios and record labels on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that Internet "peer to peer" networks cannot be held liable when their users copy music and movies without permission.

Dozens of entertainment-industry companies asked the court to reverse an appeals court decision that has prevented them from shutting down networks like Grokster and Morpheus that they say encourage millions of consumers to copy music and movies for free rather than buying them.

The entertainment industry managed to shut down the first file-trading network, Napster. But Grokster and other networks that have sprung up in its wake claim their decentralized design prevents them from controlling user behavior.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that peer-to-peer networks can't be sued for copyright infringement because, like VCR manufacturers, their products can be used for legitimate purposes.

"These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability, with the full knowledge that over 90 percent of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else," said Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

A spokesman for a trade group that represents Morpheus and other peer-to-peer networks said he didn't think the Supreme Court would overturn the decision.

"Historically, the Supreme Court has well understood that the overexpansion of the monopoly rights provided under copyright to content owners can and would interfere with other enormously important social values and commerce," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of the trade group P2P United.

The digital-media landscape has shifted significantly in the past several years. Napster has been resurrected by Roxio Inc. (ROXI.O: Quote, Profile, Research) as an industry-sanctioned pay service, competing with Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iTunes and others that have sold millions of songs.

But traffic on file-trading networks has continued to climb even as record labels have sued more than 5,000 users for copyright infringement.

Hollywood has also lobbied Congress to broaden copyright laws.

In end-of-session maneuvering, one measure that would hold peer-to-peer networks liable for user behavior appeared to be dead, but others that would specify a greater role for U.S. law enforcers appeared headed toward passage.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6455899


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U.S. Album Sales Up 5.8 Per Cent In First Nine Months Of 2004
AP

Album sales in the United States rose 5.8 per cent in the first nine months of this year, reflecting an overall turnaround in music sales that began a year ago on the strength of hit releases and a growing market for digital tracks.

About 463 million albums were sold in the United States between January and Oct. 3, compared with roughly 437.4 million in 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Overall, the number of albums, singles and digital tracks sold in the first nine months of the year totaled 562.7 million. Comparable numbers for 2003 were not immediately available. A comparison of overall music sales figures through Sept. 26 showed a 5.4 per cent increase in units sold this year over the same period in 2003.

The sales data continued to reflect encouraging news for the industry, which suffered a sales slump from 2000 to 2003, prompting a wave of restructuring by record companies and thousands of layoffs.

"After three years of decline, whether we're competing with softer numbers or not, it's certainly encouraging to see even modest growth," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst for Billboard Magazine.

The rebound began in earnest in September 2003. Over the following 52 weeks, sales were down only 10 weeks compared to 2003, Mayfield said.

The online music market accounted for the sale of more than 93.6 million tracks between January and Oct. 3. Some 19.2 million tracks were purchased in the last six months of 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The popularity of downloads has been helped by a flurry of companies breaking into the market following the success of Apple Computer Inc.'s ITunes Music Store and IPod digital player.

It's still too early to tell how the fourth quarter sales will compare to last year.

Traditionally, record companies release their strongest offerings in the fourth quarter in hopes of capturing a big slice of holiday shopping sales.

U2, Eminem, Destiny's Child and R.E.M. are among the acts due to release new albums over the next three months.

Despite the overall increase in sales, the last three weeks have been down compared with the same period last year, when John Mayer's Bigger Than My Body and OutKast's hit double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, were out.

And while 2004 began strong with releases by Norah Jones and Usher each selling more than one million copies in their debuts, no other release has since matched that.

The upswing in sales appears to be happening at the same time as online file-sharing, which the recording industry blames for its sales declines in recent years and has tried to stamp out through an ongoing legal campaign against computer users, continues to thrive.

More than 6.8 million people were signed on to file-sharing networks in August, compared with 3.8 million in August 2003, according to BigChampagne LLC, an online media tracking firm.

While still a fraction of overall music sales and online file-sharing, sales of digital tracks are encouraging, and if anything, may hint at additional non-digital sales down the road.

U2's latest single, Vertigo, which debuted on ITunes last week, is one example. More than 30,000 copies of the track were sold in one week, the most since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking such sales.
http://www3.cjad.com/content/cp_arti...s/e100649A.htm


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Feds Plan Crackdown On Intellectual Property Theft
AP

The Justice Department will launch its most aggressive crackdown on intellectual property theft next week, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday.

Ashcroft told a conference of prosecutors who specialize in computer crime that the Justice Department response to intellectual property theft ``must be as forceful and aggressive and successful as our response to terrorism and violent crime and drugs and corruption has been.''

He said the department will release a report next week that follows the creation earlier this year of an intellectual property task force. Officials will also announce a tougher response to intellectual property theft, which he said costs the United States $250 billion annually, affecting industries from auto parts manufacturing to pharmaceuticals.

Ashcroft did not reveal the details, saying only that the program includes ``new investigative resources'' and ``new prosecutorial tools.''

``Our 1.0 version of intellectual property rights and enforcement and protection has been good -- with these recommendations and your dedication, our 2.0 version is going to be better, tougher, more successful,'' he said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9853099.htm


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Record Chiefs Start Piracy Suits
Nic Hopkins

RECORD companies will unleash hundreds of lawsuits against alleged music pirates across Europe today, including the first to be filed in Britain, as they step up their campaign to protect copyrighted material.

The record companies, including France’s Universal Music Group and Britain’s EMI, are understood to have stopped short of pursuing criminal convictions against traders of counterfeit material and are instead seeking compensation for lost revenues.

The lawsuits, foreshadowed by The Times last week, will be announced jointly by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and IFPI, the record industry’s global trade organisation. IFPI announced 247 lawsuits across Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada in March.

The BPI has resorted to legal action after warning thousands of users of internet peer-to-peer services, such as Grokster and Kazaa, that they were breaking the law.

One source familiar with the situation said: “If you think of lawsuits as a stick being used against music pirates, then the carrot is that there are now more than one million tracks that can be downloaded over the internet legally from more than 30 different services.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/ar...297872,00.html


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Hackers Attack Dutch Government Web Sites
AP

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Several Dutch government Web sites remained offline Tuesday after an attack by hackers protesting unpopular policies of the right-wing Cabinet, the government said.

In what is known as a denial-of-service attack, the hackers continually made fake requests for information from the Web sites, effectively shutting out legitimate users, a government statement said.

No security sites had been breached, and only public information sites were disabled, said Henk Brons, a spokesman for the government information agency known by its Dutch acronym RVD. Two Dutch-language sites carrying information about government institutions and their activities were affected.

A group calling itself the "Hacking Crew 10pht" claimed responsibility for the attacks on a Dutch Web forum.

Brons said he had no further details on the hackers, adding that police were investigating.

The sites crashed when they became overloaded Monday afternoon. Technicians were still working on the problem more than 24 hours later, and Brons could not say when the sites would be back online.

The Dutch government has come under public criticism over planned spending cuts in 2005 on health care and early retirement benefits. On Saturday, 200,000 staged a protest in Amsterdam, the largest in the Netherlands in 20 years.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9842193.htm


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U.S. Launches New Anti-Piracy Campaign
Roy Mark

The White House, the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security and Justice and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick will carry out a multi-prong initiative to fight the global trade in pirated and counterfeited goods.

According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a major special interest group representing the software and Internet industry, an estimated 36 percent of the software installed on computers worldwide last year was pirated, representing a loss of nearly $29 billion.

Speaking at a media briefing, which included Attorney General John Ashcroft and Zoellick, Commerce Secretary Don Evans said the plan "gives American businesses clear steps to protect themselves from international counterfeiters and encourages businesses to adopt programs that ensure that their supply chains are free from fakes."

Known as the Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP), the new initiative includes beefed up programs to block bogus goods at borders, establishing a hotline to provide U.S. businesses with resources to protect themselves from piracy and developing a Web-based guide for American businesses to safeguard their intellectual property.

Evans said the plan also calls for challenging industry leaders to develop voluntary guidelines or corporate compliance programs to ensure that supply chains are free of fakes.

"With the spread of the Internet and sophisticated duplication technology, it's gotten very easy for would-be pirates and counterfeiters from other countries to download a corporate identity, or a catalogue, then produce high-quality forgeries," Zoellick said. "With the expansion of global supply and distribution channels, the way is now open for those tapes here and around the world. This is now real-time theft."

Late last year, the USTR identified the growth of piracy and trade goods counterfeiting as a top priority and began working with a number of U.S. agencies and trading partners to develop a new approach to the problem.

"This problem crosses many different jurisdictions, laws and countries, and the STOP initiative provides a coordinated and effective answer," Zoellick said. "The message to pirates and counterfeiters is simple: we will do everything we can to make their life miserable. We'll stop their products at our border; we will name and shame their company; we'll ratchet up the penalties; and we'll coordinate with our trading partners to prevent third-country trafficking."

According to Zoellick, global intellectual property rights theft and trade in fakes have grown to "unprecedented levels." From pirated music and movies to counterfeit brake pads, Zoellick said the illicit trade is not only growing in the United States but also among other countries in an effort to escape the reach of U.S. law enforcement officials.

Of particular concern to Zoellick is China, which has emerged as a leading source of pirated and counterfeit goods. The U.S. has been pressing China to meet its intellectual property obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization. Earlier this year, China committed to subject the full array of piracy and counterfeiting operations to criminal prosecution and to target production facilities and sales of fakes.

Ashcroft said another important goal of STOP is to close loopholes in the current law.

"For example, under current law, it is not a violation of intellectual property law simply to import or export counterfeit goods. Nor is it a violation of the law for an importer to have a warehouse full of counterfeit software if there is no evidence of an illegal sale," Ashcroft said. "We intend to work closely with Congress to close such loopholes."

Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of the BSA, rushed to praise the STOP plan. "The economic and societal benefits of software and other U.S. products contribute profoundly to the world economy," he said in a statement. "Yet, the software-driven productivity that has the potential to greatly strengthen national economies, including our own, is only viable if the intellectual property that serves as its foundation is fully protected and enforced by international law."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3417061


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More Than 50 In Kentucky Sued For Copyright Infringement
Beth Musgrave

David Vatter received a letter three months ago from a Los Angeles law firm that said something about downloading and the recording industry.

"I thought it was junk mail or some sort of marketing ploy," Vatter said. "I thought it was nothing."

The Louisville father learned a month later that it was no joke.

Vatter received a thick packet from lawyers informing him he was being sued.

His crime?

Vatter was being charged with copyright infringement, the documents said. His 16-year-old daughter had downloaded more than 400 songs using a program called Kazaa, which allows computer users to swap music files. Vatter was given the option of settling the case for $6,000 or taking his chances in court.

"I talked to a couple lawyer friends of mine who told me that it was going to cost me thousands of dollars in legal bills," Vatter said. "So I decided to settle."

More than 50 people in Kentucky have received similar letters over the past year. They are being sued for downloading such hits as Martina McBride's Valentine or Trick Daddy's Take it to da House without compensating McBride, Trick Daddy or their respective music labels for the pleasure of owning their songs.

The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that represents the nation's largest music labels, has filed at least 10 lawsuits against downloaders in Kentucky federal courts since April. Most recently, the organization filed three lawsuits in the Eastern District of Kentucky, based in Lexington.

Kentucky is the latest battleground in the recording industry's efforts to stop people from pointing and clicking rather than paying for their favorite music. Since launching its campaign to catch copyright infringers in September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 4,600 lawsuits. Of those cases, more than 800 people have opted to settle and pay an average fine of $3,000, according to RIAA.

Conflicting research

A year after the launch of its campaign, many question whether the recording industry's massive, not to mention costly, legal push to stop copyright infringement has curbed downloading.

The recording industry thinks it has.

The RIAA points to a recent study that shows most people believe downloading music is wrong and that artists should be compensated for their work. The Peter D. Hart Associates study found 64 percent of those polled think it's illegal to download music. The Hart poll also found that 56 percent were "supportive and understanding" of the record industry's legal campaign. And a Pew Internet study released earlier this year showed that six million people have stopped downloading music since last fall.

But market research by other companies says just the opposite.

"This is a growing phenomenon that gets more popular year after year," said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, a Los Angeles company that tracks peer-to-peer file sharing.

Estimates put the number of people who download music in the United States at about 60 million. Data from BigChampagne, which tracks how many people are on peer-to-peer systems, such as Kazaa, eDonkey or Limewire, show that downloading has increased. For example, in August 2003, BigChampagne clocked an average of 2.75 million simultaneous users on peer- to-peer systems. The following August, the number jumped to more than 4.5 million users.

Another study by Nielson Net Ratings in 2003 showed one out of five people online download.

Tactics backfired?

Garland said the music industry may have unknowingly spurred more downloading when it targeted Napster, the first peer-to-peer music sharing service, in 2000.

Until then, copyright infringers were mostly anonymous and difficult to prosecute. People started dubbing tapes for friends and family when the cassette tape was introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But most of this type of copyright infringement was difficult to track.

Enter Napster, the first large-scale file-sharing service.

The recording industry finally had a boogeyman, a face of copyright infringement.

But its well-publicized dispute took the service, largely contained to universities, out of dorm rooms and onto the cover of Time.

People who may have not realized there was a way to tap into free music now knew, Garland said.

And a technical revolution was born. And although Napster is now a legal Web site -- charging for music downloads -- other free Web sites have taken its place.

Some musicians encourage it

Although some rock luminaries such as Don Henley and Metallica have spoken out against downloading, some musicians encourage it.

Mark Borders started Eugene Records about eight years ago with some friends from a punk band. Eugene Records, based in the Lexington area, has released about 17 albums. It specializes in punk and rock. Without the Internet, it would be impossible for Borders and other musicians to get the word out about their music.

"It's nearly impossible to get local radio play," Borders said. "Everything is run by Clear Channel now."

Eugene Records' Web site offers free samples of many of its songs.

"I don't have any real hard numbers, but it seems like people who download the songs are the ones that eventually buy the albums," Borders said.

Steve Baron, the owner of CD Central, a popular Lexington music store near the University of Kentucky, agrees. Baron said avid music fans may download music, but if they like what they hear, they'll buy the CD, too.

Baron said the lawsuits may have another unintended consequence, especially on young audiences, the music industry's core buyers.

"Personally, I think a lot of these lawsuits are somewhat heavy-handed," Baron said. "I think it's going to alienate a lot of listeners."

After dickering with record industry lawyers, Vatter settled his case for under $4,000. Vatter and his daughter have since cleaned all music files from their home computer.

"I heard from the media that other people had been sued. I just figured that they were looking for the big boys," Vatter said. "I felt bad for them but I thought, 'That's not going to happen to me.' Guess I was wrong."
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky...al/9830171.htm


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You got the message right?

Sony Abandons Copy-Control Music CDs
AP

Sony Corp.'s music unit is abandoning its CDs that use built-in technology that limits copying them, after pushing the program for two years.

Such CDs let users copy their music once for free onto a personal computer, but use the Internet to charge a fee for subsequent copying of the same disk.

However, Sony Music Entertainment has announced it will stop publishing them, mainly because its message against illegally copying CDs for uses such as in file-sharing over the Internet has widely sunk in, the company said.

Sony Music has learned that only a small part of the population illegally copy CDs, company spokeswoman Kimiko Ohashi said Monday.

The music giant recently started adapting its strategy due to the proliferation of MP3 computer files, used to store music in audio players such as Apple's iPod, which are rapidly becoming a global music industry phenomenon.

Sony said last month that its portable audio players, which will soon go on sale in Europe, will be able to use any MP3 files.

Previously, Sony's players only handled MP3 files that were converted into the company's own format.

CD sales have plunged in recent years in Japan and elsewhere, as people increasingly use the Internet to download music.

As a company with major electronics and entertainment divisions, Sony has constantly faced the dilemma of wanting to protect the copyright of movies, music and other entertainment assets it owns, while trying to make its electronics gadgets popular with users.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ws/9832592.htm


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Battle of Form (and Function) in MP3 Players
Saul Hansell


The Rocbox is being marketed as an alternative to Apple's iPod.

As the trading of MP3 files ate into music sales, Damon Dash, the 33-year-old entrepreneur behind Roc-A-Fella Records, turned his hip-hop music company into a platform to sell other, more profitable products.

He built Rocawear, a hip-hop-inspired clothing line, into a $300-million-a-year business. He launched Armadale Vodka, Tiret New York luxury watches and America, an urban luxury fashion magazine. He even bought the venerable Pro-Keds name to use on a new line of athletic shoes.

Now Mr. Dash is taking his celebrity and music-infused marketing approach to a product line closer to the source of his troubles: MP3 files. In November, he will introduce a line of MP3 players under the name Rocbox, including one aimed squarely to compete with Apple Computer's iPod.

"We saw Apple making a killing, and we thought it would be good market to go after," Mr. Dash said in an interview last week. The players, which are being sold by a company he formed with some partners, called Roc Digital, are a natural area, he added, because of the possible tie-ins with his music label, which is part of the Island Def Jam Music Group of Universal Music Group, whose parent is Vivendi Universal.

"It has been rough going in the music business," Mr. Dash said, adding, "We have been using music to promote my other brands and validate them in a cool way."

With a chrome-colored front, glowing blue buttons and a black rubberized back, the hard-drive Rocbox is shinier and a bit bigger than an iPod, while matching its $299 price tag for a player with enough memory for 600 hours of music. A smaller white and aluminum flash-drive player is $159, and has enough memory for about eight hours of music. Both players will be sold at Macy's and CompUSA stores.

Mr. Dash is capitalizing on a significant shift in the electronics business, which until now has largely designed products to appeal to a worldwide audience.

Now that electronics items are getting smaller and are meant to be carried or even worn rather than being put on a shelf, consumers are choosing them for their looks as much as function.

"Things become more important as fashion items the more personal and portable they become," said Greg Woock, the chief executive of Virgin Electronics, a division of the Virgin Group, whose owner, Sir Richard Branson, is moving his music, airline and cellphone brand into the gadget world.

Other brands that have nothing to do with music or electronics are getting into the act. Oakley, the high-end sunglasses maker, is about to introduce the Oakley Thump, a line of sunglasses with tiny MP3 players built in, and priced at $395 and $495. The glasses look like they are out of a science-fiction movie, with flip-up lenses and flip- down speakers. The fashion trend in electronics is especially evident in MP3 players and wireless phones. In part, that's because those devices are most popular with young people. They are held more closely to the body than many other machines. And since they have very small circuitry and do not need to conform to the shape of a tape or disk, they can be designed in a wide range of shapes and sizes.

"A CD player has to be round or D-shaped," said Bradshaw Gray, the portable audio buyer for Circuit City, adding that MP3 players are flexible enough to invite creative designs.

Darryl Cobbin, the vice president of marketing for Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Nextel Communications that is focused on the youth market, said that most makers of wireless phones market them as an electronic device and focus on their features.

"We see it as an intimate part of your life," he said. "How many products do you know that touch your mouth and your ear and that you hold in your hand and put in your pocket for extended periods?"

Boost began trying to sell prepaid telephones to young people on the West Coast two years ago by using affiliations with sports like surfing and skate boarding. Now the brand is being altered for a broader urban audience. It has gained some notoriety from commercials featuring hip-hop artists like Kanye West and Ludacris and the musical theme, "Where You At?"

Boost has introduced one phone with a built-in makeup mirror. And it plans to introduce a limited edition phone next year (with a wood grain finish), a strategy often used by Nike and other brands to enhance the exclusivity of an item.

Even televisions, which have long been an assortment of ever larger rectangular boxes, are moving into the world of high design.

"It used to be that all televisions were square black boxes that differentiated themselves on picture quality and features," said Thomas Crowell, the television buyer at Circuit City. "In a digital world, everything looks so good, you need to make design the differentiation." The sleek look of the expensive flat-panel models attracts customers even though their picture quality is often inferior to that of many tube televisions.

Manufacturers see television buyers as divided mainly by budget, but for smaller devices they are increasingly targeting specific demographic and psychological groups of customers.

At Circuit City, Mr. Gray sees the Apple iPod as appealing to a broad audience. MP3 players from iRiver, a South Korean electronics maker, are marketed primarily to an urban audience with ties to hip-hop artists. And those from Rio, now a unit of D&M Holdings, a Japanese company, are marketed to people he calls "individualists," because the Rio players have rounded shapes and marketing that eschews celebrity tie-ins.

Mr. Dash hopes to distinguish the Rocbox players from other players on the market by weaving images of them into videos for artists of his label, and put tags promoting them on his clothing. While details haven't been worked out yet, buyers of the player will have access to exclusive bits of Roc-A-Fella music.

"In the urban market, selling something cheap is not what they want," said Shae Hong, the president of Roc Digital. "They want the best," he said, pointing to the affiliation of many hip-hop artists to Courvoisier and the Cadillac Escalade sport utility vehicle.

Paradoxically, even as fashion elements creep into device design, many devices look very similar because consumers have a narrow band of preferences.

"More people want to look like a Gap ad than a Prada ad," said Mr. Woock of Virgin.

This season, he said, the cool electronic devices are extremely small, and many open to reveal hidden functions. Virgin, for example, now sells an MP3 player so small that it can be worn as a necklace, and it is about to introduce a set of portable speakers, for use with any portable music device, that unscrew from a tube that looks like a tennis ball can.

But despite the interest in style, Mr. Woock said, consumers aren't willing to let manufacturers substitute style for substance.

You may have a super product, Mr. Woock said, "but if it doesn't work, no one will buy it."

Currently, the broadest range of looks are on wireless phones. While manufacturers limit their palettes to silver, white, steel blue and black, accessory makers are selling covers for the phones with images ranging from motorcycles to matinee idols.

Wildseed, a Seattle company started by some former Microsoft executives, is creating a phone technology aimed at teenagers that makes phone covers do more than look cool.

Their phone, called Identity, has a line of covers that are both decorated and contain memory chips. When the cover is attached to the phone, the chip gives users a choice of ring tones to hear, images to see, games to play on the phone screen and more.

One, for example, is hot pink and features the character French Kitty. Others are have the rap star Nelly and the video game character Mortal Kombat. Each has sounds and images related to its theme.

The phone, which is just being introduced in some markets, will sell for about $250 for people who sign up for a service plan. The covers will cost another $25 to $50. Cindy Smith, Wildseed's marketing director, says she believes that consumers will pay for the new phone features.

"Kids can tell their parents that they update the phone to do new things when they want to," she said. "It's like a game console. You don't toss it out when you want new entertainment."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/te...y/04urban.html


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Invasion of the Movie Snatchers

More and more movie fans are sharing films online, and hollywood doesn't like it. Should the studios fight or find a way to adapt?
Chris Taylor

Jack Valenti, the firebrand longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), was never one to mince words. As the movie industry's chief lobbyist, he knew how to portray his business's challenges in dramatic terms. Back in the 1980s, faced with new technology that supposedly threatened the studios' bottom line, Valenti once famously compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler.

Rhetoric like that took the battle against Betamax all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the movie industry and helped establish the right of fair-use copying. We all know what happened to the VCR: not long after that defeat, the studios discovered that tape rentals were even more of a cash cow than movie tickets.

Fast-forward a generation. This time the supposedly disruptive technology facing the film industry is peer-to-peer networking. Whereas the original Napster offered free music only and was easy to shut down, its successors — Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus et al.--trade movies too and have proved more resilient. The music labels fought all instances of unfettered file sharing until Apple CEO Steve Jobs helped broker a cease-fire in the form of the iTunes Music Store, which won praise from consumers and a route to profits for the labels. The film industry, however, is still in the trenches, trying to stall what it sees as an onslaught of movie theft. Already as many as half a million movies are swapped online every day, according to the MPAA. But a diverse chorus of critics says that Hollywood is on the wrong track and that file sharing may well hold as much potential profit as the VCR did.

The industry's efforts to block the new technology in the courts aren't going well. Last month a Federal Court of Appeals declared Grokster and Morpheus as legal as a VCR or a Xerox copy machine, whose legitimate copying uses outweigh illegitimate ones. The movie industry is furious. "These are folks who hide behind a curtain of plausible deniability, like they don't know what's being traded on their networks," says Dan Glickman, a Clinton Cabinet member and former Democratic Congressman who took over the helm of the MPAA after Valenti retired.

Now Hollywood is pinning its hopes on a new tactic: federal legislation that would essentially target file-sharing technology. If passed, the so-called Induce Act, backed by such powerful legislators as Senate majority leader Bill Frist and Senator Hillary Clinton, would close the legitimate-copying loophole and empower the MPAA to sue peer-to-peer file-sharing services like Grokster after all. Opponents of the bill include usual suspects like the Electronic Freedom Foundation — the A.C.L.U. of the digital world — but also a surprising number of big businesses.

Internet service providers like Verizon and gadget stores like Radio Shack say the act's wording is too draconian and makes them liable if customers use their wares to break copyright law. "It will be hard for us to introduce any digital product or service that delivers entertainment content," argues Sarah Deutsch, general counsel for Verizon.

At the same time, the studios can't exactly argue that file sharing is about to put them out of business. DVD sales, which grew 33% last year, and box-office receipts have never been stronger. So if technological breakthroughs were a boon for the movie industry in the past, why is the industry acting as if the sharing of movies online, as Valenti said a year ago, heralds the "undoing of society"?

The answer has to do with the film industry's business model, which is founded on a tightly controlled schedule of when and where the public sees movies. That schedule is broken up into windows. The box-office window is followed by the pay-per-view window, and then the DVD window opens, followed by the premium-cable window. The studios maximize their profit by selling licenses for each phase. If peer-to-peer networks can offer movies while the films are still in theaters, the whole revenue stream could be undermined. "We have less issues with technology overall than the lack of the ability to enact business rules around that technology," says Darcy Antonellis, a senior vice president at Warner Bros. Entertainment (a sister company of TIME) responsible for its worldwide antipiracy operations.

Not everyone in Silicon Valley is unsympathetic — even those promoting downloading technology. "Studios will not support downloading of new releases for the same reason book publishers don't go direct to paperback," says Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, the hugely successful online movie-rental company. Hastings has his own version of an iTunes-like solution to the movie-download problem. Right now his 2 million customers rent DVDs online and receive them through the mail, but he says he has always intended to make the transition to movie downloads. Nothing is likely to be launched in the next year, but Hastings has been brainstorming the idea with Michael Ramsay, a Netflix board member and the CEO of TiVo, whose time-shifting digital video recorder has spooked Hollywood. Recently Ramsay, who has been struggling to expand the TiVo business, won FCC approval for TiVoToGo, a service that would allow people to share TV shows, movies and other TiVo recordings with as many as nine other TiVo boxes and computers via the Internet. (Not surprisingly, the MPAA bitterly opposed TiVoToGo.) "Downloading any movie ever made — that's possible on a TiVo box today," says Ramsay. "The problem is in the copyright management, not the technology." Hastings, meanwhile, takes pains to stress that any future downloading business would work out a profit-sharing framework with movie studios.

So far, copyright management has hamstrung the movie industry's attempts to make a business out of file-sharing technology. Two years ago, major studios launched a service called Movielink, which offers movies for downloading to your computer at about the same time they hit the pay-per-view window. Not only do the movies take hours to download, but they also disappear from Movielink's catalog altogether 90 days later, when they enter the premium-cable window. Because channels like HBO and Starz! offer lucrative licensing deals, Movielink has not been able to compete in the latter window. "We'll see this business become a true mass market," says Jim Ramo, CEO of Movielink. "It's just a matter of time."

How much time is open to debate. Ramsay says the industry has five years to figure out how to work file sharing into its business; Hastings thinks it's more like 10. (Both caution that contrary to some reports, we're not likely to see a full- fledged Netflix-TiVo deal in the immediate future.) The delay in incorporating file sharing has a lot to do with the slow speed of most Americans' Internet access. Even with cable and DSL connections that average 2 megabits per second, it can take 16 hours to download a movie with just a third of the quality of a DVD. Not to mention that most of us prefer watching a movie on our TV to watching it on a computer screen. "This isn't going to be a tidal wave of change," says Hastings. "More like global warming."

Download speed is just one reason file sharing may not be as immediate a threat to the movie business as it may seem. "There were very beautiful copies of Shrek 2 available on the Internet when it was released," says Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix. "That didn't seem to hurt [Shrek's] ticket sales any." When DVDs are packed with special features and available to rent for $2 or to buy for $15, who wants to waste a day downloading a movie? "I've frequently suggested they give up on all this copy protection because it doesn't make a bit of difference," says Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Freedom Foundation who defended Grokster against the movie industry's lawsuit. "It's not all the fancy locks that protect the industry. It's a great product at a great price."

In today's fast-paced websphere, any attempt to restrict content is probably doomed to failure anyway. Exhibit A: The MPAA sued the company 321 Studios into bankruptcy last year for producing a piece of DVD-copying software called DVD X Copy. So what happened? DVD Shrink, a free product that does the same job, started popping up on the Internet. Exhibit B: Even before the launch of TiVoToGo, the online cognoscenti have latched on to BitTorrent software for swapping TV shows. Privately, some movie bosses admit the industry is on the wrong track. "Studios can only bitch so much before they provide a viable, competitive alternative," says one Walt Disney executive.

Intellectual-property experts are trying to come up with new models that will allow the film industry to survive downloading. UCLA law professor Neil Netanel has proposed more product placement in movies (since advertisers care only about how many people see their products) and allowing unrestricted file sharing in return for a "noncommercial-use levy" of 4%, regulated by the Copyright Office and imposed on the price of new computers and other copying devices. Netanel's estimate of the resulting profit for the studios: $2 billion a year.

For the moment, though, the movie industry's main thrust is the Induce Act (which is unlikely to get a full hearing before Congress this session, although Senate Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch will probably bring it back next year). A public relations campaign to try to sway people from downloading movies illegally is also under way. Theatrical trailers show stuntmen, set builders and special-effects experts claiming they are the ones hurt by illegal downloads. And the industry has raised concerns over security dangers and privacy issues endemic to file sharing.

But time and technology are not on the studios' side. Just as the Napster phenomenon appeared to come out of nowhere, the next generation of file- sharing software is already in utero. Last month computer scientists at Caltech set a new data-transmission record: they achieved the equivalent of downloading a full-length feature film in 4 sec. It's a bumpy road to acceptance for any disruptive entertainment technology, from piano rolls to the VCR. "One thing you can count on in Hollywood is fear of change," says Warren Lieberfarb, the man who launched the DVD. But as Lieberfarb's profit-rich baby continues to prove, consumers are still hungry for faster, easier entertainment — and there's always another fortune waiting to be discovered.
http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/a...709042,00.html


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MorpheusLaunches 4.5 With NEOnet(TM) Next Generation Peer-to-Peer Technology Developed by Harvard Computer Scientists

Software delivers unprecedented search reliability while solving P2P internet congestion problems
Press Release

After three years in development by a group of Harvard-educated computer scientists, and coming on the heels of its recent 9th Circuit Appellate Court victory, StreamCast Networks(TM) Inc. unveiled the latest version of its popular peer-to-peer file-sharing and search application, Morpheus(TM) 4.5 with NEOnet(TM), at today's Web 2.0 conference. NEOnet, a revolutionary new technology, delivers the most reliable search results and file accuracy available in today's peer-to-peer universe. In addition to the newly created Neo Network(TM), Morpheus 4.5 enables users to seamlessly search and share files with users of all other major peer-to-peer applications and networks.

"This is not just another updated application from a technology developer. Morpheus 4.5 is a genuine leap forward in advancing peer-to-peer file-sharing and searching, thanks to the horizonless search capabilities of the NEOnet technology," StreamCast Networks CEO Michael Weiss observed. "For the first time ever, decentralized P2P technology delivers central server reliability in a completely decentralized architecture to provide a quality of service unparalleled by existing applications."

The core search capability of Morpheus 4.5, NEOnet, was created by a consortium of Harvard computer science alumni. Users of Morpheus 4.5 will create their own ad-hoc file-sharing network, the Neo Network, in addition to being able to search other existing file sharing networks including Gnutella, eDonkey and FastTrack**. Users will appreciate that once connected to the Neo Network, they will enjoy significantly better search and download results, in part because files are more easily found and greater resources are able to contribute to the downloading of each individual file.

The Neo Network is completely decentralized, meaning that all of the computer "nodes" on the network function individually, without the need for any central server or hub. Computers within the Neo Network communicate directly with each other.

"Unlike currently existing P2P technologies, NEOnet allows users to search the entire spectrum of the network, what we call horizonless search, and to find the specific file that a user wants," Ben Wilken, Architect of the underlying technology to NEOnet, stated. "Existing technologies only search small clusters of computers until a file is found and it is not uncommon for searches using other technologies to require anywhere from six to sixteen hops to find a specific file. Now, however, because of its ability to see the entire network at once, Morpheus with NEOnet allows users to find that file within three hops or less, significantly reducing the network congestion caused by peer-to-peer usage by up to 600 percent."

NEOnet technology and the resulting Neo Network are fully scalable and will continue to grow as new Morpheus with NEOnet users add themselves to the network. Morpheus also offers users the ability to search for and download files across all the major peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and connects to Kazaa, iMesh, Grokster; eDonkey; Overnet; Gnutella, LimeWire, Bearshare and XoloX** users -- seven million simultaneous users at any given time.

Other features incorporated with the new Morpheus 4.5 version include:
-- XP Firewall Detection
-- Metadata tool tips in search results
-- Improved download performance
-- Integrated anti-virus protection with user's virus scanning software to
prevent malicious files
-- Free Bitzi anti-spoofing look-ups to ensure file integrity
-- Advanced parental controls
-- Built-in media player
-- File-Shredder to completely delete unwanted files
-- Optional access to public and private proxy networks -- provides
greater user privacy
-- Magnet Link support

Morpheus, available for FREE download at http://www.morpheus.com , is the only American P2P File Sharing software ruled legal by the US Federal Courts.

NEOnet is a next-generation horizonless peer-to-peer technology platform. The technology presents unlimited potential uses for content delivery and distribution in a completely decentralized environment. NEOnet's core competency lies in its fast, reliable and efficient search capabilities for all types of digital content including audio, video, text, images and software files. NEO Network is the ad-hoc file-sharing network created by users of the NEOnet technology.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041006/sfw056_1.html


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Artist Sananda Maitreya Has His Own P2P Program
Posted by xtv

Sananda Maitreya developed an innovative launch for his "Angels & Vampires" project that features his own version of TrustyFiles P2P (Peer to Peer) file sharing software. The campaign includes distribution of Weed format files over the major P2P networks. Sananda Maitreya also is exclusively making two new songs and a video available only through P2P.

"It's not enough to just create protected files and say ‘here’s my music, please download’”, said Sananda Maitreya. “We have a fantastic group of fans. I owe them my success. RazorPop’s P2P Street Team captures the spirit of fan support and extends it into file sharing. Their custom TrustyFiles software is perfect for me to ask my fans to share my music and at the same time continue to stay close to them.”

Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of RazorPop said “We’ve worked with Heart and Steve Winwood on previous P2P promotions. The power of P2P for legitimate music is clear. The Heart campaign outsold iTunes. When Sananda Maitreya came to us, we decided to take P2P marketing to the next level.”

“We’ve made TrustyFiles software highly customizable. A popular feature is the P2P promotions channel. It’s a fixed window on the software display that gives the artist, distributor, or marketer a permanent presence to encourage free or protected file sharing, show the latest promotions, and display breaking news. 50% of Internet users share music and other files. If you're a major artist, shouldn't your fans and web visitors be sharing files on software with your name and logo, where you can directly sell your digital downloads, CDs, DVDs, and other merchandise?”

Sananda Maitreya’s file sharing software can be downloaded direct at http://p2pfiles.com/sw/Sananda/ SanandaTF.exe (or go to http://www.sanandamaitreya.com/trustyfiles/p2p.html). As part of the campaign his video “Bella Faccina” and songs “Glad She's Gone” and “She knows I'm Leaving” are only available to the file sharing community.

Sananda Maitreya’s music and video are directly promoted on the Sananda Maitreya and regular TrustyFiles P2P software. Other P2P users can find the music and video hosted on business class servers through searches on all major networks. Web surfers can download the music at http://www.TopP2P.com. The files are in Windows Media Player format and can be played on most major media player software and portable music player devices. The songs are packaged as Weed files, which allow 3 plays before the song must be purchased. New Weed users get $5 to buy their first few songs free.

RazorPop’s P2P distribution partner is Intent Mediaworks, an online artist marketer. Intent Mediaworks provides comprehensive P2P file hosting and distribution, including media digitization, file protection, and distribution to all major P2P networks.

Sananda Maitreya won a Grammy Award in 1989 for best Male R&B Vocal. His multi-platinum album “Introducing The Hardline According To” sold over 12 million albums and was the #1 Billboard Chart R&B Album in 1988. His smash single "Wishing Well" hit the top of the charts in the US and across the world. Other top songs have included “Sign Your Name”, "If You Let Me Stay", "Delicate" with Des'ree, and "Holding On To You".

RazorPop’s TrustyFiles is the industry’s leading multiple P2P network software. TrustyFiles searches and download hundreds of millions of files from TrustyFiles, Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus, Limewire, Bearshare, Shareaza, and other Fast Track, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and Bit Torrent network users.

TrustyFiles software is designed for the user. It’s easy to use, free, and has no spyware and no bundled software. TrustyFiles developed the top performing P2P network engine for the fastest and most search results. Security features include a blocklist to protect from invasive users and virus scanning support to block infected files.
http://press.xtvworld.com/modules.ph...ticle&sid=2394


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Skype's Zennstrom to Deliver Keynote Address
Mathaba

The Skype co-founder, CEO and inventor of the Peer-to-Peer 'P2P' Phenomenon will provide the keynote address to an audience of thousands at a leading IP Telephony Conference in Los Angeles tomorrow.

The conference is currently underway October 4-7, 2004, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. Mr. Zennstrom's address, which will be delivered live from London via Internet Telephony Videoconference, will take place tomorrow, October 6th at 7:30 am PST.

"I'm honored to address the distinguished collection of telecommunications pioneers and leaders who will be attending the tenth Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, and I look forward to explaining about Skype and our vision for the future," said Niklas Zennstrom, founder and president of Skype. "Internet Telephony has been a key driver in defining new directions for communication and it is an excellent venue for Skype to engage with the industry."
http://mathaba.net/x.htm?http://math....shtml?x=75363


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Lost in Antipiracy Translation
Jon Newton

There is a coterie of individuals -- many of them extremely clever and very technically minded -- who believe they've been ripped off by the labels and studios and aren't going to put up with it any more. While all this goes on, the multinationals are floundering, trying to use technologies such as DRM to regain control and dominance.

A number of high-powered tech companies have banded together to create a "common antipiracy language."

Ignoring the reality that if you can hear it, you can copy it, members of the Coral Consortium want to come up with a set of technology specifications "that will let different kinds of copy protection be translated into other varieties," CNET News has reported.

Supported by HP, Matsushita Electric, Philips, Samsung , Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and DRM firm InterTrust Technologies, the consortium will try to do what no one has even come close to doing before.

And it all boils down to control.

Control Issues

Consumers who have shelled out for corporate product want to be able to play it anywhere, on anything, without hindrance. But the various heavies want punters to buy their stuff over everyone else's.

"Content owners, including record labels and movie studios, have been pushing hard behind the scenes for interoperability," says CNET. "They like the idea of industry-wide standards such as the DVD or CD, which allow one product to be played on hardware produced by any manufacturer."

That might be better phrased as, "hardware produced by any approved manufacturer."

As the Internet gains users, the world shrinks and so does the ability of the international corporate community to maintain control over markets and product.

A common DRM standard should fix that, the corporate interests hope and pray.

From Hackers to P2P

It might work among the (for the moment) majority of people in the world who've never heard of the Net and who still go to stores for their music and movies. But the balance is changing as more and more people get ISP accounts -- and discover that the online world is a very different place from the offline one.

A few years back, P2P wasn't the problem. Hackers were. They were into everything, changing index pages on government Web sites, doing weird stuff with telephone systems. And they still are, although no one talks much about it any more.

Were these people a bunch of evil-minded fiends bent on wreaking havoc and sowing destruction?

Nope. They were youngsters, for the most part, consumed with curiosity. Hacking was and is largely about peering into the abyss -- and hoping it won't peer back at you.

Bragging Rights

DRM, too, represents a kind of challenge, albeit nowhere near as interesting or complex or exciting as phreaking, say.

"The point ... is to spread the word of their exploits and earn praise from the rest of the groups, which is the main reward for 99 percent of the people involved," wrote Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times in his story "Secret Movie Moguls," in which he discusses a 17-year-old high- school student who's "trying to make a name for himself as a film distributor."

The student and his colleagues were members of MysticVCD -- "one of dozens of 'ripping' or 'release' groups that obtain, prepare, package and feed movies, songs and games into a secretive and complex distribution scheme that functions a bit like the illegal drug trade -- minus the bloodletting.... Instead of cash, the online underground is powered by bartering -- admission to these elite circles is granted only to those with something valuable to offer, such as computer parts or a pre-release copy of a DVD," said Healey.

Their discoveries don't stay secret for very long.

Floundering Corporations

Then you have a coterie of individuals -- many of them extremely clever and very technically minded -- who believe they've been ripped off by the labels and studios and aren't going to put up with it any more.

While all this goes on, the multinationals are floundering, trying to use technologies such as DRM to regain control and dominance.

Enter Coral. But while it gets ready to do its thing, the Moving Pictures Experts Group has been working since last summer to find an interoperability standard, and "neither group includes Apple or Microsoft, the two most prominent makers of copy- protection technology for consumers," CNET points out.

None of this bodes well for "interoperability."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/L...ion-37113.html


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Super-Powered Peer To Peer
John Borland

StreamCast Networks on Wednesday plans to release an updated version of its Morpheus file-swapping software, showcasing new search technology that could dramatically strengthen peer-to-peer networks.

Morpheus developers are looking to recapture their onetime leading role in the file-trading world with a network technology called Neonet, written by a pair of former Harvard students.

Dubbed "distributed hash tables," Neonet's technology transforms the way that searches happen on peer-to-peer networks, potentially making it more efficient to search a much larger number of computers and more easily surface rare files. Similar technology is also used by eDonkey, a competitor that is on the verge of overtaking Kazaa as the most widely used peer-to-peer service in the world.

"Peer-to-peer technology to date is not good enough yet," said Michael Weiss, StreamCast's chief executive officer. "People ask, does the world really need another peer-to- peer network? I think the answer is, yes we do, because nobody's gotten it right yet."

The advances in peer-to-peer networking come as programmers are increasingly looking at using the technology most often associated with file trading for new applications such as Internet calling or instant messaging.

Even Internet service provider EarthLink recently released its own version of file-swapping software, saying that it was a prelude to more advanced applications such as Net phone calls.

Yet for most Net users, the draw of file swapping remains paramount. The threat of lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America--or even criminal investigations from the federal government--has dampened some swapping enthusiasm, but millions of people still download and use file-trading software every week.

Swapping's evolution

The release of Morpheus' software, along with eDonkey's rise, marks the ascent of a third generation of peer-to-peer networking technology. Each successive generation has decentralized more functions, making the networks harder to shut down and helping to expand the power of searches.

The first generation of file-swapping services, led by Napster, were built around big centralized indexes that would keep track of what was available everywhere on the network. These would serve as matchmakers, linking a person searching for a file with the computer where it was stored.

That was efficient, allowing access to a huge range of material--but it also proved to be illegal. Courts said that Napster was responsible for a network where a vast amount of copyright infringement was happening and ultimately shut the company down.

The second generation of decentralized services, led by Gnutella and the FastTrack technology underlying Kazaa, soon emerged to take its place. Neither of these had central servers. They relied instead on passing search requests from computer to computer until a file was found, and then passed that information back to the original searcher.

That technology proved initially unwieldy, as millions of search requests passed through every computer on the network, creating traffic jams at low-bandwidth bottleneck points. That improved over time as programmers figured out ways to hand off these search requests more efficiently, but usually resulted in searches that included only part of a network--say 100,000 people instead of 2 million.

A U.S Appeals Court recently ruled that this kind of decentralized network was legal, unlike Napster, in part because the software distributors did not have direct control over what was happening on the networks.

"The (record labels and movie studios) urge a re-examination of the law in the light of what they believe to be proper public policy," the court wrote in that decision. "Doubtless, taking that step would satisfy the copyright owners' immediate economic aims. However, it would also alter general copyright law in profound ways with unknown ultimate consequences outside the present context."

No more ripple effect

The third generation of networks, represented by eDonkey and now Morpheus, as well as a host of smaller independent developers, makes the tools even more decentralized than before.

Distributed hash tables are essentially a way of taking a snapshot of where every file on the network is at a given moment and scattering bits of that information around the entire network.

To find a given file, a search request goes first to any computer on the network. That computer will point to a different computer that has a little more information on how to find the file. The third computer might have information on the file itself--or it might take a few more hops to find the computer with the right information.

The process is analogous to asking a succession of increasingly informed tour guides for directions, rather than accosting random people on the street. The information about the network in each place is constantly being updated as new files or computers are added.

"The main benefit is that it allows you to search the entire network instead of just a local area," said Jed McCaleb, the chief programmer for the eDonkey project. "It's probably faster than the way Gnutella works, and it's definitely technically superior."

StreamCast acquired its technology last year from Harvard students Ben Wilkin and Francis Crick, the grandson of the DNA pioneer and Nobel prize-winner of the same name. Wilkin said he'd started the project after seeing early inefficiencies in Gnutella several years ago, while Crick joined the project later.

The pair says their technology will take just three or four hops to find any file, no matter how rare, on a network of up to millions of computers.

This kind of technology also holds promise for the newer applications such as Net calling. Neonet and eDonkey each are focused on file swapping, but the same efficient network routing could be used to connect calls quickly, even among computers that are constantly popping on and off the Net, they say.

"It can be used for all sorts of distributed computing tools, and that's where we're going to go with it," Wilken said. "It really eliminates the need to have any centralized infrastructure."
http://news.com.com/Super-powered+pe...3-5397784.html


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New Software Allows File Sharing, Legally

As RIAA pushes to sue over 5,500 users for copyright infringement, a new software program attempts to get around the central argument: "Personal use" means you can share your music with a small, select group of friends, not everyone on Kaaza.

Grouper was introduced yesterday by Grouper Networks. Instead of allowing at-will downloading, this program lets up to 30 of your friends and family share what's on your computer. It does not allow anyone to download files, just view/listen to them off your computer.

Grouper Networks hopes this free program will get around the music industry's claim that trading music is a criminal offense when done with a standard file-sharing program.

Not being a lawyer, I'll not pass judgement. But, if "personal use" means I can loan CDs to someone I know, it appears Grouper has solved the biggest problem facing users. It also will give new headaches to the music industry.
http://www.audiographics.com/agd/s6100604.htm


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Restoring File-Sharing's Good Name
Paul Andrews

Not too many companies that were around during the dawn of the personal computer revolution are still in business. Intel, Apple Computer, Microsoft, IBM — after them, names come to mind a little more slowly.

But one little guy from the old days, Laplink, is still with us. Formerly known as Traveling Software, the Kirkland company is rolling out an inventive suite of tools under the banner of "reinventing ourselves."

Those words come not from the irrepressible Mark Eppley, Laplink's founder. Instead, they are new Chief Executive Thomas Koll's way of communicating Laplink's updated vision.

There's a lot going on here, including a better way of moving your old PC to your new PC (settings, programs and files), of ensuring security over the Internet, controlling your PC remotely and fighting viruses.

But most intriguing may be Laplink's approach to exchanging information over the Internet. Basically, the company wants to restore file-sharing's good name.

It's a tall order, and questions remain about whether Laplink can succeed. But the company deserves kudos for at least attempting a different strategy in a highly problematic venue.

Anyone who used Napster in the early days understands the Internet's prowess for sharing digital content. Before the music industry got involved, before users knew what they were doing could be considered illegal, file- sharing was a brave new world of fans connecting with counterparts all over the world.

Then Napster got greedy, the music industry turned combative and lawyers found a new field of practice. Today, file-sharing ranks somewhere between shoplifting and wife-swapping.

Sure you can go to Kazaa or other free services and download all the stuff you want. In doing so, you not only invite that slimy feeling of digital thievery, you enter a lasting relationship with spyware, adware, pop-ups, viruses and similar interactive vermin.

File-sharing doesn't have to be this way, Koll says. If you want to swap files with family, friends and co-workers, you ought to be able to do it in a way that doesn't make you feel like you're trolling the Web's Tenderloin district.

Laplink has come up with ShareDirect, which enables Windows users to share folders and files with one another over the Internet — without the threat of viruses or the technical hoops of FTP (file transfer protocol) or VPN (virtual private networks). And without resorting to the most common, but least safe and efficient, means of file-sharing: e-mail.

Sharing a file with another PC becomes as easy as dragging a file from one folder to another on your computer. Just select the file or folder from the other computer and pull it to yours. Laplink and the Internet take care of the rest.

Right now, you're limited to Windows PCs, but Koll said Macintosh and Linux versions are being considered. Corporate firewalls will block the system, but ShareDirect can detect them and establish a 256-bit encrypted connection.

Music seems an obvious application here, which is where things get dicey. Koll acknowledged Laplink hasn't discussed ShareDirect with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). When it does, its defense will be that sharing over Laplink is akin to swapping a CD. It's a distinction that may get some pushback from the RIAA.

But ShareDirect isn't just, or even primarily, about music. Koll thinks data, photos and home videos are well-suited. For editors, publishers and content providers, text and multimedia file-sharing becomes far easier and safer. Small businesses and home offices have countless file-sharing applications.

For ShareDirect to work, it needs to reach a user level that kicks in the "network effect" — users begetting more users. For now, it's a worthy attempt at addressing an Internet dilemma.

ShareDirect's release is scheduled for mid-October. Till then, a free kick-the- tires version can be downloaded from laplink.com.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...37_paul04.html


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MP3, Video File Sharing to Become Standardized

MP3 music or digital movie files paid for and downloaded on the Internet can now be enjoyed on most players, including those manufactured by Samsung Electronics, Sony and Philips. This is made possible by the ciphering technology of digital rights management (DRM), which allows only the player that downloads the file to be able to play that file, making universal downloading easier, but illegal copying harder.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced Tuesday at Sunnyvale, California that seven companies -- Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp., Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., InterTrust Technologies Corp. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. -- have joined the Coral Consortium to establish a framework to promote inter-operability. The companies have agreed to establish a standard for DRM that will allow a consumer to purchase a license that will decipher a password applied to software and play it.

Organizing the Coral Consortium is expected to expand the range of legal uses for fee- charging contents by solving the incompatibility of DRM -- a problem thus far, according to Ko Chung-gon, an executive officer at Samsung Electronics.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...410050039.html


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Sampling & File Sharing: Insane Poetry Sounds Off
Frank Meyer

The Sept. 7th ruling by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that sampling recordings without permission of the person who owns the copyright to the recording is in violation of the law, no matter how short or unrecognizable the sample. Though the ruling was intended to clear up the copyright status of digital "sampling," it has many people fearing it could spell the end of hip hop music as we know it. No longer will artists like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys or De La Soul be able to create the sonic collages using multiple layers of samples that marked the glory days of rap music (the early ‘90s).

While earlier decisions have tackled the copyright implications of sampling, they dealt solely with copyrights to the song itself (often held by a songwriter or music publisher), not the incarnation of a song in a particular recording (often held by a performer or recording company). So whereas before, you could sample a one-note horn stab from a song, but not the entire melody, now you cannot sample even the tiniest element of a song without facing prosecution.

Additionally, the Recording Industry Association of America has been blaming sampling, file trading and music piracy on the recent slump in CD sales. Despite a recent announcement from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) that U.S. music sales, which are about 40% of world music volume, grew 3.9% in the first half of 2004, vs. a 12% drop during the period last year, the RIAA still claims that the music business is being killed by piracy and that artists are losing money from unlicensed sampling. In fact, they just sued another 762 music file traders in their ongoing efforts to squash the cyber rush for free music.

We spoke with rap vet Cyco of Southern California group Insane Poetry, one of the originators of the hard, horror-core sound popularized by the likes of Eminem and Insane Clown Posse, about the issue of sampling in hip hop. Check out what he has to say.

Do you think the court decision making ALL samples illegal without permission will hurt hip hop?
Cyco: Yes, it hurts hip-hop cuz that is the very essence of the art form. It’s different when you blatantly jack a song, but a music loop or three-second loop is not jacking, especially when its chopped up.

Will this ruling make it impossible or too expensive to make musical collage albums like Public Enemy and De La Soul used to back in the day?
Cyco: Depending on if the artist can get the permission to use the samples to make a collage CD like PE, De La or Insane Poetry.

Do you try to clear every sample you wanna use or just wait till someone comes after you?
Cyco: Most rappers I know just wait till someone comes after them.

If you don't sample, then where do you get your beats? Do you play an instrument?
Cyco: I get beats either from a drum machine or off of the Reason 2.5 program.

Have you been sampled without permission? If so, did it bother you?
Cyco: I have sampled and, no, it never bothered me, but back then it wasn't an issue.

Do you think this an attack against rap, or will they go after rock guys too?
Cyco: There always is gonna be an attack against rap. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know why.

Will this mark the end of hip hop or is it just another hurdle rappers have to get over?
Cyco: For that old New York hip hop sound, it does ring a death knell, but rappers will get around it.

Do you think that music piracy and online file sharing is hurting the music business?
Cyco: The problem is that so many artists now make albums with only one or two good songs on them, so of course they are scared of downloading and file sharing. Once you hear that once decent single, there’s no reason to buy the whole record, ‘cause it sucks. Hopefully, if you are making quality records, people might share or download one song, like it, and go buy the album to support the artist. So in some ways, it’s another form of promotion. Is it hurting the music industry? Well, it ain’t hurting me!

So should people be able to get free music on the net?
Cyco: I'm not sure. I'm a bit torn on the subject.
http://www.g4techtv.com/players/feat...ounds_Off.html

[JackSpratts]

TMO Reports - Analyst 'Teen Tour' Shows iPod Dominating Music Player Market
Staff

A survey of nearly 600 teenager in eight states shows the Apple iPod and iPod mini are dominating "mindshare and market share" with those under 16 years of age, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

Of those surveyed, 16% said they currently own a iPod product. 25% said they planned on buying one by years end. Of the most wanted Christmas gift this year, an iPod ranked fourth among the teenagers behind clothes, money, and a car.

32% of the polled students were looking to buy a portable digital audio player with 12 months. Of those, 75% expected they will buy an iPod.

The survey was released Wednesday and obtained by The Mac Observer. Of the 600 polled, 40% were male and 60% female. The average household income in the regions where the survey was conducted was about US$64,000 versus the national average of $42,000.

Mr. Munster and his research team also found that illegal file sharing is still very popular among teenagers. 65% indicated they downloaded music on a regular basis. Of that number, 73% have used an illegal file sharing site such as Kazaa or Limeware.

"We believe many of these students will seek legitimate alternatives to illegal file sharing as they get older," Mr. Munster wrote. "We expect file sharing to become increasingly difficult as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and record labels use technology and the law to stem the bleeding."

Mr. Munster did not ask those surveyed which personal computer they specifically own or use, TMO has learned.

Mr. Munster continues to recommend Apple as a stock to buy with an 'Outperform' ranking.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/10/06.10.shtml


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Sony To Take On iTunes In Europe

Sony next week will launch a marketing blitz in Europe for its new Connect music download store, its latest effort to derail the runaway momentum of Apple Computer's iTunes service.

The Japanese consumer electronics giant said on Thursday it would heavily promote the Connect service in new advertisements for four Walkman products, including the recently launched NW-HD1 player.

Also, Sony said its second wave of European expansion is still on track for later this year as the battle for Europe's Web-savvy music fans intensifies.

On Wednesday, Apple said it would announce a series of European launches next month that would enable music fans in most of Western Europe to buy song downloads from iTunes.

The rivals chose to announce their expansion plans at the Popkomm music trade show in Berlin.

The event has expanded its focus in recent years from a talent-finding occasion to a more high-tech affair as the music industry seeks to find new formats such as downloads, cell phone ring tones and DVDs to substitute for falling CD sales.

Scores of combatants
But competition is fierce. Scores of companies, including Sony, Apple and retail chain Fnac, have entered Europe's fledgling download market looking to get a cut of a promising new business.

Meanwhile, the world's largest record labels, including Universal Music and EMI, are determined to see industry-backed services flourish in Europe to woo back music fans from free file-sharing networks.

Sony and Apple currently operate music download services in Britain, Germany and France. While Sony has not released any figures, industry analysts suspect it is trailing Apple's iTunes in Europe.

Sony and Apple are keeping their launch plans a closely guarded secret. However, Sony said in July that the Nordic and Benelux regions, plus Austria and Switzerland, were markets it expected to enter in the future.

Analysts say it will take a few years before download services provide a significant sales boost for music companies. One major problem is the bewildering array of competing technologies.

Peter Durr, senior marketing and sales manager for Sony Europe, said it is crucial for Sony and its rivals to reach a consensus on making various compression and antipiracy technologies interoperable, thus giving the consumer more choice.

"We all have to sell music, not formats. That's what consumers want," Durr said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5390339.html


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The whine of the robber baron

Ballmer: iPods Packed With Stolen Tunes
Andy McCue

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to a gathering of reporters here, didn't pass up the opportunity to take several digs at archrival Apple Computer.

At the heart of his criticism of Apple was DRM (digital rights management) technology, which aims to help content providers such as record labels and movie studios control their intellectual property--or at least ensure all royalties are paid and copyrights observed.

"We've had DRM (digital rights management) in Windows for years," Ballmer said. "The most common format of music on an iPod is stolen."

He added: "Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier to use."

However, Ballmer conceded it isn't going to be an easy battle to win. "Most people still steal music," he said. "We can build the technology, but there are still ways for people to steal music."

The Microsoft chief also claimed some domestic familiarity with the issue.

"My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it," he joked.
http://news.com.com/Ballmer+iPods+pa...3-5395870.html


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GB

Net Song-Swappers Face New Anti-Piracy Push
Bernhard Warner

A new round of lawsuits aimed at prolific Internet song-swappers could be announced as early as Thursday as music officials meet in London to discuss the next step in their global war on Internet piracy.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and British Phonographic Industry scheduled a news conference in the city for Thursday to announce "further measures in the fight against Internet piracy." IFPI and BPI officials declined on Wednesday to say whether that meant new legal action.

To date, more than 3,000 people have been sued in the United States, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada and there has been speculation that more Internet file-sharers will be sued.

Music industry officials in Britain and France, the world's third and fourth largest music markets, have said they will join the legal fight if music fans continue to download free songs from Internet file-sharing networks and share them with others.

Music sales have been showing some sign of recovery, but the piracy-battered industry is still keen to use legal threats to limit usage of popular file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey to stifle a rampant online trade in free music.

BPI officials had said they would not sue in Britain until paid download services such as Apple Computer's iTunes and Napster had established themselves and campaigns to make consumers aware of the law had been run.

"Lawsuits would not surprise me at all. The BPI has been saying for a long time they would do this. They just haven't said when. I would suspect the BPI would feel that by now anyone sharing songs online should know better," said Struan Robertson, a Glasgow-based technology lawyer for law firm Masons.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6431520


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Trojan Pretends To Do Good
Dan Ilett

Security company Symantec is warning Internet users of a Trojan horse that removes adware but alters the settings in computers.

While Downloader.Lunii eliminates a variety of adware programs--often known as spyware--the Trojan also tries to maliciously change the security settings of Windows PCs and then downloads files from unknown Web sites, Symantec said.

"It's common that a Trojan will try to change as much security as possible," said Nigel Beighton, Symantec's director of enterprise strategy. "They often try to change Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee software."

Symantec classified Lunii as a low-risk Trojan.

Trojan horses are often referred to as spyware because of their ability to stealthily run in the background of a computer without being detected. Antispam organization Spamhaus recently warned that spyware has taken control of tens of thousands of networked computers. Spammers and hackers then use these "zombies" to launch denial-of-service and spam attacks, the company said.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to criminalize the act of altering PC configurations, taking control and downloading software onto a PC without the owner's consent.

Symantec has recommended users to switch off any unnecessary services--Windows functions such as printer and file sharing--and to keep security patches up to date.
http://news.com.com/Trojan+pretends+...3-5400982.html


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eDonkey’s still a dream

Making XP a Welcome Guest on Mac
Leander Kahney

I just acquired a brand new Windows XP Pro computer. It's not the fastest machine on the block, but it cost $250. Plus, it has a dual-monitor Power Mac G5 attached.

My new PC is Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. Launched Tuesday, Version 7 of the PC emulator lets Mac users run Windows software or connect to PC- only peripherals or networks.

After testing it for several days, I'm very impressed. Virtual PC is fast and stable. It is remarkably full-featured and works pretty seamlessly. Microsoft is often knocked by Mac users, but Virtual PC proves the company can turn out very good software for the Mac. (Microsoft acquired Virtual PC from Connectix in 2003. Version 7 is the second update of the software from Microsoft).

I installed Virtual PC on two test machines: an eMac (1 GHz, 640 MB of RAM) and a Power Mac G5 (1.6 GHz, 1.25 GB of RAM), both running Panther (Mac OS 10.3.5).

Microsoft says Version 7 was "significantly rewritten" for the G5 processor, and is trumpeting significantly improved performance, claiming 10 percent to 30 percent speed gains on previous versions.

On the eMac, VPC was perfectly useable -- for short periods of time. For many tasks, the interface is pretty snappy, but it still suffers from sporadic lags and delays, which makes it maddening to use for anything but specific tasks. Admittedly, the eMac isn't loaded with RAM, which would likely improve performance.

But on the G5, VPC's performance is perfectly acceptable. OK, it's slower than a typical XP- capable PC, but in general, VPC is responsive enough not to drive you bonkers.

I spent a couple of pleasant evenings tooling around on the web, watching videos, playing music and downloading Windows-only P2P software. Though a little jittery at times, VPC didn't make me purple with rage, as I'd come to expect from previous versions.

Installation was effortless, trouble-free and surprisingly quick: about 20 minutes. I didn't time it, but it seemed quicker than installing Windows on a real PC. Setup was certainly much easier than configuring a bona fide PC. VPC automatically detects things like network settings and printers, so there are no setup wizards to slog through. Launch Internet Explorer, and VPC automatically whisks you onto the internet.

Downloading the latest security patches from Microsoft was a breeze, and luckily VPC wasn't attacked before they were installed (this version of XP includes SP2). Even though OS X is generally well-protected, Windows XP on VPC is by no means immune from viruses, Trojans, spyware and other nasties. Unfortunately, antivirus software must be purchased separately.

Here at Wired News, there's a Windows PC under my desk that's used for only one task -- a simple procedure in our online publishing system that works only with Internet Explorer on Windows. Happily, it also works fine with IE on VPC.

I also watched MTV's machinima Videos Mods. You can't watch them in Safari, but again, they work just fine in VPC -- if the videos are run in the foreground. The video gets jerky if other apps or windows are launched.

Likewise, music playback in VPC is fine in the foreground but jittery anywhere else. The G5, on the other hand, happily plays music in the background, and even rips CDs, while running VPC and several other apps.

There are plenty of nice touches. VPC supports Windows keyboard shortcuts, dragging and dropping files from OS X, and cut, paste and copy. VPC puts a nifty Start menu in OS X's dock that allows apps to be launched right from the desktop, just like the Start menu in Windows. Also, applications running in VPC have their own dock icons, making it easy to see what software is running on the host and hosted machine.

Startup isn't super fast: about 65 seconds to the login screen, and three- and-a-half minutes to get fully up and running. Shutdown is quicker. VPC has a "fast save" feature that shuts down XP and VPC in one go. There are no "Save document?" dialog boxes, and the system is restored to the same state on relaunch.

As a test, I downloaded several of the most popular applications from Download.com. Not everything worked. The file-sharing eDonkey application wouldn't launch (no idea why) and a scrolling shooter game said it was "unable to create 3-D environment."

VPC's graphics support OS X's OpenGL, but there's no native support for 3-D graphics hardware, much to the disappointment of the forums. And attempts to connect to Wired News' VPN failed.

But in general, VPC Version 7 is a very worthy upgrade, good for Mac users who need a PC for occasional tasks. And it likely runs like a champ on Apple Computer's latest dual-processor hardware.

VPC requires a G3, G4 or G5 processor running at 700 MHz or better; 512 MB of RAB; 3 GB of hard drive space; and Mac OS 10.2.8. and up. By itself, VPC costs $130. Bundled with Windows XP Professional, it sells for $250; with XP Home Edition it costs $220. An upgrade to Version 7 will set you back $100.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125...w=wn_tophead_7


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Deaf To Reason

The recording industry keeps playing bad cop instead of embracing change
David S. Bernstein

MAYBE THE RIAA doesn't mind the PR fallout of dragging 12-year-old girls into court for listening to Nelly, but the Justice Department has shown little inclination for that kind of grief.

IT’S BEEN A YEAR since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) brought lawsuits against 261 people, many here in Massachusetts, for sharing music files over the Internet without permission from the copyright holder. (See "Sue You, Sue Me Blues," News and Features, September 26, 2003.) Since then, the buzz about the recording industry’s war against music- swapping services, such as the phenomenally popular Kazaa, has died. Online distributors — and Wall Street — are much more interested in the new, legally approved services debuting almost weekly: iTunes, VirginDigital, Rhapsody. Do customers prefer a streamed "jukebox" or straight downloading? Would they rather pay per song, or through a monthly subscription?

The only ones still interested in the legal battle, it seems, are the recording companies themselves, who are letting these new online opportunities slip through their fingers as they remain obsessed with file-sharing miscreants and their enablers. In fact, those companies, through the RIAA, have actually stepped up their assault. "It is absolutely hotter than ever in the legal world," says Mark Fischer, an intellectual-property attorney with the Boston office of law firm Fish & Richardson. Last Thursday, the trade group filed 762 additional lawsuits against members of the general populace, bringing the total of such actions to about 5400.

But they really want the big fish: the companies that make and distribute the peer-to-peer (P2P) software. So, earlier this year they sued the maker of Grokster, a program that enables P2P users to download music files from any other computer that uses the same software. Joe in Milwaukee can copy the latest Jill Scott single from Jane in Phoenix, with no copyright police checking permission slips. The RIAA argued in the Grokster case that the software’s manufacturer should be held accountable for the lawlessness it fosters. On August 19, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said no.

The infuriated association is now trying to overturn the ruling through legislation, which it’s desperately trying to move through Congress before it recesses at the end of this week. The RIAA is also backing several other pieces of legislation, including one that would curtail the advertisements that provide the P2P networks’ revenue. "Their approach has been to attack the customers, the companies, and the revenue streams," says Sam Yagan, CEO of MetaMachine, which operates the eDonkey P2P service. "If they had spent all that money and effort [on] making a deal with [P2P networks], I think they could have co-opted the whole system by now."

Instead, however, the recording companies seem hell-bent on squashing the cheaters and oblivious to the emergence of potentially profitable distribution models. Apple’s year-old iTunes, which sells two million individual song downloads a week — with copyright permission — for 99 cents a pop, has demonstrated that many, many people will pay for a convenient, well-organized, legal, pay-per-download service. Wal-Mart, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Sony, America Online, eBay, and Buy.com have followed Apple’s lead. Others, including Virgin and telecommunications provider RCN, are testing monthly subscription services. Indeed, the RIAA estimates that the total number of legal, paid music downloads rose from 19 million in the second half of 2003 to 54 million in the first half of 2004. Add to that "streaming" services that offer radio-like listening access without permanent downloading.

In other words, there are lots of ways to try to squeeze pennies out of music lovers, and lots of serious companies are already trying to do so. (Even more want in on the action: Yahoo, Viacom, and others are expected to enter the market soon.) "This all validates how much music means to people," Fischer says. The recording industry, which owns the product everybody is so eager to get, seems to be the group with the least idea of how to take advantage of it.

INSTEAD, THE industry has stepped up efforts to attack music-lovers in court. Actually, it is now suing "John Does" who own IP addresses with large stashes of shared music files, since the courts ruled last December that Internet-service providers don’t have to cough up the names behind those IP numbers. The effect is the same; the RIAA eventually unearths users’ identities, and forces them to settle — usually for around $5000 each — to avoid potentially huge penalties. "You’ve got an industry where you view every customer like they are coming into your store planning to rob you," Fischer says.

However, since the odds of any individual being hit by one of those lawsuits remain negligible, this litigation orgy has done little to deter inveterate file-sharers. (On the other hand, RIAA spokesperson Jonathan Lamy is probably correct in suggesting that without the lawsuits, illegal file-swapping would be even more rampant.) Illegal downloads still dwarf legal ones, a status quo that threatens to prevent the growth of the paying market, since none of the legal music- distribution services is reliably profitable yet.

You’d think the recording industry would be working to make them profitable. Think back to the fledgling music-video days of the early 1980s: record labels not only made the videos, they offered up their stars for interviews and promotions, and set up deals for exclusive rights or early access to hot videos. The industry is just beginning to do the same for digital distribution companies, instead of treating them like part of an assault on its precious, fading compact-disc sales. Sites such as iTunes now tout exclusive tracks and pre-release access to singles, along with all manner of artist promotion, such as Tom Petty’s playlist suggestions.

The industry could boost the legitimate services by opening up its catalogue beyond the roughly 700,000 titles it makes available to them now. Consider that eDonkey has about 100 million unique titles available at any given time, according to Yagan. But the best way the labels could help these legitimate sites gain traction, and lure users away from the Kazaas and Groksters, is with a sizable copyright-payment discount. Currently, about 65 to 70 cents from each song download go to the copyright holder, usually a record company. That sets a floor for how low prices among music-download services can go; at present, rates fall between 79 and 99 cents a song. A dramatic discount from the recording companies would allow those prices to drop, and could make a huge impact on the business. When RealNetworks offered a half-price promotion last month, it sold five times its usual weekly number of songs. Of course, 25-cent song downloads would make downloading an album considerably cheaper than buying the $16 CD, so the industry isn’t ready to make that plunge.

But the labels are missing the fact that store-bought CDs, while probably retaining a place in the consumer’s world, cannot provide what today’s users want: total portability of their music. If users can connect electronically to every song or album they have ever paid for, wherever they may roam, well, the CD just can’t match that. "Culturally, people in the recording business are still slow in recognizing the change that is happening," says Fischer.

And the industry’s blind hatred of P2P has it dragging its feet on another opportunity: the illegal services themselves. Companies such as Sharman Networks, which produces Kazaa, aren’t hackers seeking the thrill of thumbing their nose at Sony; they have a viable business model, driven primarily through advertising. The record companies could be getting a piece of that action. MetaMachine’s Yagan admits that he has been waiting — practically begging — to make a deal with the record companies. "There is no reason the music industry can’t make money through peer-to-peer distribution and through direct purchase," he says. Yagan has had discussions with "senior people," but no deal to date.

IT’S PROBABLY no coincidence that those discussions began after the Grokster decision in August, which left the recording industry scrambling for solid ground. Just as makers of videocassette recorders are not liable for the use of those products to record illegally, Grokster and other P2P software companies are off the hook for users’ behavior.

The RIAA issued a terse two-paragraph press release after the decision, calling on P2P companies to step up to their "responsibility as corporate citizens to address the rampant illegal use of their networks." Sure they will — right after VCR makers do, or the makers of TiVo and other digital recording devices, for that matter.

The RIAA is considering appealing to the Supreme Court, Lamy says. But first it’s trying to get Congress to undo the decision via the pending Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act, or Induce Act for short. Sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee chairs Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), this bill would make it illegal to "lure consumers into breaking the law," as the RIAA says, by distributing P2P software.

The bill was originally introduced back in June, but gained urgency after the Grokster ruling. Unfortunately for its proponents, the Induce Act has run into trouble. The bill’s initial wording brought a panicked response from technology-industry groups, who feared that it would unintentionally outlaw recording devices as varied as iPods and TiVo.

Hatch and Leahy issued a new draft in late September. But the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington, DC, quickly released a letter warning that the bill would potentially affect makers of iTunes, instant-messaging systems, and e-mail software, among others. Groups as varied as the civil-liberties-minded Electronic Frontier Foundation and the conservative Heritage Foundation have joined forces to oppose the act. "The parties are still talking and working on it," says Tracy Schmaler, Leahy’s press secretary.

The Induce Act is not the only legislation the RIAA wants to push through before the congressional hiatus. The Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act, which seeks to make the use of camcorders in movie theaters a federal offense, also includes provisions outlawing the distribution of pre-release materials, specifically over P2P networks. Versions of the bill passed the Senate in June and the House last week. But there is no time for a formal conference committee to iron out the differences between the two, according to Don Stewart, spokesman for Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), a co-sponsor of the bill. Cornyn and others are trying to work something out quickly in private meetings.

Similarly endangered is another Hatch-Leahy bill, the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act. This one would give the Justice Department authority to bring civil cases against copyright infringers. Currently, Attorney General John Ashcroft can bring only criminal cases, which he has been loath to do. Maybe the RIAA doesn’t mind the PR fallout of dragging 12-year-old girls into court for listening to Nelly, but the Justice Department has shown little inclination for that kind of grief. Legislation is moving forward at the state level too; California just put restrictions on file-swapping into law, and others are working on similar bills. Whether they will have any practical effect remains to be seen.

That’s been true of all the recording industry’s flailing actions since it first recognized a threat from P2P networks. As Fischer points out, investors aren’t betting heavily on the industry’s top players to win this war. That might change if the RIAA starts spending more time on developing the future rather than fighting it.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/...s/04176012.asp


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Filters, FUD, and Democracy

Shackling the innocent may not discover the guilty
Richard Chirgwin

Those who want to see the Internet filtered, regardless of incidental consequences like the closure of lots of small ISPs, are gaining ground in the wake of the series of arrests around Australia this week.

It's damned hard to argue against the proposition that “something must be done”, because the spectre of child pornography and exploitation is too ghastly to ignore.

But it's also too damned easy to fall into what Yes Prime Minister called “the politician's syllogism”:

(a) Something must be done;

(b) This is something;

(c) Therefore we must do this.

Now. Let's ignore for a moment the fate of the smaller ISPs – and by the way ignore the disproportionate impact this would have outside the big cities, in places where one or two local ISPs provide the only competition to Telstra – and focus instead on the proposition that filtering is the necessary, inevitable, and best way to approach the problem.

Filtering and Democracy

The first concern I have is that it's always hard to defend abstract rights in the face of specific threats. But the way current proposals for filtering are constructed – by, for example, the Australia First party and the Australia Institute – filtering would represent a genuine threat to democracy both immediately and in the future.

The immediate threat is simple: filters are not open to genuine scrutiny. Nearly all of them are created outside of Australia, and many are known to exhibit the political bias of their authors in their behaviour.

Even if this were not so, it's impossible to verify a filter's behaviour without access to its blacklist – and those blacklist are proprietary secrets held by companies which are mostly domiciled in other countries. We cannot know whether “filter X” is blocking legitimate information, except by anecdote.

I don't have to state a position on censorship in general to point out that this is contrary to Australia's censorship practise. For films, console games and books, the content subject to censorship is known to the public; if Lord of the Rings is given an M rating, citizens can find out why that happened and make an informed decision about whether a 13-year-old is fit to see the movie.

But censorship in secret is not democratic.

In the longer term, filtering poses an even greater danger to democracy: it creates a mechanism subject to abuse by a hostile government or agency – or even a corrupt individual with access to the technology.

That's because the presence of a filter in the path creates a point at which the filter's operator can capture information about users attempting to reach blocked sites. This is, in the corporate market, given as a selling point by filter vendors: you don't just know that you've blocked inappropriate content, you can identify which users are trying to misuse the company's Internet connection.

Whether this is right or wrong on the business desktop is still hotly debated (my view is that the company pays for the connection, and as long as it makes its rules known, it has the right to impose rules on how the connection is used). But as a regime imposed on roughly half the population of a country, it's unequivocally wrong.

What the Australia Institute and Family First are advocating is a machinery whose abuse would reach far beyond suppressing the trade in child pornography. Should a government wish to know who is interested in asylum-seeker issues, for example, all it needs to do is put the relevant Websites into the blocklist, and get the filters to capture user data on the way through.

It's a very dangerous mechanism, and like many of the instruments of spying, once created it's hard to dismantle.

Family First might be too unschooled to understand this, but the Australia Institute has been around longer, and reads (and conducts) enough research to be moderately clued.

Effectiveness

Before I address the effectiveness of filtering, I have to take a side-glance at the Family First party's assertion that national filtering would only cost $45 million.

I'd love to know which vendor sales rep ran that calculation through the spreadsheet, so I could challenge every assumption point-by-point. Yardsticks for such things are few, but if we look at the $100 million or so BigPond had to spend just upgrading its mail system, it's hard to credit that a greenfields implementation of a complex and demanding technology would be had so cheaply. I suspect the party's information is garnered from price lists rather than TCO studies...

The Australia Institute certainly reads enough of the research for Michael Flood to offer us this gem in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:

"The review of the Broadcasting Services Act in May by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts found a national system of blocking access to blacklists of websites and web addresses was feasible, and would not slow computer response times.”

(The “feasibility” stated in this report was sorely qualified. The very first statement the report makes about filtering, in the Executive Summary on page 3, is this: “technologies have not developed to the point where they can feasibly filter R-rated content hosted overseas that is not subject to a restricted access system.” The report also states that "Complex analysis filtering technologies are not practical in a national proxy filtering system.”)

However, the feasibility of filtering isn't the big issue. What's really at issue is its effectiveness – and here is where filtering on a national scale falls down. The sites we're talking about – sites posted by people who already know they're comitting a criminal act – are extremely mobile. A blacklist filter catches the site's identity in a snapshot; the site relocates itself; the filters have to catch up; and the cycle starts again.

Filters would make it harder for consumers of illegal content to find the location, and that's a good thing. But the greatest evil is on the supply side – the so-called “rings” of paedophiles who abuse the children, take the pictures, and host the Websites. Their access to their market is inhibited by filtering – but their more active crimes, committed against individual children, occur before the Website is hosted.

And, as even Flood admitted in his column, Website filters don't work on peer-to-peer networks.

The P2P Problem

I fear that Flood is already behind the times – as are all arguments about Web filtering. According to a study by P2P technology provider CacheLogic, P2P traffic has already overtaken Web traffic on the Internet.

Now, a study created by a company with an interest in a particular result, with results yet to be replicated as far as I know, can't be given absolute credence. But even if the numbers are inaccurate, the premise is sound: P2P traffic is already a very significant proportion of overall Internet traffic.

The next theatre in the war against content crimes is in the P2P networks – and here, the simplistic answer of “filter the content” is nearly impossible to pursue.

Filtering is superficially attractive. But before we call on policy-makers to pursue it, someone needs to set down the principles under which filtering is acceptible in a democratic society. It has to use open blacklists, so that the political discrimination already observed in other countries doesn't pollute Australia's access to information; it has to be anonymous, using filters which themselves don't capture user information (this must be considered part of a separate regime, with user information only captured under an appropriate court order); and it should be funded not by ISPs but by the government – because there isn't a good reason to bankrupt the honest so as to capture the evil.

And the regime has to recognise that filtering already fights yesterday's battle. Tomorrow's battle, against paedophiles on P2P darknets, is a much more difficult challenge.
http://www1.commsworld.com.au/NASApp...NT&from=h ome


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Software Speeds File-Sharing Service
Dawn C. Chmielewski

Napster founder Shawn Fanning's little dorm-room project at Northeastern University in Boston is the stuff of technological legend.

Meet another pair of dorm-room tinkerers from across the Charles River at Harvard who have improved on Fanning's original approach to Internet file-sharing.

Like many a college freshman, Ben Wilken was acquainted with Napster and its progeny. What intrigued him most -- aside from getting free music -- was solving what he considered the technology's main shortcoming: the inability to search the entire network for a rare file.

Wilken's work attracted the interest of classmate Francis Crick, grandson of the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Together, these two recent graduates have created Neonet. The technology powers the new version StreamCast's Morpheus file-sharing service that will be unveiled today at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

Neonet technology speeds the search process by distributing the information needed to locate a specific file. As a new file is added, the unique computer code associated with it is indexed. Clusters of computers keep an index of a range of files.

This broadens the scope of the search because multiple computers spread across the network are keeping track of files.

``It was kind of an idea whose time had come,'' said Wilken, noting that students at MIT were exploring similar ways of organizing online content. ``But we did it our own way. We developed it for file-sharing. We applied it to search terms.''

Wilken struck out on his own, working day jobs and rising $100,000 from family and friends to support the development of Neonet. Crick, still a student, slept in the basement of Wilken's Cambridge home and worked for free.

Ultimately, Wilken sold his company, Skyris Networks, to Stirling Bridge in August 2003. It now licenses the technology to Morpheus.

Enhanced search tends to speed downloads as well because it locates more sources to contribute to the download of an individual file. In one test, Crick found 827 sources of a single Mozart composition on Morpheus.

That's different from Napster's approach, in which a central computer kept a list of every file on the network and operated like an old-fashioned telephone operator, connecting those searching for a particular file with someone else distributing it.

And Neonet also is a departure from the FastTrack network that powers Kazaa and Grokster. FastTrack assigns the search task to individual computers on the network. This approach tends to confine searches, at least initially, to small clusters of computers. It only broadens the search if the file can't be found.

StreamCast is touting the new, improved version of the Morpheus software in ads on college campuses.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...9848049.htm?1c


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Sony's Home Server Stores 1 Terabyte
Michael Kanellos

A terabyte of storage sounds like something a missile base may need, but Sony has started selling a consumer device with that much room.

The Vaio Type X, which is available only in Japan, is a home server that contains four 250GB hard drives: two for PC files and two others for audiovisual materials such as stored TV programs and music. The machine, which costs about $5,000, also comes with seven TV tuners and a special interface that lets consumers see thumbnails of what they record.

Sony released the device at CEATEC, a large tech show taking place here this week.

The unusual configuration results from the vagaries of Japanese television. The country has seven network stations, and cable is not as common as in the United States. With Type X, people can record shows from all seven stations automatically and then delete what they don't want to watch.

The 500GB dedicated to TV is enough to record six channels for five-and-a- half days nonstop, a Sony representative said. The interface helps consumers sift through the morass. It lets customers look at thumbnails of all the programs recorded during the same time slot or search for a program by name. It also groups shows by categories--sports or children's programming, for example--selected by the owner.

A hard partition exists between the PC drives and the audiovisual drives; however, owners can manually slip a file from one side to the other.

Sony does not have plans to bring the device to the United States.

In related news, Sony released a new version of its all-in-one W computer. The new model has speakers jutting out from the sides, so it operates as a home stereo when not functioning as a PC. It is being released in Japan, and Sony will study whether conditions are right to bring another all-in-one PC to the United States.
http://news.com.com/Sonys+home+serve...3-5397103.html


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Copyright and the Mouse: How Disney's Mickey Mouse Changed the World
Jack Kapica

Digital Journal — It all started with the Mouse.

A few years ago, the Walt Disney Company noticed that its star, Mickey Mouse, was aging. At the turn of the century, he would be almost 75 — venerable for a mouse, and more so for one in the entertainment field. And that meant the little black rodent would end up in corporate hell.

Corporate hell, in Disney’s case, was the public domain. Once in it, Mickey would belong to the world, and no longer be obliged to toil solely in Disney’s vineyards.

Mickey was born in 1928, when he made his debut in a three-minute cartoon called Plane Crazy. It was one of the first works by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, who founded their animation studio in a Hollywood garage in 1923. The manic mouse proved so popular that they brought him back in Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon.

Walt Disney died in 1966, survived by the mouse that helped him earn 30 Academy Awards and amass a fortune with a string of subsequent hits such as Bambi, Fantasia, Pinocchio and Dumbo.

But Disney’s death also ushered in a long creative drought for the House of Mouse, which was kept afloat largely by recycling its old hits, released regularly for each new generation. Michael Eisner, when he took over as president in 1984, rebuilt the animation studios and made a series of new acclaimed films according to a tight annual schedule and strict rules that became known as “the Disney formula.”

Eisner’s approach proved to be much more corporate than Walt’s. His strategy was to continue marketing the old movies while making new movies for both children and adults (Touchstone Pictures), along with strategic corporate takeovers such as the purchase of the TV network Capital Cities/ ABC in 1995.

It’s worthwhile indulging in Disney’s corporate nostalgia, because it has a direct bearing on technology. What Disney did next to protect Mickey Mouse is now echoing throughout the high-tech industry.

Eisner knew that the old Disney films were still the company’s prime source of revenue, even with the success of such post-Walt films as The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. He also wanted to keep the old movies from slipping out of the company’s possession, especially after he had purchased ABC, which would serve as a broadcast platform for his products.

The Lion King, for instance, followed Eisner’s belief that a single film was not merely a potential box-office money-maker but an industry unto itself, capable of being spun off into a Broadway musical and licensed to play in other cities; it would also merchandise soundtrack albums and T-shirts. It could, in short, be elevated into a recognizable brand, to be applied to a variety of products with a market life much longer than a single hit film. It was just a logical extension of the practice of strategically re-releasing the old hits every so many years.

To protect his marketing model, Eisner looked carefully at the European Union, where the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1996 extended copyright protection from the author’s life, plus 50 years to life, plus 70. He and other Hollywood moguls worked on the premise that such copyright protection could also be applicable to popular culture, and lobbied Washington to extend the U.S. life-plus-50 limit by 20 years to cover movies and music.

To accomplish this, Eisner and his Hollywood colleagues took a two-pronged attack. First, they drafted Sonny Bono, a junior Congressman whose career as a pop singer had plummeted after he and his wife Cher divorced. Bono drafted a bill proposing the 20-year extension and the House of Representatives, in a fit of distracted lawmaking (this was during the national hysteria over the Monica Lewinsky scandal), rushed its passage by a voice vote in 1998.

The second prong was to revamp the Copyright Act and toughen a piece of legislation that would halt the trade in digitized copyright material.

The same distracted Congress, under siege by an opposition mired in moral outrage, passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which essentially gave copyright holders a mighty hammer to smite those who ignored copyright laws. The DMCA, as it came to be known, was officially created to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Copyright Treaty of 1996. But it was a much more draconian piece of legislation than the WIPO called for, essentially allowing copyright holders to bypass the courts in getting warrants to charge violators.

Obsessed by Lewinsky’s dalliance with President Bill Clinton, few people looked at either bill very carefully. Critics who did called it “the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act” or the “Copyright Theft Act,” noting that its primary purpose was to protect Hollywood’s profits and not necessarily its creative products.

And those profits aren’t puny. As a single example, Disney found itself the target of a surprise takeover bid by cable giant Comcast Corp., which in February, 2004, offered $49 billion (US) for Disney, later increasing it to $67 billion (US). The bid was abandoned in April, but it did serve to show just how much property Eisner was protecting.

The impact of the two acts of Congress was that corporate interests could hang on to all sorts of creations that could be protected by copyright for nearly a century. For instance, no works copyrighted in the U.S. would enter the public domain until Jan. 1, 2019, when all works created in 1923 would become eligible. By then, of course, the studios — and the recording industry, which followed on Hollywood’s heels — would have figured out how to combat the new threats to their classic marketing models: digital technology and the Internet.

Though Congress was convinced that by passing the two copyright bills it was protecting works of artistic merit and lasting cultural richness, other industries were beginning to realize that these lavishly pro-business laws could also be used to protect stuff that was on neither film nor paper, such as computer code, component design and architecture and a host of other intellectual properties.

Serendipitously, in 1998 (the same year the copyright laws were passed) a U.S. court ruled, in a precedent-setting case, that business processes could also be considered intellectual property — and therefore could be patented. Patent registrations ballooned over the next few years, especially during the dot-com boom, when companies were creating entirely new models of doing business every day, and sought to protect their e-commerce inventions.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a group representing some of the largest makers of enterprise-grade software, used the precedent to step up a global campaign to stop the trade in software piracy. Its Canadian branch, the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST), reports how many millions of dollars the Canadian economy loses to piracy each year. It also noisily trumpets the results of its major lawsuits, all of which have so far ended with out-of-court settlements.

With the tightened laws regarding copyright on one hand, and the expansion of the definitions of patents and trademarks on the other, the road had been paved for a whole new approach to business. Tech manufacturers, especially, began to wrap ideas into a patent or a copyright so they could improve their profit margins without having to actually produce any new product. Instead, they could license it to other manufacturers or hand it over to their legal departments, which would then drag offenders into court. It helps that people charged with copyright infringement are usually competitors.

This has created an atmosphere where corporations ask patent attorneys to approve all sorts of questionable things — a recent patent-infringement suit was launched against online retail giant Amazon.com for using one-click purchasing and virtual shopping carts. Those techniques were created by a software maker called Open Market, and the patent on them was loudly criticized when it was granted. Open Market was bought in 2001 by Divine Inc., a seller of enterprise services, which subsequently went bankrupt. Divine’s assets were sold in 2003 by an investment firm called Saratoga Partners, which then sold the Open Market intellectual property to Soverain Software, an e-commerce company. It is Soverain Software that is now taking Amazon.com to court over the “shopping cart” patent.

More similar suits are inevitable, says one patent lawyer, because between 40 and 50 per cent of new patents are frivolous or unnecessary. The owners probably sought the patent just to profit through licensing or litigation.

So it was without extreme dismay that we heard U.S. businessman Donald Trump musing that he would like to claim the intellectual-property (IP) rights to the cliché “You’re fired!” — a line he delivers to the losing candidates in The Apprentice.

This situation has not arisen spontaneously. Efforts to awaken companies to their IP rights have been made by a number of groups, among them the Licence Executives Association, a worldwide organization with 5,500 members in North America whose purpose is to promote understanding and use of intellectual property as a revenue stream and as protection against copycat competition.

This non-profit organization, which gathered recently for its annual meeting at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, is a low-key group, most of them lawyers and accountants. Their day jobs are to get products and processes patented, license them and prosecute people who violate their rights. They’ve been around since 1966, but only since 1998 have they really begun to find themselves closer to the core of the businesses for which they work.

These are the people who, when they find publications printing words such as Kleenex or Plexiglas without capital letters, thus making them generic, send sharp letters to the publication demanding apologies. Protecting patents, trademarks and copyrights must be done vigilantly, they say, because the first thing courts look for in a case of infringement is whether IP owners have ever protected their product, signifying that they care about their property. “You have to be aggressive,” one LES executive said. “Use it or lose it.”

Among the crusaders is Peter Ott, a Toronto accountant whose company, Peter Ott and Associates, specializes in price tags to put a value on any given work or process or item, so that companies can set a price when licensing their wares (or when estimating the damages if someone else has used them illegally).

As far as Ott is concerned, his business is a quiet one in which his greatest challenge is to persuade his corporate clients to exploit their products in new ways. And given Canadian law, which is not as aggressive as the U.S.’s, he’s right. But his counterparts south of the border live in a more litigious society, and their boisterous corporate strategies are now as much influenced by their legal departments as by executives in marketing and sales. The classic example of this is the music recording industry, whose immediate response to the arrival of peer-to-peer file-sharing of music was not to change its marketing or sales strategy, but rather to drag offenders to court, even college kids or pre-teens downloading “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

This is especially true of the high-tech industries. Most of them are terrified of rapacious behaviour like Microsoft’s strategy of “embrace and extend,” which to them means to absorb the creative work of competitors. But it has also become true of other fields in which patents and copyrights are central.

“Congress intended the DMCA to target criminals who pick digital locks to engage in mass piracy,” said Gwen Hinze, a lawyer representing the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog organization in the U.S. that has been highlighting problems posed by the DMCA. “Yet, in practice, the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions have stifled the legitimate activities of scientists, scholars, business competitors, journalists, publishers, consumers and the general public.”

The EFF has been sounding the alarm about misuse of the DMCA ever since it was passed. An organization dedicated to guarding the free-speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution, it maintains a document called “Unintended Consequences” that lists lawsuits specifically involving new technologies that are peculiar examples of cases derived from the law. The EFF acknowledges that the “anti-circumvention” aspects of the DMCA were designed to stop copyright pirates from defeating protections built into copyrighted works. But in practice, the EFF says, the consequences are radically different from their intended spirit. Some examples:

In 2000, a multi-industry group called the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) told a team of computer researchers from Princeton and Rice universities and Xerox Corp. that they would be sued under the DMCA if they delivered a certain paper at a conference. The paper outlined how the team had taken up a challenge by SDMI and cracked its digital watermarking technology in audio files. The SDMI, stung by the team’s success, threatened the suit if the winning team published the report on how they had done it.

Similarly, Microsoft invoked the DMCA against the Web-geek forum

Slashdot, which had published charges from people who believed Microsoft had made changes to a user-authorization security standard known as Kerberos. Kerberos is an open-source system, meaning it is not protected by copyright. But Microsoft argued that its implementation of Kerberos wasn’t covered by the General Public Licence.

In 2002, a college student wrote a small software program that allowed him to embed TrueType fonts in documents. He released the program as open source and used it himself on a series of open- source fonts. But Agfa Monotype Corp., a type foundry, threatened to sue him under the DMCA saying that his program, which converts numerous fonts at once so they can be embedded in documents, could be used to convert proprietary fonts made by Agfa as well.

The EFF’s Unintended Consequences document keeps getting updated; it’s currently in its third edition. Next, it may include a recent threat of a suit launched by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) against ClearPlay, creator of a technology that allows DVD players to skip over violence, swearing, nudity and other objectionable content in movies.

The DGA is arguing that ClearPlay is altering copyrighted works without permission. “ClearPlay software edits movies to conform to ClearPlay’s vision of a movie, instead of letting audiences see and judge for themselves what writers wrote, what actors said and what directors envisioned,” the DGA said in a statement. “Ultimately, it is a violation of law and just wrong to profit from selling software that changes the intent of movies you didn’t create and don’t own.”

Last October, SunnComm, maker of a CD copy-protection technology called MediaMax CD3, threatened to sue Alex Halderman, a Princeton student who wrote a review of the system in which he revealed how the copy-protection technology could be circumvented. Halderman revealed that you simply had to hold down the Shift key while loading a CD. That act would temporarily disable the Autorun feature used by the copy-protection technology.

SunnComm claimed Halderman had violated the DMCA because he had reported the name of the driver installed by MediaMax CD3 and, once identified, it could easily be removed from the computer. SunnComm concluded in a statement that Halderman and Princeton University had “significantly damaged SunnComm’s reputation and caused the market value of SunnComm to drop by more than $10 million.”

SunnComm suddenly found itself in the centre of a firestorm of protest on the Internet, most of it accusing the company of releasing a shoddy product, and defending Halderman for pointing out its weaknesses. SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs dropped the suit abruptly, but was unrepentant in his citation of the DMCA. “This cat- and-mouse game that hackers and others like to play with owners of digital property is over,” he huffed.

Another case involves recording giant EMI Group Plc, one of the world’s largest music companies, which sued California-based Electronic Arts Inc. for using copyrighted music in some of the video game maker’s sports titles, including Madden NFL 2004, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and MVP Baseball 2004. The case is interesting because, in 2003, EA had entered negotiations with EMI for the rights to certain songs, but then released the games before the rights had been granted. Though EA tried to continue negotiating for the rights, EMI chose to go the legal route instead and launched a lawsuit for tens of millions of dollars in damages — a sum far greater than whatever EMI would have received from the song right sales.
Utah-based SCO Group, owner of copyrights on the Unix operating system, has launched a series of lawsuits against operating system rival Linux, claiming some of the Unix code had found its way into Linux. The suit against IBM Corp. alone is for $5 billion (US).

The SCO case is nightmarish in its complexity and perhaps the most dramatic example of using the DMCA to profit from a troubled product. With the future of the $19-billion Unix market cloudy, SCO’s suits appear to be designed to allow the company to relax and simply collect licence fees from Linux users.

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Much of the problem in all these cases is the rhetoric surrounding them. While copyright and patents are designed to protect artists and creators, the clout built into acts such as the DMCA is increasingly being used by corporations as a bludgeon against competitors. The companies that are most directly affected still cling to the language of artists in defending themselves.

So now movie studios roll a short film before the previews in theatres in which a stuntman explains how his work is threatened by online pirates who trade movies without paying. Meanwhile, record companies trot out pop stars like Madonna to support their position on file-swapping.

The key word used by all who invoke copyright infringement is “theft,” which places the DMCA at the heart of a moral argument involving the right of individuals to benefit from their labours. But “theft” is invoked even when a suit has little to do with an individual creator. Technology is often created by a corporate entity, which owns all its employees’ labour, and when it sells the technology, it sells all the rights to it — including rights to license it. So when industries get involved in copyright disputes, it almost never has anything to do with individual creators, who are cited as the people who are supposed to benefit from the updated laws in the first place.

Copyright is such a useful tool for large companies, says one noted copyright lawyer, because copyrights have always been about monopoly. Creators of works that can be covered by copyrights or patents would love to enjoy the fruits of their labours for as long as they can, and not have to worry about letting their works slip through their fingers like fine sand. But, individuals are less interested in dealing with subsidiary rights, derivative rights, licensing rights and all the marketing done by corporate entities like Disney, which has developed a terrific vault of proprietary material of enduring popularity no matter how old it gets.

Stiffening the copyright laws to favour corporate ownership has created serious contradictions such as this. Western society has a long history of borrowing ideas, and if the borrowing is done on a small scale, we just accept it as part of the way things are done.

But when laws become so tight that suits are easy to file, the language in defence of the suits becomes increasingly moralistic in an effort to deflect attention away from the possibility that they may be little more than a venal desire to cripple the competition.

Worse, the rhetoric has become even more hysterical, linking copyright infringement to terrorism.

In the spring of 2004, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966, was sitting in a U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, describing the horrors of a world in which the Internet allows flagrant disregard for private property. He was quoting from an article written by Sgt. 1st Class Eric Hortin for the Army News Service in which the sergeant explained that peer-to-peer file-swapping technology was a threat to national security.

“Internet piracy is going to grow malignantly over the years,” he said. “The U.S. Army believes [file traders] constitute a threat to national security.”

How not paying for a movie constitutes a security threat remains a mystery, but the damage was done. In legislators’ minds, peer-to-peer file-sharing, when violating copyright, is almost synonymous with terrorism and could perhaps even be regarded as traitorous.

In the meantime, down the hall, another U.S. Senate committee had just passed a broad anti-piracy package, which would (among other things) make the use of camcorders in movie theatres a federal crime.

As a result of such extreme language, the Electronic Frontier Foundation started a campaign in April to persuade Washington to revoke patents the EFF considers harmful to innovation and free expression. The EFF took the action after the release in October of a report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which recognized that courts are being tied up in legal action over questionable lawsuits. The FTC recommended finding a better way to challenge a patent’s validity without going to court.

The EFF is not the only voice trying to recapture the genie of corporate greed that has escaped from the bottle. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, has recently published a book called Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. To demonstrate his commitment, Lessig released the book for free on the Internet, as Ann Godoff, publisher of Penguin Books (which released the paper-based version) smiled nervously in approval.

In the book, Lessig argues for a more liberal public domain, with voluntary licences that would allow creators to choose whether to release work freely or to allow their works to be altered. He believes that excessively long copyright protection, and the aggressive tactics of media conglomerates, have upset a traditional balance between intellectual creativity and property.

Penguin said in April that the results of Lessig’s experiment were successful. After one month on the book shelves, sales had reached 2,600, a respectable showing. But Lessig said the virtual book was a much greater success. After one month, downloads from two of his websites amounted to more than 66,000 copies, and 100,000 had been downloaded from Amazon.com.

He doesn’t want to eliminate copyright, Lessig told a Reuters reporter, just “eliminate the middleman.”

Lessig believes that, ultimately, the current tight copyright laws will actually kill commercial ventures, not make them more profitable. “What so many examples around the world demonstrate,” he says, “is that free content actually helps push commercial content.”

Maybe it’s time to tell that to Mickey Mouse.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4031


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Got Juice? Not for Long, You Don't

In the escalating arms race between battery power and consumption, The Cells are losing to The Gadgets—Big time. Question is, can the chemists catch up to the engineers?
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/general...702771,00.html

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Microsoft To Tune Up Media Center PC
Ina Fried

With the next generation of Media Center PCs, you'll be able to have your TV and record it too.

For the first time, Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition is supporting multiple tuners, meaning that consumers will be able to watch one channel while recording another or record two stations at once, CNET News.com has learned. The feature is one of several improvements Microsoft has made with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, an update that the company plans to announce next week.

At the same time, Microsoft is also allowing computer makers to create Media Center PCs that lack the TV recording feature altogether, a move that will allow computer makers to offer PCs with the operating system for less than $800. It's all part of an effort by Microsoft to position Media Center as a more mainstream consumer OS.

Without an all-new version of Windows until Longhorn in 2006, Microsoft is hoping that an improved Media Center OS can help reignite interest in the 3-year-old Windows XP operating system. The launch of the updated Media Center, along with several new companion products, will form a key part of Microsoft's fall marketing blitz designed to sell consumers on the benefits of XP.

The entertainment-oriented Media Center OS is similar to other flavors of Microsoft's flagship Windows XP, but adds a second interface that can play movies, music, digital pictures or television and be controlled via remote control. In its first two incarnations, Media Center has attracted only a niche of the PC market, largely those interested in recording TV shows onto their hard drives.

Microsoft has thus far been largely mum about the new version of Media Center OS, though details have begun to trickle out. As previously reported, the new version has several new features designed to address current shortcomings, such as the ability to burn CDs and DVDs from within the remote-controlled interface.

Sources tell CNET News.com that the product will also include the ability to exchange MSN-compatible instant messages while doing other things, such as watching television or viewing a photo slideshow. The instant messages appear as an overlay to the TV or other main image.

Media Center Edition 2005 will offer limited support for high-definition television, but only the type of high-definition signal received through an antenna--not high-definition satellite or cable. Microsoft declined to comment on the new version of Media Center or its features.

Much of the focus with the new version, which is code-named Symphony, has been on improving the audio and video quality, with the goal being to rival consumer electronics devices such as DVD players and digital video recorders that cost far less and have outshined the Media Center in quality. With this version, sources say, they believe Microsoft has at least caught up to TiVo. The program guide has also been improved, including the ability to browse upcoming movies using "cover art" images.

New products for the Media Center family
Microsoft has also announced plans for two products that will complement the new OS. One is a handheld device known as a Portable Media Center that will allow content from a Media Center PC to be taken on the go. The other is a type of set-top box known as a Media Center Extender, which allows consumers to view content in one room that is stored on a Media Center PC in another room.

The company is expected to use next week's "Experience More" event in Los Angeles to tout other digital home efforts, including several moves designed to make it easier to move content around the home while still offering digital rights management. For example, Microsoft has been developing technology, code-named Janus, that paves the way for a new class of portable music devices capable of playing music that is rented on a subscription basis rather than purchased. And, in addition to Media Center extenders, which work only with Media Center PCs, Microsoft has a broader Windows Media Connect effort designed to let many different living-room products grab video, music and photos that are stored on a Windows XP computer.

Some details have come from the companies making Media Center products. Two tuner manufacturers, Hauppauge and Vixs have announced dual-tuner products that are designed specifically to work with Media Center 2005.

Computer makers are also starting to tip their hand. Sony, for example, posted several new models to its SonyStyle Web site. Best Buy has also started listing at least one of the new Sony models.

The machines are part of Sony's existing "R" series of Vaio Desktops. In addition to sporting the new OS, the machines add faster processors and larger hard drives as well as the option to automatically create a backup of data using RAID. For now, Sony's machines stick to offering a single TV tuner.

Hewlett-Packard has announced its Digital Entertainment Center, a Media Center device that is designed to look more like a consumer electronics device than a PC and is also expected to offer dual tuners, among other features. HP has yet to announce pricing or when the device will be available, though. The company is also expected to have more traditional Media Center PCs and is expected to offer an upgrade program for existing Media Center PCs, but details are not yet available.

Dell, Gateway and Toshiba are among the other big-name computer makers expected to offer machines with the new operating system, sources said.

As for the Media Center extenders, HP has announced plans to offer such a device and online retailer Buy.com has started taking orders for a similar product from Linksys. Creative and Samsung recently started selling the first Portable Media Centers.

All of the Microsoft devices find themselves competing, at least to some degree, with non-Microsoft alternatives. In the portable category, RCA and Archos offer competing portable video players that do not interface directly with Media Center. There are also other companies that offer features similar to Media Center both for Linux and Windows-based machines.

Intel showed off many such designs at its recent developer forum, though it is unclear how many big-name PC makers will choose to offer entertainment-oriented PCs that are not Microsoft-based. Instead, the challenge may come more from consumer electronics makers.

Devices that could both burn DVDs and record TV shows were once rare but are increasingly more common. Cable and satellite operators are also starting to ship digital video recorders in larger numbers, again potentially challenging Microsoft's Media Center ambitions.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+tun...3-5398217.html


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Local DC++ File-Sharing Hub To Be Shut Down

Service Allowed Students to Trade Rapidly; DC++ Web site Blames Spectator Editorial for Shutdown
Kathy Gilsinan

Columbia's private DC++ hub, a local file-sharing network used by hundreds of students to rapidly swap music, movies, and other files, will shut down tonight at midnight, its proprietor said.

The student administering the service, who declined to be named because he is concerned about his legal liability, said that he received a "cease and desist" letter from University lawyers over the weekend, and decided to pull the plug.

Other DC++ hubs, such as the popular "i2hub" that claims to link more than 250 campuses, should remain unaffected, as will LimeWire, BitTorrent, and numerous other public networks.

Unlike peer-to-peer file-sharing devices like KaZaA, which require commodity or commercial Internet access and thus use up network bandwidth, Columbia's DC++ hub includes only other members of the Columbia community. That makes it immune to external upload/download quotas instituted two weeks ago by AcIS, the office that administers the University computer network.

The student operating the Columbia hub blamed a staff editorial in the Sept. 28 Spectator for prompting the University to issue him the letter.

The editorial, commenting on the new download quotas, advocated "mature piracy" of the kind that does not involve using external networks, in order to limit exposure to viruses and spyware. The editorial described the quotas as "not, realistically, all that limiting" and speculated that they represented a tacit acknowledgement by the University that file-sharing is now a given on college campuses. It supplied an Internet address where students could learn about Columbia DC++.

As of early this morning, the Columbia hub's greeting message read in part: "you may thank the Columbia Spectator for printing the article that shut this down."

In an interview, the student operating the web site said he assumed that administrators had not known details of the service before the editorial was published, and was acting to protect its legal liability. "The RIAA does read school newspapers, and they do investigate incidents like this," he said, referring to the music industry group that has sued consumers for trading songs online.

AcIS, however, has been aware of DC++ for some time; a "GetSafe!" page dated August 2004 listed it first in a list of programs that present virus risks.

Phone calls to AcIS administrators' offices made after 5 p.m. were not answered yesterday.

In a letter to the editor following the publication of the editorial, Assistant Director of AcIS Walter Bourne cautioned that "the Recording Industry Association of America and other organizations representing copyright owners may well find ways to monitor such intra-University use and take action against individual students."

"I think it's completely unfortunate if Spec hastened the demise of the thing," said Nick Summers, Spectator's editor-in-chief, who said he uses DC++ all the time. "In retrospect, maybe putting the web address in the staff edit was a mistake."

But, he said, "If you're trying to keep something under the radar, having a dot com address [in the first place] is not the way to do it." He added, "The idea that [AcIS] wouldn't know about this is basically just absurd," he said.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com.


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Internet Grants to Schools Halted as the F.C.C. Tightens the Rules
Stephen LaBaton

Public libraries and schools around the nation have suddenly stopped receiving any new grants from a federal program that is wrestling with new rules on how it spends $2.25 billion each year to provide high-speed Internet and telephone service.

The moratorium at what is known as the E-Rate program began two months ago, with no notice, and may last for months, causing significant hardships at schools and libraries, say state officials and executives at the company that runs the program.

The suspension came after the Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the White House, imposed tighter spending rules that commission officials say will make it easier to detect fraud and waste in the program.

As much as $1 billion in grants the states say they expected to receive by the end of the year may be affected, one official estimate says. That has led state administrators to either take money from other educational programs or postpone paying their phone and Internet companies.

"We are fearful that they could shut down our service," said Curt Wolfe, chief information officer for North Dakota. The federal program contributes more than 60 percent of the money, or about $1.7 million a year, that pays for Internet services and to link video services for the state's 100,000 students, he said.

"If this isn't resolved this month, we're going to be in very serious trouble," he said. "We don't have extra funds to get us through this, and this is a major issue for every state."

Robert Boucher, who works for the Wisconsin education agency that arranges for the financing of the state's schools and libraries, said the state had not received commitments for about $22 million, or about two-thirds of the amount necessary for Internet and telephone services for the state's 426 school districts and 387 public libraries.

The tighter spending rules also forced the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit group that runs the program under the commission's oversight, to hastily liquidate more than $3 billion in investments last week. The sale generated a loss, but officials said they had not yet calculated the amount.

And the changes are expected to lead to higher charge imposed on telephone companies - and passed on to consumers - later this year or early next year. The increase may be necessary, senior officials at the universal service company said, because of a cash squeeze created by the tighter spending rules and an F.C.C. decision over the last nine months to reduce the phone companies' contributions to the E-rate program.

Although commission officials said they had made the decisions leading the moratorium in close consultation with the White House Office of Management and Budget, administration officials sought on Friday to distance themselves from the F.C.C.'s moves and said that the budget office had never issued a formal legal opinion on the appropriateness of some of the changes. Commission officials say the changes were crucial for better monitoring of the program.

"The E-Rate program is vital for America, but we must insist that it complies strictly with the highest government accounting and auditing standards," Michael K. Powell, chairman of the commission, said. "Any delays are temporary while we place the program on sounder footing. We are committed to ensuring these funds flow responsibly to America's classrooms and libraries as soon as possible."

The E-Rate program was created by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a way to finance telephone and Internet services for the states. The program expanded an earlier universal service program to include public schools and libraries and the Internet, giving money both for equipment and for service.

Derided by its opponents as the "Gore Tax" because it was advanced by Vice President Al Gore, the program has occasionally been attacked in Congress by some Republicans. In recent interviews, administration and commission officials denied that the changes were intended to hinder the program. But some officials have said that in tightening the rules, the government may have made unintentional mistakes.

The changes have created significant tension between the F.C.C. and the Universal Service Administrative Company. Executives say they have felt whip-sawed by the commission. For instance, the executives say, top officials in Mr. Powell's office approved in July a set of investment guidelines for the more than $3 billion held by the company. Two months later, the commission ordered the immediate liquidation of those investments to comply with the new budget restrictions.

Senator Olympia J. Snow, the Maine Republican who co-sponsored the provision that led to the creation of the program in 1996, expressed concern that the moratorium could jeopardize its longer-term prospects.

"This has the potential to imperil the program by leaving it in a state of such uncertainty," she said in an interview. "It raises questions about why these decisions were made."

She and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, sent a letter on Friday to Mr. Powel, seeking an explanation.

The Universal Service Administrative Company was set up to provide money to the states for phone and Internet services in four areas - schools and libraries; rural health care; remote or underserved areas that are more expensive for phone carriers to service; and low-income customers.

Officials say the spending restrictions have been applied only to the schools and libraries and to relatively small rural health care programs.

The Clinton administration decided to list the money held in the universal service accounts on the federal budget, which had the effect of reducing the deficit by billions of dollars. But after considerable debate, former officials recalled, the Clinton administration decided not to apply a series of restrictions that are imposed on money considered part of the public Treasury. As late as April 2000, William E. Kennard, the chairman of the F.C.C. at the time, issued an opinion that the fund should be maintained outside the Treasury, and by implication, not be subject to the rules that are now being applied to it.

Some lawmakers have recently criticized the E-Rate program as laden with fraud and waste, and the F.C.C. has given it more scrutiny. Last October, the F.C.C. in consultation with the White House budget office ordered the company to begin applying generally accepted accounting principles for federal agencies by Oct. 1, 2004.

But officials said it was only last summer when they began to realize that the change would have consequences that would sharply limit the program's ability to spend and manage its money. The problems have been made worse, some officials said, by the decision of the F.C.C. over the last nine months to reduce the level of contributions made to the library and school program by telephone companies by $550 million.

"There was a lot of pressure to keep the contribution factor down until the election passes, after which it will then have to rise again," said Anne L. Bryant, a member of the board of the universal services company and executive director of the National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members in 15,000 school districts.

F.C.C. officials say they reduced the contribution level because it appeared that the universal service company had been holding more than $3 billion, and they were concerned that it would be criticized for sitting on so much idle cash.

"It was the right decision to draw down, based on what we knew at the time," said Jeffrey Carlisle, chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau at the F.C.C. "But under what we know now, I'm not sure we would have made the same decision." He and other commission officials denied that this was a move to keep the rates down until after the election.

In recent weeks, officials from the company have had discussions with the F.C.C. and the budget office. Interviews with officials and correspondences between the parties reflect deep frustration between them.

In a Sept. 16 letter to Mr. Powell, Frank Gumper, the chairman of the Universal Service Administrative Company, predicted that the changes in the accounting and spending rules could delay "meaningful cash outlays" into 2006 and could delay more than $1 billion in financing commitments that would be ready to be sent by the end of the year. He also predicted that "a significant increase in the contribution factor in future quarters is likely."

The immediate cause of the crisis is the application of a federal budget law, the Anti-Deficiency Act, to the E-Rate program. The company had issued financial commitment letters to the states for amounts whose total exceeded the company's budget, because the schools and libraries as a whole spend less than 80 percent of the money they requested, company officials said. But F.C.C. officials say the Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits the company from making commitments greater than its cash on hand.

The Anti-Deficiency Act created a second problem. With the F.C.C.'s permission, the company had placed more than $3 billion in bonds and bond mutual funds to earn annual interest of more than $25 million. But under the act, those investments count as part of the company's total spending and offset the amount available for the states.

On Sept. 27, the F.C.C. instructed the company to "liquidate any such investments by Sept. 30." A few weeks earlier, Mr. Gumper said he expected that liquidation, which has been completed, would result in "an immediate loss" of $2 million and the forgoing of at least $25 million to $30 million in annual interest income.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/bu.../04fcc.html?hp


Internet Grants Cut, and F.C.C. Scolded
Stephen LaBaton

The Federal Communications Commission came under sharp criticism in Congress on Tuesday over a series of decisions that have led to the suspension of a $2.25 billion program that pays for telephone and Internet services at public schools and libraries.

The suspension, which began without notice two months ago, has caused hardships in many school districts and communities, which have had to postpone paying bills or take money from other projects. By one estimate, as much as $1 billion in expected grants could be suspended by the end of the year.

The company that administers the program issued a suspension on new grants as it wrestled with new accounting standards and tighter spending limits imposed on it by the F.C.C.

A hearing Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Committee had originally been called to examine waste at the so-called E-Rate program, which administers telephone and Internet services for schools and libraries. But three of the four senators present focused instead on the F.C.C.'s decision to impose tighter spending restrictions.

The fourth senator, John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the committee, pressed the witnesses about what steps were being undertaken to monitor the program in light of a series of fraud cases involving telephone companies and equipment makers over the last few years. He expressed irritation that Congress had not been notified about the suspension of the program.

Frank Gumper, the chairman of the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit organization that oversees the E-Rate program, told lawmakers that the F.C.C.'s decision last week to order a quick sale of more than $3 billion of the program's investments had resulted in a loss of almost $5 million.

Guidelines for making those investments had been approved in July by top officials in the office of Michael K. Powell, chairman of the F.C.C. But the investments had to be liquidated after the commission later concluded that they impinged on the company's ability to make payouts to schools and libraries.

Commission officials, who declined a request by the senators to appear at the hearing, have said that spending changes were necessary to audit and monitor the program more effectively. The officials have said they imposed the new restrictions in consultation with the White House budget office. But late last week, administration officials began distancing themselves from the changes, noting that the budget office has never issued a formal opinion on the matter.

At Tuesday's hearing, lawmakers and an executive of Universal Service said that many of the most significant changes would not make it easier to perform audits or root out fraud and waste.

That acknowledgment prompted concern from the lawmakers.

"It's really difficult to understand why these changes were made,'' said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican who helped draft the legislation that created the E- Rate program in 1996.

Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, also criticized the tighter regulations, which have led to a cash squeeze at the program, and the recent quick sale of the program's investments.

"I fail to see how these series of events have led to a more efficient management of the funds,'' he said.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, criticized the F.C.C.'s decision to reduce the contribution level by telephone companies and their customers by $550 million this year, only to find that the E-Rate program, under the new rules, is likely to suffer from a cash squeeze and may need to increase tariffs later to pay schools and libraries.

He and Ms. Snowe also criticized the commission's decision not to send any officials to the committee who could explain the decision to tighten the spending rules.

"I'm very disappointed that the F.C.C. declined to testify,'' Mr. Rockefeller said. "I do not think this is accidental.''

Mark Wigfield, a spokesman at the F.C.C., said that officials had been unable to attend because the hearing had only recently been scheduled for Tuesday and the officials had scheduling obligations that could not be changed. He said that top commission officials "are committed to working with the committee in the future.''

In a letter to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, Mr. Powell reiterated his view that the accounting and spending changes were necessary to both combat fraud and comply with a federal law that restricts spending. He said that some of the problems could be resolved if Congress were to adopt a provision that exempted the program from that law.

"I would welcome an opportunity to work with your staff to craft such legislation,'' Mr. Powell said.

But Ms. Snowe said after the hearing that there were too few days left in the Congressional session to adopt any new measures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/technology/06net.html


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Mark Cuban Prompts Dot-Com Redux
Stefanie Olsen

Hope and cynicism sparred to a draw on Tuesday at the glitzy opening banquet of the Web 2.0 conference here, as serial entrepreneur and reality TV show host Mark Cuban took the stage to talk about what's next for the 10-year-old Internet revolution.

Even before Cuban stepped onstage, some tech junket veterans seemed ready to be unimpressed. "It's like these people haven't seen each other for three years, and now they're back in the same room together," jabbed Chris Nolan, a former gossip columnist for the San Jose Mercury News who now runs political site ChrisNolan.com.

Cuban is indisputably a tech star and arguably one of the more deserving headliners at Web 2.0, whose roster included such what-have-you-done-for-me-lately veterans as Joe Krause, Brewster Kahle and Marc Andreessen, as well as genuine powerbrokers like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and venture capitalist guru John Doerr.

But Cuban's larger-than-life persona--played out on his ABC's reality series "The Benefactor" and on his blog--also seemed to draw a squeamish response from the crowd as a reminder of the hype of the dot-com heyday. After all, this was billed as a coming-out party for the new Web, and the Internet executives and venture capitalists in attendance would much rather forget the excesses of the old--or admit that they might live on.

The audience didn't seem to buy everything Cuban was selling. Even with his foot in one of the more promising technology developments--Web logs--Cuban was heckled by an audience member as being pompous about it: "Uhhhh...He's got a blog!"

Cuban responded by laughing and pointing to his more memorable public appearances in the sports world as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "I've never been heckled at a conference before," Cuban said.

To be sure, conference organizers seemed aware of the possibility of a looming hype machine. One panel early Wednesday featured stock analysts mulling the thesis: Is it a bubble yet?

Apropos of a night of vice presidential debates, much of Tuesday evening at the Nikko Hotel was political, whether it was tech executives and venture capitalists rubbing elbows in their renewed faith in the Internet economy or just espousing their campaign views.

John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google board member, pushed clean energy and stem-cell research--a dividing line between the Democratic and Republican platforms--during his evening conversation.

Cuban rocked the house (or the table of Electronic Frontier Foundation staffers) with his sentiments against the Induce Act, proposed legislation that is designed to make software developers accountable for copyright theft perpetrated with their technology.

"If you're at this conference, your livelihood is at risk if the Induce Act passes," Cuban said to a round of applause.

He added: "Orrin Hatch (the senator behind the legislation) wouldn't know a computer if it hit him."

Cuban picked up and ran with the ball on one of the conference's hot topics: Web search. On his investment in Mamma.com--a "meta" search engine that few people heard of before its stock surged on the Internet-search hype--he said once it entered into "pipe level" financing, he had to get out.

Icerocket, a more recent investment, he said was "really just my toy." Like on his TV reality show, he bet on the young founders because he simply liked them--and because search is ubiquitous.

On Google vs. Yahoo, Cuban said he liked both companies, but he especially approved of their competitiveness as "great theater."

That could be said of Cuban, too.
http://news.com.com/Mark+Cuban+promp...3-5400029.html


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ILN News Letter


Consortium Forms To Address DRM Incompatibilities

Several large electronics and media companies are collaborating to head off conflicts in digital rights management technologies. Members include Sony, HP, Philips, Matsushita, Samsung, InterTrust, 20th Century Fox, and Coral. The groups plans to develop DRM specifications.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...134651,00.html


Court Rules Against OSS Programmers In DMCA Decision

A federal court in St. Louis has ruled that open source software programmers who created the BnetD game server, which interoperates with the commercial Blizzard Games, violated the DMCA and Blizzard's end user license agreement. Blizzard successfully argued that the programmers violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and the license agreement's section on reverse-engineering. Decision at
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/doc...netd_30sep.pdf


Court Awards Damages To Students For Diebold DMCA Misuse

A federal court judge in California has ruled that e-voting company Diebold Election Systems misused the DMCA and has ordered it to pay damages and fees. The judge found that the company knowingly misrepresented that students had infringed the company's copyright and ordered the company to pay damages and fees to two students and a nonprofit internet service provider, Online Policy Group. Decision at
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/diebold.pdf


China Will Approve 'Healthy' Online Games

China has set up an official body to promote "healthy" online computer games for young people to play in its popular Internet cafes. The Professional Commission of Online Games will launch a national club for game-players and build a server of suitable games.
http://chinagames.notlong.com/


Malaysia To Issue Smart ID Card As National ID Card

Malaysia has announced plans to issue a new smart ID card that will serve as a national ID card. The card will combine the national ID, drivers license, immigration and health care records, as well as the ability to pay for transportation (through an e-purse) and utilize banking services.
<http://malaysiaidcard.notlong.com/>


California Congressman Calls For National ID Card

California David Dreier has proposed a new bill that would prohibit employers from hiring people unless the job applicants first obtain new federal ID cards with their photograph, Social Security number and an "encrypted electronic strip" with additional information. Any employer who fails to comply faces fines and prison terms of up to five years.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5395386.html


Frustrated U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Resigns

Amit Yoran, the U.S. government's cybersecurity chief, has abruptly resigned from the Homeland Security Department amid a concerted campaign by the technology industry and some lawmakers to persuade the Bush administration to give him more authority and money for protection programs. Yoran has privately confided to industry colleagues his frustrations in recent months over what he considers the department's lack of attention paid to computer security issues.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9811404.htm


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Annoy.com Webmaster Says War Art Censored
Paul Festa

An online free-speech activist is finding that even on the Internet, freedom of the press is for those who own one.

As Webmaster of Annoy.com, Clinton Fein once successfully challenged the federal government's online obscenity restrictions. In his new incarnation as a political artist, Fein now claims he's being muzzled by an online print shop that refused to print two of his works.

"From a constitutional standpoint there's not an issue, but from a corporate censorship standpoint it's an enormous issue," Fein said the day before his art opening at San Francisco's Toomey Tourell gallery. "It's not the role of printers to define the content of an artist."

Zazzle.com, a Palo Alto, Calif., online printing service, on Monday declined to release two of 10 prints Fein submitted last week. The prints in question criticize the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military.

The company made its decision after determining the prints violated the site's user agreement on the grounds of being both offensive to religious believers--in this case Christians--and excessively violent.

"The reason our QA staff decided to prevent distribution is that we have very clear guidelines, and we don't want to produce images of torture," said Zazzle vice president of business development Matt Wilsey. "We don't have a problem with political messages, but even if (the picture from Abu Graib) is iconic, it does represent humans torturing each other."

One of the images in question pictures an American flag whose stripes are replaced with the text of a U.S. military report on the abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib, and whose stars are replaced by the image of a hooded prisoner standing on a small box and holding up wires.

Another shows a crucified President Bush and asks, "Who would Jesus torture?"

Wilsey said the company had refused to print other controversial images, including those of Jews in German concentration camps and the Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps. He said Zazzle "occasionally" took heat for those decisions from clients like Fein.

Zazzle, incorporated in 1999 but not launched until last year, is one of a handful of online print shops tapping a market of artists, political candidates and activists, merchants and ordinary consumers who want the convenience of on-demand printing services and the potential to set up individual online stores hawking printed products.

Fein said he is still weighing his options with respect to Wednesday's exhibition opening and is considering legal action against Zazzle on breach-of-contract grounds.

While Zazzle's name is not attached to Fein's prints, the company said it is working to build its brand as a "family Web site." The company is a Disney licensee and maintains a ratings system to cordon off certain kinds of content displayed and sold on its site.

"We wish Clinton the best of luck and support his right to express his message," Wilsey said. "We just don't want to produce it."
http://news.com.com/Annoy.com+Webmas...3-5399766.html


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Western Australian Internet Body Slams Censorship Policy
Abby Dinham

The Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA) has slammed the Internet censorship policy created by the Family First Party in the wake of Australia's biggest ever child porn bust.

The group said it "shares the public's outrage" over the child pornography racket but it is "concerned that the actions of a small minority could be used as a justification for unwarranted restrictions on the rights of ordinary Internet users to access material freely online".

The Family First Party policy statement said it will "work to achieve government commitment to establish a mandatory filtering scheme at the ISP server level in this country", adding that "in the best interest of children the government must take a more proactive role".

The Party estimates that "set up costs" for the initiative will cost around AU$45 million. However, it adds that "some or all of the costs could be passed on to Internet users".

Yet, WAIA describes the policy as "poorly thought out and unworkable".

Media officer for WAIA, Jeremy Malcolm, said "Internet content filters at ISP level are expensive and ultimately, the user can get around them." He adds that he is "appalled" at the Party's admission that the initiative may have adverse effects on smaller ISPs.

"This policy would certainly put a dent in the pockets of ISPs and send some smaller ISPs under. It would also slow down Internet access," he told ZDNet Australia today.

The Family First policy document states that while the levy to fund the scheme would cost around AU$7 per user annually, the charge may put "cost pressures on smaller ISPs". Yet the document states that "there is arguably too many of these [ISPs] at the moment and adequate competition could be maintained with 30 ISPs rather than the hundreds in existence now".

Malcolm said "if the same reasoning was used in respect of farmers, there would be national outrage".

"WAIA supports the commercial operations of smaller ISPs. We believe it is vital for the marketplace to be composed of both large and small ISPs to fulfil the full range of the community's needs for Internet services," he said.

According to Malcolm, "parents should address this problem at their own end".

However, the Family First Party quotes the Australia Institute as stating "reliance on education and end use supervision and filtering take up fails to protect vulnerable children in dysfunctional households where there is neglect". It adds that lack of parental education on the issue has also not been taken into account when considering child protection.

"The present system of education and the promotion of end user filtering has clearly failed," it stated.

Malcolm responds that it is not the government's responsibility to fulfil parental obligations to child Internet users and that "dysfunctional parenting is a social issue that should be tackled at a community level".

"What's the difference between parents allowing their children to access pornography over the Internet or through access to their adult magazines or videos?" he said. Malcolm also points to the "well-funded" NetAlert parental education programs as response to concerns over supervision.

The Family First Party said according to a news poll conducted by the Australia Institute, 93 percent of parents of teenage children support an "automatic filtering of internet pornography going into homes".

Yet, Malcolm maintains that ISPs are already doing their part.

"ISPs already cooperate with law enforcement authorities in combating child pornography and other crimes under Australian law. They have no interest in allowing paedophiles and similar criminals to operate using their network," he said.

Malcolm said there is little "immediate danger" of this scheme being adopted by the new government, however he adds "there is some public feeling out there along these lines, but we need to make sure both sides of the coin are recognised".

"NetAlert and the crime fighting forces we have already are doing a fair job of combating this problem, but because it’s a global resource its never going to be 100 percent fixed," he said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9161776,00.htm


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University Releases New Technology To Enable Academic File Sharing

University Park, Pa. -- As the use of information technology expands in higher education, many faculty increasingly maintain collections of digital media that they use to inspire their students in the classroom. Some collections consist of a few hundred images, but some number in the thousands. Many of the repositories include digital images, but others might contain audio, video and scientific simulations as well. Regardless of the size of the collection or the type of media stored, the purpose is pretty much the same -- to create an environment where students want to learn.

"Digital media is being used more frequently in universities to enhance curricula, excite students and improve performance," said Mike Halm, senior researcher in Information Technology Services at Penn State. "Data, such as digital images, audio, simulations and video, can be used in creative ways to ignite classroom learning and motivate students to achieve."

Halm and other interested developers at Penn State began looking at ways faculty used digital media to engage their students and manage their electronic files. "What we found was a desire for better tools and services that would help faculty find, store and retrieve their resources easily."

By talking to Penn State educators who owned electronic collections, the developers also identified some of the overwhelming obstacles involved in discovering, organizing and distributing digital media. "Barriers were everywhere," said Halm. "Finding just the right information and managing it so it could be easily retrieved was a challenge. Sharing it with peers was next to impossible."

Realizing that peer-to-peer (P2P) technology offered unique opportunities to manage and exchange files, Halm and his team of researchers set out to develop an open-source software that could be used within the academic community to simplify the use of digital information by educators. Last week, that goal came one step closer to fruition, when Penn State and Internet2 developers released the open-source code for a new academic file-sharing technology, called LionShare, at the Internet2 Member Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "LionShare merges electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools into a dynamic software application that promises to significantly improve the way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic endeavors," said Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology. "In addition, LionShare will simultaneously ensure a secure authenticated computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing capabilities."

According to Augustson, last week's LionShare source code release will provide programmers around the globe with the opportunity to contribute valuable feedback and suggestions, while team partners (Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) fine-tune the project software -- slated for universities and institutions to officially begin testing this upcoming January.

Penn State's efforts already are gaining public recognition. President Graham B. Spanier testified before Congress yesterday (Oct. 4) in an update on efforts to combat peer-to-peer piracy on university campuses. (See http://live.psu.edu/ story/8351 for background.) Afterward, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, commented on Penn State's efforts in developing a legitimate peer-to-peer network for educational purposes.

"I applaud Penn State for undertaking its LionShare project," he said. "As I understand it, the LionShare project at Penn State is attempting to establish P2P networks optimized for scientific and research purposes. The hope is to connect scientists directly to one another and to the otherwise unavailable research, notes, data and unpublished material residing on their hard drives. In assessing the needs of scientists and researchers, the LionShare project has apparently found that they will share their materials most freely on closed networks with some level of security and authentication. The LionShare project will hopefully achieve its goal of establishing just such networks."

Berman's praise is welcomed by the developers. "We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated," said Halm, who currently serves as the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations from around the world have contacted us with questions about the technology and requests for the release date, and many groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the code is now available for testing."

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," said 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."

Kalisperis is among a number of scholars and scientists who have offered their suggestions to team members as project plans unfolded this past year. Feedback from faculty at Penn State and other institutions is enabling developers to enhance the software's features with cutting-edge security, authentication and password-handling capabilities -- plus a high- performance text search engine and a technology developed by Simon Fraser that will make secure, single-search inquiries of certain worldwide digital repositories possible.

The continual dialogue with developers and potential network users has furthered significantly the development of the technology.

"With the source code release on Sept. 30, interested programmers and application developers can now access the code to use and/or modify for their needs and specifications," added Halm. "Feedback from programmers, as well as our peer institutions, will be essential in our efforts to further the development of the software. These efforts will culminate in the launch of an academic file-sharing network that researchers will be able to test and use this January."

To learn more about LionShare and to access the new source code, go to http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/

About LionShare

The LionShare project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a collaboration among Penn State and partner organizations including Internet2; Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The LionShare project grew out of the Visual Image User Study (VIUS), an experimental software development project designed to assist Penn State faculty with digital file management.
http://live.psu.edu/story/8389

[JackSpratts]

Since here at the WiR I don’t have to slaughter any forests to get the news out - and regular readers have come to expect a certain, ah, “heft” from their favorite weekly newsmagazine, I thought I’d post this truly prodigious rant from p2pnet in toto. It’s so friggin huge it’s practically getting it’s own box. Hell, it oughta have it’s own zip code. I gotta post it somewhere – it won’t fit on a floppy. Badda bing!

Take a shot at it, it’s perfectly OK if you only read a little and then maybe break for sandwiches or sex or thorazine before throwing yourself back into it.

You know, sometimes if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.

Bon Appetit!

Yer pal Jack.




F*ck Big Media:

Rolling Your Own Network
Mark Pesce

Preamble

The worldwide consolidation of media industries has led to a consequent closure of the public airwaves with respect to matters of public interest," writes . As control of this public resource becomes more centralized, the messages transmitted by global media purveyors become progressively less relevant, less diverse, and less reflective of ground truth.

At present, individuals and organizations work to break the stranglehold of these anti-market-media-mega-corporations through the application of the courts and the law. However, because of the inherent monopoly that anti-market media maintain on the public mindset, legislators have been understandably reluctant to make moves toward media diversification. We are thus confronted with a situation where many people have interesting things to say, but there are progressively fewer outlets where these views can be shared.

The public airwaves, because they are a limited resource, are managed by public bodies for the public interest. While honorable, the net effect of this philosophy of resource management has been negative: a public resource has become the equivalent of a beachfront property, its sale generating enormous license revenues, but its transfer to the private domain denying the community access to the sea of ideas.

If a well-informed public is the necessary prerequisite to the democratic process, then we must frankly admit that any private ownership of public airwaves represents a potential threat to the free exchange of ideas. Now that private property has mostly collectivized the electromagnetic spectrum, and with little hope that this will soon change, we must look elsewhere to find a common ground for the public discourse.

We are fortunate that such ground already exists.


Part One: Refugee Status

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." - George Orwell, 1984

I'm not from around here. You can probably hear it in my voice, that I'm North American. Not only North American but from the United States, not only from the United States but from California, not only from California but from Los Angeles, not only from Los Angeles, but from Hollywood, and not only from Hollywood, but from Laurel Canyon, the cozy bush-in-the-city neighborhood that played host to the likes of Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell - 30 years ago.

Those days are over. For the last twenty years, ever since the military industrial complex fled Los Angeles for cheaper digs in the American South, Los Angeles has been a company town, home to an ever-dwindling number of media megacorporations. These corporations produce 92% of what Australians see on the movie screen, at least 50% of what you watch on the telly, and about 80% of the music that you hear. These megacorps have an ever-growing array of subdivisions invading every area of the mediasphere.

But we'll come to that in a moment.

Let me talk about myself. I'm pissed off. Very pissed off. And desperate. That's a dangerous combination, because it means anything can happen. And, if I do my job well here today, anything could.

I'm a guest in your country - and because I am constantly asked, let me answer the question some of you are thinking: I like Australia a great deal, and am growing to love it. No, it's not the center of the world, no it's not the most exciting place in the world, and yes, it's a bit provincial. But here's a little-known secret: the most provincial place on Earth is New York City. If any of you have ever lived there, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Everywhere is provincial, and it's up to you to choose your province. I've chosen Australia.

I chose Australia for two reasons: first, I've been invited to transform AFTRS, your national film school, into a 21st century institution, one which will move away from the artist/auteur model which seems to have infected all Australian filmmaking. That project is underway but we won't see results for a few years.

The second reason is this: I've fled my homeland. I imagine that all of you know why. I am left-wing - liberal to libertarian (anarcho-syndicalist) in the American sense of these words - and for the past four years we've been living under a civil coup d'etats, confirmed by our Supreme Court and reinforced in the continuous state of emergency which followed September 11. Last year I was invited to Sydney to give some lectures, and the moment I got off the plane it felt as though a cloud had lifted. I was out from under the cloud of fear which is slowly strangling American liberties, and for the first time in years I felt as though I could breath freely. When I flew back home a few weeks later, and spied the photographic totem of Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft at the Immigration station, I uttered a loud, derisive laugh - and immediately began to plan my exit. I was lucky enough to get an offer from AFTRS just a few weeks later, and here I am.

I have just returned from a holiday in the USA, to make sure I was registered to vote in the upcoming election, and visit with family and friends. My friends are starting to lose it. People I've known for years are so - beaten down - that they're starting to fray at the edges. There's a big question whether Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry will win the election, whether we will be able to wrest control of our country back by democratic means. In the pit of our stomachs we know that if Kerry loses this election there won't be another election, at least not one that matters. There will be more terrorist attacks, and a constant state of emergency which turns my nation into an armed camp where everyone is a suspect. Think Brazil (the film, not the nation), and you've got it precisely: fascism with a globalist face.

Why has this happened? Part of it is the post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by September 11 - but even this should be wearing off after three years, and would be, only we have something new to deal with - the collectivized mediasphere. The fact that the Bush administration hasn't been called to account for its nearly constant failures - in foreign affairs, domestic policy, you name it - is due, in large part, to the anti-market consolidation of media.

I use the word "anti-market" in a very specific sense. Being a very good American, I am a capitalist at heart, but in the model described by Thomas Jefferson - which allows for a very wide array of small businesses competing fairly in a market which uses government as a tool to prevent fraud and force. It's an ideal which America was able to adhere to - at least with respect to media - until about 20 years ago. One of the long-term effects of the Reagan/Bush 41 era was the deregulation of media ownership, culminating in an accumulation of capital around entities so large that they exert their own gravitational forces - economic, political, and most importantly, social. These megacorporations have become, quite simply, too big to fuck with. When that happens, when the power of the market is used to prevent the free and fair exercise of market forces, a market becomes an anti-market. You can call it a cabal, or a cartel, or a conspiracy - but if you want to describe it by its function, you'd have to say that an anti-market exists to prevent free exercise of market forces.

In the United States we have seven media megacorps which control access to the global mediasphere. They are Disney, Viacom, Sony, General Electric, Clear Channel, TimeWarner and News Corp. There are others, but these are the titans which set the rules by which all others play. The last three of these have particular influence over the body politic through their broadcast outlets. Clear Channel owns a near majority of radio stations in the USA, TimeWarner owns CNN, and News Corp. - well, let me just say thank you from the bottom of my American heart for that little gift from Australia.

Who would have thought that a newspaper publisher from Adelaide would become the greatest threat to democracy since Leni Riefenstahl? That he would build a media empire which would extend its reach through print, radio and television? That he would become the beacon of far-right wing values, and, in so doing, completely pollute the collective mind of my nation? If only we'd known, we never would have given him US citizenship - he'd have been stuck in Australia, vexing all of you, but he'd have left us alone.

Here's the honest truth, as surveyed by the Pew Charitable Trust in the United States: Americans who get their news from FOX outlets (and, in particular, FOX NEWS) actually know less about what's going on in the world than those who watch PBS. That's right, watching FOX makes you stupid. Or more stupid.

But FOX NEWS has so much power - particularly because it is the propaganda organ of the Republican Party in the United States - that it can not be challenged. Robert Greenwald can produce Outfoxed, and try to get the truth out there, but because of the enormous economic power of News Corp, because of its unprecedented political power, because of its popular influence, it can't be challenged directly - at least not successfully. FOX NEWS could choose to hide behind America's coveted First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press - and they'd be right to do so. But because they are part of the anti-market which prevents free expression, it's a false defense.

So here's what I have to say: FUCK BIG MEDIA. You won't be able to change them, not when they have this unholy alliance of capital and political power - and you know Australia with its PBL and News Corp and Clear Channel Broadcasting is in precisely the same boat - so just ignore them as the corrupt and corrupting influences they are. These media megacorps are quite literally poison - for the mind.

So now that we've established the horror of the situation, let's entertain some ideas on what to do about it.


Part Two: Transmission Errors

The Internet views censorship as a network failure, and routes around it. - John Gilmore

Despite everything I've said, there is hope, because the seeds have been sown for an amazing transformation in media. The means of production and distribution are being wrested away from the powers-that-be, by people who are willing to do the hard work of creating a real discourse of ideas.

Let me draw your attention to an example which occurred just a few weeks ago. CBS News in the USA got some memos which purported to show how Bush 43 was given his safe berth in the Texas Air National Guard. Nothing new there, actually, except the documents were fakes, and it took a legion of self-appointed authorities working in the blogsphere to bring this to light, and force a retraction from CBS.

We all know that the World Wide Web has revolutionized the distribution of the printed word. One individual, working from anywhere on Earth, can effectively reach everyone else on the planet. Everyone is now a publisher. This means that there are no longer any marginalized voices, provided one has access to Web publishing resources - which are not substantial for anyone in a relatively prosperous region of the world.

This has been an enormous boon for free speech; without the Web, Outfoxed would have languished in a remainder bin - instead it sold 150,000 copies in its first month of release. The Web was the beginning of an opportunity to move away from the collectivized mediasphere, but it isn't nearly enough. We all know well enough that no one reads anymore. I'm actually encouraged by how much Australians read - newspapers, magazines, even books - but Americans only occasionally use these media. They prefer television above all else to learn about the world around them, and television is tightly controlled by the media megacorps.

Or rather, it was. You see, back in June we crossed something of a watershed: for the first time the volume of video traffic surpassed the volume of audio traffic on the Internet. In practical terms this means more bits were transmitted in violation of the copyrights of movie studios and television production companies than record companies. But it also means that a sea-change is afoot - people are starting to understand that broadband internet access represents an alternative for the distribution of audiovisual materials - an alternative to television.

One of the biggest media organizations around - the BBC - is getting in front of this trend with something they're calling "Flexible TV". It's a PC-based application which gives residents of the UK access to the BBC programming schedule, within a two week window: a week before the present moment, and a week after. Viewers make their selections from the program schedule, and the programs are downloaded to the users' hard disks. The BBC is testing Flexible TV with a thousand users, but expect it to be rolled out across the UK by the end of the year.

This doesn't seem that novel an idea, does it? After all the Internet has been around in its present form for a decade - so why hasn't anyone done anything like this? It has to do with the difference between broadcasting over the air and netcasting over the internet. A broadcaster spends the same amount of money whether 10 people or 10 million are watching a broadcast, because the broadcast tower reaches all who want to tune into it. The economics for netcasting are quite different. Anyone can set up a server to send out ten simultaneous program streams - but it requires a million times the infrastructure and bandwidth to serve the same program to 10 million people.

Or it used to.

The BBC doesn't have the bandwidth to netcast its programming to all 66 million of its viewers. Fortunately it doesn't that kind of capability, because the BBC has cleverly designed the Flexible TV application to act as a node in a Peer-to-Peer network. Anyone using Flexible TV has access to the programs which have been downloaded by any other Flexible TV client, and can get those programs directly from them. All BBC need do is provide a single copy of a program into the network of P2P clients, and they handle the work themselves. More than this, because of the P2P technology used by the BBC (more on this in a moment) a Flexible TV user can get a little bit of the program from any number of other peers; rather than going through the process of downloading an entire program from one other peer, the Flexible TV client can ask a hundred other clients for small sections of the program, and download these hundred sections simultaneously. Not only does this decrease the amount of traffic that any clients has to handle, it also means that it produces a virtuous cycle: the more popular a program is, the more copies of it will exist in the network of peers, and therefore the more easily a peer can download it.

In other words, the BBC has cracked the big problem which has prevented netcasting from taking off. In this system of "peercasting" the network is actually more efficient than a broadcast network, because more than one program can be provided simultaneously, and failure in any one point in the network doesn't bring the network down. In other words, this network can't be hacked, can't suffer from a power outage (unless it spans the whole network, which is very unlikely) and achieves unheard-of efficiencies in the distribution of audiovisual programming.

How is this bit of technological magic achieved? Through the use of a new technology known as BitTorrent - something some of you may have already used. BitTorrent is a P2P filesharing system specifically designed to prohibit one of the biggest social ills which plague P2P networks - a phenomenon known as "leeching". A leech grabs files from a P2P network without providing anything in return. With BitTorrent your download speed - how fast you receive your data - is determined by how much data you're sharing. This means that a torrent starts slowly - because you haven't much to share - and then increases nearly exponentially; as you have more of the file, you have more to share, so your bandwidth increases, until the file is fully downloaded.

BitTorrent was also designed to avoid one of the biggest technical issues which affect P2P networks - the fact that peers come and go at will. BitTorrent creates a "tracker" - a list of all peers which have the file you're downloading - and gives you access to all of those peers. The file itself is divided into smaller sections, and each of these sections can be downloaded from any peer, in any order. If a peer goes off-line while transmitting a section of the file, BitTorrent simply requests that section from another peer. Whenever there's more than 2 or 3 peers, this is sufficient to guarantee a hassle-free download. When there are tens or hundreds of peers - which is often the case - file transfers can happen very quickly and efficiently.

Now we all know that P2P networks are havens for those among us who show no regard for copyright. I myself have used BitTorrent to watch all of the 4th season episodes of Six Feet Under (currently airing in Australia) just so I could keep up with my friends in the USA. But BitTorrent has legitimate uses as well. Open Source software projects, such as Redhat Fedora LINUX are distributed via BitTorrent. Robert Greenwald, bless his heart, has just released all of the interviews from Outfoxed as a 500 MB MPEG file, suitable for editing and remixing, and that, too, was released via BitTorrent. (That was a popular file - it only took me about 30 minutes to download.) Watchdog groups in the USA have begun to release the video recordings of Congressional hearings on BitTorrent. And on and on and on. BitTorrent is the future, and it's the thing that's going to wreck commercial TV as we know it.

What makes me say that?

We all know that we're in the midst of a transition to digital TV - I myself have a card for my home PC which allows me to receive the five free-to-air networks via digital transmission. The most interesting thing about the DVB signal - the standard for transmission of digital TV in Australia - is that it uses MPEG2 format for audiovisual data, in a format which is very close to the standard used on DVDs. In fact it is very easy for me to record an off-the-air broadcast and burn it to DVD. I've done that with season 5 of The Sopranos, which aired on Nine Network. My digital TV card also includes software which allows me to record the broadcasts to my hard disk, so I can watch them later on - just as if I had a VCR.

I have broadband coming into my home, and a fairly sophisticated home network - as you might imagine - so my web server can see the areas of my PCs hard disk where I keep the recordings made by my digital TV. That means that I can access my website anywhere in the world and check out what programs I've got recorded. I can even choose to download them from my website to whatever machine I'm using. This means that wherever I am in the world, I can watch the programs I've recorded. And, if I give someone else the URL for this website, so can they.

Ok, just a minute hereÉ Doesn't this mean that I've become a television broadcaster? I mean really, what's the difference between someone getting the bits for an episode of The Sopranos from Nine Digital or from my website? Bits are bits are bits, and because of that, they'll be the same bits, whether they come from Nine or from me. So why would anyone willingly watch Nine at the time that the Nine programmer has decided to air The Sopranos when they can watch it whenever they want just by downloading the bits from my website?

Once the TV producers figure this out, it's all over for the networks. After all, wouldn't TimeWarner (which owns HBO) rather have you pay them directly to watch an episode of The Sopranos? They'd make more money than they would from Nine Network. Now truthfully piracy would be rampant in that environment, but it's rampant in the current environment - it takes about four hours between when an episode of The Sopranos premieres on HBO and when it premieres on BitTorrent. Which is just about long enough to convert the broadcast from a fat MPEG2 file to a slimmed down DivX recording.

Piracy is the price a producer pays for living in the digital age. We've heard the record companies and the movie studios bitch and moan about the money lost to piracy - even as they declare ever-greater profits. They want all the benefits of digital distribution, without paying any of the associated prices. Well, fuck them. They can't have it both ways.

Within a decade - and perhaps a lot sooner - the television networks will have been deprived of nearly all their pre-produced programming. Television will become a live medium - as it was in its beginning, so it will be in its old age. Sports, news and event programming (terror attacks and awards shows) will be the staples for broadcasting in the 21st century. Advertisers will love live television - because it's where the people are - but never again will a television broadcaster be able to dictate to you what you can watch and when you can watch it. Those days are already past - at the price of a small crime of copyright violation.

All this means that as the Internet rises, broadcast television falls. That means cable as well as free-to-air broadcasters, because cable will also be competing against this Internet-based television. As more and more material becomes more consistently available to the TV viewer, the trend will be away from the circumscribed choices offered by the TV channel (five or five hundred channels, neither are very alluring when compared to the near-infinity of programming available over the Internet already) and toward the Internet.

Which gives all of this triumph of the media megacorps the flavor of a Greek Tragedy: when they reached their zenith of power, at that moment the seeds of their downfall were sewn.

Now let's take a look at some techniques to accelerate the inevitable collapse of the media megacorps.


Part Three: New Day Rising

The Chinese Taoist laughs at civilization and goes elsewhere. The Babylonian Chaoist sets termites to the foundations. - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

Over the last few weeks, as I've been working on this presentation, friends and colleagues have been guiding me to various websites with some relevance to the main idea I want to advance today: that it is possible to build an alternative news network, one which will be pervasively available to the public - as pervasive any of the networks of the media megacorps. There have been a number of attempts in the US: Guerilla Network News, BuzzFlash, Democracy Now!, TruthOut, CommonDreams, and AirAmerica. In Australia you've got Stephen Mayne's crikey.com.au and IndiMedia. Of these, only AirAmerica uses broadcasting to get its programming to the public - hence, it's the most successful of all.

Independent news organizations tend to overlook broadcasting as a distribution channel because of its tightly regulated nature. The airwaves are held in trust by our governments for the common good of the people. Or so we are told. The truth, as we all know, is that they're held by the government for the profit of the anti-market forces which have become entrenched and enriched by these resources. The public airwaves were saved from the "tragedy of the commons" by government regulation, which only produced a worse "catastrophe of the commons," creating a media plutocracy in place of an anarchic free-for-all.

I think most of us would prefer anarchy to plutocracy. And in this spirit, let's examine the ways in which we can open some gaps in the functioning of these powers, gaps wide enough to transmit a signal.

The AM radio band is a little bit different in Australia than in the USA. In the US it goes from 540 Khz to 1710 Khz, while in Australia it only extends up to 1620 Khz. This means there are at least 50 khz of spectrum that are quasi-unregulated. They are regulated by the ACA but not by the ABA - and hence not subject to the normal rules of broadcast regulation. What's interesting is that most (perhaps all) of the AM receivers sold in Australia actually provide access to the band as defined in the US, so at the top end of the dial, there's nothing but empty space.

Now you can't just plop a transmitter into that range and start broadcasting 50,000 Watts of power – the government shut you down immediately, or perhaps just demand hundreds of millions of dollars in license fees. But it is possible, and at least marginally legal to use so-called "micropower" AM radio transmitters in this band. A micropower transmitter generally has a transmitter power of 100 milliwatts or less - not much, you might think, unless you consider that most of WiFi communications use even less power than that. With that kind of signal strength you can get up to about a 500 meter transmission radius - if you're antenna is located on a nice, high point. That's not very much, although in the urban areas where most Australians live, that would still reach a fair number of homes.

But so what? You could all have your own little micropower AM stations, each saying your own little things, making your own little reports, but really who cares? A network isn't a thousand stations saying a thousand different things; a network is a thousand stations speaking with one voice. That's what Clear Channel is - here and in the United States. So how do you turn these little stations into a network?

Well, there are two answers to this question. The first is fairly obvious: you put the transmitters close enough together that each station is a paired receiver/transmitter, and in so doing you create a mesh network of transmitters. The receiver picks up the signal and passes it along to the transmitter, which rebroadcasts it on the same frequency. This is somewhat analogous to how mobile networks work - you move from cell to cell and the signal follows you seamlessly - and is very well suited to densely populated urban districts, college campuses, public events, and so forth.

The costs for each node in such a system are very low - probably less than fifty dollars for both the AM receiver and the transmitter. And because it's low power, it can all be run off of batteries which are automatically recharged via solar cells. It should be possible, with only just a touch of design and engineering, to produce a tiny all in one receiver-transmitter-charger unit that could be dropped almost anywhere - say on the rooftop of every tall building in your suburb - and voila! - you've got yourself a network.

(For technical details google "micropower radio" and peruse some of the links.)

Now it isn't possible to blanket an sparsely populated entire country - like Australia or the USA - with a micropower radio signal. There are places where the transmitters would be more than 500 m apart, and the signal chain would be broken. In situations like this, Internet streaming comes to the rescue. Any signal which can be delivered via AM radio can also be delivered via the internet at dial-up speeds. The streaming signal output can put plugged into the AM transmitter, and, once again, you've got your network. In this way you can cover both the densely populated areas and the spaces in between them with one network.

Now both of these proposals are more than just idle ideas - they're the heart of a new network - RADIO
RHIZOME - which launched in Los Angeles a week ago today. RADIO RHIZOME has hijacked frequency 1680 on the AM dial to bring a continuous loop of programming to the city which the media megacorps call home. And they can't do anything about it. Jeff Cain, the artist/creator of RADIO RHIZOME describes it in these words - "I took a look at the telecommunications law, and squirted myself in between all of its forms, like foam, filling up all the space they'd left empty." In the US this means micropower AM radio, with a mixture of repeaters and Internet streaming to cover what could potentially be the entire planet with a single broadcast network.

If we had some sort of networking in this building we could tune into RADIO RHIZOME right now; if we had a few micropower transmitters, we could set up a mesh network that ran all the way through this festival. And that's the point: anywhere you go, you could be setting up your own mesh-style radio networks. Radio networks aren't meant to be permanent - even if that's what the media megacorps want you to believe. Put them up, get the message out, take them down again, move on. Mobility is more important and more useful than permanence; flexibility trumps sheer size every time.

Now one thing that RADIO RHIZOME has - one thing that every network has - is a "head end" - the point from which programming is distributed through the network. This is an architecture that is quite literally built into the design of the network. Thus, true power lies at the head end, at the top of the hierarchy of transmitters. This is what people are going to fight over - the right to control the distribution of content. It won't be a big issue when the mesh is small, but as the mesh extends to cover the nation - and this isn't very hard to imagine happening - people will begin to have very serious disagreements about what goes onto the network. In the beginning you'll be hard pressed to find enough content to put over the airwaves, but as you reach an inflection point, you'll find yourselves swamped with programming choices. And you, like every radio and TV programmer who has gone before you, will have to decide who gets to decide who gets to the airwaves. That's a lousy choice, because it basically means you will recapitulate the gatekeeper strategies which are the hallmark of the media megacorps.

Or is there another way? This is the challenge I'm presenting to you - here and now - a challenge that needs to be solved. In some space between the community access-for-all methodology and the strictly constrained gatekeeper methodology there must be a middle path which allows for an equality of opportunity but also allows for a response to taste and quality. In the age of computers and the Web, it shouldn't be all that hard - but it's a problem of social engineering, not technology. I look forward to learning about your own solutions to this problem.

And now we come to another technique, which doesn't rely on broadcasting, and which doesn't suffer from the same sorts of questions-of-quality which plague head-end distribution of programming. This one is near and dear to my heart, and if I didn't have a full time job trying to breathe some life into the Australian film and television industries, this is what I'd be doing full time: I'd be working to create my very own version of BBC's "Flexible TV," using that as the core of a new sort of television network, one which could harness the power of P2P distribution to create a global network of left-wing reportage.

The pieces are all there: we have BitTorrent to get the pieces distributed, transmitted and received; we have the Web and email to get the word out; we have encoders like DivX and Xvid to ensure that people can get tiny downloads over their dial-up connections. But right now these pieces are separate and disjoint. It takes someone with a fair bit of ability - in computing, in communications, in video and audio production - to pull it all together. Individuals with core competencies in all three of these areas are few and far between.

What we need is a single tool to wrap it all up in a nice, easy to use form. We need a tool which makes publishing content into this media stream no more difficult than selecting a audiovisual file. We need a tool which makes finding the programming you're looking for as easy and straightforward as Google. And we need all of this to be one single tool, so that we can forever erase the false distinction between producer and audience, between professional and amateur which has kept most voices silenced as a few have used their positions as professional producers to push a pack of lies down our throats.

When we get that, it's game over. The networks will no longer matter, they will no longer determine our diet of pre-digested truths. The truth will return to its natural state: crazy, anarchic, contradictory, subjective and as wildly mercurial as a manic depressive who's gone off his meds. In place of a few well-controlled voices, we'll have hundreds, then thousands, then millions of competing points of view, and our job will be to figure out how to find some signal in the midst of all that noise.

That won't be as hard as you might think, because we already do this every day as citizens situated within an incredibly over-mediated environment. We rely on our natural filters - our social networks - to help us locate the quality, the signal in the noise. We already listen to our friends for their thoughts about what tracks to listen to, what movies to watch, which events to attend. Every one of us is a potent filter for our friends, and we'll be able to use our communications technologies to reinforce and automate a lot of that work. You'll be able to automatically share your "moments of quality" with your friends, if that's what you want to do, and they'll be able to do the same thing for you. You and your mob will become something like a media superorganism, capable of digesting an enormous amount of information, winnowing through the chaff to find the grain.

At least, that's what I'm hoping.

All of this is contingent upon one very crucial relationship - you've got to make friends with your geek peers.

Those folks are already on the cutting edge of all this tech, they've already mastered it, and they're sitting around wondering what it's good for - besides downloading the latest porno or techno tracks. They already live in a liminal world where freedom of expression has been gobsmacked by copyright law. They understand the true function of the media megacorps - to preserve and protect their profits. And they have skills you need.

I have been very lucky in my own career, because I've been able to sit in the gap between the community of creative producers - people like you - and the community of technological wizards. You each have a lot to offer the other, and you can both change the world. But you're going to have to do it together. One without the other would be a bit like the old maxim: "Revolution with revelation is tyranny. Revelation without revolution is slavery." You folks hold the keys of revelation, but you're going to have to go and seek out the folks who have the keys to the revolution, and seduce them - convince them that this is their opportunity to make a difference, to do something insanely great, and change the world.

You will encounter resistance. Already the US Senate is attempting to make P2P technology illegal, even technologies such as BitTorrent, which have demonstrably non-infringing uses. They say it's because they want to stop the huge amount of copyright theft going on. DON'T BELIEVE THEM. They can see what's happening. They know they're about to lose control of the global mediasphere, that the media megacorps which have helped them become entrenched powers won't mean a good god-damn in a decade. And they're scared. So they're trying to make all of this illegal, trying to close the gaps in the functioning of their power.

Every generation gets a battle worth fighting. I'm perhaps a bit older than most of you; my battle began back in the 1980s, when I realized that hypertext systems were incredible ways for human beings to get a handle on information. Because of that work, I was savvy to the Web from nearly the moment it was launched. I knew what it meant and did what I could to get it in front of other people - influential sorts who, once they'd seen it, would spread the word. And so the world changed.

The world is changing again. What happened to print a decade ago is about to happen to television. And television is far more potent than print. This time the revolution will be televised - and it will make the Web era look like a tempest in a teacup. They'll call you criminals, revolutionaries, thieves and saboteurs. And they'll be right. But fuck them. Fuck big media. You're the asteroid, just about to break the atmosphere, and wipe out those fucking dinosaurs.

Good luck.

Mark Pesce
11 Chuen - 12 Eb (25 - 26 September 2004)
Sydney

http://p2pnet.net/story/2650


But wait, there’s more. I kid you not. – Jack.


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Congressional Action on Induce Act Could Be in Jeopardy
Keith Regan

Representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a coalition that includes the Consumer Electronics Association, the IEEE and NetCoalition said negotiations collapsed early yesterday, with the coalition groups blaming the RIAA for not being willing to work toward a compromise.

The fate of the controversial Induce Act that would restrict file-sharing technology that can be used to illegally download and share copyrighted material was in question today after negotiations between the music and electronics industries broke down as the current Congressional session nears an end, possibly by this weekend.

The bill, formally known as the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, had been scheduled to be acted on today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but that action has been delayed in the wake of the collapsed negotiations.

It was not known when, or if, the bill will be acted on before the Congressional session ends.

Representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a coalition that includes the Consumer Electronics Association, the IEEE and NetCoalition said talks broke down early yesterday, with the other groups blaming the RIAA for not being willing to move toward a compromise.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, had planned to have the committee vote on the bill today. However, after the last-minute and late-night talks broke down, that vote was apparently put on hold.

A spokesman for the Judiciary Committee said no vote had been taken as of 3 p.m. Washington, D.C., time today and said he did not know if one was scheduled. An agenda for a meeting of the full committee did not list the bill among a dozen action items.

Catching Flack

The rest of the industry groups blamed the RIAA for the breakdown in talks, saying that a compromise version of the bill's language it put forward at 1 a.m. yesterday represented a step backwards from earlier drafts.

The first attempt at the bill was drafted by the Copyright Office after court rulings declared peer-to-peer (P2P) file-swapping networks such as Morpheus and Grokser were legal.

Will Rodger, director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Open Source and Industry Association, said committee chairmen often schedule votes on bills as a way to jump-start compromises. However, he said, a compromise is not likely to happen in this situation because the two sides are moving farther apart.

Rodger said the latest draft essentially gives judges the power to stop any technology that is found to be capable of making illegal copies.

"That describes just about every part of the IT infrastructure and most of what is in your living room as well," Rodger told TechNewsWorld. "We know infringement is bad. Our members deal with it too. But we also know there's no magic bullet. And right now, this goes to the core of what we do. We're heading for a showdown."

The RIAA did not return calls seeking comment. The association had tried to use the courts to force P2P networks to take responsibility for the file- swapping actions of their users, only to have a U.S. Court of Appeals find that makers of the technology were not responsible for how it was used.

Rodger said if the bill passes as drafted, an industry that makes up 1 percent of the gross domestic product would be dictating rules for the tech sector, which accounts for as much as 10 to 15 percent of GDP. And because the legislation will only apply to U.S. companies, overseas competitors will be able to continue to innovate and will quickly fill the void.

Try and Try Again

If the bill is not voted on in this session of Congress, which is expected to end as soon as this weekend, it could return as a rider to appropriations bills passed later in the year. If not, it's likely to be back next year, Rodger said. "We've put out word that we're going to be watching very closely," he added.

The various industry groups have been working together since late July, when Hatch asked them to try to work out a bill they could both support during a public hearing before the committee.

"Notwithstanding everyone's hard work and good intentions, we find ourselves farther apart now than at the outset of this process," the IEEE, NetCoalition and CEA wrote in a letter to Hatch.

The letter continued: "The recording industry continues to propose language that would not solve the piracy problems in the manner you identified, but instead would effectively put at risk all consumer electronics, information technology products and Internet products and services that aren't designed to the industry's liking."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/C...rdy-37169.html

















Until next week,

- js.














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