Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 25th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"I would never say never, but DRM requires a huge social change to make it work." – Andrew Orlowski


"This [Induce Act] proposal is not fully baked." – Mike Godwin


"I don't know how to do it. I don't even know where to put a CD to burn. Whatever went on up there, with her friends coming in all the time, whatever they did is nothing I know about." – Connecticut mom Barbara Tyra









Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Signs California Internet Bill - E-Mail Address Required To Share Movies, Music Online
Mark Martin

Sacramento -- Aiding the industry that helped him gain worldwide fame, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Tuesday aimed at discouraging online piracy by requiring anyone disseminating movies or music on the Internet to disclose their e-mail address.

California file sharers who trade songs or films without providing an e-mail address will be guilty of a misdemeanor, under the first-in-the-nation measure that could make it easier for law enforcement to track down people who illegally download copyrighted material.

The bill is the latest attempt by film and music trade associations to combat the hard-to-police use of file-sharing software.

The signing was hailed by the bill's sponsor, the Motion Picture Association of America, whose president, Dan Glickman, noted in a statement that Schwarzenegger had "a unique understanding of the powerful impact of piracy.''

The governor remains a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which supported the bill.

Opponents, including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, say the measure infringes on privacy rights of computer users and would turn casual file-sharers into criminals.

The measure, SB1506, was carried by state Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America, which says it loses $3.5 billion annually to piracy and is concerned that online trading of films is a burgeoning problem for them.

Vans Stevenson, a senior vice president for the trade association, said the new law "will be another tool'' used to combat piracy. He said the group hoped to work with state and local law enforcement officials on enforcing the measure.

Schwarzenegger did not comment on the signing.

But he has made no secret of his opposition to the online sharing of copyrighted material. Last week he signed an executive order prohibiting state employees from using software designed for file sharing.

In total, Schwarzenegger took action on 89 bills Tuesday.

He signed AB890, by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Sherman Oaks, that requires donations of $1,000 or more made to a political party in the last days before an election be disclosed within 24 hours.

It closes a loophole used by the GOP and 21st Century Insurance to secretly funnel nearly $1 million in last-minute contributions two years ago to Republican Assembly candidates in close races.

The governor also signed AB1793, by Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, which will require video game retailers to display signs notifying parents of the video game rating system.

"The governor's signature is a clear sign that more needs to be done to keep these inappropriate games out of children's hands and give parents the tools they need to raise healthy kids," Yee said.

The bill originally would have prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors, but that version was unable to get through the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger vetoed AB858 by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, which would have prohibited schools from using "redskin" as the mascot. Some Native Americans say the image is offensive.

Schwarzenegger deemed the bill "silly" in a radio interview last week and said in his veto message that the decision should be made at the local level.

"At a time when we should all be working together to increase the academic achievement of all California's students, adding another nonacademic state administrative requirement for schools to comply with takes more focus away from getting kids to learn at the highest levels," he said.

Schwarzenegger also vetoed a bill that would have mandated sending juvenile parolees who are caught in a nonviolent drug offense to drug treatment rather than back into confinement with the California Youth Authority.

The governor said SB519, by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, would apply to juveniles who had been convicted of a violent offense, and therefore may not be best placed in drug treatment programs.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AGQO8SOCF1.DTL


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Consumers’ Rights Versus Corporations’ Illusions
Xavier Galland

Today’s website is not a website but a 360KB PDF document that everybody even remotely concerned with consumers’ rights should either read, or at the very least, know of.

Why is that? Because it debunks what we are endlessly told by the whining recording companies – the notorious “majors” – about file sharing and peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading by computers communicating on a network without a central server.

Using the time-honoured technique of repeating something over and over until people eventually come to believe it – and it works – the majors have been trying to persuade us that file sharing is responsible for their sales slump and they have now taken to suing and intimidating web users who download songs and music.

Interestingly, the press has been very keen to relay the majors’ claims but very quiet about other people’s versions of the situation. Well, that’s the power of the advertising dollar for you.

What other people say is simply that the majors’ assertion that each download means one less sale relies on the assumption that if you had not downloaded the file you would have bought the entire album. This assumption has no basis in fact. Many people who might download certain songs just because they can would never dream of wasting Bt500 on the entire CD.

This was clearly shown last March by two researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina.

Says their press release: “This study is unique in that it uses data from file-sharing servers, where the authors directly observed 1.75 million downloads during 17 weeks in the autumn of 2002. Using statistical methods, they can then test if the sale of an album declines more strongly if that album is downloaded more often.”

The study found that, at worse, 5,000 downloads are needed to reduce the sales of an album by a single copy. This could potentially reduce sales by around two million copies a year. The problem is that CD sales actually dropped by 139 million copies between 2000 and 2002. Even if 10 million were directly lost to downloads that would still leave 129 million unaccounted for.

Could it be that CD prices are simply too high and that the majors’ greed is obvious enough to make people deliberately reduce their purchases?

Worse still, it seems that it only takes 150 downloads of the 25 per cent best selling albums to increase their sales by one copy. “This effect is particularly important because the profitability of the music industry depends almost entirely on the success of the most popular albums.”

In other words, file sharing could actually be profitable to the recording companies.

The whole study is available from http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/ papers /FileSharing_March2004.pdf
http://nationmultimedia.com/page.new...1115&usrsess=1


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Tech Groups Want Induce Hearings
Katie Dean

Over 40 technology companies and consumer rights advocates sent a letter to Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy on Friday urging them to hold public hearings on the Induce Act, in hopes that Congress won't act hastily in passing a law that would have huge effects on the tech industries.

As written initially, the legislation (SB2560) sponsored by the two senators would hold technology companies liable for manufacturing products that encourage people to infringe copyright. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill in July and many of the witnesses called to testify harshly criticized the proposal.

In response, the committee asked the U.S. Copyright Office to develop alternative language for the bill. Witnesses from the Consumer Electronics Association, the Business Software Alliance and the NetCoalition, among others, were also called on to offer suggestions.

It is the Copyright Office's revisions -- which call for holding companies liable that rely on copyright infringement to make a profit -- that are so worrisome to the technology organizations.

"The Copyright Office has given us a new approach but it hasn't really been publicly examined," said Mike Godwin, legal director of Public Knowledge, one of the groups that signed the letter. "I think that if everybody has a chance to debate this publicly I think you'd see that there are a lot of misgivings and criticism about this bill."

A Public Knowledge rep said the committee could "mark up" some form of the bill as early as next Tuesday, where it would go to the full committee and then the Senate floor for a vote.

The area of secondary liability for copyright infringement -- where a person or company is charged with profiting or contributing to or having control over the wrongdoing -- is extremely complicated and there are a lot of divergent thoughts on how to deal with it, said Markham Erickson, general counsel of NetCoalition. He said the committee should not rush to push something through for political purposes.

The groups believe the copyright recommendations would "create an unprecedented new form of liability of uncertain, but potentially unlimited, reach." They argue that the committee must hold more hearings to consider all proposals -- there have been at least seven suggested, according to one estimate -- put forth by CEA, NetCoalition and others.

"Before any approach becomes law, it should, at minimum, be subjected to careful scrutiny in a public hearing at which novel elements in these approaches can be compared, and discussed to their full implications," the letter reads. "The process thus far has been constructive, but has not resulted in either the consensus of the confidence in a legislative framework that ought to underlie a major and consequential revision to the Copyright Act."

The letter is signed by Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, EarthLink, Verizon, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others.

Representatives of Sens. Hatch (R-Utah) and Leahy (D-Vermont) couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

"It's going to be unclear for innovators whether they are going to be liable legally for particular products," Godwin said. "It doesn't matter what you intended -- you might be liable anyway and I think that's very scary."

The letter also charges that the proposed changes would undermine the Supreme Court's 1984 Betamax decision, which ruled that devices with "substantial non-infringing uses" are legal. Technology companies say this landmark case created an environment for innovation to flourish for 20 years, and now the ruling is "under unrelenting attack." Betamax would provide no defense against the Copyright Office's form of liability, the letter says.

Other objections to the Induce Act have been raised by Downhill Battle, a music activism group. This week, the group coordinated a massive call-in to congressional representatives to protest the Induce Act and register their support for the Betamax decision. The group said that over 5,000 people signed up to call.

"This proposal is not fully baked," Godwin said.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64997,00.html


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Call To Legalise File-Sharing With Taxes
Mark Ward

Pop piracy should be decriminalised and the music industry should realise that efforts to stop illegal downloading are doomed, a conference has been told.

Instead the music industry should embrace file-sharers, said technology journalist and author Andrew Orlowski in a keynote speech at the Interactive In The City conference being held in Manchester.

Mr Orlowski said the record labels should look to novel ways to generate cash to support new artists.

One way could be the addition of a small surcharge to net subscription fees which could be shared among artists whose music is being downloaded.

Hi-tech pop swap

Mr Orlowski believes that the relentless pace of technological change is going to make it increasingly difficult to police pop swapping and tackle net piracy.

"Both the technology people and the music people are sharing the collective hallucination that technology will save them but it won't," he told BBC News Online.

Although he said that the current form of peer-to-peer networks let the music industry track down the most prolific file swappers, the next generation of technologies will render such efforts futile.

New gadgets and networking technologies will make it much easier to swap pop, but far harder to stop it.

Mr Orlowski said future short-range network systems, called personal area networks, will let people swap pop as they walk down the street.

Gadgets are likely to hold a list of their owners' preferences and, when they come in range of another device bearing tracks that fit this profile, will extract a copy.

"It's peer-to-peer in your pocket," he said.

Copy control

Such ubiquitous technology that makes it so easy to swap and share music is likely to outwit technological attempts, using so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, to regulate it, said Mr Orlowski.

"I would never say never," he said, "but DRM requires a huge social change to make it work."

The ease with which music can be swapped in the future might also mean that existing legitimate music download services such as iTunes, Napster and others have a limited life, said Mr Orlowski.

The music industry needed to realise that a generation was growing up that was happy to get its pop for free.

Instead of using the law to stop this piracy, said Mr Orlowski, record labels needed to change their tactics.

"Copyright law is fine. We just need to enforce it in a more enlightened way."

The inclusion of a small surcharge on monthly internet subscription fees that was given to record labels to pay artists could solve the problem, he said.

"I do not have kids and I do not have a car but I do not have any objection to paying for roads and schools because it is better that they are there rather than not."

He added that the idea of a surcharge was winning the broad backing of many in the music industry including legendary figure Tony Wilson formerly of Factory Records.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/3674270.stm

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ILN News Letter

German Copyright Proposals Exchanges Levy For New Uses

BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Report reports on a German Ministry of Justice copyright proposal that would establish a new levy on copying devices for the purposes of compensating rights holders. In return, end users would be entitled to exploit copyrighted works in media unknown at the time of the original license and libraries would be permitted to offer electronic versions of copyrighted works on off-line computer stations with no remittance to rights holders.

Article at http://pubs.bna.com/ip/BNA/eip.nsf/is/a0a9v4b3d3


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Rules man, more and more rules

Beyond File Sharing: P2P Radio Arrives
Jack M. Germain

Mercora's Atri Chatterjee is confident that P2P radio will avoid legal entanglements with the RIAA because his network will closely regulate the actions of subscribers and will ensure that all required usage fees are paid to the recording industry. "We enable people to webcast music to each other in a P2P-style environment," Chatterjee told TechNewsWorld.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is continuing to wage its war against peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks. On August 25, the RIAA filed new copyright infringement lawsuits against 744 individuals on a variety of peer-to-peer platforms, including eDonkey, Limewire, Grokster and Kazaa .

Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals in various jurisdictions around the country has been ruling, at least in part, against the RIAA on appeals of lower court rulings that imposed injunctions and fines against some of the P2P music networks. Typically, the appeals judges have been returning these music industry cases to the lower courts to fine-tune their original decisions.

At issue is the complicated issue of copyright infringement and online piracy when P2P users swap music from storehouses of user-contributed music. The legal basis for the lawsuits against music swapping is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. According to the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy, the DMCA is designed to implement the treaties signed in December 1996 at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference, but the DMCA also contains additional provisions addressing related matters.

The provisions of the DMCA, in part, limit ISPs from copyright infringement liability for simply transmitting information over the Internet. But the Act expects ISPs to remove material from users' Web sites that appears to constitute copyright infringement. The ACT also requires "Web casters" -- those streaming music over the Internet -- to pay licensing fees to record companies.

While this legal quagmire continues, a new player on the music-swapping scene plans to launch a paid service by year's end that will offer subscribers an innovative P2P service. Srivats Sampath and Atri Chatterjee, cofounders of Mercora.com believe they have a way to make P2P work legally with a network they call P2P Radio.

This new P2P service already provides access to more than 3,000 channels and 2.1 million unique tracks. And there is more planned once the service comes out of beta testing.

RIAA'S View

In a prepared statement, RIAA's President Cary Sherman wrote that the RIAA's stepped-up efforts reflect a determination to pursue copyright infringement online wherever it might arise. John Doe lawsuits were filed in major cities all over the United States. An additional 152 lawsuits were filed against "named" defendants -- individuals who were identified through the litigation process and then declined or ignored an RIAA overture to settle the case before it proceeded any further.

"Just as enforcement strategies for street piracy adapt with changing circumstances, the same goes for combating piracy online," said the RIAA's President. "We are adjusting and expanding our efforts to target illegal file sharing on additional platforms like eDonkey and others. There will always be a degree of piracy, both on the street and online. But without a strong measure of deterrence, piracy will overwhelm and choke the creation and distribution of music."

According to new data from the RIAA, there has been an extraordinary leap in awareness about the RIAA's position on the law and the availability of legal online alternatives during the past year. A July survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that the percentage of those polled know it is illegal "make music from the computer available for others to download for free over the Internet."

Describing the music community's education and enforcement efforts during the past year, Sherman said "the difference in digital music today and last year is night and day."

P2P Radio Plan

Mercora's Atri Chatterjee is confident that P2P radio will avoid legal entanglements with the RIAA because his network will closely regulate the actions of subscribers and will ensure that all required usage fees are paid to the recording industry.

"We enable people to webcast music to each other in a P2P-style environment. Music exchanges can only be done through webcast. The file sharer becomes a mini radio station. The file receiver becomes the listener," Chatterjee told TechNewsWorld.

He said this process is totally compliant with DMCA rules. "All copyright owners get paid by us. We make sure that the performance rights are honored to the owner of the song, the producers, the performers and the record label," he said.

Chatterjee sees P2P Radio as an innovation. His service takes P2P networking topography -- a distributed approach not unlike grid computing -- and uses it in a form that lets subscribers legally share and listen to music just like broadcast radio.

"Music sharing is a multistep process. It involves a search for discovery of music, obtaining the music and enjoying the music. Mercora is in the business of searching and enjoying. We will get involved in obtaining music later on," said Chatterjee.

Licenses in Hand

According to the company, Mercora.com has obtained a statutory license for the noninteractive Web casting of digital audio. This puts its user radio operation in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This license grants Mercora the necessary digital performance rights to avoid court challenges for piracy and copyright infringement.

Under the terms of the license, Mercora will make payments for sound recordings and royalty payments to SoundExchange, an independent nonprofit organization that represents over 500 record companies and associated labels. Mercora also has obtained all U.S. and international musical composition performance rights it might need through its licenses with industry groups that pertain to the performance rights and associated royalties due to song writers.

Mercora takes care of all the reporting and royalty payments that are due to these various organizations. Subscribers do not have to worry about any user payments beyond the subscription fees for participating in P2P Radio.

How It Works

Mercora's software application lets subscribers play the network's collections of music, listen to subscriber music streams and interact through forums and chat groups.

"We are a user-contributed network. The music never leaves the subscriber's system," said Chatterjee. "This insures that all copyright laws are followed and that all payment reporting is accomplished."

Subscribers install the Mercora client and list the digital music files they would like to include in their Mercora music library. Subscribers then use the Mercora client to organize and play this music locally. They can also make the music available for Web casting to others on the Mercora network.

The Mercora client ensures that all music streams satisfy the rules governing the statutory license for noninteractive streaming. These rules include conforming to the sound recording performance complement, minimum duration for looped programming, and identification of song, artist and album.

The software allows subscribers, in some cases, to listen to one song while Web casting another.

Restrctions Keep It Legal

Subscribers cannot announce in advance when particular sound recordings will be streamed or the order in which they will be streamed. This meets the legal requirement for a noninteractive streaming service.

Subscribers also cannot stream specific sound recordings within one hour of the request by a listener. The same restriction prevents listeners from designating a time for the stream.

The only audio content permitted is music for which the subscriber has legitimate legal rights to use. In other words, music ripped from CDs that the subscriber owns or music downloaded from a legitimate online music store is permitted. But music downloaded using other file-sharing programs is considered illegitimate and thus not permitted on P2P Radio.

No Guarantee Against Abusers

The P2P Radio software client is a closed environment, so users cannot record from Mercora's software client -- at least in theory. But Chatterjee admits the system is not foolproof.

"Of course, any jukebox player on a subscriber's computer system may enable a person to rip the music while listening," Chatterjee told TechNewsWorld. "But from a software-license standpoint, we do not allow that to happen. We track all activities at a central hub. Users must sign in, and we can enforce the rules," he said.

Chatterjee said the software application ensures that the music streaming between subscribers is legal.

The user agreement is very specific about adhering to the restrictions. It places subscribers on notice about the legal requirements for legal music exchange.

Beta To End in December

P2P Radio has been in beta testing since May. Chatterjee said the service already has 100,000 subscribers. They will have the option of selecting a subscription-based service or the basic free access when beta testing ends by December.

Chatterjee plans an expansion into a kind of eBay-esque network. But unlike eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) , Mercora.com will only provide music. "eBay is a gargantuan flee market. You can find anything. That's what we envision," Chatterjee told TechNewsWorld.

He said expansion plans will capitalize on the growing market for used music, which he described as a US$2.5 to $3 billion industry. The new music market is an $11.5 billion market.

The third aspect of Mercora's operation will involve contextual advertising within the software client. Using a simple Google-style ad-word system, pop-up ads will appear on the side of the user's computer screen.

Currently, users of most P2P networks -- like Kazaa or Morpheus -- can "stream" songs simply by previewing them after downloading a small amount of data. And companies like RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) , Musicmatch and others have offered Internet streaming for quite some time -- some for a fee, others not. Whether this new model of peer-to-peer radio will catch on in a market saturated with competition remains to be seen.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/B...ves-36728.html


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Why Jobs Should Heed VoIP's Call
Alex Salkever

A while back, I wrote a column noting that Apple's impressive iChat instant-messaging software could easily replace phone lines for many purposes. Skype blows away iChat in terms of voice quality. My recent test drive of Skype for OS X led me to conclude that it's time for Apple to start a phone network -- Macphone, if you like.

The hype surrounding the August 31 launch of the third-generation iMac stole the thunder from another launch of great interest to Mac users. I'm referring to the public release -- also on August 31 -- by free Internet telephony company Skype of a long-awaited beta version of its software for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) OS X.

Apparently I wasn't the only Machead jonesing for Skype. According to the company, 105,000 people have downloaded its Mac software since its launch. And bear in mind that this is a true beta version -- definitely not ready for prime time and lacking some of the key features of the full version available to Microsoft Windows and Linux users.

Nevertheless, within minutes of my download, I was on the network making calls over my cable broadband connection free of charge to Skype users in distant places. (Skype is the only company I can think of that rivals Apple in making hard tasks really, really easy.)

However, I found Skype's claim of providing voice quality superior to that of regular phone lines untrue. My international Skype calls were punctuated with buzzes and pops, as if my neighbor's microwave were interfering with my 2.4 Ghz cordless handset.

Better Clarity, Sound Quality

Then again, for long stretches of conversation, Skype offered much better clarity and sound quality than regular voice networks. And as the global Internet continues to provide higher speeds to consumers and businesses, the quality of Skype calls will improve. In fact, I would wager that within the next five years, Skype calls to any seriously wired country will easily surpass the quality of similar calls on legacy twisted-copper networks.

A while back, I wrote a column noting that Apple's impressive iChat instant-messaging software could easily replace phone lines for many purposes. Skype blows away iChat in terms of voice quality. My recent test drive of Skype for OS X led me to conclude that it's time for Apple to start a phone network -- Macphone, if you like.

I don't mean Apple should lay a bunch of fiber-optic cable and fill large buildings with high-price switching equipment. Rather, Jobs & Co. could provide the graphical interface and the ease of use.

Outside Contractors

For the guts of the network, Apple could easily contract with other companies or try a bring- your-own bandwidth peer-to-peer approach like Skype. The potential downside is minimal. The possible upside is significant. Here's why:

Everyone knows the business models that powered old-style phone networks are rapidly unraveling. The Baby Bells have seen a steady decline of the number of phone lines connected to their networks. Consumers are increasingly cutting the cord and using a cell phone as their primary mode of communication.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Americans are now using Internet phone services to transmit voice traffic over their broadband connections and plug those calls into the public phone network. That number will soar as cable companies such as Cox and Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSK) and long-distance outfits like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Sprint (NYSE: FON) roll out Internet phone service for their subscribers.

The new reality is that voice service will ride atop a network connection, just like e-mail and Web browsing. AT&T Call Vantage customers can connect to the AT&T phone system just fine over a Verizon DSL line or a Time Warner cable-modem link. And it will be a pure service powered by software.

Greater Flexibility

What's more, it will be far more flexible than existing landline and cell networks because these calls will travel over the ubiquitous Internet, not over specialized networks that can't easily talk to each other. That's why Skype can do what it does. Driven by a quest for quality, the company writes great software that's easy to use. Its motto is "Internet telephone that just works." Sound familiar?

Apple already has the pieces in place to do what Skype is doing -- and it actually has a better chance of success. For starters, it has a paying customer base. It sells around 3 million computers a year, and it also enjoys an installed base of close to 20 million users, most of whom continue to pay money to Apple to purchase periodic software upgrades.

About 500,000 Mac users fork over around US$130 per year to subscribe to the .Mac service, which includes an e-mail address and online mail storage, 100 megabytes of online file backup, antivirus software, and tools for building and posting Web pages. Millions of Mac users buy songs on Apple's iTunes music store. The upshot? Apple has lots of potential phone-service customers.

No Great Effort

From a technical standpoint, it wouldn't be all that tough to pull off. Apple's iChat software already works through firewalls and is very easy to set up. Hooking the new Macphone service up with a regular phone company so that Macphone users could call out wouldn't be too hard. Level3, Colt and others have already done so in providing public phone service for SkypeOut.

Very good software packages are already available that provide features such as Internet voice mail. Apple could use these software systems on the back end. It would need to provide a good graphical user interface, which it could probably do easily by layering these features atop iChat and adding some menus.

The trickiest question is whether Apple should follow Skype's peer-to-peer model for telephony, in which the bandwidth provided by those logged on to the network actually carries all the calls and routes them to other Skype users.

A peer-to-peer network offers incredible efficiencies. Skype pays almost nothing to add a user to its network since its cost of distributing another copy of software is next to nothing. Apple could also use such a network to distribute software fixes or even to make it easier for iTunes customers to share songs.

Control Possible

If the record labels don't like that, no sweat. Apple could control the network and set the rules. Peer-to-peer works well for many, many things in this age of widespread broadband connectivity. And Skype has shown that you only need a few hundred thousand simultaneous users to make such a network viable.

Now, how could Apple make money on its new Macphone network? It has many ways, and some aren't necessarily obvious.

The easiest is to mimic Skype and charge on a per-minute basis for calls to the public phone network. Skype charges 2 cents a minute for calls within and between 22 countries. Those include most of the developed world. While that may seem low, Skype insiders have told me that the outfit expects to make a handy profit.

Down the road, Skype also plans to charge for added features. Apple could do the same: Offer the basic service for free and charge for things like voice mail and portable buddy lists.

Or maybe Apple could explore adding a phone service as part of its .Mac service. Perhaps it should award .Mac subscribers a bundle of voice services and a few hundred minutes per month of calls from a Macphone account to the regular phone network.

New Line

Most ambitious would be to use the Macphone service to launch a new line of Apple-branded mobile phones , which the company has talked about for some time. It makes sense. Apple likes to package devices with services. Witness the twinning of the iPod and iTunes.

A new line of Macphones that could easily talk to other Macphones over any Internet connection using iChat software would be amazingly cool. This is not a pipe dream. In many big cities, Wi-Fi coverage is almost omnipresent, and handset companies are already building phones that can handle standard cell communications and VoIP using Wi-Fi.

What I'm proposing isn't really such a big leap for Apple, which has slowly but surely morphed into a service company: Look at iTunes and .Mac. And OS X requires regular upgrades, so it's also something of a service business. Apple already has 90 percent of the expertise and the infrastructure in place to make this work.

Steve Jobs, phone home.
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/Wh...all-36688.html


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Should Apple Acquire Skype?
Ted Wallingford

While I myself wrote a piece comparing Skype to iChat, I'm starting to weary of people freaking out whenever Apple's products are bested by a competitor. The latest in this pattern is Business Week's Alex Salkever, who thinks Apple ought to to turn iChat into a phone service by using Skype's P2P approach. His comments seem driven by a dread of Apple's lovely iChat software getting trounced by the competition. But just for fun, let's indulge his idea. After all, Business Week printed it.

For starters, all iChat really needs is a built-in user directory. If that directory were centralized, unlike Skype, it would be reliable. Have you ever done a user search on Skype? For a 500,000-user system, the result counts are usually around 50 or so... It reminds me of searching a P2P file-sharing system for nearby files; of course, that's what Skype is: a P2P network. So, a decent user directory, perhaps using a cluster of LDAP-equipped Xserves at Apple HQ, would give iChat an instant advantage.

But the "MacPhone" idea requires quite a bit more work in order to replace your trusty household phone. How about a digital keypad in the iChat UI and a gateway to the Public Switched Telephone Network? Problem is, a PSTN gateway of the size required isn't chump change to set up.

Oh, by the way, don't let anybody try to convince you that any startup VoIP network will succeed without compatibility with the PSTN. The old Ma Bell system isn't going away for decades, if ever. The VoIP services that are making money are the ones who support dialing regular phones, and receiving calls at regular phone numbers. Skype does only outbound PSTN calling, and iChat doesn't do either. Coincidentally, Skype and iChat generate very little revenue for their owners.

The suggestion that a P2P network be used to replace the public telephone network is absurd. The public voice system must be centralized for a whole host of quality of service and regulatory reasons. So, if Apple took the P2P approach as Skype has done, without any idea how high it can scale, they'd be taking an awful risk. Besides, the system must be centralized if each user is going to be able to receive calls from a regular phone on the PSTN.

Mr. Salkever is also missing the idea that, to be a phone replacement, a VoIP service has to work with traditional phone equipment and non-Apple IP Phones. Somehow, as much as I'd love to use a Cisco 7960 SIP phone or my analog cheapy home phone with the iChat network, I doubt Apple will go this route.

So--

Problem 1 - Missing support for PSTN calls
Problem 2 - No dialpad interface in iChat
Problem 3 - No interoperability

Solution 1: Apple buys 8x8 Networks or Broadvoice. PSTN support problem solved.
Solution 2: Easy enough to fix, probably with an AppleScript that talks to iChat and Address Book
Solution 3: And this is the crux of the matter; Apple would have to seriously consider opening its velvet box of propriety, and this would take a huge shift in Apple's management.

Add to that the question of whether or not supporting a VoIP network as overhead adds to Apple's core revenue. I don't think it would, although it would make for a nice add-on to .Mac. Then I might not have such a begrudging feeling every time I fork over the $99 .Mac fee.

In the meantime, I would just be happy with a searchable directory of iChat users built-in to iChat.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5605


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Students Illegally Download Textbooks

Tech-savvy generation finds way to cut costs of higher education, raising ire of publishers
Isabel Teotonio

A growing number of students are skirting the high cost of textbooks by illegally downloading pirated copies from the web, according to publishers who want stiffer copyright laws to curb a practice some say is pilfering revenues.

While the volume of books being swapped in chat rooms and on peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa doesn't compare with the amount of music and movies being trafficked, it is nonetheless a growing problem, says Colleen O'Neill of the Canadian Publishers Council.

"The worry is that it's going to grow because computers aren't something only a few people have," she says. "As an industry, we need to look into this because, similar to what's happening in the music industry, it's beyond our control."

While there's been a chorus of criticism about music being downloaded, the unauthorized trafficking of pirated textbooks has gone virtually unchecked, says researcher David Price of Envisional, an online monitoring company.

This British-based company first alerted many North American publishers to the practice when it released a 2001 report listing 17,000 copyrighted books, mostly fiction, available on the web.

Today, that number is between 25,000 and 30,000, says Mr. Price. Although most are science fiction and fantasy books -- the stuff "young, geeky males" are into -- a significant portion are academic texts, particularly in disciplines where students are more tech-savvy, such as mathematics, engineering and computer science.

"Students are certainly doing it, but nobody seems to have recognized the problem," says Mr. Price. "We do see it increasing over time -- both with the range of books and the number of people doing it. Technology is going to get better and better and this will just become a growing problem."

Book industry critics say the charges are exaggerated. Instead, they suggest, publishers are attempting to justify escalating book prices and trying to clamp down on the distribution of information.

Unlike music, where you'll likely find every track released in the past five years, it's hit or miss when it comes to finding digitized books. But the general rule is this: The more popular a book is offline, the more likely it is to be online.

Pirated texts can be found on peer-to-peer networks (commonly known as P2P), such as eDonkey, WinMX, Gnutella and Freenet. P2P is a type of transient Internet network that allows users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files such as music, movies, games or books from one another's hard drives.

But the main hub of activity is hidden away in Internet relay chat channels, also known as the cyber residence of pirates.

Internet relay chat, or IRC, is a system for chatting that involves rules, conventions and client/server software. There are sites on the Web that provide servers to download an IRC client to your PC. It's a virtual meeting place where people start chat groups, called a channels, or join existing ones.

If you join a channel for books, such as "#Bookz," you can search through people's digital catalogues, where you're bound to find pirated titles by some of the largest publishers in the textbook business: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Nelson Thomson Learning, Pearson Education Canada and John Wiley and Sons Canada.

Unlike music, which can be easily copied, the effort and determination involved in pirating a textbook is extensive. After snapping the spine off a book, each page must be scanned, converted to text and proof-read before being uploaded. There have also been instances of copy-protected e-books being duplicated, but given the technological skill involved, it's rare.

But Anatoliy Boyko, president of the University of Ottawa's computer science student association has never heard of students doing it.

"If this were going on I'm pretty sure I'd know about it," said the fourth-year student. "Sure you can download text, but reading it onscreen hurts the eyes and printing out a whole textbook is really expensive."

Besides, he said, you're bound to waste time surfing for a particular book and edition only to find it doesn't exist.

But Mr. Price says it's really "pretty easy," adding there's usually someone in cyberspace willing to help track down the text.

"It's like friends who want to share their books with you." he says. "Most are doing it because it's a good way of sharing and obtaining the books they need. I don't think people are saying, 'I've been overcharged for this (book) so I'm going to rip it and share it.' It's more likely that they're just thinking there might well be others in the same boat.... Someone's thinking, 'I'll scan this book, which cost $40, and someone else who's paid a similar amount for a textbook will do it too. I do my two or three hours of scanning but I end up with 10 or 20 textbooks down the line.'"

In fact the process is so easy, says Petra Cooper of McGraw-Hill Ryerson, that even the children of company employees who work there are downloading books.

The practice may be growing in part because people assume it's legal, she says. After all, a Federal Court of Canada judge ruled in March that downloading music wasn't breaking the law. That's because when it comes to music, a private copying regime exists so that a royalty fee for the music industry is factored into the price of blank CDs. But no similar structure exists for books, meaning creators are deprived of royalties.

While researchers have come up with a ballpark figure for the number of pirated books online, it's difficult to determine the number of downloaders.

According to a CPC telephone survey done in the spring of 1,300 undergraduate students across Canada, 30 per cent said they had used electronic books and one-fifth said they had shared them via P2P networks.

Given that students today came of age in the era of Napster, the pioneering file-sharing network, it's surprising more aren't doing it, says Ms. O'Neill. After all, they're cyber-savvy and technologically equipped.

An even tougher figure to pinpoint is the amount of money being lost by an industry that sells about $250 million worth of textbooks in Canada each year. Ms. Cooper estimates the more popular pirated titles can suffer sales losses between 10 and 30 per cent.

On occasions when the publisher has hired cyber surveillance companies to identify the digitized book titles being swapped and how often it appeared on file-sharing networks, the results often coincided with dropped sales or increased returns.

Two years ago, a second-year engineering book by McGraw-Hill Ryerson called White, Fluid Mechanics was distributed on Kazaa and other P2P networks. Sales dropped by 30 per cent, despite no comparable decrease in enrolment. Following this discovery, the company alerted other publishers who also noted decreased sales.

Revenues are also affected by plunderous entrepreneurs downloading texts onto CDs and selling them to students on campuses for a fraction of the price, say publishers.

Some are brazen enough to sell their loot openly, as was the case earlier this year when an Ottawa man in his 20s was found auctioning hundreds of pirated titles on eBay. He had copied exam preparation materials, study guides and software manuals onto CDs. It's estimated he took in about $20,000 in four months for pirated works with an estimated retail value in excess of $300,000.

Access Copyright, the Canadian copyright licensing agency, sued him and he was ordered last month by a federal court to pay $100,000 in damages.

Ironically, when students try to save money by downloading or buying pirated texts, they end up jacking the prices for those buying books legally because the cost of production, research and development ends up being spread over fewer sales, says Roanie Levy of Access Copyright.

But Jesse Greener of the Canadian Federation of Students, suspects the industry is exaggerating the practice to "deflect the issue of rising costs."

Rather than take responsibility for the rising cost of textbooks, which increases between three and five per cent each year, the industry is shifting blame onto students, he says.

"There's no doubt that many things get swapped on Kazaa but it doesn't sound to me like it's a very wide practice."

Computer science student David Pascoe Deslauriers agrees.

"Book piracy is real, however the titles that are actually pirated are interest books.... If anything it's just an excuse (for publishers) to raise prices," says the third-year U of O student.

Curious about whether he could find his texts online, he launched into cyberspace and searched through various P2P networks and IRC channels but came up empty-handed. He found related books, but they were at least five years old or already available for free on the Web. "Hardly a vicious piracy ring," he notes.

After inquiring with cyber-savvy peers, he's pretty sure that text books aren't being pirated for use in class.

"Everyone I've spoken with has said they haven't even heard of anyone doing this," he said. "If texts books could be (easily) pirated, it wouldn't be on a small scale, it would be huge."

Even in the United States, where the practice of book piracy is said to be more rampant, the industry doesn't have sufficient data on the size and scope of the problem, according to the Association of American Publishers .

"We're told by publishers they don't perceive an industrywide impact, only a title-specific impact," said Edward McCoyd, the association's director of digital policy.

"The electronic book industry is growing and as technologies improve to make the book-reading experience more palatable, we may see a comparable rise in the amount of online book piracy, so it's something we have to watch closely."

But in Canada, some complain it's futile to track pirated titles, and say the Copyright Act is toothless in clamping down on copyright infringements.

Although pirating a text is illegal, publishers say they have no remedy to go after those who do it.

"Copyright reform is way behind and hasn't acknowledged the digital world," says Ms. Cooper. "It makes Canada the wild west of pirating copyrighted works because no one has any clear sense of what recourses they should take."

Canada is currently in the process of considering reforms to the act to ensure it remains relevant in a changing digital environment. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has been reviewing the copyright law, in light of technological developments and international treaties

In the U.S., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives publishers the power to request that pirated material be removed or risk having access disabled by the pirate's Internet Service Provider.

Unlike the U.S. recording industry, which has sued thousands since launching an assault against illegal file-sharers last year, U.S. publishers show no interest in going after student pirates.

"They really don't want to get to that point with their customers," said Mr. McCoyd, adding notice and takedown procedures have proven effective.

Canadian publishers show no interest in prosecuting students, they simply want legislation that will stem the tide of purloined textbooks and ensure creators are properly compensated.

Publishers warn that students' actions could literally stop the presses.

"It drives the publisher out of business and drives good Canadian authors from writing books in Canada," says Ms. O'Neill.

It's a sentiment echoed by Ms. Cooper: "This isn't about nameless, faceless, corporate greed.... We know how important cultural industries are to Canada and to have the populace screw it up doesn't make much sense."

But even academics, making up the majority of textbook authors, oppose the industry's attempt to crack down on the exchange of information online.

"Publishers like to talk about theft and how people are losing money, while professors take a more nuanced view," says Paul Jones of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents 36,000 teachers, librarians and researchers.

While professors are opposed to the outright theft of copyright material, "there's enormous sympathy for both students and other scholars to have access to this material. And, they're concerned with the way copyright law is developing and the behaviour of publishers that are pricing that material out of the reach of a lot of people."

He warns that in an industry where profits are the first order of business, issues of education and access are secondary.

"They're pricing themselves out of the market and they're not adapting to new technology."
http://www.canada.com/fortstjohn/sto...7-81d5e149ce36


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Cashing In On File Sharing

A report from the file sharing experiment
Jonathan A. Zdziarski

Machiavelli would have been proud. The Recording Industry of America has raped and pillaged its heart out to put the fear of God into many unsavvy Internet users and the message, 'We know where you live' to would-be file sharers. File sharing has now become taboo to many; 87 year-old women who mortgaged their houses to pay settlements aren't likely to bother us again, and thanks to the RIAA, many 11 year old girls will now grow up knowing that if you share music, somebody's going to come and hurt mommy and daddy.

In spite of scheduled beatings for the elderly, the RIAA has failed to put a stop to the majority of Internet users who continue sharing files. As sharing continues to grow, music sales ironically appear to follow in an upward parallel. How can this be? Hasn't the RIAA been preaching a different sermon? The RIAA insists that music labels have been severely crippled by file-sharing networks. In light of industry earnings reports (which have shown a dramatic increase in sales), there is no other explanation: this must be reverse-psychology to trick us smarter fellows. The conflicting stories between killing and blessing the music industry with file sharing have sparked interest among many file-sharers who don't buy the three-legged puppy image of the music industry.

On July 31 2004, I decided to conduct an experiment to determine the motivation behind file sharers and establish proof for a long-believed philosophy many have about file-sharing: that it actually benefits the industry. Not just the music industry, but the movie industry and television industry as well as others. It has been a long held belief by some that the reason users are file sharing to begin with are because they are disenchanted with today's business model for entertainment, and are finding an alternative solution. In order to evaluate this philosophy, the file-sharing experiment was designed to allowed people to submit the names and cost of items they wouldn't have normally purchased if they hadn't first downloaded it over a file-sharing network. Each purchase required an explanation upon submission and, although establishing financial numbers was not the goal of the project, there was surprisingly over a quarter of a million dollars of merchandise reported within the first 24 hours of the project's appearance on Slashdot. Each submission has been analyzed by hand and bogus or questionable entries falling into the test window were discarded. The goal of this report is not to attempt to justify file sharing, but explain it. With a bit of creativity, the industry can overcome filesharing by giving consumer what they need. This report also is not intended to report on some level of statistics. Clearly, only individuals who purchased items reported into the experiment, therefore this report is only useful for explaining the reasons why individuals initially downloaded something that eventually led to a purchase. What this report does offer is a starting point for industry executives to build a new business model on top of, in an attempt to win the consumer back.

Further analysis of the data showed many things which will be shared in this report. The data as a whole screams one common observation: there is a captive audience and a viable market in reaching the file-sharing community to generate revenue (without litigation). Because of the vast selection of media available to file-sharers, many are finding themselves exploring new music, movies, and even software they would not have normally considered in their purchases. There is demand, and demand creates market.

The key to finding the market is adapting to a new business model - one that serves the enlightened consumer. Digital media provides a means of gratification that is usually only temporal, like sex or good barbecue. The industry has an opportunity to take advantage of this desire for entertainment and use it to turn users into consumers. The rest of this report discusses the how, straight from the voice of the consumer.

If the industry is indeed losing money to piracy, the root of the problem does not appear to be piracy itself but rather the industry's failure to listen to its consumers. There are many users who can and are making purchases thanks to file-sharing. The "epidemic", as the industry would call it, is far too widespread to be an issue of ethical decay among consumers but rather one of obligation and civil disobedience. The industry has, thus far, failed to adapt to the business model consumers demand and when that happened, consumers took it upon themselves to find an alternative solution. The experiment has shown, if anything, that there are many users today who are ethical enough to purchase media even after they're in possession of it - if they believe it is worthy of their money. File- sharing has spawned not from selfishness, but from the demand of a simple proverb: treat others as you would want to be treated. We'll see in this report the many things holding back consumers from traditional purchases, and what drives today's consumer into making purchases.

Analysis of TV Series Downloads

The first category analyzed included users who reported the purchase of a complete TV series as a result of file sharing. The TV series on DVD has become a very popular and only lightly tapped area of the television industry lately, but it's growing in spurts. While the industry may not be as widespread as the movie industry, the revenue generated on DVD purchases can be multiplied up to 4000% or more per complete series. This industry seems to be only prospering from file sharing, as the major challenge in selling a TV series on DVD is hooking consumers who like the show; the average Joe isn't going to blindly purchase a $60 DVD collection.

Purchase Demands

A majority of users who purchased a TV series did so after downloading a few episodes from a file-sharing network. Users became consumers after they purchased the series for shows they became hooked on, or at least liked. The most common reasons for purchase fell into the following categories:

· For better quality recordings
· For a medium they can easily watch on their TV
· To avoid lengthy downloads
· To own the complete set
· The medium became available

With this in mind, file sharing appears less of a threat to the television industry and more of a sales tool - if the industry can get a hold of it. Analyzing this for a moment from a marketing perspective:

1. Users get bored sitting in front of their computer in the office or even at home.
2. They download a few episodes of a TV show, enjoy it, and boom...
3. Industry earns anywhere from $50 to $700 off of that one individual

The sales opportunity this presents is quite simple, but the catch is that it relies entirely steps one and two - the user previewing and liking the TV show. We know a few things about the consumer from this:

· The conventional medium for television doesn't fulfill the requirements of many consumers. Over 500 channels and there's still nothing on, or perhaps
· television isn't available to the user (at work, for example). They simply may not have the time to watch it when it's on. There is a clear need for alternative means to view the media.
· The individuals who download these shows are not necessarily needy teenagers without money. Many are willing to shell out to purchase the expensive titles they like.
· Many users are uncertain whether they will like a particular television show, and are therefore previewing them via download.

The television industry is obviously benefiting from the consumer's ability to download a few episodes online. There is somewhat of a novelty to owning an entire boxed series. People generally can't handle owning an incomplete set of anything, and therefore most users are going to be compelled to purchase the collection as it's much easier than downloading a set that is probably inconsistent in quality and resolution. Based on these observations, file sharing is providing a service to the industry without the industry even knowing it - by making these previews globally available to consumers at no cost to the distributor for bandwidth or server resources. The industry could do the same and provide an easy interface for ordering while you're watching.

Business Model Demands

The industry can easily capitalize on file sharing and increase sales by adjusting their business model to meet the consumer's demands:

· Many users downloaded episodes only because they weren't available on media yet. This is most likely delayed due to syndication contracts. Making the
· media available in a much more timely fashion may increase revenue.
· Continuing to provide good quality television will undoubtedly continue to grow the market that exists in file sharing. Because of the cost of the series, only fans are likely to purchase the box set. Therefore, there doesn't appear to be a distrust among consumers yet.
· Making several episodes available for download with links to ordering can help generate revenue for the casual browser and take authoritative control over file-sharing by providing best-quality samples in ideal resolutions; advertising or ordering information can be superimposed over this to further expand revenue possibilities.


Analysis of Movie Downloads

Full-length movie downloads have also led to many sales. File sharing as related to the movie industry appears not to be one of trust or preview, but one of convenience and timing. Many consumers haven't got the time to hire a babysitter and go to the movies as often as they would like to.

Purchasing Requirements

The primary reasons a majority of contributors reported to purchase a movie included:

· Purchasing a better/pristine quality recording
· To avoid lengthy downloads (e.g. downloaded a poor quality version or only part of the movie)
· For a medium that would allow them to easily watch on a television
· To view the special features on the DVD
· When the movie became available in stores

File sharing provides a few advantages to the movie industry that movie rentals and pay-per-view don't:

· When a consumer views a movie in DVD quality (as in, from purchasing a rental or PPV), they are less apt to run out and purchase the movie; they need time before they are interested in seeing it again which may lead to the loss of a sale. When viewing lower-quality movies, however, the user is more apt to purchase the movie and view it immediately in its full glory.
· When a consumer rents a DVD, all of the special features are accessible to them, while movie downloads usually don't include any special features. Special features might be worth the $15 for purchasing the movie, but are not worth the hours of download time.
· By the time a movie has hit pay-per-view or Blockbuster, it's already old and the consumer may have already lost interest. Many downloads are available before the movie is even released in the theaters, and only sparks more interest to go and see it when it comes out.

Business Model Demands

The motion picture industry appears to still be in its infant stages of understanding the consumer - they're not even marketing to the right crowd these days which you'll discover when the anti-piracy commercial plays in the theater, after you've paid for a ticket. The business model consumers are demanding is that of availability: The ability to acquire a movie on medium or view the movie in the privacy of their own home when it's still in the theaters or at least within a more reasonable time frame after the movie has left the theaters. When the movie's old, the consumer is interested in the whole story behind the movie. Releasing DVDs with additional footage, deleted scenes, and other special features is also in high demand and is likely to drive up sales.

Analysis of Software Downloads

Software piracy has been a problem since the invention of the personal computer. The software industry, however, has yet to listen to the demands of consumers which has resulted in much of the piracy taking place today. The leading reasons individuals reportedly downloaded software were:

· To ensure compatibility with their system
· To ensure the quality of the full-version of the software
· Users demanded an un-crippled version to preview
· Users could not find the title anywhere
· The price was outrageous

[u]Purchasing Requirements[/b]

Those reporting into the experiment claimed they have bought software when:

· The quality provided good enough to justify the price
· It was compatible with their systems
· To support the authors and ensure the company stays in business
· To own the original copy
· To receive technical support
· To purchase for corporate, large scale use

Business Model Demands

There is a matter of ethics among software sharers. Consumers demand good quality software and the ability to preview it in all its glory. Given the many reasons and advantages in purchasing the title, there is enough proof to suggest that the quality of the software itself will guarantee its profit. There is a significant market of users who would download software should they find it useful to them, however these same users refuse to pay for software that won't run on their system, is poor quality, or misrepresented.

The software industry can benefit from listening to its customers. Providing good quality demo versions is a must. Making the titles available to those who wish to purchase via download may make a significant dent in piracy. Why would a user drive 30 miles to the nearest city when they can download it in the privacy of their own home? Finally, pricing that is commensurate with the quality of the software being developed is vital to re-establishing trust between the software manufacturer and the consumer. There are too many overpriced titles on the market that don't live up to their expectations - of course users are going to download software to try it when they feel cheated already! Guaranteed refund periods will also help restore trust.

Analysis of Music Downloads

Music downloads have been a hot topic for many years and is at the head of all file sharing controversy. Many failed attempts to commercialize in this industry have led to much frustration, and the RIAA's financial beating of small children and elderly couples has only hurt sales and turned an industry once about loving music into one of litigation. A majority of the users chiming in on the experiment reported purchasing one or many CDs for an artist after downloading and listening to the them - it's that simple. Sometimes a few tracks would do, while other users required both full albums and time to listen and enjoy.

Purchasing Requirements:

The most prominent reasons for purchase were:

· To have a better quality recording
· To support the artist, or out of respect for the artist
· To own the jewel case and physical CD

MP3 technology isn't quite there yet for many users, who demand pristine quality. A lot of users hate hacked up ID3 tags, misspelled filenames, and frequently truncated or poor quality tracks that usually come with downloading music as well. There's also something to be said about the ownership of physical medium. The sense of ownership is still alive and many users would prefer to own the physical medium rather than a CD-R written on in sharpie. Finally, there's also a great respect for the artist and a desire to see more music out of them. Consumers seem to relate with many musicians and understand that they work for a living. Artists who have earned the consumer's money get rewarded.

Business Model Demands

The biggest challenge in the music industry appears to be that of trust and respect for the label. Many users displayed a distrust for the quality of music they were downloading. This certainly coincides with the largest consumer complaint about the music industry which is that there's no good music anymore. Many labels, it seems, will record the sound of regurgitated snot bubbles and call it music. Other labels will release a CD with one good track and fill the rest of it with mediocre studio failures. The music industry has lost the consumer's trust and therefore the consumer has now demanded the right to preview music with more intense scrutiny - not only at a music store, but in the privacy of their own homes, in good quality, for prolonged periods of time to let it grow on them. The consumer no longer sees themselves as purchasing a CD, but demands a business model where they may invest in an artist. Imagine an open business model where consumers trusted the industry enough to "donate their change to the artist"(of course, everything would then sell for $15.01).

In order for the music industry to capitalize on file sharing, they must make it just as easy to preview and purchase the music they want on line as it is to download it for free. This is starting to happen - look at iTunes. Who would have thought ten years ago that you'd get a free music download with every Big Mac you purchased? The bigger challenge yet is gaining the trust of the consumer. By suing the consumer for downloading music, many formerly paying customers have refused to make another purchase until this asinine litigation ends. By providing one golden nugget among 15 tracks, consumers no longer accept the music they hear on the radio and demand they listen to the album. Labels will publish anything today. Rather than attempting to destroy the business model consumers demand, the music industry would fair much better to feed it.

In summary, music file sharers are demanding a business model that:

· Ensures better quality in the music available
· Allows them to preview high-quality, full length songs in the privacy of their homes
· Gives them time to let the music grow on them (perhaps some type of rewards program giving them free downloads)
· Provides them with an easy way to purchase the music and support the artist
· Ensures better credibility and promotes better trust among the music industry

Summary

When consumers are fed up with an industry, they will be led to protest in any way they can. If the industries discussed in this report are to ever have content consumers again, they must adapt to the business model of the consumer. There are countless consumers in the Internet community willing to invest in long-term relationships with various artists or manufacturers. All they require is that it is on their terms.

The consistent abuse of the consumer shows the consumer only one thing: if you won't give us your money, we'll take it.
http://www.nuclearelephant.com/papers/sharing.html


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Fat Cats And Others
Sean Beatty

"If you help us, we just might get it [INDUCE] right, but if you don't we're going to do it [anyway]," says Orrin Hatch.

That quote reminds me of the way the early settlers did business with Native Americans in the West in the late-1800s, taking their lands by force if they didn't make deals with the settlers, on their terms. It kind of makes me wonder what a man like W. would do if the entire Middle East decided to retaliate against U.S. bungling of operations in Iraq, and impose a decade-long oil embargo. If I'm correct, the last embargo was implemented in 1973, and lasted for months.

The quote also reminds me of another: If I can't have it, no one can. You can bet your ass that, if the INDUCE act or anything similar should fail, the RIAA and MPAA will play their final card and resort to a scorched-Earth solution, outright technological genocide, requesting a law banning ALL P2P networks across the board! If they can't control P2P technology and whatever is derived from it in the future, then they'd rather that the technology be legislated out of existence.

What they can't control, they seek to destroy. That's their mentality. They seem to think that they should be the only ones controlling the creativity of the music and movie industry. They (especially the RIAA) are all-too-willing to turn Washington, D.C. into Pyongyang, N. Korea (who have outlawed the Web entirely), because they are afraid that, with the Web, more artists who would otherwise have to go to the major labels to get their music promoted can promote their music themselves or through an independent music Web site, like DMusic.com, Ampcast.com, BeSonic.com and a very long list of others.

That's why the major labels' artist base is shrinking! Not because of file-sharing, but because the fat cats can no longer be trusted, especially when it comes to the artists' share of earnings. Better for the artists to release their material independently or through another means.

Of course, the RIAA is engaging in blacklisting tactics, and would no doubt blackmail radio stations and record shops who promote independent music at the expense of the major labels. The RIAA and MPAA are trying so hard to get Congress to establish a communist dictatorship for their industries within this democracy. Anyone with half a brain will declare such legislature unconstitutional, and perhaps, force them to reimburse the victims they've forced into settling for $2,000 to $3,000.


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Timothy White, the late editor-in-chief of Billboard magazine, predicted that by 2010 the music industry, as it is today, will cease to exist. The industry and their Stasi henchmen the RIAA, stubborn as they have proven themselves to be, refused in the past to embrace the new technology that served to reshape the industry, and they still refuse to embrace it. Their mantra is that either they control every aspect of the industry or they will crush whatever stands in their way.

The problem is, the RIAA can't sue a million people, let alone 10 million. It will surely cost them more money and decades to go through every piece of litigation.

Not to mention that, sooner or later, they will run into someone who will have the guts to say "enough is enough", and fight back, and if that person should have a very short fuse, it will get ugly for sure.

I hate to get raw with the subject, but sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost. One thing is certain: The RIAA can't last very long. Their days are numbered, and when someone invents spy-blocking software that can even hide itself from being discovered by RIAA spies as spyware (something the RIAA wanted with this Induce Act), or a file-transfer method even more stable and spyproof than P2P, their days will come to an end, if that is not the case right now.

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Now, as I read P2PNet.net news report 2362, Induce Act 2 (http://www.p2pnet.net/story/2362), it's obvious that the intention of this legislation is hardly any different from what is going on in the People's Republic of China; that is, to spy on the networks for dissidents. It is obvious that the clause that reads the following:

Section 2 sub section (2), (B): actively interfering with copyright holders' efforts to detect infringing uses, clearly puts the RIAA and MPAA at odds with the U.S. Constitution. This segment is clearly intended to give the industry fat cats the right to violate an individual's right to privacy.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. It should come as no surprise that the RIAA site has been hacked more times than most of us can count. I imagine it won't be long that the people they've hired to spy on P2P networks will be spied upon themselves and either blocked or hacked.

Unless, of course, it's already happening right now. It wouldn't take much for a counterspy to find his way to the RIAA spy mainframe of the IP addresses of the people they intend to sue, and erase it all (provided they didn't make a printout beforehand). It wouldn't take much for one or more counterspy conglomerates (which would be a response to the activities of the RIAA spies from the likes of OverPeer and MediaDefender) to plant moles in the network of RIAA spies and collect as much information on them, before disappearing and exposing the level of sinister to which the RIAA is prepared to go.

I'd bet the RIAA and/or MPAA have traitors in their midst right now, and they don't even know it. When the time is right, these traitors will expose their many secrets and bring them down as lobbying organizations. The industry fat cats will have to do their own dirty work from that point on.

But by that time, a huge array of independent companies and music Web sites will overwhelm them, and help them on their way out of business. P2P will still be here, and a great many more artists will have the freedom to authorize their material for download, rather than allow the major record companies and RIAA to continue to falsely claim that they're working in the best interests of the artists, when in fact they're working solely in the interests of the fat cats.

By the way, bet the farm that, sooner or later the industry will beg lawmakers to make legislation to equate such opinions from average Joes like myself, along with the leading voices of dissent against Big Music (like George Ziemann, CodeWarrior, Leflaw, Jon Newton, Lawrence Lessig, etc.), with sedition, and will be punished accordingly. Ridiculous as it may sound, it could very well happen. Look at the hell that some ordinary people and celebrities alike got for making very obvious their dissatisfaction with W. and his activities.

===========================================================

There are still thousands of people who use P2P sites like Grokster, Morpheus, KaZaA, LimeWire, etc, and are even to this day still oblivious to the spy tactics and lawsuits of the RIAA/MPAA. I suppose that many of them are even oblivious to spy-blocking software such as PeerGuardian

I can't speak for any of the people who use these P2P sites, because I don't use P2P. Quite frankly, thanks to the independent MP3 sites and the truckloads of electronic dance music that they have, the RIAA music cartel has almost nothing of any interest to me.

I just recently took a look at some of the front pages of these P2P sites, and I see a few bits of information to let users know what they're in for when they try to trade an RIAA-affiliated track. I got a good look at Morpheus' Resource page, and they provide links to such sites as P2P United, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and even one that I didn't know of, Bits of Freedom.

Of course, they ought to provide links to sites like P2PNet.net, Boycott-RIAA.com, DownhillBattle.org and DMusic.com to provide users with alternative viewpoints to the communist propaganda (and I might add, outright lies) the RIAA and their fat cats are spewing, along with the threats made by these fat cats.

And once again, I should suggest that the anti-RIAA coalition should place links to their sites at the most popular sites where music fans can be found in large numbers. I suggested Yahoo and Google; perhaps a Web site by an independent artist not affiliated with the RIAA has room for a link to a site like Boycott-RIAA.com, EFF.org, P2PNet.net, AzOz.com or DownhillBattle.org.

Simply put: Spread the word in areas that are very popular to music fans. If they're not aware of the scare and smear tactics of the music cartel, they won't know, and they'll be ill-prepared when an extortion letter from the RIAA comes, obviously as a bigger shock to them than need be, and they won't know if they have any grounds for a legitimate defense.

Which brings me to a story I read from Slyck.com, about someone who got served papers by the RIAA for sharing her folder of 592 songs. I wonder what would happen if someone else was served papers for sharing that many songs, and not one of them came from a company connected to the RIAA.

Imagine if the same 4 million who use P2P (or is it 8 million, spread over a busload of P2P sites?) knew that there was better music out there than what the RIAA tries to force-feed, and they began visiting these independent sites in droves and left Big Music behind, what would the fat cats do then, besides beg Congress to outlaw independent music networks (fat chance), and continue thinking that they can close the barn door after the horse has long-since escaped?

Like most P2P and anti-RIAA advocates out there are saying, either they adapt, or they die. Big Music refused to embrace the technology, and they are now suffering for it. It is not the children of Napster (the original) they should be worried about; it is Napster's grandchildren! I imagine that the successors to Grokster & Co. will bring to reality the late Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White's prophecy of Big Music's demise in 5 years.

I believe that appeared in the March 2003 issue of Wired. The RIAA has maybe 4 years to live. By then, perhaps, the independent artists, sites and companies will overwhelm Big Music, and the RIAA will be completely irrelevant.

If I'm not mistaken, I don't think the music cartel has ever paid a dime to consumers over that price-gouging lawsuit from 2 or 3 years ago. Maybe it's time for another class-action suit, and one that will break the backs of the RIAA.
http://p2pnet.net/story/2472


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RIP Adaptec, RIP Roxio

Napster Name Breaks New Owner Into Music Fray
May Wong

The once-renegade file-sharing pioneer Napster is getting a third life. Roxio Inc. bought the Napster brand name at a bankruptcy auction two years ago and with the acquisition of another music service, Pressplay, relaunched the company as a legal music service last October.

Now in its latest reincarnation, Roxio has shed its CD-burning software business and plans to concentrate solely on selling and delivering music over the Web. It will adopt Napster as its corporate name, trading under a new ticker symbol.

The pure-play move will mark Napster's birth as the name of a public company, but more importantly, it will arm the company with resources to help survive the rough-and- tumble as other deep-pocketed, powerful rivals enter the crowded online music space.

In the past two weeks, Microsoft Corp. debuted its online music service, and Yahoo Inc. acquired online jukebox provider Musicmatch Inc. EMI Group's Virgin is among those expected to soon join the fray, which already includes the pioneer of legitimate downloads and the current market leader, Apple Computer Inc.

Roxio's sale of its software business to Sonic Solutions for $80 million in cash and stocks will give Napster a cash base of more than $100 million once the deal closes, expected by year's end.

"One of the most important questions for our investors is, 'Does Napster have the staying power to stay and thrive?' Having the cash answers that question," said Chris Gorog, chief executive and chairman of-Roxio.

Roxio's revenues grew 24 percent to $29.9 million in the April-June quarter compared with a year ago, though the company had a net loss of $2.6 million, or 8 cents per share, dragged in part by the Napster unit's $8.1 million loss. But Gorog said Napster's sales are growing at a double-digit rate, and he projected online music revenues will reach $30 million to $40 million this fiscal year.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldle...gy/9696029.htm

[JackSpratts]

How to Share Files Now

A guide to the confusing alternatives
Steve Allen

Napster died a long time ago. For a while, Morpheus was king of the file- sharing hill, but its network was yanked away. There are still many ways to share files, but which are the best? Here's a look at your options for free MP3 downloads.

First of all, there are three main file- sharing networks and a number of smaller ones. The big three are Gnutella, FastTrack, and OpenNap. Each has attracted millions of users and with them you can find most any popular song or other file. To find something more obscure, you may want to search all three networks. Unfortunately, there is no one piece of software which can search all three.

Gnutella is a truly open network which isn't controlled by any one group or company. OpenNap is also open, based on the commercial Napster protocol. FastTrack is a proprietary network used by KaZaA, Grokster, and the original Morpheus.

To use one of these networks you will need a "client," or software program. Here are some recommendations:

1. LimeWire

Network: Gnutella

Pros: Easy to set up and use; can download from several sources at once. Java based, so it works on any platform including Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Cons: Very slow to start up; you have to wait a while for connections to be established. The free version displays ads; ad-free enhanced version costs $8.50 (and is worth it).
Good alternatives: BearShare, ToadNode, Gnucleus

2. WinMX

Network: OpenNap

Pros: Incredible search results; you can find almost anything. Very fast on startup.
Cons: One of the most complex programs; not for the computer illiterate. Windows only.
Good alternative: Napigator.

3. KaZaA

Network: FastTrack

Pros: Very fast startup and excellent search results. Easy to use. Can download from several sources simultaneously.
Cons: Installs "spyware" which monitors your Net activity. The new owners have ominous plans to employ users' computers as ad servers. Windows only.
Good alternative: Grokster (but it installs even more spyware).

Even more file-sharing programs are listed at Napster Alternatives. And file-sharing networks are not your only option, you can always turn to newsgroups or IRC.

Be aware that most of these programs allow sharing of any type of file, so while searching for music you will likely encounter pornographic images, illegally copied software, and other things you never expected. The best use of these networks is the sharing of music from independent artists needing the exposure, but most of the music you find will be illegal copies. Use these programs as you wish, but remember that artists deserve support!

Emule
eMule is a open source filesharing client which is based on the eDonkey2000 network but offers more features than the standard client.

Filetopia
This free communications software includes instant messaging, chat, file sharing, and more. Available since 1999, the latest version uses sophisticated techniques to encrypt transmissions and protect IP addresses, thus promising anonymous file sharing.

Freenet
Developed to allow the free distribution of information without fear of censorship. All users are anonymous and none of the files can be removed from the network. Relatively difficult to use.

Friskit
Friskit searches for streaming music across many sites. Since it's streaming (via RealAudio), you don't have to wait for a file to download.

Gnucleus
An open-source Gnutella client for Windows. There are many coders actively involved in improving the software, and new versions come out often. Morpheus used this as the model for its "Preview Edition."

Grokster
Uses the FastTrack network (like KaZaA and the original Morpheus)for very fast searches. Features a family filter, automatic deletion of incomplete downloads, file preview, and more. However, it also installs a tremendous amount of additional programs, including "spyware" which monitors your Internet activity.

iMesh
In use since 1999, iMesh is one of the most popular file-sharing programs and was one of the first to allow direct access to shared files on other users' computers. A very slick program, but it also installs quite a lot of adware or spyware which is difficult to uninstall. Windows only, available in several languages.

iMesh Light
According to its makers, "iMesh Light is a spyware/ad clean version of the popular FastTrack client iMesh." It also adds some tools and fixes. Some users report slow response.

JBlurb
"The Future of File Sharing." Available in free or Professional editions, JBlurb allows you to specify directories to be shared. You can password-protect folders or limit them to certain users. Java-based, so it works on all platforms.

KaZaA
Uses the popular FastTrack Network which is shared by Grokster and was popularized by Morpheus. KaZaA is the number one file-sharing program and is very easy to use, but it installs adware and "spyware" software which monitors your Internet activity.

KaZaA Lite
This version of KaZaA has been modified to remove the spyware and additional ad-serving programs bundled with the original. It isn't be authorized by the company, but is widely used. The software may not be available at any given time, due to legal problems.

LimeWire
A Gnutella client that works on any platform - Windows, Mac, Linux, or anything else. Advanced filtering functions. The free version installs "spyware" and serves ads; it's worth it to pay $9.50 for the ad-free LimeWire PRO.

Morpheus
Morpheus has undergone a lot of changes. It used to be the most popular post-Napster program before it was booted off KaZaA's FastTrack network. It now uses the Gnutella network. Although Morpheus claims to include "no spyware," it installs two mandatory third-party programs - MySearch Bar and WURLD Media. Users can create a blacklist of IP addresses to deter anti-piracy agents.

Napigator
A very fast OpenNap client; some say it's the best. Windows only.

Napster
This is the one that started the file-sharing revolution and put the music industry in an uproar. Unfortunately, it has not been available for quite a while, due to legal troubles. A subscription-based Napster will be available soon.

Shareaza
This program is fast! People like Shareza's easy-to-use interface. It connects to Gnutella, Shareza's "Gnutella2," and several other networks such as eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent. One of the best.

Slyck File Sharing News and Info
It's hard to keep up with all the latest file-sharing methods and programs, but this site does a good job. Includes information on lesser-known programs such as DirectConnect, SoulSeek, Overnet and others.

SongSpy
SongSpy's "give and take" philosophy means you have to give files in order to receive. Has chatrooms, IM, built-in MP3 player, skins, and more. Windows only. Free, but donations are appreciated.

Toadnode
Windows Gnutella client, the only one to have support for SOCKS proxy servers. Free 15-day trial, after which it costs $5. No ads or spyware.

WinMX
A long-time favorite Napster alternative that allows sharing of any file type. Simultaneously connects with WinMX Peer Networking Protocol and to many networks based on the OpenNap and Napster protocols. Users report excellent search results but this isn't a very user-friendly program. Windows only.

XoloX
A very slick Gnutella Windows client with advanced features such as downloading from multiple sources and auto-resume. Automatic configuration makes it a snap to install, and its simplified interface is very user-friendly. No spyware or unwanted add-ons; may display small ads.
http://mp3.about.com/library/weekly/aa041502.htm


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California To Set P2P Policy
Susan Kuchinskas

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered the State CIO to come up with a policy for the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications by state personnel.

While the order prohibited the use of state resources to illegally download copyrighted material, it specifically allowed for legitimate uses of the controversial software -- in moderation.

"Today California is taking a stand against use of state resources for illegal downloading of this material and standing in support of the work of these talented Californians," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Schwarzenegger said he wants to make sure that state computers aren't used to contribute to what he called "huge losses of revenue to the state's valuable entertainment industry."

"So many of the entertainment industry's talented musicians, actors, writers and programmers devote their careers to creating products that enrich our society, Schwarzenegger's statement said. "We need to do our part to protect the creative and intellectual property they work so hard to create for the rest of us."

J. Clark Kelso, the state CIO and a professor of law at the University of the Pacific, was charged by the governor with creating a statewide policy for P2P on state computers that protects the rights of copyright holders while allowing for legitimate uses.

"We were very much aware that there are both legitimate and illegitimate uses of this technology, and that the definition of what constitutes an illegitimate use might very well change both as technology changes and as the law develops," Kelso told internetnews.com. "So we opted for an executive order that permits the State CIO to develop the State's policy and then to revise that policy as necessary as we get more and more experience with the issue."

The executive order, signed last Thursday, pointed out that P2P often is used to swap music, movies and other copyrighted material, and also poses security risks. The language of the order makes it clear that it's not tarring all apps with the same brush.

The order states that only "some" P2P software could give outsiders access to confidential information, and "some" can act as vectors for viruses and malware (define).

After the laundry list of potential abuses and risks, it adds that "peer-to-peer technology holds the potential for many legitimate uses."

The executive order specifically requests Kelso not to prohibit legitimate file sharing within or among federal, state or local government entities and makes the head of each executive agency responsible for complying with the statewide policy.

Kelso said he would form a task force that includes technology experts from the executive branch of state government, a representative from the Department of Personnel Administration to advise on union issues, someone from the Department of Finance and participants from legislature, the courts and the University of California and California State University systems.

"I'm going to push hard for quick action," Kelso said. "I'd like to be able to set a policy by the end of this year, but we'll have to see how complex this gets."

The order won't apply to the legislative and judicial branches of government, nor shall it apply to the constitutional officers of the state, but it does apply to the University of California and the California State University System.

In fact, the state government already is using P2P software. Groove, an enterprise-oriented application designed for small teams, is a component of the national Homeland Security Information Network, used by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Andrew Mahon, director of strategic marketing for Beverly, Mass.-based Groove Networks, said that the file-sharing policies of enterprise customers typically have two key points addressing the scope and purpose of the file-sharing. He said that curtailing the number of users in a network limits the potential for abuse. Also, he said, "If the primary use of the file-sharing network is working on project together, that's permissible. They're sharing files specifically to get work done."

Wayne Rosso, the former president of P2P software maker Grokster and a board member of P2P United, an industry-lobbying group, said, "I'm thrilled that the governor recognizes that P2P technology is used for totally legitimate purposes. To me, it's the same as saying that police can use guns as long as they use them within the limits of the law."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3410411


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Technology Slashes Telephone Call Costs

Michael Herman explores whether free internet telephony is a viable substitute to the traditional telephone.

Keeping in touch with family and friends up the road, across the country or around the world by using voice communications over the internet, or VoIP, can cost almost nothing.

Until recently, VoIP attracted mainly penniless geeks and assorted tightwads who were willing to put up with poor line quality to get free calls.

But to the enduring disquiet of most big telephone carriers, VoIP has matured beyond its growing pains and initial limitation of frequently being able only to connect users of the same software (peer to peer or P2P), with most international experts saying old- style telecommunications companies are about to face a big shake-up as more and more people start talking through their computers.

Michael Powell, the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was quoted by Fortune magazine earlier this year as saying that while the VoIP revolution has just started, the war has already been won.

"I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," Powell said. "When the inventors of Kazaa (the popular P2P music-sharing program) are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it's free – it's over. The world will change now inevitably."

If you have managed to miss out on the Skype hype and how this small program is ringing up big changes to an industry traditionally dominated by enormous monopolies and high costs, here is a quick update.

Going by the self-appointed moniker of the Global Telephone Company, Skype (www.skype.com) is the brainchild of Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, two young Nordic businessmen who also founded Kazaa, the company responsible for Kazaa Media Desktop. Celebrated as the world's most popular internet program, Kazaa Media Desktop has been downloaded more than 350 million times.

Skype, which has more than doubled its number of users in under nine months, is racing towards the 25 million download milestone and looks set to crack 50 million in March 2005. If Powell's enthusiasm for the company's technology is an indication of where Skype is heading, then local players Telecom and TelstraClear had better register quick for an innovation bootcamp or face declining revenues as disgruntled customers ring changes to their calling habits.

Skype is easy to use, downloads fast (it is only 8.2MB) and requires a small investment in a PC microphone and speakers or a PC headset. Neither option sets you back more than a few dollars and many users already have this kit plugged into their computers.

Naturally, you need an active internet connection to use VoIP, but while broadband is preferred it is only optional as Skype performs well even on dial-up connections.

Once you have downloaded and installed Skype, you can use your internet connection to talk for free to anyone who is online and also running the program.

But Skype is much more than just a free way of calling your mates. The program includes an instant messaging (IM) module, which allows you to have text-based chats and exchange files with people you have added to your contact list, and the company offers a premium service for making calls to landlines and mobile phones at rates you have only dreamed of.

For those of you who have never used IM before, it is a wonderful way to keep in touch with people as it creates the opportunity for serendipitous conversations by indicating to users when their contacts are online and available.

To prevent being interrupted all the time or contacted when you want some peace and quiet, you can override the default online status when you have a live connection, choosing from among several options that indicate your level of availability, such as away or busy.

Cutting call costs entirely is a fanciful notion unless everyone you know uses Skype, but slashing your call costs using Skype to call regular and mobile phones is not.

Recognising that not everyone is going to get Skyped up, the company recently introduced SkypeOut, a prepaid service that lets you call landlines and mobile phones using Skype software at a fraction of the usual cost and which removes the risk of nasty phone bills.

Comparing the peak-hour charges to the big five calling destinations from New Zealand – Australia, Britain, United States, Fiji and South Africa – will give you an idea of the kind of savings that are possible as well as clue you up on why the FCC's chairman was so convinced the winds of change had reached gale-force speeds.

Telecom's best standard rate during peak hours to Australia, Britain and the US is 19c a minute, with TelstraClear charging 65c a minute and callback operator CardCall 10.6c. Using SkypeOut you will pay only 3.1c a minute to a landline in these countries.

Similarly, at 13.1c a minute for calls to South Africa, SkypeOut charges about 30 per cent of Telecom's rate (35c a minute), under 9 per cent of TelstraClear's ($1.49 a minute) and 29 per cent of CardCall's already low rate of 40c a minute.

At 43c a minute for calls to Fiji, you can shave 40 per cent off Telecom's call rate (72c a minute), 65 per cent off TelstraClear's ($1.24 a minute) and 32 per cent off CardCall's (63.6c a minute).

The big telephone companies defend their pricing by claiming convenience and consistently high line quality. My experience of Skype is that the difference is so slight and the savings so large that quality is no longer a compelling reason to pay so much more.

Also, advanced communications services such as instant messaging and file transfer are not available when making calls using pots (plain old telephone system), but are integrated into the Skype service, opening up new ways of communicating with people.

When you decide to make the call on Skype, remember that it does not cost you a cent unless you are on a metered internet plan or intend using SkypeOut to get super-low call rates to landline or mobile phones.

Technological advances have finally caught up with the callmongers of the traditional telecommunications world, disproving the popular arguments against VoIP (poor quality and unreliable). Today you can get carrier and "almost carrier" grade services at a much lower rate than from your home service provider by calling over the internet or across the landline and internet networks.

Pervasive computing was the dominant force for change in the last century, moving from boxes the size of large buildings (the first computer, ANITA, covered 167 square meters of floor space and weighed 30 tonnes) to ones the size of a dust particle in about 60 years, with most of the miniaturisation achieved rapidly in the past decade.

With Skype and other VoIP coming online, telecommunications is set to undergo its most radical change since the advent of email.

The good news for long- suffering customers is greater choice and lower call rates, but the big telephone companies will have to search much harder and much longer to find something good in the calling revolution to ring home about.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3040611a28,00.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Top 100 Songs Named In Sharman Court Battle
Abby Dinham

Universal Music Australia has revealed the top 100 songs that it will focus on in proceedings against peer-to-peer software distributor Sharman Networks in one of the biggest music copyright infringement cases the Australian music industry has experienced.

The top 100 songs revealed by the Universal and affiliated record label parties' lawyer, senior counsel John Nicolas, included the ironically titled international hits "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy, and "No Need to Argue" by the Cranberries.

The Universal parties were ordered to "trim down" their case size in proceedings earlier this year, leading the group to single out the top 100 songs that it will focus its case on for the trial scheduled for 29 November this year.

The case has been in court since last February, with Sharman Networks disputing copyright infringement charges against it over its peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa.

Among the Australian acts included in the list of downloaded songs is Brisbane outfit Powderfinger, as well as Alex Lloyd, Jet, The Living End, Delta Goodrem and Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian.

Nicholas SC also contended in the Federal Court hearing last Tuesday that the Universal party will continue to pursue the identity of Sharman Networks' elusive owner and its unidentified corporate structure.

Nicholas described the issue of Sharman's control as a "very real one" and said the mystery is impeding the group's ability to gather evidence.

"Certainly I won't be able to bring forward all the documents we rely on by the 24th, that fall within that category, because that category in relation to discovery in still not resolved," he said, referring to the deadline set by presiding Justice Murray Wilcox for requests of evidence relating to copyright as part of the discovery process.

"I have to say that from what we have seen the Sharman group has been structured in a way that is deliberately calculated to conceal control," added Nicholas.

"So we will at some time have to make an application, your Honour, for an order that those documents [relating to the identity of Sharman's owner] be produced. They are not going to be volunteered and despite the best will in the world as between my learned friend and myself, that's not going to bring them out," he said.

Justice Wilcox scheduled a hearing on 14 October for the court to "deal with" the issue of Sharman's ownership and corporate structure.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for 24 September to finalise affidavit submissions and the evidential discovery process.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9159938,00.htm


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This Compilation CD Is Meant To Be Copied and Shared
Ethan Smith

For more than a year, the music industry has held firm on its zero-tolerance position on online file swapping, suing 4,679 alleged digital pirates to drive its point home.

But now, 16 high-profile artists, many of them signed to the same global music companies that have brought the lawsuits, are participating in a project that will allow music lovers to freely copy and trade some new songs without risking legal retaliation.

Next month, songs by the Beastie Boys, David Byrne and 14 others will appear on a compilation CD whose contents are meant to be copied freely online, remixed or sampled by other artists for use in their own new recordings. "The Wired CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share." was compiled by the editors of Wired magazine, of San Francisco, as an experimental implementation of a new kind of intellectual-property license called Creative Commons. About 750,000 copies of the disc are to be distributed free with the magazine's November issue. The disc also will be handed out to audience members at a benefit concert by Mr. Byrne and others tomorrow night in New York.

Creative Commons is named for the nonprofit group that came up with the concept for the license. The Creative Commons license lets the copyright holder spell out which rights it wishes to reserve and which are being waived without waiting for a permission request. That is a contrast to the typical arrangement, in which the copyright holder declares all rights reserved, forcing people who want to use the work to hire lawyers to seek permission.

In this case, all 16 participants are allowing their work to be shared on the Internet. Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson describes Creative Commons as a way of declaring that the recordings come with "some rights reserved," as opposed to the traditional "all rights reserved." The new license was developed by Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who also contributes to the magazine, which is owned by Advance Publications Inc.

Until now, Creative Commons has been applied only in limited circumstances. Gilberto Gil -- a longtime pop star in Brazil and that nation's minister of culture -- has released some songs under the license's more-permissive terms. And Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of Cambridge, Mass., has released video recordings of many of its courses under Creative Commons licenses.


STEAL THIS MUSIC

Wired magazine's "Rip. Sample. Mash. Share." compilation CD invites listeners to copy, remix and sample these songs and others at will:

ARTIST
SONG

Beastie Boys
'Now Get Busy'

David Byrne
'My Fair Lady'

Zap Mama
'Wadidyusay?'

My Morning Jacket
'One Big Holiday'

Spoon
'Revenge!'

Gilberto Gil
'Oslodum'

Dan the Automator
'Relaxation Spa Treatment'

Le Tigre
'Fake French'

Paul Westerberg
'Looking Up in Heaven'

Cornelius
'Wataridori 2'

Matmos
'Action at a Distance'

Source: Wired

The fact that Creative Commons is beginning to move forward highlights a growing rift within the music industry: Even as top executives at music companies vow to continue their legal campaign, others are beginning to cast around for compromises with what they see as the inevitable nature of file sharing.

There are no technical differences between the Wired compilation and CDs that carry standard copyright language. Both are simple to copy, or "rip," to computer files using commonly available software. Mr. Lessig said the difference is a legal one. The license offers "creators and artists a simple way to lift a legal burden that sits on their work, to allow others to share it or remix it." In the current case, it essentially represents a promise on the part of artists and their labels not to sue people for copying their music.

The move comes more than a year after the Recording Industry Association of America filed its first lawsuits against people distributing music free over peer-to-peer networks. In the debate over intellectual-property rights that is at the heart of the music-piracy issue, not everyone is so sure it is a good idea for artists to cede any rights. Jay L. Cooper, a music attorney who counts Sheryl Crow among his clients, says he would hesitate to advise a client to issue a song under a Creative Commons license, which he describes as "a blank check." "You don't want to make it for all time," he said. "What if you change your mind in two years?"

If Creative Commons were to catch on more widely, artists might decide to let some of their music be traded free on the Web to promote concerts and related merchandise, as well as to drive sales of CDs and digital tracks protected by standard copyright notices.

In an interview, Mr. Byrne compared online file-sharing services to free public libraries, and pointed out that those institutions once were a new concept, too. He said: "If you were a publisher, you didn't say, 'Oh no, Mr. Carnegie, don't go build those libraries -- it's going to destroy our business.' "

Mr. Byrne is signed to Warner Music Group's Nonesuch Records. He owned the rights to the song he contributed to the compilation, "My Fair Lady," because it had never been included on one of his releases with the label.

Wired's editors spent months shuttling to New York and Los Angeles, working to convince artists, their managers, record labels and lawyers that it was in all their interests to give away some of the valuable intellectual property that the industry has argued for years it must keep under lock and key. In the end, the magazine approached 50 to 60 acts, including Jay-Z, Moby and Coldplay, to find 16 participants. The musicians who participated contributed their efforts, as a promotional gambit.

"The artists were relatively easy to get on board," Mr. Anderson said. "The labels have different priorities. Some of them, once briefed, got it, and some of them never really saw the advantages."

Gary Gersh, the former president of Capitol Records who now runs a small label called Strummer Recordings as a joint venture with Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group, said he viewed the decision as a simple one. Two of his bands -- Le Tigre and the Rapure, both low-profile commercially, but with a lot of critical buzz -- participated in the compilation. For such bands, who don't typically get a lot of commercial airplay, Mr. Gersh said, file-sharing services present "the potential to reach tens of millions more people" than they otherwise would.

Mr. Byrne's manager, David C. Whitehead, said he participated in part because he finds the music industry's responses to the piracy problem "heavy handed" and "reactive." Nonetheless, like representatives of the other artists participating, he kept Mr. Byrne's record label apprised of his client's plans. "It wasn't much of a discussion," he said. "They're a progressive label."

Mr. Anderson said the compilation represented an attempt to demonstrate what a compromise might look like between "rigid and aggressive" copyright law as it exists and "criminality." As things stand now, "there's no middle ground," Mr. Anderson said. "Creative Commons is the best proposal to offer that middle ground."

Even so, neither he nor Mr. Lessig argued that Creative Commons would or even should replace standard copyright notices in all cases. "Obviously, Creative Commons isn't right for everybody," Mr. Anderson said.

One unexpected proponent of Creative Commons is Hilary Rosen, the former chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, on whose watch the trade group formulated its strategy of suing file sharers. Ms. Rosen, who said she first met Mr. Lessig when she debated him at the University of Southern California last year, contributed an essay to the November issue of Wired, endorsing the new form of licensing, at least in limited circumstances.

Ms. Rosen, now a CNBC commentator and consultant, says her endorsement doesn't mean she has changed her stance on piracy; she considers the new license useful as "niche" application. She said, "I've teased Larry that I don't think the major problem in the music business is that thousands of artists are looking for a legal and simplified method to give away their music."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...s_free_feature


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FBI Seizes $87 Million Worth Of Illegal Software

Largest seizure ever of fake Microsoft products cited
Joris Evers

A two-year investigation by U.S. law enforcement authorities has resulted in one of the largest seizures of fake software ever in the U.S. and charges against 11 individuals, government officials said Thursday.

The 11 defendants from California, Washington, and Texas have been charged with conspiring to distribute counterfeit computer software and documentation with a retail value of more than $30 million, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said in a statement.

The value could rise to $87 million, U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said. When arresting the defendants and searching their homes, offices and storage facilities, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents stumbled upon an additional stockpile of more than $56 million worth of fake Microsoft Corp., Symantec Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. products, he said.

As part of the two-year probe, investigators have also seized CD copying and printing equipment, Mrozek said.

A bulk of the illegal products were Microsoft products. With a total street value of about $80 million, this is the largest seizure of fake Microsoft products in history, the Redmond, Washington-based company said in a statement. Microsoft worked closely with the authorities in Los Angeles on the case, which was code- named "Digital Marauder."

The defendants have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles and are scheduled to appear before a judge on Sept. 20. If convicted, the defendants face maximum sentences of between 15 years and 75 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/16/HNfbi_1.html


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Internet Cafes Shut In Vietnam

Authorities in southern Vietnam have shut down 65 Internet cafes and kiosks after finding hundreds of addresses of pornographic and anti-government websites on their computers, a newspaper has reported.

The communist government recently intensified efforts to control use of the Internet by requiring customers of Internet cafes to register their identities and making cafe owners monitor the sites customers visit.

Last month, authorities set up a special police unit to investigate online crime and curb the distribution of banned material in cyberspace.

The 65 Internet outlets were shut down over the past two weeks in the bustling commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City, the city-run Phap Luat (Laws) newspaper said on Friday.

Inspectors were continuing to scour computers in Internet outlets to see what sites customers had been visiting, the newspaper quoted the deputy head of the city's science and technology department, Hoang Le Minh, as saying.

While the number of Internet users in Vietnam has been rising quickly, hitting 5.34 million at the end of July, the government curbs access to the global network through firewalls that block sites deemed inappropriate.

All media in Vietnam are state controlled.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040917/80/f2s8f.html


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Let ‘er rip

XM Satellite Radio to Broadcast on Web
Michael P. Regan

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. will soon begin broadcasting some of its stations to subscribers over the Internet, fresh on the heels of the company's discontinuation of a receiver for PCs that some users used to circumvent the music industry's crackdown on illegal file sharing.

Starting in early October, XM will charge $7.99 for a subscription to listen to its 68 commercial-free music stations and about a half dozen other XM stations on the Internet, the company said Wednesday. Those who already subscribe to XM's satellite service, typically at $9.99 a month, can sign up for XM Radi

Software currently on the market allows users to record music from Internet radio stations onto their computers anonymously - circumventing the music industry's much-publicized crackdown on piracy. But XM said it is discouraging subscribers from doing so.

"We don't condone that type of activity, and in fact that can theoretically constitute a violation of the user agreement of our service," said XM spokesman Chance Patterson.

A program called TimeTrax fueled a surge in demand for XM's PCR receiver, a PC-based satellite-radio receiver that went on sale about a year and a half ago. Using the PCR and TimeTrax, users can record multiple XM stations at once and store the programming as individual songs in MP3 or WAV formats.

But the PCR was discontinued recently as XM prepared to launch XM Radio Online.

"The PCR had been on the market for more than a year and a half, and so that's sort of the typical life cycle anyway of some of these consumer electronic products anyway," said Patterson.

Some satellite radio insiders believe the PCR created a big buzz among those looking to copy tunes because the sound quality of music from satellite broadcasts is much higher than music streamed over the Internet.

Still, analysts believe the chance to listen to about 70 music channels and about a half dozen other XM stations online could push more customers toward XM, which has more than 2.1 million subscribers.

"There are a lot of people who listen to radio during the workday and this is a way to reach those types of consumers," said April Horace, an analyst with Janco Partners.

"XM has already built a good brand. So for people who want the same content online, it makes a lot of sense," said Michelle Abraham, an analyst with In- Stat/MDR. "Especially with more broadband connections and new devices that let you take the content from your PC to your entertainment center and play it through your home stereo system."

XM is promoting the new service through a partnership with Dell Inc., offering buyers of Dell Inspiron notebooks and Dimension desktops a 30-day trial subscription to XM.

XM's competition, New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., doesn't offer an Internet-only subscription, but does lets subscribers listen to its 65 music stations on the Internet at no extra charge, and offers 72-hour free trials on the Net.

"It's been a significant reason why people have come to our service," said Sirius spokesman Ron Rodrigues.

XM shares rose 30 cents to $29.46 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where Sirius shares fell 1 cent to $2.89.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Sep15.html


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Free Content Still Sells
Joanna Glasner

Even after seven consecutive weeks at the top of the nonfiction bestseller list, publishers are still puzzled about the success of the 9/11 Commission Report.

A word-for-word reprint of a government panel report -- the 516-page paperback -- is not the kind of item that usually tops off the nation's reading list. Moreover, like most government documents, it's available online for free.

Nonetheless, rather than turn solely to the commission's website to download the report, more than 600,000 people have instead paid $10 or so for a printed copy. For the report's official publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., it's been an unexpected windfall.

"Nobody anticipated it would sell at this level," said Louise Brockett, director of publicity at Norton, which was the authorized publisher of the commission report on July 22, the day of its release. Last week, the publishing house also began selling a hardcover version of the report containing a detailed index.

While the 9/11 Commission Report -- a surprisingly readable work addressing an issue of supreme national importance -- is in a category of its own in the annals of government-funded literature, it's also serving as a high-profile case study of the effects of free online distribution on sales of printed works. One lesson: Just because someone can read something for free online doesn't mean they will want to.

"The thought of even reading it online makes my head spin.... And no one's going to print it out and read it," said Barrie Rappaport, chief analyst at Ipsos BookTrends, a publishing market research service. "It's cheaper to buy the book at the end of the day."

Norton's Brocket could think of no prior example in her employer's history of a public document generating such a sales frenzy.

In recent years, the example most reminiscent was the instant bestseller status of the Starr Report, published in 1998. That report, which chronicled in salacious detail Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of wrongdoings committed by President Clinton, was freely available online too. But because fewer people had internet access, and broadband connections were scarce, downloading was a less accessible option than it is now.

Today, heady sales of the 9/11 Commission Report are providing fresh ammunition to authors who have been pressing publishers to release their books both in print and online. While publishers commonly provide free access to excerpts of books, so far few have been willing to put works online in their entirety without charging.

"The conventional wisdom was, of course, if I give it away for free no one's going to buy it," said Peter Watts, a biologist and writer who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade his publisher, Tor Science Fiction, to let him put his novels online for free.

Watts, who does publish free short fiction on his website, disputes that notion. If people get free access to a novel, they're more likely to begin reading it. And once they begin reading, provided it holds their attention, they'll probably buy the book.

"You give away the whole book, but only people with congenital masochistic tendencies are going to want to read the novel online," he said. "Your eyeballs are going to be bleeding after a few minutes."

That said, the industry of e-books and associated reading devices remains in its infancy, and Rappaport believes electronic publishers can eventually develop technologies that substantially reduce eyestrain. For now, Rappaport says, there aren't many people interested in curling up with a good mystery on their PDA or laptop. But she does envision growing demand for reference books and other nonfiction in electronic form.

Some exceptions to the conventional wisdom that no one wants to read novels online exists in the realm of fiction. Cory Doctorow, author of the science fiction book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom said the novel has been downloaded more than 400,000 times since he began offering it for free online in January, 2003.

Sales of the hardcover version of the novel have also been brisk, at least by the modest expectations of science fiction novelists, Doctorow said. He estimated that nearly 10,000 hardcover copies have sold, and more than 10,000 paperbacks have been released to retailers.

While it's unclear how many buyers of the book first got a taste of the novel on the internet, Doctorow is convinced that free online publication helped sales. Even if book sales bombed, however, he'd still see value in putting the novel online to make his work more accessible to readers.

"I think it has to be about posterity and artistic satisfaction," he said. "Anyone who gets into science fiction for the money isn't trying very hard."

As for the 9/11 Commission Report, its hold on top of the nonfiction best-seller list appears to be waning, as book buyers reject the findings of the bipartisan panel in favor of more decidedly partisan political works. While the report still topped The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list last week, on USA Today's database of best- selling books, sales were lagging behind several novels and Unfit for Command, a book critical of the military record of John Kerry.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64828,00.html


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Hong Kong

Google News Site Hit By Legal Row Over Copyright

Local media warn of action but the US web search giant presses on with service
Patsy Moy

Google forged ahead with its news website despite threats of legal action and allegations by local media of copyright infringement.

The controversies arose after the launch of Google's Hong Kong news on Thursday. The website for Hong Kong news cites news summaries and uses photos from local Chinese language media, including newspaper, radio and television, and provides hyperlinks to their websites.

In its own news report yesterday, Ming Pao said it had issued a letter through lawyers to ask that the US search engine giant stop such practices. Ming Pao said Google had not sought consent from the newspaper before using its news summaries, which it said might infringe copyright.

The head of RTHK's corporation communications unit, Sze Wing-yuen, said the government radio station would ask Google not to use its news until "the matter was cleared up". "We have to strike a balance between copyright and public interest," Mr Sze said.

The chief editor of Sing Tao electronic daily, Raymond Chan Wai-man, warned of "follow-up actions".

Google has been trading on Nasdaq since last month. Its stock rose 18 per cent above its initial public offering price on its debut on August 19, ending just above US$100 a share.

Kevin Pun Kwok-hung, associate professor in computer science and law at the University of Hong Kong, warned that Google might infringe copyright if the news summaries were detailed enough to make the material "copyrightable".

"There is a possibility of criminal liability under the Copyright Ordinance if a reproduction is carried out for commercial purposes and the party knows that it is an infringement of copyright," said Dr Pun, who specialises in information technology law.

The Customs and Excise Department said yesterday it would investigate if it received any complaints of piracy.

In a telephone interview yesterday, a spokeswoman for Google in the US, Debbie Frost, said: "We are a law-abiding company. We feel that if publishers do not want to be included in Google news for whatever reasons, they can always come to us and we can take them out.

"We are very respectful of their rights ... [But] we have no plans to do that [suspend the website]."

Ms Frost refused to comment on the legal issues but described Google's news service as a "digital newsstand".

"When you go to a newsstand, there are hundreds of newspapers and you are looking at the headlines and find out which one you want to read and to buy," she said.

"People read the headlines on Google and choose which website they want to visit. After you click on the link, you will be immediately taken to the website of a publisher. The information is not on Google but is on the publisher's website. Our role is to help you to find the website."

It was "very rare" for publishers to ask to be removed from the Google website, which she said was a convenient vehicle to channel readers to their websites.

"What we found over the past two years since we launched Google news is that publishers tend to like that and they can benefit from the extra traffic provided by Google," she said.
http://asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=14525


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Wednesday, 0100 UTC

Soulseek PM

Hi, all.

Individuals have spoken of being contacted randomly by users claiming to be with administration. There are only four admins on this network, currently, those being: nir, OrtaliGoddessOfPrivileges, arsenic_, and Proteus93. It is a rarity you will receive a message from any, and most certainly not in the nature described (namely those mentioning 'investigation' by groups). Any messages sent of such otherwise can be safely disregarded. Thanks, and cheers.

--Proteus93

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Labels, Microsoft In Talks On CD Copying
John Borland

Record labels and Microsoft are in discussions about ways that the next generation of the Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, can support copy-protected CD technology.

The music labels, in large part led by top executives at EMI Group and coordinated through their U.S. and international trade associations, are creating a "wish list" of CD rights protection features they want to see provided or supported by Longhorn. Microsoft, in turn, has provided its own set of guidelines for the labels, without yet promising anything, sources familiar with the situation said.

The labels are far from unanimous on their thoughts about how to use, or even whether to use, copy protection technology on CDs. But sources said most are eager to avoid being locked into Microsoft technology and want to ensure that Longhorn provides a platform for copy protection that is at least as consumer-friendly as Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store.

"We're asking Microsoft to put in a framework--not to say what the rules are," said EMI Music North America Chairman David Munns, who has helped coordinate discussions among the music labels. "This would solve consumer confusion and help make the whole thing a much more friendly and easier consumer experience."

The discussions over copy protection and Longhorn are in some sense very theoretical, based on expectations of future technology developments and future consumer behavior. The music labels have been experimenting with ways of putting new copy controls on CDs for several years but have released only a few albums with the technology in the United States, with mixed success.

Microsoft's next operating system is also far from release. The company recently pushed back Longhorn's planned launch date until late 2006, and it is still working out details of a "Secure Computing" plan that some have said would help make digital rights management technologies much stronger.

However, EMI, in particular, has previously talked with Microsoft about ways to make copy protection a simpler experience by building support more deeply into the operating system, Munns said.

One idea from the record label side would be to let the operating system recognize a CD, when it is put in the tray, and automatically set in motion whatever usage rules have been specified by the label itself on the CD. This might include limits on the number of copies that can be made or what rules would be associated with a digitally "ripped" file, for example.

Today's copy protection technologies are more rudimentary, often including software on the CDs themselves, and have little interaction with the operating system. As a result, they are often easily bypassed and are very obvious to consumers.

The most recent discussions with Microsoft were initiated by the labels, Munns said. The software company agreed to consider their requests but in turn asked that the music industry come to a consensus on its requests, other sources added.

Led in part by EMI, labels have subsequently been developing their wish list for at least a month, with discussions that have included the major and larger independent labels. Representatives from the RIAA are scheduled to meet with Microsoft on Sept. 20 to discuss the requests, sources said.

Labels are primarily adamant that the operating system allow non-Microsoft copy protection technologies to function as transparently as Windows Media's own digital rights management tools. They also want to ensure that the operating system avoids treating the protected CDs in any way that might prompt consumer backlash, sources said.

"Longhorn done the right way could really advance that cause," one source familiar with the talks said. "Longhorn done the wrong way could significantly frustrate everyone involved."

Microsoft, in turn, has communicated to the labels that it does not want to support technologies that might be viewed by consumers as aggressive or potentially related to spyware, sources said.

No hard decisions have been made on either side, sources said. The meeting next week is likely to be the beginning of a series of discussions between the software company and the music business, as the operating system comes closer to completion. So far, Microsoft has been very open to working with the labels, Munns said.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the issue.

Munns said the drive would not be limited to Microsoft's operating system. The music companies have also had early conversations with Apple, and the framework of requests that develops from the industry wish list will be provided to any company that makes operating systems or digital rights management tools.

"Our fate as an industry--what we offer consumers, how we protect content and how the content is played--is inextricably intertwined with the technology companies and the platforms they offer," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "We have to be in dialogue with them."
http://news.com.com/Labels%2C+Micros...3-5371621.html


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“A lot of people are getting very worried about piracy. That has really eaten dramatically into the sales. It really just came down to, there may not be a market when I wanted to bring it out, which was like, three years from now. So rather than just sit by and watch the whole thing fall apart, better to bring it out early and get it over with.”

Why Lucas Tinkered With 'Star Wars'

Boxed set of first three movies out Tuesday

George Lucas never figured on a 30-year career as a space pilot. Once "Star Wars" shot into hyperspace, though, he found it hard to come back down to Earth.

Making its DVD debut Tuesday, Lucas' original sci-fi trilogy -- "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" -- began as an experimental foray into old-time studio moviemaking for Lucas, whose first two films had been far removed from usual Hollywood sensibilities.

Lucas' sci-fi satire "THX 1138" had been a commercial dud, but the energetic "American Graffiti" with its driving soundtrack and multi-character point of view scored with audiences, giving the director clout to try something bigger that had been on his mind.

"I'd already started this other idea, which was to do a kind of a classic action adventure film using sets," Lucas said over lunch at his 2,600-acre Skywalker Ranch. "I'd never worked on a set, I'd never worked at a studio. Never made a traditional movie. So I said, 'I'm going to do this once, just to see what it's like, what it's like to actually design everything, work on a soundstage, do an old-fashioned 1930s movie.

"And I'll do it in that mode from the 1930s Saturday matinee serials, using kind of 1930s and '40s sensibilities, and I'll base it on sort of mythological motifs and icons. I'll just put it together in a modern form, and I'll have fun. That's how I got into that. I did it because it was an interesting move into an area that I thought I'd never go into."

Three decades later, Lucas is preparing to launch the last of his six "Star Wars" films. Next summer brings "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," completing the prequel trilogy that tells the story of young Anakin Skywalker's metamorphosis into the villainous Darth Vader of the original three films.

Fans have eagerly awaited the first three "Star Wars" films on DVD, a release Lucas initially intended to delay until he finished "Episode III."

Some will be miffed that the original theatrical versions are not included in the "Star Wars" boxed set, which features only the special-edition versions Lucas issued in the late 1990s, with added effects and footage, including a scene between Harrison Ford's Han Solo and crime lord Jabba the Hutt in the first "Star Wars."

Q: Why did you change your mind and decide to put the original three movies out on DVD now?

GEORGE LUCAS: Just because the market has shifted so dramatically. A lot of people are getting very worried about piracy. That has really eaten dramatically into the sales. It really just came down to, there may not be a market when I wanted to bring it out, which was like, three years from now. So rather than just sit by and watch the whole thing fall apart, better to bring it out early and get it over with.

Q: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s?

LUCAS: To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there." And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done. ...

I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?" So finally, I stopped saying that, but if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it's too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.

'I'm making the movies'

Q: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?

LUCAS: The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. ...

I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.

I'm the one who has to take responsibility for it. I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.

Q: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?

LUCAS: Not really. The movies are what the movies are. ... The thing about science- fiction fans and "Star Wars" fans is they're very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way.

Q: After "Episode III," will you ever revisit "Star Wars"?

LUCAS: Ultimately, I'm going to probably move it into television and let other people take it. I'm sort of preserving the feature film part for what has happened and never go there again, but I can go off into various offshoots and things.

You know, I've got offshoot novels, I've got offshoot comics. So it's very easy to say, "Well, OK, that's that genre, and I'll find a really talented person to take it and create it." Just like the comic books and the novels are somebody else's way of doing it. I don't mind that. Some of it might turn out to be pretty good. If I get the right people involved, it could be interesting.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movi....ap/index.html

Editor’s note: George Lucas may claim piracy woes influenced his release date, but DVD sales are skyrocketing. – Jack.


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Local news

Recording Giants Take Aim At Piracy

HARTFORD (AP) – The recording industry has stepped up its copyright fight with music pirates, filing several federal lawsuits recently against Connecticut residents accused of illegally sharing thousands of songs over the Internet.

In two months, some of the nation's largest recording companies filed seven cases in Hartford federal court. That's the same number of lawsuits filed in the previous eight months. The Connecticut lawsuits were filed Monday on behalf of Virgin Records, Arista Records, Warner Bros. Records, BMG Music, Sony Music and other companies. Recording industry officials said it's part of the yearlong campaign that produced thousands of lawsuits nationwide.

"I don't know how to do it. I don't even know where to put a CD to burm," said Barbara Tyra, a Trumbull mother who said the files were downloaded on her daughter's computer. "Whatever went on up there, with her friends coming in all the time, whatever they did is nothing I know about."

Tyra is accused of sharing music through the Internet program Kazaa. Attorneys singled out nine songs, including Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," Ben Harper's "Steal My Kisses," and "One Week," by the Barenaked Ladies. .

The recording companies are demanding $500 per song - well more than the songs' retail value, but hardly enough to justify going to trial, Tyra said. That's why William Hennessey, a Bridgeport father of four, finally agreed to pay $3,500 to settle an action against him. "I wanted to bring my 12-year- old to federal court and have her explain to a jury how she did it," he said. "I don't know how she did it."

While most Connecticut cases have ended with a settlement, not all have gone so smoothly. Jennifer Brothers of Andover received a summons in December but never showed up. A judge ruled against her in May. Brothers was ordered to pay $6,000 in fines and $240 in attorney fees. She is also prohibited from copying eight songs, including "We Didn't Start the Fire," by Billy Joel and "The Real Slim Shady," by rapper Eminem.

Computer users can easily convert songs from their CDs to computer files. Using the Internet, they can share those files with millions of other users who offer up their music in return.

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Germans Break Up Internet Piracy Group
Henryk Balkow

MUEHLHAUSEN, Germany -- German police have broken up an Internet piracy operation they say had peddled millions of dollars worth of bootleg films, computer games, music and software through a Web site.

The site had charged at least 45,000 subscribers to download pirated files and brought in more than $1.2 million in profits this year, authorities said. The site, since closed by police, was run from Germany, though it was registered in the British Virgin Islands and used servers located in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

After a yearlong investigation, police arrested four men last week. They are being investigated and could be charged with copyright violation and organized crime activity, lead prosecutor Hans-Joachim Petri said. The suspects, whose names were not released, could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Police said they didn't know exactly how much money the site took in, but the German Federation Against Copyright Theft estimated the pirated material would have been worth at least $12.2 million in revenues to the legitimate rights holders.

The suspects included two brothers who operated the Web site, ages 20 and 30, a 46- year-old lawyer from Munich and a 19-year-old technician. The attorney has previously defended suspects of copyright violations, particularly Internet pirates, according to the Motion Picture Association.

The MPA said the site charged $15 for a file or $170 monthly for the pirated materials.
http://www.newstimes.com/admanager/a...w &refresh=20


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Microsoft Mimics Local Radio
Allison Linn

Fans of the Seattle music pop station Kiss 106.1 FM usually have to sit through an array of disc-jockey antics and advertising between listening to favorite artists like Avril Levigne and Ashlee Simpson.

But not anymore. As part of its much-touted new MSN Music offering, Microsoft Corp. is testing a Web-based radio service that mimics nearly 1,000 local radio stations, allowing users to hear a version of their favorite radio station with far fewer interruptions.

It's a move analysts say is annoying, but not seriously threatening, the stations.

"Because it's a beta and because it's Webcasting, it's not yet considered a tremendously important competitor to radio," said Brida Connolly, technology editor at the Los Angeles trade publication Radio & Records. "At this stage it's considered more of an irritation."

The service also poses no serious problems yet because most people still listen to commercial radio in their cars and Internet broadcasting is still in its infancy, analysts say. But they warn that the service could be a harbinger of more competitive online threats to come.

For $30 a year or $5 per month, Microsoft's service - which is still in early testing - will deliver the songs without commercial interruption. The free service includes ads but no DJs.

Microsoft builds its versions of the local stations by licensing playlists from the various local radio stations through Nielsen Broadcast Data System, an independent group that tracks commercial airplay.

The Redmond, Wash. software titan's feed differs slightly because the company must adher to different rules on what can be played on the Web and is barred from playing songs for which it has not independently secured rights.

Connolly said radio stations are less concerned with Microsoft's move to mimic popular playlists - which can be licensed - than with the fact that Microsoft refers to specific call letters and nicknames.

For example, the listing for the Seattle pop station says "Like 106.1 FM" followed by the description "KBKS KISS 106.1." Such nicknames are "taken very seriously" as part of a station's branding and competitive edge, she said.

Connolly stresses that no one is considering taking legal action regarding the use of those names, but she said radio stations have been unpleasantly caught off guard.

Rob Bennett, Microsoft's senior director of MSN entertainment, said Microsoft would be willing to remove the nicknames and call letters - but not the playlists - if radio stations request it.

But instead of being a threat to local radio, he sees Microsoft's Webcasts as an opportunity for radio stations to extend their brand and maybe even form a partnership with Microsoft's online music site.

Although Microsoft's service poses no major competitive threat for radio stations right now, analyst Phil Leigh with Inside Digital Media in Tampa, Fla., said the service should serve as a wake-up call for what's to come. After all, he notes the paid service could prove very attractive to consumers who are sick of DJ jokes and intrustive advertising - especially if Web sites find ways to transmit wirelessly to cars.

"Radio stations are seriously challenged with tech obsolescence," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...LATE=DE FAULT


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Norway to Block Child Pornography Sites

Norwegian police and a state-controlled telecommunications group on Tuesday announced a joint project to block access to child pornography Web sites on the Internet.

Starting next month, the Telenor ASA group will filter hundreds of sites that the national crime police, Kripos, deem to contain child pornography.

Anyone in Norway attempting to access such illegal sites will instead see a page informing them about the filter, and a Web link to Kripos.

"This is crime prevention at its best," said Kripos head Arne Huuse. "The filter will stop a considerable number of potential users, users that we must assume to exist in Telenor's customer base, which consists of nearly 1 million Internet customers."

Esben Tuman Johnsen, a Telenor spokesman, told The Associated Press it believes it is the first company to apply such a filter for its users.

In some countries, including the United States, such filters have met legal obstacles because of criticism that they censor non-pornographic sites.

Johnsen said the issue of censorship was not a problem, because if any user objects, the filter will be removed at their request, giving them access to the Web site.

Such projects also have the blessing of Norwegian Justice Minister Odd Einar Doerum, who last year urged law enforcement and Internet providers to work together in campaigns against child pornography.

Possession of child pornography carries a prison term of up to two years under Norwegian law.

"Child pornography on the Internet is a serious problem, and we want to make a contribution to the fight against it," said Berit Kjoell, director of consumer markets for Telenor.

Telenor said it is not interested in making a profit from the filter, which will be free. It also said it hopes to share the technology with other Internet providers at no cost.

Huuse, of the police, said his agency would help spread the word in other countries about the offer.

"If police authorities and Internet suppliers in other countries follow our example, we could succeed in destroying part of the client base of a cynical, international industry which exposes children to violence and sexual assault with the aim of making money," he said.

Telenor stressed that it would not log nor keep other records of those who attempt to access blocked sites, and that it would only block sites listed by the police.
http://www.newstimes.com/admanager/a...w &refresh=20


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House Backs Crack Down on Video Voyeurs
Jim Abrams

Calling video voyeurism the new frontier of stalking, the House on Tuesday approved legislation to make it a crime to secretly photograph or videotape people, often for lascivious purposes.

Under the legislation passed by voice vote, video voyeurism on federal lands would be punishable by a fine of not more than $100,000 or imprisonment for up to one year, or both.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the issue of surreptitious videotaping has become "a huge privacy concern" with the miniaturization of technology and the proliferation of cell phone cameras.

People have used these devices for purposes like secretly taking pictures beneath women's skirts in such places as school locker rooms, department store dressing rooms and private homes.

Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, a former FBI agent who has promoted the legislation, said there are were many Web sites devoted to such pictures, where they "can be instantly posted on the Internet for millions to view."

Secretly photographing people in a compromising position is against the law in some states, but there is no federal law. Oxley said the legislation could serve as a model for states that have not enacted anti-voyeurism laws.

The bill would make it a crime to videotape or photograph the naked or underwear- covered private parts of a person without consent when the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The Senate unanimously passed a similar bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, in June 2003. Sensenbrenner said he understood that the Senate would accept the minor changes made in the House bill.

The bill is S. 1301.

http://www.newstimes.com/admanager/a...w &refresh=20


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Great North

Academics Caught In Copyright Web
Tobi Cohen

Educators across the country are gearing up for a battle, fearing proposed changes to Canadian copyright law could hinder Internet use in the classroom. They say extended blanket licensing, as proposed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage last spring, could create a costly pay-per-use system that might cause schools to deny students access to the Internet entirely.

Pitted against the powerful lobbies of the publishing and recording industries, six national educational organizations have teamed up to ensure legislators are aware of the potential consequences to learning before they introduce amendments to the Copyright Act as early as this fall.

"Our call is for some balance in the act that allows users and owners to benefit from the act," said Paul Jones of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. "If you lock down information too much and make it hard to access it and distribute it, you're really gumming up the innovation process."

Educators are holding an information session today at Viscount Alexander Public School at 11 a.m. to highlight the problems associated with tighter regulation.

Low-Rez Images

Noting it's one thing for people to protect their work by using passwords and encryption that allows only paid users to access it, or by creating low-resolution images that are inadequate for reproduction, educators say it's another issue to charge a blanket copyright fee when many of those posting information do so without the expectation of being paid for it.

"Why should we pay for access to public information?" said Robert Schad, a University of Regina administrator and member of the Council of Ministers of Education.

"It's not about the fee. It's about access to information and control of the Internet -- the public Internet."

Bruce Stockfish of Heritage Canada's copyright policy branch said the committee is still "wrestling" with the issue of balancing the rights of the creators who want to be compensated for their work and the needs of the education community that require such resources to promote innovation.

One thing that is missing from copyright legislation, he said, is a "break and enter" provision that would essentially make breaking an encryption an offence under the Copyright Act.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Ottawa...22/638608.html


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CRIA Names New President
Guy Dixon

After a two-year search, the Canadian Recording Industry Association yesterday appointed a new president to sit in the hot seat to argue against the wrongs of unauthorized file-sharing and for the interests of Canadian record labels.

Graham Henderson, an entertainment-industry lawyer, who was managing Universal Music Canada's digital-music business and helped to launch the on-line music service Puretracks, will assume the top job at CRIA on Nov. 15.

Current CRIA president Brian Robertson said simply that his 30-year association with the group "was a long time" and that he planned to continue consulting. Given his long tenure, watching the Canadian recording industry go from a hodgepodge of businesses to a satellite of international media conglomerates, Robertson has been approached with the idea of writing a book. In the meantime, he plans to stay on board at CRIA for a six-month transitional period.

Henderson, a lawyer since 1987, has jumped the fence from time to time during his career, representing different sides of the business. As a lawyer, his clients have included such artists as Alannah Myles, Randy Bachman and The Northern Pikes, as well as smaller record labels. In addition to his position at Universal, he is currently a regular speaker at industry gatherings and teaches entertainment law at the University of Toronto.

Particularly when lecturing on "the art of the deal," he demonstrates an understanding of musicians' concerns, as much as those of the recording industry. He has been married to the Cowboy Junkies' singer Margo Timmins for 16 years.

"When artists' issues come up, I can speak credibly on them, and I'm married to an artist. So unlike many people, I have lived a recording contract from inside the fishbowl. I can see the impact a recording contract has on a person," he said.

Neither he, nor Robertson, meanwhile, indicated any change in CRIA's strategy in fighting file-sharing. CRIA's appeal case against the court decision that stalled the association's attempt to sue file-sharers may not be heard until 2005, Robertson said. CRIA hoped it would be heard by this fall.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ent/TopStories


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Website Sued Over Illegal Film Downloads

The Motion Picture Association of America says it has sued a company that sells Internet downloads of current movies like "I, Robot" and "Spider-Man 2" without permission.

The trade group said Click Enterprises, through a series of Web sites, tricked consumers into believing they were paying for legal versions of movies when in fact those movies are not legally available in download form.

"These parasitic Web sites, which charge consumers fees and counsel them to break the law, reflect the worst elements of the pirate community," said John Malcolm, MPAA director of anti-piracy operations, in a press release on Wednesday.

One of the Web sites identified by the MPAA, downloadmuch.com, offers unlimited access to a long list of movies and video games for $24.95 (14 pounds) per year.

The company, which says it is located in Naples, Florida, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The MPAA said it has sent cease-and-desist letters to similar Web sites based in the United States, Asia and Europe engaged in similar activity.

The trade group, spooked by the effect of Internet file-sharing on the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy.

It has sued microchip makers to prevent them from making equipment to illegally copy DVDs, and rewarded movie projectionists for turning in people who make recordings in cinemas.

MPAA members include Walt Disney; Sony Pictures Entertainment; Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer; Viacom's Paramount Pictures; News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film; Time Warner's Warner Brothers Entertainment; and Universal City Studios, owned by Vivendi Universal and General Electric.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle...toryID=6309224


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I’ll get my news from zer0share, thanks

Google Omits Controversial News Stories In China
Will Knight

The internet's most popular search engine Google has been accused of supporting Chinese internet controls by omitting contentious news stories from search results in China.

State-sponsored internet providers in China routinely block access to internet sites deemed inappropriate by the government. These include both Chinese and foreign news sites carrying reports that criticise the Chinese government.

Researchers at Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), a US company that provides technology for circumventing internet restrictions in China, have discovered that the recently-launched Chinese version of Google News omits blocked news sources from its results.

The origin of a computer sending a search request can be identified using its internet protocol (IP) address.

World view

Google admits to omitting some news sources within China but says this is meant to improve the quality of the service.

"In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons," says a statement issued by the company. "These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible."

Bill Xia, chief executive of DIT, however, accuses Google of reinforcing Chinese internet restrictions by leaving some sites off its list. "When people do a search they will get the wrong impression that the whole world is saying the same thing," he told New Scientist.

DIT enables Chinese internet users to get around government restrictions by connecting to computers located outside of the country.

Inside out

Some users recently reported that Google's Chinese news search returned different results depending when
they searched using a computer based outside of China. The claims were substantiated by researchers who connected to computers inside the country.

In the past, other search companies have also been accused of supporting Chinese internet controls. In 2002, for instance, Yahoo's Chinese search engine was modified to provide only limited results for queries related to the banned religious group, Falun Gong.

And Xia notes that Google recently acquired a stake in a Chinese search company called Baidu.com.

Ben Edelman, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, part of Harvard University in the US, says Google will face increasing pressure from the Chinese government to adhere to its restrictions as it extends its reach.

"As Google gains more interest in China and even comes to have financial interests in China, it's hard to imagine Google won't do so," he told New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996426


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Linux Group Rebuffs Hollywood Piracy Charge
Brendon Chase

What seems to be a blunder by the Motion Picture Association of America in its hunt for online pirates has prompted Linux Australia to contact its legal representatives and warn of a possible breach of Australian law.

Linux Australia President Pia Smith told Builder AU that the MPAA had issued the organization a notice of claimed infringement, demanding that the group cease providing access to two copyrighted movies-- one called "Grind" and the other "Twisted"--and ordering it to "take appropriate action against the account holder."

However, the files in question had nothing to do with those movies. The file labeled Twisted is a download of the popular framework written in Python, and Grind refers to a download of Valgrind, a tool for developers to locate memory management.

The MPAA has no legal rights over this software. The agency did not return Builder AU's calls regarding the matter.

Linux Australia is an association that caters to the Linux community Down Under.

Smith said the incident demonstrated that the process used to locate allegedly illegal files on Australian servers was flawed and that the MPAA could be breaking a number of local laws.

"We realized that the MPAA must be doing blind keyword matching against Internet content and then sending out automatic take-down notices with no real research or double checks," Smith said.

"This seems to be a huge misuse of resources, an infringement upon various global spam laws, an infringement upon our own Copyright Act under Section 102 and needless stress and cost upon small Australian organizations and companies," Smith said.

Linux Australia's legal counsel plans to contact the MPAA to inform them of the mistake and the legal implications of their actions.

"Linux Australia is concerned that this kind of shoot-in-the-dark approach to copyright protection is potentially damaging for Australian organizations and companies," Smith added. "Organizations that participate in such behavior should be held accountable and forced to put at least some effort into researching the validity of their keyword searches."
http://news.com.com/Linux+group+rebu...3-5374528.html
















Until next week,

- js.














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Current Week In Review.





Recent WiRs -

September 18th, September 11th, September 4th, August 28th, August 21st

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


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[multi]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09...ctive_keynote/

a few pages..but worth reading ^
great wir !
thanx jack

[TankGirl]

Thanks for the WiR, Jack!

Sean Beatty's thoughts on p2pnet.net were refreshing reading. Orrin Hatch has become an icon of corporate corruption in the U.S. Senate, and it is a shame that scumbags like him can hold influential positions in important democratic institutions.

- tg

[multi]

Originally Posted by JackSpratts

Early Edition





"I would never say never, but DRM requires a huge social change to make it work." – Andrew Orlowski

i see you quoted him but didnt have the article?(looked 3 times couldnt see it..)
thats the only reason i added the link..

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by multi

i see you quoted him but didnt have the article?(looked 3 times couldnt see it..)
thats the only reason i added the link..

the register's excellent piece was too late to make the early edition but the bbc covered it the day before. that story is the fourth one this week, headlined Call To Legalise File-Sharing With Taxes. while anything (almost) is better than irritating file-sharers with deeply flawed and hypocritical laws they rightly ignore, i'm usually against these tax schemes for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact the industry doesn't need them, it's making a bundle already. like the vcr, peer-to-peer is putting money in thier pockets, if they'd ever bother to turn them out and look.

- js.