Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 23rd, '09

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"It would be unreasonable to consider the $150,000 per infringement authorized [by the law] as an appropriate substitute for the zero actual damages." – Charles Nesson





































Back to the Salt Mine

British performer Billy Bragg rails against the music business this week, claiming big entities like MyFace ruthlessly leverage massive market share to dole out recordings for free, exploiting hapless artists merely to grow larger still. It’s a provocative proposal and one that’s fairly widespread among artists generally, who by and large sidestep sticky issues of fan culpability. Says Bragg:

The people who are doing the most damage to our industry are not the music fans swapping files for no commercial gain – it's the sites that are making money without paying for content that are really ripping us off.

To be fair, Bragg doesn’t let fans totally off the hook. He acknowledges they may play some part in his nightmare but basically blames the record companies’ decline on continuing corporate gluttony. While historically such greed has been a factor it doesn’t negate the fundamental reality behind the collapse of the modern music industry.

Here lies a very hard truth: music lovers themselves discovered a simple way to distribute content for free and took to it with gusto, and copyright values according to author Nora Ephron and others have become nil.

Until Bragg and the artists who cling to misguided myths come to terms with this immutable fact all the op-ed pieces in the world, and rants against Ares, BitTorrent, Blubster, FaceBook, FastTrack, LimeWire, MySpace, PirateBay, RapidShare, SoulSeek, WASTE etc. will add nothing to the debate beyond distractions and dissemblances.

Artists are not merely at war with faceless corporations. The sharper conflict lies with the very audience vowing love, and those vows, when screamed at the top of all those lungs, probably mean as much as the performers do when they return it at the end of a show.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

- Joni Mitchell

Forty years ago rebellious fans, determined to get in free, flattened fences at a fabled music fest and had their way with it. The only remaining barrier separating organizers from financial ruin was the commitment of a major film studio underwriting a legendary documentary. It hasn’t been 1969 for a very, very long time, but really, not much has changed.




















Enjoy,

Jack





















May 23rd, 2009




Harvard Prof Tells Judge that P2P Filesharing is "Fair Use"

Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson is headed to federal court this summer to defend an accused file-swapper, and he plans to mount a novel defense: P2P sharing is simply "fair use."
Nate Anderson

Wholesale copying of music on P2P networks is fair use. Statutory damages can't be applied to P2P users. File-swapping results in no provable harm to rightsholders.

These are just some of the assertions that Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson made last week in his defense of accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum. In court filings, Nesson spelled out his defense strategy, which doesn't appear to involve claims that his client "didn't do it." Instead, Nesson argues that it doesn't matter if Tenenbaum copied music; such noncommercial uses are presumptively "fair" and anyone seeking to squeeze file-swappers for statutory damages is entitled to precisely zero dollars.

The strategy certainly doesn't lack for boldness. In making the case that statutory damages only apply to commercial infringers, Nesson says that his reading of the law is "constitutionally compelled." His most interesting argument is that the law offers rightsholders the chance to seek either statutory or actual damages, but that the two are meant to be equivalent.

"It would be a bizarre statute indeed that offered two completely unrelated remedies," he writes, "one which granted actual damages and lost profits, and the other of which granted plaintiffs the right to drive a flock of sheep across federal property on the third day of each month."

If the two remedies are equivalent, and if "individual noncommercial copying results in no provable actual harm to the copyright harm holder," then actual damages would be zero—and so would statutory damages. "In this context, it would be unreasonable to consider the $150,000 per infringement authorized [by the law] as an appropriate substitute for the zero actual damages."

(The recording industry has not sought $150,000 per infringement in any case, and the statute actually allows a spread that begins at $750 per infringement. In the Jammie Thomas trial, a jury settled on an amount close to $10,000 per song.)

It's all fair use

In any event, all of this statutory damages talk doesn't matter, because Nesson claims that Tenenbaum's use of the songs at issue here was "fair use" and thus not an infringement at all. It's a gutsy move to claim that wholesale downloads of complete copyrighted works for no purpose higher than mere enjoyment of music somehow satisfies the famous "four factor test" for fair use claims, but Nesson believes he can win over a jury.

"Defendant Tenenbaum expects and plans to offer the jury evidence relating to each one of these four factors," Nesson wrote in his court filing, "just as they are articulated in the statute, with the jury to decide their meaning as they apply to the facts of his particular case."

Nesson has been floating this idea to his supporters for some time, but the reception has been frosty. Lawyers like Lawrence Lessig, a huge fan of "free culture," remixing, mashups, and reduced copyright protections, wrote in an e-mail to Nesson that "of course [Tenenbaum's conduct] was against the law, and you do the law too much kindness by trying to pretend (or stretch) 'fair use' excuses what he did. It doesn't."

And Terry Fisher, who heads Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and is an expert on fair use, pointed out that P2P filesharing would likely fail the four factors test. "This is not to suggest, of course, that it's sensible for the legal system to be set up in such a way as to enable and encourage the RIAA to go after people like Joel," he wrote. "I devoted much of a book to arguing that it’s not—and I'm happy to testify to that effect. But the fair use doctrine does not, in my view, provide a plausible vehicle for reform."

But last week's court filings indicate that this is precisely how Nesson intends to argue the case. As for the "four factors," he plans to address them... but also to go far beyond them. Nesson will introduce "other factors" that the jury should consider in the case, which include "the copyright holder's knowledge of and assumption of risk when it published the copyrighted work that work would be ripped and shared on P2P networks."

Should Nesson win, he will essentially legalize the sharing of all digital goods, copyrighted or not, by noncommercial users. Given that he wants to make the case about big principles like fair use and the applicability of statutory damages—and not about whether Joel Tenenbaum did what he is accused of doing—the music industry is likely to fight even harder to ensure that Nesson's preferred outcome is not realized. The fireworks are scheduled to begin this summer in Massachusetts federal court.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...s-fair-use.ars





Jammie Thomas Has a New Lawyer!
Jon Newton

I’ve just spoken with a jubilant Jammie Thomas, the woman Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA tried to nail to the wall with a bill of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

She’s over the moon because only days after learning Brian Toder, her previous legal representative, had decided discretion was the better part of valour, leaving her fend for herself against the Big 4 music labels, another lawyer has come forward with an offer of pro bono help.

He’s K.A.D. Camara from Camara & Sibley in Houston, Texas, says Jammie.

And, “He’s the youngest person in history to graduate from Harvard Law school with honors,” she points out.

Nor will her trial — or, rather, her retrial — be delayed, as was expected.

It’ll now go forward on June 15, as slated.

“I’m so happy !” - Jammie said.

That didn’t take long.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/21931





Blubster, Piolet developer in hot water

Spaniard Sued for Music File-Sharing Networks
Ciaran Giles

Recording companies went to court Tuesday claiming euro13 million ($17.5 million) from a Spaniard they accuse of profiting from computer programs he designed to allow free music downloads over the Internet.

The Promusicae association of Spanish recording firms and branches of international companies EMI Group Ltd., Sony Music Entertainment, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp. are suing Pablo Soto for what they allege is unfair competition.

Soto, 30, designed three popular file-sharing programs for Internet users to download music for free. He admits he earned a living from the programs but denies committing any offense.

Spanish courts have repeatedly ruled that free music downloading is not illegal if it is not for commercial use.

This stance has infuriated the music business, which claims it is being cheated of rightful earnings. The industry says Spain is among the worst offenders for what it says is Internet piracy.

Soto says business groups are now trying to target program designers after several failed cases against people who downloaded music for personal use.

His supporters argue that people in Spain already cover the alleged losses made by music companies and artists by paying a special tax on CDs, portable storage devices and mobile phones.

Spain's Culture Ministry said talks are being held with all parties, but there was no immediate prospect of legislation that would end the disputes.

The case was to be heard at a court again Thursday. A spokesman for Madrid's Superior Court, which oversees the tribunal, said a ruling was expected within a month. News reports says the case could drag on for years with appeals.

The spokesman was speaking on condition anonymity in keeping with court regulations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...051901568.html





Biased Pirate Bay Judge Judged by More Biased Judges
Ernesto

To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organizations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either.

Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Furthermore, one of the defense lawyers claimed to have evidence that Norström was handpicked and not assigned to the case randomly.

To investigate these accusations of bias, the appeal court appointed a judge, Ulrika Ihrfelt. Her task is to decide whether or not Norström’s verdict could have been biased since this issue must be resolved before they will look into the appeal request. If it’s determined that Norström was indeed biased, the case will be resubmitted to the district court for retrial, meaning that an appeal is not needed at this stage.

However, soon after the appointment of Ulrika Ihrfelt, it became known that she too had been a member of the same pro-copyright organizations as the ‘biased’ judge. The appointment was criticized by several judicial analysts who said she wasn’t fit either. Judicial praxis dictates that the court must not only be unbiased, but also be BELIEVED to be unbiased, which is clearly not the case here.

As a consequence and in order to avoid more negative press, the appeal court sent out a press release today in which they announce that Ihrfelt has been taken off the case. She has been replaced by three new judges from a separate division of the court.

In the press release, the appeal court writes: “The reasons for this is that the question of whether the original judge was biased needs to be tried by other judges other than those that later may have been given the case. Furthermore, because of the content of the claim of bias, it has been deemed proper that the question should be answered by a division that is not specialized in copyright.”

“None of the three judges are or have been members of the [pro-copyright] organizations in question,” the appeal court announced. But is this really the case?

With a simple Google search Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has already discovered that one of the replacements, Anders Eka, is connected to the The Stockholm Center for Commercial law, together with movie industry lawyers Monique Wasted and Peter Danowsky who represented the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial.

Nevertheless, the appeal court does not intent to replace the new judge(s). “The group Anders Eka is member of has no connection to copyright issues and the interests that are present in the case. I cannot see how this specific connection could lead to that Anders Eka isn’t suitable to try the question of bias,” Fredrik Wersäll, the president of the appeal court said.

The court will not look at the appeal case before the question of Norström’s bias is settled. The bias issue will be given priority and should be settled “in a few weeks at the maximum”, according to the appeal court president.

With all the commotion and judicial incompetence displayed after the Pirate Bay trial it seems almost unthinkable that a retrial won’t be granted. It is therefore no surprise that the entertainment industries try to get some cash off the defendants before it’s too late.
http://torrentfreak.com/biased-pirat...judges-090520/





Artists Don’t Want Pirate Fans to be Disconnected
Ernesto

Last week, a group of music and other entertainment industry representatives urged the UK government to consider drafting legislation that would force ISPs to disconnect alleged pirates. This proposal now faces opposition from an unexpected corner as a coalition of top artists has spoken out against it, saying that disconnecting their fans is the wrong path to take.

In an attempt to have their voices heard, a group of leading musicians have started their own lobby group, the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC). The group includes members such as Robbie Williams, Billy Bragg, Radiohead, Iron Maiden and Travis, and aims to correct music labels and lobby groups that claim to act in the best interest of artists.

The most recent intervention by the coalition of artists concerns the call by entertainment industry lobby groups for so called ‘three-strikes’ legislation, to disconnect repeat copyright infringers. Again, the copyright lobby has been acting on its own and without asking for input from the very artists they claim to represent.

“Not for the first time, we at the Featured Artist Coalition are forced to question whether the record industry is representing the best interests of artists in calling for such measures,” UK musician Billy Bragg writes in an article for the Guardian, dealing with the topic. According to Bragg the music industry is trying to blame ISPs for a ‘problem’ that is not as easily solved as it would first appear.

“Never mind that this is a shameful attempt to pass responsibility on to another sector of industry, the question remains whether or not such measures will have the desired effect. Technology has so far stayed ahead of enforcement. Any unauthorised filesharers who fear being caught out can simply encrypt their exchanges,” Bragg writes.

He further claims that it is sometimes hard for fans to find DRM-free music anywhere else than on file-sharing networks. The demands of music fans have changed with the emergence of the Internet, but the music industry has failed to offer decent alternatives thus far.

“The Featured Artist Coalition is opposed to copyright infringement, but we recognise that, if technology allows people to access music for free, they will take advantage. The next generation of music fans may no longer want to pay for music, but they are still hungry to hear it. The challenge to the industry is to find ways to monetise their behaviour.”

“Clearly, some form of P2P subscription service is the way forward, if only because it provides the most convenient way for consumers to access music,” Bragg argues.

Eventually the labels might have to give up the distribution component that has been at the core of their business for years on end. This paints an uncertain future for the labels and that might be one of the main reasons why they are so resistant. Or to put it in Bragg’s words;

“Yet for the major labels, the success of such an initiative would mean the end of their control over the distribution of music. Is this the real reason why they seem determined to do everything they can to clip the wings of the fledgling digital industry before it can fly?”
http://torrentfreak.com/artists-dont...nected-090518/





DMCA Conviction for Seller of Bogus Microsoft Product Keys
Greg Sandoval

Federal authorities accused Adonis Gladney of selling counterfeit Microsoft product keys, and on Thursday he was convicted of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Gladney, 24, is believed to be the first person convicted for DMCA violations dealing with the circumvention of security protections on software, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian. Typically, product keys are used to activate software and are printed on Certificate of Authenticity labels that accompany legitimate products.

Missakian, who prosecuted the case in Los Angeles along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Wu, said the conviction is a sign that administrators at the U.S. Justice Department plan to take these kinds of DMCA violations "more seriously."

"The defendant couldn't have executed his scheme without counterfeit access keys," Missakian said. "(The keys) allowed purchasers to load software on multiple computers."

Among those who unwittingly purchased phony keys from Gladney is the United States Marine Corp. Gladney's attorney, Frank Sanes Jr., declined to comment.

Convicted of one count of violating the DMCA and three counts of mail fraud, Gladney could face several years in prison, Missakian said, adding that Gladney's prison term will likely be based on the amount of monetary damage he caused.

"At this point we're still counting," Missakian said.

Gladney, who resides in Los Angeles, would advertise software licenses in large volume on his Web sites, abovegroundsolutions.com or agsolutionsspc.com. Customers paid their money and received licenses, which prosecutors say Gladney claimed legally covered between 25 and 750 users. Gladney would then ship them a CD loaded with software that authorities say was not designated as a retail product for sale to the general public, such as software that typically comes bundled in PCs.

"The licenses were essentially thin air," Missakian said.

The FBI, which spearheaded the investigation on behalf of the Electronic Crimes Task Force, a group that includes several law enforcement agencies, said that Gladney would obtain key codes and then tweak them so he could use them over and over.

"By repeatedly using and distributing the same key codes on multiple products," an FBI agent wrote in court documents, "Gladney is circumventing one of Microsoft's primary security features for legitimate product activation in violation of (trafficking in unauthorized access devices)."

According to the FBI, Gladney managed to turn his illegal enterprise into a cash cow while he was barely 20. Gladney told agents he had earned more than $3 million. Following his arrest, officials seized $74,038 and two custom-built Lamborghinis.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10242343-83.html





Napster Cuts Price and Adds 5 Downloads
Yinka Adegoke

Digital music supplier Napster said on Monday it is slashing its monthly subscription price to $5 and adding downloads of songs to its streaming service in a bid to expand its customer base and compete with Apple Inc's iTunes.

It is the latest attempt by Napster to take on iTunes, the dominant digital music leader, and its first major strategic move since being taken over by retailer Best Buy Co Inc last October.

Los Angeles-based Napster said users can now get unlimited access to stream music from its library of 7 million songs and five free songs for download every month for a subscription fee of $5. Previously, Napster had charged subscribers $12.99 for a streaming-only service.

Napster will roll out an in-store marketing campaign across Best Buy's 1,031 stores in the United States.

"We've worked very closely with our label partners to come up with a re-engineered economic structure that is a win-win for everyone starting with consumers," said Chris Gorog, Napster's chief executive.

As fewer music fans buy albums, record labels have been keen to develop subscription services like Napster whose recurring revenues are increasingly attractive to their shrinking businesses.

To date, subscription services like Napster's and RealNetworks Inc's Rhapsody have taken a relatively small share of music dollars.

"Our partners recognize that the way we can all earn value from this is to substantially grow the paid subscription model," said Gorog. "Nobody wins if it remains a niche product."

Stagnant Growth

The original Napster, founded by then college student Shawn Fanning in 1998, helped set the digital music market in motion in the late 1990s with an extremely popular free music-sharing service, which was shut down following a lawsuit filed by the music industry.

The brand name was bought and resurrected as the current legal digital subscription service.

But despite name recognition and several strategic initiatives, Napster has not dented iTunes' dominance. In part, that dominance is built on Apple's market-defining iPod digital music player.

Gorog and his team believe that adding the downloads to the on-demand music access could rekindle Napster's popularity.

"It's the closest we've ever come to the original vision of Napster," said Gorog.

MP3 downloads could also help Napster compete with iTunes as users would be able to transfer the songs to their iPods.

Napster's subscriber growth had stagnated at 700,000 subscribers at the time of its acquisition by Best Buy last October. Gorog declined to update Napster's current subscriber numbers.

Best Buy is moving into categories outside traditional consumer electronics as it looks to double annual sales to $80 billion over the next five years. It is also boosting its wireless offerings since completing the introduction of Best Buy Mobile shops at its U.S. stores.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...54H5WY20090518





Record Labels Increase Legal Pressure on Pirate Bay
enigmax

As everyone is now aware, defeat in the Spectrial did not lead to the closure of The Pirate Bay. Now, after being able to download hundreds of their own albums via the site, the record company plaintiffs from the case want action, and have applied to the court to issue fines to the defendants for every day they continue to infringe copyright.

pirate bayDespite a resounding court defeat against the combined might of the music and movie industries, The Pirate Bay continues to operate - at any given moment there are in excess of 20 million peers connected to the tracker. In any event, the verdict is subject to appeal and could drag on for years yet.

The music industry plaintiffs from the case, Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner, have had enough of this situation and through their lawyer Peter Danowsky, have applied to the court requesting it starts imposing additional fines on three of the defendants for as long as they continue to infringe their copyrights.

According to DN.se, the application to the district court describes The Pirate Bay as an “infringing service”. The plaintiffs claim that they have been able to download 467 music albums to which they own the copyright, via The Pirate Bay.

Because of this, the record companies have demanded that the operators of The Pirate Bay - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi - take steps to ensure that it is impossible for Internet users to download any of the works to which they own the copyright, using The Pirate Bay.

Additionally, in what appears to be an attack on The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth supplier, the plaintiffs are demanding that the ISP ‘Black Internet’ stops providing services to The Pirate Bay.

Worryingly, the application also asks the court to start applying the requested financial penalties before the District Court actually rules on it and that the four defendants shouldn’t be allowed to comment.

IT security expert André Rickardsson told DN.se that he was surprised the record companies have asked for The Pirate Bay operators to be fined;

“Swedish law applies in Sweden and their Internet service isn’t even in Sweden,” he said. “I don’t understand why the district court has anything to do with this. The Pirate Bay operates in countries where the activity is permitted.”

“They are acting like a bull in a china shop and this isn’t going to generate any sympathy for them in the matter.”

Developing story… Thanks SofiaK
http://torrentfreak.com/record-label...te-bay-090519/





UK TSB Invests in ULTRA Fast 10Gbps Broadband Research
MarkJ

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB), an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) established by the Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), has invested £1,000,000 into over a dozen research projects for the development of ULTRA Fast 1 and 10Gbps broadband technologies.

The feasibility projects - each costing between £30,000 and £100,000 - will also help establish European collaborations and form part of larger EU-funded research projects. The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could see EU companies gaining a massive competitive advantage on a global scale.

Mike Biddle, lead technologist at TSB, said: "Putting together an optical broadband capability across the whole of Europe, will fundamentally change the way that businesses operate and will give European companies a major competitive edge.

Imagine the efficiencies that could be achieved through broadband that is up to 1,000 times faster than we have now. Then add the opportunities for more flexible working arrangements, including an increase remote working and you begin to see the many advantages."

It's good to see a proactive initiative being taken on broadband technology research. Still, developing a technology and finding a government willing to spend the billions it might cost to roll the service out are two completely different things.

Hopefully, if the TSB has any sense, their research will concentrate on ways to utilise existing fibre optic cables and networks to push future services. The other issue is likely to be whether or not the Internet itself could handle the new bandwidth. Then again, you won’t be getting a 1Gbps+ connection to your home anytime soon .
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/200...-research.html





Does The WIPO Copyright Treaty Work? The Business Software Association Piracy Data
Michael Geist

The Business Software Alliance is out today with their annual report on global piracy in 2008. While the methodology raises serious questions - the BSA actually only surveys about 5,000 people in 24 countries and then extrapolates the data to 110 countries - the report shows declining numbers in many countries, though there is an overall increase due to very high rates in parts of the world. It also points to the growing importance of open source software, which the report says commands 15 percent of the market.

Piracy rates in Canada have been steadily declining in recent years - down to 32% in 2008 from 36% in 2004. Canada ranks among the 25 countries with the lowest piracy rates, ahead of many European countries including France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal (notwithstanding claims of CAAST). The 32% is lower than the European Union average, lower than any country in Africa, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East (tied with Israel), and lower than all but three Asian countries (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). In fact, only five countries that have ratified the WIPO Internet treaties have software piracy rates lower than Canada. So much for Canada as a piracy haven and deserving of a place on the USTR Priority Watch List.

Beyond refuting many of the claims about Canadian piracy rates, the data is interesting since the BSA uses it to argue that implementing of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) is part of a blueprint for reducing software piracy. It says it is one of five key elements:
In 1996, in direct response to the growing threat of Internet piracy, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopted new copyright treaties to enable better enforcement against digital and online piracy. More than 1.2 billion people around the globe now have Internet access - increasing the power and potential of software but also opening new doors for pirates to distribute their wares. In order to ensure protection of copyrighted works in
the digital age, countries need to update national copyright laws to implement their wIPo obligations. Among other things, these measures ensure that protected works are not made available online without the author’s permission, and that copy protection tools are not hacked or circumvented.

But does the BSA's own data support the claim that implementing the WCT is a key element in combating piracy? The short answer is no. WIPO lists seventy countries as having ratified the WCT. The BSA does not offer data for 16 of them (Belarus, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Mali, Mongolia, Saint Lucia, Tajikistan, Macedonia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago) and there is no comparative data for Georgia (this is the first year of data at 95% piracy rate). That leaves 53 countries. The full chart can be downloaded here, but the data shows that:

Modest increase (5% to 9%) No countries
Minor increase (4% or more) 4 countries
No change
4 countries
Minor decrease (4% or less) 28 countries
Modest decrease (5% to 9%)
14 countries
Significant decrease (10% or more) 3 countries

In other words, 68% of the countries that the BSA tracks that have ratified the WCT have shown no change or only a minor increase or decrease in software piracy rates. The three countries that showed a significant decrease are Russia (which only ratified in February), China (which ratified in 2007), and Qatar (which ratified in 2005). Russia and China are important markets, yet their numbers remain very high (68% in Russia and 80% in China) and few would argue that the big declines are as a result of anti-circumvention legislation. Moreover, the average software piracy rate among WCT ratifying countries is 62% and, as mentioned, only five countries that have ratified the WCT have software piracy rates lower than Canada's.

What does all of this really mean? My take is that where software piracy rates are declining, this is due largely to the increasing use of open source alternatives and tougher enforcement. Notwithstanding the rhetoric that seeks to link the WIPO treaties with addressing infringing activities, anti-circumvention legislation required by the WIPO Internet treaties is largely irrelevant for the purposes of combating commercial piracy.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/





BSA Piracy Figures Need a Shot of Reality

Iain Thomson argues that the annual piracy survey is not an exact science

Another year rolls by, and yet another study from IDC and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) about software piracy is making the headlines.

I've been covering these surveys since they started, and over the years I've become more and more sceptical about the results. While there is some useful data in the latest report, the methodology and some of the conclusions are, in my opinion, open to question.

My school history teacher used to give sage advice to his students when reading any historical document, and it's advice I still follow today.

"Before reading anything consider three questions," he would say. "Ask yourself who is writing this material, why are they writing it and who is paying for it."

Applying this leads to some interesting conclusions. The author of the report is the highly reputable analyst firm IDC. But the way that the report was compiled causes me concern, not least for the low number of actual respondents at just over 6,000 for a worldwide survey.

But of more concern is the methodology IDC uses. Roughly speaking the firm takes an estimate of the amount of computers shipped to individual companies, takes a further estimate of what software should be on those machines, and compares that, not to exact software sales, but to interviews with software vendors.

This research method has been questioned by many people, including such august organisations as The Economist magazine in its article BSA or BS?.

"The association's figures rely on sample data that may not be representative , assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data," the article reads.

"Moreover, the figures are presented in an exaggerated way by the BSA and IDC, a research firm that conducts the study. They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms."

That last sentence is particularly telling. If you're a computer user in China and a legitimate copy of Windows costs around a month's salary (which used to be the case) it's understandable to see why piracy is so popular. But if the pirated version wasn't available would you still buy Windows, or go to an open source alternative, or just abstain from buying the computer?

Similarly, if someone in a business in the US wants to use Photoshop once or twice a year and uses a pirated version, does it mean that they'd buy a legitimate version if they couldn't pirate the code? It seems more likely that they would simply farm the work out to someone else.

The second question as to why the report is written is fairly simple: the commercial IT industry needs data to press its case for tighter laws on software licensing and piracy, and surveys like this look impressive and can be used to brief journalists and governments.

Don't get me wrong: piracy is a serious issue for some parts of the industry. Commercial software companies depend on people buying their code, as opposed to open source companies that make the bulk of their profits from services.

Smaller vendors and developers can be crippled by piracy, but I see precious few of those in the list of the BSA's funding group compared to larger companies like Microsoft and Apple, both of which are flush with billions in cash reserves.

Stealing software is little different from any kind of theft, except that it's easier and doesn't require shoplifting things personally. In the past this has led to courts being fairly lenient on those caught, something that drives the IT sellers up the wall, thus the need for such surveys.

But the picture is not so black and white. Piracy does have an upside. Traian Băsescu, the president of Romania, pointed out to a discomfited Bill Gates a couple of years ago that without piracy his country wouldn't have an IT industry because it couldn't afford the licences.

"Piracy helped the young generation to discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania," said Băsescu.

"A bad thing became, in the end, an investment in friendship towards Microsoft and Bill Gates; an investment in educating the young generation in Romania which created the Romanians' friendship with the computer."

Piracy can actually spur sales. If someone grows up using a pirated version of Windows, and later in life is in a position to buy a copy, then they'll buy the copy that they know, and Microsoft benefits. This is something the BSA would rather not think about.

Which brings us to the final question of who is paying for this report, and the answer is the BSA. The BSA sounds like a very professional, almost official, organisation, but it is simply a pressure group set up and funded by the big IT vendors like Microsoft, Dell, Apple and Symantec.

As such the group operates under a tight remit to advance the influence of the IT industry, and affect public policy in the interests of its sponsors. It's no coincidence that the BSA's US headquarters are located in Washington a few blocks from the White House.

The BSA takes a high moral tone in its reports, but the organisation has been accused of some fairly dodgy practices. User groups complain of being bombarded with official looking junk mail demanding audit details of computer systems under the threat of jail sentences if piracy is found.

Where piracy or the use of unlicensed software is found, the BSA should logically do everything in its power to bring the offenders to court and ensure heavy sentences. It does do this some of the time, but is usually also happy to make a deal with companies if they buy new software licences from one of the BSA's sponsors.

The latest study holds useful information to be sure, and piracy is a serious problem for some in the industry. But the figures of billion dollar losses being thrown around make me suspicious that there may be other agendas here.
http://www.vnunet.com/2242134





Judge Rules Dorm Room Search for Evidence of Prank Email Illegal

Student's Computers Were Seized Under Baseless Theory of Computer Hacking

Boston - A justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ordered police to return a laptop and other property seized from a Boston College computer science student's dorm room after finding there was no probable cause to search the room in the first place. The police were investigating whether the student sent hoax emails about another student.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Boston law firm Fish and Richardson are representing the computer science student, who was forced to complete much of the final month of the semester without his computer and phone. Boston College also shut off the student's network access in the wake of the now-rejected search.

"The judge correctly found that there was no legitimate reason to search and seize this student's property," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Our client was targeted because law enforcement was improperly suspicious of our client's computer skills and misunderstood computer crime laws. We're grateful that the court was able to see through the commonwealth's smokescreen and rectify this mistake."

In her order Thursday, Justice Margot Botsford rejected the commonwealth's theory that sending a hoax email might be unlawful under a Massachusetts computer crime statute barring the "unauthorized access" to a computer, concluding that there could be no violation of what was only a "hypothetical internet use policy." Thursday's decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer "hacking" crimes. Justice Botsford further found that details offered by police as corroboration of other alleged offenses were insufficient and did not establish probable cause for the search.

"No one should be subjected to a search like this based on such flimsy theories and evidence," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "The Fourth Amendment flatly bars such fishing expeditions. Computer expertise is not a crime, and it was inappropriate for the commonwealth to employ such transparent scare tactics in an attempt to hide the fact that they had no case."

EFF had appealed the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Court with Fish & Richardson attorneys Adam Kessel, Lawrence Kolodney, and Tom Brown.
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/05/22





Next Up for France: Police Keyloggers and Web Censorship

The French government, fresh from passing its controversial "three strikes" law to boot repeat file-sharers off the Internet, is now prepping its next assault on online malfeasance. A new bill would legalize government keyloggers, institute ISP censorship of child porn sites, and set up a massive citizen database called Pericles.
Nate Anderson

Having just passed its super-controversial Création et Internet "graduated response" law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the "internautes." Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called "Pericles."

French newspaper Le Monde has the details on the new law, dubbed "Loppsi 2." Together with the recent Dadvsi law (which banned DRM circumvention) and Création et Internet (which disconnects repeat online copyright infringers), Loppsi 2 will "fix" France's various cybersecurity issues.
Think of the children

Loppsi 2 allows the state to install software that can "observe, collect, record, save, and transmit" keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more.

In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects' computers to record and transmit "pen register" data back to investigators.

Under Loppsi 2, French ISPs would also need to participate in a Web censorship regime that initially appears targeted at child pornography. Critics like Jean-Michel Planche, who advises the French government on Internet issues, are already calling the new bill the end of an open and neutral Internet.

Finally, the bill allows for a database called "Pericles" that can pull together information from various existing French databases to create a "super-dossier" on people. According to Le Monde, such a database could contain all sorts of crucial, personal information, and sounds certain to set off the same debates that have taken place in the US whenever similar projects have been floated.

Oh—and did we mention that Loppsi 2 funds all sorts of other crime-fighting techniques, including automated camera systems that record the license plates of cars passing by on the motorway?

Taken together, the Loppsi 2 draft shows just how serious the Sarkozy government is about getting some control over this crazy Internet thing that all the kids are using now. Actually, this is a situation playing out in most developed countries at the moment, and it's not yet clear whether a global consensus will emerge on how to deal with law enforcement challenges on the 'Net.

Numerous countries in Europe already run Internet child porn blacklists; massive government databases exist or are being developed just about everywhere; graduated response laws are slowly moving into the mainstream. France just seems more interested than most in adopting all of these ideas in the shortest possible timeframe.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...censorship.ars





Computer Virus Strikes US Marshals, FBI Affected
Devlin Barrett

Law enforcement computers were struck by a Mystery computer virus Thursday, forcing the FBI and the U.S. Marshals to shut down part of their networks as a precaution.

The U.S. Marshals confirmed it disconnected from the Justice Department's computers as a protective measure after being hit by the virus; an FBI official said only that that agency was experiencing similar issues and was working on the problem.

"We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies," said FBI spokesman Mike Kortan. He did not elaborate or identify the other agencies.

Marshals spokeswoman Nikki Credic said the agency's computer problem began Thursday morning. The FBI began experiencing similar problems earlier.

"At no time was data compromised," said Credic. The type of virus and its origin were not determined.

In addition to their external networks, most federal law enforcement agencies have an internal-only network to prevent cyber-snoopers from sensitive data.

In Thursday's incident, the Marshals Service shut down its Internet access and some e-mail while staff worked on the problem. The FBI made similar moves to protect its system.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/200905...computer_virus





Obama Says He's a Night Owl, Working On Big Issues
AP

President Barack Obama says he's a night owl.

Obama tells C-SPAN in an interview airing Saturday that after he's had dinner with his family and tucked his daughters into bed, he typically stays up until midnight going through a big stack of material he's taken into the White House residence.

He says he somethings pushes the big stack aside to do some writing and focus on some of the issues "that are coming down the pike"—rather than immediate issues.

He says one example is a comprehensive plan to deal with national cybersecurity. Obama says that if he doesn't build in what he calls "some thought time," then these kind of issues can keep getting pushed aside by "the constant churning of events."
http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_12436461





New Windows Netbooks May Harbor Malware
Gregg Keizer

Kaspersky Labs is warning users to scan brand new systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet after discovering attack code on a just-out-of-the-box Windows XP netbook.

After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet.

When Kaspersky developers installed their recently-released Security for Ultra Portables on an M&A Companion Touch netbook purchased for testing, "they thought something strange was going on," said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior antivirus researcher with the Moscow-based firm. Schouwenberg scanned the machine -- a $499 netbook designed for the school market -- and found three pieces of malware.

"This was done at the factory," said Schouwenberg. "It was completely brand new, still in its packaging."

With a little more digging, Schouwenberg found multiple Windows system restore points, typically an indication that the machine had been updated with new drivers or software had been installed before it left the factory. One of the restore points, stamped with a February date, included the malware, indicating that it had been put on the machine before then. And the malware itself hinted how the netbook had been infected.

"In February, the manufacturer was busy installing some drivers for an Intel product in the netbook," said Schouwenberg, citing the restore point. Among the three pieces of malware was a variant of the AutoRun worm, which spreads via infected USB flash drives.

"The USB stick they used to install the drivers onto the machine was infected, and [it] then infected the machine," said Schouwenberg. Installed along with the worm was a rootkit and a password stealer that harvests log-in credentials for online games such as World of Warcraft.

Kaspersky has reported its findings to M&A, said Schouwenberg, but the netbook maker has not been in contact with the security company since then.

Although factory-installed malware is rarely found on consumer electronics, there have been cases. Last December, for example, Amazon.com told customers it had sold Samsung digital photo frames before the holidays that came with a driver installation CD infected with a Trojan downloader. "These [cases involving computers] are much rarer than picture frames," said Schouwenberg.

To ensure that a new PC is malware-free, Schouwenberg recommended that before users connect the machine to the Internet, they install security software, update it by retrieving the latest definition file on another computer and transferring that update to the new system, then running a full antivirus scan.

"That's the best course of action, even though it sounds like a lot of work," said Schouwenberg.
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=58E...59AE31EA733AAE





YouTube Rocked by Hackers' 'Porn Day'
Jack Riley

In what is believed to have been a coordinated attack carried out by the infamous 4Chan group of hackers, clips containing nudity and sexual scenes were made available to the sites tens of millions of users.

On the same day it was revealed that users of YouTube, the world's largest video-sharing site, were uploading more than 20 hours of video footage every minute, the site was hit by a porn scandal which threatened to bring the service into disrepute. Over the course of 24 hours, the site was flooded with a number of pornographic video clips rumoured to be in the tens of thousands.

In what is believed to have been a coordinated attack carried out by the infamous 4Chan group of hackers, clips containing nudity and sexual scenes were made available to the sites tens of millions of users. To circumvent the site's normal moderation policy, they were uploaded with titles referencing such favourite children's entertainers as Hannah Montana and the famous American Christian pop boy band, the Jonas Brothers. The videos began with footage of the artists in question before cutting to video of adults participating in group sex acts, according to the BBC.

It is believed YouTube's moderation team have been working around the clock since the attack to try and take down the offending items, though the process may take weeks or even months thanks to the site's laissez-faire approach to content uploading, which relies on users flagging content as offensive before it is viewed by official representatives of the company.

This is far from the first time the site has been drawn into controversy for the content users upload; currently many music videos have been withdrawn from the site following a series of high profile copyright disputes. The group behind the attack have claimed these removals as their motivation for the ongoing incident, with one attacker telling the BBC "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."

A YouTube spokesperson was keen to downplay the attack, saying "YouTube is a community site used by millions of people in very positive ways. Sadly, as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules."

"We were aware of yesterday's issue and removed the videos as they were brought to our attention through our flagging system, as we would any videos that violate our community guidelines. In addition, any account we discover that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube was also disabled."

4Chan, an image-sharing message board founded in 2003, has been to thank for some of the biggest online phenomena of recent years. Commentators claim they were responsible for the success of such varied internet 'memes' as lolcats, a series of images of kittens captioned in internet slang parlance, and Chocolate Rain, a kitsch YouTube video depicting musician Tay Zonday performing a song about racial disharmony. More recently, its community of highly computer-literate users originated 'rickrollling', a process which involves misleading internet users by tricking them into visiting a website featuring eighties pop star Rick Astley.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...y-1689434.html





Court Orders Closure of 72 Websites

Crackdown on online gambling and games

The Criminal Court has ordered the closure of 72 websites offering access to online gambling and games.

The court order follows the death of a 12-year-old boy who jumped from the sixth-floor balcony of his school building on Thursday after he was banned from playing computer games by his father.

Department of Special Investigation (DSI) deputy chief Suchart Wong-anandchai said under a May 19 order issued by the Criminal Court to the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ministry, the agency was told to shut down 72 websites seen as encouraging people to place online bets or hooking them on computer games.

Pol Col Suchart, who also sits on the ICT's subcommittee on internet safety, said it was the first time that a court order had been issued in the country to close websites offering online gambling opportunities. But many have argued that the present legislation was not good enough to order the closure of any websites for such violations.

Some websites are rumoured to take in over 100 million baht from online betting a night at peak periods, causing huge economic losses to the country.

To prevent online gambling, the DSI, also a member of the internet safety committee, would notify all Internet service providers (ISP) across the country about the court order.

From now on any provider found to encourage or provide online gambling will not only face a jail term and a fine, but also have his/her ISP licence revoked by the ICT, he said.

Among the 72 websites facing closure are 368sb.com and 88suncity.com, both based in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone of the Philippines.

The Mental Health Department will send a team of psychologists to counsel and console the parents, friends and those close to the boy who took his own life.

Department spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin said those close to the boy at school and his parents, who were badly affected by his death, needed psychological help.

Pongsathorn Wattanabenjasopha, a Prathom 6 (sixth grade) student at the Sri Witthaya Paknam School, jumped to his death on Thursday after his father banned him from playing computer games.

Dr Taweesilp said the suicide rate was rising in the kingdom. The majority of those taking their own lives were mostly in the 30-40 age group, followed by teenagers aged 12-13.

There were several factors that drove people to commit suicide. Family problems topped the list. Other factors included physical and mental problems, economic hardships, poor income and unemployment.

Bundit Sornpaisarn, director of the Rajanagarindra Child and Adolescent Mental Health Institute, said the boy's suicide reflected that children who were addicted to games and had an aggressive mentality were more likely to commit suicide than others.

Parents need to instil a sense of discipline in children from a young age if such tragedies are to be prevented, he said.

Dr Bundit said people whose children were in their teens should use positive communications to deal with their child's addiction to online games. They should control their emotions and listen to their children's views, as that would bring positive responses, he said.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/loca...of-72-websites





Facebook Raises $150 Million More to Cash Out Employees
Matt Marshall

Facebook has almost finished raising $150 million in capital, in an extraordinary move by the company to buy out shares of hundreds of regular employees.

Hundreds of the Palo Alto, Calif.’s employees have now toiled at the company for more than two years, and many have worked three to five years. Increasingly, some have become restless, and would like to cash in on the huge value they’ve created. Most employees were awarded several thousands of shares valued at far less than a dollar each. Now, by selling to those shares investors for a private market value of $10 each, employees can enjoy a nice windfall. According to our sources, the transaction will include the buying out of roughly 15 million common shares — thus equaling around $150 million total value.

Facebook declined comment on the financing.

The deal has not quite closed yet. But it’s another sign that large private companies like Facebook are desperately seeking ways to find “liquidity” for their employees — especially now that the IPO market remains difficult, in particular for unprofitable companies.

Because of the size of the round, Facebook’s existing investors — Accel, Greylock, Founders Fund and several others — found it a stretch to supply the full amount of capital. We’re hearing the final part of the deal is being sold to new Asian investors.

Speculation about Facebook raising cash has swirled for several months, but most reports have misunderstood the reason why Facebook wanted to do so. Some outsiders claim the social networking company needs the cash to cover high storage and server costs, now that more than 200 million users are sharing photos at an increasing rate. But the company has constantly rejected such arguments, and now our sources are corroborating that.

The company declined to comment specifically on the fundraising, or the amount. Spokesman Larry Yu confirmed the existence of a Facebook common stock sale program, which lets employees sell up to 20 percent of their common share holdings, but he wouldn’t comment on any other details. “Facebook is a private company, so as a matter of policy, we don’t typically share details about our financial plans or comment on rumor and speculation,” he said, using a prepared statement. The company delayed the program in October, but we’re hearing the program will resume once this latest funding is finalized, which should happen very soon.

Before this, the company raised more than 400 million. It also raised debt of at least $100 million, much of that coming last year, and most of it in the form of a lease line to buy servers.

There’s no denying the company faces significant costs in covering photo-sharing costs. However, over the past six months, the company dedicated a crack team of three engineers to drive down the costs considerably. The initiative, called Haystack, replaced off-the-shelf storage products — which contained a lot of “head room” costs — with a proprietary architecture that shrunk the company’s computing costs to what really mattered. There’s also no sign the company is holding back from rolling out new high-bandwidth initiatives. It’s about to roll out a new live video chat feature, according to a report by AllFacebook (Update: We’ve since heard from another source that, while this is video chat feature in testing, there are no current plans to launch it).

Yu said speculation last last year by TechCrunch about Facebook’s server costs were an “order of magnitude wrong:” He added: “There’s a perception that our costs are skyrocketing…But those costs are not as nearly as radical as people are beginning to report.” He said that if nothing were to change at all, the company is on a “clear path to be cash-flow positive in 2010.” This is possible given Facebook’s cash in the bank, its managing of infrastructure costs and growth of its business, he said.

The company has repeated several times that it doesn’t need cash. Last month, the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg told Bloomberg: We could not be doing better financially … We might take money—but it doesn’t mean we need to.”

The buyout of employee shares in this latest transaction should be distinguished from the separate process of “secondary market” transactions, in which former Facebook employees sell their shares to accredited investors. Those transactions are commonplace. Until now, however, Facebook has asked its current employees to refrain from such sales.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/16/fa...out-employees/





Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies
Brad Stone

Turning itself into a kind of electronic vanity publisher, Scribd, an Internet start-up here, will introduce on Monday a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it.

The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text, letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail.

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

Authors can choose to publish their documents in unprotected PDFs, which would make them readable on the Amazon Kindle and most other mobile devices. Scribd also says it is readying an application for the iPhone from Apple and will introduce it next month.

Scribd hopes its more open and flexible system will give it a leg up on Amazon, which has become the largest player in the burgeoning market for e-books. Amazon sets the retail price for books in its Kindle store and keeps the majority of the revenue on some titles, which has publishers worried that Amazon is amassing too much control over the nascent market. Amazon also allows those books to be read only on its Kindle devices and in Kindle software on the iPhone.

“One reason publishers are excited to work with us is that they worry that publishing channels are contracting as Amazon and Google are gaining control over the e-book space,” said Jared Friedman, chief technology officer and a founder of Scribd.

But Scribd also has some hurdles to overcome itself. Though large publishing firms like Random House have experimented with the site, they also express frustration that copies of some works have been uploaded to Scribd without permission.

Trying to address the piracy problem, Scribd is building a database of copyrighted works and using it to filter its system. If a publisher participates in the Scribd store, its books will be added to that database, the company said.

So far, no major publishing houses have signed on to the store, though the company says it is talking to them. The independent publishers Lonely Planet, O’Reilly Media and Berrett-Koehler will add their entire catalogs.

The Scribd store will also give unpublished authors, or authors who are in a hurry, a well-trafficked Web forum on which to post their books, charge for them and see immediate results.

Kemble Scott, who has released a novel through a conventional publisher, said he would post his topical new political comedy, “The Sower,” to Scribd and charge $2 for it, partly because standard publishing is so slow. “If this is a book that is going to be interesting to people, now is the time that it fits into the national mood,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/te...8download.html





Craigslist CEO Asks SC AG to Apologize for Threat
Meg Kinnard

The CEO of Craigslist is asking South Carolina's attorney general to apologize for threatening to prosecute the company if any advertisements on the Web site lead to a prostitution case.
CEO Jim Buckmaster wrote on his blog Monday that Attorney General Henry McMaster had wrongly accused Craigslist of criminal misconduct.

McMaster last week threatened to prosecute Craigslist executives for aiding and abetting prostitution if an ad leads to a prostitution case in South Carolina. His office did not immediately return a phone message Monday.

Craigslist has been under fire for its "erotic services" category. The site has pledged to eliminate the category and screen all submissions for a new "adult services" section.
http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_12395570





Craigslist Sues So. Carolina Attorney General
Jon Skillings

Craigslist said Wednesday it is suing South Carolina's attorney general over the threat of criminal charges against the Web site and its executives.

In the lawsuit filed in federal court, Craigslist says it is "seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order" connected to accusations by Henry McMaster, the state's attorney general, that the classified ad site has not adequately removed "advertisements for prostitution and graphic pornographic material."

In a blog post Wednesday morning, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said that the charges are egregious:

In addition to being unwarranted by the facts, legal experts agree that the charges threatened represent an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech, and are clearly barred by federal law (sec 230 CDA).

McMaster responded later Wednesday morning with a statement, given here in full:

The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time.

More importantly, overnight they have removed the erotic services section from their website, as we asked them to do. And they are now taking responsibility for the content of their future advertisements. If they keep their word, this is a victory for law enforcement and for the people of South Carolina.

Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected.

In recent weeks, Craigslist has worked to remove its erotic ads section in response to demands from a number of state attorneys general and to replace it with a new, more closely monitored adult section. A check of the site earlier this week by CNET News, however, showed that Craigslist had not been able to completely prevent people from posting solicitations for sex. In addition, similar content can be found on other classified-ad sites serving South Carolina locales.

Buckmaster said in his blog post Wednesday that the only way to fully comply with the attorney general's "ultimatum" to remove the portions of Craigslist containing erotically charged material "is to take down the craigslist sites for South Carolina in their entirety." On Monday, Buckmaster had demanded an apology from McMaster.

The attorney general, Buckmaster said, "has persisted with his threats despite the fact that craigslist:"

• is operating in full compliance with all applicable laws
• has earned a reputation for being unusually responsive to requests from law enforcement
• has eliminated its "erotic services" category for all US cities
• has adopted screening measures far stricter than those Mr McMaster himself personally endorsed with his signature just 6 months ago
• has far fewer and far tamer adult service ads than many mainstream print and online venues operating in South Carolina
• has made its representatives available to hear Mr McMaster's concerns in person
• has politely asked Mr McMaster to retract and apologize for his unreasonable threats

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10245380-93.html





House of Commons Lawyers Sent Takedown Notices Over Committee Video
Michael Geist

In the spring of 2007, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, the well-known broadcasting advocacy group, began to post videos and podcasts of Parliamentary committee proceedings on their website. When officials at the House of Commons caught wind of their activities, they promptly sent a cease and desist letter, demanding that the videos and podcasts be removed from the Internet. A lawyer for the House of Commons argued that posting excerpts from committee proceedings could be treated as "contempt of Parliament." The group responded that they did not want to remove the videos, but would be willing to follow a reasonable procedure to obtain the necessary permissions. That response did not sit well with the Chairs of the Finance and Canadian Heritage Standing Committees, who upon learning that the group was offering webcasts and downloads of their proceedings, asked the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (SCPHA) to examine the issue to prevent further infringement.

My weekly technology column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that the idea that videos of committee hearings constitute proprietary content that when used without permission raise the potential for allegations of contempt of Parliament or copyright infringement will undoubtedly come as news to many Canadians. Using these excerpts in YouTube videos, webcasts, or podcasts has emerged as an important and powerful tool for business and consumer groups to educate the public on policy issues and legislative proposals. Yet House of Commons lawyers maintain that many of these activities violate the law and have sent notice and takedown demands to YouTube seeking the removal of videos that include House of Commons and committee proceedings. These include clips that involve satire and parody, since they are seen to "distort" the video itself.

SCPHA hearings held earlier this year revealed that Canada's elected officials safeguard Parliamentary video with very restrictive licencing requirements that are generally limited to use in schools or for private study, research, criticism or review. Relying on crown copyright, the policy states that any other use - including any commercial use - requires the express prior written approval of the Speaker of the House of Commons. This stands in sharp contrast to the United States, where the default presumption is that such videos are in the public domain and can be freely used without permission. House of Commons lawyers portrayed that approach as representing an extreme position.

To their credit, most of the MPs on the Committee recognized that changes to the policies in the YouTube era are needed. However, MPs from the three opposition parties expressed some reluctance to mirror the U.S. approach, fearing that some videos taken out of context could be "terrifically damaging." Bloc MP Claude DeBellefeuille raised the possibility of lawsuits to enforce the copyright and noted that "we will have to establish rules so that we have some recourse and that remarks can be withdrawn after they have been broadcast and pointed out."

Conservative MP Scott Reid came closest to recognizing the problems associated with retaining certain restrictions, warning against policies that provide that videos are "usable for certain purposes but not for the purposes that lie at the heart of what this speech is for." Instead, he argued that using video excerpts for either favourable or critical purposes would be appropriate.

The Committee ultimately adopted a liberalized policy that permits non-commercial, accurate reproduction without prior permission. Commercial uses still require prior approval, while "distorting" a video for parody, satire or political comment purposes may still fall outside the licence and lead to demands for its removal. The new policy is a modest improvement, but it fails to fully realize the potential of public political participation through online video.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3953/135/





Do We Want ISPs to Penalise Our Fans?

The record industry wants ISPs to take action against unauthorised downloaders – but fans are the wrong target
Billy Bragg

Having failed miserably in previous attempts to stamp out illicit filesharing, the record industry has now joined forces with other entertainment lobby groups to demand that the government takes action to protect their business model.

Speaking at a joint meeting of the Federation of Entertainment Unions, UK Film Council and Bafta on the future of the creative industries last week, the chairman of the British Phonographic Industry called on the government to take seriously the argument that, in the face of illicit file-sharing, a "write and sue" policy will not be effective, to introduce legislation requiring ISPs to act against persistent unauthorised downloaders and to recognise that the music industry has already transformed its business models online.

Not for the first time, we at the Featured Artist Coalition are forced to question whether the record industry is representing the best interests of artists in calling for such measures.

Stating that a "write and sue" policy will not work is an admission that the current copyright law is no longer fit for purpose in a digital age. The government has pointed out to the BPI that if it wants to crack down on unauthorised file-sharing, the law is already on its side. Fearful of the prospect of dragging their customers though the courts, with all the attendant costs and bad publicity, members of the record industry have come up with a simple, cost-free solution to their problem: get the ISPs to do their dirty work for them. They are asking the government to force the ISPs to cut off the broadband connection of customers who persistently download unauthorised material, without any recourse to appeal in the courts.

Never mind that this is a shameful attempt to pass responsibility on to another sector of industry, the question remains whether or not such measures will have the desired effect. Technology has so far stayed ahead of enforcement. Any unauthorised filesharers who fear being caught out can simply encrypt their exchanges.

Even if this proposal should become law, as recording artists we question the wisdom of pursuing and penalising our potential audience. The people who are doing the most damage to our industry are not the music fans swapping files for no commercial gain – it's the sites that are making money without paying for content that are really ripping us off.

The Pirate Bay had to be closed down, but what about the fans who use such sites to find music they cannot get legally or DRM-free elsewhere? The Featured Artist Coalition is opposed to copyright infringement, but we recognise that, if technology allows people to access music for free, they will take advantage. The next generation of music fans may no longer want to pay for music, but they are still hungry to hear it. The challenge to the industry is to find ways to monetise their behaviour.

The question is, are the major labels too wedded to their old business model to be capable of leading the next generation? It is all very well to claim that they have already transformed their business models online. Evidence suggests otherwise.

Earlier this year, British cable ISP Virgin Media was set to launch a peer-to-peer filesharing service, paid for by subscription. Research had shown that over 80% of the users of Pirate Bay were willing to pay for a similar service. At the 11th hour, the two biggest labels in the UK, Universal and Sony, sank the project by demanding stringent "anti-piracy" controls.

Clearly, some form of P2P subscription service is the way forward, if only because it provides the most convenient way for consumers to access music. Yet for the major labels, the success of such an initiative would mean the end of their control over the distribution of music. Is this the real reason why they seem determined to do everything they can to clip the wings of the fledgling digital industry before it can fly?

Billy Bragg is a board member of the Featured Artists Coalition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...music-internet





Woody Allen, American Apparel Settle Suit for $5M
Tom Hays

Woody Allen agreed Monday to a $5 million settlement in his lawsuit accusing American Apparel of using an image parodying him as a rabbi without his permission.
Both sides announced the settlement—to be paid by American Apparel Inc.'s insurance company—on the morning a trial was to start in federal court in Manhattan.

Reading from a statement outside court, Allen said he hoped the outcome "would discourage American Apparel or anyone else from ever trying such a thing again." His lawyers said the $5 million appeared to be the largest amount ever paid to settle a lawsuit brought under state privacy statutes.

American Apparel president Dov Charney told reporters it wasn't his decision to settle. The Los Angeles-based company's insurance company "controlled the defense" in the case, he said.

"I'm not sorry for expressing myself," he said.

Allen, 73, sued the trendy clothing company last year for $10 million after the advertisements turned up on billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site. Using a frame from the film "Annie Hall," the ads depicted Allen as a Hasidic Jew—long beard, side curls, black hat—and featured Yiddish text meaning "the holy rebbe."

Court papers filed on Allen's behalf had described the actor-director as one of the most influential figures in the history of American film and said he believes maintaining strict control over his image has been critical to his success.

The papers claimed Allen hasn't done commercials in the United States since 1960s, when he was a struggling standup comic. The billboards, he says, falsely implied he endorsed a clothing line known for its racy advertising—a "blatant misappropriation and commercial use of Allen's image."

American Apparel lawyers had called the $10 million demand "outrageous," especially since the billboards were taken down after a week. They also had threatened to call Allen's former longtime companion, actress Mia Farrow, and his current wife, Soon-Yi Previn, as witnesses to show that his image has already been devalued by scandal. Previn is Farrow's adopted daughter.

Farrow starred in several of Allen's movies, including "Crimes and Misdemeanors." Their relationship ended in 1992, when she discovered he was having an affair with Previn, then 22.

On Monday, Allen blasted American Apparel, calling their First Amendment defense "sheer nonsense" and accusing of it of trying "to smear me."

Charney insisted there were no hard feelings, saying the billboards were misunderstood.

"We would never try to malign the dignity of Mr. Allen," he said. "I have respect for Mr. Allen. ... I hope to meet him on more friendly terms at a different point."

Meanwhile, American Apparel posted a first-quarter loss of $9 million and its shares slid Monday in aftermarket trading.

Charney said the business was hurt by severe liquidity constraints.

The retailer lowered its yearly revenue outlook, and the stock sank 19.6 percent to $4.40 in aftermarket trading, after ending the regular session up 38 cents at $5.47.
http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_12394205





In Slump, Networks Scramble Lineups
Stuart Elliott and Bill Carter

Each May, the big broadcast television networks invite advertisers, agency executives and affiliates to peek at their schedules for the coming season. But the awful economy threatens to spoil the party before it begins on Monday.

The recession has suppressed demand for commercial time during the shows the networks are planning for the 2009-10 season, which starts in September. That is particularly true for crucial advertising categories like automotive, retail and financial services.

As a result, the broadcasters are making some startling moves in hopes of shaking up the market, most notably a decision by NBC to replace traditional fare at 10 p.m. on weeknights with a comedy talk show hosted by Jay Leno.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of clients are holding back, really holding back,” said David Sklaver, president at KSL Media, which buys commercial time for advertisers.

Estimates are that sales on the five big broadcast networks could decline by as much as 15 percent from last spring, when they sold about $9.2 billion of commercial time ahead of the 2008-9 season.

An automaker or retailer might welcome a decline of only 15 percent. But in television, where arrows almost always point up, that steep a slide in the upfront market — so named because it takes place before each season begins — could be the most severe in eight years.

“There are still a lot of questions out there,” said Jeff Zucker, chief executive at the NBC Universal unit of General Electric. His NBC network is one of the five broadcasters that will announce their fall schedules this week, along with ABC, CBS, CW and Fox.

Some network executives said recently that they saw glimmers of improvement in the ad market, but Mr. Zucker is not that sanguine.

Although “we may have seen the bottom,” he said, “we don’t see an uptick.”

Rather than waiting for a turnaround, Mr. Zucker and NBC are taking what may be the biggest gamble of this — or any recent — upfront market: betting that viewers will want to watch Mr. Leno, the longtime host of “The Tonight Show,” in a prime-time slot earlier than he has ever had.

“People want more comedy,” Mr. Zucker said, explaining the rationale for the introduction of what is being called “The Jay Leno Show,” and “people love Jay.”

To help prove that, Mr. Zucker commissioned research on the prospects for Mr. Leno. “People tell us they will, or will make a significant effort to, watch three nights a week,” Mr. Zucker said, which would ensure the show’s success. Five nights of Mr. Leno a week would cost NBC Universal much less to produce than other types of shows at 10 p.m. like drama series.

NBC’s affiliated stations, which will meet with network executives on Wednesday specifically to discuss plans for the Leno show, commissioned their own research.

“It was mostly good news for us,” said Michael J. Fiorile, vice chairman of the Dispatch Broadcasting Group, which owns an NBC affiliate in Indianapolis. Viewers who said they liked Mr. Leno tended to be heavy viewers of local news, Mr. Fiorile said, which would benefit affiliates that offer 11 p.m. newscasts after the Leno show.

“In terms of our evening news, we always prefer a talk show as a lead-in,” he added.

The network’s executives are scrambling to counter the idea, put forth by competitors, that NBC is leaving the 10 p.m. hour open to be won by dramas on ABC and CBS.

CBS has been more successful than ABC in developing a popular lineup of 10 p.m. series. CBS is expected to shore up the time period with even stronger shows in its 2009-10 schedule; the network has been experimenting this spring by giving 9 p.m. hits like “The Mentalist” trial runs at 10 p.m.

The new Leno show is “clearly the highest priority for the network this fall,” said Alan Wurtzel, the president for research at NBC. He offered data showing that no conventional series introduced at 10 p.m. since the 2003-4 season has approached true hit status in the ratings.

“The 10 p.m. environment is just brutal,” Mr. Wurtzel said.

Executives at media agencies, who will help decide whether the Leno show is a hit or flop in terms of sales, offered mixed reviews.

“It’s a bold move,” said Steve Lanzano, chief operating officer for MPG U.S., part of the MPG media agency owned by Havas.

“I give NBC credit for trying something,” he added, even if “I’m not sure it’s the right move.” Mr. Leno’s arrival in prime time could affect viewership for the late-night shows that will follow him on NBC, Mr. Lanzano said, hosted by Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly.

Steven J. Farella, president and chief executive at another media agency, TargetCast TCM, said the prospect of Mr. Leno at 10 p.m. was welcome.

“Think about the alternative: another crime drama, another hospital drama,” Mr. Farella said. “We like things that are different, so we can sit in front of clients and say, ‘Let me tell you what I’m doing differently this year than last year.’ ”

Mr. Farella said he also liked NBC’s promise that Mr. Leno’s show would be “advertiser-friendly,” offering sponsors opportunities like commercials delivered by Mr. Leno and the inclusion of brands in skits.

Fox, part of the News Corporation, will make its upfront week presentation on Monday, followed by ABC, part of the Walt Disney Company, on Tuesday; CBS, a unit of the CBS Corporation, on Wednesday; and CW, owned by CBS and Time Warner, on Thursday. NBC, which has already been meeting with advertisers, will unveil its fall lineup on Tuesday.

Some major cable channels intend to crash the upfront week, scheduling presentations around those of their broadcast rivals. For instance, ESPN, owned by Disney, will go on Tuesday. And cable channels owned by Time Warner, including TBS and TNT, will present on Wednesday.

The cable channels are hoping they can be attractive alternatives for advertisers seeking to spend less in hard times; commercials in cable shows typically cost less than in broadcast shows.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/bu...ia/18adco.html





Seeking a Missing Link, and a Mass Audience
Tim Arango

It is science for the Mediacene age.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

The specimen, designated Darwinius masillae, is of a monkeylike creature that is remarkably intact: even the contents of its stomach are preserved. The fossil was bought two years ago in Germany by the University of Oslo, and a team of scientists began work on their research. Some of the top paleontologists in the world were involved in the project, and it impressed the chief scientist at the Natural History museum enough to allow the press conference.

“We would not go forward with this, even in a hosting capacity, unless we had a sense of the scientific importance,” said Michael J. Novacek, the provost of science at the museum.

But despite a television teaser campaign with the slogan “This changes everything” and comparisons to the moon landing and the Kennedy assassination, the significance of this discovery may not be known for years. An article to be published on Tuesday in PLoS, a scientific journal, will report more prosaically that the scientists involved said the fossil could be a “stem group” that was a precursor to higher primates, with the caveat, “but we are not advocating this.”

All of this seems a departure from the normal turn of events, where researchers study their subject and publish their findings, and let the media chips fall where they may. But this campaign is only the latest example of the scientific media blockbuster, of which the National Geographic Society has become perhaps the most successful practitioner. It often gives grants to researchers, with National Geographic gaining the rights to produce television shows and magazine articles related to any discoveries.

And these kinds of publicity campaigns can backfire. In 2007, for example, the Discovery Channel ran a documentary called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which had its share of detractors in the academic community.

Executives of A&E, which operates the History Channel, said they were mindful of that example, and were satisfied that the science behind the fossil discovery was solid. The media facets to the project began to coalesce last summer, when an A&E executive met in London with Anthony Geffen, a filmmaker and the chief executive of Atlantic Productions, who had been secretly working on the film with Mr. Hurum.

“I made the decision pretty close to on the spot,” said Abbe Raven, the chief executive of A&E Television Networks, which owns the History Channel. “Unearthing a piece of history like this is unbelievable. To do it on television is incredible.”

For almost a year, within the halls of A&E it was simply called “Project Y.” The company bought 51 percent of the film, giving it editorial control and the right to show the world premiere. (The film, a two-hour documentary, will be shown on Memorial Day on the History Channel.)

The BBC in Britain and ZDF, the German broadcaster, will show the film after the History Channel does. (A&E would not say what it paid for the film, but said it was the highest it had paid for a single documentary.)

A&E also took the project to the Natural History museum to arrange a big press conference, to be attended by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

A&E executives also approached the ABC News president, David Westin, and brokered a deal for exclusive access to “Good Morning America” (Wednesday morning the fossil will be in the studio), “Nightline” and “World News”; they helped line up a publisher for a book, which like the film is called “The Link,” being published by Little, Brown. The publisher shipped 110,000 copies, and sellers signed confidentiality agreements promising not to open the cartons before the publication date.

“It’s the most newsworthy and noteworthy special we’ve been a part of,” said Nancy Dubuc, the general manager of the History Channel. “We made a commitment early on to get behind it in a big way: to see it through peer review, and see that it is the media event it should be.”

The project had its origins in December 2006 at a mineral and fossil fair in Hamburg, Germany, where Mr. Hurum ran into a private dealer who, over fruity vodka drinks with umbrellas, showed him an image of the fossil, which had been found in a pit in Germany and lain in a collector’s drawer for about 25 years.

“It was incredible,” he said. “I could not sleep for two nights, just thinking about this specimen.”

Mr. Hurum then assembled what he described as a dream team of experts to study the fossil: B. Holly Smith, a dental anthropologist at the University of Michigan; Jens Franzen, a German fossil expert; and Philip D. Gingerich, the leading American primate specialist, also from the University of Michigan.

“I sometimes felt like a banjo player jamming with Pink Floyd,” Mr. Hurum said.

Most parties involved were required to sign nondisclosure agreements, including the two companies that the History Channel approached to advertise during the film. One of those, GMAC, signed on to publicize its rebranding as Ally Bank, though executives were not fully told what the subject of the film was.

Despite precautions, the 47-million-year-old secret broke early when The Wall Street Journal published a short piece about the find. The source proved to be Mr. Gingerich, who did not realize he was speaking on the record.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/bu.../19fossil.html





"Angels & Demons" Fails to Crack "Code"

"Angels & Demons," the new movie based on Dan Brown's popular novel about conspiracy in the Catholic church, racked up $152 million in global ticket sales over the weekend, but failed to match the start of its predecessor "The Da Vinci Code."

Distributor Columbia Pictures said on Sunday the $150 million sequel earned about $48 million during its first three days of release in the United States and Canada, reaching No. 1 on box office charts and eclipsing last week's champ, "Star Trek," which slipped to No. 2 with $43 million.

Guided by the studio, box office pundits had expected "Angels" to open in the $40 million to $50 million range, and Columbia said it was thrilled with the result.

The sequel should pass $150 million in domestic ticket sales, said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at the Sony Corp unit.

Still, the popular "Da Vinci Code" opened to $77 million in 2006 on its way to a domestic haul of $217.5 million.

"Angels" also earned $104.3 million from No. 1 starts in 96 countries, down from the $147 million start for "Da Vinci."

Inevitably, the new film failed to replicate the buzz of the first movie. "The Da Vinci Code," based on another best-selling book by Brown, generated a firestorm of criticism with its premise that Jesus impregnated Mary Magdalene and that church officials tried to keep their bloodline secret.

The Vatican -- along with most critics -- ripped the film, but took a more measured tone against its sequel. Columbia said the first book sold twice as many copies as the second one, a clear indication that the second movie would come up short.

"On the other hand, 'Angels' absolutely was a far more cinematic book than 'Da Vinci Code' was," said Bruer.

Poor Reviews Again

In "Angels & Demons," Tom Hanks returned to the series as a Harvard professor on a mission to save the papacy, and Ron Howard is also back directing the film. And much as they were with "Da Vinci Code," critics were scathing.

On website rottentomatoes.com that collects criticism and scores movies said the film earned only 38 percent positive reviews.

The Washington Post's John Anderson said: "What the movie is supposed to accomplish -- laying out a fairly complex mystery in a way that creates suspense -- is precisely what it doesn't do."

Still, Bruer expected the film to hold up well in coming weeks, as a rare adult thriller in a summer marketplace dominated by youth-skewing pictures like "Star Trek" and Thursday's upcoming release of "Terminator Salvation."

Columbia was also bullish about overseas prospects, noting it was the biggest international opening for a film since "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in 2008.

Germany was the top market, contributing $12.7 million -- about the same as the opening for "The Da Vinci Code." Italy was also steady with $11.4 million. But Britain accounted for $9.7 million, down from $15.7 million for "Da Vinci." Spain ($7.1 million) and Japan ($6.9 million) also saw sizable drops.

"Da Vinci" finished with $540.7 million internationally.

Meanwhile, "Star Trek" lost just 43 percent of the audience from its opening round at box offices last week. Total sales rose to $147.6 million. The sci-fi reboot was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc.

"X Men Origins: Wolverine," which kicked off the lucrative summer movie season two weekends ago, was down one to No. 3 with $14.8 million. The total for the superhero picture rose to $151.1 million, with foreign fans kicking in an additional $144.5 million. The film was released by 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp.

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Philip Barbara)
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmN...BrandChannel=0





How to Fit 300 DVDs on One Disc
BBC

A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports.

The researchers say this could see a whopping 1.6 terabytes of information fit on a DVD-sized disc.

They describe their method as "five-dimensional" optical recording and say it could be commercialised.

The technique employs nanometre-scale particles of gold as a recording medium.

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have exploited the particular properties of these gold "nano-rods" by manipulating the light pointed at them.

The team members described what they did as adding three "dimensions" to the two spatial dimensions that DVD and CD discs already have.

They say they were able to introduce a spectral - or colour - dimension and a polarisation dimension, as well as recording information in 10 layers of the nano-rod films, adding a third spatial dimension.

The scientists used the nanoparticles to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location. This is a major improvement over traditional DVDs, which are recorded in a single colour wavelength with a laser.

Also, the amount of incoming laser light absorbed by the nanoparticles depends on its polarisation. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

The researchers thus refer to the approach as 5-D recording. Previous research has demonstrated recording techniques based on colour or polarisation, but this is the first work that shows the integration of both.

As a result, the scientists say they have achieved unprecedented data density.

Their approach used 10-layer stacks composed of thin glass plates as the recording medium. If scaled up to a DVD-sized disk, the team would be able to record 1.6 terabytes - that is, 1,600 gigabytes - or over 300 times the quantity stored on a standard DVD.

Significant improvements could be made by thinning the spacer layers and using more than two polarisation angles - pushing the limits to 10 terabytes per disc and beyond, the researchers say.

Bit by bit

Recent efforts based on holography have shown that up to 500 Gb could potentially be stored on standard DVD-sized disks.

Holographic methods take all of the information to be recorded and encode it in the form of a graph showing how often certain frequencies arise in it.

That means that the recording process is a complex, all-at-once, all-or-nothing approach that would be difficult to implement on an industrial scale.

By contrast, 5-D recording is "bit-by-bit", like current CD and DVD writing processes in that each piece of information is read sequentially.

That is likely to mean that recording and read speeds would be comparatively slow, but the approach would be easier to integrate with existing technology.

"The optical system to record and read 5-D is very similar to the current DVD system," says James Chon, a co-author on the research.

"Therefore, industrial scale production of the compact system is possible."

Now that the method has been demonstrated in custom-made multi-layer stacks, the team is working in conjunction with Samsung to develop a drive that can record and read onto a DVD-sized disc.

Dr Chon says that the material cost of a disc would be less than $0.05 (£0.03), but there are a number of advantages in moving to silver nano-rods that would bring that cost down by a factor of 100.

For optical data storage expert Tom Milster, at the University of Arizona, the beauty of the approach is in its simplicity.

"It's not just elegant - there are a lot of experiments that are elegant - it's relatively straightforward," he told BBC News.

For the moment, Dr Milster says, the equipment needed to write the data would make a commercial system expensive. However, that has not stopped the development of optical storage solutions in the past.

"For example, a Blu-ray player is not an easy system to realise; they've got some wonderful optics in there," Dr Milster said. "People thought that would be pretty difficult to do, but others managed to do it."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8060082.stm





Are Your " Questions" Too Easily Answered?

Research finds that the answers to secret questions used to retrieve forgotten passwords are easily guessed.
Robert Lemos

Brian Green's experience with not-so-secret questions began when he logged on to his World of Warcraft account in March of this year and found all of his characters in their underwear. Someone had stolen the account and sold off all of his virtual equipment.

"My first thought was that I might have a keylogger on my computer," Green wrote in a description of the event. Yet his own research into the incident--and the attacker's ability to change his account passwords multiple times--led Green, who is himself a game designer, to a different conclusion: "My 'secret question' has an all-too-common answer . . . This wasn't something I considered when I filled it out way back when."

The incident bares similarities to the high-profile case involving Alaska governor and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In September 2008, hackers used the name of the location where Palin and her husband met to gain access to her Yahoo e-mail account via the "secret question" password-recovery mechanism.

Palin and Green are not alone. In research to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy this week, researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University plan to show that the secret questions used to secure the password-reset functions of a variety of websites are woefully insecure. In a study involving 130 people, the researchers found that 28 percent of the people who knew and were trusted by the study's participants could guess the correct answers to the participant's secret questions. Even people not trusted by the participant still had a 17 percent chance of guessing the correct answer to a secret question.

"Secret questions alone are not as secure as we would like our backup authentication to be," says Stuart Schechter, a researcher with software giant Microsoft and one of the authors of the paper. "Nor are they reliable enough that their use alone is sufficient to ensure users can recover their accounts when they forget their passwords."

The least-secure questions are simple ones whose answers can be guessed with no existing knowledge of the subject, the researchers say. For example, the answers to the questions "What is your favorite town?" and "What is your favorite sports team?" were relatively easy for participants to guess. All told, 30 percent and 57 percent of the correct answers, respectively, appeared in the top-five list of guesses.

But answers that require only a little personal knowledge to guess should also be considered unsafe, the researchers warn. Of people that participants would not trust with their password, 45 percent could still answer a question about where they were born, and 40 percent could correctly give their pet's name, the researchers found.

Backup-authentication schemes should have two important characteristics, Schechter says. They should be reliable, allowing a legitimate user to regain access to his or her account, and they should be secure, preventing unauthorized users from gaining access.

The study found that secret questions fall short on both accounts. Even for the most memorable questions--Yahoo's, as it turned out--the participants forgot 16 percent of the answers within three to six months. Overall, one out of every five people forgot all of the answers to their secret questions, the researchers found.

"People tend to underestimate the likelihood of their forgetting some clever technique or glib answer," Schechter says.

For most of a decade, security expert Bruce Schneier has criticized secret questions for their vulnerability to attack. In 2005, Schneier wrote, "I like to think that if I forget my password, it should be really hard to gain access to my account. I want it to be so hard that an attacker can't possibly do it."

Yet companies focused on reducing customer-service costs have introduced a back door into people's accounts that is easier to circumvent than attempting to guess the password, he says. "The weird security thing that is being done is that there is a backup system to reset your password that is less secure than the system that it's intended to support," Schneier says.

Schechter agrees that researchers will have to find a completely different mechanism for backup authentication--secret questions just don't cut it. "We would eventually like to see these questions go away," he says. "Unfortunately, since we didn't find many questions that were conclusively good, it's hard to recommend simply changing questions."

Schechter recommends not choosing questions that may have common answers. Schneier goes farther and says that he frequently just types in a random answer; if he needs to retrieve a password, he says, he will call the company.

Green, whose secret question asked the name of his high school, plans to use more secure e-mail in the future. And that may mean forgoing password retrieval. "Being able to reset my password on the site is nifty if I forget my password, but it sucks if someone else manages to figure out how to do it without my permission," he says.
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/22662/page1/





Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies
Brad Stone

Turning itself into a kind of electronic vanity publisher, Scribd, an Internet start-up here, will introduce on Monday a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it.

The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text, letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail.

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

Authors can choose to publish their documents in unprotected PDFs, which would make them readable on the Amazon Kindle and most other mobile devices. Scribd also says it is readying an application for the iPhone from Apple and will introduce it next month.

Scribd hopes its more open and flexible system will give it a leg up on Amazon, which has become the largest player in the burgeoning market for e-books. Amazon sets the retail price for books in its Kindle store and keeps the majority of the revenue on some titles, which has publishers worried that Amazon is amassing too much control over the nascent market. Amazon also allows those books to be read only on its Kindle devices and in Kindle software on the iPhone.

“One reason publishers are excited to work with us is that they worry that publishing channels are contracting as Amazon and Google are gaining control over the e-book space,” said Jared Friedman, chief technology officer and a founder of Scribd.

But Scribd also has some hurdles to overcome itself. Though large publishing firms like Random House have experimented with the site, they also express frustration that copies of some works have been uploaded to Scribd without permission.

Trying to address the piracy problem, Scribd is building a database of copyrighted works and using it to filter its system. If a publisher participates in the Scribd store, its books will be added to that database, the company said.

So far, no major publishing houses have signed on to the store, though the company says it is talking to them. The independent publishers Lonely Planet, O’Reilly Media and Berrett-Koehler will add their entire catalogs.

The Scribd store will also give unpublished authors, or authors who are in a hurry, a well-trafficked Web forum on which to post their books, charge for them and see immediate results.

Kemble Scott, who has released a novel through a conventional publisher, said he would post his topical new political comedy, “The Sower,” to Scribd and charge $2 for it, partly because standard publishing is so slow. “If this is a book that is going to be interesting to people, now is the time that it fits into the national mood,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/te...8download.html





The 14 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits Filed by the RIAA and the MPAA

Nine years ago the RIAA won a groundbreaking suit against Napster.com in what would become the beginning of a nearly decade-long flood of litigation. The incident seemed to be a tipping point for the Entertainment Industry, as both the RIAA and MPAA up until then had enjoyed little success in stemming the piracy movement which was growing at exponential rates across the world. Peer-sharing, while still relatively new at the time, looked like it would be snuffed out in the legal battles to come; the populace that had taken to services like Napster were too afraid to continue for fear of being sued.

The RIAA alone had managed to sue upwards of 35,000 people after their win against Napster, and when they had finally announced in late 2008 that they would stop filing lawsuits on a grand scale, they still reserved the right to sue particular offenders whom they deem to be the worst. In the meantime, the duo turned their attention to the Internet Service Providers, in an attempt to exert a measure of force on those companies to handle offenders by disallowing them internet access, a move which the European Union has declared something of a human rights violation. Showing colors strangely unlike any expected, American ISP’s have actually resisted this pressure, disliking the implication that one industry can control another on little more than a whim.

The behavior of the RIAA/MPAA during the last decade has been nothing short of a schoolyard bully who has the teacher in his pocket. It’s not just the consumers who’ve had enough of the Industry’s nonsense, the ISP’s and even the actors and musicians who just ten years ago claimed they were being robbed are now standing up to call out the associations for their wonton disregard for their own customer-base. It’s important that it be stressed that it was not only the outlandish number of people that had been sued that brought this about, but several cases in which the RIAA, chiefly, managed to cross the line in such a way that the public could not help but demand action. Here we take a look at some of those most ridiculous suits they filed that they immediately regretted, as well as some associated lunacy that could affect you.

The Late Larry Scantlebury

Seven different recording labels banded together to bring the fight against a man named Larry Scantlebury. Larry was a vietnam veteran who loved reading books in his spare time, along with spending time with his wife and spoiling his three grandchildren. The RIAA was suing Larry for allegedly stealing their content, as usual, when during the long drawn-out process, he died. Where normally this kind of incident would lead to candle-light vigils, and scandal about a man dying while being sued by the RIAA, this only got more vile. Immediately upon hearing that the accused had passed away, Warner’s lawyers told his surviving family members that they had 60 days to grieve before their depositions were expected, and at that time the RIAA would consider amending the charges before moving on with the case, against them.

Fred Lawrence and His Grandson

The MPAA sued a Wisconsin Grandfather named Fred Lawrence for illegally downloading four movies via peer-to-peer sharing. True to form, they contacted him demanding $4,000 with the threat that if they didn't get paid, he'd be facing a lawsuit; when Mr. Lawrence flatly refused to pay them he found himself facing a potential $600,000 in damages. As it turns out, his 12-year-old grandson had downloaded the movies for no particular reason, since they already owned three of the four offending titles. This entire episode was especially stressful to Mr. Lawrence, as legal experts explained to him that even if he fight and won against the MPAA, the association would be fully within their rights to sue his grandson afterwards.

Sarah Ward: Mega-Pirate

Mrs. Ward was a 66-year-old retired schoolteacher who sculpted in her spare time, and suffered from mild dyslexia. She rarely used the computer for anything more than checking her e-mail, or the weather, and enjoyed listening to celtic or folk music. The RIAA sent her notice in late 2003 that she was being sued for illegally downloading and trafficking several million dollars worth of music using the peer-to-peer file-sharing program and network KaZaA. Specifically cited in the charges was her extreme pirating of artist Snoop Dogg. Also interesting to note is that KaZaA was strictly a Microsoft Windows application at the time, and Mrs. Ward’s old Apple machine would not have been running it.

Tanya Anderson

42-year-old single mother Tanya Anderson was informed by the RIAA in 2004 that she could either settle out of court or face legal action for her early morning piracy antics. She learned that she had apparently been downloading the rap song “Shake that Ass, Bitch” at 4:24 in the morning under the username “gotenkito.” This was news to her, and she promptly counter-sued the RIAA under state Racketeering laws. At the time, she worked for the Department of Justice, but was forced to leave for health reasons shortly after her legal woes began. She was severely disabled, and with the loss of her job added to the already soaring legal fees she was in for hard times. To put a nice cap on it all, the RIAA not only called her 10-year-old daughter’s school impersonating the girl’s grandmother in an attempt to get information from her, but they also threatened to “interrogate and confront her little girl at the offices of the RIAA lawyers” if Ms. Anderson did not drop her counter-claim, which she disclosed in her deposition against them.

Lola Scruse

In 2006 a grandmother of three, Lola Scruse, who was also 66 years old, and on dialysis. She lived off of Social Security checks, and she didn’t know much of anything about computers or the internet other than the fact that she owned one and paid for the other. Her grandchildren would use her computer when they were over to visit. Lola was informed by the Court that she owed $6,000 for 872 songs that she had downloaded illegally, and that she had already lost the case due to default judgement since she never responded to the initial lawsuit. She was already handling monstrous medical bills for the dialysis, and now with this figure added, she was quite upset. Lola’s since been more mindful of what her grandchildren are doing on her computer, and the RIAA has since targeted more grandmothers who don’t respond to strange court documents about things they don’t understand.

Berry the Hobo

Chaz Berry fell on hard times, and became one of New York City's thousands of homeless people. He was going about his business in early 2007, presumably just being homeless, when he found out that he was being sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement. Apparently, the Industry lawyers had found that they couldn't locate Mr. Berry, and were aware that he was in fact homeless. That didn't stop the process server from adhering the summons to the door of his former apartment. They reported to the Court that they had "made every effort" to locate Mr. Berry, and requested default judgement in the case. After much legal ado, the case was dropped against Mr. Berry, and the RIAA barely escaped the courtroom without sanctions on their legal team.

Jammie Thomas: First in Court

In 2007 the RIAA took a case all the way to a jury in Federal Court, suing Jammie Thomas on 24 counts of illegal file-sharing. This was the first case to go all the way to court, as every other had either been settled or was tied up in litigation and negotiating settlement. Being the first, it was extremely important to both sides of the issue, which at the time was red-hot in all media venues. At the time of the trial, well over 20,000 other suits were active, and the RIAA had a point to prove. In the end, the jury found Thomas guilty on all 24 counts, and set an award to the plaintiff of $222,000, despite the testimony of expert witnesses that proved a degree of reasonable doubt.

The Displaced Granny: Rhonda Crain

In 2006 Ms. Crain, a grandmother who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina to East Texas, was told by the RIAA that she had the option to pay them the pittance of $4,500 or see them in court. They explained to her that they knew all about her KaZaA account name "kcrain" and that her sharing of tracks by the likes of Usher and 50 Cent, totalling 572 songs, were well documented. Ms. Crain ended up settling in court with the RIAA under stipulations that she delete the offending files, and she did not have to pay them any damages. The judge in this case had decided that simply paying for internet access that someone else uses to download files does not make a person entirely liable for those downloads. It's too bad Mrs. Scruse didn't have that judge.

Brianna LaHara

At just 12 years old, Brianna LaHara was forced into settlement with the RIAA and had to pay $2,000 in damages for illegally sharing music. The breakdown was roughly two dollars per song. Out of 261 defendants in the first round of mass-suits, Brianna was the first to settle. At the time, the association had stated that it was only going after offenders who had been shown to have shared more than 1,000 songs illegally, and that anyone who stepped forward before a suit was filed against them would be given amnesty, though only for tracks officially represented by the RIAA. Not many people actually took the chance, since it would have only opened them up to secondary suits from interest groups working in tandem with the RIAA. This also came at the same time that the association was targeting universities and the students who used their networks to acquire music through them.

The Ghost of Gertrude

83-year-old Gertrude Walton was sued for illegally sharing over 700 songs on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks in early 2005, under the username "smittenedkitten." The problem with the case, was that Gertrude Walton not only did not own a computer, or know how to use one, but had in fact died in December of 2004. The RIAA quickly dismissed the case, after the entire known world laughed them out of court.

Tenenbaum Fights Back

In 2007 a man named Joel Tenenbaum decided not to settle and took his case all the way to court when he was sued by the RIAA. He began the adventure defending himself, but as time wore on, the RIAA lawyers delayed as much as possible, stalling whenever the opportunity presented itself. When the delays and court actions got too thick for him to handle without help, a Harvard Law professor named Charles Nesson stepped in to carry the mantle. The team then proceeded to not only stand their ground, but to attack the RIAA in both open court and open media. Not stopping their, Tenenbaum and Nesson called on the Court itself, declaring that allowing the RIAA to sue for such large amounts was unconstitutional, and violates Due Process. To truly make their point sink in, and gain massive attention Nesson brought to the foreground the fact that the RIAA itself used the very same argument in its own defense in a previous round of suits in which it was accused of the unauthorized use of music samples.

The Pirate Bay

Of all the sites on the internet dealing with peer-to-peer sharing, The Pirate Bay is widely known as the largest and most established. Based in Sweden, TPB has operated with near-impunity to American copyright laws, at least until recently. The MPAA tried repeatedly, at one point on a weekly basis, along with its sister association the RIAA, as well as several other special-interest groups and even Microsoft itself, to frighten the operators of the site to shut down by threatening legal action. In 2006 the MPAA released a public memorandum exalting in their success and stating that TPB had been shut down, and commending the U.S. and Swedish authorities for doing such a wonderful job in "the raid". There was a raid, and there were technically arrests, and seizures, but TPB was only shut down for 3 days and largely unaffected by the loss of equipment. The MPAA's press-release actually backfired, and became a more effective marketing tool for the Swedish Pirate Bay here in the U.S. than anything they could have done themselves. It read like an advertisement, showcasing what is available, for free, if one were to visit TPB. The full release can be read here. When the site came back online, it had an even larger following than it had before the raid. In 2009, after amendments to Swedish laws, the Pirate Bay founders were put on trial for breaking Swedish copyright laws; this was the first time they could be prosecuted by anyone. In the end, all four founders of the site were convicted on less than half the original charges, and sentenced to one year in prison and required to pay large award sums to the groups behind the suit. Under Swedish laws, however, no sentence is legal until all appeals are carried out in full, meaning The Pirate Bay's founders are unaffected by the outcome and will remain so for several more years to come.

Sue and Sue Alike: Real Networks vs. MPAA

IN 2008, during the feverish litigation-fest the U.S. Government was hosting for the MPAA lawyers, Hollywood reacted violently to a new piece of software released by Real Networks, called RealDVD. The software was simple, it basically broke the Industry's DRM (Digital Rights Management) on DVD's so that consumers could copy the DVD or save it to their computer for posterity. The MPAA began using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or the DMCA as it's more commonly known, to sue every entity that has come in contact with this DRM-bypassing software. The drama became even more spectacular when Real Networks turned the tables and counter-sued the MPAA, and demanded the court rule that their software be legitimized under a previously-established set of laws governing software and technology for the consumer. Technically, at that point, both sides had laws to substantiate their own claims, and the entire ordeal became a media fiasco dubbed "Dumb and Dumber" in the headlines. Recently, the MPAA has accused Real Networks of destroying evidence that showed the source of their code, which they claim to be "hackers."

Shawn Hogan

When the MPAA attempted to get a piece of the action by suing Shawn Hogan for illegally sharing Meet the Fockers in 2006, the case received a lot of media attention. This was partially because of the fact that Shawn never shared the movie, nor did he download it to begin with. He also owned the movie on DVD, but this wasn't what had made headlines; Shawn's ire for justice at being slandered in such a way drove him to hire a legal team to prove that the MPAA was wrong, and in their research they discovered that the Industry never actually owned the copyright to the movie in the first place due to clerical errors at the time of the filing. The case was quickly dismissed.

These ridiculous cases aside, the RIAA and MPAA continue to wander around the internet harassing innocent bystanders as they see fit. The RIAA raised eyebrows again in late 2007 with the sudden declaration that ripping your own CD's to your computer is illegal, which surprised many owners of mp3-players who had read the manuals to their devices. As strange as this was, it didn't really surprise people, as RIAA had also just sued XM Satellite Radio only a year beforehand, for selling a receiver that could record songs. The MPAA recently made headlines by in a landmark decision made by Swedish courts. The case will spend years in further litigation in Stockholm, but it was the verdict that nobody ever expected, given the amount of times the MPAA has targeted the Internet's most notorious peer-to-peer sharing hub. This is clearly an issue that has no clear end in sight, and in the meantime, the best anybody can do is cover their own end, whether they actually participate in piracy or not.
http://brainz.org/14-most-ridiculous...riaa-and-mpaa/





Farrah Fawcett Cried, Joked About Her Documentary
Christine Kearney

Farrah Fawcett became emotional while watching a television documentary about her losing cancer battle but still had the wit to make an old showbiz joke, according to her closest friends.

"She cried a few times. It was very emotional for her," her friend Alana Stewart, the former wife of rocker Rod Stewart, told NBC's "Today" program in an interview on Monday. "It's been a very, very long journey, you know, and going back through it was probably a bit painful."

Nearly 9 million viewers tuned in to watch the video diary, "Farrah's Story" that aired on Friday, NBC said.

The 90-minute film, much of it narrated by Fawcett, makes clear the actress is nearing the end of her life. It shows the actress' numerous medical treatments over the past two years and recent weeks when she has been bedridden, heavily medicated and barely able to recognize her son.

Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's long term boyfriend, told "Today" that Fawcett had a "very low pulse" when she began watching the film that "kept going up and up" throughout the viewing.

She also had the clarity to make a showbiz joke about whether the ratings were any good.

"I said, 'We did very well last night,' And she said, "What were the numbers?' ... and it made me laugh that she would still have those terms in her head," O'Neal said.

Fawcett, 62, the former star of the TV show "Charlie's Angels," was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006, and it spread to her liver two years ago. The film includes footage of Fawcett shaving her own hair late last year when it began to fall out after chemotherapy.

The actress was too ill to attend a screening of the documentary in Beverly Hills for close friends last week.

The show drew mixed critical reactions. The New York Times described it as "awful" and "exploitative." Entertainment Weekly said it was "sometimes almost unbearable, sometimes fascinating."

O'Neal has spoken tearfully in recent days of a life without Fawcett.

But Stewart, who helped film the documentary, said in a separate interview that she still hoped for a miracle.

"Ryan has loved her for 30 years. She's the love of his life. He does go to worst possible case scenario. He's very emotional about it. I'm different. I'm stubbornly insistent there can be a miracle. [Farrah and I] talked about [death] once. We didn't allow any outcome into our minds except getting well," she told Entertainment Tonight in an interview to be broadcast on Monday evening.

(editing by Jill Serjeant)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssI...38212120090518





Judge Says Alton Telegraph Must Disclose Two Who Posted Online
Robert Kelly

The Alton Telegraph must provide authorities with the identities of two people who put comments about a murder investigation on the newspaper's website, a judge ruled Friday.

But Madison County Circuit Judge Richard Tognarelli, said the names of three others who posted comments need not be disclosed because what they wrote appears to be irrelevant.

The paper sued to quash subpoenas for the information, contending the identities of the five people were protected by an Illinois law shielding journalists from disclosing their sources.

Tognarelli wrote that the law "does not address the applicability of the Act to online bloggers." He said that is up to the Legislature.

Officials contended that posting comments on a newspaper website does not make someone a news source.

Missouri has no equivalent law.

Madison County sheriff's detectives obtained the subpoena Sept 18, seeking to question the five on information they posted regarding a news article about that month's fatal beating of Ethan Allen, 5, of Cottage Hills.

Frank D. Price, 36, the boyfriend of Ethan's mother, is charged with first-degree murder in the case.

Tognarelli found that "purplebutterfly" and "mrssully" posted information about Price that might help the investigation. The judge said the three others comments "appear to be nothing more than conversation/discussion."

Neither State's Attorney William Mudge nor Telegraph Publisher Jim Shrader would comment on the ruling.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...F?OpenDocument





Thank you, Napster

While it may not have been the first file-sharing app, Shawn Fanning's creation, which turns 10 in June, turned a trickle into a torrent and changed the world.
Matt Hartley

Shawn Fanning never meant to change the world, it just kind of happened.

It was January, 1999, and the 18-year-old freshman gazed out the window of his cousin’s car as they drove the 40 minutes from Hull, Mass. to Northeastern University in Boston. It was the end of a long weekend and he was lamenting his return to school. While at home he’d made some headway on a piece of software he’d been working on since school started and like anyone consumed with building something from scratch, he wanted to finish it.

By the time he arrived at the campus, he’d come to a decision. With barely a semester of university behind him, Mr. Fanning decided to drop out, head home and devote his attention to the long lines of code scrolling down his computer screen.

He didn’t even bother to clean out his dorm room.

A short while after his former classmates ended their freshman year, it was ready. Mr. Fanning’s creation – a simple and effective program that let him share his digital music collection with friends – went live on June 1, 1999.

From there, well, pick a simile – a pebble cast in a pond that creates a ripple effect, the first domino in a long line of dominoes, a virus that spreads like wildfire. Whatever. It’s easy to see 10 years later – Napster was it.

The music-sharing program represents the dawn of the download decade, a period in which consumers discovered they could acquire whatever media they wanted, when they wanted, for free over the Internet, and in the process toppled imposed business models and forced new ones.

One moment, file sharing belonged to a tiny subculture of tech-savvy computer geeks; the next, millions of average people were accessing their entertainment with a degree of control they’d never experienced before. Media and entertainment companies, which for so long had been happily dictating the terms of the consumption arrangement suddenly found their long-standing and wildly profitable revenue streams threatened. And society, which once had a pretty clear idea of right and wrong, now wasn’t so sure.

Ask him, and Mr. Fanning will readily admit he had no idea the impact his program would have.

“It’s hard to say that I really could have seen that coming,” Mr. Fanning said in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail. “Especially since I set out to build it and make it work for a handful of friends. To see the software and the concept applied on a much larger scale, it was a great experience.”

While copyright infringement and file sharing wasn’t new in 1999, Napster brought it to the masses.

Although the music industry was the first to feel the effects of digital media, the ability to transform information into data and transfer it quickly over the Internet has changed long-standing business models in more than the record industry. Movie studios, book publishers, TV producers, video-game makers and even newspapers – any business that makes its money from the creation of intellectual content – has been dragged kicking and screaming into a new reality, one many of them were (and still are) unprepared to deal with.

Yet aside from the immediate impact Napster – and file sharing as a whole – had on these industries, a consumer’s ability to download entertainment and information has had overwhelmingly positive effects as well.

For every business threatened with extinction, another one recognized the potential of being able to carry a thousand songs in your pocket. Consumers’ desire to download content spurred the growth of broadband Internet access, which in turn stimulated the growth of wireless networking, IP communications and video-sharing sites such as YouTube.

Today, we buy our music online, download movies on demand and read newspaper stories on our cellphones.

Meanwhile, legal systems around the world struggle to adjust to the ever-changing nuances of what exactly it is to “share,” successfully closing some services and sites, suing thousands of average consumers and convincing ISPs to hand over personal data about their customers. And yet file sharing seems to grow stronger year after year.

Over the next two weeks, The Globe and Mail presents The Download Decade, an in-depth five-part series examining the profound economic, social and legal changes that have occurred since Napster ushered in the digital revolution 10 years ago.

In all, our team of reporters, editors, videographers and digital designers have put together a package that includes content from more than 30 interviews, more than a dozen of which have been boiled down into podcasts. We’ll also feature five documentary videos – one for each story in the series – and five Flash interactives. Interspersed with each story, readers will be able to read dozens of archived columns and news articles from The Globe and Mail covering the events as they unfolded at the time.

The series will also include numerous live discussions at globeandmail.com/downloaddecade, featuring some of the interview subjects in the package, and will offer readers the chance to script copyright legislation of their own.

But before all that, we start with Napster.

Six months after Napster launched, more than 2 million people had downloaded the software. Realizing they had tapped into something explosive, Mr. Fanning joined forces with his uncle, John Fanning, and the pair formed a company and moved to San Mateo, California, to be closer to Silicon Valley investors.

The company even entered into negotiations with members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the biggest music companies in the United States.

Although the RIAA was aware of the growing popularity of the MP3 file format as early as 1997 and had spent the preceding years chasing down and shuttering as many MP3 blogs and websites as it could, it faced a different animal in Napster. The speed at which Napster spread around the world and the volume of content passing through its servers was the biggest threat the industry had ever seen.

“[MP3] technology had been around for a while, but it was only in about the summer of 1997 that people started using it to put up music illegally on FTP sites,” said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA in an interview. In 1999, he was in-house counsel for the RIAA and oversaw legal strategy for the organization.

“So we would address the cease-and-desist letters and takedown notices to try and deal with that problem. It was obviously a situation of whack-a-mole, but it was in the early days. When Napster came along ... it was now a situation where everything – anything that anybody ever had recorded – would now be available online for people to take for free. It was a game changer.”

Despite continuing partnership discussions, on Dec. 7, 1999, the RIAA sued Napster in Northern California’s U.S. District Court, demanding a permanent injunction to stop Napster from committing alleged copyright infringement. The suit kicked off a legal battle that would last for nearly two years and which would eventually bring the U.S. justice system into the age of the Internet, forcing lawmakers to examine the implications of digital media.

But the lawsuit had an ironic effect – it catapulted Napster into the mainstream. Newsweek magazine ran a cover story about Mr. Fanning in March of 2000 and mainstream media outlets began telling the tale of his software and the hair-pulling going on deep in the boardrooms of the music industry. The public was captivated – not only because most users were discovering file sharing for the first time, but because there was little love lost for an industry long thought to have abused its relationship with consumers.

In February of 2000, Edgar Bronfman Jr., then the CEO of Universal Music's parent company Seagram Co., gathered his top executives and lieutenants from around the world for a crucial meeting in New York. The issue at hand: what was to be done about the Napster problem?

Graham Henderson, who had recently given up his boutique music law practice in Toronto to help build Universal’s e-commerce division, could sense the changes the minute he walked into the first meeting.

“We went down to New York and walked into this big room, and there was a sign over the stage that said ‘We are a Content Company,’ ” recalls Mr. Henderson, who took over as president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association in 2004. “It didn’t say anything about being a music company.”

Despite the perception that the music industry wanted to stamp out digital music, put the genie back in the bottle and continue selling nothing but CDs, Mr. Henderson said that the industry wanted to be in the business of going digital, something that was easier said than done.

“We were desperately interested in that, and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in a race to get a product into the marketplace as fast as we could before the Napsters of the world became entrenched and before consumers thought music is free,” he said. “In fact, Bronfman’s admonition to us at the time was, ‘six months, you have six months to figure out how we can figure out these records and give them to people this way.’ ”

“Obviously it didn’t take us six months, it took us more like two years.”

With that mainstream attention came the interest of the venture capital community, and it wasn’t long before potential investors began kicking Napster’s tires, wondering if Mr. Fanning had indeed invented the distribution prototype for the next generation of the music industry.

Hank Barry was one of those investors. In 1999, he was a partner with the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

“Intense, focused and very young,” is how Mr. Barry characterized his first impressions of Mr. Fanning in an interview. “But wise beyond his years. A lot of people don’t know this, but the first version of Napster was pretty primitive, but it was the first software program that Shawn Fanning ever wrote, and he wrote it all himself. Every piece of code. Every line. And so, in some ways it’s a monumental achievement and in another way it’s one of these naive things where you don’t know why you’re doing something, you’re just determined to do it. And I give him a tremendous amount of credit for that. He sort of single-handedly took everyone into a new era on the Internet.”

By May of 2000, Mr. Barry’s firm had invested $13-million (U.S.) in Napster and he had taken over as CEO of the company on an interim basis. His stint as CEO was supposed to last no more than six weeks until his partners could find a suitable replacement, but he ended up staying on for 18 months.

In early July, the U.S. Senate convened a special Judiciary Committee on Downloading Music on the Internet. Mr. Barry testified on behalf of Napster while a steady of stream of artists and music label executives appeared to appeal to legislators to shut the service down.

Two days after the hearings wrapped up, Napster met with some of the most powerful executives in the music industry in Sun Valley California to negotiate a deal whereby the labels would license Napster, turning it from a rogue operation into a retail business where artists could get paid. Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer was there, in addition to Thomas Middelhoff of German media giant Bertelsmann and finally Mr. Bronfman.

“They all said they would [negotiate a deal],” Mr. Barry said. “They said talk to Edgar Bronfman, he’s our guy.”

Mr. Bronfman is now the head of Warner Music. His office did not return interview requests for this article.

On July 26, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favour of the record labels and ordered Napster to stop helping to make copyright music available for downloading. Although Napster would appeal the decision, and won the right to continue operating until its appeal could be heard, negotiations with the music industry essentially dried up. Mr. Barry never heard from Mr. Bronfman again.

Napster and its lawyers spent the rest of 2000 trying to strike a deal with the record industry, but to no avail. In February of 2001, the 9th Circuit Appeals Court in the U.S. found that Napster was contributing to copyright infringement. Napster’s executives soldiered on, but by May of 2002, the company was forced into bankruptcy and sold off in pieces.

“I assumed good faith on the part of the record companies, and that was a big mistake,” Mr. Barry said. “While they were having nice cordial meetings with us and saying of course we must make a deal, they were making plans to have their own competitive services and indeed they were making plans to go out and sue 50,000 people that they ended up suing.

“So the idea that they were just the victims of this is hilarious, and doesn’t reflect in any way the really utterly bad faith nature of their approach to Napster.”

Still, Mr. Fanning said he never entertained much hope that Napster would be able to forge a deal with the industry and evolve into a successful business.

“I wasn’t sitting and holding my breath that everything would be miraculously worked out and that a business or anything would be established with the industry,” he said. “I knew that it was a pretty big change for them in terms of transitioning and authorizing digital distribution on the scale that would be necessary to maintain a quality service.”

One of the most vocal critics of Napster was Lars Ulrich, drummer for the heavy metal group Metallica. Mr. Ulrich became incensed when he discovered that several unfinished versions of the band’s song I Disappear were being played on U.S. radio stations. The group was able to trace the songs back to Napster and discovered that in a 48-hour period, more than 300,000 users made 1.4 million free downloads of Metallica’s music.

“Napster hijacked our music without asking,” Mr. Ulrich told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Downloading Music on the Internet in July of 2000. “They never sought our permission. Our catalogue of music simply became available for free downloads on the Napster system.”

“With Napster, every song by every artist is available for download at no cost,” he said. “And, of course, with no payment to the artist, the songwriter, or the copyright-holder. If you are not fortunate enough to own a computer, there is only one way to assemble a music collection the equivalent of a Napster user: theft. Walk into a record store, grab what you want and walk out.”

Although Metallica has since embraced digital distribution channels for its music – the band recently released its entire catalogue on iTunes, had provided fans with free concert recordings and provided music for a Guitar Hero video game – many in the online community continue to vilify Mr. Ulrich for his campaign to shut down Napster. A spokesman for Metallica said that due to the band’s summer touring schedule in Europe, Mr. Ulrich and the rest of the band would be unavailable for comment for this story.
In a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Ulrich explained his position regarding Napster.

“Nine out of 10 people go, ‘What was that about? It was about money.’ Fuck you – it wasn’t about money. It was about control,” he said. “I’ll give away all my shit for free. But I’ll decide when and where and how.”

While other artists, such as rap icon Dr. Dre, joined in the music industry’s quest to quash Napster, other artists such as Limp Bizkit, The Offspring and Chuck D, leader of the seminal hip hop group Public Enemy, came to the service’s defence, arguing that Napster and filesharing presented a revolutionary way for emerging artists to find an audience.

Although David Usher has since developed an international following as a solo artist and as one of the more tech-savvy musicians to come out of Canada through his embracing of social media, back in 1999, he was still the lead singer of the Vancouver rock band Moist.

“Napster changed the idea of music as something you paid for to being something that was free,” Mr. Usher said in an interview. “It took a whole industry that had its infrastructure built up on making, delivering and selling a CD – a piece of plastic – and it took away the piece of plastic. And without that piece of plastic, you can’t support that pyramid of infrastructure that you no longer need when you deliver for free.”

For established musicians who came up through a system built on record sales, radio play and landing the cover of Rolling Stone magazine as measures of success, Napster and file sharing shook the foundations of their world. But for emerging artists, and for a generation of kids who grew up plugged into video games, computers and the Internet, digital media levelled the playing field.

Thanks to improvements in sound editing and recording technology, kids in basements and dorm rooms could record and remix their own music and upload it to the Internet, where it could be pushed out to thousands of downloaders and potential fans. Although the phrase “user-generated content” wouldn’t come into vogue until the rise of blogging and YouTube a few years later, that’s precisely the platform Napster meant for aspiring musicians.

Gregg Gillis was just 17 when Napster was launched. That fall he headed off to university, graduating not just to post-secondary education, but from his parent’s dial up Internet connection to the fat pipes of his dormitory, where the breadth of Napster’s pirated offerings came into focus. For a burgeoning mash-up artist and DJ, the ability to freely download thousands of songs with which to experiment was nothing short of a dream come true.

Today, Mr. Gillis is best known by his pseudonym, Girl Talk, the internationally known mash-up and digital music artist. His latest record, Feed the Animals, ranked No. 4 on Time Magazine’s list of the Top 10 albums of 2008, turned Mr. Gillis into an international sensation with both the mainstream and indie press, and it’s comprised entirely of samples taken from songs by popular artists.

“For me, as a music fan, Napster was just insane, where I could just look up anything and go get it,” Mr. Gillis said in an interview with The Globe. “But also, as a musician, it was a chance to push my music out to new people. You could get into chat rooms there and send it out. You could mislabel files [a process known as 'Napster Bombing'] to get people interested in it. That completely opened the lines of communication for music consumers and allowed everyone to hear anything they wanted at the click of a mouse.”

These days Mr. Gillis doesn’t download a lot of music. And while he’s still a fan of buying CDs, he has no problem allowing his fans to download his songs for free over filesharing networks.

“I like when they buy my stuff and I like when they support it, but I think the spread of my music through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks is part of the reason that I’ve been relatively successful over the past couple of years,” he said. “It’s the reason I can play the size shows that I can play and it’s the reason that I can go to Europe and go to Mexico and do things like that.”

Although he acknowledges that some areas of the music industry – namely the record executives at major labels – are making less money because of free file sharing, and that with less revenue coming in from CD sales many artists are forced to make up the difference through other means such as touring or merchandise sales, Mr. Gillis believes that the advent of filesharing has enabled many underground musicians to find audiences and make a living from their craft.

”I know not every band is going to want to tour all the time ... but I think that for many musicians operating on a more underground or independent level, file sharing is one of the greatest things to ever happen,” he said. “I just know so many musicians making relatively weird music, stuff that would be stuck in a very small underground 15-20 years ago, who can live off it, tour now and have huge fan bases.”

One shouldn’t be so quick as to give Napster all the credit for rewriting the rulebooks for the technology and music industries, says Cory Ondrejka, one of the creators of the online world Second Life who now works for EMI as the label’s executive vice-president of digital marketing.

“When you look at Napster, it was a singular piece of technology in the midst of a much larger transformation,” he said in an interview. “That transition was going to happen independent of Napster or any other singular piece of software.”

In addition to massive broadband adoption, the period of 1995 to 2003 also saw quantum leaps in the power of computers. PCs were doubling in speed and power every 18 months and the Internet was becoming commonplace in North American homes and businesses. When those technologies were combined with the widespread adoption of the MP3 format which allowed music files to be compressed so that thousands of songs could be stored on a single hard drive, suddenly consumers were experiencing music in a whole new way.

“What you have is the emergence of MP3, you have a have much smaller data format and enough CPU horsepower to be able to play it,” Mr. Ondrejka said. “This whole idea that you could have your whole music collection in your pocket all the time ... none of us were thinking that way yet, even though we all knew what the technical trajectories looked like.

“I think that it’s a fairly typical disruption story where Napster is the singular example that came out of it, but that it was pretty inevitable that that collection of technologies was going to change the music business.”

And change it did, but not just the music industry.

While content creators felt under siege by the growing gaps in their business models, other businesses saw opportunity.

“The people who made the money on Napster were the ISPs like Comcast and Verizon,” said Mr. Barry, the former Napster CEO. “Broadband penetration in the United States more than doubled in the period that Napster was operating. [News Corp. CEO] Rupert Murdoch once said that without Napster, there was no Internet. What he meant was that it was the availability of Napster that drove Internet adoption in the United States.”

The same was true in Canada. ISPs such as Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw saw a sharp increase in the number of high-speed Internet subscribers beginning in 1999. Although most of Canada’s largest ISPs had begun building their broadband Internet networks in the early 1990s, being able to download music fast was what finally convinced many Canadians to upgrade their connections.

Bell had just 51,000 high-speed Internet customers the year that Napster went online. But by 2002, the company’s high-speed subscriber base had skyrocketed to more than 1.1 million customers, according to the company’s annual reports. Rogers’ subscriber base more than tripled from 185,000 to nearly 640,000 over the same time period while the number of high speed subscribers at Telus jumped from 25,000 to more than 410,000.

“In terms of Internet media, I believe [Napster] was definitely the first example of mainstream usage of the Internet for accessing media,” Mr. Fanning said. “I’ve heard a number of different stories at different times about people’s parents and grandparents not really understanding computers or the Internet, getting broadband and getting a computer just to download music. It was definitely a phenomenon in that sense.”

ISPs recognized early on that consumers needed a tangible and identifiable reason to upgrade to faster, more expensive, service plans. The ability to download music quickly was used as a selling point, similar to how mobile carriers – many of which are the same companies – are now using services such as Facebook and YouTube to convince consumers to upgrade to data plans and more expensive smart phones.

“The quality of experience went up when you got broadband,” Mr. Fanning said. “People were willing to pay for that just based on the value they were getting from the service. Being able to download a track in 2-3 minutes as opposed to 10-20 and not having to use their phone line, I think the value proposition was much better with Napster than without.”

While ISPs found themselves growing rapidly at the start of the Download Decade, perhaps no single company has benefited from the rise of digital media as much as a computer company.

When Apple Inc. founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, its business was in shambles, and outside of a core group of devoted fans, Apple computers were an afterthought in a world dominated by Microsoft Corp.

Mr. Jobs, however, quickly recognized the power of digital music, and in October of 2001, just as Napster’s run was coming to an end, he unveiled a quirky new digital music player that wasn’t much bigger than a deck of cards. The first iPod would go on sale later that year and turn what was an also-ran computer company into one of the most powerful consumer electronics firms in North America.

“Napster showed that the world didn’t want to buy songs 12 at a time,” said Michael Janes, who ran Apple’s e-commerce business from 1998 until 2005, who is now the CEO and co-founder of online ticket retailer FanSnap.com. “It just made it obvious that this was the way people wanted to acquire music. They wanted to share it. They wanted to get it this way, when they wanted and how they wanted.”

Mr. Jobs & Co. could see the potential Napster represented and recognized an opportunity.

“Apple’s view was, let’s take the good away from that, let’s understand what needs that customer have that are being highlighted that aren’t being met by the current record industry and let’s figure out a way to do this legitimately so that the record companies and the artists can make money so that everybody wins,” Mr. Janes said.

In 2003, Apple launched the iTunes music store, which has since become the gold standard of digital media sales and has grown to become the largest seller of music in the United States – digital or otherwise.

“Without Napster, there is no iPod, period,” Mr. Barry said. “Remember that the iPod launched two years before the iTunes store was around, so you have a two-year period where essentially the only source of music for people’s iPods was people doing their own ripping from their own CD collection and getting things from Napster or some other service.”

For as long as there has been a commercial music industry, a tug of war has existed between musicians hoping to make a living from their artistic creations and fans who want to share their favourite songs with their friends.

Nothing, however, kicked off a legal controversy in the entertainment fields quite so much as digital music. The cloudburst of file sharing kicked off a legal controversy that saw businesses suing website operators, file sharing operations and thousands of customers in an attempt to reign in piracy.

There was a time when some in the music industry wanted player pianos banned because they threatened the producers of sheet music. In the 1980s, the British Phonographic Industry launched a campaign dubbed “Home Taping Is Killing Music” which sought to curb the practice of consumers making cassette copies of commercially produced tapes and vinyl records. The slogan has since become a hit t-shirt design.

Although the music industry had pursued a litigious agenda against sites such as MP3.com, Napster presented a new challenge. Napster wasn’t a single website where music was posted that could be downloaded, rather it was a network of users who shared music stored on their own PCs. Napster just indexed the files, but the music wasn’t stored on its servers.

Napster’s legal struggle moved quickly through the U.S. legal system because it was an instance of first impression – in other words, the courts had never dealt with something like it before.

“That’s kinda what I concluded before I thought about making the investment,” Mr. Barry said. “Here’s something that’s never been tried, they might lose, and if they lose [our investors] lose all their money. But if they win, then we’ve got something really exciting to work with as a company.”

Eventually Napster was defeated in the courts and pushed into bankruptcy. Emboldened, the entertainment industries continued their efforts to crack down on piracy and filesharing, scoring victories over Napster clones Grokster, Kazza and others.

The RIAA even embarked on a period of suing average peer-to-peer users for hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing music.

“We were facing an almost impossible situation,” RIAA president Mr. Sherman said. “And we felt that something needed to be done and that if we didn’t stand up for ourselves, who would ever think that music ever had value any more? Why would anybody ever spend money for music in the circumstances that we were facing at that time?”

Although the industry used the lawsuits as educational tools, the suits resulted in a consumer backlash against the organization. The vitriol against the industry reached a fever pitch in October, 2007, when the RIAA won a legal victory over Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two from Minnesota, who was fined $222,000 for copyright infringement for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa and was portrayed as a victim of bullying by corporate interests by many in the mainstream media. The victory was shortlived, however. In September, 2008, a U.S. district judge ordered a retrial of the case.

The industry says it has since abandoned its legal strategy of suing consumers. However, several prominent technology blogs – including Wired.com and Techdirt – report that the RIAA continues to bring new legal action against consumers. The RIAA has responded by saying those new actions involve only cases where the defendents were first contacted before August of last year, when the organization decided to stop filing new lawsuits.

With the emergence of BitTorrent technology in 2003, however, the battle shifted to torrent tracker sites – underground Google-like search engines that index files users can download using specialized software – such as TorrentSpy, Demonoid and most recently, The Pirate Bay.

Today, Shawn Fanning doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about Napster, but he’s still building software. His first post-Napster venture was a rights registry system for licensing digital music called Snocap. He found dealing with the record labels a tiring process, however, and he soon tired of the music industry and abandoned the project.

Like many in the technology world, he took up playing the online video game World Of Warcraft.

“I became pretty fascinated just by the level of immersion and the connections that you would build with these people you would play with on a regular basis,” he said. “There’s a collaboration that happens and you would get to know these people pretty well but never really get beyond the surface and learn more about them.”

By marrying the online community of World Of Warcraft with the emerging success of sites like Facebook and MySpace, Mr. Fanning came up with the idea for Rupture, a social networking service that connects gamers across platforms and titles. The site is currently preparing for a re-launch after being acquired by video game kingpin Electronic Arts Inc. for $30-million (U.S.) last June. He has since decided to stay on with the startup as it prepares for a summer release.

Although Mr. Fanning created a software program that upended the music industry, dragged the U.S. legal system into a new age and caused his high school nickname to become a household word synonymous with piracy – “Napster” was the moniker Mr. Fanning’s classmates gave him because he had a penchant for not washing his hair, letting it become a bit “nappy” – you’d never guess it from speaking with him.

These days, he tends to decline most interview requests – although that’s getting harder with the Napster anniversary around the corner – and for the most part he’s reluctant to speak about himself. He largely shrugs off questions about Napster’s legacy and takes on an “aw shucks” demeanour when you mention his girlfriend – professional poker player and Playboy model Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh.

Still, he’s accommodating, thoughtful and articulate. He’s just more comfortable staying behind the scenes and coding, than making himself the centre of attention.

“I’ve never really been concerned with [my own legacy] especially how it relates to the press,” he said. “I mean, I was writing software because I loved writing software. Writing software is a pretty anti-social thing as well. So [a legacy] is not something I tend to think about, I just tend to focus on doing stuff that I enjoy, that I feel good about and I just love creating things, and wherever that takes me, it takes me.”
http://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news...rticle1014979/





Is Lala's DRM a New Way to Lock Up Music?
Greg Sandoval

Correction at 11:10 a.m. PDT: Lala's patent filing is an application. And Lala says it has made no promises to music labels regarding piracy in order to offer 10-cent "Web Songs."

Michael Robertson, the gadfly of digital music, is once again pestering rivals about their business practices.

Robertson--the controversial founder of MP3.com, Linspire, and MP3tunes.com--has accused Lala of attempting to transfer control of its users' music to the recording labels.

Robertson claimed last month on his personal blog that Lala had developed an "insidious new plot" to entice its users to upload music to the company's servers and then trap the music there by embedding digital rights management into the servers. This would enable Lala and the big music labels to exercise greater control over the tunes. He compared Lala's plan with a "roach motel," where songs check in but they can't check out.

Robertson's accusations generated little attention, possibly because he operates a competing site, MP3tunes.com. Both companies enable customers to access music from the cloud, and one competitor badmouthing another won't stop the presses. But in regards to Robertson's accusations about Lala and DRM, the best support for the claims comes from Lala itself.

Robertson directed CNET News to a Lala patent application filed last year and titled "Network Based Digital Rights Management System." In the filing, Lala describes what it is hoping to patent.

"A network-based DRM system manages digital media assets stored in the network," Lala, which has been praised by music labels and has financial backing from Warner Music Group, states in the document. "The system provides consumers with access to the digital media from any device connected to an electronic network such as the Internet, while enforcing the intended uses by the copyright owners."

"The Web restricted nature of the offering," Lala writes elsewhere in the filing, "means that the digital assets are at all times controlled by the system and thus result in minimal piracy."

The patent application proves Lala is trying to develop a new type of DRM, according to Robertson. Instead of wrapping individual songs in DRM, Lala's plan calls for a network to act as a fortress that surrounds an entire music ecosystem.

Lala CEO Geoff Ralston confirmed that Lala filed for the patent but denied the company is trying to wrest control away from users.

"It's a patent around Web Songs," Ralston said.

Web Songs are one of the cornerstones of the company's latest business model. Lala, which has switched focus from two prior models, now offers three main features. In the first, MP3s unprotected by DRM can be purchased and download for rates comparable to iTunes'. A second option offers users unlimited, ad-free streaming access to music they already own. The way this works is that users allow Lala to scan their hard drives and preserve a list of the songs the person owns. Lala's system will then stream its own copies of the songs to the user. This way users don't have to worry about losing their music to hard-drive meltdowns or misplaced music players.

Lala's last feature allows people to listen to streaming music--that they don't already own--for 10 cents per song. Lala calls these "Web Songs." One of the ways Web Songs are different from MP3s is that they can't be downloaded to a portable device.

"A Web Song by definition has a limited set of rights associated with it," Ralston said. "One right you don't have is the right to take it with you. It's not a portable song. Another right you don't have is to copy it. Everything has limited rights, even an MP3. You're not allowed to take an MP3, copy it, and sell it."

Lala said Web Songs offer people a chance to obtain streaming access to a song for the price of a grocery store gum drop. If customers later want to upgrade and buy an MP3 version of the tune, the dime is counted against the price of the download.

While Ralston said the filing only deals with Web Songs, the patent document itself, under a section titled "Overview of Present Invention," lists the many applications of its invention.

The patent filing indicates that Lala's DRM invention is designed to lock down music that its users already own. Lala's system doesn't allow people to listen to their own music via anything but a Web browser and the songs cannot be downloaded. Ralston argues that people can do all these things with the original music files they own.

But if Lala's users own the music the company stores, why does Lala restrict it this way? Are these restrictions rooted in some technology limitation or do the major labels require them?

"We're trying to provide a way so that users can have more access to their music than they had in the past," Ralston said. "Look at the iPhone. I can't easily throw brand-new graphic cards into it. It's all closed up. But it's a much better consumer proposition. We're not acting as an agent of the record companies in any way except that we resell their goods. There's nothing nefarious there at all. We repackaged some stuff that we think provides a better consumer proposition."

Music sales have been falling for years, and piracy is at least one of the main causes. Nonetheless, the four top record labels over the past year have appeared to give up on DRM as a piracy-busting strategy. This trend culminated in January when Apple announced it would strip DRM from the entire iTunes library. So, why then is Lala attempting to come up with a new DRM strategy?

In the patent application, the company offers some clues.

Lala notes that DRM produced by Microsoft and Apple "suffered from lack of interoperability caused by competitive and licensing issues." Most DRM, Lala points out, can also be cracked or broken. Lala says in the patent filing that its DRM approach avoids these issues.

"A network-based approach protects against rampant piracy," Lala writes. "By delivering the product directly from the network, only authorized users and devices can access the media. Access by users and devices is controlled on the Web and can be constantly adapted to changing technologies and market pressures."

Robertson claims that network DRM is simply the latest attempt by the recording industry to jerk control of music away from consumers. He said what may be most alarming about Lala's system is its potential to snatch away someone's songs.

"The system also allows for the 'revoking' of ownership of digital media," Lala writes in the patent filing. "For example, if a user is known to have illegally shared a file, the copyright owner may choose to revoke their ownership of the digital media in the system, limiting the rights of such user to the media."

When asked about this, Lala's CEO was unapologetic.

"Is it controversial that a store has the right to terminate someone that steals from them?" Ralston asked.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10236302-93.html





Right-to-Repair Law Proposed ... for Cars
Fred von Lohmann

It's not often that you get former presidential candidates from the Green Party and the Libertarian Party to agree on legislation, but Bob Barr and Ralph Nader have done just that -- jointly supporting the Right-To-Repair Act of 2009 (H.R. 2057):

This aptly named bill would allow independent repair shops to compete for the business now guaranteed only to dealer-controlled establishments. This is important because car manufacturers now severely limit the number of repair shops that are allowed to have the tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information essential to being able to repair late-model cars (which are heavily dependent on computers for performance and repair).

By thus unfairly limiting the universe of repair shops able to diagnose and repair late-model cars to only those repair shops that are connected with their dealers, the manufacturers dramatically limit consumer choice and significantly increase the costs to those car owners (by some 34 percent, according to a study preformed for the Automotive After Market Industry Association by Lang Research).

We're all for promoting competition and consumer choice. But this bill points to a much bigger consumer issue. The problem that this law attempts to fix is the direct result of the use of computers in cars, accompanied by proprietary diagnostic tools and "lock-out codes." Sound familiar? It should, as it's the very sort of thing that can also make it difficult to repair computer systems, sell replacement garage door openers, and refill printer toner cartridges. One underlying legal problem here is the DMCA, which prohibits bypassing or circumventing "technological protection measures."

So while the Right-to-Repair Act of 2009 is legislation that deserves our support, it doesn't help those who repair things other than cars. For example, it won't help Joe Montero, who treks to the Copyright Office every three years to argue for a DMCA exemption to permit the repair and replacement of obsolete and malfunctioning software "dongles," those little hardware devices purportedly intended to prevent software piracy, but which often end up frustrating perfectly legitimate customers.

And the issue goes beyond the importance of being able to get independent repair and maintenance services. The use of technological "locks" against tinkerers also threatens "user innovation" -- the kinds of innovation that traditionally have come from independent tinkerers -- which has increasingly been recognized as an important part of economic growth and technological improvement. MIT Professor Eric Von Hippel has been at the forefront of this research, and has been hosting a fascinating workshop this week entitled "Intellectual Property Law and Open & User Innovation" (being live-blogged by Georgetown Prof. Rebecca Tushnet).

In short, thanks to the DMCA, we need a Right-To-Repair Act not just for cars, but increasingly for all the things we own.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05...repair-law-pro





A DRM Dissertation

Microsoft Research DRM talk Cory Doctorow ( cory@eff.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ), June 17, 2004 This talk was originally given to Microsoft's Research Group and other interested parties from within the company at their Redmond offices on June 17, 2004. (See public domain notice.) EFF website: EFF (Donate)

Introduction

Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!

I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.

I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer. That means I've got a dog in this fight, because I've been dreaming of making my living from writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn't as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it's every bit as important to me as yours is to you.

Here's what I'm here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save all our asses.

Let's dive into it.

1. DRM systems don't work

This bit breaks down into two parts:

1. A quick refresher course in crypto theory
2. Applying that to DRM

Cryptography -- secret writing -- is the practice of keeping secrets. It involves three parties: a sender, a receiver and an attacker (actually, there can be more attackers, senders and recipients, but let's keep this simple). We usually call these people Alice, Bob and Carol.

Let's say we're in the days of the Caesar, the Gallic War. You need to send messages back and forth to your generals, and you'd prefer that the enemy doesn't get hold of them. You can rely on the idea that anyone who intercepts your message is probably illiterate, but that's a tough bet to stake your empire on. You can put your messages into the hands of reliable messengers who'll chew them up and swallow them if captured -- but that doesn't help you if Brad Pitt and his men in skirts skewer him with an arrow before he knows what's hit him.

So you encipher your message with something like ROT-13, where every character is rotated halfway through the alphabet. They used to do this with non-worksafe material on Usenet, back when anyone on Usenet cared about work-safe-ness -- A would become N, B is O, C is P, and so forth. To decipher, you just add 13 more, so N goes to A, O to B yadda yadda.

Well, this is pretty lame: as soon as anyone figures out your algorithm, your secret is g0nez0red.

So if you're Caesar, you spend a lot of time worrying about keeping the existence of your messengers and their payloads secret. Get that? You're Augustus and you need to send a message to Brad without Caceous (a word I'm reliably informed means "cheese-like, or pertaining to cheese") getting his hands on it. You give the message to Diatomaceous, the fleetest runner in the empire, and you encipher it with ROT-13 and send him out of the garrison in the pitchest hour of the night, making sure no one knows that you've sent it out. Caceous has spies everywhere, in the garrison and staked out on the road, and if one of them puts an arrow through Diatomaceous, they'll have their hands on the message, and then if they figure out the cipher, you're b0rked. So the existence of the message is a secret. The cipher is a secret. The ciphertext is a secret. That's a lot of secrets, and the more secrets you've got, the less secure you are, especially if any of those secrets are shared. Shared secrets aren't really all that secret any longer.

Time passes, stuff happens, and then Tesla invents the radio and Marconi takes credit for it. This is both good news and bad news for crypto: on the one hand, your messages can get to anywhere with a receiver and an antenna, which is great for the brave fifth columnists working behind the enemy lines. On the other hand, anyone with an antenna can listen in on the message, which means that it's no longer practical to keep the existence of the message a secret. Any time Adolf sends a message to Berlin, he can assume Churchill overhears it.

Which is OK, because now we have computers -- big, bulky primitive mechanical computers, but computers still. Computers are machines for rearranging numbers, and so scientists on both sides engage in a fiendish competition to invent the most cleverest method they can for rearranging numerically represented text so that the other side can't unscramble it. The existence of the message isn't a secret anymore, but the cipher is.

But this is still too many secrets. If Bobby intercepts one of Adolf's Enigma machines, he can give Churchill all kinds of intelligence. I mean, this was good news for Churchill and us, but bad news for Adolf. And at the end of the day, it's bad news for anyone who wants to keep a secret.

Enter keys: a cipher that uses a key is still more secure. Even if the cipher is disclosed, even if the ciphertext is intercepted, without the key (or a break), the message is secret. Post-war, this is doubly important as we begin to realize what I think of as Schneier's Law: "any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it." This means that the only experimental methodology for discovering if you've made mistakes in your cipher is to tell all the smart people you can about it and ask them to think of ways to break it. Without this critical step, you'll eventually end up living in a fool's paradise, where your attacker has broken your cipher ages ago and is quietly decrypting all her intercepts of your messages, snickering at you.

Best of all, there's only one secret: the key. And with dual-key crypto it becomes a lot easier for Alice and Bob to keep their keys secret from Carol, even if they've never met. So long as Alice and Bob can keep their keys secret, they can assume that Carol won't gain access to their cleartext messages, even though she has access to the cipher and the ciphertext. Conveniently enough, the keys are the shortest and simplest of the secrets, too: hence even easier to keep away from Carol. Hooray for Bob and Alice.

Now, let's apply this to DRM.

In DRM, the attacker is *also the recipient*. It's not Alice and Bob and Carol, it's just Alice and Bob. Alice sells Bob a DVD. She sells Bob a DVD player. The DVD has a movie on it -- say, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and it's enciphered with an algorithm called CSS -- Content Scrambling System. The DVD player has a CSS un-scrambler.

Now, let's take stock of what's a secret here: the cipher is well-known. The ciphertext is most assuredly in enemy hands, arrr. So what? As long as the key is secret from the attacker, we're golden.

But there's the rub. Alice wants Bob to buy Pirates of the Caribbean from her. Bob will only buy Pirates of the Caribbean if he can descramble the CSS-encrypted VOB -- video object -- on his DVD player. Otherwise, the disc is only useful to Bob as a drinks-coaster. So Alice has to provide Bob -- the attacker -- with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext.

Hilarity ensues.

DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.

2. DRM systems are bad for society

Raise your hand if you're thinking something like, "But DRM doesn't have to be proof against smart attackers, only average individuals! It's like a speedbump!"

Put your hand down.

This is a fallacy for two reasons: one technical, and one social. They're both bad for society, though.

Here's the technical reason: I don't need to be a cracker to break your DRM. I only need to know how to search Google, or Kazaa, or any of the other general-purpose search tools for the cleartext that someone smarter than me has extracted.

Raise your hand if you're thinking something like, "But NGSCB can solve this problem: we'll lock the secrets up on the logic board and goop it all up with epoxy."

Put your hand down.

Raise your hand if you're a co-author of the Darknet paper.

Everyone in the first group, meet the co-authors of the Darknet paper. This is a paper that says, among other things, that DRM will fail for this very reason. Put your hands down, guys.

Here's the social reason that DRM fails: keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall. DRM vendors tell us that their technology is meant to be proof against average users, not organized criminal gangs like the Ukranian pirates who stamp out millions of high-quality counterfeits. It's not meant to be proof against sophisticated college kids. It's not meant to be proof against anyone who knows how to edit her registry, or hold down the shift key at the right moment, or use a search engine. At the end of the day, the user DRM is meant to defend against is the most unsophisticated and least capable among us.

Here's a true story about a user I know who was stopped by DRM. She's smart, college educated, and knows nothing about electronics. She has three kids. She has a DVD in the living room and an old VHS deck in the kids' playroom. One day, she brought home the Toy Story DVD for the kids. That's a substantial investment, and given the generally jam-smeared character of everything the kids get their paws on, she decided to tape the DVD off to VHS and give that to the kids -- that way she could make a fresh VHS copy when the first one went south. She cabled her DVD into her VHS and pressed play on the DVD and record on the VCR and waited.

Before I go farther, I want us all to stop a moment and marvel at this. Here is someone who is practically technophobic, but who was able to construct a mental model of sufficient accuracy that she figured out that she could connect her cables in the right order and dub her digital disc off to analog tape. I imagine that everyone in this room is the front-line tech support for someone in her or his family: would it be great if all our non-geek friends and relatives were this clever and imaginative?

I also want to point out that this is the proverbial honest user. She's not making a copy for the next door neighbors. She's not making a copy and selling it on a blanket on Canal Street. She's not ripping it to her hard-drive, DivX encoding it and putting it in her Kazaa sharepoint. She's doing something *honest* -- moving it from one format to another. She's home taping.

Except she fails. There's a DRM system called Macrovision embedded -- by law -- in every DVD player and VHS that messes with the vertical blanking interval in the signal and causes any tape made in this fashion to fail. Macrovision can be defeated for about $10 with a gadget readily available on eBay. But our infringer doesn't know that. She's "honest." Technically unsophisticated. Not stupid, mind you -- just naive.

The Darknet paper addresses this possibility: it even predicts what this person will do in the long run: she'll find out about Kazaa and the next time she wants to get a movie for the kids, she'll download it from the net and burn it for them.

In order to delay that day for as long as possible, our lawmakers and big rightsholder interests have come up with a disastrous policy called anticircumvention.

Here's how anticircumvention works: if you put a lock -- an access control -- around a copyrighted work, it is illegal to break that lock. It's illegal to make a tool that breaks that lock. It's illegal to tell someone how to make that tool. It's illegal to tell someone where she can find out how to make that tool.

Remember Schneier's Law? Anyone can come up with a security system so clever that he can't see its flaws. The only way to find the flaws in security is to disclose the system's workings and invite public feedback. But now we live in a world where any cipher used to fence off a copyrighted work is off-limits to that kind of feedback. That's something that a Princeton engineering prof named Ed Felten discovered when he submitted a paper to an academic conference on the failings in the Secure Digital Music Initiative, a watermarking scheme proposed by the recording industry. The RIAA responded by threatening to sue his ass if he tried it. We fought them because Ed is the kind of client that impact litigators love: unimpeachable and clean-cut and the RIAA folded. Lucky Ed. Maybe the next guy isn't so lucky.

Matter of fact, the next guy wasn't. Dmitry Skylarov is a Russian programmer who gave a talk at a hacker con in Vegas on the failings in Adobe's e-book locks. The FBI threw him in the slam for 30 days. He copped a plea, went home to Russia, and the Russian equivalent of the State Department issued a blanket warning to its researchers to stay away from American conferences, since we'd apparently turned into the kind of country where certain equations are illegal.

Anticircumvention is a powerful tool for people who want to exclude competitors. If you claim that your car engine firmware is a "copyrighted work," you can sue anyone who makes a tool for interfacing with it. That's not just bad news for mechanics -- think of the hotrodders who want to chip their cars to tweak the performance settings. We have companies like Lexmark claiming that their printer cartridges contain copyrighted works -- software that trips an "I am empty" flag when the toner runs out, and have sued a competitor who made a remanufactured cartridge that reset the flag. Even garage-door opener companies have gotten in on the act, claiming that their receivers' firmware are copyrighted works. Copyrighted cars, print carts and garage-door openers: what's next, copyrighted light-fixtures?

Even in the context of legitimate -- excuse me, "traditional" -- copyrighted works like movies on DVDs, anticircumvention is bad news. Copyright is a delicate balance. It gives creators and their assignees some rights, but it also reserves some rights to the public. For example, an author has no right to prohibit anyone from transcoding his books into assistive formats for the blind. More importantly, though, a creator has a very limited say over what you can do once you lawfully acquire her works. If I buy your book, your painting, or your DVD, it belongs to me. It's my property. Not my "intellectual property" -- a whacky kind of pseudo-property that's swiss-cheesed with exceptions, easements and limitations -- but real, no-fooling, actual tangible *property* -- the kind of thing that courts have been managing through tort law for centuries.

But anticirumvention lets rightsholders invent new and exciting copyrights for themselves -- to write private laws without accountability or deliberation -- that expropriate your interest in your physical property to their favor. Region-coded DVDs are an example of this: there's no copyright here or in anywhere I know of that says that an author should be able to control where you enjoy her creative works, once you've paid for them. I can buy a book and throw it in my bag and take it anywhere from Toronto to Timbuktu, and read it wherever I am: I can even buy books in America and bring them to the UK, where the author may have an exclusive distribution deal with a local publisher who sells them for double the US shelf-price. When I'm done with it, I can sell it on or give it away in the UK. Copyright lawyers call this "First Sale," but it may be simpler to think of it as "Capitalism."

The keys to decrypt a DVD are controlled by an org called DVD-CCA, and they have a bunch of licensing requirements for anyone who gets a key from them. Among these is something called region-coding: if you buy a DVD in France, it'll have a flag set that says, "I am a French DVD." Bring that DVD to America and your DVD player will compare the flag to its list of permitted regions, and if they don't match, it will tell you that it's not allowed to play your disc.

Remember: there is no copyright that says that an author gets to do this. When we wrote the copyright statutes and granted authors the right to control display, performance, duplication, derivative works, and so forth, we didn't leave out "geography" by accident. That was on-purpose.

So when your French DVD won't play in America, that's not because it'd be illegal to do so: it's because the studios have invented a business-model and then invented a copyright law to prop it up. The DVD is your property and so is the DVD player, but if you break the region-coding on your disc, you're going to run afoul of anticircumvention.

That's what happened to Jon Johansen, a Norweigan teenager who wanted to watch French DVDs on his Norweigan DVD player. He and some pals wrote some code to break the CSS so that he could do so. He's a wanted man here in America; in Norway the studios put the local fuzz up to bringing him up on charges of *unlawfully trespassing upon a computer system.* When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."

His no-fooling, real and physical property has been expropriated by the weird, notional, metaphorical intellectual property on his DVD: DRM only works if your record player becomes the property of whomever's records you're playing.

3. DRM systems are bad for biz

This is the worst of all the ideas embodied by DRM: that people who make record-players should be able to spec whose records you can listen to, and that people who make records should have a veto over the design of record-players.

We've never had this principle: in fact, we've always had just the reverse. Think about all the things that can be plugged into a parallel or serial interface, which were never envisioned by their inventors. Our strong economy and rapid innovation are byproducts of the ability of anyone to make anything that plugs into anything else: from the Flo-bee electric razor that snaps onto the end of your vacuum-hose to the octopus spilling out of your car's dashboard lighter socket, standard interfaces that anyone can build for are what makes billionaires out of nerds.

The courts affirm this again and again. It used to be illegal to plug anything that didn't come from AT&T into your phone-jack. They claimed that this was for the safety of the network, but really it was about propping up this little penny-ante racket that AT&T had in charging you a rental fee for your phone until you'd paid for it a thousand times over.

When that ban was struck down, it created the market for third-party phone equipment, from talking novelty phones to answering machines to cordless handsets to headsets -- billions of dollars of economic activity that had been supressed by the closed interface. Note that AT&T was one of the big beneficiaries of this: they also got into the business of making phone-kit.

DRM is the software equivalent of these closed hardware interfaces. Robert Scoble is a Softie who has an excellent blog, where he wrote an essay about the best way to protect your investment in the digital music you buy. Should you buy Apple iTunes music, or Microsoft DRM music? Scoble argued that Microsoft's music was a sounder investment, because Microsoft would have more downstream licensees for its proprietary format and therefore you'd have a richer ecosystem of devices to choose from when you were shopping for gizmos to play your virtual records on.

What a weird idea: that we should evaluate our record-purchases on the basis of which recording company will allow the greatest diversity of record-players to play its discs! That's like telling someone to buy the Betamax instead of the Edison Kinetoscope because Thomas Edison is a crank about licensing his patents; all the while ignoring the world's relentless march to the more open VHS format.

It's a bad business. DVD is a format where the guy who makes the records gets to design the record players. Ask yourself: how much innovation has there been over the past decade of DVD players? They've gotten cheaper and smaller, but where are the weird and amazing new markets for DVD that were opened up by the VCR? There's a company that's manufacturing the world's first HDD-based DVD jukebox, a thing that holds 30 movies, and they're charging $30,000 for this thing. We're talking about a $300 hard drive and a $300 PC -- all that other cost is the cost of anticompetition.

4. DRM systems are bad for artists

But what of the artist? The hardworking filmmaker, the ink-stained scribbler, the heroin-cured leathery rock-star? We poor slobs of the creative class are everyone's favorite poster-children here: the RIAA and MPAA hold us up and say, "Won't someone please think of the children?" File-sharers say, "Yeah, we're thinking about the artists, but the labels are The Man, who cares what happens to you?"

To understand what DRM does to artists, you need to understand how copyright and technology interact. Copyright is inherently technological, since the things it addresses -- copying, transmitting, and so on -- are inherently technological.

The piano roll was the first system for cheaply copying music. It was invented at a time when the dominant form of entertainment in America was getting a talented pianist to come into your living room and pound out some tunes while you sang along. The music industry consisted mostly of sheet-music publishers.

The player piano was a digital recording and playback system. Piano-roll companies bought sheet music and ripped the notes printed on it into 0s and 1s on a long roll of computer tape, which they sold by the thousands -- the hundreds of thousands -- the millions. They did this without a penny's compensation to the publishers. They were digital music pirates. Arrrr!

Predictably, the composers and music publishers went nutso. Sousa showed up in Congress to say that:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal chord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

The publishers asked Congress to ban the piano roll and to create a law that said that any new system for reproducing music should be subject to a veto from their industry association. Lucky for us, Congress realized what side of their bread had butter on it and decided not to criminalize the dominant form of entertainment in America.

But there was the problem of paying artists. The Constitution sets out the purpose of American copyright: to promote the useful arts and sciences. The composers had a credible story that they'd do less composing if they weren't paid for it, so Congress needed a fix. Here's what they came up with: anyone who paid a music publisher two cents would have the right to make one piano roll of any song that publisher published. The publisher couldn't say no, and no one had to hire a lawyer at $200 an hour to argue about whether the payment should be two cents or a nickel.

This compulsory license is still in place today: when Joe Cocker sings "With a Little Help from My Friends," he pays a fixed fee to the Beatles' publisher and away he goes -- even if Ringo hates the idea. If you ever wondered how Sid Vicious talked Anka into letting him get a crack at "My Way," well, now you know.

That compulsory license created a world where a thousand times more money was made by a thousand times more creators who made a thousand times more music that reached a thousand times more people.

This story repeats itself throughout the technological century, every ten or fifteen years. Radio was enabled by a voluntary blanket license -- the music companies got together and asked for an antitrust exemption so that they could offer all their music for a flat fee. Cable TV took a compulsory: the only way cable operators could get their hands on broadcasts was to pirate them and shove them down the wire, and Congress saw fit to legalize this practice rather than screw around with their constituents' TVs.

Sometimes, the courts and Congress decided to simply take away a copyright -- that's what happened with the VCR. When Sony brought out the VCR in 1976, the studios had already decided what the experience of watching a movie in your living room would look like: they'd licensed out their programming for use on a machine called a Discovision, which played big LP-sized discs that disintegrated after a few plays. Proto-DRM.

The copyright scholars of the day didn't give the VCR very good odds. Sony argued that their box allowed for a fair use, which is defined as a use that a court rules is a defense against infringement based on four factors: whether the use transforms the work into something new, like a collage; whether it uses all or some of the work; whether the work is artistic or mainly factual; and whether the use undercuts the creator's business-model.

The Betamax failed on all four fronts: when you time-shifted or duplicated a Hollywood movie off the air, you made a non-transformative use of 100 percent of a creative work in a way that directly undercut the Discovision licensing stream.

Jack Valenti, the mouthpiece for the motion-picture industry, told Congress in 1982 that the VCR was to the American film industry "as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone."

But the Supreme Court ruled against Hollywood in 1984, when it determined that any device capable of a substantial non-infringing use was legal. In other words, "We don't buy this Boston Strangler business: if your business model can't survive the emergence of this general-purpose tool, it's time to get another business-model or go broke."

Hollywood found another business model, as the broadcasters had, as the Vaudeville artists had, as the music publishers had, and they made more art that paid more artists and reached a wider audience.

There's one thing that every new art business-model had in common: it embraced the medium it lived in.

This is the overweening characteristic of every single successful new medium: it is true to itself. The Luther Bible didn't succeed on the axes that made a hand-copied monk Bible valuable: they were ugly, they weren't in Church Latin, they weren't read aloud by someone who could interpret it for his lay audience, they didn't represent years of devoted-with-a-capital-D labor by someone who had given his life over to God. The thing that made the Luther Bible a success was its scalability: it was more popular because it was more proliferate: all success factors for a new medium pale beside its profligacy. The most successful organisms on earth are those that reproduce the most: bugs and bacteria, nematodes and virii. Reproduction is the best of all survival strategies.

Piano rolls didn't sound as good as the music of a skilled pianist: but they *scaled better*. Radio lacked the social elements of live performance, but more people could build a crystal set and get it aimed correctly than could pack into even the largest Vaudeville house. MP3s don't come with liner notes, they aren't sold to you by a hipper-than-thou record store clerk who can help you make your choice, bad rips and truncated files abound: I once downloaded a twelve-second copy of "Hey Jude" from the original Napster. Yet MP3 is outcompeting the CD. I don't know what to do with CDs anymore: I get them, and they're like the especially garment bag they give you at the fancy suit shop: it's nice and you feel like a goof for throwing it out, but Christ, how many of these things can you usefully own? I can put ten thousand songs on my laptop, but a comparable pile of discs, with liner notes and so forth -- that's a liability: it's a piece of my monthly storage-locker costs.

Here are the two most important things to know about computers and the Internet:

1. A computer is a machine for rearranging bits
2. The Internet is a machine for moving bits from one place to another very cheaply and quickly

Any new medium that takes hold on the Internet and with computers will embrace these two facts, not regret them. A newspaper press is a machine for spitting out cheap and smeary newsprint at speed: if you try to make it output fine art lithos, you'll get junk. If you try to make it output newspapers, you'll get the basis for a free society.

And so it is with the Internet. At the heyday of Napster, record execs used to show up at conferences and tell everyone that Napster was doomed because no one wanted lossily compressed MP3s with no liner notes and truncated files and misspelled metadata.

Today we hear ebook publishers tell each other and anyone who'll listen that the barrier to ebooks is screen resolution. It's bollocks, and so is the whole sermonette about how nice a book looks on your bookcase and how nice it smells and how easy it is to slip into the tub. These are obvious and untrue things, like the idea that radio will catch on once they figure out how to sell you hotdogs during the intermission, or that movies will really hit their stride when we can figure out how to bring the actors out for an encore when the film's run out. Or that what the Protestant Reformation really needs is Luther Bibles with facsimile illumination in the margin and a rent-a-priest to read aloud from your personal Word of God.

New media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at. Books are good at being paperwhite, high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing list.
The only really successful epublishing -- I mean, hundreds of thousands, millions of copies distributed and read -- is the bookwarez scene, where scanned-and-OCR'd books are distributed on the darknet. The only legit publishers with any success at epublishing are the ones whose books cross the Internet without technological fetter: publishers like Baen Books and my own, Tor, who are making some or all of their catalogs available in ASCII and HTML and PDF.

The hardware-dependent ebooks, the DRM use-and-copy-restricted ebooks, they're cratering. Sales measured in the tens, sometimes the hundreds. Science fiction is a niche business, but when you're selling copies by the ten, that's not even a business, it's a hobby.

Every one of you has been riding a curve where you read more and more words off of more and more screens every day through most of your professional careers. It's zero-sum: you've also been reading fewer words off of fewer pages as time went by: the dinosauric executive who prints his email and dictates a reply to his secretary is info-roadkill.

Today, at this very second, people read words off of screens for every hour that they can find. Your kids stare at their Game Boys until their eyes fall out. Euroteens ring doorbells with their hypertrophied, SMS-twitching thumbs instead of their index fingers.

Paper books are the packaging that books come in. Cheap printer-binderies like the Internet Bookmobile that can produce a full bleed, four color, glossy cover, printed spine, perfect-bound book in ten minutes for a dollar are the future of paper books: when you need an instance of a paper book, you generate one, or part of one, and pitch it out when you're done. I landed at SEA-TAC on Monday and burned a couple CDs from my music collection to listen to in the rental car. When I drop the car off, I'll leave them behind. Who needs 'em?

Whenever a new technology has disrupted copyright, we've changed copyright. Copyright isn't an ethical proposition, it's a utlititarian one. There's nothing *moral* about paying a composer tuppence for the piano-roll rights, there's nothing *immoral* about not paying Hollywood for the right to videotape a movie off your TV. They're just the best way of balancing out so that people's physical property rights in their VCRs and phonographs are respected and so that creators get enough of a dangling carrot to go on making shows and music and books and paintings.

Technology that disrupts copyright does so because it simplifies and cheapens creation, reproduction and distribution. The existing copyright businesses exploit inefficiencies in the old production, reproduction and distribution system, and they'll be weakened by the new technology. But new technology always gives us more art with a wider reach: that's what tech is *for*.

Tech gives us bigger pies that more artists can get a bite out of. That's been tacitly acknowledged at every stage of the copyfight since the piano roll. When copyright and technology collide, it's copyright that changes.

Which means that today's copyright -- the thing that DRM nominally props up -- didn't come down off the mountain on two stone tablets. It was created in living memory to accommodate the technical reality created by the inventors of the previous generation. To abandon invention now robs tomorrow's artists of the new businesses and new reach and new audiences that the Internet and the PC can give them.

5. DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

When Sony brought out the VCR, it made a record player that could play Hollywood's records, even if Hollywood didn't like the idea. The industries that grew up on the back of the VCR -- movie rentals, home taping, camcorders, even Bar Mitzvah videographers -- made billions for Sony and its cohort.

That was good business -- even if Sony lost the Betamax-VHS format wars, the money on the world-with-VCRs table was enough to make up for it.

But then Sony acquired a relatively tiny entertainment company and it started to massively screw up. When MP3 rolled around and Sony's walkman customers were clamoring for a solid-state MP3 player, Sony let its music business-unit run its show: instead of making a high-capacity MP3 walkman, Sony shipped its Music Clips, low-capacity devices that played brain-damaged DRM formats like Real and OpenAG. They spent good money engineering "features" into these devices that kept their customers from freely moving their music back and forth between their devices. Customers stayed away in droves.

Today, Sony is dead in the water when it comes to walkmen. The market leaders are poky Singaporean outfits like Creative Labs -- the kind of company that Sony used to crush like a bug, back before it got borged by its entertainment unit -- and PC companies like Apple.

That's because Sony shipped a product that there was no market demand for. No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, "Damn, I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in order that I may do less with my music." Presented with an alternative, Sony's customers enthusiastically jumped ship.

The same thing happened to a lot of people I know who used to rip their CDs to WMA. You guys sold them software that produced smaller, better-sounding rips that the MP3 rippers, but you also fixed it so that the songs you ripped were device-locked to their PCs. What that meant is that when they backed up their music to another hard-drive and reinstalled their OS (something that the spyware and malware wars has made more common than ever), they discovered that after they restored their music that they could no longer play it. The player saw the new OS as a different machine, and locked them out of their own music.

There is no market demand for this "feature." None of your customers want you to make expensive modifications to your products that make backing up and restoring even harder. And there is no moment when your customers will be less forgiving than the moment that they are recovering from catastrophic technology failures.

I speak from experience. Because I buy a new Powerbook every ten months, and because I always order the new models the day they're announced, I get a lot of lemons from Apple. That means that I hit Apple's three-iTunes-authorized-computers limit pretty early on and found myself unable to play the hundreds of dollars' worth of iTunes songs I'd bought because one of my authorized machines was a lemon that Apple had broken up for parts, one was in the shop getting fixed by Apple, and one was my mom's computer, 3,000 miles away in Toronto.

If I had been a less good customer for Apple's hardware, I would have been fine. If I had been a less enthusiastic evangelist for Apple's products -- if I hadn't shown my mom how iTunes Music Store worked -- I would have been fine. If I hadn't bought so much iTunes music that burning it to CD and re-ripping it and re-keying all my metadata was too daunting a task to consider, I would have been fine.

As it was Apple rewarded my trust, evangelism and out-of-control spending by treating me like a crook and locking me out of my own music, at a time when my Powerbook was in the shop -- i.e., at a time when I was hardly disposed to feel charitable to Apple.

I'm an edge case here, but I'm a leading edge case. If Apple succeeds in its business plans, it will only be a matter of time until even average customers have upgraded enough hardware and bought enough music to end up where I am.

You know what I would totally buy? A record player that let me play everybody's records. Right now, the closest I can come to that is an open source app called VLC, but it's clunky and buggy and it didn't come pre-installed on my computer.

Sony didn't make a Betamax that only played the movies that Hollywood was willing to permit -- Hollywood asked them to do it, they proposed an early, analog broadcast flag that VCRs could hunt for and respond to by disabling recording. Sony ignored them and made the product they thought their customers wanted.

I'm a Microsoft customer. Like millions of other Microsoft customers, I want a player that plays anything I throw at it, and I think that you are just the company to give it to me.

Yes, this would violate copyright law as it stands, but Microsoft has been making tools of piracy that change copyright law for decades now. Outlook, Exchange and MSN are tools that abet widescale digital infringement.

More significantly, IIS and your caching proxies all make and serve copies of documents without their authors' consent, something that, if it is legal today, is only legal because companies like Microsoft went ahead and did it and dared lawmakers to prosecute.

Microsoft stood up for its customers and for progress, and won so decisively that most people never even realized that there was a fight.

Do it again! This is a company that looks the world's roughest, toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can take them with your arm behind your back.

In Siva Vaidhyanathan's book The Anarchist in the Library, he talks about why the studios are so blind to their customers' desires. It's because people like you and me spent the 80s and the 90s telling them bad science fiction stories about impossible DRM technology that would let them charge a small sum of money every time someone looked at a movie -- want to fast-forward? That feature costs another penny. Pausing is two cents an hour. The mute button will cost you a quarter.

When Mako Analysis issued their report last month advising phone companies to stop supporting Symbian phones, they were just writing the latest installment in this story. Mako says that phones like my P900, which can play MP3s as ringtones, are bad for the cellphone economy, because it'll put the extortionate ringtone sellers out of business. What Mako is saying is that just because you bought the CD doesn't mean that you should expect to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player, and just because it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to expect it to run as a ringtone. I wonder how they feel about alarm clocks that will play a CD to wake you up in the morning? Is that strangling the nascent "alarm tone" market?

The phone companies' customers want Symbian phones and for now, at least, the phone companies understand that if they don't sell them, someone else will.

The market opportunity for a truly capable devices is enormous. There's a company out there charging $30,000 for a $600 DVD jukebox -- go and eat their lunch! Steve Jobs isn't going to do it: he's off at the D conference telling studio execs not to release hi-def movies until they're sure no one will make a hi-def DVD burner that works with a PC.

Maybe they won't buy into his BS, but they're also not much interested in what you have to sell. At the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group meetings where the Broadcast Flag was hammered out, the studios' position was, "We'll take anyone's DRM except Microsoft's and Philips'." When I met with UK broadcast wonks about the European version of the Broadcast Flag underway at the Digital Video Broadcasters' forum, they told me, "Well, it's different in Europe: mostly they're worried that some American company like Microsoft will get their claws into European television."

American film studios didn't want the Japanese electronics companies to get a piece of the movie pie, so they fought the VCR. Today, everyone who makes movies agrees that they don't want to let you guys get between them and their customers.

Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records.

Because if you don't do it, someone else will.


This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative Commons public domain dedication:

Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law)

The person or persons who have associated their work with this document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the public domain.

Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors. Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work. Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.

Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
http://www.debiantutorials.org/a-drm...-off-topic-230





Sony Music Revenue Down 16%
FMQB

Sony Corp. has released its latest revenue results, as Sony Music Entertainment saw a 16 percent pro forma revenue decline for the final six months of the company's fiscal year, ending March 31. The label reported $ (or €1.2 billion) in sales for the last six months of the fiscal year, with best sellers including AC/DC, Beyoncé, P!nk and Britney Spears. In Q4, the label's pro forma revenue was $654 million, a three percent decline.

Sony Corp. reported a $1 billion loss in its fiscal 2008 year, as well as a $1.72 billion in its fiscal Q4. Sony's revenue in Q4 was $15.5 billion, a 22 percent drop from a year earlier.
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1325455





TuneCore, Amazon Set to Unveil On-Demand CD Sales
Eliot Van Buskirk

TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.

The service is expected to be announced Thursday, linking Amazon with TuneCore, a novel digital distribution startup that’s made waves signing the likes of Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and other stars seeking a way out of the label system, as well as slews of garage bands and hopefuls on their way up.

Tunecore will charge just $31 a year in upfront fees to handle a 10-track CD from pressing to delivery, passing all other costs through to the buyer. In other words, the service promises to remove nearly all of the risks of short-run CD manufacturing, which can cost musicians hundreds or even thousands of dollars for discs that rarely sell enough to cover expenses.

“As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com,” said TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, formerly of indie label SpinArt Records (Pixies, KaitO, Apollo Sunshine).

The deal comes as physical music sales are tanking and as major CD distributors like Amazon seek to evolve to a digital model. Yet Price suggests that there may be life left in good old physical storage media, with a slight twist. Why would people buy music on CD if it’s also available in iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other digital stores?

“Why not?” responds Price, who says he believes the costs are so low it will makes sense for lots of bands to try it out. “Let the music fan decide how they want the music.”

In addition to competing with downloads and streaming, one obvious drawback to this model is that you can’t sell an on-demand CD at shows, where enthusiastic fans are most likely to pick one up. But Price says labels wondering why artists still need them now have yet another thing to worry about. When you can sell CDs on Amazon for 30 bucks, who needs a label? Certainly not Reznor, an early TuneCore adopter who once paid the service 38 bucks to distribute a quadruple-length album through Amazon MP3.

For TuneCore, the deal expands its primary business helping indie artists get digital distribution through online outlets such as iTunes, Napster and Amazon MP3. TuneCore will now compete directly with CDBaby, the current leader in low-volume CD manufacturing and distribution. CDBaby charges $278 for 100 discs, although it recently lowered its minimum order to just five copies.

Brooklyn-based TuneCore gave us a peek inside its accounting system, which shows the most successful artists on the service regularly earning upwards of $20,000 per month. Chump change this is not.

As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazon’s payout to the artist — about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazon’s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, you’ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, you’re in the black. TuneCore takes care of the UPC code, artwork, bar code, CD label design and so on, so that artists can concentrate on writing songs — and cashing checks.

The on-demand CD partnership with Amazon is just the latest in a long string of successes for the 2006 startup, whose distribution catalog dwarfs those of the labels.

“There’s more music released in one day on TuneCore than there is on a major [label] in the course of a year — in three days, more than all the majors combined, and within a month, all the majors and indies combined,” explained Price. “TuneCore artists have generated over $32 million in revenue from music sales over the past 22 months.

“Some of the artists, frankly, have been selling more than the Billboard Top 40 artists,” he added. “It’s just not being picked up by the mainstream places [like SoundScan] that track sales.”

As their label contracts expire, some fairly heavy hitters are signing up for TuneCore. In addition to Reznor and Richards, the service now handles distribution duties for Joan Jett and other luminaries. But unsigned bands are always found among TuneCore’s top sellers. For instance, Never Shout Never sold over 250,000 songs in 60 days, as well as 30,000 T-shirts (also handled by TuneCore).

Universal Music Group — the biggest record label in the world — has also partnered with TuneCore to offer additional services to its indie artists. For $50, Universal’s Grammy-winning producers will master your music for CD before it gets distributed. And for another as-yet undisclosed fee, Universal’s art department will also design the high-resolution PDF that iTunes now requires with each album submission — all they need is four images and the names of your songs.

TuneCore has other plans in the works:

* Amazon will launch a TuneCore-branded section next month.
* A TuneCore widget will soon allow bands to distribute tweets and songs to fans.
* If you sell 100 songs in the New York or Los Angeles area, you get to play Le Poisson Rouge or The Roxy, earning a guaranteed minimum of $100 — even if no one shows up.
* TuneCore is working on a deal with live music behemoth Live Nation/House of Blues that would give artists who sell a certain number of songs a live gig, also with a minimum guarantee of $100.
* If you sell enough songs through TuneCore, MusicNotes will score one of them into downloadable sheet music so that others can learn how to play your music.
* Another deal rewards bands who sell a certain number of songs with 16 packs of Ernie Ball guitar strings and 8 packs of bass strings for free, every month.
* Yet another deal lets bands who hit certain metrics offer fans the chance to wrap Blackberries, computers and other gadgets with an image of the artist.
* A TuneCore iPhone app will soon allow 30-second and full-song streams for participating bands.

Here’s how you can distribute a CD through Amazon using TuneCore. Once you’ve signed in, click Add Album:

add-album

Then you enter some basic information and choose which stores you’d like to stock the album:

enter

Here’s the part that deals with Amazon’s on-demand CD service:

physical

Then it’s time to pick a cover for your CD. There are hundreds of options, and you can upload your own artwork:

artwork

Add tracks and liner notes, and you’re just about there:

album

Pick a design for the disc itself, and you’re done — now, all you have to do is wait for those Benjamins to roll in:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/...with-tunecore/





Civil Rights Groups Ask Pelosi To Review Radio Royalties
FMQB

On Wednesday, May 13, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Performance Rights Act [H.R. 848], which would require radio stations to pay royalties to artists for playing their music. The following day, three minority and civil rights organizations sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to express their concern over the "devastating effect" a performance fee would have on minority radio broadcasters and their listening communities. The letter was signed by David Honig, executive director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council; Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law; and Francisco Montero, director of the Spanish Broadcasters Association.

"As civil rights advocates, we know that minority owned radio stations speak directly to our communities and are a cherished resource that must be nurtured and protected," reads the letter. "However, H.R. 848 would lead to severe reductions in sustaining and public service programming. Based on its knowledge of minority broadcasters' finances, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council predicts that H.R. 848 would lead to the bankruptcies of at least a third of minority radio stations."

The letter to Pelosi goes on to explain that if the bill would require broadcasters to pay royalty fees, then there should be a corresponding examination by the House Ways and Means Committee on reinstituting the minority tax certificate program, or an examination by the Energy and Commerce Committee on advancing any minority ownership-enhancing diversity proposals. It also suggests that the Small Business Committee should research the impact that the legislation will have on both small and minority-owned broadcasting businesses.

"H.R. 848 is not ripe for Floor consideration," the letter concluded. "We sincerely hope you will ensure that additional thoughtful analysis and deliberation is permitted before it is scheduled for Floor consideration."

In related news, four more lawmakers have signed the Local Radio Freedom Act, bringing the total to 200 House co-sponsors. The Local Radio Freedom Act is a bi-partisan resolution that opposes the Performance Rights Act. The latest signers are Reps. Steve Driehaus (OH), Wally Herger (CA), Jerry Lewis (CA) and Albio Sires (NJ).

"From day one, the record labels’ performance tax has been about making an Inside-the-Beltway money grab from local radio stations and hoping that communities won't notice," said Free Radio Alliance spokeswoman Cathy Rought. "Radio is a vital part of people's lives, and a performance tax would not only decimate local and especially minority-owned stations, but threaten jobs, non-profits big and small, and impact listeners. Members of the Free Radio Alliance applaud the 200 members of Congress who recognize the negative impact the performance tax would have back in their districts and the overwhelming response from local communities to stand up for what is right."
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1328522





Founder Buying Bankrupt Broadcasting School
AP

The man who founded the Connecticut School of Broadcasting in 1964 has won approval to buy back the bankrupt business and campuses in seven states for about $1 million.

A federal Bankruptcy Court judge in Boston approved the sale to Dick Robinson earlier this month. Connecticut officials announced Monday that 11 schools in seven states would reopen.

Robinson sold the school in 2006. In March, the new owners abruptly closed all 26 locations in 16 states and filed bankruptcy, blaming the tightening student loan market and a dispute with its lender.

Court documents indicate Robinson is scaling back the school's operations and acquiring several sites, including the original location in Farmington.

Robinson, a longtime broadcaster who now lives in Florida, has said he was dismayed by the closing.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_12394774





"We Were so Keen to Believe that Web 2.0 Would Make the World Fairer that We Rejected All Evidence to the Contrary"

Andrew Orlowski

Chris Anderson, who popularised the phrase “the long tail”, claims to know how the internet will rewrite the rules of business. Exciting as they sound, the Wired editor’s theories have no sticking power and the backlash against him has begun

Few attempts at rewriting the rules of business have been met with as much hostility as the latest theory touted by Chris Anderson, editor of the technology magazine Wired. His latest book, Free: the Future of a Radical Price, expounds a philosophy of “freeconomics” – businesses in a vast range of industries, he argues, should emulate the giant giveaway of the internet. Bold, perhaps, but also spectacularly badly timed. And the response has reflected that. The Economist, for one, has roundly criticised Free. “The lesson of the two internet bubbles,” it intoned, “is that somebody, somewhere, is going to have to pick up the tab for lunch.”

What is really puzzling is that the backlash against Anderson’s ideas has taken this long to happen. The response to his first book, The Long Tail, an analysis of online businesses which sell a wide variety of items in very small quantities, compared Anderson to Copernicus, no less, and its title became a buzz-phrase for the new media and marketing classes. But eventually his theory wilted in the face of empirical evidence.

Both books contain a grain of truth; however, in each case it is buried beneath a pile of dramatic, improbable extrapolations. Anderson correctly notes that digital technology has lowered the cost of production (and reproduction) of digital goods, the cost of transactions, and the cost of acquiring customers. However, the giveaways his freeconomy depends on require someone else to pick up the tab, and in the current economic climate, with profits evaporating and jobs being shed, there is little enthusiasm for altruism or wild punts. In addition, media owners and executives have turned viscerally on the notion of giving away their key products. Rupert Murdoch, who could be heard lauding Web 2.0 a couple of years ago, now echoes the fairly common view that aggregators such as Google are parasitic. Understanding how such flimsy ideas became so popular in the first place involves looking back to the infancy of the magazine that incubated them.

In 1992, Louis Rossetto, an expatriate American living in Amsterdam, was getting exhausted. For a fruitless two years, he had been pulling a blueprint from his backpack. It was for a new magazine that would foretell dramatic changes in business and society as computers became networked – but nobody wanted to know. However, his fortunes took a turn for the better when he met Nicholas Negroponte, the well-connected Boston socialite and academic.

Negroponte was seeking a publicity vehicle for his “concept factory”, a novel business proposition spun out from the venerable Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Negroponte’s Media Lab didn’t trouble itself with boring engineering and scientific research – the empirical bedrock of technological innovation, which takes years to bear fruit. The Lab was designed to coax corporate sponsorship with attention-grabbing ideas. This was Hollywood with P T Barnum thrown in.

Few of the whimsical concepts from the Lab – furry alarm clocks that run away, “ambient furniture” – would ever be viable products, but they generated acres of newsprint. And the press coverage drew in the sponsorship. Negroponte sold the proposition that his whizz-kids knew the future, and if you, too, suspended disbelief, so could you. A new business had been created. Negroponte became Rossetto’s first investor, and his flagship guru. Wired magazine was born.

Wired married an admirable American can-do spirit to the techno-utopianism of earlier media prophets such as Alvin Toffler, a former associate editor of Forbes magazine who has been writing since the 1960s about technology’s future and its impact. But Wired also inherited Toffler’s bossy, declamatory tone. The future wouldn’t just be different, it would be unrecognisable; history would be erased, and existing businesses must leap out of the way. The necessity to preach “rewriting the rules of business” in every issue set Wired on the path to hubris.

The answer to the puzzle of Anderson’s popularity lies in the roots of Wired itself – a mix of manifest destiny and opportunistic hucksterism. Anderson is primarily an evangelist for a vision that dictates a specific shape and structure for the internet. This may be premature. And, coincidentally, it is a vision that directly benefits one company, Google, at the expense of the telecommunications and media industries. Both of Anderson’s theses were inspired by critiques of the internet that fatally undermine this vision. Arguably, both amount to exercises in public relations rather than economics.

The Long Tail was a response to an essay by Clay Shirky, a prominent technology writer who also teaches at New York University. Shirky’s argument dampened much of the nascent utopianism about blogs, pointing out that the readership of early blogs followed what economists call a Pareto curve, or “power curve”: a small number of sites (the “head”) attracted a huge number of readers, but most (the “tail”) had few or none. This jarred with the utopian notion of the internet as a new kind of democracy. Why bother to participate if our fates were decided for us by a few block votes?

So Anderson turned the notion upside down. The blockbuster was over, he proclaimed, and, like a man possessed, he began to see long tails everywhere. It was the Guardian that lauded this logic by comparing Anderson to Copernicus. The implicit message was that the little people would win. Many people were so keen to believe that Web 2.0 would make the world fairer that they rejected any evidence to the contrary. It was only last year, with an exhaustive study of online music sales by the economist Will Page and an experienced digital retailer, Andrew Bud, that a more useful picture of digital markets begin to emerge.

Page and Bud found that most of the songs available for purchase had never been downloaded, and that the concentration of hits was more pronounced than ever before. On the file-sharing networks, the same pattern emerged. So, carrying a huge retail inventory, though cheaper than before, was of little or no value.

Now, with Free, Anderson has turned to the criticism that the internet destroyed the value of movies, newspapers and music. Firms could, and now should, cross-subsidise this unprofitable activity, he argues. But cross-subsidies aren’t new: they have been the subject of decades of observation by economists. Nor are they a panacea. Alan Patrick, co-founder of the Broadsight media and technology consultancy, points out that despite falling marginal costs, the idea of anything being “free to produce” is a myth; the costs are hidden elsewhere in the system. While at McKinsey, Patrick ran simulations of the “free to produce” business model and found that “it results in wholesale value destruction with no accruing market benefit, unless you can build an extremely commanding lead and get the whole positive dynamic of increasing returns working for you. But that’s hard and rare.”

Explaining the popularity of Wired-style theses should keep sociologists busy for years to come. They will doubtless note the business culture’s appetite for upbeat nostrums, and the media’s desire for myth-making. Business pays lip-service to genuine innovation these days, but, like the modern politician, it is keen to hear about the virtues of constant structural reorganisation, or how to adopt the ephemera of radical change. A speaker who can supply this market with new buzzwords can command 20 times the income of an American magazine editor. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. So one can hardly blame Anderson for trying his luck. And the buzz-phrases wouldn’t have spread without frequent repetition by an uncritical media. This could be evidence of a lack of confidence or expertise in explaining technical subjects – but it’s the same cynical resort to novelty that Negroponte banked on when he backed Wired magazine.

Anderson’s vision today looks curiously conservative and static, and is both deeply reductive and pessimistic about human nature. We are happy to pay when we perceive value, even for the most unlikely products, such as bottled water. The ideas at the heart of Free do little to explain that. For the “little people to win”, we need to draw on our human capacity for organisation and inventiveness, and engage in real, not virtual, politics. Fittingly, and not surprisingly, Free has had a critical mauling. So, perhaps the Wired era is over, departing like a snake-oil salesman at a medicine show who – having poisoned the town – can’t leave quickly enough.
http://www.newstatesman.com/business...wired-business





Didn’t know the half of it

Top 50 Text Acronyms Parents Should Know
Fox

Here is a list of the top acronyms commonly used on the internet and in text messages.


1 8 Oral sex
2 1337 Elite
3 143 I love you
4 182 I hate you
5 459 I love you
6 1174 Nude club
7 420 Marijuana
8 ADR Address
9 ASL Age/Sex/Location
10 Banana Penis
11 CD9 or Code 9 Parents are around
12 DUM Do You Masturbate?
13 DUSL Do You Scream Loud?
14 FB F*** Buddy
15
16 FMLTWIA F*** Me Like The Whore I Am
17 FOL Fond of Leather
18 GNOC Get Naked On Cam
19 GYPO Get Your Pants Off
20 IAYM I Am Your Master
21 IF/IB In the Front or In the Back
22 IIT Is It Tight?
23 ILF/MD I Love Female/Male Dominance
24 IMEZRU I Am Easy, Are You?
25 IWSN I Want Sex Now
26 J/O Jerking Off
27 KFY or K4Y Kiss For You
28 Kitty Vagina
29 KPC Keeping Parents Clueless
30 MorF Male or Female
31 LMIRL Let's Meet In Real Life
32 MOOS Member Of The Opposite Sex
33 WYCM Will You Call Me?
34 MOS Mom Over Shoulder
35 MPFB My Personal F*** Buddy
36 NALOPKT Not A Lot Of People Know That
37 NIFOC Nude In Front Of The Computer
38 NMU Not Much, You?
39 P911 Parent Alert
40 PAL Parents Are Listening
41 PAW Parents Are Watching
42 PIR Parent In Room
43 POS Parent Over Shoulder or Piece Of Sh**
44 PRON Porn
45 Q2C Quick To Cum
46 RU/18 Are You Over 18?
47 RUH Are You Horny?
48 S2R Send To Receive
49 SorG Straight or Gay
50 TDTM Talk Dirty To Me

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news...ld_Know_052009





Driving While Texting Remains Popular–And Dangerous
Matt Richtel

Despite widespread research indicating that texting while driving can cause dangerous–even deadly–distractions, the behavior remains rampant, according to a new survey.

The survey is the work of Vlingo, a company that makes software that translates spoken messages into text or email on mobile phones. Yes, that gives Vlingo a vested interest in establishing that DWT (Driving While Texting) is rampant, and that an alternative is preferable.

Nevertheless…

The company’s survey – drawn from a sample of 4,800 online participants – found that 26 percent of respondents send texts while driving. That’s about the same returns as last year, when the company
found that 28 percent DWT.

Not surprisingly, the behavior varies by age group. About 60 percent of people 16 to 19 reported TWD, compared to 49 percent of people 20 to 29, and 13 percent of people over 50.

The behavior also varied by state. The states with the highest percentage of text drivers: Tennessee (42 percent), New Jersey (35 percent), Alabama (34), Idaho (33) and Oklahoma (31.7).

There is a growing body of research that shows that texting while driving causes serious distraction–not just because it can take the hands off the wheel and eyes off the road, but also because driver
attention is directed away from wielding a multi-thousand-pound steel car.

But the research also might undermine Vlingo’s hopes that speaking into a phone is a safer alternative. A considerable body of research shows that even when people use hands-free technology, their attention spans are considerably divided–making them four times more likely to be involved in a crash than when not engaged in a virtual conversation.
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/...-dangerous/?hp





Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson is Branching Out

For years he watched with horror as the RIAA demanded money from tens of thousands of Americans, finally getting into the ring himself when federal judge Nancy Gertner connected him to Joel Tenenbaum, a young man in need of an attorney for his file-sharing suit.

The move made waves that continue to ripple—the resources and legal minds of Harvard Law would wade into the controversy and provide a much needed counterweight to the crushing RIAA litigation machine! But critics noted that this was only a single case, and it only came after years of recording industry lawsuits. Didn't Harvard's privileged profs need to do more?

It turns out that Nesson is doing more. Though his main involvement is with the Tenebaum case—where he plans to argue that file-sharing is simply fair use—Nesson is also involved in two similar cases. In one of them, the lawyers are asking that the RIAA be forced to return all the money it has ever collected from the settlement campaign.

Thomas and English

The best known of these is the Jammie Thomas case in Minnesota, where defendant Thomas faces another trial this summer after losing the first time around. Thomas' long-time attorney, Brian Toder, withdrew from the case recently, citing unpaid legal bills of $130,000.

One of Thomas' new lawyers is K.A.D. Camara, a Harvard Law grad who took classes from Nesson. Camara sounds like an intriguing guy; he was involved in a bizarre controversy during his time at Harvard after he uploaded course notes containing the word "nig" to refer to African-Americans. He was also the youngest graduate of Harvard Law, having skipped high school altogether to earn his JD at 19.

The Nesson link here isn't accidental; as the student team defending Joel Tenenbaum noted today, "Professor Nesson has played an active role in arranging for Jammie Thomas to be represented. And yes, with support and input from Professor Nesson and and our team, Thomas’ new attorneys will undoubtedly be re-styling and filing some of the arguments we’ve put forth in Joel’s defense here in Boston."

Given the skepticism which some of Nesson's own supporters have toward his legal approach, it's not clear that this will be a good thing for Thomas, though it may be the only real chance left to her. A jury was utterly unconvinced by her claims the last time around, so challenging the underlying legal framework of statutory damages and making fair use claims might actually have a greater chance of success.

I checked in with the student legal team at Harvard, who tell me that they remain "focused on Joel" but that "Professor Nesson is lending his guidance and inspiration to the other cases." Camara will also get some PR help from the team, sure to boost what is already guaranteed to be a high-profile retrial.

Nesson is also working with Camara on a third case, this one against college student Brittany English. Camara's website, which lists the case as "pro bono," says that the lawyers "are asking the courts to declare that statutory damages like these—150,000:1—are unconstitutional and that the RIAA’s campaign to extract settlements from individuals by the threat of such unconstitutional damages is itself unlawful, enjoin the RIAA’s unlawful campaign, and order the RIAA to return the $100M+ that it obtained as a result of its unlawful campaign."

A double whammy

In the unlikely event that Nesson, Camara, and the Harvard Law crew succeed in all of their goals, not only will file-sharing be redefined as fair use, but the recording industry will be out $100 million. Ouch.

And Nesson & Co. aren't finished yet. Debbie Rosenbaum, who handles PR for the Harvard Law students, says that the students "will need to recruit more students to work on Joel's case in the Fall, so we will hopefully be able to have enough manpower to take on even more cases then."

Back in 2007, we noticed that no prelitigation letters had yet gone to Harvard—an odd omission, but one possibly explained by the fact that "some of the best and brightest at Harvard Law School will get involved [in the cases] in a big way."

At the time, Nesson had already made his position clear, calling the RIAA out for "bully" tactics. Now that he's revved up, he seems intent on orchestrating a grand defense that goes far beyond his particular clients. Does that worry the music industry? It's certainly generating plenty of press, but if the RIAA was worried about bad press it would have stopped suing people long ago.

But despite all the activity and publicity, Nesson and crew still need to win in court. When you're arguing that the RIAA needs to return all its settlement money and that file-sharing is fair use, that's certainly not a given.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...ring-cases.ars


















Until next week,

- js.



















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