Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Jan. 25th, ‘03 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 23-01-03, 11:06 PM

Subpoena Stampedes

Score another big win for the RIAA. Say what you will about them (they’re sharks) but give them the credit they’re due, anything less is head in the sand.

On Tuesday they won their fight with the ISPs. From now on a record company or anyone, even you or your enemy, can receive detailed information about an ISP customer as long as a clerk is convinced the customer has shared copyrighted files. Previously subpoena warrants were issued by judges only. Verizon had protested the requirement, saying it was bad for business, bad for precedent, expensive, unwieldy and intrusive but the judge disagreed. Strongly. Cary Sherman president of the RIAA thinks the decision was a Great Day for America, but he might want to read his history. Warrant-less searches have been tried before and have ended in disaster. Germany comes to mind. Verizon plans an appeal.

As bad as it’s getting in the States, the Lillehammer has really dropped on another poor kid in Norway, where a court ruled in favor of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), fining student Frank Bruvik 100,000 crowns ($14,520 gulp) for building a Napster clone site and running it for just three months. That now makes them 3 for 4 in the North Countries. The IFPI has previously won suits in Sweden and Denmark and the one case they did lose - Norways’ “DVD Jon” - will be appealed.

Extra Extra

Not one to lose international momentum Hillary Rosen this week at the Midem conference in southern France proposed an extra “new idea” (it’s actually been kicked around for a while). ISPs should pay for all those files we trade. As you can imagine the ISPs weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect but if it happens they will of course pass the extra costs along to us. I suppose it’ll eventually work like this - it’s complicated so follow closely:

Hapless customers download files. Hapless customers send extra big checks to ISPs. RIAA takes extra big checks and hires extra big lawyers. Extra big lawyers use extra big checks to buy extra big SUVs. Extra big SUVs are perfect for extra big vacations and have extra big phones that lawyers use to send hapless customers to extra big prisons. So get your friends to practice baking extra big cakes with extra big files inside.

In an extra big twist the RIAA has denied the report. Reuters stands by it.

Are we clear?

When the internet is finally dead and we have to trade files on foot will Hillary’s clone subpoena the shoe companies (with the consent of the courts of course)? Stay tuned.

Every time you buy a record or pay to see a movie a fair bit of your cash goes to industry lobbying groups like the RIAA, MPAA and the IFPI. They use it to create laws like these. Indeed, without your money these laws wouldn’t be possible. Something to think about.

And your little dog too.

The very bright spot this week was the not totally unexpected announcement of the resignation of Hillary Rosen, storm trooper extraordinaire and head lobbyist for the “Damn the Peoples’ Rights” RIAA. Citing personal reasons (“They hate me, they really, really hate me!”) she’ll be melting at the end of the year. Can’t come too soon toots. You and your even creepier pal Valenti have done more harm to this fair land than you’ll ever know. Ding dong the witch is dead.

Enjoy,

Jack.

"She can punch you in the face, and you're still smiling after she does it."

"I never thought of myself as one of those separatist dykes," she says, "But I suppose if people see me that way, that's fine."

Hating Hilary
Matt Bai

Hilary Rosen paces the creaking oak floor of the Oxford Union debate hall, eyeing the empty pews the way a Roman gladiator might have surveyed the Colosseum. Rosen is the chair of the Recording Industry Association of America, and in a few hours she'll be standing here in a black formal gown, getting ripped to pieces. Along with several other industry executives, she's charged with defending the proposition: "This house believes that the free- music mentality is a threat to the future of music."

Of course, the students of "this house" believe nothing of the sort. "I myself have about 900 megabytes of music on my computer," Dave Watson, the union's president, tells me before the debate. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a group of students who've never downloaded music. You can't stop them, as long as it's free."

"Are you nervous?" I ask Rosen. She's checking out the two doors students will exit through to cast their votes - one for "ayes" and another for "noes." She looks a little hurt by the suggestion. "I just want to win," she says.

Most people in Rosen's place would consider themselves lucky just to make it out alive. Reviled by college kids, music fans, and more than a few recording artists for the RIAA's role in forcing the shutdown of Napster, Rosen is seen as the embodiment of a venal corporate culture hurtling toward obsolescence. It seems she'll stop at nothing to frighten those who share music online instead of buying it in a store - hacking into networks, threatening universities and businesses, sending out subpoenas to unmask music-swappers. Some Hilary haters have protested her speeches and urged others to mail her excrement. On a scale of odiousness, devotees of the Web site Whatsbetter?com rated Rosen just below Illinois Nazis but better than Michael Bolton (and way above pedophile priests). On the more serious side, death threats once prompted Rosen to travel with security.
"People take their free music seriously," Rosen says wryly.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/hating.html

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Norwegian student fined for online music piracy
Reuters

A court has fined a Norwegian student over his song-swap website in a ruling hailed by the music industry on Thursday as a victory for giants like EMI and Sony whose revenues have suffered from online music piracy.

The case, the first in Norway on downloading of music without copyright holders' approval, followed similar rulings in neighbouring Sweden and Denmark in favour of the industry.

The court in the southern city of Lillehammer ruled on Wednesday that Frank Bruvik broke the law when he made his own version of the now-closed U.S.-based website napster.com, enabling users to download songs by clicking on links on his site, napster.no.

"This was the most high-profile piracy site in Norway for downloading music and an important victory for us," Saemund Fiskvik, director general of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Norway, told Reuters.

The IFPI sued Bruvik together with Norway's TONO performing rights society, the Nordic Copyright Bureau and major music companies including EMI EMI.L , BMG [BERT.UL], Sony Music and Universal Music EAUG.PA V.N .

Bruvik, 24, was ordered to pay 100,000 crowns ($14,520), about a fifth of the music industry's original claim for estimated losses of sales caused by napster.no. Big music labels blame online piracy for a dramatic drop in CD sales.

"I call it even," said Bruvik's lawyer Magnus Stray Vyrje.

"The ruling said it is illegal to distribute the links, but that it's legal to use them. That is a victory for all Internet users in Norway," he told Reuters, estimating Norwegians make about 60-100 million pirated music copies per year.

Bruvik would probably appeal, he added. The deadline for any appeal is four weeks.

Fiskvik said Bruvik, who had developed the program as a school project in 2001, shut down the service after the lawsuit was filed late that year -- after a few months in operation.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2098420

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Quicker than you can say “Taliban”
Southern Methodist University Officials Ban All Peer-To-Peers
Katy Blakey

After checking his mailbox, Clark Castle, a sophomore advertising major, tore open a letter from the Information Technology Services Department and quickly discarded it on his way out of Hughes-Trigg. Like most of his peers he ignored the letter, which warned students about using file-sharing software applications to download music or movies that may be copyright protected.

"I didn't really give the letter much thought," said Castle. "It seemed just like another letter warning us about consequences that would never really be put in effect."

That night as Castle sat at his computer, he opened up the LimeWire program, which he had regularly used while at SMU, and began downloading new songs. After downloading a few songs he shut down his computer for the night.

"The next morning, I tried connecting to the Internet and it wouldn't let me," said Castle. "I thought at first that the server was just down until I tried logging on to a friends computer and could check my e-mail."

An e-mail from Information Technology Services told Castle that the network had detected illegal use of file sharing software and that his network connection had been disabled. To regain access to his connection he would have to either show proof that he had been given authorization to download copyrighted material or confirm in writing that he had deleted the program from his computer.

"I immediately deleted the program from my computer and wrote a letter and took it up to the center," said Castle. "When I got up there, I didn't even need to turn in my letter because there were already forms to fill out regarding the violation."

Until classes resumed for the Spring 2003 semester, users on the SMU server were able to download copyrighted computer games, movies and material from programs like LimeWire and Kazaa Media Desktop without any consequences. Starting this semester, students will no longer be able to download these commonly used file sharing programs.

If use of one of these programs is detected, the user will receive one warning to remove the program from their computer. If the user continues to participate in file sharing, his case can be taken to the Student Judicial Affairs and SMU Legal Affairs.
http://www.smudailycampus.com/vnews/.../3e2c92ebce33c

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Faster than you can say “Southern Methodist”
Islam Officials Destroy Tapes and CD's in Pakistani Province
AP

Officials in a deeply conservative Pakistani province destroyed audio and video tapes and compact discs today as part of a campaign to wipe out material the authorities deem obscene.

In front of a crowd of more than 1,000 people, officials doused gasoline on the materials piled up in a bazaar in Peshawar. The police chief, Tanveer ul-Haq Sipra, then set the pile on fire.

"We are determined to fulfill our promises about Islamization and cleaning up society," said Maulana Haji Ihsan ul-Haq, general-secretary of the Muthida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/in...ia/19TAPE.html

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RIAA monitors downloads while Carnegie Mellon U cuts off students
Matt Rado

A seemingly innocent download of the popular Disney film Monsters, Inc. gave one student a firsthand demonstration of Carnegie Mellon’s copyright policies.

First-year H&SS student Nayoung Joe was participating in what has become a fixture in college dorm rooms across the country when on December 12 she received a surprising email. Computing Services informed her that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was able to download copyrighted material off of her computer, and that Computing Services would suspend her Internet service for at least one full semester.

She thought a simple apology would correct the matter, but when Joe responded to the email, she was told she must wait at least one semester before CMU would consider reinstating her access.
http://www.thetartan.org/97/14/news/2843.asp

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The Deal
Amy Harmon

The major recording companies said yesterday that they would not seek government intervention to prevent digital piracy, in a compromise with computer companies that may hurt the movie industry's efforts to win support for its own anti-piracy plan.

As part of the agreement, the Recording Industry Association of America said that under most circumstances it would oppose legislation that would require computers and consumer electronics devices to be designed to restrict unauthorized copying of audio and video material. Technology executives have hotly opposed such measures, which they say would slow innovation, make their devices more expensive and do little to stop piracy.

In turn, the Business Software Alliance and another technology group, the Computer Systems Policy Project, said they would not support legislation that seeks to clarify and bolster the rights of people to use copyrighted material in the digital age, which the recording industry has opposed as unnecessary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Microsoft Introduces CD Copy-Protection 'Fix'
Bernhard Warner

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O announced on Saturday the introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry's side.

Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or "burning," new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers.

For example, most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too.

Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's 6758.T proprietary technology simply by scribbling a magic marker pen around the edges of the disc, thus enabling playback on any device.

Microsoft believes it may have come up with a solution. The new software is called the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit.

It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.

The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2068044

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Hillary: ISPs should pay for music swapping
Reuters

A top music industry representative said Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.

The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy.

Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source--Internet service providers (ISPs).

"We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera.

"Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981281.html

RIAA Denies Story
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,46652,00.html

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U.S. becoming Big Brother society: Report
Associated Press

San Francisco — The United States is evolving into a Big Brother society as technology advances and post-Sept. 11 surveillance increases, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a new report.

"The reasonable expectation of privacy has been dramatically diminished," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, said in an interview following Wednesday's release of the report "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society."

"A combination of lightning-fast technological innovations and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from an oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life," the report said.

A growing "surveillance monster" is emerging, it argues, in which the private and the public sector are monitoring Americans with video cameras to the extent that it is becoming almost impossible to walk the streets of major cities without being filmed. Yet there are virtually no rules governing what can be done with those tapes.

Computer chip technology currently in use to speed motorists through tollbooths might one day be used on identification cards to allow police officers to "scan your identification when they pass you on the street," the report said.

The study points to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is exploring amassing a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records. There are few privacy laws to prevent businesses from selling the government such information, Mr. Steinhardt said.

"If we do not act to reverse the current trend, data surveillance - like video surveillance - will allow corporations or the government to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day," the report said.

Moreover, under the Patriot Act - the anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks - the government can demand that libraries turn over reading habits of patrons. Authorities can more easily attain telephone and computer wiretaps, and conduct searches in secret without immediately notifying the target.
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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New WinMx Trojan? UTC’s Lion says maybe. http://www.unitethecows.com/forums/s...?threadid=5625

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Pentagon database plan hits snag
CNET News.com

Washington — A Pentagon antiterrorism plan to link databases of credit card companies, health insurers and others — creating what critics call a "domestic surveillance apparatus" — is encountering growing opposition on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a bill on Thursday to halt the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program. A representative said on Wednesday that if passed, the legislation would suspend the TIA program until Congress can "review the data-mining issues."

Even if Congress never acts on Mr. Feingold's proposal, the unusual step of trying to suspend a military program may prompt the Defense Department to review the TIA program in a way few other tactics could. The bill will also provide TIA critics with a focal point for activism.

If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor vehicle departments for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists. It's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Over the last two months, scrutiny of TIA has been growing, with newspaper editorials claiming that one of the project's leaders, Adm. John Poindexter, is unfit for the job because of his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. As a protest gesture, activists and critics of TIA have posted Mr. Poindexter's personal information on-line, which may lie behind the removal of information from the TIA Web site on at least three occasions.

On Tuesday, a coalition of civil liberties groups sent a letter to Congress asking that hearings be convened to investigate TIA.

"Why is the Department of Defense developing a domestic surveillance apparatus?" the letter asked. "What databases of personal information would TIA envision having access to?"

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Battered Record Execs Set to Face the Music
Fri January 17, 2003 09:38 AM ET
Bernhard Warner and Merissa Marr

Global recorded music sales look set to fall for the fourth straight year in 2003 thanks to piracy and the economic downturn, and its bosses are desperate for solutions.

Executives gathering for the global music industry conference Midem in southern France this weekend know it's make or break time.

The bruised industry needs a new formula as fans increasingly spend their disposable income on video games and "burn" their own CD compilations while labels desperately seek a new crop of long-lasting stars.

Major music labels have so far responded by slashing jobs, axing B-list artists and trimming back their bloated businesses. However, the industry appears no closer to a long-term solution than last year and talk of consolidation among the big five music companies is growing louder by the day.

"2003 will be the tipping point. The fundamentals continue to deteriorate and consolidation will have to happen," said Michael Nathanson, media analyst at U.S.-based investment research firm Sanford Bernstein.

"The outlook is miserable. It's going to take at least two years to get out of this and a lot of people will disappear in the process," one music executive predicted.
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=2064138

Music Official: Online Piracy Costs Jobs
Bernhard Warner

In its harshest indictment yet of Internet piracy, a top official of the music industry said Sunday Europe's 600,000 music professionals risk losing their jobs unless the industry fights back.

"They are all potential victims of online music piracy," Jay Berman, the CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told music executives in his annual address at the Midem music conference in southern France.

"In truth, online music piracy is not about free music. The music creators and rights holders, denied the right to choose how their music is used and enjoyed, are in fact paying the price," Berman said in a fiery speech.

The music industry is facing its fourth straight year of declining sales. Executives blame the rise of Internet file-sharing services such as Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus, plus rampant CD copying by consumers and organized criminal groups.

Berman challenged music executives at the major music labels, which include Warner Music, Vivendi Music, BMG, EMI and Sony Music, to tackle its nemesis head-on.

He urged them to pump more money into promoting industry-backed subscription download services and step up lobbying efforts to bring a new piece of European legislation, The Copyright Directive, into law on the local level.

Berman accused the telecommunications industry of derailing the Copyright Directive, which has won support in Brussels, but still requires 13 of the 15 European Union member states to adopt on the local level.

If passed, it would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on the grounds that it put them in the costly role of having to police their customers.

Compared to the United States, which has the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Europe lacks strong laws that would penalize individuals for distributing and reproducing copyrighted materials such as music, films and software.

Berman also criticized comments made by chart-topping British pop star Robbie Williams, who Saturday called file-sharing "great."

There are a lot of artists out there who haven't signed Robbie-like deals," Berman said, referring to Williams' estimated $125 million mega-deal with Britain's EMI.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2070260

International music business closes ranks to fight Internet threat
Audrey Stuart

Faced with the seemingly unstoppable flood of free music accessible on the Internet the world's music business is finally pulling together to fight back, industry trade body chiefs believe.

"I sense a huge coming together in the music industry around the world," Hilary Rosen, head of the powerful Recording Industry Association of America told MidemNet here.

Held on the eve of MIDEM, the music industry's largest trade show, the one-day MidemNet meeting is focused on the new technologies like the Internet that are driving and transforming the music sector business.

But having turned from music business darling into its greatest challenge as free online music services drain revenue away from the recording industry and artists, there was a palpable feeling of anxiety at this year's MidemNet.

How to turn consumers into paying customers - or "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free" - are among the conundrums facing the industry today and the focus for the brainstorming MidemNet meeting.

Worldwide music sales nose-dived 9.2 percent last year with the U.S., home to music recording giants EMI and Universal Music to name two, one of the hardest hit with sales down 11 percent. With the total world market worth a cool $30.3 billion in revenue in 2002, pressure to staunch this flow is mounting.

Most of the blame has been placed on the surge in downloading from free Internet music services.

"We're talking about hundreds of millions of unauthorized music files being shared around the world and made available, just by the click of a mouse. The magnitude of it is staggering," Jay Berman, chairman and CEO of the world industry trade body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said.

"This (downloading) is already having a profound impact on the business. The number of releases is down substantially," Burnham added.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/techn...-5307323c.html

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The Rolling Heads
Sue Zeidler

Jay Boberg, president of Vivendi Universal's MCA Records, home to acts such as Mary J. Blige and Sublime, resigned on Thursday, becoming the second high-profile record industry executive to step down in a week.

The departure of Boberg, 44, came on the heels of the sudden resignation last week of Thomas Mottola, the powerful head of rival recording giant Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment, replaced one day later by an industry outsider, Andrew Lack, a top NBC executive.

Both shake-ups at Sony and Universal, as well as recent layoffs at Bertelsmann AG's BMG, underscored to many in the industry the fragile state of the recording business.

"We're just having a huge leadership shake-up in the music industry as it repositions and redefines itself and tries to experiment and redetermine the winning formula," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research. "It's unclear how the music industry intends to make money with the CD becoming less and less a desirable product for consumers."

Boberg, a Harvard Business School graduate, is credited with overseeing the growth of big acts like Blink-182, Sublime, Shaggy, and Blige at MCA.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2060702

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eMule v0.25b is now available http://www.emule-project.net/

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Mix master iPod makes music of juxtapositions
Tom Moon

Last spring, the New York Times Magazine devoted a full page to the contents of the musician Beck's iPod portable MP3 player. The list wasn't terribly surprising -- obscure Brazilian pop of the '60s, several pieces by 20th-Century dissonance master Anton Webern, some Bing Crosby and Blind Willie McTell.

I remember wondering: What's the big deal? Of course an artist who revels in curious juxtapositions and collisions of "found" sounds would feed his head with minor classics and arcana, lost beats from every hidden corner of the globe.

What I didn't appreciate then was what Beck and other MP3-enabled types had been saying: That having so much music at your fingertips, with the ability to organize and quickly regroup tunes to follow one stylistic path or mix several, actually changes the listening experience.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...isuretempo-hed

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Campuses License Xythos Technology
Press Release

Boston College, University of California at Irvine, and University of Memphis have selected Xythos Software, a developer of Internet file management software, to implement file management solutions for their campus communities. More than 20 colleges and universities have licensed the company's products to address file sharing needs both on and off campus. With Xythos, students, faculty, and administrators can access and share any type of education related content including course syllabi, records, lesson plans, and assignments from any Internet connection while maintaining control and security of this information.
http://www.econtentmag.com/ecxtra/20...03_0117_4.html

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This Is Your Deep Link on P2P
Michelle Delio

Following links from one Web page to another may soon require users to run special stealth applications, if a Danish search company's experience is a sign of things to come.

To link directly to some newspapers' content, Danish search firm Newsbooster now must use the sort of decentralized subterfuge utilized by companies that distribute file-sharing applications.

File-sharing systems such as Kazaa and Gnutella have so far avoided the sort of legal hassles that brought down Napster by networking their users' computers together, instead of serving up files from a single server. The accepted wisdom is that it's easier to pursue corporations whose software may be used to violate copyrights, but tracking down and stopping a dispersed network of individual violators is significantly more difficult.

"Newsbrowser" offers all the same features as Newsbooster's original Web-based service, but through a separate, downloadable program that runs on a user's own computer.

"Newsbooster cannot and will not accept limits on the free possibilities of the Internet," Lassen said. "We will continue to fight for a legal ruling that recognizes the difference between a referral via a link and the copying of protected information. But in the meantime, there is Newsbrowser."

"Since copyright is intended to promote authorship and dissemination, it is best served by encouraging these deep links, not threatening and suing them out of existence," said Wendy Seltzer, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney and founder of the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, a project to study and combat the legal threats to the Internet.

"However, as we've seen from some of the silly cease-and-desists Chilling Effects has received, and the Newsbooster case, not all copyright holders are so sensible. Newsbrowser sounds like a rational response to ill- considered enforcement."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57230,00.html

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Court Rules Against Network Associates' Software Review Policy
Matt RichelI

New York court has ruled that Network Associates, a maker of popular antivirus and computer security software, may not require people who buy the software to get permission from the company before publishing reviews of its products.

The decision, which the company has vowed to appeal, could carry a penalty in the millions of dollars, according to Ken Dreifach, chief of the Internet bureau of the office of the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.

Last spring, Mr. Spitzer sued Network Associates, which has its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., asserting that the company's software included an unenforceable clause that effectively violated consumers' free speech. The clause, which appeared on software products and the company's Web site, read: "The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates Inc."

In a decision the parties received late Thursday, Justice Marilyn Shafer of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the clause was deceptive and that it warranted a fine, which she wrote that she would determine in the future.

Mr. Dreifach said the decision had implications beyond Network Associates. "These types of clauses are not uncommon," he said. The decision "raises the issue of whether these types of clauses — whether they restrict use, resale or the right to criticize — are enforceable," he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/business/18SOFT.html

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“So please, be online. But be protected.”
Optimum Online - Scare mongering and propaganda

Please note that "upstream" refers only to the sending of information or files from your computer out to the Internet (which is what a server does) and not the receiving of files or Web pages at your computer. In other words, even if your upstream speed were throttled due to abuse, your "downstream" speed would not be affected--and you would still be able to download music, video, games and Web pages in seconds with your Optimum Online service.

In fact, Optimum Online is a great, fast way to download music! We encourage you to try out the Optimum Online Rhapsody service for one week free to see for yourself the power of unlimited access to 20,000 albums with CD- quality sound from any computer you choose. Just click here to get started!
http://www.optonline.net/Home/Articl...%3Dreg,00.html

Encourage? Don’t be modest OOL, you downright insist! If ISPs succeed in stopping uploads then the only way most of us will be able to get any content at all will be through your paid gateways, sharing with friends will be a bitter memory.

“Click here to end P2P’s!” is what they’re really working towards and that’s what I call abuse.

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“It is ludicrous for the illicit toll-collector to argue that if people can learn how to cross the Brooklyn Bridge without paying the illicit toll, then legitimate toll collectors will be at risk.”

The DMCRA is Consistent With the DMCA
John T. Mitchell

Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), along with Representatives John Doolittle (R-CA), Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), introduced the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act of 2003 (H.R. 107, or “DMCRA”), which would, among other things, make it no longer unlawful to circumvent access control technologies for the purpose of making lawful (noninfringing) use of a work protected by copyright. This is just common sense. We make it a crime to break into cars, but we don’t criminalize breaking into your own car when you locked the keys inside. And even in the case of criminals, we’ve never found any valid reason for letting an automobile manufacturer sue people for breaking into cars the manufacturer no longer owns. Why should record companies and movie studios be allowed to sue people for breaking into their own music and film collections? This was certainly an unintended side effect of the DMCA.

This amendment is long overdue. It protects the DMCA from potential invalidation, it brings the DMCA in line with our treaty obligations, it creates a powerful incentive for copyright holders to use technological access controls for lawful purposes only, and it protects the rights of the least advantaged.

Opponents of H.R. 107 claim that the DMCRA would weaken, undermine, gut, eviscerate, or otherwise wreak havoc with the DMCA – that the exception would swallow the rule. They are only kidding themselves – Congress should know better.

To call the DMCRA as just a “fair use” bill does it a disservice. None of the uses described…constitute “fair use” under the Copyright Act. Because none are infringing in the first place.
http://interactionlaw.com/interactionlaw/id9.html

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From Filter – varied reactions to the courts’ Kazaa/ISP ruling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan22.html

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After the copyright smackdown: What next?
Don't despair at the Supreme Court's gift to Disney, says one expert. The fight has really only just begun.
Siva Vaidhyanathan

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Congress was within its constitutional bounds to extend the duration of all copyrights by 20 years -- up to 70 years beyond the life of the author and potentially infinitely -- many saw the ruling as a knockout blow to the movement to reform copyright.

Some on the public interest side are tempted to lament what could be called the "Dred Scott case for culture," unjustifiably locking up content that deserves to be free. After all, six of the nine justices concurred with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she issued a stark opinion that cavalierly dismissed the historical "bargain" that justified American copyright in the first place: We the People agree to grant a limited, temporary monopoly to a creator or publisher in exchange for access to creativity and the eventual return of the work to a state of freedom.

And Ginsburg's opinion did not allow that the purpose of copyright is to encourage future production, not lock up works already created. She ignored the fact that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 does nothing to "promote the progress" of science or art because it grants no incentive to produce and distribute new works.

So out of despair some might see civil disobedience -- hacking and freely distributing songs and films over digital networks -- as the only remaining response to the excesses of the copyright regimes and the hold they have over courts and Congress.

While disobedience might be more fun, the power of civil discourse remains. In fact, the ruling gives public interest activists both motivation and ammunition in the continuing battle against the excessive expansion of the power to control information and culture.

As is so often the case, the best rallying cry came from a dissenter in the case. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: "It is easy to understand how the statute might benefit the private financial interests of corporations or heirs who won existing copyrights. But I cannot find any constitutionally legitimate, copyright-related way in which the statute will benefit the public." This is the key to any public interest movement: Show that narrow special interests are getting away with everything and the public interest is suffering.

Yet Ginsburg herself aided the public's rhetorical cause even while ruling against its interests. While dismissing the notion that excessive copyright expansion has severe First Amendment implications, she invoked two of the classic democratic safeguards of American copyright: the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use. Because of these two concepts, Ginsburg concluded, the court need not take the censorious power of copyright seriously.

The idea/expression dichotomy means that copyright does not protect facts or ideas. It only protects specific expressions of facts or ideas. This allows us to cite a fact or idea while criticizing another writer or building on another's work.

Fair uses are small allowances for the public good, exceptions to the sweeping powers that a copyright holder enjoys. A teacher may invoke fair use, for instance, when showing a film in class. A student uses another's work fairly if she quotes a small portion in a research paper.

Ginsburg's expression of faith in the power of the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use does not recognize that both these rights are under attack in Congress and lower courts right now. The motion picture, music, publishing, and software industries are trying to expand their control over the machines in your home to limit the uses you might make of material you have lawfully purchased.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ght/index.html

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Court Deaf to Public-Domain Pleas
Michael Grebb

The Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday to uphold a controversial law extending copyrights for 20 years came as a blow to public-domain advocates.

The 7-2 ruling (PDF) in Eldred v. Ashcroft gives Congress free reign to hand out copyright extensions as long as media companies are around to lobby for them -- all while rejecting most arguments brought by the plaintiffs to the contrary.

"Litigation is not the path anymore," acknowledged Joe Kraus, co-founder of DigitalConsumer.org, a consumer rights group that focuses on digital copyright issues. "The pressure needs to now turn toward our elected officials in Congress.... The domain just got taken off the table. Now all we have is fair use."

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he was "pleased that the court reaffirmed the absolute authority of Congress to set copyright terms."

Broussard, however, noted that the decision could someday haunt copyright owners because it clarifies that Congress is the ultimate forum for copyright law. If Congress someday took away terms now enjoyed by copyright owners, he said, it might be more difficult to argue that it's an act of "taking away" under the Fifth Amendment.

"That seems to be the other edge of this decision," he said.

While the lobbying strength of media companies makes such prospects unlikely any time soon, the future balance of power may depend on the success of grassroots efforts.

"It's my hope that there's actually good to come out of this decision," said Kraus of DigitalConsumer.org. "It's a wake-up call. It's a rallying cry."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57237,00.html

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Boo Hoo. Poor Aussies Getting Sheared like Sheep By Shrewd U.S. Telcos
Garry Barker

United States telecommunications companies are "screwing" Australia on Internet content transmission, says the Minister for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Richard Alston.

He said Australia paid for transmission in both directions and the US paid nothing.

"We and other countries have made repeated efforts to (correct the situation) but nothing has been done and is not likely to be done," he said. "The Americans take the view that might is right."

Senator Alston was speaking after the publication in Melbourne of the report of the Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) set up by the Federal Government a year ago to examine the development of broadband communications in Australia.

The report urges a national broadband strategy across all levels of government and industry and makes 19 recommendations, most of them touching on issues already well accepted in the communications industry - even self-evident.

Although it stops short of proposing price caps or controls, the BAG urges the government to require the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate industry concerns about domestic Internet "peering" arrangements (charging between peer companies) and monitor progress towards an open, competitive broadband market.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...911531247.html

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Austrailian ISPs ignore US copyright attack

Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have doused reported attempts by a US digital copyright solutions company to force them to terminate the Internet contracts of customers suspected of breaching copyright rules.

MediaForce, a US digital copyright solutions company claiming to act on behalf of Warner Bros, has reportedly sent a letter to at least one Australian ISP listing a series of IP addresses it claims have been used to illegally access copyrighted material. The letter goes on to request the user of the IP addresses be denied access, and that their account be terminated.

"Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following: 1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you," read the letter, a copy of which has been posted on broadband forum site Whirlpool.

None of the five ISPs contacted by ZDNet Australia claimed to have received the letter, but most indicated they would be unlikely to comply with the requests in the letter if they did receive one.

"We wouldn't act on it because Warner Bros is not a government body that would act on those things," Iain McKimm, Pacific Internet's director of technology and strategy told ZDNet Australia . "We can't act as police, we have to act on what the guidelines are."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/sec...0271225,00.htm

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RIAA can't touch UK ISPs, says lawyer
Dinah Greek

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is unlikely to be able to hold UK internet service providers (ISPs) accountable for customers downloading illegal music files, according to a lawyer.

The RIAA has said that ISPs must be made to pay a charge to offset revenues lost to the music industry from people illegally downloading music.

But according to Stuart Nuttall, of solicitors Fladgate Fielder, the grounds on which the music industry intends to 'fine' ISPs are flawed. The move is simply an attempt to look for someone else to blame for falling CD sales, he said.

Nuttall indicated that the RIAA is unlikely to be successful in the UK.

"It is part of a trend by the RIAA to hit soft targets. But it flies in the face of economic developments and stops the music industry looking closely at other ways of selling music," explained Nuttall.

But a judge in the US has already given the music industry the power to force American ISPs to name those who trade music files across their servers.

In a landmark judgement, a US judge ordered the online division of Verizon Communications to give the RIAA the name of a customer who had downloaded as many as 600 songs a day using the popular Kazaa music file-sharing service.

But Nuttall suggested that even a move like this in the UK could fall foul of a number of laws designed to protect consumers.

"In the UK I would seriously question the validity of any claim and think it would be unenforceable," he said. "Monitoring customers' internet activities could fall foul of UK data protection laws."

ISPs are open to forming alliances with the music industry, according to online music distribution company OD2.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1138202

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Congress needs to codify fair use
Ted Como

Kudos to Rep. Rick Boucher, who will carry on efforts to protect consumers' fair use of digital material regardless of an agreement last week between music and technology industries over digital copyright.

Earlier this month, Rep. Boucher reintroduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which would grant rights under the fair use exemption of copyright law to repurpose digital media that you pay for. Boucher knows well that absent all interested parties, the agreement, though a major advance on behalf of consumers of digital media, likely will not prevent efforts to handicap use of digital content. That's why it's important to codify fair use and it's past time Congress acted.

The agreement is hailed as a truce in an ongoing battle over piracy of digital content, and I take no issue with efforts by factions of the music industry to protect the rights of artists whose material is stolen and distributed over the Internet. We all are entitled to the fruits of our labor and downloading music without paying for it is no different that stealing a paycheck.

But while music representatives who signed onto the agreement with various purveyors of technology are to be commended, others who did not would take a different approach - the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) foremost among them. MPAA would dictate how we all use technology and in the process, strangle technological development. That's what Rick Boucher wants to prevent.

MPAA would require makers of computers, DVD players, CD-ROMs and other devices build copyright protection technology into their products. A bill introduced in the last Congress by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and co- sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Outer Limits) would allow government to mandate how technology is developed and used - something citizens of China may be accustomed to but nothing we need in a free enterprise system.

Even should such an effort succeed legislatively, it won't work practically. As with evolution, technology is unstoppable and there's no better way to energize something than government telling us we can't do it.
http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3168899

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Web pirates raise flags on college campuses
Ryan Smith

The bedtime stories that Sheldon Steinbach read to his daughter when she was young always included something a little extra.

"I always read the copyright notice," he said. "She must have been mind-boggled when she was 3."

Now that she’s grown, Mr. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education in Washington, figures that if anyone appreciates copyright laws, it’s his daughter.

For many of today’s youths, however, copyright law is little more than a pesky thing to be ignored en route to burning the latest Eminem CD or Star Wars prequel. And with the speed and capacity of college computer networks, universities have increasingly found their systems a breeding ground for offenders.

Some students say they just don’t care.

"I think especially with college students, the feeling is, ‘If I can get if free, I’ll take it free,’" said Matt Vandermeulen, a BGSU senior from Chicago.

Mr. Carroll used to count himself among that group. When the online music-swapping service Napster became popular a few years ago, he admittedly downloaded around 400 songs.

Now he discourages his friends from helping themselves to free tunes.

"I began to realize that that’s what made the Internet so slow," he said. "It just became so ridiculous."
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...1190075&Ref=AR

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SmartRight demonstrates digital content protection system
Press Release

SmartRight has demonstrated a complete smart-card based end-to-end digital content protection system for home-networked consumer electronics devices at last week's International Consumer Electronics Show.

The demonstration showed how usage rights associated with content are enforced on a digital home network comprising a set-top box, a hard disk drive and a TV set linked together over IEEE 1394. SmartRight is based on the use of removable security modules, such as smart cards, which provide a cost-effective and renewable solution to protect content against hacking.

Member companies participating in the initiative include Canal+ Technologies, Micronas, Nagravision, SchlumbergerSema, STMicroelectronics, SCM Microsystems, and Thomson. Olivier Lafaye, General Manager, Innovation Projects at Thomson, has said "The initiative has gained and continues to gain rapid momentum and acceptance, highlighted recently by SCM joining the initiative last month."

SmartRight aims to offer a complete solution to ensure copy protection and content management on digital home networks. The new copy protection system has been proposed to the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) ad-hoc group on Copy Protection Technology which is currently defining technical requirements for content protection in digital home entertainment networks, which include devices such as TV sets, set-top boxes, DVD players, digital video recorders, and PCs.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14498

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STM demonstrate 'advanced satellite broadcast services'
Press Release

Switzerland's STMicroelectronics (ST), the world's third largest semi-conductor company, has announced that it
successfully operated a live 8PSK turbo-coded satellite digital TV broadcast during a satellite test in "France Telecom Reseaux et Services Internationaux" premises in Rambouillet, France.

The demonstration, which took place on 5 December 2002, was based on ST's STV0499 8PSK Turbo Coding technology, which increases throughput for advanced satellite broadcast services up to 50% over today's commercial satellite links.

The demonstration, which featured an actual satellite connection, highlights STMicroelectronics' collaboration with French satellite pay-TV operator TPS and Eutelsat, which provided the satellite link. The system that has been demonstrated provides satellite broadcasters with an efficient method of increasing throughput over existing satellite infrastructures and providing new services for their customers. Additional services that may be offered include increased numbers of standard TV channels, HDTV and internet download.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14496

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K-Lite forums off the boards. Host trouble or something internal? Reaction http://www.internal-technologies.net...3ffa42ae3682e6

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Court mulls Madster restart request
Deep representing himself
Kevin Harlin

Madster founder John Deep was in U.S. District Court on Wednesday asking a judge to let him restart his file-swapping service so he can defend himself against piracy accusations and eventually pay off creditors.

Deep, who represented himself before Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, said Madster -- shut down since Dec. 2 by order of a federal judge in Chicago -- is suffering irreparable financial harm and that is threatening his ability to pay off creditors in a separate bankruptcy case.

Deep wants Kahn to temporarily freeze the Chicago copyright case, which would essentially void the Dec. 2 order.

It also would force the major record companies and movie studios to move their efforts to shut down Madster to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albany.

"Jurisdiction battles really matter when you're the one going up against some of the biggest companies in the world, represented by some of the biggest law firms in the world," Deep said after the hearing. "I really do think I can win if we can make it a fair fight."
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories... te=1/16/2003

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Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB
Michael Lasky

Take a look at one of those credit cards in your wallet. That's the exact size and thickness of an upcoming, revolutionary removable storage device called StorCard.

Created by a company with the same name, StorCard can contain from 100MB to more than 5GB of data on a plastic card. At first glance, it looks like a credit card, and even has a magnetic strip like a credit card, for potential use in standard credit card readers.

The hard disk data, however, is accessed on a tiny spinning disk inside the thin card.

"The card actually has moveable parts inside its thin shell," says Bill Heil, vice president of StorCard.

A spinning wheel made of Mylar is engaged when the card is inserted into a StorReader, a USB-connected drive or PC Card that reads and writes to the StorCard. The reader is expected to retail for under $100 and the cards for under $15 each, Heil says.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108816,00.asp

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No Future For Record Labels Speculates Sony CEO
Steven Levy

It is the only company with premium positions in both the gizmo world and the media world. At AOL Time Warner, synergy is an epithet, but in Tokyo the promise not only survives, but thrives. To Idei, everything comes together with his beloved buzzword: broadband. Sony will create not only network-connected products but also devise services that deliver the content—much of which Sony owns through its own music, movie and game divisions. (The early models for this include the wildly popular online game called EverQuest and an interactive television guide.) Sony may even have a hand in new forms of currency used to purchase such services: through its own bank, the company offers Tokyo train commuters a smart-card payment system.

To realize this vision requires not only imaginative new products that exploit the vaunted “Sony DNA,” but altering the dynamics within Sony itself.

“The company was built in a vertical silo fashion, to cultivate the independence that was prized by Mr. Morita,” says Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony USA. “At the end of the analog age, the operating companies actually didn’t get along well.” Idei realized that this had to change. “Now everybody in every aspect of the company is talking to each other,” says Sir Howard.

The necessity for such bridge-building led to the recent ouster of Sony Music’s longtime leader Tommy Mottola, whose unwillingness to confer with the rest of Sony on a new business model forced the change to an outsider, NBC television executive Andrew Lack. “If you keep talking about networks, you have to practice good networking in your own company,” says Stringer. Lack’s new job will be to try to figure out how to add value to Sony’s music division by integrating J. Lo and Bob Dylan into the interlocking stream of revenue generators that Sonyites call the Ubiquitous Value Network.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/861338.asp?0cv=TB10&cp1=1

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In blow to consumers, Canada blocks internet TV
John Borland

Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses.

The long-awaited decision helped close what some had seen as a loophole in international copyright law, potentially allowing American and Canadian TV signals to be streamed online without the TV stations' or copyright holders' permission. However, regulators said they were wary of undermining traditional producers and distributors of TV content by allowing it to be distributed on the Net without regional restrictions.

"At present, there is no completely workable method of ensuring that Internet retransmissions are geographically contained," the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission wrote in its decision. "The likelihood that a program retransmitted over the Internet would become available worldwide could significantly reduce the opportunities" for copyright owners.

The commission's decision comes largely in response to a string of start-ups that had hoped to take advantage of Canadian law to create businesses streaming live television on the Web. The prospect horrified programmers and TV producers and prompted one high-profile lawsuit against an early start-up.

The decision had been closely watched by the industry. However, the urgency of the issue dissipated somewhat late last year, when Canadian legislators independently blocked the loophole that would have allowed Internet retransmission of TV programming without the broadcasters' permission.

The United States National Association of Broadcasters, which assisted in the IcraveTV case and filed comments with the Canadian Commission, welcomed the decision.

"We regard this decision as a major victory for consumers in the protection of free, over-the-air television signals and programming," the group said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981254.html

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Sprint DSL's Gaping Security Hole
Brian McWilliams

Sprint DSL customers are at risk of having their e-mail addresses and passwords stolen -- even when their computers are powered off -- due to weak security controls on their DSL modems.

Experts warned this week that the security problem could enable Internet vandals to wreak havoc from afar with the ZyXel Communications DSL modems issued by Sprint to tens of thousands of its FastConnect broadband customers.

Sprint officials acknowledged that remote access to the administrative software embedded in the ZyXel Prestige 642 and 645 modems is by default protected with a password of "1234." But the company said users are responsible for securing the equipment, which stores login data, including the user's e-mail address and password.

"We recommend that customers change the (administrative) password to increase security, but we recognize that not all customers change the password as recommended," said Sprint FastConnect spokeswoman Laura Tigges.

Tigges admitted that Sprint does not provide instructions for resetting the administrative password in the documentation provided to FastConnect customers.

Sprint could not say how many of its more than 110,000 DSL customers might be affected by the security issue. But a scan of a sample of Internet addresses used by Sprint DSL customers revealed that more than 90 percent of the ZyXel DSL modems found had the widely known default administrative password.

Not to be confused with the Sprint DSL account password, the administrative password allows a remote user to access the modem's configuration software over the Internet.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,57342,00.html

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Prosecutors Appeal DVD Case
AP

Norwegian prosecutors will appeal the acquittal of a Norwegian teenager charged with digital burglary for creating and circulating a program online that cracks the security codes on DVDs.

Rune Floisbonn, a prosecutor with Norway's economic crimes police, told the NTB news agency Monday that an appeal would be filed. He did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

Jon Lech Johansen, 19, was found innocent of violating Norway's data break-in laws Jan. 7, in a ruling that gave prosecutors two weeks to decide whether to appeal the high profile case. That deadline expires Tuesday.

"An appeal was expected," Johansen's attorney, Halvor Manshaus, told AP by telephone. "I haven't gotten it confirmed ... but I believe it is correct and that there will be an appeal."

Floisbonn told Nettavisen, a Norwegian online newspaper, that prosecutors would challenge the Oslo City Court's interpretation of the law and the evidence presented in their case against Johansen.

In its unanimous 25-page ruling, the three-member court found Johansen -- known in Norway as DVD-Jon -- innocent on all charges.

The ruling was a key test in how far copyright holders can go in preventing duplication of their intellectual property. It said that consumers have rights to view legally obtained DVD films "even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57301,00.html

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Xlife Updates Acquisition With Improved Filtering

Xlife has released an update for Acquisition, bringing it to version 0.72. Acquisition
is a gnutella client designed for peer-to-peer file sharing. The update ships with support for pervasive contextual menus and improved filtering. According to Xlife:

Acquisition 0.72 has just been released.

Acquisition is a gnutella client supporting modern gnutella features such as Ultrapeers, swarm (multi-source) downloads, download resumption, and distributed network discovery. Acquisition is built using code from the LimeWire gnutella client, and consequently supports the same rich set of protocol features.

Acquisition features an elegant single-window user interface with a convenient drawer summarizing current searches, network activity, and active transfers. Unlike other P2P clients, Acquisition is designed with usability and simplicity as the primary goals.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/20.11.shtml

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Five ways Sony’s new chief can save the music biz
Randall Rothenberg

Make KaZaa your friend -- for research. Andy, if you haven't tried KaZaa, Limewire, or another peer-to-peer program, do it now. You'll notice something interesting: They not only allow you to illegally download music from peers; they also allow you to legally peer directly into their music collections. On a mass scale, that means it's possible to do consumer research that was unimaginable in the era of surveys and focus groups. With a bit of rocket science and a few clever algorithms, you can cross-reference peoples' music preferences in a way that will revolutionize target marketing, and dramatically improve the recording industry's marketing ROI.
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36931

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New box throttles campus uploads
Andrea James

Students, faculty and staff have a small purple box to thank for maintaining a high- speed Internet connection on campus this semester.

The device, called Packetshaper, was purchased by AU e-Operations last fall to prevent file- sharing programs, such as Kazaa, from causing another network standstill, according to Director of Network Security Eric Weakland.

University officials had to react quickly last fall when a new version of Kazaa—a popular file-sharing program—caused the school’s network to slow down and to utilize 99 percent of its communication capacity, as previously reported in The Eagle.

Packetshaper, composed of hardware and software, physically sits between AU’s network and the outside world, according to Weakland.

“The software looks at network traffic and applies rules that we set,” he said. “If it sees Kazaa usage going through the roof, it will basically tell it to slow down.”

The software is not an invasion of privacy because it doesn’t actually read data such as e-mails, according to Weakland.

Because AU has a high-speed Internet connection, Kazaa users worldwide like to download files from AU students. Consequently, the University uses methods to control Kazaa traffic without blocking it completely, according to Weakland.

The purchase of the new hardware was made necessary last fall when a new version of Kazaa was released that functioned different from earlier versions and therefore took a heavy toll on the network’s speed and accessibility, Weakland
http://www.theeagleonline.com/section.cfm/94/2/4304

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The Eric Eldred Act FAQ
Larry’s Lessig’s got a great idea to get stuff back into the pubic domain.

Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...ves/EAFAQ.html

Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art's Expense
Lawrence Lessig

The Supreme Court decided this week that the Constitution grants Congress an essentially unreviewable discretion to set the lengths of copyright protections however long it wants, and even to extend them.

While the court was skeptical about the wisdom of the extension, seven justices believed it was not their role to second-guess "the First Branch," as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it. As I argued the opposite before the court for my clients, a group of creators and publishers who depend on public domain works, I won't say I agree. But there is something admirable in the court acknowledging and respecting limits on its own power.

Still, missing from the opinion was any justification for perhaps the most damaging part of Congress's decision to extend existing copyrights for 20 years: the extension unnecessarily stifles freedom of expression by preventing the artistic and educational use even of content that no longer has any commercial value. As one dissenter, Justice Steven G. Breyer, estimated, only 2 percent of the work copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 continues to be commercially exploited (for example, the early Mickey Mouse movies, whose imminent entry into the public domain prompted Congress to act in the first place).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/opinion/18LESS.html

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Cruelty to Analog
Chronicling efforts to control digitization technology http://analog.blogs.eff.org/archives/000239.html#000239

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Supreme Court copyright decision:
A Mickey Mouse Ruling
Chris Sprigman

Honesty requires that I begin this column with an embarrassing admission: I am now 0 for 1 in predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases.

Last March, I wrote a column for this website predicting that the Supreme Court, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, would strike down the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The CTEA, enacted in 1998, extended by 20 years the duration of both future and subsisting copyrights.

On January 15 of this year, the Court upheld the Act, 7-2. (Justice Ginsburg wrote for the majority; Justices Stevens and Breyer filed separate dissents.)

Not only is the result, in my view, erroneous, but the opinion that reached it is deeply flawed. It also bodes ill for the future, for it is yet another step in the direction of complete privatization of our culture, at the expense of the public domain.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/comment..._sprigman.html

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European Commision to extend high-speed internet rules

Brussels may be on the verge of issuing new guidelines that will give national regulators increased power to limit
the activities of cable companies, the Financial Times (FT) reported yesterday.

The FT claims to have seen a draft report suggesting the need extend the scope of regulations, that could result in cable companies finding themselves subject to the same restrictions on high-speed internet access that incumbent telecommunications operators have been vocal in protesting against. The European Commission previously argued that telecoms operators had an unfair advantage over cable companies from their initial position of market dominance. The EC had sought to prevent such operators making their positions unassailable through predatory pricing, but now the Commission appears to be trying to take pre-emptive action before things swing too far the other way.

The debt-piles of existing cable companies means that the proposed legislation is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the sector. Financial restraints have meant that many cable companies have so far failed to gain a significant position in the broadband market and are finding it difficult to be pro-active in promoting the service. Telecoms operators are likely to welcome the proposed legislation, however, having renewed their protestations about the discriminatory effect of existing regulations at a November meeting in Brussels.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14512

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Keeping Track of the Online Music Industry
Ellen McCarthy

Patrick Breslin, who was a bass guitarist in a Boston rock and roll band before joining a consulting firm, a radio station and a start-up, always seems to wind up at the nexus of music and technology.

While managing the music Web site for National Public Radio during the late 1990s, Breslin became increasingly interested in the organization and distribution of audio files on the Internet.

Eventually Breslin and Sean Ward, an NPR co-worker, left the organization to establish Relatable, a start-up that provides music-tracking technology.

"Both of us obviously had an interest in how technology was changing music. This was the time of a lot of online music distribution -- MP3.com, Napster," Breslin said. "But there really weren't very easy ways to find what is interesting to you. There was a fundamental problem identifying music that you find."

Relatable's software does not protect audio files from being illegally downloaded. Instead, it imprints files with a code, allowing music distributors to track songs that are downloaded by users and pay the appropriate record company.

The firm's first client was Napster, Breslin said, but Napster's effort to charge for its service eventually failed, ending the deal with Relatable. The Alexandria start-up has plenty of competition, but Breslin said the speed and accuracy of Relatable's technology will be key to its success.

Still, the company's fate depends in part on the willingness of consumers to pay for Web-based music files. It also sells software to track the popularity ratings for recording companies and provide identifying data for songs on the radio.

"Some believe that they can actually protect content, others believe it is more important to track it. Copy protection is a really difficult problem and there have been some significant failures," Breslin said. "Ultimately we believe the better approach is tracking the music."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan18.html

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Juniper Networks profit rises
Bloomberg News

Juniper Networks, the No. 2 maker of equipment to direct Internet traffic, had a fourth-quarter profit of $8.45 million as expenses fell. Sales climbed 2.8 percent. Net income was 2 cents a diluted share, in contrast to a net loss of $5.13 million, or 2 cents a diluted share, in the year-earlier period, the company said yesterday. Revenue rose to $155.3 million from $151 million. First-quarter sales and profit, excluding certain items, will be unchanged from the preceding period, beating analysts' forecasts, the chief financial officer, Marcel Gani, said. Juniper, which trails Cisco Systems in sales of data-traffic routers, had losses in five of the six preceding quarters as customers slashed spending after overbuilding fiber optic networks. Shares of Juniper dropped 33 cents, to $8.90, in after-hours trading. Earlier, shares fell 46 cents, to $9.23, in regular trading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/business/17TBRF.html

JackSpratts · 23-01-03, 11:07 PM

Australian ISPs will fight RIAA Plans
Sue Lowe

The music industry's latest plan for recouping losses from song-swapping over the internet is to charge the service providers, but the Australian internet industry says it will fight the moves.

In a speech to a music conference in Cannes, the chief of the Recording Industry Association of America said she planned to "hold internet service providers more accountable" for internet file-sharing.

The chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, Peter Coroneos, said internet providers in Australia were well-protected by copyright law, but he still expected music file-swapping to "come to a head" this year.

"The recording industry is obviously planning some sort of an assault on peer-to-peer networks," he said.

"We will resist any moves to transfer the cost burden from the music industry to the ISP sector.

"The music and content industries have failed to adapt their business models to the realities of the internet. We're not going to prop them up."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...911380707.html

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All your title are belong to us -
First we’re going to find them, and then we’re going to print them. MP3 List Creator does both jobs fast…and free! http://mp3lister.virtualave.net/ You’ll thank Andre.

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Courts Split on Internet Bans
Matt Ritchell

If a person goes to prison for using a computer and the Internet to commit a crime, can he be barred from using the Internet after the sentence is served?

Courts are increasingly facing the question as the Internet age gives rise to an explosion of cybercrime. But appellate courts in different parts of the country are coming up with different answers. And in the process, they are showing how an emerging technology can cause rifts in the legal landscape and pose difficulties in monitoring offenders.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, whose opinion interprets law in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, has ruled that people on probation may be barred from using computers and the Internet. The court argued that while this prohibition can greatly restrict a person's freedom and ability to find work, it also protects society from criminals who have turned the computer into a weapon.

But two other federal appeals courts, including the one governing New York, have recently concluded that such a prohibition is too broad. In overturning the sentence of a child pornographer last year, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the Internet was as vital to everyday existence as the telephone and that while the government could monitor an offender's computer use, it could not stop it completely.

And the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has issued conflicting opinions in cases involving child pornography. In one case in 2000, it allowed a complete ban to stand, saying that it was necessary to deter a public threat to children. But in another — issued earlier this month — it argued that such a condition was overly broad. In this case the court said these sentences would have to depend on the facts in each individual case.

The courts have noted that computers now pervade virtually every area of life, suggesting a reason they have found a complete ban excessive, said Jennifer S. Granick, director of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

"Computers are everywhere," she said. "The A.T.M. is a computer; the car has a computer; the Palm Pilot is a computer. Without a computer in this day and age, you can't work, you can't communicate, you can't function as people normally do in modern society."

The issue emerges just as Kevin Mitnick, the hacker once called by the government "the most-wanted computer criminal in U.S. history," is poised to start using the Internet again. Mr. Mitnick served five years for breaking into computer networks of major corporations and stealing software; he was released from prison in January 2000. As a condition of his probation, he has not been allowed to use the Internet — a restriction that expires today.

Differences of opinion among federal courts are not unusual, though this rift can mean that two people living in different states may receive different sentences, even if they commit similar crimes. But the offenders are not the only people directly affected by the changing landscape.

The impact has been felt, too, by probation officers, whose job it is to monitor offenders' activities after they are released from prison. Where they cannot rely on a complete Internet ban, probation officers are being forced to pioneer ways to make sure that offenders on probation or on supervised pretrial release do not use computers and the Internet to commit new crimes.

That has meant finding technologies to monitor what Web sites offenders visit and what e-mail messages they send.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/21/te...gy/21MONI.html

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Copyright and Rhetoric
Edward W. Felten

In a much-acclaimed blog posting, Doc Searls writes that the limited-copyright folks are losing the rhetorical battle to the copyright expansionists.

I believe Hollywood won because they have successfully repositioned copyright as a property issue. In other words, they successfully urged the world to understand copyright in terms of property. Copyright = property may not be accurate in a strict legal sense, but it still makes common sense, even to the Supreme Court.

Watch the language. While the one side talks about licenses with verbs like copy, distribute, play, share and perform, the other side talks about rights with verbs like own, protect, safeguard, protect, secure, authorize, buy, sell, infringe, pirate, infringe, and steal.

I would go further and say that focusing on the role of the public domain is bad rhetorical strategy. It's not that the public domain is unimportant. It's just that public-domain arguments end up sounding like, "We want to use your stuff." By making a public-domain argument, you're inviting the accusation that you're a freeloader trying to make money off the creativity of others. You're saying, in effect, that certain ideas are the property of the public, and so you're buying in, indirectly, to the concept of ideas as property.

A better rhetorical strategy is to focus on the entangling effects of copyright on everyday life, including ordinary creative work. The argument is simply that copyright has become a wide-ranging regulatory scheme that goes far beyond its proper role of protecting the legitimate rights of authors. A great example of this is the section of Lessig's The Future of Ideas about the documentary filmmaker. The filmmaker isn't trying to copy other people's work. But because so many everyday objects are the subject of intellectual property claims, filming everyday life becomes problematic, with too many rights to be "cleared". Expansionist IP claims entangle ordinary creativity, even when nobody is trying to copy anything.

Even the record companies complain about the difficulty of "clearing" rights to recorded music so that they can sell it online. When the big copyright owners find the system too onerous and complicated, that's a rhetorical opportunity.

This strategy also exploits the ever-growing stock of copyright horror stories. When the Girl Scouts are worried about what they can sing around the campfire, or when the DMCA is being used to regulate garage door openers, you're seeing the tentacles of copyright reaching into places where it doesn't belong.

"Free the mouse" is a catchy slogan, but we would do better by talking more about our own freedom and less about Mickey's.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000266.html

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We mean it. Honest. Really. We do.
RIAA In Hot Denial
George V. Hulme

"Absolutely false." That's what a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America says about reports that it was paying hackers to infect peer-to-peer file- swapping networks with a damaging worm. Hoaxers posted notices on Symantec's BuqTraq mailing list and the vulnerability-tracking site VulnWatch saying they'd been recruited by the association, which represents music publishers, to deploy the nonexistent worm. Since last summer, the recording-industry group's Web site, riaa.org, has been attacked a number of times, presumably by music swappers angry with RIAA's anti-swapping policies.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030117S0037

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RIAA wins battle to ID Kazaa user
Declan McCullagh

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of an alleged peer-to-peer pirate in a legal decision that could make it easier for the music industry to crack down on file-swapping networks.

In a 37-page decision, U.S. District Judge John Bates said the wording of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires Verizon to give the Recording Industry Association of America the name of a Kazaa subscriber who allegedly was sharing more than 600 music recordings. Bates said "the court disagrees with Verizon's strained reading of the act, which disregards entirely the clear definitional language."

This case represents the entertainment industry's latest legal assault on peer-to-peer piracy. If its invocation of the DMCA is upheld on appeal, music industry investigators would have the power to identify hundreds or thousands of music pirates at a time without going to court first.

The dispute is not about whether the RIAA will be able to force Verizon to reveal the identity of a suspected copyright infringer, but about what legal mechanism copyright holders will be able to use. The RIAA would prefer to rely on the DMCA's turbocharged-subpoena process because it is cheaper and faster than other methods--but Verizon and civil liberties groups have said it is not sufficiently privacy-protective.

At issue in the RIAA's request is an obscure part of the DMCA that permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering a "service provider" to turn over information about a subscriber. Verizon says the DMCA does not apply because the company is only a conduit and is not hosting the material on its servers.

Bates said Verizon's proposed solution--a lawsuit with a "John Doe" defendant to be named later--is "more burdensome and less timely" in copyright cases. Bates ordered Verizon to comply with the RIAA's subpoena.

"We appreciate the court's decision, which validates our interpretation of the law," Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said in a statement. "The illegal distribution of music on the Internet is a serious issue for musicians, songwriters and other copyright owners, and the record companies have made great strides in addressing this problem by educating consumers and providing them with legitimate alternatives."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981449.html

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HNS Demonstrates Technological Breakthrough with Industry's First 440 Mbps Transceiver Chip
Press Release

GERMANTOWN, Md., Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hughes Network Systems, Inc. (HNS), the world's leading provider of broadband satellite solutions, today announced the development of the first 440 Mbps digital modem ASIC, a critical milestone achieved in the development of DIRECWAY(R) terminals for the SPACEWAY(TM) broadband satellite system.

Without sacrificing performance and cost, the Maxwell chip is housed in a low-cost package measuring less than a square inch. This digital chip enables a receive capability of 440 Mbps burst mode, which is ten times the speed of today's conventional technology. The chip also enables TDMA/FDMA transmit capability at 512kbps, 2Mbps and 16Mbps. By using extremely high levels of integration to produce a single device, the cost of the terminal has been substantially reduced, while enabling very high performance. Its smaller size translates into a 20 percent cost reduction over today's comparable unit.

Scheduled for service launch in 2004, SPACEWAY will provide full-mesh connectivity for efficient delivery of high-bandwidth services. In addition to its unique peer-to-peer architecture, SPACEWAY incorporates many other advanced features-such as packet switching, spot beams, and bandwidth-on-demand.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+08:11+AM

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Chief Intends to Leave Cable and Wireless
Suzanne Kapner

LONDON, Jan. 21 — Cable and Wireless said today that Graham M. Wallace, the chief executive and the architect of its transformation from a humdrum telephone carrier into a provider of information services to large businesses, would leave the company.

Mr. Wallace, 54, will continue overseeing daily operations until Cable and Wireless finds a successor. Peter Eustace, a Cable and Wireless spokesman, said there was no fixed timetable for filling the post.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/bu...ss/22CABL.html

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Lobbyists Held Party for Bush Telecommunications Official

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (AP) — The Bush administration's top official for telecommunications policy let lobbyists for wireless companies help pay for a private reception at her home and 10 days later urged a policy change that benefited their industry, according to documents and interviews.

The official, Nancy Victory, an assistant commerce secretary, said she regarded the lobbyists as friends and cleared the arrangement in advance with her department's ethics office. She did not report the party, held in 2001, as a gift on her government ethics disclosure form.

"My friends paid for this party out of their personal money," Ms. Victory said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Ms. Victory said it was "ridiculous" to draw a connection between the party and her letter 10 days later to the Federal Communications Commission urging an immediate end to a decade-old restriction on how much of a region's wireless spectrum a company could control.

"Many of the attendees had nothing to do with that issue," she said, declining to identify the guests.

Ethics experts said the arrangement might violate federal ethics standards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/21/politics/21LOBB.html

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Some Text Messages Just Disappear, a Study Finds
Susan Stellin

A study conducted the first two weeks of December found that 7.5 percent of the text messages sent from cellphones were not received within 120 seconds and that 5 percent were never received at all.

The messages at issue are known in the industry as S.M.S., for short message service, and are slowly growing in popularity in this country, especially among teenagers. The study was conducted by Keynote Systems, a San Mateo, Calif., company that tests the performance of Internet technologies and sells monitoring services to clients. During the two-week survey, Keynote sent 25,000 text messages between various carriers: AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, Nextel Communications, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. ( Sprint PCS was not included because it uses a proprietary wireless messaging service.)

Chuck Mount, general manager for wireless services at Keynote, said the financial implications of the survey findings were double-edged: in some cases, wireless carriers are losing revenue on messages that do not reach their destination, while in others customers are being charged for messages that are lost in the ether.

Prices for text messaging services vary, but wireless users are typically charged for both outgoing and incoming messages, and whether a fee is assessed depends on where along the network a message is lost.

The survey results also raise questions about the reliability of these services, particularly since users often do not know whether their messages arrived at their destination. "The network usually comes back with a message that tells you it was sent, but that doesn't guarantee it was received or track the message in any way," Mr. Mount said. "You don't necessarily get an error message saying, `We can't deliver your message.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/20/business/20LOST.html

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Move over MP3; purists demand 'lossless'
A Guide To SHN
Steve Shayman

There's a whole industry built around the MP3 data-compression format, but did you know that by using MP3s to burn music CDs, you lose part of the original recording as the data compressor does its work?

Such "lossy" compression schemes result in conveniently small data file sizes, but like audio cassette tapes of old, fidelity is lost each time you convert MP3s back and forth, to and from the CD-burnable .WAV file format, resulting in digitally degraded music files that become increasingly removed from the CD- quality benchmark to which listeners aspire.

The industry that relentlessly flogs MP3 probably doesn't want you to know that it is possible to obtain truly "lossless" audio compression with very little trouble.

Shorten, otherwise known as SHN, is an audio compression scheme that can shrink and endlessly replicate music files without any loss of fidelity. The format is especially popular among traders of live concert recordings.

SHN was developed to compress audio files while having a way of verifying that copies are digitally exact. SHN was not developed for direct listening to music (although you can play back SHN files via Nullsoft's versatile Winamp music player -- see www.winamp.com -- with the SHNAmp realtime SHN playback plugin -- www.etree.org/shnamp.html ). SHN rather was intended to be an archival format for digital music.

Anecdotally speaking, SHN files seem to produce files that are between 50 and 65 percent of the original size. The fidelity of MP3 files, on the other hand, depends entirely on the sampling ratio you specify during the compression process. For example, on the popular MusicMatch music-file management software program, 64 kbps sampling produces supposedly "FM radio quality" files that are around 5 percent of the original file size, while 128 kbps -- so- called "CD quality" -- yields around 10 percent.

MP3 has good sound for such a small file size, but it is nonetheless a lossy compression scheme -- a certain amount of data is lost and can never be recovered after the conversion. This data loss, to your ears, can sometimes result in a "swooshing" sound in the music, particularly during playback on good headphones or stereo speakers. For this reason, hard-core purists will argue that you should never make an audio CD from MP3 files.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/...20030123a1.htm

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Is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Unconstitutional under Eldred v. Ashcroft?
JB

In an earlier post, I strongly criticized the Supreme Court’s First Amendment analysis in Eldred, arguing that the first amendment issues were not well thought out and that the Court seemed so preoccupied with the Copyright Clause that it dismissed the First Amendment issues as an afterthought. But anyone who understands the important connections between the free speech principle and the public domain should also understand that there is no way you can resolve the First Amendment issues in the case simply, or without making new law, and if you don’t pay careful attention to the larger picture, even what appear to be the simplest and most uncomplicated statements of law will have all sorts of unintended side effects.

As a lawyer and legal scholar, it’s my job, when confronted with decisions I don’t particularly agree with, to make lemonade out of lemons-- to see how the court’s reasoning might apply to future cases in ways I do approve of. And after thinking about Eldred’s First Amendment analysis, it seems to me that the Supremes have made new law that puts the DMCA into question.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/

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If it’s Wednesday, it must be Locutus. http://locut.us/

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Whatever happened to a stiff upper lip?
British Culture Minister overheated and over the top, equates file sharing with drug running and prostitution
Say what? And how exactly is this relevant when a fourteen year old sends a file to a friend?

Last Monday, major music and technology companies announced that they will re-launch an industry initiative to ‘give-away’ of online music. The campaign had been previously conducted in the UK last autumn, and will this time operate on a pan-European scale. The purpose of the event, dubbed ‘Digital Download Day Europe’, is to raise awareness of what the industry views as legitimate download services.

The move comes as record executives have begun to urgently warn each other that unless something is done to stop the phenomenal culture of music piracy their own jobs may be on the line. Some senior officials have said as many as 600,000 people in the music industry may risk redundancy unless the trend is reversed. The record industry has directly blamed royalty-free file-sharing services for the nine per cent decline in music sales last year, whilst the newspaper USA Today has estimated that Kazaa has seen its software downloaded by around 175mn homes worldwide.

Though high-profile music star Robbie Williams was last week reported to have said that he thought music piracy was a ‘great’ idea, the signs are that record executives themselves are beginning to lose their tempers. Yesterday, Forbes.com reported that the ISP Verizon Communications had been ordered by a Washington District Court to give the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the name of a customer who had downloaded as many as 600 songs a day using the popular Kazaa music file-sharing service. The move signals a shift in the RIAA’s battle against piracy from targeting file-sharing providers to homing in on individual consumers. Though the RIAA has so far not announced any plans to take further action against the individual concerned, many media commentators are reported to have found Judge John Bates’ decision “chilling”.

British Culture minister Kim Howells, meanwhile has reacted to Robbie Williams’ recent remark by accusing the singer of supporting drug and prostitution rackets. During an online chat for the Guardian newspaper, Howells claimed that Williams’ recently negotiated E120mn (GBP80mn) record deal with EMI meant he was out of touch with the concerns of “musicians and music publishers who depend entirely for a living on receiving an honest revenue from sales of their product." Reacting to Mr Howells, others indicated that they thought the pricing policies of record companies meant that they had brough the recent trouble on themselves. Howells went to court more controversy when he maintained that Williams’ comments aided "international gangs involved in drugs and prostitution who find music piracy an excellent way of laundering profits".
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14551

Julia Day

Culture minister Kim Howells waded into more controversy today by accusing Robbie Williams of supporting drug gangs and prostitution by saying internet music piracy was "great".

In an online debate on Guardian Unlimited this afternoon, Mr Howells was asked whether he was concerned at the statement £80m superstar Williams made about online music piracy.

"In saying that piracy is a 'great idea', Williams is doing the work for international gangs involved in drugs and prostitution who find music piracy an excellent way of laundering their profits," replied Mr Howells.

He railed at length against Williams, who made his remarks as the industry launched a campaign to stop piracy through song- swapping websites on the internet.

"I'm appalled at Robbie Williams' statement. He has an £80m contract and probably doesn't worry too much about all those singers, songwriters, musicians, and music publishers who depend entirely for a living on receiving honest revenue from sales of their product," said Mr Howells.

"He should also realise that many of these pirate operations are linked to organised crime on a worldwide basis.

Mr Howells added: "The industry should ask him to think again, not least his publishers EMI, who are one of the leading companies in lobbying government to take stronger action against music pirates."

The minister said he wanted to use the online chat to "put a few matters right", after a week in which he hit the headlines for condemning what he believed was the glorification of gun crime by rap music and TV shows such as ITV's Serious and Organised.

Today he said: "I do not believe that listening to rap is capable of turning otherwise peace-loving, respectful individuals into gun- toting gangsters.

"If that was true then my generation would all be in jail, having been brought up on cowboy movies, Sam Peckinpah films and Clint Eastwood stroking very big guns.

"It is the notion that somehow we should ignore this amoral, violent and misogynistic content as somehow being perfectly legitimate because it happens to be produced by a particular ethnic culture," he said.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia...878674,00.html

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40 Arrested in Spain for CD, DVD Piracy

Police arrested 40 people and needed two large trucks to cart away more than 240,000 CDs and DVDs in Spain's biggest crackdown on pirate recording, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Monday.

The raids over the past 24 hours took place in 11 Madrid apartments, a country villa and a warehouse on the capital's outskirts, said Acebes. The 40 arrested included 29 Chinese, nine Senegalese and two Taiwan-born Spaniards.

The recording scam, run by two Chinese immigrants who were identified by their initials only, was capable of producing 60 million pirate copies of records and videos a year using 346 recorders, or burners.

The compact discs and digital video discs seized in the raid had a street value of at least 2 million euros ($US 2.1 million).
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ting_crackdown

While you still can…

Prescient ad seen on ZDNet

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RF Solutions Intros WLAN Amp
Press Release

RF Solutions, Inc., an innovative supplier of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) semiconductor products, today introduced the WLAN industry’s most efficient, low-cost Power Amplifier (PA) for 802.11b/g applications – the multimode RFS P2023.

“There is no question the landscape is changing for the high-volume WLAN industry,” states Michael Hooper, CEO. “To achieve the price points required to reach high volume production, the overall cost of implementing RF components must be lowered. As a fully-matched, easy-to-use PA, the RFS P2023 offers the best combination of linearity and efficiency while eliminating the challenge and uncertainty of RF design in volume manufacturing.”
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=27249

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Pinch Me, I’m Fookin Dreamin’

Hilary Rosen, the U.S. recording industry's head lobbyist who waged a high- profile battle against Napster and music piracy, is resigning at the end of the year.

In a statement, Rosen cited personal reasons for leaving the Recording Industry Association of America, where she has served as chief executive since 1998.

"During my tenure here, the recording industry has undergone dramatic challenges and it is well positioned for future success ... But I have young children and I want to devote more of my time to them," Rosen said.

She said the RIAA board will search for a replacement.

David Munns, chairman and chief executive of EMI Recorded Music North America, said Rosen has been an influential advocate "in both transforming the music industry in the digital age and in fighting piracy."

The industry has been struggling with declining sales, which Rosen has blamed on illegal downloading over defunct online file-sharing service Napster and successors like Kazaa.

Rosen's departure comes as the organization seeks to soften its image among Internet consumers, many of whom view it with antipathy over incessant pressure for crackdowns on sharing digital music over the Internet.

Rosen was an independent consultant before joining the RIAA in 1987. She also is a founding board member of Rock the Vote, an organization aimed to get younger people more politically involved.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

She got ‘em involved alright.

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Your customers bought your high bandwidth service to share files - you hire Sandvine to make sure they can’t.
Sandvine opens European subsidiary
Press release

Sandvine Incorporated today announced the opening of its European, Middle East and African (EMEA) headquarters and the establishment of Sandvine Limited in the U.K.

The new subsidiary will serve as the cornerstone of Sandvine's European sales operation and enable the company to support demand from broadband service providers for Sandvine's range of peer-to-peer policy management and network-based subscription service products.

In addition, Sandvine EMEA will augment overall support capacity and enable local-area, 24/7 coverage for the company's growing base of global customers.

Helming the new subsidiary is managing director Chris Colman, a veteran network equipment marketer with more than 20 years experience in the EMEA operational theatre (see bio, attached).

"Peer-to-peer file sharing traffic is weighing down service provider networks in every corner of the globe," said Dave Caputo, president and CEO of Sandvine. "The establishment of Sandvine EMEA signals our commitment to help service providers in this region better manage the impact of P2P file-sharing on their networks, and take advantage of the opportunity to increase their revenues by delivering network-based firewall, content filtering and anti- virus solutions to their residential broadband subscribers."

Sandvine Limited is located in Basingstoke, Hampshire; 40 minutes southwest of London. Address: Pinewood, Chineham Business Park, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24 8AL. Telephone: +44 (0) 1256 698021; Fax: +44 (0) 1256 698245.
http://www.newswire.ca/releases/Janu.../22/c1973.html

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Record labels are under attack from all sides - file sharers and performers, even equipment manufacturers and good old-fashioned customers - and it's killing them. A moment of silence, please.
The Year The Music Dies
Charles C. Mann

Not long before his sudden death from a heart attack, I saw Timothy White at a party in Boston, standing by the bar in his usual bow tie and white bucks. When he waved me over, I was delighted: Timothy was not only the editor of Billboard but a respected music critic and biographer. Even the executives he often took to task conceded, with a wince, that he understood the secretive, confusing business better than almost anyone. "How much you want to bet that the entire music industry collapses?" he asked me. "And I mean soon - like five, ten years. Kaboom!"

Truth is, it may happen even sooner. This year could determine whether the music business as we know it survives.

The industry rightly believes that if it can make file-swapping more difficult, and legitimate online services easier and less expensive, it can turn the kids on Kazaa into paying customers. Pursuing this two-pronged approach, the companies are spending millions on their own Internet services (pressplay from Universal and Sony; MusicNet from BMG, EMI, and Warner), on lawyers to chase away pirates and peer-to-peer networks, and on anti-piracy ads featuring the likes of Britney Spears.

But this won't be enough. To survive, the industry will need the active assistance of friends it doesn't have. The labels may be able to kill Kazaa, but they won't be able to stop even more decentralized networks like Gnutella without help from Internet service providers, cable operators, and telephone companies. All their efforts to get DVD-like protection for CDs ultimately depend on the goodwill of hardware manufacturers and Capitol Hill. The online subscription services will flounder without cooperation from performers, songwriters, and record stores. And the ability of Britney to change the hearts and minds of music fans depends on public sympathy.

That sympathy is in short supply. Rightly or wrongly, record companies are detested by politicians (for corrupting youth), by webcasters (for demanding royalties), and by their customers (for inflating prices). Musicians and songwriters are famous for loathing the labels, and many have resisted licensing their songs to MusicNet and pressplay. (Both are under investigation for possible antitrust violations.) Radio and MTV aren't in the industry's corner; the labels, through "independent promotion" programs, effectively have to pay them to broadcast music. And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into "Fuck you, record labels."

Even the music trade's corporate masters are torn. Until the 1980s, most labels were controlled by eccentric, sometimes thuggish entrepreneurs who had their whole lives bound up with selling albums. In the past two decades, every big label has been swept up into one of five major groups: Universal, Warner, Sony, BMG, and EMI, which together control about 75 percent of global recorded-music sales. Despite their dominance, though, the majors are merely duchies in large media empires with other, often conflicting, priorities.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/dirge.html

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"The heads of the record labels don't know what to do about it. But I'm cool, if you want my music - download it." - Robbie Williams.

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Backfire
Richard Menta

What caught my eye when I first read about the record industry's attempt to ID and prosecute a KaZaa user for trading music files is how average he or she seems to be. The profile that Declan McCullagh offers on the individual in his article "RIAA wins battle to ID Kazaa user" is quite sparse, and yet is still telling.

This alleged peer-to-peer pirate has been targeted for trading hundreds of files. Not thousands, but hundreds.

In Napster's heyday when you could see the names of individual users and view just the files they had to offer there were plenty of folks who made available thousands of songs. Those Napster days are long gone, but more users are trading than ever and the number of files they each trade has also risen. I would think there were beter candidates. Certainly there are folk out there who share many more files.

It therefore makes me wonder if the Record Industry Association of America already knows the identity of this person. This is not a far fetched notion. Lawyers like to only ask defendants questions they already have the answer to, because there are no surprises. If they do know they have plenty of reasons to keep their mouths shut about it including privacy issues that might put the RIAA itself on the wrong side of the law. What make a small time trader in the Pittsburgh area so important?
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/iduser.html

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"I have more regard for music pirates. At least they respect the product."
Digital Film Censor Incurs Hollywoods’ Wrath

There's a bloody battle sequence in the Mel Gibson movie "The Patriot" which shows bullets slamming into British soldiers and a speeding cannon ball decapitating an American revolutionary.

Too graphic? ClearPlay Inc. plans to market a new DVD player that automatically skips past graphic violence, gratuitous sex and profane language.

Hollywood's top directors and movie studios are yelling "Cut!" They have filed suit to block ClearPlay and other companies from offering sanitized versions of popular films, saying it infringes on their artistic integrity and trademark rights.

"This is an abomination," said Robert Giolito, general counsel for the Directors Guild of America. "I have more regard for music pirates. At least they respect the product."

Yet ClearPlay and a dozen other firms offering cleaned-up PG-13 and R-rated videos say they are only giving viewers a reasonable alternative to what they consider objectionable material. "In the home, families should be able to watch (movies) any way they want to," said Bill Aho, ClearPlay's chief executive officer.

The controversy has ignited yet another battle between Hollywood and companies creating cutting-edge digital entertainment technology.

"It's the digital equivalent to your mom slapping her hand over your eyes in the theater," said Mike McGuire, research director for media with GartnerG2.

"Striking that balance between technological innovation and the original intent of the artists for their work is not going to be so easy."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl....DTL&type=tech

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AOL Time Warner Taking Itself Apart

After years of running up massive debt the media giant, owner of Warner Bros records, AOL and one of the largest cable TV and Internet ISPs in the world, is struggling to come up with cash. The division now on the blocks is books, the fifth largest consumer publisher in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/bu...dia/23AOL.html

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DMCA Violation? Nope.
Computer Security Expert Cracks Physical Keys

In an article in today’s New York Times a security expert applies his knowledge of encryption cracking to the physical world and attains surprising results. It turns out that buildings that employ master keys, offices, estates, schools and other institutions including high security compounds like government and military installations have a major weakness. Their keys are a snap to crack. Using this technique from Matt Blaze a 15 year can cut a 2 dollar master key that works all the locks in about 5 minutes after getting his hands on just one easy to snag key, like one to the bathroom.

No kidding.

the story.

the crack pdf.

- js.

nick: bobbob
pass: bobbob

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2 Telcos to Merge
AP

Two telephone companies, Birch Telecom Inc. and Ionex Telecom Inc., announced that they would merge to create a company that will compete with SBC Communications Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a group of investors that includes the major backers of Ionex will provide more than $40 million in financing. The company will retain the Birch name and operate on Ionex's network. It will be based in Kansas City and led by David E. Scott, chief executive of the old Birch, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in September. The deal, which faces regulatory approval, is expected to be completed within three months. The combined company will serve over 500,000 telephone lines, mostly in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, and is expected to generate $350 million in annual revenues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/te...gy/23TBRF.html

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"Audio fingerprinting is accurate, robust and runs in a sensible amount of time. It really works."
Instead of a D.J., a Web Server Names That Tune
Anne Eisenberg

A song and its name are easily parted, as anyone knows who has listened to a tune on the radio and then waited in vain for the announcer to identify it.

Now some companies are using a technology that can name that tune as it plays, promptly displaying words like "Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet" in text on an Internet radio or cellphone.

The systems are sensitive enough to identify not only names and artists within a vast range of recorded music, but also different versions of a piece done by the performers, even when the differences are slight.

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, for instance, Royal Philips Electronics demonstrated a prototype of an Internet radio that was not only capable of naming the band Pearl Jam as its music streamed past but also distinguishing a version of a tune that it played at a concert in Verona, Italy, from the same tune recorded in Milan.

"To our ears the two versions sound the same," said Ton Kalker, a mathematician at Philips Research in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, who led the team that developed the rapid identification system. "But the technology is sensitive enough to make a distinction."

"Audio fingerprinting works by creating a mathematical description of some of the unique features of a song," said Dr. Richard Gooch, deputy director of technology at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade organization based in London. The fingerprints are stored on a server. When the server is asked to identify a tune - for instance, a song playing on Internet radio - software matches a snippet of the tune, expressed in code, with the whole coded version of the song stored on the server.

Dr. Gooch said that the technology stood up even to the most difficult conditions - poor loudspeakers, highly compressed streaming files or broadcasters who speed up songs slightly to make room for commercials.

"We've found that even when broadcasters tweak a song or compress it," he said, "so long as you can still hear it, the systems can extract a description of unique characteristics in the song," quickly matching the description with the database to identify the track.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/te...ts/23next.html

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P2P Numbers down? Change the counter! http://www.unitethecows.com/forums/p...?threadid=5318

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Sheer Tunage
In a Single DVD Changer, Hundreds of Movies and MP3's
Ian Austen

Although it was not Sony's main objective, the company has made its DVP-CX875P DVD-CD changer something of a marathon machine. Among other things, the 301-disc changer can play back DVD's containing music recorded as MP3 files. Anyone who has the patience (and the music collection) to fill 301 discs with MP3 files could sit back and listen to music continuously for just under a year and a half.

But Bruce Pripido, Sony's marketing manager for DVD players, anticipates that the jumbo changer is likely to be most popular among owners of extensive collections of movies recorded on DVD's.

The gradual spread of computers that can record DVD's, Mr. Pripido said, will increase demand for devices that can store and manage the recordings. "It's our feeling that there will be quite a few of these shiny discs out there," he said.

To keep track of its contents, the player, which is $500 at www.sonystyle.com, allows users to create individual folders that they can view on the television screen and manipulate using a joystick on the player's remote control. And for users who want to take a break from those months-long music sessions, the player will remember where a disc has been stopped, and even if it has been removed from the machine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/te...ts/23chan.html

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A Shredder That Gobbles CD-ROM's and Floppies
J.D. Biersdorfer

With identity theft on the rise, the proper disposal of old personal documents and information has become a priority for many people. Getting rid of old bank statements is easy for most shredders, but the new MD100 Media Destroyer shredder is designed to pulverize harder materials. It can chomp up old floppy diskettes and CD's and make them safe to discard.

The Media Destroyer, which was presented last week by Royal Consumer Information Products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is small enough to fit on top of a desk. It has a five-inch slot on top for inserting diskettes or discs and can shred seven folded sheets of paper in one shot.

The shredder can power through the metal strips on diskettes and slice up expired credit cards. It can rip through 30 CD's a minute; as they are destroyed, special rollers inside the machine obliterate any data on the surface of the disc so that the shards will be unreadable.

The MD100 Media Destroyer will be available this spring at major office supply stores and is expected to sell for $130. The right combination of colorful crumbled bits might even brighten up the office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/te...ts/23shre.html

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Peak to P2P - Everest Gets Wi-Fied
Nancy Gohring

IF the 25-below-zero temperature, howling wind and grim effects of altitude sickness do not make most of those trying to scale Mount Everest feel a world away from home, the near-complete lack of communications on and around Everest surely does.

This year, just in time for the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's first ascent of Everest, climbers on the mountain will have the chance to connect with the world below by e-mail. That is because Tsering Gyaltsen, the grandson of the only surviving Sherpa to have accompanied Hillary on that famed climb, is planning to build the world's highest Internet cafe at base camp.

The technical challenge is significant. Wireless radios will be positioned on moving glaciers, and gear must be insulated against temperatures far colder than they were designed to withstand. And at the helm of the project is Mr. Gyaltsen, who is not wealthy and has no formal technical training.

But tenacious he is. From halfway around the world, Mr. Gyaltsen has attracted an all-star cast of technologists in the United States dedicated to furthering his goal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/te...ts/23sher.html

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Up 300%!!! Oh My GOD!!! People are using P2Ps’!!! This consultant uses fear. http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...35&ticker=wbsn

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RIAA Head Wrongdoer Hilary Rosen To Step Down

I am glad to see Ms. Rosen go, and my only regret is that she not wait until the end of 2003 to do so. She has been instrumental in keeping the recording industry mired in the thought that it is still 1983. In the process, she has harmed the very fabric of our society in her attempts to wrest control over the way legally owned content is used by customers. The DMCA, for instance, is one of the most disgusting laws on the books, and the RIAA lobbied hard for its passing. It simply puts far too much power in the hand of big media companies.

The killer aspect of all this is that the recording industry has really only managed to hasten its own irrelevance in the digital age, and that did not have to happen. Had the RIAA put even 1% of the energy and resources into finding a new, relevant, business model as it did in trying to stop file sharing, the industry would be much healthier and happier today.

I specifically hope her replacement at the RIAA has a better understanding of what is happening around him or her. I hope that this person has the foresight to understand that record label profits can not be protected by making it harder for us to listen to our music in the manner that we want. I hope that her replacement will have the simple ability to understand that it is a sluggish economy, high prices for CDs, and the incredible levels of utter mediocrity in the crap being put out by the record labels, not to mention the labels' own behavior in regards to file sharing, that is responsible for falling profits, and not piracy.

Good bye, Ms. Rosen. We shan't miss you.
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/t...20030123.shtml

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Wireless == great jukebox in the sky?
Robert Kaye

Its been over 5 years since the first MP3 Summit where the concept of the jukebox in the sky was hotly debated. The promise of the jukebox in the sky was to make
all music available to users everywhere. Users could tap into the jukebox at home, at work, in their car or hiking up a mountain.

Five years later and the iPod is the closest thing to this jukebox we have -- not exactly what people talked about back then. With the current legal climate I'm not expecting the RIAA and its cronies to deliver this jukebox anytime soon.

Community wireless networks have a much better chance of delivering on this promise. Assume for a moment that wireless networks have come of age and in urban areas dense wireless networks blanket the neighborhoods.

Now lets assume that computer users make their music collections available via tools like iCommune. If you can aggregate the music collections of dozens/hundreds of people around you, you'll get a virtual music collection that approaches the jukebox in the sky.

This jukebox won't have everything under the sun (which physical jukebox does?), but it will have large amounts of music ready to be played, right now without waiting for it to download, which is not a bad start.

While aggregated wireless music collections won't provide everything to everyone everywhere, they do have some interesting qualities that are worth exploring.

If the community around you has the music, do you need to download all of the music to your machine? Better get another bigger harddrive, because the community will have more music than you have harddrive space. So, I hope that people will truely start sharing their collections instead of actually copying them as the current file sharing networks do. And if we're just sharing and not copying does that fall under fair use? (Never mind that fair use has been erradicated in the last few years).

And finally, if wireless networks don't rely on traditional ISPs, it conceivable to put firewalls/packet filters at locations where the wireless net connects to a traditional ISPs, so that the RIAA cannot even see these wireless jukeboxes?

Traditional ISPs unwittingly act as DMCA chokepoints, and if firewalls hide the activity of wireless networks, then how will the RIAA combat these jukeboxes in the sky?
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/wlg/2639

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Danish news search agent goes Kazaa style

Danish search agent company has begun to offer its Danish clients a version of its Newsbooster service that operates in a similar fashion to the decentralised file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Gnutella.

Similar to a news clipping service, Newsbooster provides business clients with a service that scours online content for news or other content related to their company or to any series of pre-selected keywords and then offers links directly to webpages with such related content

However, some news sites, particularly online newspapers, have charged that this sort of ‘deep-linking’ – or linking directly to a possibly premium-content designated page within a site, rather than the freely accessable main or home page – is a breach of European copyright law.

In July last year, a Copenhagen court agreed with this analysis and ordered the company to end any deep-linking.

Courts across Europe are increasingly accepting the argument that deep-linking represents an unauthorised access of a private database – viewing newspaper sites as such databases.

Newsbooster has responded by developing a downloadable programme, ‘Newsbrowser’, that runs from the user’s own computer, seeing sense in the strategy of groups like Kazaa over the defunct Napster, where a network of computers is more difficult to prosecute than a company offering the same service from a central server.

Newsbrowser is available only for Danish clients, as the Copenhagen ruling does not apply beyond the country’s borders.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14563

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'Proof' - downloading music hurts Europe's CD sales

The debate rages over the impact of file-sharing on the music industry, with listeners and many independent artists supporting it, while industry executives saying it is nothing less than theft. A new report sides with the execs.

While supporters of file-sharing argue that the general downturn in the economy is responsible for the music industry’s reduced profits, executives claim that downloading tracks via services like Kazaa and Morpheus cannibalise CD sales, and a new report from market analysts Forrester Research argues that, to some extent, industry executives are right.

According to the report, one in seven Europeans downloads music. Around one-third of the internet population, or 13 per cent of all Europeans, uses the internet to download music, and 38 per cent of these users download more than seven tracks per month. These frequent downloaders are much younger than the rest of the online population -- about half are less than 24 years old.

Frequent downloaders burn CDs. What do downloaders do with the music? Most of them listen to it while working at their PC; only seven per cent upload files to an MP3 player. Of frequent downloaders, 63 per cent burn CDs – and, downloading an average of 12.6 tracks monthly, they can fill one per month.

Light and occasional buyers are buying fewer CDs, and more than 40 percent of frequent downloaders confess to buying less music now. However, music fanatics – heavy CD buyers – say that the advent of internet file-sharing has actually encouraged them to buy more CDs, as they become more easily acquainted with new music they would like to buy.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14535

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Verizon Ruling could chill music swapping
Hiawatha Bray

In a decision that could chill the practice of Internet music swapping, a federal court in Washington ruled yesterday that the telecommunications firm Verizon Communications must reveal the identity of one of its Internet subscribers who is suspected of illegally exchanging copyrighted music files over the Internet.

Verizon said it would appeal the ruling. If the decision stands, the record industry will be able to more easily identify and sue millions of Americans who illegally exchange music files over the Internet.

The ruling is a victory for the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the nation's biggest record companies, and a major defeat for New York-based Verizon.

It's also a severe legal setback for critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial 1998 federal law designed to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted materials in digital form. Supporters of the law, including the recording industry, computer software makers, and Hollywood movie studios, say it's a vital weapon in their efforts to prevent theft of their valuable intellectual property. But critics argue the law gives major corporations unreasonable powers to restrict the freedom and invade the privacy of consumers.

Jonathan Zittrain, associate professor at Harvard Law School, opposes the digital copyright law. But he said its provisions are clearly on the side of the music industry. ''I figured Verizon would lose,'' said Zittrain. ''Basically the publishers foresaw this very issue coming up in 1998, and they pushed for and got a specific provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to cover this eventuality.''

Zittrain said he believes the RIAA will use its subpoena power to demonstrate that large numbers of Internet users are downloading illegal materials. Then, he believes, the record producers will argue that under the act, Internet providers can be compelled to shut off service to any customer found swapping illegal files.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/02...wapping+.shtml

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Tech giants: No government copy-control mandates
Grant Gross

A coalition of technology company heavyweights and consumer groups have joined the chorus of voices calling for the U.S. government to stay away from mandating anti-copying schemes on computers.

The Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP), a lobbying group made of 27 technology companies, consumer groups and think tanks, launched Thursday in response to calls from the Motion Picture Association of America for copy protection measures from the U.S. Congress. Among the members of ADP are technology companies Microsoft, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple Computer; and consumer groups Consumer Alert, DigitalConsumer.org, and 60 Plus Association.

Frederick McClure, president of the fledgling group, said the ADP will fight government copy-protection mandates, but he endorsed private-sector methods of solving what he called a "problem with digital piracy."

"We oppose efforts by Hollywood to use the government to design anti- copying technology and require all digital devices to be built using that technology," said McClure, a former legislative advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "But make no mistake, the organizations here today also are committed to protecting digital content."

On Jan. 14, the Recording Industry of America Inc. joined two major technology associations in also calling for Congress to stay away from copy- protection mandates. The Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project, which joined the RIAA last week, are also part of the Alliance for Digital Progress, although the RIAA is not.

While McClure didn't mention it by name, it was clear his coalition would target any re-introduction of Sen. Fritz Hollings' Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which mandated copy-control technology on all digital devices. At least one press release in the ADP packet, from senior citizens group 60 Plus Association, focused on the Hollings bill, which went nowhere during the 2002 session of Congress. The association called the South Carolina Democrat's bill "a prime example of government reach out of control."

The MPAA supported the Hollings bill and continues to say that government solutions to file-trading over the Internet may be needed. Neither Hollings' office nor the MPAA had an immediate comment on the ADP announcement.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn...ol.xml?s=IDGNS

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IP Justice
Digital rights under fire
Lisa M. Bowman

Robin Gross thinks international copyright laws are out of step with the people. So much so that the former Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney is launching a new watchdog group called IP Justice.

Her goal is to "promote balance in global intellectual property law." Gross says she wants to make sure people won't become targets of legal action for doing things like making personal copies of CDs, DVDs and e-books they've purchased.

Gross, who's officially unveiling the project in the next couple of weeks, envisions uniting programmers and online activists across the globe to make sure consumers get a fair shake in the copyright debate. She talked with CNET News.com about how digital technology is changing copyright law, why technologists and consumers should be concerned, and why she thinks the United States is one of the most "restrictive regimes" in this area.

Q: Why did you found IP Justice?
A: I felt like there was a real need to connect the like-minded groups all over the world who are battling against the expansion of copyrights and are concerned about protecting freedom of expression.

How will IP Justice differ from other online activist groups?
We'll differ in that our focus will be on international IP law. I think our focus will also be a little bit different because we're going to be principle-based. One of the frustrations that so many people have expressed to me is that the laws are just being bought and paid for by Hollywood in the intellectual property space, and they're so out of step with the public's principles about what's fair and what's just.

What will some of those principles be?
One is the idea that we should have the right to control our own individual experience of creative works. When we're in the privacy of our own homes, and we're using DVDs or CDs that we own on the computers that we own, that Hollywood doesn't have a right to tell us how we can use that media. It's our property and our rights as global citizens to receive and express and impart information without the interference of the copyright holders.

How about another one?
We have the right to make personal private copies of lawfully acquired works. So if I buy a CD, I should have an affirmative right to make a personal-use copy of that without breaking any laws by attempting to make a copy. Unfortunately, the United States has a very dismal track record right now for protection of freedom in this area. It's truly ironic that the United States has such an international reputation as being the leader in freedom of speech, but when it comes to intellectual property, it's actually one of the most restrictive regimes in terms of what people can do with their intellectual property.

Practically, how do you see this list of principles promoting this balance that you seek?
The idea is to get groups and individuals from all over the world to sign onto to these principles, to endorse these principles, and we can sort of hold the lawmakers in check in that we can say these are our principles and you can compare them to the laws and see that there's a difference. Laws are going to have to change in some cases, and that's really the ultimate goal of releasing these principles--to get the lawmakers to understand the will of the public when it comes to intellectual property issues.

And you don't think they do right now?
I really don't think that lawmakers have been given a fair hearing about what the public's rights are and what the public's concerns are. They've got a very close connection with the Hollywood lobbyists, and their position seems to very closely reflect the views of the Hollywood executives. So I think they need to be reminded of the public and what they expect of lawmakers when it comes to protecting their civil rights and their civil liberties.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-981663.html

Until next week,

- js.

Current Week In Review

Submit articles, press releases and letters in English - text only, no HTML - to jackspratts at lycos dot com. Please include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.

naz · 24-01-03, 12:03 AM

LOL @

Quote:

Hapless customers download files. Hapless customers send extra big checks to ISPs. RIAA takes extra big checks and hires extra big lawyers. Extra big lawyers use extra big checks to buy extra big SUVs. Extra big SUVs are perfect for extra big vacations and have extra big phones that lawyers use to send hapless customers to extra big prisons. So get your friends to practice baking extra big cakes with extra big files inside.

great content, as usual

SA_Dave · 26-01-03, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by naz
LOL @

Quote:

Hapless customers download files. Hapless customers send extra big checks to ISPs. RIAA takes extra big checks and hires extra big lawyers. Extra big lawyers use extra big checks to buy extra big SUVs. Extra big SUVs are perfect for extra big vacations and have extra big phones that lawyers use to send hapless customers to extra big prisons. So get your friends to practice baking extra big cakes with extra big files inside.

great content, as usual

I agree completely.

I liked the "User Friendly" strip a lot!

It really sums up the entire issue perfectly.

From the Washington Post:

Quote:

The Washington Post said the ruling gave "the recording industry a powerful new weapon in its efforts to crack down on what it considers digital piracy."

They finally got it right!

I discovered this article via one of the links you provided. An interesting development in my government's policies I must say!

Quote:

WHEN Microsoft introduced a new licensing model for its software late last year, simmering resentment within government finally boiled over.

For months the State IT Agency had winced at the incessant expense of buying software licences for hundreds of thousands of staff spread across government departments. Now the agency has declared that it will ditch expensive brand name software in many cases and switch to opensource alternatives.

The move should save at least R3bn a year, says agency chief information officer Mojalefa Moseki. The policy should also help to create a new generation of programmers skilled in developing their own applications.

Last week the company {Microsoft} followed up with the surprise news that it will open its source code to governments worldwide so they can enhance the security of its software. That is a calculated move to entrench its position in government markets. But Microsoft's move has come too late to affect the agency's decision.

"The logic for open-source is so compelling that after a year of debates we decided to stop talking and declare government an open-source zone," says Moseki.

Just say "No" to F.U.D.

Two quotes sum up nicely how "out of touch" record executives are with not only their customers, but with their patrons i.e. the artists :

Quote:

There are a lot of artists out there who haven't signed Robbie-like deals," Berman said, referring to Williams' estimated $125 million mega-deal with Britain's EMI.

That's SO true... I wonder why that's the case?

Quote:

"I'm appalled at Robbie Williams' statement. He has an £80m contract and probably doesn't worry too much about all those singers, songwriters, musicians, and music publishers who depend entirely for a living on receiving honest revenue from sales of their product," said Mr Howells.

Actually many of these artists make less than a McDonald's employee does. And you can't deny the fact that this was true before "internet piracy". Could there be a common factor here?

They really don't get it, do they?

multi · 26-01-03, 07:10 PM

Quote:

"The heads of the record labels don't know what to do about it. But I'm cool, if you want my music - download it." - Robbie Williams.

not for me,but thanks anyway.......

naz · 26-01-03, 07:59 PM

perhaps when the cd industry finally keels over, chancers like Robbie Williams won't be so ridiculously overvalued ...
I mean it was 80 million or something to sign him. Did they even listen to his 2 last albums? Don't even get me started on Invincible Jackson.

23-01-03, 11:06 PM	#1
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,017	Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Jan. 25th, ‘03 Subpoena Stampedes Score another big win for the RIAA. Say what you will about them (they’re sharks) but give them the credit they’re due, anything less is head in the sand. On Tuesday they won their fight with the ISPs. From now on a record company or anyone, even you or your enemy, can receive detailed information about an ISP customer as long as a clerk is convinced the customer has shared copyrighted files. Previously subpoena warrants were issued by judges only. Verizon had protested the requirement, saying it was bad for business, bad for precedent, expensive, unwieldy and intrusive but the judge disagreed. Strongly. Cary Sherman president of the RIAA thinks the decision was a Great Day for America, but he might want to read his history. Warrant-less searches have been tried before and have ended in disaster. Germany comes to mind. Verizon plans an appeal. As bad as it’s getting in the States, the Lillehammer has really dropped on another poor kid in Norway, where a court ruled in favor of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), fining student Frank Bruvik 100,000 crowns ($14,520 gulp) for building a Napster clone site and running it for just three months. That now makes them 3 for 4 in the North Countries. The IFPI has previously won suits in Sweden and Denmark and the one case they did lose - Norways’ “DVD Jon” - will be appealed. Extra Extra Not one to lose international momentum Hillary Rosen this week at the Midem conference in southern France proposed an extra “new idea” (it’s actually been kicked around for a while). ISPs should pay for all those files we trade. As you can imagine the ISPs weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect but if it happens they will of course pass the extra costs along to us. I suppose it’ll eventually work like this - it’s complicated so follow closely: Hapless customers download files. Hapless customers send extra big checks to ISPs. RIAA takes extra big checks and hires extra big lawyers. Extra big lawyers use extra big checks to buy extra big SUVs. Extra big SUVs are perfect for extra big vacations and have extra big phones that lawyers use to send hapless customers to extra big prisons. So get your friends to practice baking extra big cakes with extra big files inside. In an extra big twist the RIAA has denied the report. Reuters stands by it. Are we clear? When the internet is finally dead and we have to trade files on foot will Hillary’s clone subpoena the shoe companies (with the consent of the courts of course)? Stay tuned. Every time you buy a record or pay to see a movie a fair bit of your cash goes to industry lobbying groups like the RIAA, MPAA and the IFPI. They use it to create laws like these. Indeed, without your money these laws wouldn’t be possible. Something to think about. And your little dog too. The very bright spot this week was the not totally unexpected announcement of the resignation of Hillary Rosen, storm trooper extraordinaire and head lobbyist for the “Damn the Peoples’ Rights” RIAA. Citing personal reasons (“They hate me, they really, really hate me!”) she’ll be melting at the end of the year. Can’t come too soon toots. You and your even creepier pal Valenti have done more harm to this fair land than you’ll ever know. Ding dong the witch is dead. Enjoy, Jack. "She can punch you in the face, and you're still smiling after she does it." "I never thought of myself as one of those separatist dykes," she says, "But I suppose if people see me that way, that's fine." Hating Hilary Matt Bai Hilary Rosen paces the creaking oak floor of the Oxford Union debate hall, eyeing the empty pews the way a Roman gladiator might have surveyed the Colosseum. Rosen is the chair of the Recording Industry Association of America, and in a few hours she'll be standing here in a black formal gown, getting ripped to pieces. Along with several other industry executives, she's charged with defending the proposition: "This house believes that the free- music mentality is a threat to the future of music." Of course, the students of "this house" believe nothing of the sort. "I myself have about 900 megabytes of music on my computer," Dave Watson, the union's president, tells me before the debate. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a group of students who've never downloaded music. You can't stop them, as long as it's free." "Are you nervous?" I ask Rosen. She's checking out the two doors students will exit through to cast their votes - one for "ayes" and another for "noes." She looks a little hurt by the suggestion. "I just want to win," she says. Most people in Rosen's place would consider themselves lucky just to make it out alive. Reviled by college kids, music fans, and more than a few recording artists for the RIAA's role in forcing the shutdown of Napster, Rosen is seen as the embodiment of a venal corporate culture hurtling toward obsolescence. It seems she'll stop at nothing to frighten those who share music online instead of buying it in a store - hacking into networks, threatening universities and businesses, sending out subpoenas to unmask music-swappers. Some Hilary haters have protested her speeches and urged others to mail her excrement. On a scale of odiousness, devotees of the Web site Whatsbetter?com rated Rosen just below Illinois Nazis but better than Michael Bolton (and way above pedophile priests). On the more serious side, death threats once prompted Rosen to travel with security. "People take their free music seriously," Rosen says wryly. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/hating.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Norwegian student fined for online music piracy Reuters A court has fined a Norwegian student over his song-swap website in a ruling hailed by the music industry on Thursday as a victory for giants like EMI and Sony whose revenues have suffered from online music piracy. The case, the first in Norway on downloading of music without copyright holders' approval, followed similar rulings in neighbouring Sweden and Denmark in favour of the industry. The court in the southern city of Lillehammer ruled on Wednesday that Frank Bruvik broke the law when he made his own version of the now-closed U.S.-based website napster.com, enabling users to download songs by clicking on links on his site, napster.no. "This was the most high-profile piracy site in Norway for downloading music and an important victory for us," Saemund Fiskvik, director general of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Norway, told Reuters. The IFPI sued Bruvik together with Norway's TONO performing rights society, the Nordic Copyright Bureau and major music companies including EMI EMI.L , BMG [BERT.UL], Sony Music and Universal Music EAUG.PA V.N . Bruvik, 24, was ordered to pay 100,000 crowns ($14,520), about a fifth of the music industry's original claim for estimated losses of sales caused by napster.no. Big music labels blame online piracy for a dramatic drop in CD sales. "I call it even," said Bruvik's lawyer Magnus Stray Vyrje. "The ruling said it is illegal to distribute the links, but that it's legal to use them. That is a victory for all Internet users in Norway," he told Reuters, estimating Norwegians make about 60-100 million pirated music copies per year. Bruvik would probably appeal, he added. The deadline for any appeal is four weeks. Fiskvik said Bruvik, who had developed the program as a school project in 2001, shut down the service after the lawsuit was filed late that year -- after a few months in operation. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2098420 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quicker than you can say “Taliban” Southern Methodist University Officials Ban All Peer-To-Peers Katy Blakey After checking his mailbox, Clark Castle, a sophomore advertising major, tore open a letter from the Information Technology Services Department and quickly discarded it on his way out of Hughes-Trigg. Like most of his peers he ignored the letter, which warned students about using file-sharing software applications to download music or movies that may be copyright protected. "I didn't really give the letter much thought," said Castle. "It seemed just like another letter warning us about consequences that would never really be put in effect." That night as Castle sat at his computer, he opened up the LimeWire program, which he had regularly used while at SMU, and began downloading new songs. After downloading a few songs he shut down his computer for the night. "The next morning, I tried connecting to the Internet and it wouldn't let me," said Castle. "I thought at first that the server was just down until I tried logging on to a friends computer and could check my e-mail." An e-mail from Information Technology Services told Castle that the network had detected illegal use of file sharing software and that his network connection had been disabled. To regain access to his connection he would have to either show proof that he had been given authorization to download copyrighted material or confirm in writing that he had deleted the program from his computer. "I immediately deleted the program from my computer and wrote a letter and took it up to the center," said Castle. "When I got up there, I didn't even need to turn in my letter because there were already forms to fill out regarding the violation." Until classes resumed for the Spring 2003 semester, users on the SMU server were able to download copyrighted computer games, movies and material from programs like LimeWire and Kazaa Media Desktop without any consequences. Starting this semester, students will no longer be able to download these commonly used file sharing programs. If use of one of these programs is detected, the user will receive one warning to remove the program from their computer. If the user continues to participate in file sharing, his case can be taken to the Student Judicial Affairs and SMU Legal Affairs. http://www.smudailycampus.com/vnews/.../3e2c92ebce33c ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Faster than you can say “Southern Methodist” Islam Officials Destroy Tapes and CD's in Pakistani Province AP Officials in a deeply conservative Pakistani province destroyed audio and video tapes and compact discs today as part of a campaign to wipe out material the authorities deem obscene. In front of a crowd of more than 1,000 people, officials doused gasoline on the materials piled up in a bazaar in Peshawar. The police chief, Tanveer ul-Haq Sipra, then set the pile on fire. "We are determined to fulfill our promises about Islamization and cleaning up society," said Maulana Haji Ihsan ul-Haq, general-secretary of the Muthida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/in...ia/19TAPE.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RIAA monitors downloads while Carnegie Mellon U cuts off students Matt Rado A seemingly innocent download of the popular Disney film Monsters, Inc. gave one student a firsthand demonstration of Carnegie Mellon’s copyright policies. First-year H&SS student Nayoung Joe was participating in what has become a fixture in college dorm rooms across the country when on December 12 she received a surprising email. Computing Services informed her that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was able to download copyrighted material off of her computer, and that Computing Services would suspend her Internet service for at least one full semester. She thought a simple apology would correct the matter, but when Joe responded to the email, she was told she must wait at least one semester before CMU would consider reinstating her access. http://www.thetartan.org/97/14/news/2843.asp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Deal Amy Harmon The major recording companies said yesterday that they would not seek government intervention to prevent digital piracy, in a compromise with computer companies that may hurt the movie industry's efforts to win support for its own anti-piracy plan. As part of the agreement, the Recording Industry Association of America said that under most circumstances it would oppose legislation that would require computers and consumer electronics devices to be designed to restrict unauthorized copying of audio and video material. Technology executives have hotly opposed such measures, which they say would slow innovation, make their devices more expensive and do little to stop piracy. In turn, the Business Software Alliance and another technology group, the Computer Systems Policy Project, said they would not support legislation that seeks to clarify and bolster the rights of people to use copyrighted material in the digital age, which the recording industry has opposed as unnecessary. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Microsoft Introduces CD Copy-Protection 'Fix' Bernhard Warner CANNES, France (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O announced on Saturday the introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry's side. Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or "burning," new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers. For example, most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too. Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's 6758.T proprietary technology simply by scribbling a magic marker pen around the edges of the disc, thus enabling playback on any device. Microsoft believes it may have come up with a solution. The new software is called the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit. It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC. The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2068044 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hillary: ISPs should pay for music swapping Reuters A top music industry representative said Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites. The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy. Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source--Internet service providers (ISPs). "We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera. "Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981281.html RIAA Denies Story http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,46652,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ U.S. becoming Big Brother society: Report Associated Press San Francisco — The United States is evolving into a Big Brother society as technology advances and post-Sept. 11 surveillance increases, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a new report. "The reasonable expectation of privacy has been dramatically diminished," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, said in an interview following Wednesday's release of the report "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society." "A combination of lightning-fast technological innovations and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from an oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life," the report said. A growing "surveillance monster" is emerging, it argues, in which the private and the public sector are monitoring Americans with video cameras to the extent that it is becoming almost impossible to walk the streets of major cities without being filmed. Yet there are virtually no rules governing what can be done with those tapes. Computer chip technology currently in use to speed motorists through tollbooths might one day be used on identification cards to allow police officers to "scan your identification when they pass you on the street," the report said. The study points to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is exploring amassing a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records. There are few privacy laws to prevent businesses from selling the government such information, Mr. Steinhardt said. "If we do not act to reverse the current trend, data surveillance - like video surveillance - will allow corporations or the government to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day," the report said. Moreover, under the Patriot Act - the anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks - the government can demand that libraries turn over reading habits of patrons. Authorities can more easily attain telephone and computer wiretaps, and conduct searches in secret without immediately notifying the target. http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New WinMx Trojan? UTC’s Lion says maybe. http://www.unitethecows.com/forums/s...?threadid=5625 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Pentagon database plan hits snag CNET News.com Washington — A Pentagon antiterrorism plan to link databases of credit card companies, health insurers and others — creating what critics call a "domestic surveillance apparatus" — is encountering growing opposition on Capitol Hill. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a bill on Thursday to halt the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program. A representative said on Wednesday that if passed, the legislation would suspend the TIA program until Congress can "review the data-mining issues." Even if Congress never acts on Mr. Feingold's proposal, the unusual step of trying to suspend a military program may prompt the Defense Department to review the TIA program in a way few other tactics could. The bill will also provide TIA critics with a focal point for activism. If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor vehicle departments for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists. It's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Over the last two months, scrutiny of TIA has been growing, with newspaper editorials claiming that one of the project's leaders, Adm. John Poindexter, is unfit for the job because of his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. As a protest gesture, activists and critics of TIA have posted Mr. Poindexter's personal information on-line, which may lie behind the removal of information from the TIA Web site on at least three occasions. On Tuesday, a coalition of civil liberties groups sent a letter to Congress asking that hearings be convened to investigate TIA. "Why is the Department of Defense developing a domestic surveillance apparatus?" the letter asked. "What databases of personal information would TIA envision having access to?" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Battered Record Execs Set to Face the Music Fri January 17, 2003 09:38 AM ET Bernhard Warner and Merissa Marr Global recorded music sales look set to fall for the fourth straight year in 2003 thanks to piracy and the economic downturn, and its bosses are desperate for solutions. Executives gathering for the global music industry conference Midem in southern France this weekend know it's make or break time. The bruised industry needs a new formula as fans increasingly spend their disposable income on video games and "burn" their own CD compilations while labels desperately seek a new crop of long-lasting stars. Major music labels have so far responded by slashing jobs, axing B-list artists and trimming back their bloated businesses. However, the industry appears no closer to a long-term solution than last year and talk of consolidation among the big five music companies is growing louder by the day. "2003 will be the tipping point. The fundamentals continue to deteriorate and consolidation will have to happen," said Michael Nathanson, media analyst at U.S.-based investment research firm Sanford Bernstein. "The outlook is miserable. It's going to take at least two years to get out of this and a lot of people will disappear in the process," one music executive predicted. http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=2064138 Music Official: Online Piracy Costs Jobs Bernhard Warner In its harshest indictment yet of Internet piracy, a top official of the music industry said Sunday Europe's 600,000 music professionals risk losing their jobs unless the industry fights back. "They are all potential victims of online music piracy," Jay Berman, the CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told music executives in his annual address at the Midem music conference in southern France. "In truth, online music piracy is not about free music. The music creators and rights holders, denied the right to choose how their music is used and enjoyed, are in fact paying the price," Berman said in a fiery speech. The music industry is facing its fourth straight year of declining sales. Executives blame the rise of Internet file-sharing services such as Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus, plus rampant CD copying by consumers and organized criminal groups. Berman challenged music executives at the major music labels, which include Warner Music, Vivendi Music, BMG, EMI and Sony Music, to tackle its nemesis head-on. He urged them to pump more money into promoting industry-backed subscription download services and step up lobbying efforts to bring a new piece of European legislation, The Copyright Directive, into law on the local level. Berman accused the telecommunications industry of derailing the Copyright Directive, which has won support in Brussels, but still requires 13 of the 15 European Union member states to adopt on the local level. If passed, it would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on the grounds that it put them in the costly role of having to police their customers. Compared to the United States, which has the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Europe lacks strong laws that would penalize individuals for distributing and reproducing copyrighted materials such as music, films and software. Berman also criticized comments made by chart-topping British pop star Robbie Williams, who Saturday called file-sharing "great." There are a lot of artists out there who haven't signed Robbie-like deals," Berman said, referring to Williams' estimated $125 million mega-deal with Britain's EMI. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2070260 International music business closes ranks to fight Internet threat Audrey Stuart Faced with the seemingly unstoppable flood of free music accessible on the Internet the world's music business is finally pulling together to fight back, industry trade body chiefs believe. "I sense a huge coming together in the music industry around the world," Hilary Rosen, head of the powerful Recording Industry Association of America told MidemNet here. Held on the eve of MIDEM, the music industry's largest trade show, the one-day MidemNet meeting is focused on the new technologies like the Internet that are driving and transforming the music sector business. But having turned from music business darling into its greatest challenge as free online music services drain revenue away from the recording industry and artists, there was a palpable feeling of anxiety at this year's MidemNet. How to turn consumers into paying customers - or "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free" - are among the conundrums facing the industry today and the focus for the brainstorming MidemNet meeting. Worldwide music sales nose-dived 9.2 percent last year with the U.S., home to music recording giants EMI and Universal Music to name two, one of the hardest hit with sales down 11 percent. With the total world market worth a cool $30.3 billion in revenue in 2002, pressure to staunch this flow is mounting. Most of the blame has been placed on the surge in downloading from free Internet music services. "We're talking about hundreds of millions of unauthorized music files being shared around the world and made available, just by the click of a mouse. The magnitude of it is staggering," Jay Berman, chairman and CEO of the world industry trade body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said. "This (downloading) is already having a profound impact on the business. The number of releases is down substantially," Burnham added. http://newsobserver.com/24hour/techn...-5307323c.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Rolling Heads Sue Zeidler Jay Boberg, president of Vivendi Universal's MCA Records, home to acts such as Mary J. Blige and Sublime, resigned on Thursday, becoming the second high-profile record industry executive to step down in a week. The departure of Boberg, 44, came on the heels of the sudden resignation last week of Thomas Mottola, the powerful head of rival recording giant Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment, replaced one day later by an industry outsider, Andrew Lack, a top NBC executive. Both shake-ups at Sony and Universal, as well as recent layoffs at Bertelsmann AG's BMG, underscored to many in the industry the fragile state of the recording business. "We're just having a huge leadership shake-up in the music industry as it repositions and redefines itself and tries to experiment and redetermine the winning formula," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research. "It's unclear how the music industry intends to make money with the CD becoming less and less a desirable product for consumers." Boberg, a Harvard Business School graduate, is credited with overseeing the growth of big acts like Blink-182, Sublime, Shaggy, and Blige at MCA. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2060702 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ eMule v0.25b is now available http://www.emule-project.net/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mix master iPod makes music of juxtapositions Tom Moon Last spring, the New York Times Magazine devoted a full page to the contents of the musician Beck's iPod portable MP3 player. The list wasn't terribly surprising -- obscure Brazilian pop of the '60s, several pieces by 20th-Century dissonance master Anton Webern, some Bing Crosby and Blind Willie McTell. I remember wondering: What's the big deal? Of course an artist who revels in curious juxtapositions and collisions of "found" sounds would feed his head with minor classics and arcana, lost beats from every hidden corner of the globe. What I didn't appreciate then was what Beck and other MP3-enabled types had been saying: That having so much music at your fingertips, with the ability to organize and quickly regroup tunes to follow one stylistic path or mix several, actually changes the listening experience. http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...isuretempo-hed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Campuses License Xythos Technology Press Release Boston College, University of California at Irvine, and University of Memphis have selected Xythos Software, a developer of Internet file management software, to implement file management solutions for their campus communities. More than 20 colleges and universities have licensed the company's products to address file sharing needs both on and off campus. With Xythos, students, faculty, and administrators can access and share any type of education related content including course syllabi, records, lesson plans, and assignments from any Internet connection while maintaining control and security of this information. http://www.econtentmag.com/ecxtra/20...03_0117_4.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This Is Your Deep Link on P2P Michelle Delio Following links from one Web page to another may soon require users to run special stealth applications, if a Danish search company's experience is a sign of things to come. To link directly to some newspapers' content, Danish search firm Newsbooster now must use the sort of decentralized subterfuge utilized by companies that distribute file-sharing applications. File-sharing systems such as Kazaa and Gnutella have so far avoided the sort of legal hassles that brought down Napster by networking their users' computers together, instead of serving up files from a single server. The accepted wisdom is that it's easier to pursue corporations whose software may be used to violate copyrights, but tracking down and stopping a dispersed network of individual violators is significantly more difficult. "Newsbrowser" offers all the same features as Newsbooster's original Web-based service, but through a separate, downloadable program that runs on a user's own computer. "Newsbooster cannot and will not accept limits on the free possibilities of the Internet," Lassen said. "We will continue to fight for a legal ruling that recognizes the difference between a referral via a link and the copying of protected information. But in the meantime, there is Newsbrowser." "Since copyright is intended to promote authorship and dissemination, it is best served by encouraging these deep links, not threatening and suing them out of existence," said Wendy Seltzer, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney and founder of the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, a project to study and combat the legal threats to the Internet. "However, as we've seen from some of the silly cease-and-desists Chilling Effects has received, and the Newsbooster case, not all copyright holders are so sensible. Newsbrowser sounds like a rational response to ill- considered enforcement." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57230,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Court Rules Against Network Associates' Software Review Policy Matt RichelI New York court has ruled that Network Associates, a maker of popular antivirus and computer security software, may not require people who buy the software to get permission from the company before publishing reviews of its products. The decision, which the company has vowed to appeal, could carry a penalty in the millions of dollars, according to Ken Dreifach, chief of the Internet bureau of the office of the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. Last spring, Mr. Spitzer sued Network Associates, which has its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., asserting that the company's software included an unenforceable clause that effectively violated consumers' free speech. The clause, which appeared on software products and the company's Web site, read: "The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates Inc." In a decision the parties received late Thursday, Justice Marilyn Shafer of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the clause was deceptive and that it warranted a fine, which she wrote that she would determine in the future. Mr. Dreifach said the decision had implications beyond Network Associates. "These types of clauses are not uncommon," he said. The decision "raises the issue of whether these types of clauses — whether they restrict use, resale or the right to criticize — are enforceable," he added. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/business/18SOFT.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “So please, be online. But be protected.” Optimum Online - Scare mongering and propaganda Please note that "upstream" refers only to the sending of information or files from your computer out to the Internet (which is what a server does) and not the receiving of files or Web pages at your computer. In other words, even if your upstream speed were throttled due to abuse, your "downstream" speed would not be affected--and you would still be able to download music, video, games and Web pages in seconds with your Optimum Online service. In fact, Optimum Online is a great, fast way to download music! We encourage you to try out the Optimum Online Rhapsody service for one week free to see for yourself the power of unlimited access to 20,000 albums with CD- quality sound from any computer you choose. Just click here to get started! http://www.optonline.net/Home/Articl...%3Dreg,00.html Encourage? Don’t be modest OOL, you downright insist! If ISPs succeed in stopping uploads then the only way most of us will be able to get any content at all will be through your paid gateways, sharing with friends will be a bitter memory. “Click here to end P2P’s!” is what they’re really working towards and that’s what I call abuse. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “It is ludicrous for the illicit toll-collector to argue that if people can learn how to cross the Brooklyn Bridge without paying the illicit toll, then legitimate toll collectors will be at risk.” The DMCRA is Consistent With the DMCA John T. Mitchell Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), along with Representatives John Doolittle (R-CA), Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), introduced the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act of 2003 (H.R. 107, or “DMCRA”), which would, among other things, make it no longer unlawful to circumvent access control technologies for the purpose of making lawful (noninfringing) use of a work protected by copyright. This is just common sense. We make it a crime to break into cars, but we don’t criminalize breaking into your own car when you locked the keys inside. And even in the case of criminals, we’ve never found any valid reason for letting an automobile manufacturer sue people for breaking into cars the manufacturer no longer owns. Why should record companies and movie studios be allowed to sue people for breaking into their own music and film collections? This was certainly an unintended side effect of the DMCA. This amendment is long overdue. It protects the DMCA from potential invalidation, it brings the DMCA in line with our treaty obligations, it creates a powerful incentive for copyright holders to use technological access controls for lawful purposes only, and it protects the rights of the least advantaged. Opponents of H.R. 107 claim that the DMCRA would weaken, undermine, gut, eviscerate, or otherwise wreak havoc with the DMCA – that the exception would swallow the rule. They are only kidding themselves – Congress should know better. To call the DMCRA as just a “fair use” bill does it a disservice. None of the uses described…constitute “fair use” under the Copyright Act. Because none are infringing in the first place. http://interactionlaw.com/interactionlaw/id9.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From Filter – varied reactions to the courts’ Kazaa/ISP ruling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan22.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After the copyright smackdown: What next? Don't despair at the Supreme Court's gift to Disney, says one expert. The fight has really only just begun. Siva Vaidhyanathan When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Congress was within its constitutional bounds to extend the duration of all copyrights by 20 years -- up to 70 years beyond the life of the author and potentially infinitely -- many saw the ruling as a knockout blow to the movement to reform copyright. Some on the public interest side are tempted to lament what could be called the "Dred Scott case for culture," unjustifiably locking up content that deserves to be free. After all, six of the nine justices concurred with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she issued a stark opinion that cavalierly dismissed the historical "bargain" that justified American copyright in the first place: We the People agree to grant a limited, temporary monopoly to a creator or publisher in exchange for access to creativity and the eventual return of the work to a state of freedom. And Ginsburg's opinion did not allow that the purpose of copyright is to encourage future production, not lock up works already created. She ignored the fact that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 does nothing to "promote the progress" of science or art because it grants no incentive to produce and distribute new works. So out of despair some might see civil disobedience -- hacking and freely distributing songs and films over digital networks -- as the only remaining response to the excesses of the copyright regimes and the hold they have over courts and Congress. While disobedience might be more fun, the power of civil discourse remains. In fact, the ruling gives public interest activists both motivation and ammunition in the continuing battle against the excessive expansion of the power to control information and culture. As is so often the case, the best rallying cry came from a dissenter in the case. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: "It is easy to understand how the statute might benefit the private financial interests of corporations or heirs who won existing copyrights. But I cannot find any constitutionally legitimate, copyright-related way in which the statute will benefit the public." This is the key to any public interest movement: Show that narrow special interests are getting away with everything and the public interest is suffering. Yet Ginsburg herself aided the public's rhetorical cause even while ruling against its interests. While dismissing the notion that excessive copyright expansion has severe First Amendment implications, she invoked two of the classic democratic safeguards of American copyright: the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use. Because of these two concepts, Ginsburg concluded, the court need not take the censorious power of copyright seriously. The idea/expression dichotomy means that copyright does not protect facts or ideas. It only protects specific expressions of facts or ideas. This allows us to cite a fact or idea while criticizing another writer or building on another's work. Fair uses are small allowances for the public good, exceptions to the sweeping powers that a copyright holder enjoys. A teacher may invoke fair use, for instance, when showing a film in class. A student uses another's work fairly if she quotes a small portion in a research paper. Ginsburg's expression of faith in the power of the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use does not recognize that both these rights are under attack in Congress and lower courts right now. The motion picture, music, publishing, and software industries are trying to expand their control over the machines in your home to limit the uses you might make of material you have lawfully purchased. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ght/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Court Deaf to Public-Domain Pleas Michael Grebb The Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday to uphold a controversial law extending copyrights for 20 years came as a blow to public-domain advocates. The 7-2 ruling (PDF) in Eldred v. Ashcroft gives Congress free reign to hand out copyright extensions as long as media companies are around to lobby for them -- all while rejecting most arguments brought by the plaintiffs to the contrary. "Litigation is not the path anymore," acknowledged Joe Kraus, co-founder of DigitalConsumer.org, a consumer rights group that focuses on digital copyright issues. "The pressure needs to now turn toward our elected officials in Congress.... The domain just got taken off the table. Now all we have is fair use." Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he was "pleased that the court reaffirmed the absolute authority of Congress to set copyright terms." Broussard, however, noted that the decision could someday haunt copyright owners because it clarifies that Congress is the ultimate forum for copyright law. If Congress someday took away terms now enjoyed by copyright owners, he said, it might be more difficult to argue that it's an act of "taking away" under the Fifth Amendment. "That seems to be the other edge of this decision," he said. While the lobbying strength of media companies makes such prospects unlikely any time soon, the future balance of power may depend on the success of grassroots efforts. "It's my hope that there's actually good to come out of this decision," said Kraus of DigitalConsumer.org. "It's a wake-up call. It's a rallying cry." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57237,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Boo Hoo. Poor Aussies Getting Sheared like Sheep By Shrewd U.S. Telcos Garry Barker United States telecommunications companies are "screwing" Australia on Internet content transmission, says the Minister for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Richard Alston. He said Australia paid for transmission in both directions and the US paid nothing. "We and other countries have made repeated efforts to (correct the situation) but nothing has been done and is not likely to be done," he said. "The Americans take the view that might is right." Senator Alston was speaking after the publication in Melbourne of the report of the Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) set up by the Federal Government a year ago to examine the development of broadband communications in Australia. The report urges a national broadband strategy across all levels of government and industry and makes 19 recommendations, most of them touching on issues already well accepted in the communications industry - even self-evident. Although it stops short of proposing price caps or controls, the BAG urges the government to require the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate industry concerns about domestic Internet "peering" arrangements (charging between peer companies) and monitor progress towards an open, competitive broadband market. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...911531247.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Austrailian ISPs ignore US copyright attack Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have doused reported attempts by a US digital copyright solutions company to force them to terminate the Internet contracts of customers suspected of breaching copyright rules. MediaForce, a US digital copyright solutions company claiming to act on behalf of Warner Bros, has reportedly sent a letter to at least one Australian ISP listing a series of IP addresses it claims have been used to illegally access copyrighted material. The letter goes on to request the user of the IP addresses be denied access, and that their account be terminated. "Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following: 1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you," read the letter, a copy of which has been posted on broadband forum site Whirlpool. None of the five ISPs contacted by ZDNet Australia claimed to have received the letter, but most indicated they would be unlikely to comply with the requests in the letter if they did receive one. "We wouldn't act on it because Warner Bros is not a government body that would act on those things," Iain McKimm, Pacific Internet's director of technology and strategy told ZDNet Australia . "We can't act as police, we have to act on what the guidelines are." http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/sec...0271225,00.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RIAA can't touch UK ISPs, says lawyer Dinah Greek The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is unlikely to be able to hold UK internet service providers (ISPs) accountable for customers downloading illegal music files, according to a lawyer. The RIAA has said that ISPs must be made to pay a charge to offset revenues lost to the music industry from people illegally downloading music. But according to Stuart Nuttall, of solicitors Fladgate Fielder, the grounds on which the music industry intends to 'fine' ISPs are flawed. The move is simply an attempt to look for someone else to blame for falling CD sales, he said. Nuttall indicated that the RIAA is unlikely to be successful in the UK. "It is part of a trend by the RIAA to hit soft targets. But it flies in the face of economic developments and stops the music industry looking closely at other ways of selling music," explained Nuttall. But a judge in the US has already given the music industry the power to force American ISPs to name those who trade music files across their servers. In a landmark judgement, a US judge ordered the online division of Verizon Communications to give the RIAA the name of a customer who had downloaded as many as 600 songs a day using the popular Kazaa music file-sharing service. But Nuttall suggested that even a move like this in the UK could fall foul of a number of laws designed to protect consumers. "In the UK I would seriously question the validity of any claim and think it would be unenforceable," he said. "Monitoring customers' internet activities could fall foul of UK data protection laws." ISPs are open to forming alliances with the music industry, according to online music distribution company OD2. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1138202 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Congress needs to codify fair use Ted Como Kudos to Rep. Rick Boucher, who will carry on efforts to protect consumers' fair use of digital material regardless of an agreement last week between music and technology industries over digital copyright. Earlier this month, Rep. Boucher reintroduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which would grant rights under the fair use exemption of copyright law to repurpose digital media that you pay for. Boucher knows well that absent all interested parties, the agreement, though a major advance on behalf of consumers of digital media, likely will not prevent efforts to handicap use of digital content. That's why it's important to codify fair use and it's past time Congress acted. The agreement is hailed as a truce in an ongoing battle over piracy of digital content, and I take no issue with efforts by factions of the music industry to protect the rights of artists whose material is stolen and distributed over the Internet. We all are entitled to the fruits of our labor and downloading music without paying for it is no different that stealing a paycheck. But while music representatives who signed onto the agreement with various purveyors of technology are to be commended, others who did not would take a different approach - the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) foremost among them. MPAA would dictate how we all use technology and in the process, strangle technological development. That's what Rick Boucher wants to prevent. MPAA would require makers of computers, DVD players, CD-ROMs and other devices build copyright protection technology into their products. A bill introduced in the last Congress by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and co- sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Outer Limits) would allow government to mandate how technology is developed and used - something citizens of China may be accustomed to but nothing we need in a free enterprise system. Even should such an effort succeed legislatively, it won't work practically. As with evolution, technology is unstoppable and there's no better way to energize something than government telling us we can't do it. http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3168899 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Web pirates raise flags on college campuses Ryan Smith The bedtime stories that Sheldon Steinbach read to his daughter when she was young always included something a little extra. "I always read the copyright notice," he said. "She must have been mind-boggled when she was 3." Now that she’s grown, Mr. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education in Washington, figures that if anyone appreciates copyright laws, it’s his daughter. For many of today’s youths, however, copyright law is little more than a pesky thing to be ignored en route to burning the latest Eminem CD or Star Wars prequel. And with the speed and capacity of college computer networks, universities have increasingly found their systems a breeding ground for offenders. Some students say they just don’t care. "I think especially with college students, the feeling is, ‘If I can get if free, I’ll take it free,’" said Matt Vandermeulen, a BGSU senior from Chicago. Mr. Carroll used to count himself among that group. When the online music-swapping service Napster became popular a few years ago, he admittedly downloaded around 400 songs. Now he discourages his friends from helping themselves to free tunes. "I began to realize that that’s what made the Internet so slow," he said. "It just became so ridiculous." http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...1190075&Ref=AR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SmartRight demonstrates digital content protection system Press Release SmartRight has demonstrated a complete smart-card based end-to-end digital content protection system for home-networked consumer electronics devices at last week's International Consumer Electronics Show. The demonstration showed how usage rights associated with content are enforced on a digital home network comprising a set-top box, a hard disk drive and a TV set linked together over IEEE 1394. SmartRight is based on the use of removable security modules, such as smart cards, which provide a cost-effective and renewable solution to protect content against hacking. Member companies participating in the initiative include Canal+ Technologies, Micronas, Nagravision, SchlumbergerSema, STMicroelectronics, SCM Microsystems, and Thomson. Olivier Lafaye, General Manager, Innovation Projects at Thomson, has said "The initiative has gained and continues to gain rapid momentum and acceptance, highlighted recently by SCM joining the initiative last month." SmartRight aims to offer a complete solution to ensure copy protection and content management on digital home networks. The new copy protection system has been proposed to the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) ad-hoc group on Copy Protection Technology which is currently defining technical requirements for content protection in digital home entertainment networks, which include devices such as TV sets, set-top boxes, DVD players, digital video recorders, and PCs. http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14498 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STM demonstrate 'advanced satellite broadcast services' Press Release Switzerland's STMicroelectronics (ST), the world's third largest semi-conductor company, has announced that it successfully operated a live 8PSK turbo-coded satellite digital TV broadcast during a satellite test in "France Telecom Reseaux et Services Internationaux" premises in Rambouillet, France. The demonstration, which took place on 5 December 2002, was based on ST's STV0499 8PSK Turbo Coding technology, which increases throughput for advanced satellite broadcast services up to 50% over today's commercial satellite links. The demonstration, which featured an actual satellite connection, highlights STMicroelectronics' collaboration with French satellite pay-TV operator TPS and Eutelsat, which provided the satellite link. The system that has been demonstrated provides satellite broadcasters with an efficient method of increasing throughput over existing satellite infrastructures and providing new services for their customers. Additional services that may be offered include increased numbers of standard TV channels, HDTV and internet download. http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14496 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ K-Lite forums off the boards. Host trouble or something internal? Reaction http://www.internal-technologies.net...3ffa42ae3682e6 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Court mulls Madster restart request Deep representing himself Kevin Harlin Madster founder John Deep was in U.S. District Court on Wednesday asking a judge to let him restart his file-swapping service so he can defend himself against piracy accusations and eventually pay off creditors. Deep, who represented himself before Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, said Madster -- shut down since Dec. 2 by order of a federal judge in Chicago -- is suffering irreparable financial harm and that is threatening his ability to pay off creditors in a separate bankruptcy case. Deep wants Kahn to temporarily freeze the Chicago copyright case, which would essentially void the Dec. 2 order. It also would force the major record companies and movie studios to move their efforts to shut down Madster to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albany. "Jurisdiction battles really matter when you're the one going up against some of the biggest companies in the world, represented by some of the biggest law firms in the world," Deep said after the hearing. "I really do think I can win if we can make it a fair fight." http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories... te=1/16/2003 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB Michael Lasky Take a look at one of those credit cards in your wallet. That's the exact size and thickness of an upcoming, revolutionary removable storage device called StorCard. Created by a company with the same name, StorCard can contain from 100MB to more than 5GB of data on a plastic card. At first glance, it looks like a credit card, and even has a magnetic strip like a credit card, for potential use in standard credit card readers. The hard disk data, however, is accessed on a tiny spinning disk inside the thin card. "The card actually has moveable parts inside its thin shell," says Bill Heil, vice president of StorCard. A spinning wheel made of Mylar is engaged when the card is inserted into a StorReader, a USB-connected drive or PC Card that reads and writes to the StorCard. The reader is expected to retail for under $100 and the cards for under $15 each, Heil says. http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108816,00.asp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No Future For Record Labels Speculates Sony CEO Steven Levy It is the only company with premium positions in both the gizmo world and the media world. At AOL Time Warner, synergy is an epithet, but in Tokyo the promise not only survives, but thrives. To Idei, everything comes together with his beloved buzzword: broadband. Sony will create not only network-connected products but also devise services that deliver the content—much of which Sony owns through its own music, movie and game divisions. (The early models for this include the wildly popular online game called EverQuest and an interactive television guide.) Sony may even have a hand in new forms of currency used to purchase such services: through its own bank, the company offers Tokyo train commuters a smart-card payment system. To realize this vision requires not only imaginative new products that exploit the vaunted “Sony DNA,” but altering the dynamics within Sony itself. “The company was built in a vertical silo fashion, to cultivate the independence that was prized by Mr. Morita,” says Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony USA. “At the end of the analog age, the operating companies actually didn’t get along well.” Idei realized that this had to change. “Now everybody in every aspect of the company is talking to each other,” says Sir Howard. The necessity for such bridge-building led to the recent ouster of Sony Music’s longtime leader Tommy Mottola, whose unwillingness to confer with the rest of Sony on a new business model forced the change to an outsider, NBC television executive Andrew Lack. “If you keep talking about networks, you have to practice good networking in your own company,” says Stringer. Lack’s new job will be to try to figure out how to add value to Sony’s music division by integrating J. Lo and Bob Dylan into the interlocking stream of revenue generators that Sonyites call the Ubiquitous Value Network. http://www.msnbc.com/news/861338.asp?0cv=TB10&cp1=1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In blow to consumers, Canada blocks internet TV John Borland Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses. The long-awaited decision helped close what some had seen as a loophole in international copyright law, potentially allowing American and Canadian TV signals to be streamed online without the TV stations' or copyright holders' permission. However, regulators said they were wary of undermining traditional producers and distributors of TV content by allowing it to be distributed on the Net without regional restrictions. "At present, there is no completely workable method of ensuring that Internet retransmissions are geographically contained," the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission wrote in its decision. "The likelihood that a program retransmitted over the Internet would become available worldwide could significantly reduce the opportunities" for copyright owners. The commission's decision comes largely in response to a string of start-ups that had hoped to take advantage of Canadian law to create businesses streaming live television on the Web. The prospect horrified programmers and TV producers and prompted one high-profile lawsuit against an early start-up. The decision had been closely watched by the industry. However, the urgency of the issue dissipated somewhat late last year, when Canadian legislators independently blocked the loophole that would have allowed Internet retransmission of TV programming without the broadcasters' permission. The United States National Association of Broadcasters, which assisted in the IcraveTV case and filed comments with the Canadian Commission, welcomed the decision. "We regard this decision as a major victory for consumers in the protection of free, over-the-air television signals and programming," the group said in a statement. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981254.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sprint DSL's Gaping Security Hole Brian McWilliams Sprint DSL customers are at risk of having their e-mail addresses and passwords stolen -- even when their computers are powered off -- due to weak security controls on their DSL modems. Experts warned this week that the security problem could enable Internet vandals to wreak havoc from afar with the ZyXel Communications DSL modems issued by Sprint to tens of thousands of its FastConnect broadband customers. Sprint officials acknowledged that remote access to the administrative software embedded in the ZyXel Prestige 642 and 645 modems is by default protected with a password of "1234." But the company said users are responsible for securing the equipment, which stores login data, including the user's e-mail address and password. "We recommend that customers change the (administrative) password to increase security, but we recognize that not all customers change the password as recommended," said Sprint FastConnect spokeswoman Laura Tigges. Tigges admitted that Sprint does not provide instructions for resetting the administrative password in the documentation provided to FastConnect customers. Sprint could not say how many of its more than 110,000 DSL customers might be affected by the security issue. But a scan of a sample of Internet addresses used by Sprint DSL customers revealed that more than 90 percent of the ZyXel DSL modems found had the widely known default administrative password. Not to be confused with the Sprint DSL account password, the administrative password allows a remote user to access the modem's configuration software over the Internet. http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,57342,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prosecutors Appeal DVD Case AP Norwegian prosecutors will appeal the acquittal of a Norwegian teenager charged with digital burglary for creating and circulating a program online that cracks the security codes on DVDs. Rune Floisbonn, a prosecutor with Norway's economic crimes police, told the NTB news agency Monday that an appeal would be filed. He did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press. Jon Lech Johansen, 19, was found innocent of violating Norway's data break-in laws Jan. 7, in a ruling that gave prosecutors two weeks to decide whether to appeal the high profile case. That deadline expires Tuesday. "An appeal was expected," Johansen's attorney, Halvor Manshaus, told AP by telephone. "I haven't gotten it confirmed ... but I believe it is correct and that there will be an appeal." Floisbonn told Nettavisen, a Norwegian online newspaper, that prosecutors would challenge the Oslo City Court's interpretation of the law and the evidence presented in their case against Johansen. In its unanimous 25-page ruling, the three-member court found Johansen -- known in Norway as DVD-Jon -- innocent on all charges. The ruling was a key test in how far copyright holders can go in preventing duplication of their intellectual property. It said that consumers have rights to view legally obtained DVD films "even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen." http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57301,00.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Xlife Updates Acquisition With Improved Filtering Xlife has released an update for Acquisition, bringing it to version 0.72. Acquisition is a gnutella client designed for peer-to-peer file sharing. The update ships with support for pervasive contextual menus and improved filtering. According to Xlife: Acquisition 0.72 has just been released. Acquisition is a gnutella client supporting modern gnutella features such as Ultrapeers, swarm (multi-source) downloads, download resumption, and distributed network discovery. Acquisition is built using code from the LimeWire gnutella client, and consequently supports the same rich set of protocol features. Acquisition features an elegant single-window user interface with a convenient drawer summarizing current searches, network activity, and active transfers. Unlike other P2P clients, Acquisition is designed with usability and simplicity as the primary goals. http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/20.11.shtml ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Five ways Sony’s new chief can save the music biz Randall Rothenberg Make KaZaa your friend -- for research. Andy, if you haven't tried KaZaa, Limewire, or another peer-to-peer program, do it now. You'll notice something interesting: They not only allow you to illegally download music from peers; they also allow you to legally peer directly into their music collections. On a mass scale, that means it's possible to do consumer research that was unimaginable in the era of surveys and focus groups. With a bit of rocket science and a few clever algorithms, you can cross-reference peoples' music preferences in a way that will revolutionize target marketing, and dramatically improve the recording industry's marketing ROI. http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36931 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New box throttles campus uploads Andrea James Students, faculty and staff have a small purple box to thank for maintaining a high- speed Internet connection on campus this semester. The device, called Packetshaper, was purchased by AU e-Operations last fall to prevent file- sharing programs, such as Kazaa, from causing another network standstill, according to Director of Network Security Eric Weakland. University officials had to react quickly last fall when a new version of Kazaa—a popular file-sharing program—caused the school’s network to slow down and to utilize 99 percent of its communication capacity, as previously reported in The Eagle. Packetshaper, composed of hardware and software, physically sits between AU’s network and the outside world, according to Weakland. “The software looks at network traffic and applies rules that we set,” he said. “If it sees Kazaa usage going through the roof, it will basically tell it to slow down.” The software is not an invasion of privacy because it doesn’t actually read data such as e-mails, according to Weakland. Because AU has a high-speed Internet connection, Kazaa users worldwide like to download files from AU students. Consequently, the University uses methods to control Kazaa traffic without blocking it completely, according to Weakland. The purchase of the new hardware was made necessary last fall when a new version of Kazaa was released that functioned different from earlier versions and therefore took a heavy toll on the network’s speed and accessibility, Weakland http://www.theeagleonline.com/section.cfm/94/2/4304 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Eric Eldred Act FAQ Larry’s Lessig’s got a great idea to get stuff back into the pubic domain. Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website. http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...ves/EAFAQ.html Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art's Expense Lawrence Lessig The Supreme Court decided this week that the Constitution grants Congress an essentially unreviewable discretion to set the lengths of copyright protections however long it wants, and even to extend them. While the court was skeptical about the wisdom of the extension, seven justices believed it was not their role to second-guess "the First Branch," as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it. As I argued the opposite before the court for my clients, a group of creators and publishers who depend on public domain works, I won't say I agree. But there is something admirable in the court acknowledging and respecting limits on its own power. Still, missing from the opinion was any justification for perhaps the most damaging part of Congress's decision to extend existing copyrights for 20 years: the extension unnecessarily stifles freedom of expression by preventing the artistic and educational use even of content that no longer has any commercial value. As one dissenter, Justice Steven G. Breyer, estimated, only 2 percent of the work copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 continues to be commercially exploited (for example, the early Mickey Mouse movies, whose imminent entry into the public domain prompted Congress to act in the first place). http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/opinion/18LESS.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cruelty to Analog Chronicling efforts to control digitization technology http://analog.blogs.eff.org/archives/000239.html#000239 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Supreme Court copyright decision: A Mickey Mouse Ruling Chris Sprigman Honesty requires that I begin this column with an embarrassing admission: I am now 0 for 1 in predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases. Last March, I wrote a column for this website predicting that the Supreme Court, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, would strike down the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The CTEA, enacted in 1998, extended by 20 years the duration of both future and subsisting copyrights. On January 15 of this year, the Court upheld the Act, 7-2. (Justice Ginsburg wrote for the majority; Justices Stevens and Breyer filed separate dissents.) Not only is the result, in my view, erroneous, but the opinion that reached it is deeply flawed. It also bodes ill for the future, for it is yet another step in the direction of complete privatization of our culture, at the expense of the public domain. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/comment..._sprigman.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ European Commision to extend high-speed internet rules Brussels may be on the verge of issuing new guidelines that will give national regulators increased power to limit the activities of cable companies, the Financial Times (FT) reported yesterday. The FT claims to have seen a draft report suggesting the need extend the scope of regulations, that could result in cable companies finding themselves subject to the same restrictions on high-speed internet access that incumbent telecommunications operators have been vocal in protesting against. The European Commission previously argued that telecoms operators had an unfair advantage over cable companies from their initial position of market dominance. The EC had sought to prevent such operators making their positions unassailable through predatory pricing, but now the Commission appears to be trying to take pre-emptive action before things swing too far the other way. The debt-piles of existing cable companies means that the proposed legislation is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the sector. Financial restraints have meant that many cable companies have so far failed to gain a significant position in the broadband market and are finding it difficult to be pro-active in promoting the service. Telecoms operators are likely to welcome the proposed legislation, however, having renewed their protestations about the discriminatory effect of existing regulations at a November meeting in Brussels. http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14512 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Keeping Track of the Online Music Industry Ellen McCarthy Patrick Breslin, who was a bass guitarist in a Boston rock and roll band before joining a consulting firm, a radio station and a start-up, always seems to wind up at the nexus of music and technology. While managing the music Web site for National Public Radio during the late 1990s, Breslin became increasingly interested in the organization and distribution of audio files on the Internet. Eventually Breslin and Sean Ward, an NPR co-worker, left the organization to establish Relatable, a start-up that provides music-tracking technology. "Both of us obviously had an interest in how technology was changing music. This was the time of a lot of online music distribution -- MP3.com, Napster," Breslin said. "But there really weren't very easy ways to find what is interesting to you. There was a fundamental problem identifying music that you find." Relatable's software does not protect audio files from being illegally downloaded. Instead, it imprints files with a code, allowing music distributors to track songs that are downloaded by users and pay the appropriate record company. The firm's first client was Napster, Breslin said, but Napster's effort to charge for its service eventually failed, ending the deal with Relatable. The Alexandria start-up has plenty of competition, but Breslin said the speed and accuracy of Relatable's technology will be key to its success. Still, the company's fate depends in part on the willingness of consumers to pay for Web-based music files. It also sells software to track the popularity ratings for recording companies and provide identifying data for songs on the radio. "Some believe that they can actually protect content, others believe it is more important to track it. Copy protection is a really difficult problem and there have been some significant failures," Breslin said. "Ultimately we believe the better approach is tracking the music." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan18.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Juniper Networks profit rises Bloomberg News Juniper Networks, the No. 2 maker of equipment to direct Internet traffic, had a fourth-quarter profit of $8.45 million as expenses fell. Sales climbed 2.8 percent. Net income was 2 cents a diluted share, in contrast to a net loss of $5.13 million, or 2 cents a diluted share, in the year-earlier period, the company said yesterday. Revenue rose to $155.3 million from $151 million. First-quarter sales and profit, excluding certain items, will be unchanged from the preceding period, beating analysts' forecasts, the chief financial officer, Marcel Gani, said. Juniper, which trails Cisco Systems in sales of data-traffic routers, had losses in five of the six preceding quarters as customers slashed spending after overbuilding fiber optic networks. Shares of Juniper dropped 33 cents, to $8.90, in after-hours trading. Earlier, shares fell 46 cents, to $9.23, in regular trading. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/business/17TBRF.html

26-01-03, 07:59 PM	#6
naz - Join Date: Mar 2001 Posts: 1,319	perhaps when the cd industry finally keels over, chancers like Robbie Williams won't be so ridiculously overvalued ... I mean it was 80 million or something to sign him. Did they even listen to his 2 last albums? Don't even get me started on Invincible Jackson. __________________ I’ve been a little down because today my doctor diagnosed me with John Travolta Syndrome. It’s a condition where your face or head grows laterally, getting wider year by year. It’s not so much of a problem and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s just a condition. In fact mine is good because it means my brain is getting bigger too. But not that Travolta guy, his head is mostly fat. The doctors said I am much smarter than John Travolta and I believe them.

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