Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – November 15th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week: “There are no lyrics, cover art or goodies. The music industry gets to reduce its distribution, marketing and sales costs, while consumers receive the "privilege" of downloading music. Whoever decided that 99¢ was the cost of an online song did not understand that consumer behaviour has changed dramatically. All you have to do is look at Roxio Inc.'s stock price, which dropped again yesterday in the wake of news that its Napster service only had 300,000 songs downloaded since its launch last week.” - Mark Evans

“It might be wise to root for the hackers”. - Rob Pegoraro on the FCC’s Broadcast Digital Flag decision.



Issue 52


The State As Information Manager
Siva Vaidhyanathan

The rise of distributed information systems certainly complicates, perhaps even undermines, the sense of stability within a nation-state. The nation-state is an information system in itself. Among its various roles, it regulates flows of information. One could even venture to define a nation-state as a particular method of information management.

An important characteristic that distinguishes a dictatorship from a democratic republic – apart from its resort to physical repression and denial of basic rights – is how it restricts the flows of certain pieces of information and the technologies that carry them. An authoritarian state, as Hannah Arendt argued, is the constant reminder that the state is the source of “official” information, and that all other information is suspect.

The most oppressive and brutal of world states – Burma, Saudi Arabia, and the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) – can be expected to install technological restrictions on the communicative technologies at their citizens’ disposal. But even relatively liberal nation-states like the United States and Britain are attempting to block or monitor legitimate flows of information, and ignoring concerns for due process or free speech. And because many of these initiatives are emerging through multinational organisations and corporations, citizens have no forum for debate or appeal.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...8-101-1544.jsp


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U.S. $enators Back 3 Year Prison Term For Movie Downloaders -- Hollywood Smirks
Declan McCullagh

A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.

In addition to the prison term, the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act would punish making such movies available on a public "computer network" as a federal felony with a fine of up to $250,000. It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place.

Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plan to introduce the legislation at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Joining them at the event will be actress Bo Derek, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti, and Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Hollywood studios have fretted for years about Internet distribution of prerelease movies, meaning films that have not appeared on DVD or in theaters. Footage of "Star Wars: Episode II," "Tomb Raider" and "The Hulk," has reportedly surfaced on peer-to-peer networks before their commercial distribution. In September, the major studios responded by halting their normal practice of sending DVD "screeners" to Academy Award judges.

A copy of the bill seen by CNET News.com, marked "Discussion Draft," represents one of the fiercest attacks yet on peer- to-peer networks from copyright holders' allies on Capitol Hill.

The threat of a three-year prison term kicks in when anyone makes an illicit copy of a movie "available on a computer network accessible to members of the public" when the film "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time." Once the film is commercially distributed, the felony penalties appear to no longer apply.

Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation because it does not say that any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened."

MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor said that "this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures. It's the first time the U.S. Senate has had legislation that specifically addresses the threat of camcording."

"Piracy for too long has been high reward and low risk," Taylor said. "Legislation such as that being introduced tomorrow will go a long way toward changing that equation."

The Cornyn-Feinstein bill also creates another federal felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for using "an audiovisual recording device" in a movie theater to make a copy of a film and boosts civil penalties available to MPAA member companies when suing over prerelease movies placed on the Internet.

Cornyn's office did not respond to a request for comment. "Copyright piracy is a serious threat not only to the entertainment industry, but also to a U.S. economy struggling to get back on its feet," Cornyn said in a statement. Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are co-sponsors of the bill.

A related proposal has been introduced in the House of Representatives. It covers surreptitious recording in theaters but does not include the three-year prison term for making a prerelease movie available online.
http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5106684.html


Bought and paid for.

Senate Bill Targets Internet Pirates
David McGuire

People who steal copies of films and albums and post them on the Internet before their official release dates could face felony charges under legislation scheduled to be introduced Thursday in the U.S. Senate.

Authored by Sens. John Cornyn (R- Texas) and Dianne Feinstein (D- Calif.), the Artists Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act makes it easier to prosecute suspected pirates who offer "pre-release" movies and music online.

"We're trying to go after the pre- release stuff that is absolutely killing any potential revenue for one of the segments of our economy that's doing well," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Cornyn. The movie studios and record labels are "just absolutely getting clobbered."

The movie and record industries are eager to stamp out pre-release piracy, which they see as one of the most dangerous trends facing their respective industries. This year alone, blockbuster films like "The Hulk" and "The Matrix Reloaded" hit the Web before they hit the theaters. More recently, popular hip-hop artists Jay- Z and G-Unit had to bump up the release dates for their albums when pirated copies hit the Internet.

Internet movie piracy is costing the major studios up to $1 billion a year in lost revenue, according to Macrovision Corp., which develops anti-piracy technology. The largest music publishing and distribution companies lost $700 million to digital file sharing in 2002, according to a report from the Boston-based Forrester research group.

For movie studios, which count on earning revenues from film releases from the time they hit the theaters until well after they come out on DVD, pre-release piracy is especially galling, said Motion Picture Association of America spokesman Rich Taylor.

"If it happens before a film can even penetrate the darkness of the theater for the first time, obviously it has grave consequences," Taylor said.

Under current law, felony charges apply only to piracy suspects who distribute 10 or more copies of pre-release albums and movies, with a retail value of more than $2,500. Under the Cornyn- Feinstein bill, felony charges could be filed against people who share pre-release entertainment online, regardless of the number of copies or its value.

On the Internet, where many pirated goods are offered free over peer-to-peer networks, it can be difficult to place a dollar figure on a single act of piracy. That difficulty has made it harder to prosecute even the most egregious cases of copyright infringement, Stewart said.

For the movie and music industries, which have often faced staunch opposition in their efforts to push stiffer anti-piracy laws, the Cornyn-Feinstein bill could be a slam-dunk. While civil liberties advocates have opposed efforts to topple peer-to-peer networks or impose copyright-friendly technological standards on personal computers, this bill is unlikely to face much opposition.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said the bill addresses the concerns of copyright owners without trampling consumers' constitutional rights. "To us it's a narrow bill, but for them it's a huge problem and this is a good way of taking care of it."

"To the extent that the bill remains focused on those ... problems, it doesn't raise much of a problem for us," Sohn said, adding that she hopes the legislation marks the start of a new approach for the music and movie industries.

"Focus on illegal behavior and not on outlawing technology," she said.

Stewart said it's unlikely that the legislation will go anywhere before Congress goes home for the holidays, but the senators want to use that time to seek support from their colleagues.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has already signed on as a co-sponsor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Nov12.html


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License Revocation
Ed Foster

License revocation is not just a Microsoft thing. Not surprisingly, where it is really starting to become visible are the pay-per-tunes music services. Music services have no choice but to attach some form of DRM (Digital Rights/Restrictions Management) to the music tracks they sell in order to get the record companies to sign up with their service. But for at least some of the services, part of that devil's bargain is to let the copyright holder take back licenses to play those tunes whenever it so chooses. "Your copy of the Software and your access to certain applications that communicate with it are subject to restriction and/or revocation (such as being shut down) for security purposes or according to consistently applied Content-protection policies," reads the Napster 2.0 EULA, for example. "You understand and agree that this would likely result in Content that was previously available for use being unavailable thereafter."

It's ironic that the files being sent to your computer from the new Napster will therefore include lists of revoked music files. And, as Napster is one of those music services that's employing Microsoft's DRM, its users will now come under Microsoft's Windows Media Player license agreements and privacy policies for those lists. "A list of revoked software is sent to your computer whenever you acquire a license," reads one relevant portion of the Media Player privacy policy. "Microsoft will not retrieve any personally identifiable information, or any other information, from your computer by downloading such revocation lists. The only way to avoid receiving revocation lists is to not acquire licenses for secure content."

Of course, just as Microsoft's DRM ambitions aren't restricted to music, its plans for license revocation go much further. Recently I wrote about Microsoft's Information Rights Management (IRM) technology that builds DRM capabilities into Office 2003 applications. Microsoft counts license revocation as one of the attractive features that IRM brings to Office 2003 on its website. For some time now, Microsoft has been talking about how license revocation will work with IRM, even warning that "revocation is a fairly large hammer" to use to eradicate individual documents.

Microsoft explains in some detail how licensing revocation can be used with its overall Rights Management technology. "When a license creator builds a publishing license, she can specify that, in order for the publishing license to be valid, the content consumer must obtain a revocation list from a specified URL at a regularly scheduled interval," notes notes one document for potential developers. "This revocation list is a signed list of content IDs, use license IDs, public keys, or other identifying information that specifies principals that are no longer valid. Therefore, if a company has terminated an employee and wishes to revoke their access to sensitive company files, or if a content key associated with a particular encrypted film has been compromised and made available on the Internet, the licenses granted to that employee or for that content ID can be revoked after use licenses have been granted."

Now, that's interesting to think about. How tempting will a Hollywood studio find the capability to revoke all licenses it sold to a movie when it decides it's time to re-release it to the theatres? Those sensitive company files that an ex-employee can be barred from accessing might include his original employment contact, for example. Or perhaps documents revealing company misdeeds that a whistleblower was about to leak to the press could suddenly disappear for all time. Would there be such a thing as false advertising when any traces of the misleading ad can be made to disappear?

A world in which all content is DRM'd and subject to license revocation is a world in which history can constantly be rewritten by the powers-that-be.
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/...1/13/8919/8624


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Vanderbilt Mock Trial Looks At File Sharing
George Pradhan

Mary Jones feels that she is being unjustly sued; the Recording Industry Association of America begs to differ.

Over 50 mock jurors were present in Vanderbilt Law School's Flynn Auditorium on Tuesday to hear the case of The RIAA v. Mary Jones, presented by Project Dialogue and Vanderbilt Mock Trials Association.

"I really liked the show," said freshman Bill Robertson. "My only problem with it was how fast and choppy it was - made it seem kind of unsubstantial - but I guess that's just because of the time limit."

Freshman Elizabeth Ryan began with the plaintiff's opening statement.

"Right is always right, and wrong is always wrong," Ryan said. "Wrong is always wrong, and stealing is stealing whether done offline or on."

Freshman Boone Lancaster followed with the opening statement for the defense. Mary Jones was not aware of the downloading of files, he said. Her roommate, appropriately named Sharon Seedee, was the one who downloaded music; Mary Jones was served the subpoena only because she paid the Internet Service Provider bill.

Once the opening statements were concluded, witnesses from both sides were called to the stand and presented their respective arguments.

"(File-sharing) is no different than shoplifting. You couldn't just walk into a store and steal a CD," said Allison Sony, mock record executive.

"(Jones) is representative of thousands of others and for that reason I take issue with her," said mock musician Brian McKnight passionately.

However, Jones, mock president of the Vanderbilt Honor Council, said that she had never downloaded. "I haven't done anything wrong," Jones said at the stand.

"Members of the jury, what we have here today is not sharing, it's stealing," said freshman plaintiff attorney Bill Weimar in his closing statement.

Freshman defense attorney Charleston Bell closed by asking some big-picture questions, in line with this year's Project Dialogue theme "Ideas, Images, Internet: Who Owns What?"

"Who owns what is on the internet?" Bell said. "(File-sharing is) not stealing. It is only taking advantage of the technology that is already here.... So where does this leave the music industry?"

"They can sue, or they can change with the times."

After the ballots were given out to the audience members to vote for whom they felt better argued their case, mock Judge David Williams, vice chancellor for student life and university affairs, gave a few thoughts on the trial.

"This case is hard... since it is a case where technology has evolved faster than American law."

After explaining why and how each side could have been proclaimed the winner, Williams jokingly declared the case to be a mistrial, but then went on to say that on a strictly knowledge-based judgment, he would probably rule that downloading is in fact illegal.

The jurors voted 30-23 in favor of the defense, however.
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/vne.../3fab14143ba2b


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Technologies Of The Year -- Tool For Teamwork

Wildfire, a new release of ProEngineer CAD software, features revolutionary collaboration capability.
Tim Stevens

Collaboration among engineers in a virtual computer-aided design (CAD) space, where each participant can exercise control and contribute to a 3-D solid modeling session in real time, has been a dream of the product- development community for years. In February, that dream became reality with the first production shipments of ProEngineer Wildfire, the latest CAD software release from Parametric Technologies Corp. (PTC), Needham, Mass.

The core of PTC's product lifecycle management (PLM) suite, Wildfire also adds convenient browser-based connection to all solutions in that suite, as well as a new interface and model of interaction with the user. "Wildfire is a breakthrough in the sense that it transforms design from a single-user activity to a collaborative, process-oriented product-development activity for all internal stakeholders and supply-chain participants," says James Heppelmann, executive vice president, software and marketing, and chief product officer.

According to PTC, the key to Wildfire's collaboration power is the first-ever use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology in the field of CAD software to connect design sessions of multiple users. In past efforts at collaborative design over the Internet, session partners attempted to share either the actual geometry data of 3-D solid models, or simple graphic representations of the models. In the first case, networks are too slow to keep up with streaming of such data-heavy files. The static images transferred in the second case allow mark-up of designs, but no actual real-time modeling modifications. P2P technology allows engineers participating in design sessions to run their own CAD programs and simply exchange commands, which are much less data-heavy and move easily in real time across networks. "As engineers, we are actually sharing the application, working together on a live model at the same time from different locations," says Heppelmann. "If you make a change, I see it immediately, and I can respond with a modification of my own."

The new underlying architecture in Wildfire is a Web-based client server, which connects PTC's PLM applications for project and data management solutions through a common Web hub. The first implication is that engineers can access all of these solutions via the browser they are using to run their design sessions without leaving that environment. No saving in one application, opening up another and transferring files. Secondly, the entire product development team, from supplier to customer, manufacturing to sales/ marketing, procurement to service, can selectively access design models and the data attendant to them from a browser as well. Comments and modifications can flow easily between the functions eliminating the need to exchange models via e-mail or hard-copy, speeding and improving the quality of the product development process.

While past revisions of ProEngineer typically contained about 10% new code, Wildfire has a whopping 40% new code, much of it devoted to the new user interface and interaction scheme, which was rebuilt from scratch. Previously, ProEngineer used a traditional menu-based approach to modeling. Wildfire now employs a more intuitive, graphical, icon-driven scheme PTC calls "direct modeling." As one user put it, "It seems the model itself is telling the system how to interact with me."
http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentA...ArticleId=1523


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All Your 99c Are Belong to Us - RIAA, Steve Jobs
Andrew Orlowski

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish? Apparently not.

At an Apple financial analyst conference on Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April. As iTMS is the leading download service, with 80 per cent market share (or so Jobs claimed), where's your 99 cents per song going?

Well, although it costs nothing for the record industry pigopolists, this small ragged army, to make a digital version of one of its hoardings available to hear, somebody must pay. It costs Apple real dollars to provide the hosting service that delivers that digital file to you, and to write the sophisticated software that delivers it. Meanwhile, almost all the cash is flowing back to the copyright holders. Who, when you last looked, were a dinosaur oligopoly of five record labels, desperately seeking a way to preserve their copyright cartel into a new century. They were down, and they were out: but Steve Jobs rode to their rescue.

"Most of the money goes to the music companies," admitted Jobs.

"We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it's not a money maker," he said, candidly.

So now we have it on record: the music store is a loss leader. Jobs said Apple would pay its dues to the RIAA, then seek to make money where it could, from its line of hardware accessories. When the conversation turned to rivals such as eTunes and Napster, Jobs said: "They don't make iPods, so they don't have a related business where they do [make money]".

Running counter to several thousand years of basic human observation, Apple decided it could afford to control those points where we share music. It developed an opportunistic business with such compromises built in: a plan is to infect as many computers it could with restrictive DRM technology to allow us to rights we once took for granted. But why, you ask, is Apple helping an extinct, and unworthy industry back on its feet? Precisely why does this strike you as greedy, desperate and gasping? Let us explain.

DRM is non-negotiable
Digital media presents with a particularly nasty social problem: we love to share and enjoy our common culture, but we want the artists to be rewarded, too. But when the distribution medium is as careless and fluid as the Internet, dues are easily overlooked. We're simply too lazy to reward the artists. However, inspired by NGO-backed initiatives as the move to low-costs drugs, a global consensus is coalescing around the idea of something called "compulsory licensing".

This can take many forms, but if you want it simple, it means a cent on your income tax, or your blank CD purchases. Are you still standing? Good, for this creates a vast pool of wealth from which the artists can be rewarded. It's not alien to most people: we pay taxes everyday for roads we don't use, or healthcare for neighbours brats we'd rather see strangled. But that's how society works: with a bit of give and take. And if it means the artists gets a guaranteed income, that, we can generally agree, is a good thing. Fortunately the technology helps us here: because unlike most taxes, we'll be able to target the most popular. And all this can be done while preserving your anonymity, too.

Imagine such a model: you could click, download and play your favorite as much as you wanted, safely knowing that artists wouldn't be being ripped off, and that your clicks were earning them more money. Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

Stripped to the core, compulsory licensing resolve two real social nasties without each side losing face. A flat tax is simply the easiest way of getting rid of the problem: we all get to swap music, and all the artists get paid. Now, problem: go away. And it's gone.

It doesn't make Steve Jobs feel warm and fuzzy, however, because he thinks he sees a real nasty, short-term business opportunity. Always a nervous kind of character, one to jump too early, Jobs sees a window of opportunity, by tying Apple to be the RIAA's slave.

When that 99 cents leaves your wallet, the RIAA monopoly swallows most of it, and the credit card companies swallow the rest. As the supplicant in this relationship, Apple is left holding the can.

While much of the received wisdom in both the music industries and technology industries see compulsory licenses in one form or another as inevitable, both Apple and RIAA are agreed on the short-term solution. One where the ancient copyright rules spin the money back to the pigopolists, and some sucker, like Apple, is left holding a brand of dubious (and soon to be extinct) value.

Alas it's Jobs who wants to be first - the first tech CEO - to offer himself up for a beheading. Having got so much right about personal computer ergonomics, it's initially surprising to find Jobs accepting a deal on such bad terms. At Wednesday's conference call, Jobs sounded positively happy that he was losing money on iTunes, so he could make the RIAA that little bit richer. But vanity plays havoc with even the finest minds.

At the end of the day it's for Apple's board to peg Jobs' peculiar exercises with such diametric labels as "excusable vanity" or "hopeless cause". But however you sliced it, and with the weight of history bearing pretty heavy, Steve Jobs' decision to give the RIAA a perpetual monopoly doesn't look so smart. As Jobs admitted, Apple is in a supplicant position in which it makes no money.

We like having Steve around, as the Jobs judgement is typically both coherent and devoid of technoutopian fantasies, but this could be fatal
http://www.theregister.com/content/6/33850.html


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Help! My Belkin Router Is Spamming Me
John Leyden

The marketing geniuses at Belkin, the consumer networking vendor, have dreamed up a new form of spam - ads served to your desktop, by way of its wireless router.

Uh Clem. a former Belkin wireless router user, was perplexed to find machines on his network redirected to an ad for Belkin's new parental control system, following a software update.

Clem initially thought that the browser setting on the machine he downloaded the updated software had been changed. But when other machines displayed the same behaviour he realised his router was to blame.

The router would grab a random HTTP connection every eight hours and redirect it to Belkin’s (push) advertised web page.

"It seems the router now supports a parental control and the market droids at Belkin got the bright idea of equipping the router with intrusive nagware," writes Uh Clem. "Of course, I have this strange notion that routers should pass data unmolested by marketeers!"

There is an opt-out link on the advertised page but this failed to appease Clem who, not unreasonably, objects to having to "opt-out from commercials from my router". Because of the ads, he's decided not to buy Belkin products again.

In response criticism, a Belkin product manager came forward this week to confirm the behaviour was designed into the products as a way to make it easier for consumers to sign up to a free trial of its parental control software. Belkin's Eric Deming is keen to allay concerns about the technique which have produced sharp criticism of the company on the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup.

"We don't have the ability to spam you at a later time if you select "No Thanks" or turn off the reminder manually," Deming writes. "I know this feature might be misunderstood and might PO some people. I know the manual could do a better job explaining it. These are all things that we at Belkin are working to remedy."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33858.html


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Too Much Information
Nathan Cochrane

Despite having more information at our fingertips than any generation before, there is little evidence that our ability to make good, timely decisions has improved. A musician is not someone with an instrument and a songbook. Similarly, to be "information literate" - able to extract knowledge from the welter of choice - we need to know how to orchestrate the technologies and "listen" for the results. As a society we are computer and internet literate yet information literacy lags. We have computer hardware and software but often ignore "wetware" - the first, most important, cog in the information seeking machine is ourselves.

Information literacy is viewed as a "prerequisite for participating effectively in the information society", according to the United Nations' Prague Declaration issued at the end of September. It is essential in reducing inequities, promoting tolerance and closing the digital divide, said the experts from 23 countries, including Australia, in a joint statement following talks in the Czech Republic. They suggested that information literacy should be given the same standing as the "Three-Rs".

The task to improve our awareness of information literacy was summed up by Baroness Susan Greenfield, professor at Oxford University's department of pharmacology and director of the Royal Institution, during a visit to Australia in September.

"One has to draw the distinction between knowledge and information," Greenfield told the ABC's Hamish Robertson. "We are in a time when people can sit in front of the screen and get bombarded with facts and sometimes that's confused for education. But I think that what we owe it to our young people to do is to help them ask questions."

Greenfield believes society is becoming "answer-rich but question-poor". Rather than being forced to learn things by rote, "by burdening our memories, because the cyber-world is doing this for us", we can now concentrate on "asking the right questions ... have a sense of values, develop a morality, develop novel ideas, and that can be done, I think, by giving people a framework.

"It's not so much giving people fact after fact after fact, because they can Google on their computers and do that anyway."

Australia is among a handful of countries, including the United States, that has a national standard for information literacy, through our national library and information association.

"Fluency with information technology requires more intellectual abilities than the rote learning of software and hardware associated with computer literacy," the standard says, in agreement with Greenfield. "Information literacy is an intellectual framework .. which may be supported in part by fluency with information technology (and) sound investigative methods but most importantly through critical discernment and reasoning."

Ralph Catts, a University of New England researcher in the field of adult education who helped to formulate Australia's information literacy standard, says generic skills such as critical thinking and communication will grow in importance to employers.

"As adults are called on more and more to continue to learn, the ability to transfer prior knowledge to new situations becomes more important," Catts says.

"We need to learn more about how people learn to use information in an effective and efficient manner. Information is all about us but to use it effectively we need skills not just to find it but to evaluate it."

Catts says literacy in the information arts is a practical matter and, for instance, can help us avoid being scammed online. The "Nigerian email" and "banking passwords" scams could be neutralised if people were critical of communications they received from scammers masquerading as trusted acquaintances.

He says people need to check for authenticity, currency and reliability. "Unless they are aware of the need to check for a second source of information before it can be considered to be reliable, they get caught."

A British researcher and co-maintainer of the Information Literacy Weblog, Sheila Webber, says governments have paid a lot of attention to plumbing the connections, "but there's the idea that once you've got an internet connection into each school and public library, that'll see us right for the 21st century".

"This ignores the fact that it's what you do with the technology that's important."

Webber says the "Iraq Dossier" - claims by Western leaders about Iraq's security forces, in part plagiarised from a student's thesis - was a classic case of governments underestimating the importance of information literacy, to their embarrassment.

"(Was) the Government hoping its citizens weren't information literate - that they wouldn't have the ability to question what they were told or check things up?" asks Webber, a lecturer in information studies at the University of Sheffield.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...329472603.html


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Wal-Mart Could Make Music Downloads Sing a New Tune
Steve Alexander

"What we're finally seeing is that the free peer-to-peer music downloading networks are being marginalized," said Phil Leigh, founder of the research firm Inside Digital Media in Tampa.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reportedly is looking at beginning to sell digital music downloads by year's end, raising the prospect of new price competition in the online music market. That could significantly reduce the allure of unauthorized free music downloads.

According to the New York Post, Wal-Mart has been in talks to license music from record companies for its own downloading service on Walmart.com. The service is expected to be modeled after Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store that allows customers to download songs for 99 cents each.

Wal-Mart Stores didn't confirm its entry into the market Thursday. The Bentonville, Ark., company is the world's largest retailer and the top seller of music CDs, controlling 14 percent of worldwide music sales.

"At any given time we are looking at new services and products, and digital services is one of those things being looked at," said Cynthia Lin, a Walmart.com spokeswoman in Brisbane, Calif.

Some analysts said rumors about Wal-Mart's entry into online music have been circulating for some time.

In doing so, Wal-Mart would enter a growing field of competitors that includes for-pay providers such as Apple's iTunes, Roxio's Napster (only the brand name of the free Napster remains) and RealNetwork's Rhapsody, as well as free music sites such as Kazaa and Grokster. By some estimates, about 500 million unauthorized copies of songs are downloaded each month. The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major music labels, filed lawsuits earlier this year in response, accusing 261 people of sharing copyrighted music.

Analysts say that online music sales could help reduce free downloading, both because of the potential for price competition and because the for-pay services are easier to use than the free ones.

"What we're finally seeing is that the free peer-to-peer music downloading networks are being marginalized," said Phil Leigh, founder of the research firm Inside Digital Media in Tampa. "The free networks are annoying because they are filled with pop-up advertisements and spyware [software that spies on a user's Internet surfing], and they often don't perform well. It's logical that people will buy music, particularly when they know it will work and they don't have to put up with the possibility of ruinous lawsuits."

David Card, an analyst with Jupiter Research in New York City, predicted that "music piracy will go down because of the trouble it takes to download free music compared to buying music."

"The music industry's lawsuits against consumers also have had some effect," Card added. "Our surveys show that 18 percent of adult online file sharers say they've cut back that activity."

Meanwhile, competition from Wal-Mart could further reduce prices.

"Wal-Mart historically does compete on price," Card said. "But I think 99 cents for singles is a pretty good price point, and that there will be good demand for that. It's unclear whether you could sell more online songs at a lower price, but it's very early in the game."

Leigh disagreed.

"I expect that Walmart.com may well experiment with special digital music sales promotions to see if it generates cross sales of other products online. But if music doesn't help sell other products, I don't think they're going to materially reduce the price per song," he said.

Studies to determine whether lower prices would stimulate online song purchases have been inconclusive. Rhapsody experimented with 49-cent songs and said it more than doubled its revenue by cutting the price from 99 cents. But it later gave up on the 49-cent price and settled on 79 cents a song plus a monthly subscription fee. Another study by the New York market research firm Ipsos-Insight showed that consumer demand increased when the price was lowered to 79 cents a song, but that demand didn't rise correspondingly at lower prices.

One big factor in online price competition from Wal-Mart might be whether the company can get the music industry to agree to charge it lower prices for digital downloads than other online companies pay, analysts said.

"Today, license agreements are such that it doesn't make economic sense for online marketers to go below 79 cents a song," said Matt Kleinschmit, Minneapolis-based director of Ipsos-Insight. "But it would not surprise me if the record labels were willing to make some deals. Because, let's face it, there has not been a lot of good news in the music world in the last two or three years."

Best Buy, which offers music downloading services, said it wouldn't be directly affected by price competition because it simply remarkets existing services such as Rhapsody.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32091.html


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Wal-Mart To Hold ID Tag Meeting
Alorie Gilbert

Wal-Mart Stores and its largest 100 merchandise suppliers plan to meet this week to plot the implementation of a new high-tech inventory-tracking system, a project expected to send ripples across the retail industry.

The meeting, scheduled for Tuesday near Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, follows the megaretailer's announcement in June about its foray into a technology known as RFID (radio frequency identification). At the time, Wal-Mart asked its top 100 suppliers to join the effort and, starting Jan. 1, 2005, attach RFID tracking "tags" to the millions of cases and containers they ship to the company.

Among the companies congregating in Bentonville for a full briefing from Wal-Mart are industry giants Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Tyson Foods and Unilever, a Wal-Mart representative said. Some big names in information technology will also be in town, with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Philips Semiconductor and SAP participating in an RFID "tech expo" Wednesday.

RFID tags, which contain special microchips and antennae, are designed to automatically relay to computers precise information
about the contents of product packages and containers. The technology is expected to reduce much of the manual labor and human error involved in tracking inventory via bar codes and could save Wal-Mart close to $8.4 billion annually, according to investment research firm Sanford C. Bernstein.

But less clear are the benefits for Wal-Mart's suppliers, many of whom already have highly accurate inventory systems, according to a recent report from IT analyst firm AMR Research. It's a critical question, given that large suppliers will spend an average of $13 million to $23 million to comply with Wal-Mart's plan, AMR Research estimates.

"Other than maintaining positive relationships with Wal-Mart, almost no company attending the symposium could readily identify immediate value in implementing the technology," the report states.

A spokesman for the retailer dismissed the notion, insisting that the technology will be a boon to suppliers as well as to Wal-Mart. "Analysts always have to come up with something," Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams said.

The benefit to manufacturers comes only when RFID is deployed in stores to decrease stock-out situations, AMR analyst Kara Romanow said. But because of costs and privacy concerns, that could be 10 years away or more, experts said.

Procter & Gamble, which has been deeply involved in the testing and development of retail RFID systems for the last several years, is optimistic that RFID will be more than just another cost of doing business with the world's largest retailer.

"We see that this technology has huge benefits, even at the case and pallet level, in helping us to track our product and helping us understand how long does it take to get through the supply chain," a P&G representative said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1008-5101416.html


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iSP

A new online music service claims to have found a way to lure users away from illegally downloading tracks. Bobbie Johnson explains
Bobbie Johnson

Now is the time of year that record company executives around the globe are likely to be mopping the sweat from their collective brows. With fingers crossed, they hope record releases from their biggest guns will help to boost flagging revenues over Christmas and revive an industry in seemingly terminal decline.

Music label bosses waste no time laying the blame for a downturn in music sales - the culprit, as always, is the internet. Illegal downloading is the Achilles heel of the recording industry, and the term "file sharing" is anathema to the music-label fat cats staring plummeting profits squarely in the face.

But a new service which has just begun testing ahead of a proposed launch in the new year aims to provide a stepping stone between file sharers and the music industry. Instead of being a pay-per-download service or music portal, Playlouder MSP is being touted as a "music service provider" - a one-stop shop that not only provides users with their broadband connection, but also allows them to download as much music as they want legally. And all for a price to compete with big rivals such as BT, Freeserve and AOL.

The concept is simple: subscribers receive a high-speed internet connection and everything else associated with a normal ISP. And like normal internet users, they will be allowed to use file-sharing programmes such as Kazaa or Gnutella. But instead of sharing with users anywhere on the internet, subscribers will remain within a gated community, only able to share with approved users - and therefore only sharing licensed tracks from the labels signed up to the scheme. And in return for licensing their entire catalogues for downloading among the Playlouder peer group, record labels will receive a slice of the subscription fee.

"A lot of people were wondering why no one had found a way to collaborate between record companies and internet service providers," says Playlouder MSP director Paul Hitchman. "The answer's simple: ISPs don't want to share their revenue. We're putting our necks on the line by effectively cutting those revenues.

"We share our margin with the music companies directly. We're trying to cut through the antagonistic relationship between music companies and internet firms."

With recognisable, but credible, names such as Dizzee Rascal, White Stripes and Stereophonics already signed up, and with respected underground labels such as Ninja Tune on board, Playlouder MSP is hoping to appeal to dedicated music fans as well as cautious individuals looking to avoid legal action down the line.

Of course, part of the gamble relies on the slow but steady demolition of the myth of "free" file sharing. Those users who are downloading and swapping tracks are still paying for their internet connection - and, in most cases, paying handsomely, even if the victims of file sharing never see those profits. That's where Playlouder MSP hopes to change the landscape. A deal to gain direct access to the fabled "local loop" cuts out rental costs from BT, allowing them to keep broadband speeds high, prices low and, crucially, allowing record companies to gain profit from an otherwise illegitimate revenue source.

Labels backing the new initiative are hoping this method of top-slicing revenues could be the way forward.

"We are committed to working with the most innovative new media companies," says Martin Mills, the chairman of Beggars Group. "PlayLouder MSP finally offers record companies a way to monetise file-sharing and represents a potential solution for the record industry."

If it is to succeed, though, Playlouder will have to fight hard. It will need to bring major labels on board to give subscribers a wide enough range of tracks to trade, and compete with a burgeoning range of music services. It could be joining the market at exactly the kind of watershed moment which could prove make or break.

"This is the pregnant moment in digital music," says Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Reearch. "Lawsuits are creating doubt among users of free services, while the variety and usability of legitimate digital music services make them a real, usable alternative."

The industry standard for online music is rapidly becoming Apple's iTunes download shop - currently vaunting the fact that it has sold more than 10m tracks in the four months since it launched its service in America. It's an impressive figure - and one that is increasing quickly with the recent launch of iTunes for PC, a move which expands the technology beyond the niche market of Macintosh users and potentially into every internet-enabled household in the US.

But nobody wants to let Apple steal a march in the market, and rivals are clamouring to throw their hats into the ring. Dotmusic, which was bought last month by Yahoo! from BT could be the latest contender to don its spandex pants and jump on stage, with industry watchers speculating about a wide-ranging link-up with AOL and Real Networks. Thanks to the fact it currently holds licensing deals with five major labels, Dotmusic has not yet lost all of its rock star lustre, even though it is something of an internet hot potato, changing hands three times in the past three years.

And recently the trumpets have sounded for the much-vaunted relaunch of Napster, which resurrects the infamous file-sharing application in the form of an Apple-like download store. But still it must compete with the illegal traders on difficult ground.

Those sceptical of the record industry's position believe file-sharing is the scapegoat for waning sales and overpricing. This is the same set of issues raised decades ago by audio tape recording, they argue, simply magnified by the power of the internet.

"Labels are in trouble, and it's not from file-sharing," says Bernoff. "To tap into $2bn in new revenues, they must let people find, copy and pay for music on their own terms."

Some figures inside the download industry go even further. "Protecting copyright is really just a smokescreen to hide the real challenge confronting the entertainment industry," says Alan Morris, the executive vice president of Kazaa-owner Sharman Networks - and the man whose picture is most likely to be used as a dartboard by frustrated record company bosses around the globe. His own product, he claims, is under fire because it is about "moving beyond an outdated economic model that is being rejected by the marketplace for which we have a well-conceived upgrade path".
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediagua...081300,00.html


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Berklee College of Music Launches 'Berklee Shares,' a Groundbreaking New Program Offering Free Music Education Online

World-Renowned Music College Encourages People to Share Music Lessons Via File Sharing Networks
Press Release

Berklee College of Music, the world's largest independent music college and the premier institution for the study of contemporary music announces the launch of Berklee Shares. This groundbreaking new program provides free music lessons and encourages musicians to share and distribute these music lessons online.

The Berklee Shares lessons are available at no charge and are made up of a growing catalog of MP3s, QuickTime movies and PDF files derived from curriculum developed at the college by its world-renowned faculty. The lessons are available today for free download on http://www.berkleeshares.com/ , affiliate partner sites and peer-to-peer networks including Limewire and Kazaa. Like MIT and its Open Courseware Initiative (ocw.mit.edu), Berklee is committed to providing music education that is widely available to the music community around the world. The Berklee Shares program is designed to create an open exchange of ideas for musicians everywhere as well as evangelize the Internet as a means to gain unprecedented access to quality education. Berklee believes that digital distribution networks will have a significant impact on the future of music and music education.

"Berklee Shares was born out of Berklee College of Music's commitment to furthering music education through innovative means," said Dave Kusek, Associate Vice President. "Offering free education on the Internet and through file sharing networks underscores the college's core belief that these channels are an effective way to openly distribute meaningful educational content to a global audience. It also serves as a powerful promotional platform for artists to market, distribute and sell their music."

The Berklee Shares program launches with over 80 music lessons spanning instrument performance, music production and technology, songwriting and arranging, music business and careers, music education and music improvisation. The number of lessons offered will expand over time. The Berklee Shares music lessons can help musicians around the globe to play better, write their own songs, teach better, use music technology on personal computers, and further their career aspirations.

The project will use licenses provided by Creative Commons. The Berklee Shares content will thus be marked with technology that signals, in a human and machine understandable way, the freedoms that go with the content. "Berklee College of Music will prove to many the innovation and education that can be supported through a more balanced system of rights," said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons. "We are honored to help Berklee College of Music spread educational content broadly." http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+08:07+AM


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Apple Will 'Make RIAA Beg For Mercy' – readers
Andrew Orlowski

What Apple enthusiasts lack in market share, they certainly make up for in optimism. Apple vs. the RIAA is a foregone conclusion. For some of our readers, the David and Goliath mantles have been reversed, and beggar your logic: Apple's new online music store, which doesn't own any record labels or music publishing properties, and which has begged but been refused the rights to sell low bitrate copies of The Beatles' back catalog, will soon make the copyright cartel beg for mercy. How? We'll see.

Our story, we suspect, introduced many people to the movement behind what's called 'compulsory licensing'. It's a model that's successfully provided low cost drugs to developing countries, by breaking drug companies' IP strangleholds. Now it's being backed by record industry executives who see the explosion of peer to peer PC file swapping as a terminal threat. It's a bit of a blur, admittedly, because it involves some form of flat rate tax and the use of new technology to determine more accurately where the royalties should flow. But it's found a foothold in the industry already. For proponents, it's the least-bad option, and they're willing to dismantle the RIAA and give it a chance.

Only, Steve Jobs would rather you didn't know this was brewing. Apple is presenting a simple duality of piracy vs the RIAA, in which he has stepped in, personally, to soldier a 'decent compromise'. Which is jolly good of him.

So we invited you to shoot down a modest proposition. Some form of a compulsory license model, and it can be finessed as an invisible tax (let's say, we only tax currency transactions, or some other swinish speculators) will soon be discussed and become very, very attractive to ordinary people who suddenly have the freedom to share music without the guilt factor. Because the artists gets recompensed. Meanwhile, what happens to these early online hucksters, then?

At The Register, we like to keep an open mind. We don't like to rule out anything unless it's been proven really impossible, in at least N- universes, so let's entertain this scenario. Oblivious to the licensing schemes that the labels are currently discussing, several readers insist on Apple's right to maintain the RIAA copyright cartel:

"iTunes' business model could well be the death of the cartel," writes Matt Cooney.

Matt actually has a good point:

"If and when online sales make a reasonable percentage of all sales, we'll see artists wondering at contract negotiation time why they can't just sell their music direct to the stores, or though a specialist, low- margin agent such as CD Baby. They don't need the RIAA. The first major artist to do this could well kick off the trend."

This is an excellent point that highlights the potential power of Apple as a distribution channel.

Reader "E" puts its this case even more concisely:

"Apple may look to replace the RIAA pigs by doing deals directly with musicians. The songs could be cheaper - like $.50 - and still there would be more for both Apple and the musicians."

And even more succinctly, reckons reader Steve Carlson:

"Doesn't it make sense for Steve to play the slave while the market is emerging, since he's got the deeper pockets to take the loss from, and simply bleed his competition to death?"

As we write, Apple owns nothing, except a simulacra of an online music store Wal-Mart. You have to close your eyes, and suspend disbelief, to think that the copyright cartel is worried about this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33885.html


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Musical Mergers
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

Pretty soon you probably won't be hearing about the major problems with the five major record labels. No, music sales aren't necessarily on the rise. It's just that the quintet is in the process of downsizing to a quartet -- or possibly even a trio.

With Sony and BMG agreeing to merge their music operations last week, along with the possibility that love songs are in the air between Time Warner and EMI, the sector consolidation may turn this beleaguered industry into a squeezed accordion in no time flat.

Along with Vivendi's Universal Music, the five companies have suffered through three consecutive years of declines in prerecorded music sales and the first half of 2003 offered no respite. While Nielsen//NetRatings has reported that traffic to peer-to-peer song swapping sites has declined significantly since the music industry starting going after individual consumers over the summer, there is little evidence that industry will grow in 2003.

No, if anything, the fact that so many of the major labels are still looking for exit strategies indicates that the prognosis has only gotten worse. Scaring music listeners away from music piracy hasn't helped the industry as much as it has alienated potential fans.

Meanwhile, Vivendi's garage sale continues, which means we might very well be looking at a duet before all of the white flags are tallied. That might be just what the industry needs to finally start making beautiful music together.

With less decision makers and a more concerted effort to win back fans while growing high-margin digital distribution outlets like Apple's iTunes (which is off to a strong start), let's not kill off the music industry just yet. The line between carnage haul and Carnegie Hall is much thinner than you think.
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2003/mft03111002.htm


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New Sony Disc May Slow File Sharing
Reuters

Sony Music, home to such artists as Beyonce Knowles and Bruce Springsteen, said Monday it plans to introduce new CD technology in Germany that prevents users from copying songs to file-sharing sites, but allows them to make copies for their personal use.

The record industry blames its recent sales slump on file-sharing services like KaZaa, which it says are havens for piracy. Last year, major labels issued "copy-protected" CDs that prevent them from being played on computers.

The copy-protected discs faced a backlash from customers and music fans, and several lawsuits emerged from some customers that complained these CDs caused their computers and other devices to malfunction.

But Sony thinks it has an appealing approach: Give customers added incentives to buy copy-protected CDs.

Sony will release rhythm & blues group Naturally Seven's new CD in Germany Monday with a so-called "second session." The disc can be played on almost any device conventionally, Sony Music Chief Technology Officer Phil Wiser said.

It also contains a compressed digital copy of the music that can be quickly copied onto any computer. From the computer, users can copy that music onto Sony portable digital music players.

The CDs also allow users to connect to Web sites with exclusive features such as bonus songs and concert tickets. The features are available only if you have the original CD.

Such features already are available with Sony artists Tori Amos and AC/DC. But the new discs combine the "second session" copy protection with the bonus features, which Sony has dubbed "ConnecteD."

Sony will evaluate customers' reaction to the new technology before introducing it in other countries. Wiser declined to specify a timetable for the technology will be available in the United States.

"We believe we can deliver more value by delivering more immediate content, an interactive experience, a better experience. Even if you could go to a [file-sharing] site and download a single song, you won't get the kind of content that we can deliver."

A label on the disc will say it includes the new copy protection software features.

There are several limitations. The digital files will play only on Sony-licensed digital music players. Wiser said Sony is working on "plug-ins" that will allow the files to be played on more popular players like Microsoft's Windows Media. He expects the plug-ins to be available early next year.

To copy the music to the Sony portable player, the technology requires an extra step to copy the files to a separate program to transfer the music to the portable player.

At this point, music can be transferred only to Sony portable players, although Sony executives note that Apple Computer's popular iTunes service works the same way with the Apple-branded iPod.

Earlier this year, BMG introduced similar technology with its hip-hop performer Anthony Hamilton.

BMG, which announced plans to merge with Sony Music last week, is using software from SunnComm Technologies to restrict the amount of copies that could be made of Hamilton's music. The software, however, was quickly hacked.

BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown noted sales of Hamilton's copy-protected disc did not fall off in the weeks following its release as dramatically as most releases often do, in part due to file sharing. Brown suggested this was partly the result of the copy-protection software. "Consumer and retail response has been positive," he said.

"All copy protections can be hacked," Wiser said. "But if we give people what they are asking for in terms of value, they won't go out and steal it. It's called trusting the consumer."
http://money.cnn.com/2003/11/10/technology/sony.reut/


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Digital-Image Capture Rampant On The Web

Despite the government's continued efforts to protect intellectual property and copyrights, piracy of digital photos and images by content providers is rampant on the Web, a report showed yesterday.

Wui Jeong-hyeon, professor of business administration at Chung- Ang University, said that 68.1 percent of respondents working in Web site creation, video game development, animation and advertising said they resorted to illegally using digital images.

Of the 967 respondents, 9.6 percent said they frequently used illegally copied digital images for their work, while 23.6 percent said they sometimes opted for such stolen images. And 34.9 percent said they have used digital images without securing permission a couple of times.

The preferred channel to get free digital images turned out to be free Web sites that provide such unlicensed pictures, accounting for 33 percent. Those who capture PC screens made up 20.9 percent and and peer-to-peer file sharing was used by 17.6 percent.

About 52 percent of respondents said they have used paid digital images, and 47.8 percent said they have not used such licensed images.

"Digital images are widely used for content production but there is no effective distribution channel," said Wui said. He said those who work in the animation and gaming industries particularly tend to use pirated images or stolen images largely because in many cases they modify and transform the originals.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0311110070.asp


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Group Calls For Peace Talks In P2P Wars
Graeme Wearden

One of the music industry's more active opponents is calling for dialogue and debate between record companies and P2P network users, rather than legal action.

Bill Evans, founder of www.boycott-RIAA.com, launched a new organisation called the International Music Industry Reform Association (IMIRA) last week that could encourage peace to break out in the combative world of peer-to-peer file-sharing.

IMIRA is designed to be a "middle ground" where everyone involved in the sticky area of copyright protection and file swapping can establish working relationships.

"IMIRA will promote discussion on a music industry that takes market, customer and artist concerns and interests equally into account," said Evans, announcing the launch of www.imira.org.

A stern critic of the major record labels, and especially of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in the past, Evans once urged music fans not to buy RIAA recordings, or support RIAA artists for the month of August 2000.

He now hopes to bring an end to the "subpoena war" that he says the RIAA is conducting.

"It's time for everyone within the music industry, smaller and independent labels included, to start taking advantage of the tremendously exciting opportunities that p2p file sharing offers listeners, music-makers and business people on- and offline," says Evans.

Working alongside Evans on IMIRA is Jon Newton, the founder of file-sharing news site p2pnet.net, who is hopeful that agreement can be reached between the record labels and music fans.

"Any number of potentially viable solutions exist. But every one of these has its own advocates and, to the considerable benefit of the major record labels, they're frequently at odds with each other and out of synch with the realities of artist, business and consumer needs," Newton claims.

After years of battling the likes of Napster, Scour and Kazaa, the music industry may not be ready to smoke a peace pipe with those who swap copyright-protected songs online.

Late last week, the RIAA filed 80 new lawsuits against alleged file swappers, in a move that came after it sent a wave of letters warning targets of their legal risk.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9117597,00.htm


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Altnet Issues Legal Notices for Patent Infringement Occurring on File Sharing Networks

Altnet Warns Companies Including BigChampagne, MediaDefender and Overpeer to Cease Infringing Activities
Press Release

Altnet, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment (AMEX:BDE), the leading provider of secure digital media via Internet and peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies, announced today that it has issued notices to nine companies, including BigChampagne, Ranger Online, MediaDefender, Overpeer and MediaSentry, warning them to cease engaging in activities that Altnet believes constitute patent infringement.

Altnet believes these companies have been using its patented TrueNames file-identifying technology to spoof, track or interdict files on file sharing networks, and that the technology was used improperly to identify people sharing files who were then sued for copyright infringement.

"We continue to focus on protecting and commercializing our patented technology and realizing the potential it offers content owners by commercializing peer-to-peer networks," said Derek Broes, Altnet's executive vice president of worldwide operations. "These companies are using Altnet's patented technology without Altnet's permission to spoof, track and interdict shared files."

Altnet's TrueNames technology facilitates the identification of unique files on a massively distributed network by using a unique file hash identifier that enables one to track, retrieve, monitor and charge for the distribution of content. TrueNames is a method of identifying data based on the actual content of a file, rather than by the file name, origin, location, address or other information that can be easily changed. A unique identifier, or hash, is assigned to the data using an algorithm in a process protected by U.S. Patents Nos. 5,978,791 and 6,415,280, both of which have been exclusively licensed to Altnet for peer-to-peer applications.

"Altnet acquired the TrueNames patents in order to build a commercial solution for P2P operators and content owners. The patent should not be used improperly for any reason," added Broes. "That it is being used without permission in order to research or interfere with the infringement of others' intellectual property is ironic."
http://www.primezone.com/pages/news_....mhtml?d=48047


Altnet Warns Anti-Piracy Companies Against Patent Infringement
James Pearce

Altnet, which sells technologies enabling companies to use peer-to-peer networks as secure, legitimate marketing tools, has issued warnings to companies investigating file-sharers that they may be infringing Altnet patents.

The nine companies targeted by Altnet -- which include BigChampagne, Ranger Online, MediaDefender, Overpeer and MediaSentry -- provide anti-piracy services targeting peer-to- peer networks.

Altnet said it had sent the companies letters warning them to stop engaging in activities that Altnet believes constitute patent infringement. Altnet warned the companies against using its TrueNames file-identifying technology to spoof, track or interdict (prohibit) files on file sharing networks, claiming the technology was improperly used to identify people sharing files who were then sued for copyright infringement. TrueNames is a method of identifying a file based on its content rather than the file name, origin or other information which can be easily changed.

"We continue to focus on protecting and commercialising our patented technology and realising the potential it offers content owners by commercialising peer-to-peer networks," said Derek Broes, Altnet's executive vice president of worldwide operations in a statement. "These companies are using Altnet's patented technology without Altnet's permission to spoof, track and interdict shared files."

"Altnet acquired the TrueNames patents in order to build a commercial solution for P2P operators and content owners. The patent should not be used improperly for any reason," said Broes. "That it is being used without permission in order to research or interfere with the infringement of others' intellectual property is ironic."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0280887,00.htm


Altnet Says P2P Spies Violate Patent Rights
John Borland

Altnet, a company that distributes files legally through Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services, has sent legal threats to nine companies that monitor or meddle with file-trading networks, accusing them of violating its patent rights.

The cease-and-desist orders are the first legal use of a patent Altnet unveiled last June , under which it claims to hold rights to one of the most common means of identifying files on peer-to-peer networks. That technique, which uses a "hash," or a digital representation of all the information in a file, has even been used by the Recording Industry Association of America in its fight against online copyright infringers.

Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment and a close partner with Kazaa parent Sharman Networks, has spent months in discussions with other file-swapping companies about licensing the technology, according to Executive Vice President Derek Broes. But the company has chosen to send legal warning letters to this group of companies because they're using the technology in ways that Altnet wouldn't necessarily approve of. Among other things, Altnet pays Kazaa for the right to place its customers' files at the top of Kazaa search results.

"Our intent has always been to commercialize peer to peer, and if anyone is misusing our patent for any reason, I have to protect that intellectual property," Broes said. "If they're building business on the backs of the patent I worked hard to acquire, then they should talk to us."

Altnet's action, while aimed at some of the underground file- swapping world's chief foes, is likely to ruffle feathers on both sides of the technological fence. The company's claim to own rights to such a basic file-identification technique has sparked considerable controversy inside peer-to-peer circles and has in part been responsible for a political divide that has created two separate lobbying and policy groups in Washington, D.C.

The company acquired the patent in late 2002, from a researcher who now serves as Altnet's chief scientist.

At least one of the companies now targeted by Altnet says the claim is simply off base.

BigChampagne, a Los Angeles-based market research company that's come to prominence recently by providing record labels and other entertainment companies with reports of what files are most popular online, says it doesn't use Altnet's technology.

"I think at first blush this looks like a case of mistaken identity," said BigChampagne Chief Executive Officer Eric Garland. Identifying files "is not really the business we're in."

Garland said his company does do some file identification in order to ensure the accuracy of its aggregate data reports but does not use the hash technique.

Several of the other companies targeted take more direct action inside file-swapping networks, posting false versions of files in the hope of steering would-be downloaders away from the real ones, or taking snapshots of individual users' hard drives to use in copyright-infringement actions.

The full list of companies targeted by the Altnet letters includes

• BigChampagne
• BayTSP
• Cyveillance
• MediaDefender
• MediaSentry
• NetPD
• Overpeer
• Ranger Online
• Vidius

Altnet is asking the companies to stop using the hash technique in their businesses unless they take a license.

Broes said he had no immediate plans to pursue a similar strategy against the RIAA, which has publicly outlined its use of file hashes to identify copyrighted files downloaded from Kazaa users' hard drives.

"We have a good relationship with the RIAA, and we have lines of communication open with them," Broes said. "It is not a notice that we have served."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5106093.html


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Kazaa To Launch P2P Print Ads
John Borland

Kazaa parent Sharman Networks plans to unveil its first offline advertising campaign next week, in which it will exhort computer users to defend file swapping and tell entertainment companies they can make money too.

The Australian company has been scrambling for months to find a way to convince record companies and movie studios that it is sincerely interested in becoming a legitimate, licensed distributor of mainstream entertainment content. It hasn't yet been successful--Sharman and Kazaa, its file-swapping software, are still the target of lawsuits from the entertainment companies. Sharman hasn't struck any large-scale distribution deals with major studios or record labels.

According to a brief statement previewing the campaign, the print ads will be a "call to action to peer to peer (software) users to communicate the message that, given the chance, users will pay a fair price for movies, music and games from P2P networks."

The ads are also intended to tell traditional entertainment companies that they are "missing a huge opportunity" to reach file- swapping communities, according to the statement.

For much of its two-year existence, Sharman has been pursuing two goals that many see as mutually exclusive. Its Kazaa software has created far and away the largest file-swapping community online, built in great part on the unauthorized and unregulated exchange of copyrighted works, such as music and movies.

But it also has worked increasingly closely with Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, to persuade the file- swapping community to buy or download authorized versions of entertainment content such as music or video games. Ultimately, the company has claimed in lawsuits filed against the recording industry and Hollywood studios, it intended to push unauthorized sharing almost wholly off the network.

"By relegating non-(copy protected) files to a subordinate and comparatively unattractive access location...Sharman intended to promote and encourage only business appropriate file sharing and to share the net payments for (copy protected) works lawfully exchanged by users of the (Kazaa) software with Altnet," court papers filed by Sharman in September said.

Sharman and Altnet have also been working though a trade association they started, the Distributed Computing Industry Alliance, to try to create a forum where entertainment companies, Internet service providers and file-swapping companies can agree on business models that serve all three interests. To date, that group has found it difficult to attract other parties into serious discussions, however.

The Sharman print ad campaign will launch on Nov. 19, the company said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5106581.html


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Donating money…

321 Studios Advocates Fair Uses in Digital Copyright Law

DVD Backup Software Vendor Supports Electronic Frontier Foundation's Efforts
Press Release

DVD backup software vendor 321 Studios today announced it will donate as much as $1 million over the next year to online civil liberties organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). 321 Studios hopes to support EFF's work in advocating for digital copyright law responsive to consumer needs and to educate its customers about these issues.

The company will donate $25 toward EFF's efforts for each sale of a Lite-On DVD burner and DVD X Copy Platinum software bundle through the 321 Studios website or at the 321 Studios Touch Point Customer Service Center in the St. Louis Galleria Mall.

"We are very pleased that 321 Studios has chosen to recognize the important work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation with a generous financial contribution over the next year," said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. "321 Studios knows firsthand the importance of advocating for copyright law that preserves the balance among content-creators, innovators, and the public."

"This is a natural partnership that allows our customers to join the fight for digital rights. The EFF is working to protect those rights including that of Americans to protect their home entertainment investment through DVD backup and repair," said Robert Moore, President and Founder of 321 Studios. "As the leader in the DVD backup, repair, and creation software industry, it makes sense for 321 and our customers to put some economic muscle behind that fight."

Last year, 321 Studios filed a declaratory relief action in federal court asking a judge to confirm that its software, which enables consumers to make backup copies of DVDs they own, does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The major movie studios counter-sued to prohibit 321 Studios from selling and distributing that software. EFF submitted a friend-of-the- court brief arguing that the DMCA cannot constitutionally prohibit tools, like 321 Studios', that enable the public to make fair use of their media. The court has not yet ruled on the case.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20031111_321_studios_pr.php


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CD Players, VCRs Losing Edge In A Digital Age
Chris Gaither

As consumers make out their holiday wish lists this year, two stalwarts of home entertainment from the past decade will be conspicuously absent: the VCR and the compact disc player. Both are losing out to the digitization of movies and music -- and to tumbling prices.

Most music lovers are expected to choose pocket-sized digital music devices, which can store thousands of songs, instead of CD players. And for the first time, the price of DVD recorders is expected to drop below $300, enough to start pushing the devices into the mainstream.

The rise of digital music players and the improvement to the DVD format are part of the technology evolution that disrupts the home entertainment industry every decade or so, enticing consumers to upgrade their entertainment collections. The vinyl record, videocassette, and now discs have all marched music and video toward the next era: digital distribution.

Until now the VCR, which is in 94 percent of American households, has been able to hang on to its popularity primary because of its ability to record programs from television.

But the VCR is about to lose its final edge. The prices of DVD recorders, which can copy television shows or home movies onto blank discs that cost about $2, are expected to fall faster than the prices of DVD players have.

"You'll see $299 this holiday season, if not lower," said Scott Jacobi, a senior buyer for Best Buy Co., a Minnesota electronics chain that has 21 Massachusetts stores.

Also on the immediate horizon at sharply lower prices: digital video recorders like TiVo, which captures TV programs onto a storage drive like a computer's. People who have them rave about the ability to pause live TV and skip commercials. After mail-in rebates the entry-level TiVo costs $199 plus monthly service fees. Analysts said these devices will eat into VCRs, too, but nowhere near as much as DVD recorders, which will include more TiVo-like features themselves.

Meanwhile, cable companies are starting to build digital recorders into their set-top boxes. Comcast Corp., for example, plans to offer the service in Massachusetts and New Hampshire next year. The new technologies "put the final nail in the VCR coffin," said Sean Wargo, an analyst for the electronics trade group.

Digital distribution of music will eventually replace CDs, analysts said, because digital music files are becoming easier for more people to buy over the Internet and store on computers.

"In five to seven years the music CD industry could be pretty much eliminated by online music distribution," said Jonathan Hurd, vice president of Adventis Corp., a Boston technology strategy consultant.

But other analysts said the demise of VCRs and CD players will take longer because many consumers will not trust the new technologies enough to give up physical copies of movies and music.

Take Tony Mercadante, a 40-year-old promotions director. A custom-made pine rack takes up most of the hallway in his Everett apartment, displaying his collection of more than 2,000 CDs.

"It's a part of who I am," he said of his collection. "To have it just on a hard drive where it exists only in the virtual world, it's not the same. To me collecting means having it in your possession."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...a_digital_age/


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IN THE PIPELINE: ISPs Poised To Punish Biggest Customers
Roger Cheng

Internet service providers - besieged by rampant use of peer-to-peer services that clog up bandwidth - are preparing a series of measures to control the amount of bandwidth people can use.

At least one ISP already is poised to strike. Cox Communications Inc. is implementing a new, tiered pricing system that will charge more to heavy users of bandwidth. In doing so the company hopes to reconcile the bandwidth needs of two types of customers - the hardcore user who downloads movie or music files, and the modest user who logs on for e-mail or light web surfing - and to profit from it.

Cox said it has rolled out this plan in a few select markets, with further expansion in 2004. The premium version costs $79.95 to $89.95, while the low-cost choice goes for $24.95 to $29.95.

People who hog up Internet bandwidth have been a growing problem for the industry since the emergence of peer-to-peer file sharing services. According to industry data, up to 60% of the Internet's total bandwidth is used by 5% of the users entrenched in file swapping on sites like Kazaa or Grokster - services that allow people to trade media files through the Web.

"ISPs have been throwing more bandwidth at the problem, but that clearly does nothing for potential revenue," said Lindsay Schroth, broadband infrastructure analyst for research and consulting firm Yankee Group.

Now, ISPs are considering implementing systems that tell them who's a peer-to-peer user and who's simply Web browsing - and control them accordingly.

The alternative to limiting bandwidth is to build more capacity, which is a short-term solution that offers no return on investment.

The increased bandwidth use by peer-to-peer services is driven by larger media files, which perpetuates an endless cycle. As Internet speeds increase, so do the size of media files downloaded and bandwidth consumed, said Phil Morle, chief technology officer for Sharman Networks Ltd., which distributes Kazaa.

"ISPs are sweeping the dust under the carpet by blaming P2P," Morle said. "They need to look at the broader issue and look at how the Internet is growing."

Technology such as P-Cube's system isn't on the company's radar right now, Morle said, adding that he hasn't heard many complaints about download speeds from Kazaa's users in areas where P-Cube has installed its system.

To the record industry, which has sued individuals to discourage unauthorized swapping of music files, technology like P-Cube's system could be used to stop copyright infringement, said Matthew Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America. Oppenheim said he can see ISPs ultimately encouraging users to get their music online through legal channels. But right now, he said, the technology's potential is getting lost in the noisy debate about whether downloading music files is stealing or sharing.

Not everyone is convinced that restricting traffic is an urgent priority. Gartner's Leung said Internet service providers are actually touting higher bandwidth, rather than considering limits at this point. She noted the size of the market for providing tiered services is still relatively small.

One major cable company said it isn't taking action against peer-to-peer traffic, and is actually offering more bandwidth. The potential for this kind of technology lies more in its ability to identify types of traffic, rather than its power to limit, said the company's senior engineer. His company is in talks with a few of these private companies, but doesn't see any tests beginning until at least late next year.
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/031111/15/3fs9w.html


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Maestro Tries To Lose Label Of Music Pirate
Paul Sexton

If thoughts could kill, record moguls would be moonwalking over Alan Morris's grave. Mr Morris is executive vice-president of Australian software distributor Sharman Networks, a name that does not usually raise music executives' blood pressure. But mention Kazaa, the name of the file-sharing software the company distributes, and industry bigwigs reach for their rifles.

When it bought Kazaa in 2002, Sharman acquired a service that had already been shut down once after being fined by a Dutch judge for facilitating the illegal downloading and sharing of copyrighted music.

Since then, the number of copies of Kazaa software loaded on to personal computers has risen to an estimated 278m, making it one of the world's most downloaded programs. With the once-infamous Napster music website relaunching as a paid-for legal download service, Kazaa has become the bête noire for an industry quick to blame digital piracy for falling sales.

Mr Morris, an affable Englishman and a former pay-TV consultant, is unfazed by press vilification or writs the company has attracted from the Record Industry Association of America, which he describes as "muscleheads". "We're very clear that we don't condone copyright infringement," he says. "We acquired [Kazaa] with the simple objective of being the world's largest and most effective distributor of licensed content. It'd be crazy to do it for any other reason."

Indeed, Sharman estimates that 100m legally licensed files have been distributed using its peer-to-peer (P2P) software. But its protests that it wants a mutually beneficial deal with the record business are undermined by the tacit admission that, along with its legitimate use, grand-scale copyright theft by Kazaa users is also taking place. And its efforts to be seen as a legitimate partner are not helped by the ambiguous nature of its business model, technology and corporate set-up.

Although the parent group is a software publisher, Kazaa's current business model relies on selling online advertising. Users can download free Kazaa software in several variants from www.kazaa.com or other websites.

When Kazaa-equipped users search for music files online, they view and access folders on anonymous Kazaa users' PCs containing stored music, games or video content. Provided the user is online, they can download them by connecting to their PC - the P2P connection. If not, the software searches for one that is online.

Most of these files are "free" because they have been illicitly downloaded from websites or burnt from CDs or DVDs. Others are protected by so-called digital rights management (DRM) software and involve a payment split between the rights owners and Kazaa.

Although users do not have to visit the Kazaa.com website to search for files, an estimated 60m people have registered to it, thus creating the market to sell advertising to this audience.

Sharman Networks is run, day-to-day, by an affiliated management group in Sydney but its headquarters are on the little-known island of Vanuatu, described on its website as "the South Pacific's premier tax haven".

Unlike Napster, which had a main content server that gave its opponents something to aim their legal challenges at, Kazaa operates a more decentralised P2P structure. Attempts to close it down will prove legally fraught and do little to deter the millions already using Kazaa or other P2P software.

These characteristics hardly endear the group to music executives, who see it more as part of the problem of digital piracy. Mr Morris retorts: "While we don't condone it [piracy], it seems ridiculous to suggest that [it's the cause of] the record industry's woes, which have been going on a lot longer than P2P. Research suggests that two-thirds of people, once they become peer-to-peer users, buy more CDs.

"It has been suggested, doubtless unfairly, that if P2P didn't exist, the record industry would have to find some other scapegoat. Certainly there's no evidence to suggest that if somebody downloads an infringing file, that's a lost sale. That's naive. In most countries, there's not a sterling or dollar decline, there's just a decline in units. You might well therefore think there's a pricing issue."

In May, Cooking Vinyl, an independent British label, trialled Kazaa to promote two tracks from Richard Thompson's The Old Kit Bag album. Two tracks were available free for 24 hours, after which there was an option to buy them for 25p each.

"We didn't sell many downloads. They need to do another test," says the label's managing director, Martin Goldschmidt. "If they can come up with a way to make labels money, labels will take it. If they can't, labels will call them pirates. There's some truth in that, but there is also an element of making them the scapegoat for not having an internet policy."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...1066565779234#


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Penn State Students Do Slow Burn Over Music- Download Deal
W. David Gardner

Pennsylvania State University's pioneering agreement with Napster to provide music downloads to students is meeting with student response ranging from downright criticism to a wait-and-see attitude.

“It's a mixed bag,” said student leader Joseph Curigliano. “We don't have enough details. No one knows how much it's going to cost. I wonder how this is going to help us academically.”

Curigliano, who is president of the state university's Council of Commonwealth Student Governments, said a group of student representatives met after the program was announced last week. Many students at the meeting and elsewhere have voiced concern over the program.

A group of students at the Penn State Erie campus have been attempting to organize students to boycott the program. They were said to complain that some students who would not use the program would be paying for it through the college's IT fee.

Penn State's President, Graham Spanier, and Cary Sherman of the Recording Industry Association of America announced the program. The two men also serve as co-chairmen of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, a group formed to curb the illegal downloading of music from the Internet. They called the Penn State program “revolutionary” last week, and presented it as a model for other colleges to adopt.

But the program, as announced, is complex and most students are trying to pick their way through its details. The program will be implemented in university residence halls in the spring.

While there was much hoopla about the “free” service, students were questioning that statement. The cost will be bundled into Penn State's $160 per semester student charge for information technology. The college's student newspaper, The Digital Collegian, suggested that university officials explain the cost better.

“One possible explanation is that other services previously provided by the technology fee will be compromised in some way,” the newspapers editors said in an editorial. “A second option is that in the past, students were being overcharged for the fee.” Some students also questioned the proposed cost of 99 cents for each downloaded song they want to burn into a CD or load into an MP3 player.

Hounded by the recording industry, Napster declared bankruptcy and has since been reincarnated as a division of Roxio Inc. which recently relaunched the popular Napster 2.0 music service, charging 99 cents a song and $9.95 an album. A key piece of the Penn State program is the “tethered” way that songs will be offered to students; students can keep songs on up to three computers, but to burn songs into CDs or MP3 players, a charge of 99 cents a song will be levied. Joe Curigliano said the whole process seems complicated, but he said students are likely to wait to see how the program plays out in the spring.

Curigliano pointed out that students often swap music and wonder whether they will be able to under the new program. He added that he doesn't copy music from the Web, but he copies occasionally from radio broadcasts and he wonders exactly what the distinction between the two is. “It's a funny thing about the industry,” he said. “You can take it off the radio. The recording industry hasn't protested loudly about that.”

The Collegian newspaper said some students will continue to use peer-to-peer downloading programs like Kazaa, which can be used to burn songs into CDs and MP3 players. Kazaa is also more difficult to police because it originates in Sweden.

One student said those left out by the program are candidates to use Kazaa. The Penn State program can only be used on Windows 98, 2000 and XP, leaving out students with Windows Millennium Edition (ME) and Apple computers.

Noting that many music-downloading services already exist on the Internet, the Collegian asked rhetorically: “What then is Penn State really offering? If Penn State is not offering anything more than what already exists, why is the university getting involved at all?”
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20031111S0015

[JackSpratts]

Fighting For The Right To Share
Aliya Sternstein

Ian Clarke, inventor of file-swapping service Freenet, has departed the United States for the United Kingdom, where copyright laws are more lax. Wayne Rosso, the man behind file-sharing service Grokster, left for a peer-to-peer network in Spain, again saying goodbye to thorny copyright issues.

File sharing has gotten a black eye from illegal downloads of copyrighted music and movies, but the technology behind it is important. A legal network of shared thinking will hasten drug research, software development and the flow of information. But U.S. copyright laws, designed decades before the Web was ever conceived, have tied file sharing--and many other Internet technologies--in knots.

The traditional holders of copyrighted material have dug in for a long fight against any loosening of the laws. In 1998, after intense lobbying from The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ) and other companies, the U.S. Congress passed a law making corporate copyrights good for 95 years and those owned by individuals good for 70 years past the creator's death. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court extended that law for another 20 years. But if the old-liners continue to get their way, the public domain in the U.S. will virtually disappear. And early-stage Internet innovations from digital music stores to virtual actors will forever be stuck behind legal firewalls.

The losses suffered by traditional copyright holders have piled up. A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America claims that 2 billion songs worldwide are downloaded illegally every month; software developers like Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) say the industry loses more than $10 billion per year to illegal software; the Motion Picture Association of America puts piracy losses in the U.S. at more than $3 billion per year. According to the Business Software Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group, a ten-point drop in worldwide piracy over the next four years would add 1.5 million jobs and $400 billion in additional economic growth.

Also piling up: lawsuits, against both the downloaders and the Internet service providers that transmit their booty.

Yet the recent gains scored by legal file sharing show just how much money is at stake on the other side of the copyright divide. In just five months, services such as Apple Computer's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iTunes, RealNetworks' (nasdaq: RNWK - news - people ) Rhapsody, BuyMusic.com and others have reported more than 9.5 million legal music downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With downloads averaging $1 per song, the recording industry has collected more than $9.5 million.

One of the ways content providers aim to control distribution is through technology called digital rights management, which essentially assigns usage rights and fees to everything from entertainment to e-mails to medical records. Giants like Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) are promoting DRM technology.

Can copyrights be protected without stifling innovation? Ultimately, the protection of content and jobs hinges on collaboration between producers and distributors.

Among the ideas being floated by lobbying groups like P2P United: a royalty pool created from small charges on Internet service, blank CDs and CD burner equipment. These so- called compulsory licenses would mean consumers broadly share the cost for all copyrighted music that passes through the ISP.

But such licenses would require the approval of the U.S. Congress, says William Fisher, a Harvard Law professor and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The idea would also get pushback from ISPs. "We would become the world's most complicated billing system," says Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ), which is not promoting compulsory licenses.

There may not be any consensus on how to control distribution and licensing of content, but most agree that it's a train that can't be stopped.

History shows that conventional media reflexively shuns novel technology. In 1908, a music publisher sued a player piano company. The Supreme Court ruled that making piano rolls was not close enough to publishing music to be prohibited. In 1984, Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Productions took the VCR to court. There, the judges decided that taping TV programs at home was fair use, to the glee of VCR and Betamax makers and owners.

Hanson, the teen group behind the hit song "Mmmbop," launched a Web site during the Web's music infancy. Six years later--with a new album and tour--the brothers still support online music. "Whether it's a tax or 99 cents for a song, we gotta work something out," says 18-year-old Zac Hanson.

Somewhere in the middle of cyberspace, the kids and the grown-ups have to lay down some ground rules. Even the U.S. Constitution was a compromise.
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/20...oadblocks.html


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Downloading Update

Middle Ground
I.J. Hudson,

Members of a local DC band called "Q and not U" say they certainly aren't part of the "big" music industry, but have a lot to say about music and being a musician. They say music should be freely shared. And that includes the Internet. Their website offers a few songs for free download, and band members believe it gets their music out and attracts more people to their live concerts, which is what they want. "Since we're touring 100 days a year, we've had tons of people come up to us at shows say, Oh, I downloaded a song off your website. I have no idea of who you are or anything about the music scene that you're in, but I heard this song on the Internet and decided to come to this show," says Chris Richards, of "Q and not U." Music downloading on the Internet is in transition between the total "freedom" of Napster's peer-to-peer sharing, and the new legal business models of Apple's iTunes and Napster 2.0. Download a track for 99 cents.

The original Napster caught the eye of the recording industry when profits dipped. Eventually the RIAA filed lawsuits against more than 200 people the RIAA felt were illegally downloading music. "There was a real misperception of what is legal and what is illegal, and that's why we sent this strong message that taking music that doesn't belong to you is illegal, and the message has gotten out to people all across the country," says Amy Weiss of the RIAA. In the middle are a lot of people like student Jamal Shavers. "If it's on the Internet and you are paying for your service, it should be free." Others say free downloads make up for past money spent on CDs loaded with tracks they didn't want. A suggestion the music industry's old way of distributing music was on borrowed time. But the RIAA says it will continue suing people who illegally download music, that the suits educate the public about copyright law. And its statistics suggest 75 percent of the people illegally downloading music are now signed up to legal sites. (Say what!? – JS.)

American University law professor Christine Farley teaches Intellectual Property Law and says the RIAA was not overly concerned about downloading until the industry lost money. She suggests the Internet could be bringing in new music buyers. "There's no doubt about it that the music industry is having a hard time financially right now, but it may not all be attributable to the technology. The technology may be counter-balancing. There might be some people that are no longer buying CD's, but that might be counter-balanced by other people who use the technology to buy those CDs. File sharing is here to stay. I think the technology is here to stay. You just can't turn it back." The RIAA's Weiss says "the marketplace will work and is working, but you can't compete for free." Again, middle ground between free downloading and paying something short of the CD in the store. And the RIAA is trying to turn back some of the downloaders by running commercials on MTV featuring artists who use phrases like: "To us, it's black and white. Either you pay for it or you don't. Straight up and down, it's stealing." But in the minds of some consumers, it seems nothing is straight up and down - especially downloading music on the Internet.
http://www.nbc4.com/technology/2630341/detail.html


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Connecticut Woman Snares Canadian Man Charged With Nigerian E-Mail Hoax

(Danbury-AP) _ A Bethel Connecticut woman who was fed up with suspicious e-mail pitches promising millions is taking credit for helping catch a Canadian man accused of fraud.

Heidi Evans received numerous messages purporting to be from Nigeria and promising millions of dollars.

Evans said she led the US Secret Service and Bethel police to Nicholas Horvath-Howard of Toronto who met her in Bethel hoping to receive a reward.

She says the 24-year-old Horvath-Howard expected to pick up more than $200,000. Instead, Bethel police were waiting for Horvath-Howard and charged him with first-degree attempted larceny.

Horvath-Howard was arraigned in Danbury Superior Court on Monday. Bond was set at $250,000 and his case was continued until Monday.
http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp...7&nav=3YeXIx3H


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Premium Download Market War Proves Music To Ears Of The Media Industry
Ross Fadner

It’s been a while since the online medium has spawned anything resembling – dare we say – a dot-com advertising boom, but that’s just what appears to be shaping with a sudden marketing war surrounding premium download music services. The services, which are the legitimate successors of the Napster-era of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing services, seem to be launching daily, replete with heavy consumer advertising budgets.

Major players include RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, Apple’s iTunes, and Roxio’s revamped Napster service, but such biggies as Sony Corp, Viacom’s MTV Networks and Wal-Mart Stores are said to be poised to launch competing services.

Apple, Roxio, and RealNetworks have already launched ad campaigns for their respective services. Familiarly, each campaign is directed towards differentiating their service from their pay-for competitors.

RealNetworks’ campaign features TV spots produced by Sofia Coppola’s production agency and will be their first national television effort. The commercial will focus on a television pole that becomes increasingly plastered with more and more promotional posters for various artists and groups such as Bob Dylan and Radiohead. Eventually, the posters fill up the pole and the entire space surrounding it. The message will be something to the effect of “You can have it all,” or “15,000 bands at one venue,” which is the overall tone and message of the ad campaign that also features online and possibly print ads.

Roxio, which purchased the rights to revive Napster for $20 million, is announcing its reemergence with a flurry of TV and print ads flashing its familiar “kittyhead” logo of a cat with headphones on. One wonders, however, whether it’s smart to re-launch a branding image that became synonymous with music piracy for so many years.

RealNetworks, meanwhile, announced a new co-branding effort with Comcast on Monday that will provide a direct link to Comcast’s purported 2.5 million site users —around half of Comcast’s overall broadband consumer base. During a special promotion, Comcast subscribers who go to the Rhapsody site will receive a seven day free trial run of the service and 10 free songs to download.

The Comcast partnership brings “the advantage of communicating with people who already have a broadband connection,” noted Greg Chiemingo, vice president- corporate communications, RealNetworks. A high-speed connection, of course, is certainly more favorable for downloading music and people with broadband and DSL connections will be the audience RealNetworks is primarily targeting.

Chiemingo said the RealNetworks’ ad campaign will feature a good mix of online, TV and print ads, but does not specifically target any specific demographic. “There is a big broadband audience out there,” he noted, “it’s not necessarily just college students and younger kids—they are an important audience of course but part of a much bigger picture.”

Despite the explosive popularity of such services, paid online music distributors still face the challenge of convincing a generation of music fans who have become very used to getting their music for free to suddenly pay for it. Why would they want to do that?

“History is full of new technologies, new markets, new opportunities. People race in with new ideas, and then there is shakeout,” observed Larry McNaughton, chief operating officer of brand consultancy agency CoreBrand LLC. He said the rush to enter the paid online music business reminds him of the coffee store boom of the last five to seven years when many copycats appeared only to vanish in the wake of Starbucks Corporation’s rise to global coffee market dominance.
http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_ne...ate=11/11/2003 Registration req’d


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Offline Radio Vets Join Online Radio Fray
Larry Dobrow

To date, marketers haven’t exactly embraced the nascent medium of Internet radio. There are any number of reasons for this, ranging from their usual hesitancy to back an untested medium to the economic malaise of the last few years. But with consumers starting to listen in droves – Yahoo’s LAUNCHcast had two million listeners last month, while Radio@AOL notched around four million – radio planners are no longer getting laughed out of the room when they propose diverting a few of their clients’ network radio dollars onto the web.

It is into this fray that radio-sales vets Andy Lipset and Eric Ronning have chosen to launch Ronning/Lipset Radio, billed in a company press release as “the first online radio representation firm aimed at bringing traditional advertisers into the new era of online radio.” Though Lipset quickly hedges on this statement (“we’re not saying that we’re the first ones to do this”), it’s clear that there are few media firms attempting a similar feat: devoting all of their resources to a format that many marketers dismiss without much thought.

Surging listener support certainly hasn’t hurt. A recent Arbitron/Edison study found that 16% of Americans have listened to Internet radio in the last month and 8% in the last week. And while satellite radio has been the recipient of borderline euphoric press and analyst coverage – witness the bouquets hurled at XM for recently hitting the one-million-subscriber mark – Internet radio boasts substantially more listeners, as witnessed by the LAUNCHcast and Radio@AOL numbers. “The anecdotal evidence about its growth is stronger than what satellite radio has,” Ronning affirms.

As for online radio groupies, they’re a demographically desirable lot, falling almost exclusively within the 18-49 age range. “They’re tech-savvy. They may speak a different language than your regular radio listener,” Vasey says. Adds Ronning: “They’re at a desk with big broadband pipes doing work on the computer. If we’re right, you’ll start to see fewer and fewer clock radios on peoples’ desks.” With this in mind, solid bets for online radio include computer hardware, banking/financial and consumer electronics companies. Ronning points to cell phone service providers as a potential target in the months ahead, as these companies will likely be eager to reach online listeners (as well as just about everybody else on the planet) with the message that consumers are now allowed to keep their numbers when switching carriers.

As for the medium’s future, well, Ronning and Lipset wouldn’t be getting into the business full-time if they weren’t bullish about its potential. For now, they believe that the best way to sell Internet radio to advertisers is as a complementary buy. Too, they hope to sell marketers on the notion that online radio offers a relatively clutter- free environment, with few online broadcasters running more than six ad units per hour. “Advertisers can stand out,” Lipset notes.

Vasey, a longtime supporter of Internet radio, believes in the medium’s potential – she’s approached a handful of clients about advertising on it – but cautions that it has “a long, long way to go.” Among her major concerns are still-skittish advertisers, who want to see results before investing in a new medium. “If clients are looking at budget cuts, it’s hard to get them to spend somewhere they haven’t spent before,” she says. “They’re pressed for results and ROI, so some of them aren’t going to jump in anytime soon.”
http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_ne...ate=11/11/2003


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Music Industry Fights Download Free-For-All

Best Buy, Comcast target pirates with Web music services
Mark Evans

The music industry's strategy to resolve the troublesome piracy problem moved forward on several fronts yesterday, highlighted by new online services offered by Best Buy Co. and Comcast Corp., and new CD technology from Sony Corp.

The question, however, is whether the music industry's shotgun approach to try everything and anything to attack illegal downloading will deter consumers from getting free music from peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and LimeWire.

The answer appears to be a resounding "maybe" if the music industry can learn from small victories it has achieved so far.

The industry's most trumpeted success has been Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes service, which has sold several million songs since its launch in April.

This has encouraged rivals such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Buymusic.com to get into the business. Best Buy followed in Wal-Mart's footsteps yesterday by announcing it would offer customers the ability to download music from its Web site.

On the legal front, the Recording Industry Association of America has used lawsuits to spook many people from using Kazaa, et al.

The music industry deserves kudos for working to expand the number of online services. Competition will hopefully lead to better selection, services that cater to specific interests, and lower prices.

This may be enough to convince consumers it is better to pay for music than download it for free.

In the meantime, the music industry cannot afford to be complacent. If it believes the proliferation of online services is strategically sufficient, it's in for a major surprise.

Some of the success enjoyed by services such as iTunes and Napster is grounded in their novelty. A lot of people are experimenting with the pay-to-play format. But what happens after that? How many loyal customers will online services attract if they stick with the status quo? The biggest stumbling block is still price.

At 99¢ a song, online services are expensive considering all you get is the music. There are no lyrics, cover art or value-added goodies such as priority access to concert tickets or exclusive Webcasts. The music industry gets to reduce its distribution, marketing and sales costs, while consumers receive the "privilege" of downloading music.

Whoever decided that 99¢ was the cost of an online song did not understand that consumer behaviour has changed dramatically.

All you have to do is look at Roxio Inc.'s stock price, which dropped again yesterday in the wake of news that its Napster service only had 300,000 songs downloaded since its launch last week. Roxio missed the boat because it forces consumers to pay an additional fee if they want to transfer music from their personal computers to other devices such as MP3 players.

The peer-to-peer network world, while wounded, seems to be far from dead. According to Download.com, there were more than 2.1 million downloads of Kazaa software last week, 280,904 of Morpheus and 127,581 of LimeWire. Clearly, there are plenty of music lovers who have not been scared by the RIAA or attracted by iTunes, Napster and other services. As a result, the music industry is forced to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the downloading problem.

Sony said yesterday it will introduce new CD technology in Germany that stops users from copying songs to file-sharing sites, but lets them make copies for personal use. This is a step in the right direction but it only addresses a small symptom of the problem rather than providing a solution. Then again, maybe piracy will be solved through small battles as opposed to a knockout blow.

If lower prices are a legitimate tool to get consumers on board maybe Sarah McLachlan is on to something. The popular Canadian singer insisted her new album sell for 20% less than regular retail prices in a bid to combat piracy. If more albums were sold for $10, like Sarah's new disc, maybe the music industry's unit sales and revenue would improve.

It is troubling that the music industry's biggest innovator is probably Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Aside from lawsuits and ho-hum online services, there is not a lot of out of the box thinking by the major music labels. It is an industry that moves cautiously and slowly, and despite the flurry of news yesterday, there is no indication things will change soon.
http://www.canada.com/technology/sto...8-DC6AB1E30D1C


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On the DL
Hiroshi

It seems that with the animation studios and distributors taking such a relaxed attitude to fan subs and other activities (such as dojinshi and Japanese fanzines, which often contain fan manga), it’s a real boom time for fans. The internet era may yet prove to be a golden age. On the one hand, the increasing speed of the net provides faster-than-ever access to fansubs and other versions of new shows, and on the other, it creates the ability to purchase shows direct from Asia that would likely be unavailable in the States for a long time.

Much of this is lost on my faithful friend, Badtz, who is barely able to tell the difference between Pokemon and Speed Racer. I mention this because, when people try to characterize anime as this or that, I find myself trying to describe anime in terms of content, which will almost always lead you astray.

Some people have complained that I’ve been promoting piracy. Humbug. At this moment I place myself on the side of people who feel sharing is not theft. To say that the peer-to-peer networks constitute theft is analagous to saying community centers’ book and video exchanges are violating copyright law. People will share amongst themselves, and online networks are a natural extension of that. People are naturally curious and have an instinct to share what they find. It is inevitable, and cannot be stopped.
http://www.nypress.com/16/46/gaming/ondl.cfm


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File Sharing Inevitable In Time Of Rapidly Growing Technology
Eric Zimmermann

As the days of our lives slowly lurch forward, one can almost feel the change in the air.

Our lives, due to the multitude of technological innovations within the last decade, are becoming faster and faster as our products, that were "once upon a time" separated, become highly integrated.

Whether the combination of products be 1) a phone and a camera, 2) a DVD that networks to a computer hard drive, or 3) a car and a map (GPS) these combinations are intended to make life just a little bit more relaxed.

Has anyone else noticed that most of the time they succeed in the exact opposite, allowing, instead, for more time, which one can stuff with busy nothingness?

Nonetheless, technologies such as e-mail, Kazaa and digital cameras have allowed Americans to forgo the process of writing letters, visiting the local CD store and watching their relative's dreaded "slide show" in lure of more simple ways of connecting with people. Some are opposed.

However, Kodak didn't sue Canon Digital Cameras. The United States Post Office didn't impede progress by suing15-year-old e-mail users for violation of an archaic code that needs updating.

Conversely, in the final moments of 2003, after a subpoena rampage that targeted myriad file-sharers, including 12-year-old New Yorker Brianna LaHara, the record companies under the umbrella of trade organization the RIAA, have begun to hasten the pace of their Kazaa jenga game with a multi-lateral assault.

By attacking from multiple angles, the actual server itself as well as users of that server, the RIAA is attempting to capsize the capacity of the major servers, Kazaa, Limewire and Gnutella, in an effort to end filesharing forever by whatever means necessary!!!!!

However, things aren't going well for them.

As the movie and television industries learned with the invention of the VCR and the ability to record you just cannot fight technology instead work with it not against it, because technology is ever expanding and as the adage suggest "once there is a way there will always be a way."

Public action groups, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation, are rounding up opposition to the RIAA's barrage by recalling years of unchecked mark-ups and pointing to the absurd penalties for trading a single song, up to $250,000 and five years in prison.

They are currently heading up a campaign centered on a mass Senate e-mail to oppose the current severe consequences.

Individuals are standing up to the RIAA as well, suggesting that P2P software is the future of music acquisition.

For instance, Chuck D of Public Enemy and Marty Lafferty, CEO of DCIA, both see P2P technology as an essential and permanent form of communication and connection while simultaneously asserting that unfair fines and punishments far exceed the crime.

Both question the tactics of the RIAA while Chuck D, an avid protester since the days of Napster, has watched for ways to create profit from the new technology.

Lastly and surprisingly enough, Republicans such as Senator Sam Brownback (R - Kan.)and Congressman Chris Cannon (R -UT), have both respectively argued against the lawsuits, citing the illegality of information obtaining used by the R.I.A.A and the need for new forms of commerce as dictated by the new forms of technology, respectively.

As the struggle continues I see a simple mirage in the distance and it begins to scream at me, "Tell the industry that the people should begin to open customized CD stores on the Internet and that downloads should be offered at the remaining physical CD stores."
http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.d...-file.35d.html


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Oops - Nokia Confirms New Game Codes Cracked
Mark Berniker

Just as Nokia Corp. announced the addition of two new security companies to its developers alliance, the Finnish cellphone maker confirmed that the security schema for its new wireless gaming platform has been compromised by hackers.

Nokia only debuted the new N-Gage game phone last month. But press reports have already surfaced that the copy protection codes have been cracked leading to the illegal copying of video games for the device.

"We've investigated rumors that the copy protections for the Nokia N-Gage game cards have been cracked. We have found that some of the copy protection mechanisms of some game titles have been disabled and the game titles have been disabled and the games available for download on various Web sites," said Steven Knuff, a spokesman for Nokia.

The company confirmed to internetnews.com that it will try to track down the perpetrators of the theft of its software protection codes. The crack apparently detects encrypted games stored in the root directory of a memory card; then decrypts the files onto the card; and then adds the game in the handset's application launcher.

"We take these types of intellectual property offenses very seriously and we have initiated a program to stop individuals, and or entities that are behind these IP violations. Nokia will cooperate with ISP's, auction sites and the relevant authorities to pursue all actions and remedies available to stop this illegal activity," Knuff told internetnews.com.

Nokia's N-Gage allows for mobile multiplayer game play on a tri-band phone, which supports Bluetooth wireless networking and also contains an MP3 player and an FM radio. In fact, Nokia has high hopes for the device to drive sales and challenge Nintendo's Gameboy Advance.

Meanwhile, the company continues to advance its security initiatives elsewhere. Nokia has added two enterprise partners, nCircle and Websense, to the Nokia Security Developers Alliance.

nCircle is in the business of providing a vulnerability management system, which assists in the security of IP network devices. Websense makes filtering software that assists in the analysis, management and reporting of employee Internet access, network activity, software applications usage and the utilization of bandwidth.

Together, the companies hope to bring solutions to Nokia's network integrity and secure connectivity appliances. The two new companies along with other members of Nokia's Developers Alliance have access to the company's SDK for Nokia's secure Operating System. Other companies with sanctioned-secure enterprise solutions for the Nokia Developers Alliance include BMC Software (Quote, Chart), HP (Quote, Chart), Fishnet Security, ForeScout Technologies, netForensics, Open Service, Permeo Technologies, SurfControl and Tripwire.

NCircle said its IP360 Vulnerability Management solution "automatically scans and profiles a customer's network to find and eliminate network vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. The porting process delivers a truly interoperable solution offering rapid deployment, ease of configuration and the highest level of performance and availability."

Websense specializes in providing employee Internet management solutions and said "Websense Enterprise combined with Nokia IP security appliances empower businesses to detect and manage employee access to the Internet and other network-based applications such as instant messaging, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and streaming media."
http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/print.php/3107851


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The Middleman's Dwindling Value

The value of the online middleman is declining rapidly as the Internet evolves into a place where our needs and wants are perfectly understood, and geography matters less and less.
Bambi Francisco

Middlemen on the Net have, so far, attracted the largest gatherings of people on the Web, and brokered a significant number of deals for them.

Consider EBay ( EBAY: news, chart, profile ). The value of goods transacted on its site was $5.8 billion in the last quarter, or $23.2 billion a year. Not even 10 years old, EBay is generating 1.5 times the sales rung up at Federated Department Stores ( FD: news, chart, profile ) and nearly three-quarters of the sales transacted at J.C. Penney ( JCP: news, chart, profile ), whose first store was established in Kemmerer, Wyoming 100 years ago. EBay's likely to outlive 141-year-old F.A.O. Schwartz, the toy and collectibles retailer that may not see this Christmas.

But the Internet establishment faces dire challenges when it comes to the online world where knowledge is easily disseminated and geographic constraints are nonexistent.

The result: a market-share war among a whole host of players vying for price-sophisticated consumers whose loyalty to a brand is as fleeting as a day-trader's conviction about a stock.

What middleman can raise fees in this environment?

On Monday, EBay kicked off the week with "Penny Gallery Days," a two-day promotion to entice merchants to put their wares on EBay for 1 penny. As I've written countless times, the Internet is a medium that shrinks the gap between advertising and commerce, pitting both advertising agencies and third-party marketplace operators against each other.

EBay increasingly faces challenges from the search engine companies, (Google in particular as well as Yahoo ( YHOO: news, chart, profile ) which earn their keep by giving merchants a platform to reach consumers, much like EBay.

And if, or when, Google goes public, the popular search engine might just find a way to lower the fees that investment-banker types (middlemen of sorts on Wall Street) make for taking companies public. The fee to raise capital on Wall Street is typically 7 percent. But should the search engine decide to go directly to the consumer in some sensible way or form, it may have the opportunity to save half that.

InterActiveCorp's ( IACI: news, chart, profile ) Match.com is one of the most popular sites online, but its ability to raise prices next year (should it care to) looks questionable even though online dating is the leading service consumers are willing to pay for.

The onset of the site called Friendster, a new so-called social-networking site that burst onto the Internet scene through word-of-mouth marketing and its unbeatable cost to the consumers -- zero, invariably caps Match.com's ability to charge. Someone recently pointed out to me that he saw the same people on Match that he saw on Friendster. So, why bother paying to get on Match?

IAC may also face challenges hiking prices on travel deals if it wants to compete with the likes of Orbitz, which is soon to go public. Just as United Online's ( UNTD: news, chart, profile ) low-cost structure enabled it to offer reasonable access prices and capture market share in the Internet access business, the winner in the online travel business will be the one with the lowest-cost structure and the best deals.

In the delivery of digital music, how does a marketplace with new entrants each day create any opportunity for anyone to raise prices? RealNetworks ( RNWK: news, chart, profile ) can't raise prices even though it's going to split the revenue it makes on new subscribers signing up through Comcast. Steve Jobs says that he doesn't care if Apple's ( AAPL: news, chart, profile ) I-Tunes loses money as long as he can sell I-Pods. How does Roxio's ( ROXI: news, chart, profile ) Napster and Real, along with MusicMatch, BuyMusic's BuyMusic.com, etc. raise prices against that?

Competition makes it difficulty for these companies to raise prices. Even worse, peer-to-peer file sharing will take a big chunk out of this industry. According to Infoma Media Group, cited in The Economist, file sharing will deprive the music industry $4.7 billion in music sales in 2008.

I raise these points not to say that middlemen will one day be extinct.

But if we continue at this rate, we may one day be trading with each other without anyone to pay a broker's fee to.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...d=1531_0_3_0_C


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Copyright and Music: A History Told in MP3's
Madeleine Baran

"In truth, literature, in science and in art, there are, and can be, few, if any things, which in an abstract sense are strictly new and original throughout. Every book in literature, science, and art borrows, and must necessarily borrow, and use much which was well known and used before." -- Supreme Court Justice David Souter

Copyright lawsuits involving music have been based on the largely mythical concept of originality. The process of making music necessarily involves recycling notes, chords, and lyrics. The attempt to carve out areas of ownership (chord progressions, refrains, a riff) within the finite musical landscape immediately gets bogged down in murky distinctions. Does borrowing a one-line lyric constitute copyright infringement? How about two lines? What happens when the songwriter wasn't even aware s/he was copying another song? Is sampling legally different than simple imitation?

In the courts, judges abide by the standards of "fair use," a set of guidelines codified in section 107 of the Copyright Act. Traditionally used for resolving disputes about written, academic material, the standards of "fair use" state that reproduction of copyrighted work is only permissible "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." Applying this to the music business has been a difficult and contradictory endeavor. Most judges focus on whether the song in question comments on or criticizes the original. If so--and only if so--the work is legally protected.

In the copyright cases below, originality, tradition, artistic creation, and the law collide in an often confusing manner. As these cases illustrate, copyright law is every bit as capricious as it is complicated.

Gilbert O'Sullivan v. Biz Markie

Is sampling theft? When rapper Biz Markie sampled the melody of Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 hit "Alone Again, (Naturally)" for his song "Alone Again" on his 1991 album I Need a Haircut, he was only following in the footsteps of countless other rappers. Unlike the others, however, Markie went to court. After O'Sullivan denied Markie the right to use his song, Markie used the sample anyway, and O'Sullivan filed suit. Ignoring the nuances of copyright law and artistic creation, Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy likened Biz Markie to a common thief, stating, "Thou shalt not steal has been an admonition followed since the dawn of civilization." Upon rendering his verdict, which included an injunction against the future distribution of the album and the song, Judge Duffy referred the case to a U.S. district attorney for possible criminal prosecution. Although Biz never served time for his alleged violation of the Seventh Commandment, the case did set the precedent for viewing unlicensed sampling as a crime.

Wire and the Stranglers v. Elastica

The British band Elastica, devotees of "77 English punk," were sued for copyright infringement in 1995 by two of their idols. The art punk band Wire's publisher sued Elastica for using the intro guitar riff from "Three Girl Rhumba" in the Elastica hit "Connection." Elastica denied the charges. Shortly thereafter, the Stranglers' publishers got into the action, claiming that Elastica used the riff from "No More Heroes" in the song "Waking Up." Both cases were settled out of court for undisclosed sums.

Queen/David Bowie v. Vanilla Ice

Vanilla Ice used the main riff from David Bowie and Queen's song "Under Pressure" for his 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby." Ice neglected to clear the sample or to credit Bowie/Queen on the album's liner notes. Instead, he listed the song's authors as himself, Earthquake, and Mr. Smooth. He was subsequently sued by the copyright holders of "Under Pressure," and the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Rolling Stones v. the Verve

After sampling a few bars of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones, the Verve learned the hard way that you can't always get what you want. Though the Verve received permission to use the sample, lengthy negotiations with Stones publisher ABKCO forced the band to cede the song's copyright to ABKCO owner Allan Klein, and to give all royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The sample that started the confusion is only a small piece of the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony." Verve member Ashcroft explained, "We sampled four bars. That was on one track. Then we did 47 tracks of music beyond that little piece. We've got our own string players, our own percussion on it. Guitars. We're talking about a four-bar sample turning into 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' and they're still claiming it's the same song."

Incidentally, Allan Klein is known in the industry for his tough tactics. He forced Janet Jackson to give up a portion of the rights to her song "What'll I Do" because she sings the "Satisfaction" lyric "hey hey hey, that's what I say." He also squeezed George Michael out of some of his royalties for quoting the Stones' lyric "You can't always get what you want" in the song "Waiting for the Day."

The Chiffons v. George Harrison

George Harrison's subconscious landed him in serious legal trouble in 1970, when he was sued for aping the Chiffons' "He's so Fine" with his song "My Sweet Lord." Harrison acknowledged his familiarity with the Chiffons' hit but claimed that he wrote his song without any attempt to copy it. Judge Owen decided against Harrison, ruling, "It is clear that 'My Sweet Lord' is the very same song as 'He's so Fine.' Under the law, this is infringement of copyright, and is no less so even though it may have been subconsciously accomplished." Although the album featuring "My Sweet Lord" was number one on the Billboard charts for seven weeks, Harrison never received any royalties. About the suit, Harrison remarked, "I still don't understand how the courts aren't filled with similar cases as 99 percent of the popular music that can be heard is reminiscent of something or other."

Roy Orbison v. 2 Live Crew

When 2 Live Crew parodied the Roy Orbison classic "Oh, Pretty Woman" in 1989, the band ended up in a major legal dispute. The hip-hop group had offered to pay a licensing fee and credit the song's writers but were refused by publisher Acuff-Rose Music. 2 Live Crew went ahead with their version of "Pretty Woman" anyway, and Acuff-Rose sued. The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and marked the first time the standards of "fair use" had been applied to sampling. At the heart of the debate, according to the Supreme Court, was whether 2 Live Crew's song "reasonably could be perceived as commenting on the original or criticizing it to some degree." Although sampling a small piece of a song to criticize or parody the original is generally legally permissible, musicians are not allowed to take the original and transform it into a new piece. So if 2 Live Crew had sampled "Pretty Woman" but had not made fun of it (or otherwise commented on it), the band wouldn't have stood a chance in court. (See the Verve case for an example of the trouble artists get into when they create a new piece of music using samples.) In a landmark decision, the justices found in favor of 2 Live Crew. However, the Court ruled that parody should be viewed in only a very strict sense, giving 2 Live Crew the victory, but dissuading others from future unlicensed sampling.

Willie Dixon v. Led Zeppelin

When Shirley Dixon first heard Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love," she recognized it as a song by her father, famed blues musician Willie Dixon. Although Dixon's song "You Need Love" was popularized by Muddy Waters' cover in 1962, Dixon had never received money from either Waters or Zeppelin. In 1985, he filed suit against Zeppelin, charging copyright infringement. The case was eventually settled out of court in Dixon's favor for a large, undisclosed sum. With a newfound understanding of the music industry, Dixon founded the Blues Heaven Foundation, an organization devoted to helping blues artists recover royalties.
http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/historic.html


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Hello Senator –

I am familiar with the work of the S.H.C. on drug patents. Thank you (and others) for your efforts there. You’re correct that drug companies, as corporations, will naturally seek any opportunity to make more money - even ahead of (but not necessarily to the exclusion of) doing what’s good for people or the nation they are part of. As Professor Lessig has stated, we shouldn’t assume what corporations want is necessarily good public policy.

Do your positions in regard to drug patents also apply to copyrights, which, in fact, are in a similar situation? That is - the holders of copyrights are doing everything humanly possible to extend their property rights and not allow their work to become part of the public domain - which would greatly benefit the people - whose government granted them the limited franchise to begin with? I realize that art and culture are more abstract than healing the sick and that there are many more votes to be had by freeing Lipitor and Zocor than by freeing Mickey Mouse and The Sun Also Rises.

But, at the end of the day, it is our culture, not the longevity of individual citizens, that will be our legacy. Surely it is just as important that the public domain includes not only Claritin, but also Cascablanca?

Thank you.

Ed Lyons

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001554.shtml


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Patent Ruling Tugs At Net Downloads
Stefanie Olsen

SightSound Technologies, a digital media company, has won a ruling in its patent case against Bertelsmann subsidiaries that could have wide-reaching effects on the business of Net music and video downloads.

Mount Lebanon, Penn.-based SightSound holds three patents related to the sale and download of digital music and video over the Internet. In 1998, the company sued the Internet site CDNow, owned by media titan Bertelsmann, for infringement of patents filed in the late 1980s. The case is the first and only test so far of the validity of SightSound's intellectual property holdings.

Last Thursday, a federal judge in the Western District Court of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh granted SightSound's motion for summary judgment against Bertelsmann's divisions, paving the road for the 5-year dispute to go to jury trial. The court also dismissed Bertelsmann's request to avoid trial, which was based on the assertion that SightSound had not filed the proper information with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

"We are very pleased with the Court's thorough and well-reasoned opinion and we look forward to taking this case to trial," said SightSound's lead counsel William Wells, of law firm Kenyon & Kenyon.

CDNow's parent company Bertelsmann could not be immediately reached for comment.

If a jury decides that SightSound has a right to enforce the patents, it could affect almost any business that sells downloadable music or video online, including the major record labels and music studios. This is increasingly important, as a number of download services emerge to offer people a legal way obtain video and music content online.

The patent ruling, while not final, is a sign that more of the most basic technologies and techniques underlying online media may be privately "owned" than previously thought. For example, Acacia Media Technologies has claimed it owns patents on the process of transmitting compressed audio or video online--one of the most basic multimedia technologies on the Net. So far, it has signed up licensees such as Mexican satellite telecommunications company Grupo Pegaso and Radio Free Virgin, the online music division of Richard Branson's Virgin group of companies.

The patents--granted to SightSound in 1992--give the company control over a technique for "electronic sales and distribution of digital audio or video signals," specifically over a "telecommunications line." SightSound is suing to stop CDNow from pursuing "any infringing activities," as well as to claim unspecified damages.

Read in a business environment 10 years after the patents were granted, the language is broad. They don't cover a specific technology for encoding or transmitting data; instead, they outline a basic model for sending a digital audio or video signal from one place to another over telecommunications lines, in which a copy of the audio or video is stored on a consumer's computer and a credit card is used for payment.

CDNow had contended, amongst other myriad objections, that this description didn't cover Internet transmission. But in almost every case, the judge's ruling on the scope of the patents agreed with SightSound's contentions.

A pretrial and settlement conference between the parties is scheduled for Nov. 12. A full trial could take place within the next year, unless the parties settle.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5101490.html


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Probe Studies Skype

Services like Skype have the potential to undermine the existing voice services business. Skype, a P2P voice client produced by the founders of Kazaa, claims to have distributed 1.6 million beta copies of its P2P calling software since August.

"Voice is the primary revenue generator of the entire telecom industry," comments Allan Tumolillo, Chief Operating Officer, Probe Financial Associates. "Incumbent carriers know that landline voice is a shrinking market." he continued. "Subscribers are migrating to mobile, cable, and niche carriers."

P2P service has the potential to further drain the landline voice market. Young users already accustomed to instant messaging are a natural audience for P2P telephony, Skype integrates IM in its offering. Landline carriers need a market response to Skype and others starting down the P2P path, and they need one soon.

PFA's new report, "Free Voice? Skype's Peer-to-Peer is to be Watched!" examines the emergence of P2P telephony as a potential threat to landline-voice carriers.
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=43450


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iTunes ‘Not Affecting LimeWire Downloads’
Jonny Evans

Peer-to-peer file-sharing service LimeWire has seen no decline in the number of downloads it serves since the debut of mass-market music download services, said company chief operating officer Greg Bildson.

Speaking to Macworld, Bildson said: "We have seen no effect on the number of downloads we have in a given day since the launch of iTunes. Likewise, we don't believe Napster 2.0 will have any effect on our number of downloads."

The arrival of legal electronic music distribution services is regarded as part of a music-business strategy to reduce music piracy. The music business believes it must deliver legal consumer-friendly ways for Internet-dwellers to download music as an alternative to file-sharing services, such as LimeWire (which allows Mac users to access the Gnutella network).

Through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry has also been engaged in aggressive attempts to protect its copyright through a series of legal initiatives, including the prosecution of individual file downloaders.

Bildson isn't sure the industry has gone far enough to bring services to market consumers want: "iTunes is a nice piece of software from Apple, but these music services are only a baby step in the right direction by the music industry."

He is critical of aspects of existing legal services: "Given the economics of the Internet, selling digitally-restricted songs for 99 cents is a rip-off." He points to in-company research, which he claims prove: "Most people won't pay more than 20 cents for a song, which is why the bulk of consumers are rejecting these music services.

"LimeWire sees no reason that songs should cost more than five cents, certainly no more than 20 cents."

The music industry has been long-criticized for being late arriving on the Internet, Bildson observed: "Music executives created the piracy problems in the 1990s by not licensing their content to the many innovative companies that wanted licences. They can fix the problem now by licensing everyone that is interested at a reasonable price."

The LimeWire chief was upbeat on the possibilities in comments that echoed the words of one-time Napster CEO, Shawn Fanning. When RIAA litigation beset Napster, Fanning approached the labels asking for licenses to distribute content for a small fee, "we'll make more money than you've ever dreamed of," he said. The labels rejected the opportunity.

Bildson said: "There is a win-win situation for the music industry if it’s forward-looking enough to embrace it. Offering high-quality, low-cost MP3s would lead to explosive sales volumes and the music business would continue to make good money and actually grow their business.

"Artists would benefit tremendously if music executives got their heads out of the sand and tried to understand the digital age."
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=7246


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Nielsen Music to Incorporate WebSpins P2p File Sharing and Downloading Data
Press Release

Entertainment and Uncommon Media have announced that WebSpins P2P file sharing and download data will be included in integrated client offerings with other Nielsen Entertainment and VNU research tools including Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS. The agreement provides Nielsen Entertainment with exclusive rights to utilize WebSpins' statistical data of music files traded among peer-to-peer networks for its music industry clients. WebSpins, the P2P music file sharing and real time downloading tracking and analysis database network, has been operating since 2001.

Uncommon Media's CEO Lawrence Gallo says, "We're thrilled to come together with Nielsen Entertainment to ensure that accurate and timely download tracking information is provided to the music industry worldwide. This coupling supports Uncommon Media's philosophy of providing 'fair exposure' to all."

"After an extensive review of peer to peer tracking data providers, we found that the WebSpins information is the most reliable and useful data available. We believe that it will bring valuable perspective to our music industry clients," says Rob Sisco, president Nielsen Music, and COO Nielsen Entertainment East Coast Operations.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+11:00+AM


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Interview with LimeWire COO Greg Bildson
Lisa Rein

Greg Bildson is the COO of LimeWire and president of P2P United, a consortium of P2P software companies created to help educate Congress and the public about peer-to-peer software, technology, and culture. P2P United is the organization that paid 12-year-old Brianna LaHara's $2,000 RIAA settlement after the RIAA served her with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoena.

P2P United is also trying to educate the RIAA about the many ways in which P2P technologies could be beneficial to its member companies. LimeWire's MagnetMix web site provides one example of the numerous ways that traditional web-based programming can be combined with P2P technologies to provide new kinds of experiences for music lovers.

In this interview, Lisa Rein catches up with Greg Bildson to hear his views on the state of P2P, the RIAA, and the challenge of educating lawmakers.

Yes, We Cut the Check

Lisa Rein: So, you guys paid Brianna's RIAA fine?

Greg Bildson: Yes, we cut the check to her mother to reimburse her. We felt that suing a 12-year old in the Bronx wasn't the answer.

LR: Tell me more about P2P United.

GB: P2P United is basically trying to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything stupid, which they're apt to do in the technology world. We're trying to make sure to protect our rights to innovate and write software, and to address all of the bad mouthing the RIAA is constantly doing to P2P.

P2P was proven to be legal in that California decision. If there's anything we can do with respect to the overreach of the DMCA and invasion of privacy and, basically, due process -- we feel that there should be due process, and there should be an actual lawsuit before they are able to get information about users.

Congress is writing bills targeting P2P, and the RIAA is talking about pornography and homeland security and identity theft and all of these things that are really minor concerns, with regard to P2P. For the most part, Congress is either overreacting or doing the bidding of the RIAA.

For instance, there was a hearing regarding P2P and porn a few weeks ago. There are already laws that exist to punish people for being pedophiles; P2P's got nothing to do with it. In these cases, the content itself is illegal. P2P is not the concern when it comes to child endangerment, but they are constantly targeting P2P. They should go look at AOL and Yahoo chat rooms rather than P2P networks. Orin Hatch's presentation of child pornography began with a movie sponsored by the RIAA. The record industry is probably the last group of people to be protecting children, when their lyrics and videos are so explicit.

So the RIAA is basically using the high $150,000 per infringement to extort a settlement out of people who wouldn't even consider fighting it. People view this more like a speeding ticket instead of something where one act of infringement can cost you $150,000. We're in favor of people being able to protect their copyrights, but in a way that is fair. If the government is going to regulate, they need to know what they're doing. They shouldn't be getting their information only from the RIAA.

LR: So are you trying to educate Congress?

GB: Yes. P2P United is trying to educate Congress. However, their staffers need to be willing to be educated. So far, they've been willfully blind or ignorant.

LR: Do you think that the RIAA might eventually see the various ways that P2P could be beneficial to their business model?

GB: We hope so. We're seen as a threat to the record industry, but there's definitely potential for a win-win solution. The discussion needs to move beyond sound bites for soccer moms. Congress is making sound bites rather than thinking seriously about technology or innovation.

LR: What do you think of compulsories for file sharing?

GB: The big media companies -- the "Big 5" -- have had a lock on both distribution and licensing in the past. If the RIAA had let people license their music in the 90s, they wouldn't have the piracy problem they have today. There was a natural demand. There's a benefit to the current world of having music currently available.

LR: What about iTunes and Buymusic.com? What do you think of them?

GB: They're steps in the right direction, but they're still radically overpriced. In the digital age, there's no reason for a song to cost 99 cents; it should be five cents. Another issue is that the Microsoft DRM looks to be too restrictive. Judging by the trend of recent PC pay-per-download sites that all use Microsoft DRM, handing another monopoly to Microsoft doesn't seem like a smart move.

LR: So what's Magnetmix?

GB: We've been putting the technology in place for this for a while. It's an example of integrating P2P networks and the Web. We think that's what the future is going to be. The Web can present things nicer and give you nice images, while the existing P2P networks just act as sort of a raw Google search. "Magnet links" can work into P2P networks for a richer experience by packaging the content into a single download. We think that it's going to appeal to content creators in the future. The portals will highlight high- quality, legitimate content for high-quality independent artists of all kinds.

So rather than running their own web servers, artists will create their content and then bundle it into a package media file that's just a .zip file with an index.html file inside to launch from. This file is placed on a P2P network. The entire experience is serialized, if you will, in these packages.

LR: So a user would see the web page, and then click on the link to get the music via a P2P network, rather than eating up bandwidth.

GB: Right, with videos and pictures and things.

LR: ...that would be expensive to serve on the web?

GB: Right. It's expensive to serve, but it's easy to use P2P to share. We think there are going to be a lot of creative independents in the future. And you can build the advertising vehicles right into the packages, if you want.

LR: So how can artists implement this technology now?

GB: Anybody can put magnet links up. We're also accepting submissions and hosting content ourselves. It doesn't cost anything, and we don't see money being involved in the future.

LR: How would this work, actually?

GB: Right now people don't know what magnet links are, but in the near future, people will be using the LimeWire "Library." The LimeWire Library is a type of file browser. Within the Library tab of the LimeWire application, you will be able to view and create magnet links to files that you share, and be able to email links to these files. There will be options to view the magnet link or email the magnet link to others, so that they can click a link in their email to launch the magnet link "packages." The links will launch their LimeWire P2P client right from their email client.

LR: Is LimeWire cross-platform?

GB: Yes. It's cross-platform. It's in Java.

LR How many LimeWire users are there?

GB: We lost ability to track our users a while ago. But we've had at least 300,000 users a day for a while. We're pretty close to 50/50 on the Mac and PC platforms.
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/200.../limewire.html


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Gamespy Uses DMCA To Destroy Bug Research And Full Disclosure
Luigi Auriemma

Just today (12 Nov 2003) opening my mailbox I have found a mail of about 1 megabyte and half and fortunally for the sender I don't use filters. The mail has been sent by the Gamespy's lawyers asking me to remove my bug research stuff from my site. The stuff is composed by my proof-of-concepts and advisories written to test and explain the bugs in the Gamespy's products found and signaled to them a lot of months ago and completely ignored by Gamespy. All my advisories were released to the most known and pubblic security mailing-lists in the past so everyone can see all the release dates of them and how Gamespy manages the bugs in its products... the best example is just a remote buffer-overflow found and signaled to Gamespy at the end of May 2003 and still existent in the actual version of the program RogerWilco. The other incredible thing is that the lawyers have included in the list of "stuff to remove" also a simple program that is not a proof-of-concept or an advisory and moreover is not directly related to Gamespy... really comic...

Continuing to read the mail (a pdf file) can be found a lot of senseless affirmations, some reported below:

- "you have committed numerous violations of state and federal law by illegally accessing Gamespy servers and by creating, marketing, and distributing software which circumvents the encryption mechanism that protects access to Gamespy's servers"... are we talking about security bugs??? what I market???

- they say my proof-of-concepts "purport to permit to circumvent the encryption protection of Gamespy's proprietary software, including GameSpy 3D and Roger Wilco, to obtain access to computer servers owned and operated by GameSpy, or in some cases to cause those servers to crash"... I'm very interested about what of my proof-of-concepts "circumemvent the encryption protection of Gamespy". The bugs I have found are in the Gamespy's products NOT in the Gamespy's servers.

- but the most comic affirmation is "In contrast to simply advising GameSpy of these vulnerabilities, by publishing this software to the world at large you are clearly facilitating the intentional crashing of GameSpy's server by others"... I have tried to contact Gamespy EVERYTIME I have found a new bug for MULTIPLE times but they have EVER ignored my signalations or, as happened for the first bug in RogerWilco, they have simply "feigned" to patch the bugs so insulting me and my research (who has read my wilco-remix-adv.txt knows all the shameful story). So the "common time delay" to release advisories (a week or sometimes a month from the signalation of the bug without receiving replies) was FULLY respected in all the occasions.

The last part of the mail/pdf talks about various DMCA's violations, US's laws and moreover "crime"! Bug research is a crime and bug researchers are criminals, didn't you know that? Is really shameful to see a company spending money for useless lawyers instead to quickly patch their incredibly bugged products and moreover to support who do bug research... what Gamespy wants is to destroy the full disclosure and the free information encouraging the underground scene. I think is not good for the Gamespy's users to know that the main goal of Gamespy is just to protect itself instead to protect its users and clients. That's the situation... BYEZ
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/344214


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Diebold Latest: The Effects of Student Spread Memos on CA Secretary of State
Posted by Mary Hodder

The Daily Cal has a piece on Joe Hall and Notice and Takedown request (Sect 512 under the DMCA) on the Diebold memos he posted: Posting of Leaks Lands Student in Hot Water. Joe responds here:

It's too bad that Andrea couldn't get some quotes from the other Berkeley students participating in this action as I'm sure they have valuable things to say: Parker Thompson, Ping Yee and Sean Savage. This action achieved it's goals of getting the documents out there and in to the hands of investigators solely because so many students weighed the issues (copyright v. freedom of speech, privacy, etc.) and were willing to take the risks involved with posting the documents.

Kim Zetter/Wired with E-Vote Firm's Bill Comes Due says that the CA Secretary of State's office is forcing Diebold to pay for an audit, because they installed uncertified software code into CA voting machines, in order to win certification for a new model. According to Zetter, this is due to student actions to get this information out, and the CA SoS offices reading some of these memos and taking action:

Release notes for the 1.18.17 version that were posted on the Web recently with other internal Diebold correspondence, indicate that several critical fixes were made to the software in addition to installing several new features.

If this is true, students at Swarthmore, followed by students at many other institutions including those above at Berkeley, in spreading the Diebold memos around, have accomplished the goal of causing those with review power over Diebold systems to take another look at Diebold's work. Let's hope the review really scrutinizes this company's activities and that EFF and OPG's suit against Diebold brings about the conclusion that using the DMCA to suppress speech necessary to the functioning of the democracy is wrong. Even if the review doesn't cause the state to discontinue using Diebold systems or require severe changes (and I'm sure the pressure is enormous TO certify), the fact is the memos raise disturbing issues and the review is very necessary. If companies providing services of this sort feel that they can quash documents out on the Internet by using the DMCA, if Diebold succeeds on this point, we and our democracy will be the poorer for it.

Also note that Verified Voting.org has a petition in support of a bill introduced by Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey requiring a voter-verifiable paper trail. Consider looking over the bill and signing the petition. Also Parker Thompson notes that Greg Palast of the BBC spoke at Berkeley and in the Q&A, received over 200 note card questions, where 25% asked about black box voting issues.
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/proje...ve/001479.html


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Scratching Itches

Any computer user will have often experienced many times to have a new software application, an extra feature in their favourite computer programme, or to have programmes behave in a different way. For users without extensive programming skills, this can be very frustrating.

Users today have little other option than to hope that some developer will realise their needs and decide to dedicate considerable time, effort, and financial resources to generate the required software package, feature or patch.

Among the current possibilities to solve this very real need, the most promising solution is the GPL-License Software, for it offers an unbeatable combination of freedom and openness. The GNU General Public License (GPL) provides all users with four basic freedoms, namely:

"The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission." (Source: The Free Software Definition)

In the spirit of a free market and true to its desire to offer maximum freedom of choice, the Open Code Market (OCM) will be also open to other licenses, not only GPL. However, it is logical to assume that the GPL license should become the most commonly used: Because it allows absolute freedom in the re-using of the computer code, developers will use as much GPL code as possible to minimise their coding workload, creating a virtuous cycle of an ever-increasing repository of GPL Software, ready to be improved, or recycled and recombined into new software.

Since the user of GPL Software is the main beneficiary of its protections (including zero copyright fees), it will become the only way for users and organisations to ascertain a priori that by using this software they not breaking copyright laws, and cannot be sued, penalised, or espied upon, under the pretext of copyright infringement.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8...noz/index.html


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Digital Rights Management And The Breakdown Of Social Norms
Christopher May

At the centre of the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is a long history of political bargains struck between private rights to reward and the social benefit of information/knowledge diffusion. The historical dynamic of politics in this policy area has been to expand the rights of owners while circumscribing the public realm of information and knowledge. In recent decades the public domain has become merely a residual, all that is left when all other rights (as constructed by IPRs) have been exercised. The advent of digital rights management (DRM) technologies has disturbed a reasonably legitimate politico-legal settlement over "fair use," challenging the existing balance between the rights of "creators" and the interests of users. The breakdown of the norms underpinning IPRs has prompted renewed debate regarding their legitimacy. Although it is technological change that has enhanced not only the ability to copy but also the potential to control the distribution of content, this paper suggests that this argument will not be won or lost in the realm of technology. Rather, new technologies return the question of the control of knowledge and information (content) to the realm of politics.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_11/may/index.html


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Upbeat

Is The Threat Of Online Piracy Receding?

PEOPLE in the music industry are feeling more optimistic than they have for years. Apple's digital music-download service, iTunes, has won customers in far greater numbers than once seemed possible. This week saw the launch of Napster 2.0, a paying version of the service shut down by big music and the courts in 2002 because its software allowed people to share songs for free. Legal, paid-for online services, music executives hope, together with lawsuits against file-sharers, could save the industry from internet piracy.

In April, in its first week, iTunes sold over 1m downloads. By the end of October it had sold about 14m. Now that Apple has made the service available to PC users—previously, only a Mac system would work—sales should soar still higher. Napster 2.0 has a library of 500,000 songs to choose from, 100,000 more than iTunes. Its strong brand makes it a formidable addition to the market.

But the fact that more people are willing to buy music online than seemed likely does not mean that the industry's problems are anywhere near over. In the next five years, says Informa Media Group, a media information publisher, digital sales of à la carte downloads and subscription services will grow 20- fold. But they will account for only $1.8 billion, or under 6%, of the global music market. Peer-to-peer file sharing will deprive the industry of $4.7 billion of revenues in 2008.

For impecunious teenagers and students, the fact that peer-to-peer sharing is free will always be compelling. Paying 99 cents for a song on iTunes, says one British teen, is unappealing because at that price she may as well buy the CD in a shop. Nor do the new services yet come close to matching the libraries of nearly all music ever recorded that the peer-to-peers boast.

As for the risk of a lawsuit from the Recording Industry Association of America, the selling point for new versions of peer-to-peer networks in recent months is that they can guard the identity of users. The most popular now is Earth Station 5, based in, of all places, the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank. After the RIAA said it would sue, its software was downloaded more than 16m times in 90 hours. So far, it seems to work.

To glimpse the future, big music companies should look not at iTunes' encouraging numbers but at September's price cut by Universal Music Group, the biggest record company of all, which reduced CD prices for consumers by nearly a quarter. One reason for slumping music sales is that customers believe that CDs cost too much. Now, other firms will have to lower prices to compete with Universal. Discount stores such as Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Best Buy will drive them down more.

The success of iTunes has made clear to the music industry an uncomfortable truth: many people want to buy single tracks, not albums. Apple's data show that its customers bought 12 singles for every one album at iTunes. That compares with 0.02 singles per album in American stores, according to research by Sanford Bernstein. The best artists may tempt people to buy a whole album. But the industry can no longer rely on getting the price of an album as a reward for backing a band.

In the end, says Moby, an influential musician, the record industry will have to throw out its current business model. It will no longer be able to make huge profit margins on CDs that cost next to nothing to manufacture. To compensate for lower prices, he says, the industry needs to cut its marketing for artists by as much as four-fifths. Once the record companies have less marketing clout, and with internet distribution, says Moby, artists will be in a powerful position. “Why”, he asks, “is a record company any more qualified to send an MP3 to iTunes than I am?”

One reason why people have placed a lower value on music in recent years is that record companies put so much of their energy into creating acts that are hugely, but only briefly, successful. That could change in future as the industry alters its business model. If companies cannot make money by selling online, one option will be to try to get a piece of a band's other revenues. They would then have a strong incentive to nurture long-term quality.

Korda Marshall, managing director of East West Records, a division of Warner Music Group, developed “The Darkness”, a new British band soon to tour America. He wanted to avoid billboard hype. At one point the marketing machine wanted to kick in, he says, but that could have shortened the band's future. Sanctuary, a British company, earns half of its money from live concerts, artist management, merchandising and music DVD sales and the other half from CD sales and licensing. With artists such as Neil Young, the Cranberries and the Pet Shop Boys, with loyal fan bases, it grew revenues by 26% in 2002, as recorded music sales globally fell by 7%.

For the consumer, buying music is likely to mean lower prices, more choice and, possibly, higher quality. But for the music industry as it exists today, despite the optimism caused by iTunes and the new Napster, the future remains uncertain and, compared to the past, bleak.
http://www.economist.com/business/Pr...ory_ID=2177244


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To Push Desktop Linux, Radical Shift May Be Required
Andy Oram

Microsoft is not stuck in the past; they're pulling as hard as they can to move their users to these upcoming innovations--trying to make them seem indispensable to staying competitive--because otherwise the company will have to stand by and watch the hose that gushes license fees gradually diminish to a trickle over the next couple years. No, Microsoft is pushing ahead. If any developers are stuck in the past, it's the free software programmers diligently recreating what's been done before.

But the kink in Microsoft's hose is that its business plan is a plan for business, not for end users. On the whole, Microsoft's initiatives revolve around corporate data use, and depend on adoption by corporations. And corporations are naturally conservative. They're afraid, for instance, that the grand SharePoint achievement of integrating office applications and corporate servers will lead to more bugs and security problems with both. They're not likely to budge.

Individual users, by contrast, are not conservative. History has shown them to be, if anything, quite reckless. Look at what hordes of ordinary people did when they get their hands on Web server software in the early 1990s. Look at the current popularity of instant messaging, and now SMS, both of which started as novelties. Look at the millions who signed up for the original Napster, and then slid over comfortably to current peer-to-peer systems.

So Linux has a natural user base it can appeal to. The very people advocates are trying to reach--individuals at home and in school--are the people likely to drive radical innovation in computing.

The area where Linux excels is services. Apache, Samba, MySQL, and mail transfer agents are practically household words thanks to Linux (although of course they run on many other systems too, and are found on Windows more often than people give credit for). Anything that you need to do that requires running a service benefits from the state-of-the-art network stack and security offered by Linux. This includes peer-to-peer applications, as I explained in a talk I gave back in 2002.

What's the advantage of running an application as a continuous, background service? Many find it hard to remember, because the division between server and client has become so commonplace (and the second-class citizenship of the Average Schmo, exiled to the client side, has been enforced for so long). Advantages include:

1. You're more in charge of your own data. You don't have transmit it to some remote system under somebody else's bailiwick or beg for someone to put it up for you before others can access it. Immediacy opens up whole new dimensions, such as the ability to provide dynamic, instantly customized content.

2. You're more in charge of your own processing. You can choose when to process information in tiny chunks and when to postpone processing and do it in batches. You can choke off access or open up new threads to accommodate more. The simple, synchronous connections clients have may work for small amounts of communication, but when you get busy it's critical to have the flexibility of a server.

3. You're more likely to be able to support multiple users. Many servers recognize the idea of an account and offer access controls.

But running a service on your computer is socially disruptive. It puts control in your hands rather than in a central professional staff, so it's suspect in large organizations. It also bothers Internet providers because you need potentially more bandwidth, a static IP address, and perhaps a domain name. But accommodations have been made for activities as diverse as file-sharing, Web servers, and chat. The practice may grow, and that's where the arguments against migration to Linux break down.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/3971


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I.B.M. Says Supercomputer to Be Suitable for Businesses
John Markoff

I.B.M. plans to introduce a dishwasher-size prototype supercomputer on Friday that the company says will also have broad uses in high-capacity corporate data centers in the future.

The machine, Blue Gene/L, will be ranked as the 73rd-fastest computer in the world when a new listing of the 500 fastest computers appears on Sunday at the Supercomputer Conference, I.B.M. executives said.

It will be air-cooled, as opposed to many high-performance machines that use water and refrigeration, and it will use no more power than the average home, the executives said. Computer scientists and industry analysts said the Blue Gene/L represented a radical departure from the industry's obsession with ever-faster microprocessor chips. Instead, I.B.M. designers chose to balance computing speed and energy consumption to create a far denser data processing system than had previously been possible.

The computer is a component of a vastly larger system being designed for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. That machine, when it is completed in 2005, will have 128 times the power of the current prototype that is capable of a peak speed of about 1.4 trillion mathematical operations a second, I.B.M. said. Today, the world's fastest computer, the Japanese Earth Simulator, has reached speeds of 35.8 trillion calculations a second.

The Livermore machine is expected to have a theoretical peak performance of 360 trillion operations a second. In practice, however, supercomputers do not reach peak ratings for actual calculations. Although it will not be a computer for classified applications, the Livermore machine will be a significant step toward a Defense Department goal of creating a computer capable of reaching 1,000 trillion mathematical calculations a second - referred to as a petaflop - by the end of the decade.

The prototype has 512 PowerPC 440 microprocessors, which are similar to the I.B.M. 970 processor being used in Apple Computer's G5 Macintosh, but each with a lower clock speed. By lowering the clock speed governing how fast the chip executes calculations, it is possible to pack the processor chips far more closely together. Speed is then made up in other areas of the computing system.

"This is an extraordinarily well-balanced machine," said William R. Pulleyblank, director for exploratory server systems research at I.B.M. Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

The new computer has yet to prove itself for advanced scientific applications, however, Mr. Pulleyblank said that in tests the system had performed better than expected on a range of problems. I.B.M. executives said they had been discussing the new design widely in the computer industry, approaching large corporate users of computing systems for commercial applications, like Internet search engines.

Google, the large Internet search company, has been critical of high- powered server computers, saying they consume too much energy and require costly cooling systems. The company has gone to extraordinary lengths to cool its thousands of server computers now used in data centers spread around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/te...y/14super.html


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Keeping That Whippersnapper in Touch With Grandpa DOS
Charles Herold

For years, users of Macintosh and Linux computers have been able to play games or run software written for Microsoft's DOS operating system by using DOS emulation software. So when Microsoft released Windows XP, which removed the underlying DOS code from the Windows operating system, it suddenly became easier to run DOS software on a Mac than on a Windows PC. While XP does include a way to run some DOS programs, in many cases it will crash or the sound will not work.

Microsoft may have abandoned DOS, but not everyone has. A free DOS emulator for Windows called DOSBox, available at dosbox.sourceforge.net, lets you continue to enjoy that old software.

DOSBox allows you to specify a drive or folder as your C: drive and then use it to run most DOS games with full sound and surprisingly few glitches. Fans of Cannon Fodder or Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father can play these games in all their glory. Originally those games occupied the whole screen, but DOSBox will allow you to run them in full screen or in a window.

It's not just old DOS games that won't run on Windows XP; some old games designed for Windows 3.0 also won't run with Microsoft's newer operating systems. This could someday result in a minor paradox: a Windows emulator for Windows.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html

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Set-Top Box Summons Video From the PC Upstairs
J.D. Biersdorfer

In just a few short years, the home computer has transformed itself from a humble word processor and solitaire machine into a full-fledged multimedia powerhouse capable of playing music and video and screening photo slide shows. But sitting in front of a computer screen to watch a home video is not everyone's ideal, so Pinnacle Systems has set out to close the distance between the PC and the entertainment center.

Its solution, Pinnacle ShowCenter, is a set-top box that fits in with the rest of the audio and visual equipment but offers wired and wireless Ethernet network connections to the computer, allowing it to stream video, picture and music files from the PC to the TV and stereo. It comes with software that catalogs the computer's multimedia files and creates a database that makes them accessible via the set-top box's remote control.

ShowCenter, which has a suggested price of $300, is to become available this month at www.pinnaclesys.com and at major electronics stores. The system works with Windows 2000 and XP and requires a computer with at least a 1-gigahertz Pentium III or Athlon processor, 256 megabytes of memory and 10 gigabytes of free hard-drive space.

Aside from providing a more comfortable viewing experience, ShowCenter can help keep those pesky popcorn parts out of your keyboard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/te...ts/13show.html


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UNCENSORED - Russ Kick founded The Memory Hole to bring suppressed or ignored documents to light.
Photo - Chris Richards for The New York Times


Peeking Behind the Curtain of Secrecy
Tom Mcnichol

IN George Orwell's "1984," documents deemed embarrassing to the State were tossed down a memory hole, a disposal chute in the Ministry of Truth that led to enormous furnaces. Taking a cue from the novel, Russ Kick, a journalist and author, established www.thememoryhole.org, a Web site dedicated to saving official documents from oblivion and posting them online.

From his home in Tucson, Mr. Kick runs his own Ministry of Truth, chasing down government reports, Congressional testimony, court proceedings, corporate memos and media images that have been either suppressed or ignored.

"I'm certainly not a journalist in the normal sense of the word," said Mr. Kick, who is 34. "I'm more of an information archaeologist. I'm trying to get the stuff that's either been purposely buried or just covered over by time."

One of Mr. Kick's recent digs involved an internal report from June 2002 that harshly criticized the Justice Department's efforts toward diversity in employee hiring, promotion and retention. A version of the report was posted at the department's Web site last month with about half of the material in the 186-page study blacked out.

But Mr. Kick discovered that the deletions were easy to restore electronically. Opening the document in Adobe Acrobat, a reader and editor for Portable Document Format, or PDF, Mr. Kick used the software's "Touch Up Object" tool to select the black bars covering the text. He then hit the delete button. The black bars disappeared, leaving just the text.

"It was that simple," Mr. Kick said. "I was kind of surprised, but we are talking about a government bureaucracy, so I wasn't that surprised."

The uncensored report, posted at The Memory Hole on Oct. 21, has been downloaded more than 340,000 times.

Mr. Kick is not alone on the online paper trail; thesmokinggun.com has been posting quirky celebrity and court documents since April 1997 and is now owned by Court TV. Specialty sites like cryptome.org focus on documents related to privacy, cryptology and freedom of expression.

Mr. Kick began his site in July 2002 and finances it himself. His chief source of income is writing and editing books; he recently published his seventh title, "50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know" (The Disinformation Company, 2003). His books are full of things "they" don't want you to know, although it is not always clear who "they" are or whether the statements are true. (Among the 50 things you are not supposed to know: the C.I.A. commits over 100,000 serious crimes per year; blood relatives of Hitler are living in the United States; an atomic bomb was dropped on North Carolina.)

Mr. Kick is on firmer ground when he presents raw documentary evidence and lets readers draw their own conclusions, as he does at The Memory Hole. Among the site's top exhibits is the original text from the Web site of the Justice Department's Terrorism Information and Prevention System, known as Operation TIPS, in which American workers were encouraged to report unusual non-emergency events that they observed at work. Also to be found there is information on the poison ricin that was removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the full text of the joint Congressional report that criticized American intelligence for failing to plan for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the General Accounting Office's report on the energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Kick obtains many documents through requests under the Freedom of Information Act and posts a log of requests - his own and those of others - submitted to various federal agencies as a tool for other researchers. The site also has images seldom seen in the American media, including photos of soldiers and civilians who have been killed or maimed in the Iraq war.

"My thought behind posting the photos was, that's what war really is," Mr. Kick said. "I think especially if you support the war, you have to look at what the effect of that is."

Mr. Kick was born in Alabama and raised in Tennessee. His major at Tennessee Tech University was psychology, but he found he was more interested in reading crusading muckrakers like I. F. Stone. At the same time, he had an abiding interest in collecting obscure scraps of information: He was the kind of person people wanted on their Trivial Pursuit team.

Years later, the same love of minutiae is evident at Mr. Kick's site, which contains nuggets like the full list of 599 cigarette additives identified in tobacco industry documents (vanilla extract, prune juice, vinegar, caramel color, and caffeine) and the number of soldiers who deserted the United States Army last year (4,021).

Mr. Kick's audience is small - the site is visited about 10,000 times a day - but loyal. Some regular visitors send him small donations, which he uses to defray his document scanning costs. He currently has seven boxes of documents ready to go.

"There's more of a market for this sort of information than the infotainment media realizes," Mr. Kick said. "There's a real hunger out there."

The site's latest addition is a news release from the Department of Justice explaining why its diversity study was so heavily censored in the first place. According to the department's release, the revisions consisted of "pre-decisional deliberative information" - a fine specimen of Newspeak captured just before it fluttered down the memory hole.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/te...ts/13kick.html


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File-Sharing Data on Track For Marketing
AP

The recording industry, it seems, doesn't hate absolutely everything about illicit music downloading. Despite their legal blitzkrieg to stop online song-swapping, many music labels are benefiting from - and paying for - intelligence on the latest trends in Internet trading.

By following the buzz online, they can determine where geographically to market specific artists for maximum profitability.

"The record industry has always been more about vibe and hype," said Jeremy Welt, head of new media for Maverick Records in Los Angeles. "For the first time, we're making decisions based on what consumers are doing and saying, as opposed to just looking at radio charts."

Beverly Hills-based BigChampagne, began mining such data from popular peer-to-peer networks in 2000 and has built a thriving business selling it to recording labels.

"Our hope was that we could take the technology revolution that Napster made popular and create tools for the benefit of copyright holders," said Eric Garland, BigChampagne's chief executive. BigChampagne has certainly done well by file-swapping. It formed in July 2000, just as the Internet boom was beginning to bust, and now counts Maverick, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Disney and Atlantic Records among its clients.
http://www.newsday.com/business/prin...business-print


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Fallout continues from Penn State/Napster deal

Trustee Member Says Work For RIAA Played No Part In Deal
Bridget Smith and Jen Winberry

Despite recent speculation about a possible conflict of interest, Penn State trustee Barry Robinson said his work with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) played no role in a recent agreement to bring the Napster online music service to Penn State students in the spring.

Robinson became a member of the Board of Trustees in 1989, and currently serves as senior counsel for corporate affairs for the RIAA. As counsel, Robinson said
he deals with "day-to-day" legal matters for the association, including trademark violations.

Robinson said he was notified of the agreement, which provides Napster's premium service to Penn State students for no cost, 36 hours before it was officially announced Thursday in Anaheim, Calif.

He added there is no connection between his work as a trustee and legal counsel for the RIAA.

"I or any other trustee ... want to make sure the [university's] broadband capacity is used legally," he said.

Some students said they question Robinson's membership in the groups.

"I found the connection interesting because he is on the board and all of a sudden this agreement comes through," said Elisha Marshall (senior-international politics and public relations) said. "The agreement benefits the RIAA as well as Penn State."

RIAA spokeswoman Amanda Collins said the association is not involved in individual licensing agreements and had no say in the university's agreement with Napster.

"The RIAA was informed of the deal after it was made," said Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon. "Barry Robinson is one of 32 board members. His knowledge of the issues surrounding this national problem have been a good resource for us, but it is not related to his having 1/32 of the power of the board."

Napster representatives also said the RIAA had no input in the agreement.

"The RIAA represents the label and the music industry, and they are quite happy with the deal we have made," said Seth Oster, a Napster spokesman.

Robinson and Penn State President Graham Spanier serve on the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, a group investigating a legal solution to music piracy. RIAA President Cary Sherman and Motion Picture Association of American President Jack Valenti also serve on the committee.

Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly President D. Josh Troxell said it was not surprising that Penn State was the first university to reach such an agreement.

"We had the right people in place to make the connection," he said.

Mike O'Connor (junior-computer science and biology) said he believes the board can have a strong influence over administrators' decisions.

O'Connor said he thinks Robinson could -- and should -- be a valuable liaison between the university and recording industry.

"We have to reach out to them and have an open line of communication, but at the same time student interests must be most important [thing]," he said. "Certain actions have demonstrated that student interests may not come first."

He also said he thinks Spanier might be getting "too close to the issue" by serving on the joint committee.

O'Connor said he thinks it's good to have recording industry representatives on the board, to reach out to communities either affected by or affecting college students.

"There is a possibility that it could be a conflict of interest," he said. "Can the administration work against this?"
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive...03dnews-05.asp


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FCC Deserves a Digital Thanks for Nothing
Rob Pegoraro

The Federal Communications Commission has figured out how to make digital television more appealing to the millions of consumers who haven't bought into it: Force manufacturers to make hardware that's less capable than what's sold today.

The FCC did this when it voted Tuesday to require consumer-electronics firms to support the "broadcast flag" -- a tiny bit of code in digital- TV (DTV) broadcasts -- by July 1, 2005, in any hardware that can receive an over-the-air digital signal. That means not only TV sets but also videotape, hard-drive and DVD recorders and even computers with digital-TV tuner cards.

If your first thought on seeing that deadline was "I should buy my DTV hardware before then," you've already grasped the unpleasant essence of this ruling. Intended to stop mass redistribution of TV shows over the Internet, the decision will make using digital TV harder and more expensive.

Here's how the flag is supposed to work: Broadcasters may add it to any digital (but not old-fashioned analog) broadcast, whether or not it's high-definition. The only information it carries is permission to copy a show an unlimited number of times -- a "right" stripped of its meaning by what the flag triggers.

That flag, when recognized by future DTV sets, will require that any digital copies of a show be made with an FCC-approved copy-control technology. It won't stop you from using old analog cables to connect a VCR, TiVo, DVD recorder or computer to the TV to record shows, if at a lower quality.

As for new digital cables, the FCC ruling does not mandate any one copy-control technology, leaving it up to companies to choose from competing options. But this competition probably won't happen. Most of the electronics industry has anointed one system, called "5C" after the five corporations that developed it (Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba) and already approved for the digital outputs on future cable boxes and cable-compatible TV sets. The FCC can approve other copy-control schemes, but 5C-compliant hardware may not be upgradeable to support these competing mechanisms, placing them at a disadvantage.

Once a show enters the 5C copyright cocoon, your options to use it shrink. The FCC's statement that "the flag does not restrict copying in any way" ignores the fact that 5C eliminates your ability to play back recordings on existing hardware, since almost none of it complies with the 5C standard.

You won't be able to make a lower-resolution copy of a digital broadcast to watch on your DVD player or move a recording to the laptop or handheld computer you own today. And by forbidding all Internet transfers, even of brief excerpts, the scheme steals fair-use rights.

That amounts to a foreclosure on the future, and for some pretty thin reasons. The FCC acted because TV networks and studios said they couldn't compete with cable and satellite unless they could protect over-the-air digital broadcasts in the way that cable and satellite operators can in their own, closed systems. They have threatened to pull their high-definition fare, either dulling its resolution to the minimum permitted by the digital-TV spectrum or not showing first-run content at all.

"If a broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by Summer 2003, Viacom's CBS Television Network will not provide any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season," Viacom said in a December 2002 filing with the FCC.

But the idea that broadcast has less protection makes no sense. Every cable and satellite receiver includes analog outputs, from which a near-perfect copy can be digitized and uploaded to the Internet. And as anybody who's actually tried a file-swapping service knows, perfect copies aren't the point. They are all about sacrificing a little audio and video quality to streamline the digital files for quick, free downloads.

That vulnerability hasn't stopped cable networks such as ESPN and Discovery Communications from spending millions of dollars to launch high-definition services in the past year or two. What do they know that the broadcast networks don't?

Furthermore, should the FCC even care if the broadcasters carry out their threats? A gap in quality between cable and satellite versus broadcast is not new -- to see my choice of NFL games, watch Iron Chef or just get a static-free version of Fox's broadcasts here, I need to pay for cable or satellite.

The FCC has yet to remedy this injustice, nor should it: Its job doesn't include keeping me entertained at all costs. So if networks want to destroy the advertising value of their airwaves by cutting back on what they show, the market can solve that problem by itself.

But the FCC, which is supposed to reclaim analog-TV spectrum from broadcasters by 2007 so the government can auction it off for other uses, chose to turn digital television into even more of a "command economy," in which it orders manufacturers to build things that consumers don't want to buy.

Fortunately, consumers still have some choices:

One is not to buy a digital set at all. Another is to buy one that doesn't support the broadcast flag before the FCC deadline. A third is to buy only sets with high-resolution, component-video analog outputs.

Unfortunately, the broadcast-flag ruling isn't the end of the story. DTV will continue to writhe in regulatory agony as Hollywood gears up for the next step in its campaign - - fixing the "analog hole" with a system of watermarks or some technology not yet invented to stop analog copying.

The only safe predictions are that commercial piracy will continue, and that any copy-control scheme will eventually be broken. "No technology is going to be perfect," said Fritz E. Attaway, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. "Hackers are going to hack whatever you put out."

It might be wise to root for the hackers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Nov8.html












Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17877 November 8th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17835 November 1st
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17790 October 25th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17741 October 18th





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

[SA_Dave]

Congrats are in order: Happy Anniversary to the WIR!!

Thanks Jack. We really appreciate your vigilant efforts!

The company acquired the patent in late 2002, from a researcher who now serves as Altnet's chief scientist.

I'm no expert and I haven't read the patent, but it seems likely that Altnet's patent would be invalidated by prior art. Of course, it'll cost at least a million dollars to overturn it in court, so most companies will either pay up or find an alternative. It's too easy to get patents nowadays, the USPTO merely collects fees and rubber-stamps the applications.

"All copy protections can be hacked," Wiser said. "But if we give people what they are asking for in terms of value, they won't go out and steal it. It's called trusting the consumer."

If hack is defined as "pressing shift" and "trusting" is synonymous with "restricting" then I'd agree. Still it's a rather amusing quote.

And its statistics suggest 75 percent of the people illegally downloading music are now signed up to legal sites. (Say what!? – JS.)

I think they left out a decimal point before the 7? However they don't specifically define "legal sites" so I'll assume that 75% of p2p users sign in to their ISPs homepage.

[multi]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WIR..whoo hoo...
bumper edition too...

good stuff jack