Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 15th, '04 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 13-05-04, 10:04 PM

Carpe Nocturne

In an article entitled “Globe Grows Darker as Sunshine Diminishes”, the New York Times reports scientific measuring devices have recorded unexpected - and unexplained – major drops in worldwide levels of sunlight reaching the planet going back to the 1950’s. Since the sun itself is as bright as ever something on earth is causing the loss. Speculation involves pollution but no one’s really sure about the cause, indeed there is even some dispute whether the levels have dropped at all, though readings have the put the amount of light lost as much as a startling 37%. It’s understandable if the average reader’s a bit confused, with such a politically touchy subject most media would rather ignore it until it’s unignorable. This comes on the heels of a major Hollywood movie launch about of all things, global warming. The film’s such a hot potato (no pun intended) the studio releasing the picture had disinvited certain guests to the premiere leading some to conclude they were shunned for political reasons, out of fear of offending the Bush administration. Since the studio head is big Bush supporter and the Bush administration’s been historically hostile to the concept of human induced global warming it may not be idle speculation. Another film falling victim to this new politically correct censorship is Michael Moore's latest picture “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Disney is so set against distributing the liberal advocate’s product it’s ordered subsidiary Miramax to sell it outright - and arrange to have it marketed by another company altogether. According to the report Disney has no desire to alienate certain customers by involving itself in a partisan issue, but since there’s no way to actually avoid partisanship, which many public corporations typically define as “anti-establishment,” claiming to do so is arguably an act of partisanship in itself. Actions such as these usually reflect great unease on the media companies’ part against upsetting the current ruling parties, ultimately censoring competing viewpoints that may prove embarrassing.

None of this is good news for a democracy. The way in which a healthy political system deals with it is by making sure there are enough competing voices that the establishment can never fully control most of them. That’s the theory anyway. In practice the results are far from perfect and during the current climate of media consolidation - done with the establishment’s full support - there has never been a time in America’s past that so many voices are controlled by so few people. This democracy is not dealing responsibly with the problem. We are living in a time when one establishment - indeed one political party - controls nearly everything we see, hear and are allowed to do. Such a monopoly on ideas, information and lawmaking calls into question America’s self-defined image of itself as a people’s republic. A democracy by definition cannot be monolithic. All voices must be heard – and respected. Majorities may govern but not by marginalizing, minimizing or silencing the minority. By itself a ruling party does not an establishment make however, not in a democracy, at least not here and not yet so there are still competing philosophies and interests well served by other media. One party’s ascendancy is normally temporary, the state of being in power always in flux. The New York Times is a famous example of a strong minority party paper, thoroughly establishment and preeminently so, separate and often at odds with the current ruling party but flourishing in spite of it.

By itself a strong minority paper does not a democracy make however, and the damage is without question spreading beyond one country’s borders. Increasingly stratified philosophies manipulated by corporate sponsors monopolize the time and decision making of global bureaucrats whose philosophies make business stronger at the expense of individuals. We see it everywhere, especially in the media, where communication industry rule-making invariably favors consolidation over breadth of voice while simultaneously marginalizing and even criminalizing dissent. The exception is now so rare as to be noteworthy, as when a Canadian judge recently “legalized” file sharing. It was only yesterday that sharing was not only legal but encouraged, a sign of civility and good citizenship. The reverse – the perverse - is now the rule as ever wealthier conglomerates usurp long cherished rights in search of greater riches, their power spreading corruption and malignancy deep into our increasingly fragile democracies.

There is something disturbing when people loose their way. But to lose one’s own culture is an insupportable burden. When the very tools that create ideas and give flight to thought are stolen by the industrialized state and corrupted for use against the people we face an appalling future.

Without eyes how can we see? Without ears how can we hear? Without voices how can we speak?

Without question and by any measure there is a darkness spreading across our lands. Unless we act decisively we will face a future permanently obscured in twilight. What future is this that we would choose to leave to our children? It is not one we should nor I believe are fated to leave them - but it will take action to evade, and even sacrifice. Can we continue our course? Are we up to the task ahead? Do we have it in us to avoid this descent into darkness? I think we do, and I think if you’re here reading this you may be one of those who can lead. I hope so. Believe me, many of us are counting on it.

Enjoy,

Jack.

Developers Search For Anonymous File-Sharing
Bernhard Warner

While media companies step up their legal crackdown on Internet song- swappers, separate teams of software developers -- from the Middle East to Madrid -- toil away on a foiling technology: an anonymous file-sharing network.

"Our users are requesting more and more privacy. They are more than disgusted with the threat of lawsuits," said Pablo Soto, chief programmer and co-founder of Madrid-based Optisoft.

Optisoft runs Blubster (http://www.blubster.com) and Piolet (http://www.piolet.com), music-only file- sharing networks. They run on Optisoft's proprietary MP2P peer-to-peer platform.

Music trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued 11 of MP2P's 10 million users for putting their music collection online for others to download. The new upgrade, which goes into effect shortly, should shield MP2P users from future lawsuits, Soto said.

"I do not think it will stop the RIAA from suing our users. But if any of our users has the balls to go to court, I don't see any way on the planet for the RIAA to win," Soto said.

The RIAA, however, recommends taking any claims of anonymity with a grain of salt. "More often than not, these are marketing ploys rather than a genuine technological capability," an RIAA spokesman said.

THE QUEST FOR ANONYMOUS SHARING

Relaunching later this month, MP2P will offer users the closest thing yet to anonymously sharing music files with others computer users, he said.

Others, including Palestine-based EarthStation 5 (http://www.es5.com) and Filetopia (http:// www.filetopia.com), make similar claims.

Most technical experts say absolute anonymous file-sharing is difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. But the young technicians are undaunted.

If they can't completely disguise a user sharing his Outkast tracks with others, they say they can make it exceedingly difficult for outsiders to trace.

The stakes are high. Since January, the music trade group RIAA has sued more than 2,000 Americans for copyright infringement for sharing their music collection with others over Internet peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and WinMX.

Hundreds more face legal action in Europe and Canada announcing similar lawsuits. Media companies have employed firms to scour file-sharing networks to find the biggest uploaders.

CAMOUFLAGED FILES

The 24-year-old Soto said his new file-sharing network offers two layers of camouflage. Each user is assigned multiple Internet protocol (IP) addresses to mask precisely who is trading what file at any one time.

And, the files zipping around the network are disguised to look entirely generic to the outside observer. "With the files, you get a user ID and some data, but that data looks bogus," Soto said.

The multiple IP addresses, he explained, are pulled from other users on the network at the same time, thus distorting the activities of individual file sharers to the outside observer.

There is a serious flaw, Soto admits. Light users, who at the moment are not being targeted in the lawsuits, could be rounded up alongside other MP2P users who share hundreds or thousands of music tracks through the network.

But, he reckons, it makes it four times more difficult for a copyright holder to trace the activities of file-sharers.

EarthStation 5, which carries the slogan "Resistance is futile, only the Anonymous will Survive", uses third-party proxies' computers in an attempt to throw copyright lawyers off the trail.

And, Filetopia has developed encryption tools to protect the identity of its users and their actions. Encryption is used by companies and the military, among others, to mask the content of data files to outside eyes.

The results of their combined work are far from foolproof, technology observers point out. "In theory, you can never have a completely anonymous network. But you can make it really, really difficult to trace," said Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040506/80/eswo2.html

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Japan

Top Software Developer Arrested For 'Winny' File Sharing
AFP

Japanese police have arrested an elite computer engineer for developing popular piece of software that allows anonymous users to download pirated films and music through a file sharing network.

Isamu Kaneko, 33, was arrested for suspected conspiracy to commit copyright violation by the High-tech Crime Taskforce of the Kyoto Prefectural Police.

It is the country's first arrest of a file sharing application developer, a police spokesman said.

The alleged offence is punishable by up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of $US26,700.

Kaneko, known as only "47" in cyberspace, is a research assistant in a computer engineering graduate course at Japan's Tokyo University.

He developed the file sharing application, called Winny and released it free of charge over the Internet in May 2002, enabling users to exchange files stored in their computers.

More than one million people are believed to be using Winny in Japan, according to Kyoto police.

Files available for exchange by Winny users include pirated films, music, game software and other leaked confidential information.

The Mainichi Shimbun daily has said some 200 categories of confidential information, such as internal army documents and wages for postal workers, have been circulated among Winny file sharers.

The spokesman said Kyoto police had been aware of Kaneko's activity since at least last autumn as their "cyber patrol unit" searched his apartment in November in connection with the arrest of two Winny users for engaging in piracy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1105174.htm

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Vietnam Seeks To Silence Online Dissent With Tough New Laws

HANOI (AFP) - Vietnam has introduced tough new laws regulating the use of the Internet in an apparent bid to silence online dissent.

The Ministry of Public Security's mouthpiece, the An Ninh The Gioi, said Wednesday that the new rules were necessary "to tighten the management of Internet operations". Under decision No. 71, which came into force in March, taking advantage of the web to disrupt "social order and safety" or to breach the communist nation's "fine customs and traditions" are "strictly forbidden". "Storing on Internet-connected computers information, materials or data classified as state secrets," is also prohibited. Furthermore, accessing foreign Internet Service Providers to visit websites firewalled by the authoritarian regime is outlawed. Internet cafe owners must also comply with a lengthy list of regulations or face legal action. They include recording "full and detailed information" about all their customers. Only around 3.2 percent of Vietnam's 80 million people surf the web, mainly through cyber-cafes. Many analysts believe the biggest constraint on the growth in Internet usage is Hanoi's desire to control and censor the online world to prevent it from being used as an anti- government tool. The new rules follow a June 2002 decree by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai that ordered all Internet cafes take action to prevent access to pornographic sites and those that revealed "state secrets" and "reactionary documents". On May 5, Vietnamese cyber-dissident Nguyen Vu Binh had his seven-year jail sentence and three-year house arrest order for espionage upheld. He was found guilty on December 31, 2003, of communicating with overseas "reactionary" organizations as well as writing articles and sharing information that "distorted the party and state policies". Binh, who denied all charges, was detained in September 2002 after posting an article on the Internet criticising a controversial Vietnam-China land border accord. The 35-year-old pro-democracy advocate was the latest in a series of journalists and intellectuals to have been arrested and tried over the past two years for using the Internet to voice dissenting opinions. International human rights groups have accused Hanoi of using national security as a pretext to silence criticism of the one-party regime.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040512/323/etdn3.html

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Chinese Internet Writer Jailed
BBC

A Chinese journalist has been jailed for two years without trial, according to an American civil rights group.

Liu Shui was detained in the southern town of Shenzhen, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

The group is concerned that Mr Liu could have been arrested in connection with his writings on sensitive political topics.

He had recently posted essays on the internet commemorating pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Liu Shui is a former editor and reporter for the outspoken Southern Metropolis News and the Shenzhen Evening News.

He was detained in Shenzhen on 2 May, accused of soliciting prostitutes, the rights group said.

He was reportedly ordered to serve two years of "custody and education", a form of punishment specifically designed for accused prostitutes and their clients.

According to Chinese law, the authorities can sentence individuals to up to two years of "custody and education" without filing formal charges or holding a trial.

Before his arrest, Mr Liu wrote essays commemorating the 4 June military crackdown in Beijing, which he posted on the internet. The essays called for political reforms and the release of political prisoners.

The 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown will take place next month.

The deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon, said Mr Shui's arrest was another example of the Chinese authorities using spurious criminal charges against a journalist for political reasons.

"Fifteen years after the June 4 crackdown, China's leaders have proven that they still will not tolerate any open discussion of political and social reforms," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ic/3706727.stm

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$50 MILLION IN ROYALTIES RETURNS TO ARTISTS

Deal With Record Industry Sets New Procedures for Recovery of Unclaimed Asset

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today announced a deal with the nation’s top recording companies that returns nearly $50 million in unclaimed royalties to thousands of performers.

The agreement comes after a two-year investigation by Spitzer’s office found that many artists and writers were not being paid royalties because record companies had failed to maintain contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments. This problem affected both star entertainers with numerous hit recordings and obscure musicians who may have had only one recording.

"As a result of this agreement, new procedures will be adopted to ensure that the artists and their descendants will receive the compensation to which they are entitled," Spitzer said.

Under the deal, the recording companies have agreed to do the following:

• List the names of artists and writers who are owed royalty payments on company websites;
• Post advertisements in leading music industry publications explaining procedures for unclaimed royalties;
• Work with music industry groups and unions to locate artists who are owed royalty payments; and
• Share artists’ contact information with other record companies.

In addition, each company has agreed to have the heads of the royalty, accounting and legal departments meet regularly to review the status of royalty accounts and take steps to improve royalty payment procedures.

The companies have also agreed to comply with New York State’s Abandoned Property Law, which requires that if an artist or his or her family cannot be found, unclaimed royalties be "escheated" or turned over to the state. The state then holds these monies until a claim is made.

The participating companies include: SONY Music Entertainment; Sony ATV Music Publishing; Warner Music Group; UMG Recordings; Universal Music; EMI Music Publishing; EMI Music North America; BMG Songs; Careers-BMG Music Publishing; BMG Music and the Harry Fox Agency.
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2004/may/may4a_04.html

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DMCA Mods

Congressional Panel To Weigh Digital Copyright
Declan McCullagh

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday plans to hold what appears to be the first hearing devoted to critiquing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Critics of the 1998 law are hoping to use the event to slam its highly controversial "anti-circumvention" sections--which generally prohibit bypassing copy-protection technology-- and drum up support for an alternative called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act.p>

First introduced by Rick Boucher, D-Va, and John Doolittle, R-Calif., in October 2002, the DMCRA would defang current law by permitting circumvention for "fair use" purposes. It has received a hostile reception from the entertainment industry and is not expected to be enacted this year. One reason: The consumer protection subcommittee convening this week's hearing does not have jurisdiction over copyright law.
http://news.com.com/2110-1028-5209689.html

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CDs, DVDs Not So Immortal
AP

Dan Koster was unpacking some of his more than 2,000 CDs after a move when he noticed something strange. Some of the discs, which he always took good care of, wouldn't play properly.

Koster, a Web and graphic designer for Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, took one that was skipping pretty badly and held it up to the light.

"I was kind of shocked to see a constellation of pinpricks, little points where the light was coming through the aluminum layer," he says.

His collection was suffering from "CD rot," a gradual deterioration of the data-carrying layer. It's not known for sure how common the blight is, but it's just one of a number of reasons that optical discs, including DVDs, may be a lot less long-lived than first thought.

"We were all told that CDs were well-nigh indestructible when they were introduced in the mid '80s," Koster says. "Companies used that in part to justify the higher price of CDs as well."

He went through his collection and found that 15 percent to 20 percent of the discs, most of which were produced in the '80s, were "rotted" to some extent.

The rotting can be due to poor manufacturing, according to Jerry Hartke, who runs Media Sciences Inc., a Marlborough, Massachusetts, laboratory that tests CDs.

The aluminum layer that reflects the light of the player's laser is separated from the CD label by a thin layer of lacquer. If the manufacturer applied the lacquer improperly, air can penetrate to oxidize the aluminum, eating it up much like iron rusts in air.

But in Hartke's view, it's more common that discs are rendered unreadable by poor handling by the owner.

"If people treat these discs rather harshly, or stack them, or allow them to rub against each other, this very fragile protective layer can be disturbed, allowing the atmosphere to interact with that aluminum," he says.

FACT BOX

"CD rot" Dos:
1. Handle discs by the outer edge or the center hole.
2.Use a felt-tip permanent marker to mark the label side of a CD.
3. Keep discs clean. Wipe with cotton fabric in a straight line from the center of the disc toward the outer edge.
4. Return discs to their plastic cases immediately after use.
5. Store discs upright (book style) in their cases.
6. Store discs in a cool, dry, dark place with clean air.
7. Open a recordable disc package only when you are ready to record.
8. Check the disc surface before recording.

Part of the problem is that most people believe that it's the clear underside of the CD that is fragile, when in fact it's the side with the label. Scratches on the underside have to be fairly deep to cause skipping, while scratches on the top can easily penetrate to the aluminum layer. Even the pressure of a pen on the label side can dent the aluminum, rendering the CD unreadable.

Koster has taken to copying his CDs on his computer to extend the life of the recordings. Unfortunately, it's not easy to figure out how long those recordable CDs will work.

Fred Byers, an information technology specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has looked at writeable CDs on behalf of government agencies, including the Library of Congress, that need to know how long their discs will last.

Manufacturers cite lifespans up to 100 years, but without a standardized test, it's very hard to evaluate their claims, Byers says. The worst part is that manufacturers frequently change the materials and manufacturing methods without notifying users.

"When you go to a store and buy a DVD-R, and this goes for CD-R as well, you really don't know what you're getting," he says. "If you buy a particular brand of disc, and then get the same disc and brand six months later, it can be very different."

This renders the frequently heard advice to buy name-brand discs for maximum longevity fairly moot, he says.

DVDs are a bit tougher than CDs in the sense that the data layer (or layers -- some discs have two) is sandwiched in the middle of the disc between two layers of plastic. But this structure causes problems of its own, especially in early DVDs. The glue that holds the layers together can lose its grip, making the disc unreadable at least in parts.

Users that bend a DVD to remove it from a hard-gripping case are practically begging for this problem, because flexing the disc puts strain on the glue.

Rewriteable CDs and DVDs, as opposed to write-once discs, should not be used for long-term storage because they contain a heat-sensitive layer that decays much faster than the metal layers of other discs.

For maximum longevity, discs should be stored vertically and only be handled by the edges. Don't stick labels on them, and in the case of write-once CDs, don't write on them with anything but soft water-based or alcohol-based markers.

Also, like wine, discs should be stored in a cool, dry place. Koster's friend Mark Irons, of Corvallis, Ore., stored his CD collection in a cabin heated by a wood-burning stove. The temperature would range between 40 degrees and 70 degrees in the space of a few hours. Now, the data layer of some of his CDs looks as if it's being eaten from the outside.

Irons is still pretty happy with CD technology, since it beats vinyl LPs and tape for longevity. Now that he's moved his discs to an apartment with a more stable temperature, he's noticed that the decay has slowed.

"I'm hoping they'll hold out till that next medium gets popular, and everyone gets to buy everything over again," he says.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html

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$20 Back-up

New DVD Copying Software To The Rescue

Court rulings have pulled the most popular software for copying DVD movies off the market, but a new program, already on sale at CompUSA and Wal-Mart, is trying to get around these rulings and still let users duplicate copy-protected discs.

The new software, called 123 Copy DVD, sells for as little as $19.99. Out of the box, it won't copy the vast majority of commercial DVDs, which are protected by encryption.

However, the manufacturer, also called 123 Copy DVD, has a Web site with a link to another site that contains a piece of decryption software. Users can easily download that patch, which allows the program to copy any disc.

Steve Thomas, the manufacturer's vice president, claimed in a telephone interview that the site with the decryption software is unaffiliated with 123 Copy DVD.

But that claim is contradicted by Web site registration records, which show that both 123 Copy DVD's site and the site with the patch are owned by the same company, Bling Software Ltd., which has a Gibraltar mailing address.

Reached later, Thomas said he had been unaware that Bling Software owned the site with the patch. He identified Bling Software as 123 Copy DVD's parent company.

Federal judges in March ordered another company, 321 Studios Inc., to stop marketing its best-selling DVD copying software. That was a victory for Hollywood studios, which contended that DVD-copying products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law bars circumvention of anti-piracy measures used to protect DVDs and other technology.

Since those rulings, 321 Studios has shipped retooled versions of its DVD-copying products, removing the software component required to descramble movies.

Thomas said that because 123 Copy DVD does not ship with decryption software, it does not violate the law.

``Our position is that it complies with the Millennium Copyright Act,'' he said.

Linking to the patch doesn't make much of a difference, Thomas contended, since decryption software is widely available on the Internet anyway.

Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual-property lawyer for Bromberg & Sunstein, a Boston-based law firm, said that even if the Web site with the patch were not affiliated with 123 Copy DVD, the manufacturer is on very shaky legal ground by providing a link to it.

``If you aid somebody in circumventing copyright protection, then you've done the bad thing,'' he said. ``I don't see it as a particularly good defense.''

In a written statement, the anti-piracy director at the Motion Picture Association of America noted that every maker of DVD copying software has claimed that its product was legal.

``We have now sued over a dozen persons/companies offering these packages and in every instance, every court has deemed the product to be illegal,'' John G. Malcolm wrote.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8605291.htm

Site info here – Jack.

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DVD dual-layer burner product test

Exclusive: Sony DRU-700A Dual Layer Recorder

A few weeks ago, we dangled a little DVD Dual Layer primer (teaser?) for all of you who are looking forward to the technology.

Even though we received a preproduction sample from Sony, we have a generally good idea which media will be bundled in the final version of the drive. To no surprise, most of the Nero Express suite will ship with the final drive. This includes Nero Express 6, InCD 4, ShowTime, ImageDrive, WaveEditor and the Nero Toolkit.

The faceplace of our preproduction drive looks identical to the DRU-530A. Our press guide claims that the final version of the drive will also ship with a black replaceable faceplate. Unlike the Gigabyte GO-W0808A, there is no forward headphone capability.

Our largest surprise came when we noticed the chipset in our DRU-700A was the same found in the Gigabyte GO- W0808A, the MT1818E. This little chipset has been with DVD burners for a long time; the only real upgrades that have occurred since DVD+R 2X has been upgrades to the analog controllers and pickups. The same innards are found in the Lite-On LDW-812S.
More

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P2P Group Accuses Music Industry of Smut Smear
Roy Mark

Charges of proliferating child pornography on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are part of a persistent smear campaign by commercial music interests and are not supported by the facts, a P2P trade group official told a Congressional panel Thursday.

Martin Lafferty, the chief executive of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, said although pornography Web sites have increased from 88,000 in 2000 to more nearly 1.6 million in 2004, the actual instances of documented child pornography on P2P networks has declined over the past year.

Speaking to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, Lafferty said while "no amount" of child pornography (not protected free speech, and a felony offense in most countries) can be tolerated, the music industry is making "disingenuous allegations" about P2P's role in the distribution of the material.

The music industry is currently suing about several hundred P2P file sharers over alleged copyright infringements.

Lafferty said reported child pornography on P2P networks was down from 2 percent in 2002 to 1.4 percent in 2003, data he cited from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"The use of file sharing software for the distribution of pornography is regrettable, but it is less a problem than activity in many other environments," said Lafferty, whose members include Kazaa and Grokster.

Lafferty's numbers are supported by a November supplemental report by the General Accounting Office stating that the risks of inadvertent exposure to pornographic content using P2P software are no greater than those posed by other Internet applications such as browsers, e-mail, search engines and chat rooms.

The peer-to-peer figures typically correspond to the period of greatest growth in the consumer adoption of peer-to-peer software, Lafferty said. "By contrast, Web sites, chat rooms, news groups and bulletin boards, already well established and relatively mature, represented more than 97 percent of reported incidents in this period."

Lafferty added that since P2P software first burst upon the scene, companies like Kazaa, the world's most popular P2P software, have added search filters that are effectively blocking out pornographic materials.

"The record demonstrates that these issues have been and are being addressed," Lafferty said, "resulting in a user experience comparable to, if not better, than that of surfing the Internet generally."

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), who has introduced legislation requiring file-swapping services to obtain parental consent before allowing children to use P2P network software, took exception to Lafferty's comments, claiming the P2P filters do not work.

"Now, I know we'll hear a lot today about peer-to-peer software's filters and parents' passwords," Pitts said. "They don't work. This is because they are keyword filters that only prevent children from searching for pornography. Because pornographers rename their files to sound innocent, the filters are ineffective."

Pitts' Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act (H.R. 2885) would also mandate that distributors of P2P software provide notice that pornographic material can be accessed through the networks. It also requires that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) develop "do-not-install beacons" to block downloading of P2P software.

"Some proponents of peer-to-peer say that in proportion to the Internet at large, the amount of pornography on peer-to-peer networks is meager," Pitts said. "I agree that pornography is rampant on the Internet, but this finger pointing is a pretty bad way to pass the buck. In fact, it sounds a lot like a child caught doing something he knows he shouldn't be doing."

Since the demise of Napster, the first widely popular P2P program later shut down by court order, newer file-sharing programs like Kazaa, Grokster and BearShare have surged in popularity.

Unlike Napster, which allowed only the sharing of music files, the newer P2P networks allow the sharing of digital images.
www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3350801

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Illegal Film Downloads 'Triple'
BBC

The number of internet users who illegally download films and TV series has tripled over the past year, a survey has suggested.

An estimated 1.67m people download illegal film or TV files, compared with 570,000 last year, the British Video Association's survey found.

The loss to the UK video industry was calculated as £45m in 2003 DVD sales.

The findings, based on 16,000 people between 12 and 74, were an "enormous" threat to the industry, the BVA said.

Movies and TV series illegally downloaded last year included Kill Bill: Volume 1, The Sopranos and BBC's The Office.

TNS, which conducted the survey, said: "With downloading growing at such an enormous rate the industry cannot afford to be complacent."

But it added: "There are several factors that reduce the impact on the retail market - quality issues being the major one."

This referred to the fact that many considered illegally downloaded films to be of poor quality when compared to legal DVDs or television broadcasts.

As long as we can continue to make our traditional product attractive... we hope to avoid the worst of the damage
Lavinia Carey,

Many also felt it took too long for films to download via the internet, but the growth in use of broadband - which offers faster internet connections - is changing that.

The average film or TV downloader was identified as under 35 years old and male.

He is most likely to live in the south of England, where broadband is more widely available, and to download an average of 30 films or TV episodes per year.

Lavinia Carey, from the BVA, said: "The film, TV and video industries are working closely to pre-empt the threat from online piracy.

"As long as we can continue to make our traditional product attractive and future online offers affordable and easy, we hope to avoid the worst of the damage."

The BVA also reported a 61% increase in DVD sales in 2003, the format now representing 70% of the total video market.

Total sales across the video industry rose from £2.05bn in 2002 to £2.42bn last year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...lm/3692999.stm

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Korean Conflict Over MP3 Handsets Deepens
Kim Tong-hyung

The conflict between the recording industry and mobile carriers over online music is widening, with lobby groups threatening to seek an injunction on the sale of LG Telecom Co.'s MP3 player-equipped handsets.

"LG Telecom's MP3 cellular phone provides no protection against playing free copies of copyrighted songs, which is a threat not only to the music industry but to the mobile content industry as a whole," said a legal advisor working for the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers yesterday.

"We are considering every legal measure possible, including filing a provisional injunction against the sale of the MP3 handsets," he added.

The statement comes a day after mobile operator LG Telecom offered to pay a percentage of sales from its MP3 phones to set up a digital music development fund, in a belated attempt to mend fences. However, the producer's association officials balked at the offer and insisted LG Telecom halt the sale of its MP3 phones immediately.

The association and other lobby groups, including the Recording Industry Association and Entertainment Producers' Association, held a rally in front of LG Group headquarters in Seoul's Yeouido district yesterday, demanding the company remove its MP3 phones from the market.

The groups said they will refuse to provide music files to www.ez-i.com and other music download sites operated by LG Telecom starting today.

The dispute over online music began in February when the country's three mobile carriers - SK Telecom Co., KTF Co. and LG Telecom - and cell phone manufacturers confirmed plans to launch MP3 player-equipped handsets within the first half of the year.

The recording industry responded by expressing their concerns over the illegal distribution of music files and both sides have been engaged in talks ever since to set the guidelines of copyright protection.

The conflict appeared to be nearing a settlement early last month, when SK Telecom, KTF and cell phone makers Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Teletech reached an agreement to limit the playing time of free MP3 copies to 72 hours after downloading.

However, LG Telecom refused to accept the conditions and went on to release their LG- LP3000 model, made by handset manufacturer LG Electronics Inc.

Around 80,000 units of the LG-LP3000 model have been sold through this month, making it one of the hottest items on the telecom market. LG Telecom is Korea's smallest mobile service provider, controlling 5.5 million of the country's 35 million cellular phone users.

"Our MP3 phones are equipped with a DRM (digital rights management) system that limits the transmission of content to other handsets, thus reducing the possibility of illegal reproduction," said LG Telecom's Kim Seung-bum.

"We consider it a violation of consumer rights to limit the usage of individually obtained music files downloaded on personal computers. There are currently no such limitations on personal MP3 players here or abroad," he added.

In a survey conducted by local portal site Daum.net, 83 percent of the 6,398 respondents said they take the limitations on the playing time of MP3 files as a violation of consumer rights.

With more than 11 million Korean households, or 73 percent, having Internet access, the free distribution of digital music has always been at the center of copyright disputes. The online music site Bugs Music (www.bugs.co.kr), which provides free music streaming services, has more than 14 million subscribers, while the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Soribada has more than 4.5 million members.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0405070032.asp

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

TBR Not Interested In Buying Napster Systemwide
AP

It doesn't look like Tennessee colleges will be buying a new service from Napster, which is trying to sell music legally to colleges and universities.

The company is best known for popularizing illegal music downloads in dorm rooms across the country.

The Tennessee Board of Regents was looking into the idea of buying Napster for all 180,000 students at 45 state schools.

But TBR officials say they didn't like the idea of the mandatory fee they would have had to charge students for the service.

Plus, they didn't think illegal downloading posed a specific problem for the Tennessee schools.

Only two schools have signed up so far on similar deals, Penn State and the University of Rochester in New York.
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=1830040

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Civil Liberties Groups Criticize Whois Bill
ILN News Letter

Five civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, CDT, and EFF, have signed a letter criticizing the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, which would criminalize providing false WHOIS information. Letter at
http://www.cdt.org/copyright/2004050...3754letter.pdf

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Japanese Find a Forum to Vent Most-Secret Feelings
Norimitsu Onishi

TOKYO, May 8 - In a society in which subtlety is prized above all, face-to-face confrontation is avoided, insults can be leveled with verbal nuances and hidden meanings are found everywhere, there is one place where the Japanese go to bare their souls and engage in verbal combat: Channel 2.

It is Japan's largest Internet bulletin board - the place where disgruntled employees leak information about their companies, journalists include tidbits they cannot get into the mainstream news media and the average salaryman attacks with ferocity and language unacceptable in daily life. It is also the place where gays come out in a society in which they mostly remain in the closet, where users freely broach taboo subjects, or where people go to the heart of the matter and ask, "What's for dinner?"

About 5.4 million people come to Channel 2 each month (http://www.2ch.net), many of them several times a day. Founded in 1999, "ni-channeru," as it is called here, has become part of Japan's everyday culture as no other Web site has.

News organizations follow it closely to gauge the public mood; big companies meticulously monitor how their products or companies are portrayed on it; and the police react immediately to threats posted on the site - as they did recently when someone wrote about wanting to blow up the Chinese Embassy, prompting a sudden increase in security around the building.

Americans are more direct about expressing themselves in person, and they can turn to radio talk shows or other media for straight talk. But the choices have always been limited in Japan, so Channel 2 has created an entirely new type of forum. It plays a role that no single Web site does in the United States.

As with any bulletin board, anonymous users start threads on myriad subjects and post comments. Unlike the real Japanese world, where language is calibrated according to one's social position, the wording on Channel 2 is often stripped of social indicators or purposefully manipulated to confuse readers. Language is also raw. "Die!" is a favorite insult - and the comments are blunt, often cruel and hurled with studied cynicism.

Although about 20 Web sites attract more users than Channel 2, based on March ratings from NetRatings Japan, most of the others are portal or retail sites; and while Yahoo Japan also runs a bulletin board, it is not considered as influential as Channel 2.

Unlike the other big corporate sites, Channel 2 is run by a single person and its contents are shaped entirely by the individual users who post comments. Its only source of income is advertising from obscure companies and services.

"Channel 2 has become a brand name in this society and has an influence that cannot be measured by numbers," said Akiko Sugiyama, manager of the data mining division of Gala, which is hired by big companies to track how they are portrayed on the Internet in general and especially on Channel 2.

The manager and founder of Channel 2 is Hiroyuki Nishimura, 27, who started a business designing Web pages for customers while studying psychology in college. In 1998, he studied for a year at the University of Central Arkansas and, influenced by America's Internet culture, created Channel 2.

In an interview, Mr. Nishimura played down Channel 2's significance, saying he created it because he had "some free time." Still, he explained that he wanted to create a Web page for which others would provide the content - in effect creating a community or an open space.

Two incidents shortly after Channel 2 started up signaled the birth of a new player in Japanese society. A customer who was verbally abused by a Toshiba service representative recorded the conversation and uploaded it onto Channel 2. Then, a 17-year-old youth, an hour after posting his intentions on Channel 2, hijacked a bus in Fukuoka, stabbing one passenger to death.

Channel 2's popularity has continued to rise significantly, to 5.4 million users in the latest figures from the 220,000 users that NetRatings recorded in June 2000, when it began keeping track.

In the United States and Europe, a community spirit was behind the growth of the Internet and remains a force. But in Japan, which was late to the Net, it has been almost exclusively business driven.

"In that regard, he is unique in the Internet culture and played a big role," said Soichiro Nishimura, vice president of NetRatings Japan, referring to Channel 2's founder, to whom he is not related.

"He started the Web site because he liked it and wanted to play with it. This still seems to be his policy. That is, he is doing it because he liked it. This type of thinking is unusual in Japan and it is interesting. If I were the owner, I would naturally turn it into a business."

The most popular subjects on the site tend to relate to the news. Information not found anywhere else is leaked here, like the name of a then 14-year-old who decapitated an 11-year-old and left the severed head at a middle school a few years ago. A popular subject in Japan right now is speculation about the real reason Princess Masako has been out of the public eye for several months, which mainstream news organizations have covered circuitously.

The site also provides a community setting for people wanting to discuss topics that are still avoided in public in Japan: gays who may be thinking of coming out or people suffering from depression. In a forum in which a father discussed whether to tell his child of the family's background as burakumin, an outcast group in Japan and a very delicate subject, one user wrote, "As a resident of eastern Japan, I've learned that this problem remains a severe one only thanks to Channel 2."

But Channel 2 is also a window into Japan's ugly side. Many of the contents tend to be nationalistic and xenophobic, especially toward Koreans. When Sony and Samsung recently announced a joint project, users attacked Sony for cooperating with the South Korean company. "Die, Sony!" read several comments. "Die, Koreans!" Many wrote that they hated Koreans, using a derogatory term to describe them.

Some see that kind of comment as simply a reflection of a society that has grown increasingly conservative and nationalistic. Others say that part of Channel 2's culture is to shock by exaggerating.

"They seem to dare to say things that they cannot utter in the real world even though that's a little different from their true feelings," said Kaoru Endo, a sociology professor at Gakushuin University, referring to users of the Web site. "They want to say antagonistic things against Koreans exactly because there is a prohibition against saying such things in Japanese society."

On Friday, Mr. Nishimura said he paid $20,000 a month to a company in Palo Alto, Calif., to provide a host for the Web site. With the advertisements, Mr. Nishimura said he managed to break even.

In keeping with his detachment, Mr. Nishimura said he was bored with his Web site and did not believe it was worth enough to attract buyers. Asked about Channel 2's role in Japanese society, he said people used it simply to "kill time."

"Many people who write on Channel 2 are stupid," Mr. Nishimura said, making a statement that many Channel 2 regulars would agree with but one that will surely draw a flurry of attacks. "They cannot change the world by writing about it. If they really want to have an impact, there are other things they could be doing."

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

Connecticut Woman Fined For Getting Tunes Off Internet
AP

A federal judge has fined a Connecticut woman $6,000 for allegedly downloading copyright-protected music from the Internet.

Jennifer Brothers of Andover was among thousands of people named in lawsuits filed by the recording industry last year.

Court documents indicate Brothers never accepted a copy of the suit and never filed a response with the court. The fine came when she failed to appear for a hearing last week and U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall found Brothers to be in default.

Some 2,500 suits have been filed nationally within the past year as the industry attempts to protect itself from downloads and file sharing.

Brothers Wednesday told the Connecticut Post that the only indication she had that a suit might be filed was a letter she received a month ago from a California lawyer who claimed to represent Arista Records.

Brothers said she had never received any notice of the suit from the federal court or from Connecticut lawyers handling the case.

"It think this is very unfair because I had no idea when I downloaded the music that I was doing anything wrong," Brothers said. "And after I got that letter I immediately stopped downloading off the Internet."

Last week the recording industry filed 477 suits, two of the suits claim students at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and Trinity College in Hartford illegally downloaded music.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pb.../NEWS/40506006

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Apple Asks Indian Portal To `Play Fair' — Seeks To Shut Down Free Web Download
Raja Simhan

APPLE Computer Inc has asked an India-based portal to shut a free computer programme available on the Internet. The programme decoded Apple's protected files, converted them into unencrypted files and allowed them to be played and distributed in an unrestricted manner.

The global information technology giant recently issued a legal notice that is available on the Net, to the Thiruvananthapuram- based Sarovar.org to remove the computer programme `PlayFair' from its portal. Sarovar also infringed the copyright in iTunes, an online music services offered by Apple, said the notice. iTunes offers over one-lakh new tracks from independent artists and record labels.

Sarovar.org hosts projects under free and open source licenses. The portal is customised, installed and maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River Valley Technologies.

A Linuxense official confirmed that the programme was shut after receiving the notice. There were over 30,000 downloads of the programme from the portal in six days. He added that it is not illegal in India to download such a programme. The notice did not specify under which part of the law it was illegal to download the programme, he said.

``However, we had to shut down, since any legal action would affect our investors and the Internet Service Provider that hosted the programme,'' he said.

The notice, issued by advocate Mr Nitin Sen said that Apple has invested a substantial amount of resources to obtain legitimate rights in these works and make them available through its iTunes Music Service. The songs are formatted in the AAC:MPEG4 audio format (`AAC'). These AAC files sold over the iTunes Service are encrypted by Apple, which allows user to burn songs on to an unlimited number of compact disks (CDs), listen to the songs on an unlimited number of Apple's music players called iPods and play songs on up to three computers.

`PlayFair', on the other hand, decoded Apple's protected AAC files, converted them to unencrypted files and allowed them to be played and distributed in an unrestricted manner. ``This is contrary to our client's terms and conditions governing availability of the service and is causing them enormous potential loss of revenue and reputation. Not only that, PlayFair is against the express provisions of our Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Copyright Act, 1957,'' the notice said.

The programme was previously hosted on a Web site called SourceForge. When Apple addressed a `cease and desist' letter to SourceForge, the Web site removed the programme immediately from its server.

Apple asked Sarovar to immediately remove `PlayFair', all links and/or references thereto from all Web sites and servers, the notice said.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...0400440700.htm

************************************************************

Posted By: Sarovar.org Admin
Date: 2004-04-16 17:18
Summary: "PlayFair" has been taken down.

This is to announce that the project "PlayFair" has been taken down from
Sarovar.org upon receiving a legal notice this morning from Apple's
attorneys. We are awaiting to hear from our attorneys. Here is the notice we received in its full form:

E-mail : info@linuxense.com

RSK/NSN/skk/A45 - 547
Thursday, April 15, 2004

Linuxense Information Systems
Lalita Mandir
16/1623, Jagathy
Thycaud P. O.
TRIVANDRUM - 695014
[ Fax # 0471 233 3186 ]

Attn: Mr. C. V. Radhakrishnan
President

Dear Sirs,

Re: Circumvention Computer Program "PlayFair" &
Infringement of Copyright in ITunes of
Apple Computer Inc.

We write on behalf of our clients, Apple Computer Inc, a corporation
organised and existing under the laws of the State of California, USA, of
1 Infinite Loop MS:3TM, Cupertino, California - 95014, U.S.A.
As you are undoubtedly aware, our clients own and manage one of the most
comprehensive and well-known online music services in the world under the
brand "iTunes". The iTunes music service contains hundreds of thousands
of songs from major music labels, plus over 100,000 new tracks from
independent artists and record labels. Our clients invest a substantial
amount of resources to obtain legitimate rights in these works and make
them available through their iTunes Music Service. The songs are
formatted in the AAC:MPEG4 audio format ("AAC"), which is one of the
foremost audio codecs revolutionising the field of online music today.
These AAC files sold over the iTunes Service are encrypted by our clients,
which allows the user to burn songs on to an unlimited number of CDs,
listen to the songs on an unlimited number of our clients' music players
called iPods and play songs on up to three computers. In short, our
clients have one of the most generous personal use rights attached to
services of this kind, thus enjoying the patronage of millions of users worldwide.

It was recently brought to our clients' attention that a program called
"PlayFair" had been developed, which decoded our clients' protected AAC
files, converting them to unencrypted files allowing them to be played and
distributed in an unrestricted manner. This is contrary to our clients'
terms and conditions governing availability of the service and is causing
them enormous potential loss of revenue and reputation. Not only that,
the PlayFair program is against the express provisions of our Information
Technology Act, 2000 and the Copyright Act, 1957 and you are equally
liable as accessories, being the means through which the offending program
is available for download at the Sarovar site at the following URL:
http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/.

This program was previously hosted on a website called "SourceForge".
When our clients addressed a cease and desist letter to SourceForge, the
website removed the program immediately from its server, in recognition of
the fact that PlayFair compromised the intellectual property rights of our
clients. Following the removal of PlayFair from the SourceForge's server,
it has moved to Sarovar.org, which is run, owned and managed by you.

You will agree that no site hosting open source / free projects can
support programs of this sort, which are in contravention of the law and
undermine the intellectual property rights of the owners. It may be
mentioned that you are completely aware of the background of the matter
inasmuch as the fact that PlayFair has moved from SourceForge to your
website has been clearly mentioned in the "latest news" column of your
Sarovar.org homepage. It is, therefore, not understandable as to how you
have knowingly allowed the illegal PlayFair program to be hosted on your
website.

In the aforesaid circumstances, you are hereby called upon to:

1. immediately remove the program called "PlayFair", all links and/or
references thereto from all websites and servers under your control; and

2. undertake that you will not host the program "PlayFair" on your website
or link to the location of the program "PlayFair" on your website, as well
as you will not use or cause or allow others to use "PlayFair" through
your website in future.

Since you have styled yourself after "SourceForge", our clients expect
that you will do likewise and remove the PlayFair program from your
servers as well.

Please confirm your compliance of the above requisitions within 24 hours
from receipt of this notice, failing which our clients would be forced to
consider the legal options available to them.

Yours faithfully,

[ Nitin Sen ]
Advocate

http://sarovar.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=474

************************************************************

Update: Meanwhile, FairTunes offers the ability to decode protected into unprotected and uncompressed audio... but does not retain the unique ability of the other applications of converting from Protected AAC -> Unprotected AAC without any loss.
http://fairtunes.cjb.net/

************************************************************

PlayFair Project Coming Back Online Soon

The PlayFair free software project is likely to come online again soon, despite efforts by Apple Computer Inc. to close it down, according to Infoworld; a new improved version to be hosted outside the US is expected: "Apple last month shut down last the free software project, which lets tool users play music from the Apple iTunes Music Store on hardware not authorized by Apple, such as GNU/Linux PC, provided an authorized key is available. Sarovar, a free software development community site based in India said it would stop hosting the PlayFair project after site sponsors received a legal notice from Apple's attorneys alleging infringement of copyright."
http://www.macnn.com/news/24543

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

FTA 'Unleashes Bounty Hunters'
Karen Dearne

THE US-Australia free trade agreement will unleash copyright "bounty hunters" locally even as their controversial practices are being questioned in the US, according to Verizon vice-president and general counsel Sarah Deutsch.

The US take-down notice system was "essentially a joke", said Ms Deutsch, who led ISP Verizon's successful challenge to Recording Industry Association of America demands that ISPs hand over customer information.

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act that is now being force-fed to you has been twisted and distorted in extraordinary ways," she said.

"Originally, the concept was quite simple and workable: if you hosted content, you had an obligation to take down infringing material, but if you were simply a conduit, you were absolutely exempt.

"That worked well until the rise of peer-to-peer sharing. Frankly, US copyright owners have tried to twist the DMCA to fix a new business problem, and now we find the whole deal is unravelling."

Ms Deutsch, in Australia to attend an Internet Industry Association workshop on the FTA in Canberra and a Baker and McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre symposium in Sydney, said the recording industry had aggressively pursued so-called "infringers".

In a bid to stamp out music file-sharing, owners began automating their enforcement activities — engaging bounty hunters who used software bots to search the internet for alleged infringements, then flooding ISPs with automatically generated takedown notices.

"The problem, though, is that the materials are not on the ISP's system or network — they are on the user's hard drive," Ms Deutsch said.

"Automated P2P notices ask ISPs not only to take the material down, but effectively terminate the subscriber. It's a very egregious remedy."

Bounty hunters pumped out hundreds of thousands of automated notices based on little more than a file name match against a target list, so serious mistakes were being made, she said.

These types of errors have given rise to the now infamous cases of the record industry suing a 12-year-old girl in a housing project over a child's song, and a 66-year-old Massachusetts grandmother whose Macintosh didn't have file- sharing software.

Copyright owners were not obliged to show due diligence in sending out notices, Ms Deutsch said, but ISPs had to check each one.

The scale was vast, she said: "Over the past 12 months, one US ISP received more than 90,000 automated notices.

"In the three months since January it received 30,000 — and only two of these actually related to materials that were on its network."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E15306,00.html

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

NewsLeecher is a brand new Usenet downloading (leeching) application. It downloads movies, pictures, MP3 files, and software applications in a snap, and uses it's inline engine to assemble and decode all the downloads. The powerful featureset and state-of-the-art user interface makes it an application "you simply can't live without" if you are a serious Usenet leecher.

Beta 18 released this week. Download.

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

Filesharing Is Not the Enemy
Joy Lanzendorfer

In a 2001 episode of "The Proud Family," a Disney Channel cartoon series, the teenager Penny gets addicted to filesharing after she is shown the wonders of a Napster-like program called EZJackster.

Crazed, she starts downloading all the music she ever wanted. Soon after, chaos erupts. Her favorite singer doesn't get his royalty check, her local record store goes out of business, the police come to her house and threaten to take her jail, and worst of all, her mom takes away her computer. Penny practically single-handedly destroys the U.S. economy before she finally sees that filesharing is wrong.

The episode rings with Reefer Madness-era propaganda; the 1936 film promoted the idea that marijuana makes people go insane, have promiscuous sex, and dance maniacally to jazz music in seedy apartments.

Still, the episode's underlying message – that filesharing is stopping CD sales and destroying the recording industry – has been promoted by groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ever since Napster hit the mainstream five years ago. Several studies have come out supporting the RIAA's assertions, which have been used to back up some of its actions, like filing lawsuits against people for sharing files and lobbying to have peer-to-peer filesharing categorized as a criminal activity.

But a new study by Harvard Business School and University of North Carolina is going against the popular beliefs surrounding filesharing. After tracking 1.75 million downloads over a 17-week period in 2002 and then comparing those observations to the sales of 680 popular albums, the study found that filesharing has no negative effect on CD sales.

In fact, for the most popular 25 percent of CDs, the study found that downloading boosts sales. For every 150 songs downloaded, sales of that album jumped one copy.

"Initially, we were surprised by our results, given the consistent claim that P2P hurts sales," says Koleman Strumpf, co-author with Felix Oberholzer-Gee. "But on deeper reflection, not so much. Filesharing can potentially boost sales through the user learning about new music, and this could offset the substitution for buying, as is often claimed."

Stealing or Sampling?

The response to the Harvard-UNC study has been mixed. The RIAA decried the study, calling it "inconsistent with virtually every other study done" on the subject. While previous studies have relied on surveys asking users about their downloading habits, the Harvard-UNC study was the first to directly compare actual downloads – using server logs from OpenNap, an open source Napster server – with album sales data from Nielsen SoundScan.

Other researchers, like Stan Liebowitz, Professor at University of Texas at Dallas, have criticized the details of the study. Among other things, Liebowitz believes the study shows the result of advertising on popular music, not necessarily the effect of downloading on the entire music industry.

"It's a study that on the surface looks pretty good, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, serious problems arise," he says. "I don't find the results believable."

Others say the study is evidence of how little we know about the effect downloading has on music sales, and that alone is reason to proceed judiciously when creating laws about the technology.

"The only thing we can confidently say is that filesharing makes some people buy more records and some other people buy fewer records," says Fred Von Lohmann, Staff Attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation. "But there's no very clear data on what the ultimate balance of the situation is."

Downloading has been likened to singles, cheap recordings with one or two songs that were used to whet listeners' appetite for a full album. Like downloading, some people bought singles to get the one song they liked and others bought them to sample the music before buying the full album. Aptly enough, singles were phased out by the record industry because they were suspected of taking away from the profit margin of full-length albums.

"When you download a Mp3, are you thinking of it as a substitution – Ha Ha, now I have that CD and I don't have to buy it – or are you thinking of it as sampling music that you like?" says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, a market research firm focusing on online media. "That's the heart of this debate. In our experience, we've found that downloading both hurts and aids the sales of CDs, and it's pretty much a wash."

According to the study, most people only download a few songs per album. Of the albums tracked, more than 50 percent of the songs were never downloaded, which the study seems to interpret as evidence that many people are sampling music.

What about the Record Slump?

There's no doubt the record industry is struggling. The RIAA says it has seen a 31 percent reduction in units shipped in all formats since 1999. According to the Harvard-UNC study, CD sales declined by 139 million copies from 2000 to 2002.

The study's most pessimistic statistical model showed that downloading had a slight negative impact on CD sales, with 5,000 downloads of an album reducing sales by a single copy. This would have accounted for only 2 million fewer sales in 2002, according to the authors.

The study points to a number of other possibilities for the slump besides downloading. For one thing, the record industry's decline happened during a recession, when all industries were suffering. For another, there's competition for the entertainment dollar from new options like DVDs and computer games. And the consolidation of radio by corporations like Clear Channel has led to less music variety and, consequently, less interest from the public.

"The radio is turning into a wasteland," says Von Lohmann. "Fewer people are relying on radio for their musical needs because of the ever shrinking playlists that most radio stations play."

The record industry has also spent the last few years catering to the 15- 24 age group under the belief that young people buy the most records and are the most susceptible to advertising.

Young people are also the ones downloading music. This does not mean, however, that they would buy the CDs they are downloading if filesharing didn't exist.

"Peer-to-peer is attractive to folks who are money-poor and time-rich, like teens or college kids," says Strumpf. "But it's unlikely they would be able to buy all of that music in the absence of filesharing."

Whether they would buy the albums or not, the recording industry may have started shifting its attention to the music-buying habits of the over- 30 crowd, i.e. the rest of the population. While record sales as a whole are down, adult sales have gone up the last few years. While 15-24 year olds bought 246 million records in 2003, the over-30s crowd bought 417 million albums, according to the NPD Group. Adults purchase 56 percent of all records, and that could increase to 60 percent by 2005.

P2P and Independent Musicians

With only four companies controlling mainstream music, the common belief is that filesharing brings democracy to the music industry by allowing people to have access to music they would never otherwise see. Whether this is true or not is a matter of debate. Some independent artists like Ani Difranco, (who got her start by people copying and passing around her tapes), have come out saying that illegal downloading hurts independents.

The study seems to support this belief.

"Interestingly, independent musicians are the one group who seem to be hurt from downloads, according to our results," says Strumpf. "However, this could be in part an artifact of the few downloads we observe and the poor quality of the sales data for smaller bands."

It's true that the internet allows musicians to reach audiences they otherwise could not, though connecting to that audience can prove difficult. The real differences between independent and corporate musicians may be in what they are selling.

"Many independent musicians are not in the business of selling you a plastic disc, but a relationship," says Garland. "They want a loyal fan, the person who will buy a t-shirt or a concert ticket when they come into town. That's a very different business from the kind of widgets and Coca-Cola products the four major labels are into."

These relationships can foster a loyalty in the form of support. Many people who will not bother to buy a corporate artist's CD will buy the work of an independent artist. Such displays of loyalty have insulated some independents from the effects of downloading, like Lookout! Records in Berkeley, California, which handles Green Day, The Donnas and a host of other bands.

"I don't feel like downloading has harmed our business in any way," says Chris Appelgren, President and Co-Owner of Lookout. "Independents are not the same as major labels. The people who buy our records are fans who have understanding of the size of the business, and they feel that the money does find its way to the artist. So for them, buying an album is a show of support."

Nearly everyone agrees that the artists need to be compensated for the music that people are downloading. The problem is that some see filesharing as a way of ripping artists off and some see it as a technology that, if harnessed correctly, could cut out the middleman and benefit the artists even more. But even after five years, it's still too early to tell which way downloading will go.

One thing is clear, though. Despite the efforts of the RIAA, downloading is still going strong.

"You can try to sue downloading out of existence, but it's not doing to work with tens of millions of people doing it," says Von Lohmann. "It's like prohibition. You can ban alcohol, but people are still going to drink."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18698

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

Congress Considers DMCA, Consumer Copying
Jay Lyman

The basic issue before the lawmakers this week was whether the DMCA infringes upon fair-use allowances for copying copyrighted materials for one's own personal use. Supporters of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003 -- sponsored by Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) and John Doolittle (R- California) -- argue that the DMCA prevents consumers from making fair use of encrypted materials.

This week's U.S. congressional hearing on the loosening of DVD and other copying restrictions based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 might signal a change in attitude toward laws that have been the basis of infringement suits against companies and consumers.

Some, including lawmakers on the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, view the ability to make backup and mixed copies of copyrighted music, movies and other media as fair use, provided consumers are not selling or distributing their homemade digital copies.

Copyright holders, such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Business Software Alliance , however, argued before the committee that the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003 would "legalize hacking" and strip copyrighted content of its piracy protections, according to MPAA president Jack Valenti's testimony.

Despite a longheld defense of the DMCA in both the U.S. House and Senate, lawmakers are now joining consumers and industry representatives in questioning the six- year-old law's effects on law-abiding, paying customers, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Fred von Lohmann.

"Yesterday's hearing really marked a turning point," von Lohmann told TechNewsWorld. "It's certainly been a case of a growing number of voices calling for DMCA reform."

Fair Use Fouled

The basic issue before the lawmakers this week was whether the DMCA infringes upon fair-use allowances for copying copyrighted materials for one's own personal use. While the DMCA was intended to protect such materials from piracy that has prospered with Internet distribution, DVD burning and other technologies, it also has been the basis for a failed lawsuit against an individual who cracked a DVD encryption scheme and the RIAA's use of subpoenas to identify peer-to-peer (P2P) network users.

Supporters of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003 - - sponsored by Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) and John Doolittle (R- California) -- argue that the DMCA prevents consumers from making fair use of encrypted materials.

"If you want to make a copy for your car and one for your wife's and one for the boat and another for the cabin, that is hard to do because of technical restrictions the industry wanted and Congress gave to them," said Allan Swift, a former congressman who testified.

Protection in Peril

Those opposed to the DMCA limitations contend that protection for copyrighted works would be weakened and that the ability to undo encryption and antitampering technology will lead to an explosion of piracy gadgets and other technology that will devalue copyrighted material.

Valenti argued there are three reasons the proposed DMCA limitations and an allowance for backup copies are "unsuitable for passage": It is illegal, it is unnecessary, and it allows hacking of encrypted, creative material, "which in turn puts to peril the future home video market."

"Back-up copies are not legal," Valenti said. "The Copyright Act does not say 'buy one movie, get one free.' There is no more a right to a back-up copy of a DVD than a back- up DVD player, lawn mower or set of wine glasses."

However, Swift, a former member of the committee who witnessed the Big Media resistance to videotapes and DVDs, said the industry track record is marked by fear.

"They have always distrusted new technology," Swift testified. "If Hollywood had been given its way, the videotapes and DVDs from which they now make a great percentage of their profits would have been smothered in their bassinettes."

Consumers and Industry

The EFF's von Lohmann said that while consumers traditionally have been the main source of DMCA resistance, industry is now joining in opposition because the DMCA is being used as an anticompetitive weapon.

"There is concern that this is being used as a protective measure, not to protect against piracy but to fence out competitors," von Lohmann said, referring to the printer cartridge, garage-door opener and auto manufacturing industries.

Von Lohmann added that while the DMCA revision faces "enormous resistance" among other lawmakers, such as the Judiciary Committee, the recent subcommittee hearing is evidence that a change is emerging in Washington, D.C.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33787.html

JackSpratts · 13-05-04, 10:05 PM

Big Music's Climate of Terror and the Media Response
Jon Newton

The recording industry has worked hard to create this climate of terror, and it's the industry's explicit agenda to want people to be dissuaded from sharing files out of fear of the consequences that will result if they're discovered.

The CRIA, Canada's version of the RIAA, recently suffered an ignominious and embarrassing defeat when it failed to convince a Canadian federal court that online file- sharing is illegal and is "devastating" the multibillion-dollar music industry.

Having fallen flat on its face, the Canadian Recording Industry Association now is trying to pull itself up by its bootlaces by claiming "a significant majority of Canadians disagreed with the recent Federal Court decision which suggested that it is not illegal to upload music files on the Internet." The emphasis is mine.

However, when he ruled against the CRIA, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein didn't "suggest" anything. He stated, clearly and unequivocally, that putting digital music files into a computer directory that might be shared remotely by someone else isn't copyright infringement under Canadian law.

Considering that, unlike people in the United States, Canadians can share music freely online without fear of being savaged by the Big Five record labels, the CRIA finding is hard to fathom, even bearing in mind that it comes from a study commissioned by the CRIA itself.

It's particularly puzzling stacked against another report from America's Pew Internet & American Life Project , which found that the number of people who share music through P2P networks actually has increased from an estimated 18 million to 23 million since its November-December 2003 survey.

It becomes even more confusing when you take into account a different Pew report that states the following:

In terms of their careers, more artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them. Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and only 5% say it has hurt.

Some 30% say free downloading has helped increase attendance at their concerts, 21% say it has helped them sell CDs or other merchandise; and 19% say it has helped them gain radio playing time for their music. Only fractions of them cite any negative impact of downloading on those aspects of their work.

What Do You Believe?

"Our focus is on the world's most popular 'download' communities, file-sharing networks," said Eric Garland of Big Champagne, a company that tracks and reports on P2P downloads in an anonymous fashion. "These are the download 'sites' (actually networks) first made famous by Napster and now including clients like LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa , Morpheus and hundreds of others."

While the music industry is reporting that its sue-'em-all campaign is dramatically reducing the number of file sharers, and while Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is boasting people downloaded 50 million files from its iTunes Music Store in its first year, Big Champagne is reporting that, at a conservative estimate, 4 million people are online at any given moment happily swapping 1 billion files every month, at the very least.

"We want to be the 'just the facts, ma'am' company," said Garland. "It's an increasingly critical component. You can't begin to sort out the business and address the problems until you understand the state of things. Behind closed doors, when the focus is on strategy, it's imperative that you have good data, even if it's not what you want to hear. We're often told by pros from all sides of the music industry that we deliver a lot of bad news. But we take it as a compliment, because that means we're telling the whole story."

Wayne Rosso, Blubster's CEO and the man who used to run Grokster, makes no secret of it. "I always look to Big Champagne's figures," he said, as do significant numbers of people on the other side of the fence -- those who run the Big Five record labels.

So, how reliable are the reports and surveys, especially if their focus is online file sharing?

Whether the reports appear to be for or against a particular issue, if there's an apparent slant in a given direction, it's almost certainly down to the media reporting it, said Garland, guaranteeing there's no bias on the part of the researchers and collators who put the reports together.

Where Does That Leave Us?

Despite the fact that the odds of being sued by the RIAA for sharing music online are similar to those of winning the lottery, Big Music has succeeded admirably in creating an aura of distinct terror around uploading, downloading and sharing digital music files. And it's this aura that means you can't believe surveys or reports centering on the way music is distributed online -- unless they're based on straight data analysis derived from data taken directly from a physical source.

Surveyors investigating, for example, alcohol abuse or recreational drugs expect the people they're surveying to be somewhat less than forthright. Now add P2P file-swapping to the list of dodgy subjects.

"It's very difficult to get reliable information on topics like music file-sharing," Garland told me. "And it's particularly challenging in a climate of aggressive litigation, proposed legislation and what the RIAA calls 'education.' It's difficult to extract good data from respondents on these things."

Every time we turn on the TV or open a newspaper, we're reading about ISPs being compelled to identify their clients in connection with copyright infringement prosecutions. "It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to think: 'Here I am in my home, and these researchers have called me on my home phone, so they know who I am and where I live,'" Garland continued.

"And even assuming researchers' best efforts to maintain my privacy, and given that they have no interest in identifying me, nonetheless, I may well imagine they could be compelled -- just like an ISP -- to identify me in conjunction with a civil litigation or, real horror of horrors, a criminal one," he said.

A Climate of Terror

The recording industry has worked hard to create this climate of terror, and it's the industry's explicit agenda to want people to be dissuaded from sharing files out of fear of the consequences that will result if they're discovered.

"But respondents are in no danger from researchers," said Garland. "The critical difference between an ISP and a market research firm is: We researchers take great care to make sure we're not in possession of anything that could identify someone. So when a market researcher calls you when you're in the middle of dinner, that typically is the result of random digit dialing, which actually ensures that although this company has phoned you at home, they're not actually in possession of your home number or of other identifying marks."

However, even given that someone answering questions for a market researcher isn't afraid of suddenly ending up on the RIAA's sue-'em-all list, the majority will still be less than truthful in their responses, said Garland. That's because, in addition to creating the climate of fear, the music industry also has given file-sharing an aspect of being somehow unwholesome -- of being tainted.

Predictable Media Response

"It's not unlike getting someone to disclose information about behaviors that are considered offensive or about recreational drug abuse," he stated. "People are uncomfortable discussing these kinds of things, and they're just as uncomfortable talking about file-sharing with a stranger."

There's no such thing as bad PR for file-sharing, and the music industry knows this, Garland added. But against that, he also points out that every time it comes up, it simply introduces the concept to more and more casual users.

In the meantime, the surveys are "of tremendous importance to the handful of people who can really be unduly influenced by the information in the surveys -- I'm talking about legislators and executives in the industry."

Nonetheless, everyone -- legislators included -- should "employ a healthy dose of skepticism to any reporting of any kind -- the media included. Satisfy yourself with the methodology and the agenda of whoever's reporting the information," said Garland. "We're all pressed for time, but it never hurts to have that little voice of doubt in the back of your mind."

Given that respondents -- for file-sharing, at least -- seem to be so unreliable, what's the point of doing a survey in the first place? Could it be that the companies that commission them are well aware that although, at the end of the day, the studies have no real value, they'll generate very predictable media responses and that's what they're really after?
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/c...ary/33736.html
http://p2pnet.net/story/1422

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Finnish ISP Selects Sandvine
Press Release

KUOPIO, Finland -- KPY Networks today announced that it has selected Sandvine Peer-To-Peer Policy Management to enhance the online experience for its Internet customers.

The popularity and resilience of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications continues to challenge European service providers. P2P applications generate more than 70% of all residential Internet traffic in Finland, causing increased network costs and threatening to degrade the overall broadband experience for KPY's subscribers.

The 12,000 broadband subscriber ISP had witnessed a sharp spike in network costs resulting from P2P traffic and was looking for a transparent and subscriber- friendly way to address it. Results from live trials were immediate and achieved by adding Sandvine Peer-To-Peer Policy Management organically to KPY's existing network infrastructure.

"Sandvine's approach has allowed us to create traffic policies that minimise the cost of supporting file sharing traffic on our network whilst maintaining the best possible online experience for our subscribers," said Timo Hopponen, Data Network Manager for KPY Networks. "We were looking for a solution that would help us maximise our existing infrastructure investments and prepare us to stay ahead of changes in this rapidly-evolving technology environment. Sandvine Peer-To-Peer Policy Management meets our needs perfectly."
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=52629

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Another strange survey from Ipsos-Ried, in this case strange because filesharing is legal in Canada – Jack.

Canadian Downloaders Backing Off, Study Says
Chris Lackner

Legal pressure from the recording industry has taken its toll on the number of people downloading music in Canada, according to a new study by Ipsos-Reid.

The number of Canadian adults with an Internet connection who have downloaded at least one music file has fallen to 32 per cent from an all-time high of 47 per cent in June 2002.

While approximately 5.7 million Canadians have downloaded free digital music, the study reports that 1.8 million have stopped the practice.

But Canada's recording industry, still reeling from a major legal setback, dismissed the survey's results as "unscientific" and said they fail to paint an "adequate picture" of the situation.

"We don't see too many signs of the trend diminishing," said Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. "There are still 120 million downloads a month from illegal sites and sources."

The Ipsos-Reid study used a sample of 1,000 Canadian adults, but Mr. Robertson said it ignored the primary downloading demographic.

"Younger people are the highest active file sharers ... we need to see a more scientific sampling than this one in order to have any kind of positive reaction," he said.

Mr. Robertson also said that people are prone to lying when questioned about file sharing because they are afraid of its consequences.

In March, the Federal Court of Canada denied a CRIA request that would have forced Canadian Internet Service Providers — such as Rogers Cable and Sympatico — to turn over confidential customer information that could help the CRIA sue individuals for copyright infringement.

With his ruling, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein went much further than simply denying CRIA's request. He stated that placing a music file on a shared directory falls short of distribution, and does not infringe upon Canadian copyright laws.

The CRIA filed an appeal of the ruling in April.

While 21 per cent of those surveyed say that the fear of "legal ramifications" led them to stop downloading, the poll was conducted before the Federal Court's ruling.

Mr. Robertson said he fears the decision may have inspired some people to download without fear of legal action or criminal charges.

But Ipsos-Reid vice-president Chris Ferneyhough said the survey marks an important shift in the mind-set of Canadian adults, who use the Internet at one of the highest rates in the world.

When accounting for the results, he said lawsuits in the United States against individual file sharers have resonated in Canada. The uncertain future of Canadian copyright law has also given people reservations.

"Before the cases in the United States, music file sharing was a grey zone ... no one could say whether it was conclusively illegal, and those with access to the technology took advantage of it.

"But because the recording industry's battles have received so much media attention, people are more [cautious]. Even with the Canadian court ruling, people still worry that the laws could be rewritten."

Companies such as Puretracks — which charge Canadians to download music — should be encouraged by the study, Mr. Ferneyhough said. Among those Canadians who said they have downloaded music files, 15 per cent say they have used a paid downloading service at least once. A majority of those surveyed — 56 per cent — also said they would prefer downloading music from a legitimate on-line company than buying a CD from a record store.

"People may be asking themselves whether it's worth paying thousands of dollars in fines in order to download 10 songs," Mr. Ferneyhough said.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...ry/Technology/

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Proposed Copyright Changes Could Hit Downloaders
From Canadian Press

The practice of downloading songs for free could change if the federal government adopts recommendations tabled today by a Heritage committee. Among the nine recommendations is one urging the government to sign two World Intellectual Property Organization treaties. The treaties would strengthen copyright law for online property, as well as clarify the definition of distribution via peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, WinMX, eMule and iMesh.

Provisions in the treaty, which has been signed by 44 countries including the U.S., would allow music creators to use anti-copying devices that limit the number of copies made from one CD. The treaties also make it illegal to sell software that hacks through protected or locked files such as copy control technology used by EMI Canada on new CDs.

In addition, the committee urged changes to the Copyright Act to make Internet service providers subject to liability for copyrighted material. Currently ISPs tell their customers on a voluntary notice that someone's claiming copyright infringement against them. That was the case in December when the recording industry filed lawsuits against 29 Jane and John Does.

"It was clear to us that that wasn't enough of an option to protect copyright holders," explained MP Sarmite Bulte, chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. "If anything, it seems to be an excuse to say `Well I gave them notice so I'm not responsible for anything else.' "

The Canadian recording industry, which has been pushing for the government to ratify the treaties since 1997, was overjoyed with Wednesday's report. "It's like a spring wind blowing away the smog of seven years of disappointments," said Brian Robertson, president, Canadian Recording Industry Association. "It's the first real support and action we've seen for something that should have been done five or six years ago."

Since the start of Napster in 1998, the association has been trying to put an end to the practice of downloading songs. It recently lost its attempt in Federal Court to force ISPs to identify people who put large amounts of files in shared folders for the rest of the world to access for free.

Robertson, whose organization represents 95 per cent of the sound recordings that are manufactured and sold in Canada, said if the recommendations were all enacted it would allow the industry to control illegal activity through the courts. "It's a cornerstone for the future of the music industry," he said.

CRIA said Wednesday that during a five-week stretch beginning March 30, more than half a million unauthorized attempts were made to download a new Tragically Hip song, Vaccination Scar. It said less than 1,000 copies were purchased legally online from places like Puretracks.com.

If the committee gets all its wishes, attaining music from the Internet without payment will become trickier by the end of the year. It set a Nov. 15 deadline for government although it wasn't clear how a federal election would affect the introduction of new copyright laws. The committee has been meeting since last October to study the Copyright Act. Other issues discussed included the use of Internet material for educational purposes and technology-enhanced learning.

Heritage Minister Helene Chalifour Scherrer intends to have the department prepare legislation to be introduced in the fall, her communications director Marc Roy said Wednesday.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=968332188492

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Illegally Downloading Music Just Isn’t (Tragically) Hip
ChartAttack.com Staff

In the wake of a recent national survey which showed that the majority of Canadians believe recording artists and songwriters have a right to copyright protection and that uploading music files on the Internet should be illegal, our boys from Kingston are wondering just what the hell happened.

The Tragically Hip launched "Vaccination Scar," their first single off of the forthcoming album In Between Evolution, at the second game of the Toronto-Ottawa playoff series. It was simultaneously released to radio stations across the country and made available for legal download at Puretracks.com for 99 cents. However, according to Universal Music Canada, during a five-week stretch from March 30 to May 7, there were more than half a million attempts to illegally download the latest Hip single.

"The peer-to-peer system is public. You go online and you ask for something, it’s fairly easy to intercept the request," says Graham Henderson, senior vice-president of business affairs and e-commerce at Universal Music Canada. "We have a network of servers that monitor Internet traffic. We monitor networks like Fasttrack, Kazaa, Glockster, iMesh, Gnutela, Morpheus, Limewire, Bearshare, Donkey… you name it. We tally the total number of illegal copies of a given title that’s shared on the networks. We do this constantly, it’s repeated over and over and over again every day, and the survey is extremely reliable in terms of the numbers."

Henderson assured ChartAttack that, yes, there were more than 500,000 Hip fans out there searching for this new single.

With promotional copies floating around and insufficient copyright protection, the carefully constructed release of the single could not guarantee the elimination of illegal copies available for download.

"Somebody gets it, somebody rips it to their hard drive, dumps it into Kazaa, then they go onto the Internet and start offering it, and it spreads like a virus through the whole system," Henderson says. "That’s much more common among teenagers, they rarely buy anything, so they’re just stealing and burning amongst one another — and that’s how it spreads."

Aside from the statistics Universal Music Canada has come up with for the single, in that same time span they claim that there were also 2.2 million requests for The Hip’s catalogue music.

"That means it’s fans of the Hip — their own fans are doing this," Henderson says with a hint of disgust. "And the CDs that they could be buying? They’re all mid-price. Every damn one of them is mid or budget and available for under 10 bucks in any store in this country. Now, you tell me that’s overpriced."

And to those of you who think that The Hip are already well off enough without your hard earned cash, "Oh come on," Henderson retorts. "The guys live in Kingston, they’re not on MTV Cribs."

In Between Evolution will be available Tuesday June 29, and though "Vaccination Scar" is currently the #1 downloaded track from Puretracks.com, the band are still not pleased with their fans downloading the track for free.

"To me it’s an ethical question," Hip bassist Gord Sinclair said in a statement. "If you hear something you like, go out and support the artist."

Unsurprisingly, Henderson agreed.

"At the end of the day it’s like, ‘Will you guys start playing fair?’ I mean, some sharing, OK, but this? Everyone knows this is wrong. This is really, badly wrong."

Shame on you all.

- David Missio

http://connect.247media.ads.link4ads...ype=t;uniq=666

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Tragically Hip's Money Troubles
p2pnet.net News

Canada's Tragically Hip have decided file sharing is bad for their wallets.

The group (with absolutely NO help from their label, Universal Music, or the CRIA) point out that during March 30 to May 7 there were more than half a million 'unauthorized' attempts to download their new single, Vaccination Scar.

Tragically Hip is one of the biggest selling Canadian bands ever, with all that implies

"The grim economic reality aside, it shows how widespread the practice of downloading has become," says the band's Gord Sinclair.

But Hey! "Don't get me wrong," he says. "Anything that gets people into music is okay with me, but at some point people have to recognize their role in the creative process. To me it's an ethical question."

In the same puff piece, Jann Arden (?) "reacted to the news", saying,

"Downloading music from the Internet is ironically the hope, and alarmingly the impending decay and

destruction, of the music industry. Unless these downloads are monitored and artists are compensated for their work, there will be NO work to download. None of us, as writers and performers, can afford to keep making the music that has always, and will always, make the world a little easier to swallow in troubled times.

"We cannot play if we are not paid."

There you go.

No pay, no play.

In other words, the musical arts depend absolutely on the dollar. Or franc. Or pfennig. Or whatever.

No way.

The Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson also wades in with, "I'm totally fine with people downloading music, as long as they steal everything that they want. If you want pants, go steal them. If you need gas in your car, you should steal it, because you can. As long as people are consistent I don't have a problem. As long as they see themselves as thieves in general then I don't mind if they steal everything that they like. But it irks me that it's only okay to steal music."

And to cap it off Brian Robertson, the president of the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), says grimly:

"It underlines, again, the vulnerability of our artists, creators and producers to the lawlessness of the Internet in Canada and the need for federal politicians and bureaucrats to move far more expeditiously than they have in the past to update Canada's woefully inadequate Copyright Act."

But while Robertson & Co are singing the blues, in terms of their careers, "more artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them," says a Pew report here.

"Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and only 5% say it has hurt. Some 30% say free downloading has helped increase attendance at their concerts, 21% say it has helped them sell CDs or other merchandise; and 19% say it has helped them gain radio playing time for their music. Only fractions of them cite any negative impact of downloading on those aspects of their work.

"Some 60% of people surveyed say they don't think the RIAA's (Recording Industry Association of America) suits against online music swappers will benefit musicians and songwriters. Those who earn the majority of their income from music are more inclined than 'starving musicians' to back the RIAA, but even those very committed musicians don't believe the RIAA campaign will help them. Some 42% of those who earn most of their income from their music do not think the RIAA legal efforts will help them, while 35% think those legal challenges will ultimately benefit them."

And Oh Yeh - wasn't Universal Music one of the labels that, following a two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office, was ordered to return $50 million to musicians they've had under contract.

Spitzer's office found many artists and writers weren't being paid royalties because record companies "had failed to maintain contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments".

Finally, the CRIA (and, hence, its owners, the Big Five record labels) recently suffered an embarrassing defeat when it failed to convince a Canadian federal court that online file sharing is illegal and is "devastating" the multi-billion dollar music industry.
http://p2pnet.net/story/1434

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The Mashin' of the Christ
p2pnet.net News:- Horror or horrors!

"This April a hacker broke through Negativland's UMN mainframe firewall and stole the final version of Negativland's top-sacred for-internal-use-only 'Mashin' of the Christ' video project," it says on the site here.

Do these wicked, wicked p2p thieves no know (or is it know no?) bounds?

"Negativland prayed that their in-house project would not make it into the hands of the unsuspecting public, but we all know how hard it can be to stop those 'peer to peer' criminals from illegally sharing the property of others."

OK. So what's gone missing?

No less than the "The Mashin' of the Christ".

Yep.

Negativland decrypted, downloaded and mashed up the most violent religious film ever made along with over 27 other Hollywood portrayals of Jesus to create their own vision of the last moments of Christ's life... all in four minutes and 14 seconds as its top-secret-not-for-viewing video response to the number one film in America.

Friends and lawyers who've seen it strongly advised against a public release occuring. Ever.

But you know how it is with these dastardly file-stealers. What can you do? The RIAA, IFPI, MPAA,

BPI, IBP, BIP, SPCA, AA and others have for years been selflesssly ....

But we digress.

Anyhow, you probably won't want to know any more about this, so don't bother to go to Negativland to find out whether or not full-screen, DVD quality PC/MAC mpeg2s, high quality DivXs and medium sized mpeg4s are available for on several p2p networks including Soulseek, Suprnova and BitTorrent, and you probably won't want to use BitTorrent, or anything like that.
http://p2pnet.net/story/1433

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Sharman Continues File-Sharing Evidence Fight
Abby Dinham

Sharman Networks and the Music Industry Piracy Investigation (MIPI) will be back in the Australian Federal court later this week for yet another legal contest over access to evidence that was confiscated in raids last February.

MIPI, which is investigating the allegations of music copyright infringement against Sharman Networks, today claimed the software company was in defiance of court orders handed down last February giving it access to the evidence.

Sharman Networks, the owner and distributor of the peer-to-peer file sharing program Kazaa, was ordered to schedule times to allow MIPI to see the evidence.

Sharman has until Friday to produce a schedule of times giving MIPI access to the evidence; however, the investigation company's general manager, Michael Speck, claims the software provider will not meet the deadline.

"The last time we were in court his honour said that we must have access to the material by the 14 May, and they have not obliged us with access," said Speck.

Speck claims Sharman Networks will apply for a review of the access terms on Friday. However, he opined that the court would be "unlikely to be sympathetic to [Sharman's] appeal" if it missed the Friday deadline.

MIPI seized the evidence from the premises of Sharman Network's and a number of associated companies in accordance with an Anton Piller order it secured from the federal court on 6 February. The documents were taken to support MIPI's claim that Sharman is liable for copyright infringements carried out by users of its file-sharing program, Kazaa.

Sharman has lobbied the court on several occasions to have the evidence made inadmissible; Speck today opined that the company's latest actions show the evidence must not be favourable to their case.

"We can't see any other reason why they are so vigorously avoiding giving us access to any of the material," said Speck. "This shows an absurd desperation to keep the evidence from us."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9154433,00.htm

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Kazaa Fails To Meet Court Evidence Deadline
Abby Dinham

Sharman Networks and the Music Industry Piracy Investigation (MIPI) will be back in the Australian Federal court later this week for yet another legal contest over access to evidence that was confiscated in raids last February.

MIPI, which is investigating the allegations of music copyright infringement against Sharman Networks, today claimed the software company was in defiance of court orders handed down last February giving it access to the evidence.

Sharman Networks, the owner and distributor of the peer-to-peer file sharing program Kazaa, was ordered to schedule times to allow MIPI to see the evidence.

Sharman has until Friday to produce a schedule of times giving MIPI access to the evidence however the investigation company's general manager, Michael Speck, claims the software provider will not meet the deadline.

"The last time we were in court his honour said that we must have access to the material by the 14 May, and they have not obliged us with access," said Speck.

Speck claims Sharman Networks will apply for a review of the access terms on Friday. However, he opined that the court would be "unlikely to be sympathetic to [Sharman's] appeal" if it missed the Friday deadline.

MIPI seized the evidence from the premises of Sharman Network's and a number of associated companies in accordance with an Anton Piller order it secured from the federal court on 6 February. The documents were taken to support MIPI's claim that Sharman is liable for copyright infringements carried out by users of its file sharing program, Kazaa.

Sharman has lobbied the court on several occasions to have the evidence made inadmissible; Speck today opined that the company's latest actions show the evidence must not be favourable to their case.

"We can't see any other reason why they are so vigorously avoiding giving us access to any of the material," said Speck. "This shows an absurd desperation to keep the evidence from us."
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9120620,00.htm

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Inside The Kazaa Raid
Garth Montgomery and Dan Warne

An APC investigation

The Australian music industry says it’s about to blow the lid on the complex web of companies behind Kazaa. Garth Montgomery and Dan Warne investigate.

Legal action equals business as usual for Kazaa owner Sharman Networks, but even CEO Nikki Hemming was surprised when Australian music piracy investigators burst through the doors of Kazaa’s Cremorne offices in NSW armed with a court-sanctioned search warrant.

Organised under a cloak of absolute secrecy, the controversial “Anton Piller order” granted by the Federal Court gave lawyers and forensic analysts for the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) legal authority to gather evidence from the Kazaa premises without police being present, including the right to make binary copies of hard drives. An Anton Piller order is granted when a judge is persuaded that there are reasonable grounds evidence may be destroyed if advance notice is given.

The music industry’s aim was to create a digital “snapshot” of the entire system in operation at one moment in time. Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) general manager Michael Speck told APC his aim was to prove in court that Sharman Networks could control and manipulate the network, debunking its claim of simply being a neutral technology provider.

Hemming didn’t stick around for the duration of the raid. She fled through a side door of the building, escaping in a silver Porsche Boxster with “SHARE” number plates to her luxury home in Castle Cove. When she arrived, forensic analysts were already at her house, analysing hard drives of servers found inside. She was told to make herself comfortable in the front yard.

The raid was conducted simultaneously at Telstra, iHug/iiNet, University of Queensland, University of NSW, bandwidth wholesaler NTT Australia, Altnet (the rights-managed content distribution company partnered with Kazaa), and Akamai, the worldwide content mirroring network with high profile clients like Apple Computer and Microsoft. All were subjected to the Anton Piller order so the music industry could capture a digital snapshot of the Kazaa system.

Investigators also searched the homes of Sharman Network’s CTO Phil Morle, and Brilliant Digital Entertainment and Altnet’s CEO Kevin Burmeister as they sought to gather evidence on the involvement of these individuals in the operation of the Kazaa network.

Sharman Networks was outraged that the music industry was granted the right to search its headquarters, those of its business partners and the homes of its senior executives. It argued that music industry lawyers had deceived the Federal Court’s Justice Wilcox by not giving him all the facts, including that Kazaa had been given a clean bill of health in Dutch courts. That ruling was based on the Sony Betamax precedent, which ruled that makers of VCRs were not responsible for their use by pirates.

Perhaps it was Justice Wilcox’s irritation at being accused of being duped, or simply that Kazaa’s claims weren’t relevant in the Australian jurisdiction, but the court rejected the motion to dismiss the Anton Piller order out of hand.

Sharman was equally enraged that media, acting on anonymous tip-offs, were on-site at Kazaa’s offices to witness the raid. “They wrote to MIPI’s lawyers about its media activity and MIPI’s lawyers were equally interested in the catering arrangements for journalists at the raid,” Speck said. “Curiously, the issue went away.”

A former Detective Sergeant in the NSW Police Service, Speck said he is approaching the Kazaa investigation using the same methods he’d apply to a police investigation, and wouldn’t exclude using undercover surveillance, informants and covert operations to deconstruct the complex structure of the organisation.

While he has suspicions as to who is behind the money backing Kazaa (“they can afford to send a QC and seven lawyers to court”), Speck won’t be drawn. The company is incorporated in Vanuatu, where simply asking who owns a company constitutes a criminal offence. Hemming claims this is for “tax efficiencies”, but the music industry argues that the company is set up to deliberately obfuscate its legal ownership structure in order to avoid prosecution.

The music industry is also suspicious of Altnet’s involvement with Sharman Networks. Altnet, which sells pornography, computer games and music via the Kazaa network, was added as a defendant to the Australian legal action following the raids. In a US securities filing, Altnet admitted it had the right to negotiate deals on behalf of Sharman Networks, a fact that the industry alleges is a suspiciously cosy arrangement, raising questions about Altnet’s true influence within the tangled web of companies surrounding Kazaa.

Under attack

The case against Kazaa marks a milestone in the recording industry’s attempts to stop music piracy on the Internet. For the first time, the Australian labels have a very real chance of putting a dent in global piracy by arguing before the court that since Kazaa is headquartered and operating in Australia, it is liable for any copyright infringement, if proven, on Australian soil.

The industry alleges that Kazaa facilitates the distribution of 260 million pirated tracks a month. “You only have to multiply that by BigPond Music’s price of $1.89 per track to realise this is the biggest [alleged] copyright infringement in history,” Speck pointed out.

Hemming argues that the music industry actually benefits from Kazaa: “The vast majority of the third-party research that’s been done indicates that sampling product means more sales for those products. . . it’s a vital part of the promotional mix in our view.”

Ironically, while Kazaa is allegedly used mainly for copyright infringement (Altnet CEO Kevin Burmeister admits there are only about 5,000 legally rights-managed files available), Sharman Networks has been ruthless in protecting its trademark and copyright. When K-Lite (a spyware- free version of the Kazaa Media Desktop software) became popular, Kazaa sent cease and desist notices to search engines in an bid to prevent Net users from finding K-Lite. “We have a business to run,” Sharman’s Nikki Hemming argued. Sharman does not receive banner ad revenues when K-Lite software is used to access its network.

While Sharman doesn’t profit directly from the alleged piracy that occurs on its network, it has created a media empire that would make Rupert Murdoch lime green with envy. Effectively Kazaa has done what every media owner dreams about — it has built a huge worldwide audience of consumers which can be sliced, diced and delivered to advertisers. It sells information collected from its bundled spyware to marketers, along with ad space in the Kazaa Media Desktop, which is precisely targeted at particular groups of users (see “But you agreed to it”, page 26). Hemming has no problem with this. “Our advertisers keep us in business and 70-plus million users are telling us they’re okay with that relationship.”

Speck sees a more sinister side. “Kazaa stores more information about each of its users than any government in the world holds on citizens,” he claimed, hinting that the Kazaa trial will be a bonanza of revelations that will stun its users.

ISPs are also accused of profiting from Kazaa. Internode’s Simon Hackett told APC that the “gang of four” ISPs (Telstra, Optus, OzEmail and AAPT/Connect) benefit financially when P2P programs are used.

He said that if an Internode customer downloaded a file from a Telstra customer, for example, Internode would have to pay Telstra for that data. But Telstra customers could download all they liked from Internode, and Telstra wouldn’t have to pay Internode a cent. Software like Kazaa made large-scale file sharing within a local region so easy for customers it became an enticing business opportunity for unscrupulous ISPs.

With one study showing that just 0.8% of Kazaa’s total files represent 80% of downloads, ISPs also stand to gain huge reductions in international traffic bills by caching the most popular allegedly pirate content for Kazaa users.

The developer of Kazaa’s peer-to-peer networking technology, Netherlands-based Joltid, calls this technology PeerCache, and MIPI is determined to find out which Australian ISPs are using it.

Psychological warfare

While Kazaa is under attack from the American music industry’s armada of lawyers, the war on Australian turf has become psychological. Six death threats have been levelled at music piracy investigator Michael Speck and ARIA CEO Stephen Peach since action commenced against Sharman Networks.

“The threats were made by phone, and the caller referenced very specific personal details,” Speck revealed. “We anticipated [the death threats] — and got them — at certain points in the litigation. The caller leaves no doubt that the threats are directly related to the action against Kazaa.” The threats have been referred to police.

No link has been made to anyone associated with Kazaa, BDE or their related companies, nor is any suggested, but MIPI’s take-no-prisoners approach has clearly provoked unprecedented fury among Kazaa’s users.

Altnet’s Kevin Burmeister told the other side of the story about the raid on his home: “There were five people that I would never under any circumstances let into my home, and it was a complete search of the entire house. They went through my kitchen drawers and my bedroom cupboards. . . they weren’t just taking digital copies of disks; it was a complete invasion of privacy. I was extremely angry about it.”

Anger spilled over to allegations of assault during execution of the federal court order at Altnet’s parent company, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, in Surry Hills, NSW. A court appointed solicitor from Blake, Dawson, Waldren made a formal complaint of assault at Randwick police station following the BDE raid.

The unstoppable revolution

Hemming and Burmeister are convinced that P2P distribution is an unstoppable force. Both genuinely believe the music industry will eventually back off its legal offensive because of the efforts Kazaa is making. “Sharman bought the Kazaa software with the express purpose of creating a marketplace for promotion and sale of legitimate, licensed creative work,” waxed a press release.

Hemming expertly diverted questioning about unauthorised copyright content away to the topic of how a musician could bundle a video clip and concert tickets with their songs via Kazaa. “The tours and the live events are one of the highest yield incomes for the artist themselves,” she told APC. “I imagine that a lot of them are thinking about the creative ways that the intimacy of peer- to-peer can bring them right to the consumer’s front-door.”

But the company is slippery when it comes to the technicalities of why it can’t stop unauthorised distribution of copyrighted works. Each file traded on Kazaa has a unique digital fingerprint in the form of an MD5 hash — a mathematical signature produced by running an algorithm across the contents of a file.

This signature allows Kazaa to identify how many users are sharing the same file so that it can be downloaded from many places at once with complete integrity.

If Kazaa were really trying to become a legitimate service, an obvious first step would be to block the MD5 hashes for known pirated files, argues the music industry.

It’s hard to fault that argument, but Kazaa’s chief technical officer Phil Morle told APC it wasn’t possible. “Using filtering to block copyrighted content in a P2P context is often cited by the record industry as a panacea to the Internet piracy issue,” he said. “We have investigated this and have yet to see any technology that can effectively filter copyrighted files through decentralised P2P.

“In fact, a federal judge in the US found that ‘filtering’ software for copyrighted files is simply not effective. This is another case of the record industry oversimplifying the technology to suit their argument.”

Despite the legal onslaught against Kazaa, Altnet’s Burmeister argued that the bundled Altnet software is playing an important part in giving independent artists a chance to get exposure on a world scale. “We can enable artist Web sites by distributing content for them on Altnet, and they enable their Web sites to be able to sell their content via us without having to set up payment gateways and so on,” he said.

But in an American SEC filing, Altnet admitted the future of its business relied entirely on the survival of the Kazaa network. Since Altnet is the only component of Kazaa that distributes digitally rights-managed files, the statement seems to acknowledge the music industry’s argument that Kazaa’s ongoing success is predicated on its current popularity.

Burmeister said he was continuing to try to get the big five record companies to agree to license their music for distribution via Altnet in the US, with no success.

However, while Burmeister may have been trying hard in the US, that doesn’t excuse Kazaa’s lack of interest in copyright on Australian turf, according to the industry. The executives of all five major Australian music labels have signed affidavits under penalty of perjury stating that none has ever been approached by Altnet or Kazaa to obtain music licences in the Australian region.

“Apple has to approach every music company in every country individually for its iTunes Music Store,” said Speck. “So does everybody else — including Kazaa.”

Hemming is convinced Kazaa is being boycotted by the recording industry. “We are not being treated on an even and fair basis in having licences made available to us… There is a universal boycott at the moment by the industry.”

A tangled web

Sharman Networks is legally based in Vanuatu, but Speck is adamant that it doesn’t make any difference. “The Kazaa system is operated out of Australia,” he said, pointing to a locally registered trademark for Kazaa. “Their end-user agreement even says it is governed under the laws of New South Wales. So, everyone from Kazakhstan to Karratha is governed by a NSW- based contract, and yet Sharman still argues it just has an ‘ephemeral’ presence in Australia.”

Speck is confident that the courts won’t accept that the distributed nature of Kazaa’s P2P system reduces the liability on one central company.

Sharman is working hard to avoid being caught with the digital goods at home: when it was sued in the US, it created a new, almost identically named company in Vanuatu. This raised questions about the exact location of the company’s assets and whether the current US case is against a worthless shell company.

Kazaa hasn’t been so lucky in the Australian case: both companies are named in the lawsuit and industry sources hint that more defendants will be added when the evidence from the Anton Piller order is eventually released and presented to the court.

The music industry’s central argument is that Kazaa’s Media Desktop software is deliberately designed to put legal liability back on users. While Napster ran central file servers indexing files being shared by users, proving its legal liability and leading to its ultimate demise, Kazaa turns individual users on its network into file list servers for other users — if a user’s PC and Net connection are fast enough, they become a “supernode”.

MIPI alleges that this is a concerted effort to operate what it claims to be an illicit enterprise with the legal liability defrayed to users.

The future of P2P

While Kazaa may go down in flames at the hands of the Australian music industry, some analysts believe the music industry is wasting its time. A plethora of other technologies, such as Gnutella and BitTorrent, are far less vulnerable to legal attack than Kazaa because of more distributed architectures with no involvement by a central company.

P2P will continue to proliferate because of a lack of good legitimate alternatives, said Altnet’s Burmeister. “To me, Napster started because it was convenient. People could get everything they wanted in one search box. They didn’t have to go to PressPlay for Sony and Universal’s music, and MusicNet for Warner and EMI’s music.

“The fact that the copyright industries have been unable to arrange their affairs quickly enough to deal with the market and changes that technology has enabled, is the reason why the users in the marketplace have decided to do what they’re doing,” he added.

Unfortunately for Burmeister, the final victor in the race to establish a market for legal music downloads is unlikely to be Kazaa or Altnet. The music industry has lawyered up and appears to be digging in for the long haul after billions of dollars worth of its content was allegedly stolen via the Kazaa network.

From a music industry perspective, it’s also easy to understand why Burmeister’s argument doesn’t wash. P2P is a hard business-case to make when high-quality, tightly-controlled server- client download services such as BigPond Music are being established in Australia and offer a far more clear-cut revenue stream and rights management capability.

Perhaps P2P will continue to flourish simply because users like downloading free music, software and movies from other users, rather than giving their money to corporate giants like Telstra.

Burmeister’s defence relies on a simple philosophy: “I don’t need a legitimate excuse for it,” he said. “To me it’s not about a legitimate excuse, it’s about defining a problem and fixing it.”

Hemming shares a similar view: “It’s the attitude of not waiting for all the lights to go green before starting the journey.”
http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/4...256E77001DD222

Submitted by fantom.

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Congress Mulls Revisions To DMCA
Declan McCullagh

Congress has taken a step toward revising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has attracted extensive criticism over the past six years.

A House of Representatives subcommittee convened Wednesday for the first hearing devoted to a proposal to defang the DMCA, a 1998 law that broadly restricts bypassing copy-protection technologies used in DVDs, a few music CDs and some software programs.

Called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, the amendments are backed by librarians, liberal consumer groups and some technology firms. But they're bitterly opposed by the entertainment industry, including Hollywood, major record labels and the Business Software Alliance.

"It legalizes hacking," Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the proposed changes. "It allows you to make a copy or many copies. And the 1000th copy of a DVD, Mr. Chairman, is as pure and pristine as the original. You strip away all the protective clothing of that DVD and leave it naked and alone."

Section 1201 of the DMCA drew fire after it was used to outlaw a utility permitting Linux users to watch their own DVDs, as well as threaten security researchers with lawsuits. Programmer Dmitry Skylarov was charged under the DMCA for writing a program that let owners of Adobe e-books export them to Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

The proposed amendments, sponsored by Rick Boucher, D-Va, and John Doolittle, R-Calif., would permit circumvention for "fair use" purposes. Selling pirated DVDs and other forms of copyright infringement would remain illegal.

"Without a change in the existing law, individuals will be less willing to purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is severely circumscribed," Boucher said. "In addition, manufacturers of equipment and software which enable circumvention for legitimate purposes will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market."

It's unclear what the prospects are for the Boucher-Doolittle bill. It has a mere 15 co-sponsors in the House and no Senate version exists. What's more, the consumer protection subcommittee that convened Wednesday's hearing does not have jurisdiction over copyright law, making it unlikely the bill will be forwarded to the House floor this year.

Even some members of the subcommittee took a dim view of the proposal. "Theft is theft and property is property," said Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5211674.html

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Arrest of Winny Author 'Overkill'
John P. Mello Jr.

"If all the person did was write software that was generally useful, then it's mindboggling that they would hold the software developer liable for a tool that's similar to many other tools on the Internet," Greg Bildson, COO of P2P software maker LimeWire in New York City, told TechNewsWorld.

The arrest this week of the Japanese author of a popular online file-sharing program appears to be an extreme reaction, at least by American standards, to his alleged abetting of copyright infringers, according to a patent attorney in Chicago.

In what's been reported as the first arrest of a software developer for helping others to violate copyright law, police pinched Isamu Kaneko, 33, a teaching assistant at the University of Tokyo and the author of Winny, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program that's been downloaded by anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people, most of them in Japan.

If convicted of criminal charges leveled against him by the police, Kaneko faces up to three years of jail time or a fine of up to 3 million yen (US$27,000).

Arrest Overkill

"From a criminal penalty standpoint, this is overkill in my view," James Muraff of law firm Wallenstein Wagner & Rockey told TechNewsWorld. "It's pretty stiff compared to U.S. law."

He explained that in the United States, there are no criminal penalties for authoring software that may be used for copyright infringement. Such authors, however, could become targets of civil actions for contributing to copyright infringement.

"In the Japanese situation, you've got criminal penalties against someone who created software that allows other people to directly infringe -- a contributory infringement situation that, in my view, doesn't warrant a criminal penalty," he argued.

Mindboggling Development

Whether or not P2P software can be legally tagged in the United States as a contributor to copyright infringement is still up in the air, according to Muraff. "No final decisions have taken place, but some initial decisions favor the recording industry," he said.

According to the P2P industry, any contribution its software makes to copyright infringement is outweighed by its legitimate purposes -- a line of reasoning successfully used to introduce the VCR into American markets.

"If all the person did was write software that was generally useful, then it's mindboggling that they would hold the software developer liable for a tool that's similar to many other tools on the Internet," Greg Bildson, COO of P2P software maker LimeWire in New York City, told TechNewsWorld.

Stifle Innovation

"If the Japanese law allows that, then they really are going to stifle competition," Bildson added. "They're going to stifle innovation in this kind of distributed computing area."

When making their arrest of Kaneko, police reportedly cited the author's cavalier attitude toward copyright law as evidence of his intent to encourage infringements.

Police quoted Kaneko as saying: "I am doubtful about the current ways businesses control digital content. It's wrong that big business uses the police to crack down on violations and maintain the status quo. The only way to destroy that system is to continue to spread ways to violate copyright laws."

Target of Destruction

Kaneko isn't the only one concerned about the lengths to which copyright holders will go to preserve their intellectual property.

"These guys have so much money and they're spending so much money in lobbying that it's difficult to protect anybody's rights," Wayne Rosso, CEO of P2P software maker Optisoft of Madrid, Spain, told TechNewsWorld.

"The content industry will use any means that they have to destroy P2P," he added.

Anonymity

An aspect that has added to the popularity of Kaneko's Winny program is its purported ability to keep its network users' identities anonymous. That feature is apparently imperfect, as two men using Winny were arrested last November for illegally sharing movies and video games on the network.

Users of P2P systems shouldn't look to anonymity for comfort from the prying eyes of copyright enforcers, cautioned LimeWire's Bildson.

Most anonymity schemes require a third-party intermediary to launder user identities, he explained. "Any of those intermediaries could theoretically have their computers searched and identities discovered that way."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33774.html

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Uncertain Future of File Sharing

Chat -Sam Yagan, President of eDonkey

File-sharing networks like eDonkey and Morpheus are undeniably popular, with millions of members using them to exchange music, video and software. But they also are beleaguered by the entertainment industry's claim that they are havens for rampant copyright infringement. Now some U.S. senators say they might be conduits for child pornography.

Sam Yagan, president of eDonkey, discussed file-sharing's uncertain future with washingtonpost.com reporter David McGuire on Thursday, May 13 at Noon ET. A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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David McGuire: Hello Sam, thanks for joining us. I understand that eDonkey is now one of the largest peer-to-peer networks on the Internet. Could you describe your global operations? Also, eDonkey is a U.S. company. How has your growing customer based changed your relationship with regulators and lawmakers? Are you participating in the debates over copyright infringement and the spyware?

Sam Yagan: David: Thanks so much for having me; I am looking forward to chatting with you and your readers. Over the course of the past year, we have indeed become one of the largest (if not the largest) peer-to-peer (p2p) networks in the world. In particular, we believe that eDonkey is the largest in Europe and in Asia. As for our global operations: eDonkey is proud to be an American company, incorporated in the state of New York. We have a small office in downtown Manhattan.

Our relationship with regulators and lawmakers, as well as our participation in the debate over copyright infringement and spyware, is primarily done through the industry trade group P2P United, which we co-founded and on which I am a director. We have a very active presence in Washington and are very interested in working with the various stakeholders to reach agreement on the many controversial issues facing our industry.

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Alexandria, Va.: What vulnerabilities does Overnet address that were inherent in the eDonkey2000 server?

Sam Yagan: Overnet is designed to scale to many millions of simultaneous users. eDonkey servers and most other p2p applications have a limited search radius -- this means that when you search for a file you are not searching the entire network! Instead you are only searching a very limited part of the network. Overnet overcomes this and allows you to search across all the current users of the network in a very efficient manner.

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Arlington, Va.: So what's the breakdown between illegally copied music and movie files shared on eDonkey? Do you think the movie industry faces the same threats from piracy as the music industry and will it respond in the same way?

Sam Yagan: eDonkey users share many types of files on the network. In particular many independent artists use the network as a free distribution mechanism and a great way to build a fan base. We have done extensive promotions for such bands as Bishop Allen, for example.

I hope that the movie industry will learn from the experiences of the music industry and will be much more constructive in their approach to P2P. The recording industry decided to take a highly litigious approach to this new technology, which historically has not been the most effective way to deal with technological breakthroughs. I hope the movie industry will see P2P as a business opportunity and work with us to make a win-win-win for everyone, including consumers.

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Redmond, Wash.: How are you responding to the growing clamor over spyware? Doesn't your company make the lion's share of its money by placing spy- and adware on peoples' computers? How would federal anti-spyware legislation effect your operations?

Sam Yagan: The spyware issue is a critical one facing not only our company or the P2P industry, but software distributors more generally. First and foremost: we do not distribute any spyware with our application. We take great care not to harm our users in any way.

Adware is a different issue, and I hope our users understand that. We allow users to download and use our software completely free of charge (though many of our users do purchase the ad-free version). However, we do incur significant development costs in creating and improving our software. We've got to make the rent payments every month, and ad revenue is one channel that allows us to do so without requiring payment from our users.

We would support narrowly crafted legislation protecting users from spyware that violates their privacy.

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David McGuire: I'm not sure our readers know what "overnet" is. Can you describe it, and how it differs from other popular networks like gnutella (used by Morpheus and Lime Wire) and fast-track (Kazaa, Grokster)?

Sam Yagan: The eDonkey network is a completely distributed way to share and download any type of file. It uses Overnet technology to search all of the peers in the network. It has very a sophisticated transfer mechanism that allows users to reliably download very large files very efficiently and quickly. Downloads are taken from many users simultaneously thus insuring the fastest transfer possible.

In terms of how it differs from our competitors -- our competitive advantage is on the quality of our technology. We offer more robust searching and faster downloads -- the two most important aspects of a good P2P product.

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Los Angeles: You said you hope the movie industry will see P2P as a business opportunity and work with you to make a win-win-win for everyone, including consumers. Let me get this straight - your users would win by getting content they didn't pay for, you win from adware and advertising, how do the people in the movie industry win?

Sam Yagan: Great question. First, I look back throughout the last half century and I look at the various technological breakthroughs that were supposed to bring financial ruin to copyright holders. In particular, I am thinking of photocopiers and vcrs -- though there are many others.

The movie and television industries decried VCRs and predicted that no one would go to movie theaters and that revenues would fall precipitously. In fact, what happened? More people became movie fans. The average number of movies watched per person increased. And on many releases, the copyright holders make more money in the rental/purchase market than on the theatrical release.

P2P offers many of the same opportunities. There is no reason why people won't watch more movies or listen to more songs as a result of having an incremental, convenient distribution channel.

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Fairfax Station, Va: How can the government regulate e-sharing networks on the basis of porn any more than they can regulate newsstands? They are both basically the same thing -- places for people to exchange information, albeit a certain percentage of it being completely vile smut. And I should say, the same types of folks decrying these sharing networks are probably the ones downloading all the crap. Cynical? Perhaps.

Sam Yagan: You raise an interesting analogy. Two points that I think are often overlooked, however:

1. Pornography represents a small portion of the content shared on P2P networks, just like it represents a small portion of the magazines sold in newsstands.

2. P2P represents only a tiny fraction of all pornography distributed on the Internet.

For the smut that is completely vile (and illegal) we, through P2P United, are working with government to figure out how we can be helpful in preventing distribution of illicit material.

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Fairfax, Va.: The Internet these days is swarming with worms and viruses. What steps do you take to minimize infections of your users?

Sam Yagan: The best thing we can do is to help educate our users on protection and prevention. The three best things you can do to prevent worms and viruses are

1. Having a good personal firewall

2. Having a good virus scanner

3. Keeping your operating system up to date

Running our software does not increase the risk of viruses or worms as long as you always scan any file that you download with eDonkey.

As a good tie-in to the earlier question about adware, on several occassions in the past we have entered into distribution partnerships with anti-virus software providers such as Bullguard. Several million copies of Bullguard software were distributed to our users with the eDonkey software.

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Mountain Lake Park, Maryland: With Apple Itunes and others raising the price of albums it will only be a matter of time till consumers rebel at the cost. These prices will be the same as what you pay for a cd. The answer is clear. The music industry is not learning from their past mistakes. I predict that the music industry will end up in another slump and the reason is because they still do not get it. Your thoughts?

Sam Yagan: I hope the music industry will recognize the many advantages of online distribution. In particular, users seem to value the ability to purchase on a per-song basis rather than by album. More over, the music industry saves a lot of money in distribution costs when it distributes electronically. As a result, there's no reason to think that prices will get anywhere near the current CD prices. It is clear that the recording industry has to find a stable equilibrium where they are making money without charging so much that users won't purchase the product -- but this not unique to that industry. Any business has to face the challenge of setting prices optimally.

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Glitter Gulch, S.D.: Hello Mr. Yagan. I am curious as to the origin of what sounds like patently insipid names for these file-sharing services. E-Donkey? Why did the person who started this firm name it that? What on earth is a "Blubster?" What is the general thought process here in coming up with these names? Are they based on Nitrous Oxide or am I getting too old to understand the p2p demographic? Many thanks and good luck.

Sam Yagan: Well, I think you've got a couple forces at play here. First, many of these P2P names are simply following the lead of other Internet companies with crazy "memorable" names. We definitely think eDonkey is pretty memorable.

However, like many other companies we tried to be a little clever in our name. The "eDonkey" concept is one of an electronic "beast of burden" -- the perfect way transport lots and lots of data.

I can't speak for the others, of course, so I can't rule out Nitrous Oxide in those situations.

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Los Angeles, CA: Will e-donkey begin promoting authorized content to its users that artists and copyright owners can derive revenue from in a similar way to Kazaa?

Sam Yagan: We have begun to do this in a variety of ways. First, as I mentioned earlier, we've worked with quite a few independent bands to distribute their copyrighted works to our users. We're also beginning to partner with some film schools to allow students a venue to share their work with others.

We have also distributed computer games and other software that users can download and use for free during a trial period, at the end of which they can purchase the product.

In the long run, copyright owners will be using P2P much more widely to distribute their content. It's virtually a no-brainer: it has cost advantages, offers instant gratification, and can reach millions of users instantly.

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Christmas Bend, Montana: Hello. What is eDonkey's revenue model? Do you make money off of advertising? On a larger front, is it possible to make a lot of money in this area?

Sam Yagan: We've been so focused on revolutionizing the technology that we have not broken much new ground on the revenue side. We have three primary forms of revenue:

1. Users who purchase our ad-free Professional version

2. Banner ads placed in the client

3. Software that we bundle with our download

In the long-run, we hope to add a fourth: distribution of copyrighted material. As I said earlier, we've only scratched the surface here, and it is not yet a major component. In the future, though, we hope that this will become our largest revenue stream.

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Los Angeles, CA: What do you think about other P2P applications like Morpheus, that allow users to search multiple networks?

Sam Yagan: We think this will become more and more common. We have just implemented a plugin system that allows anyone to make a plugin for eDonkey that downloads from any network. So our next version will also include the ability to download from other network:, bittorrent, gnutella and others.

It would be nice if Morpheus wasn't using our logo, though!

_______________________

Snakefoot, Wyo.: I get the impression that your cohorts in the file-sharing trade are probably desperately trying to strike a deal to get taken seriously by the music industry (as a legitimate business source, NOT a piracy haven) before their successful online outposts like iTunes blow you guys out of the water. What's the status of those negotiations?

Sam Yagan: Sadly, there are no really negotiations currently ongoing, though I would not describe us as desperate. Obviously (as you point out), the music industry is in the driver's seat and they have to be willing to come to the table before we can have those negotiations.

They have tried an aggressive litigation strategy and the courts pretty consistently rule in favor of the P2P companies. Of course, they have then taken the strategy of suing their own customers.

I think it is up to the recording industry to decide when it is more effective to engage the industry and its customers rather. In terms of "desperation" -- I think the recording industry has a lot more to gain from coming to the table than any other party.

_______________________

Burke, Va.: What's your argument for being a good corporate citizen? I saw an interview with the chief technology officer of Sharman Networks, who said Kazaa, when compared to edonkey, does not promote infringing activity. He added that kazaa from day one has been designed to move users towards paying.

Sam Yagan: It seems to me that Kazaa is much more geared toward infringing activity. eDonkey is simply a tool to share and download files, it almost exactly the same way that an FTP client is a tool to download files. Everything in our system is kept very generic. In no way do we encourage you to share files you don't have the right to.

Look, we're geared toward having our users pay too. I'd love to get all three million downloads we get per month to be of the paid variety. That's something that has to come from the customers, though.

_______________________

Anonymous: What is the current threshold for drawing attention to oneself, in terms of numbers of files being shared, and the likelihood of getting sued by RIAA or some other entertainment industry entity?

Sam Yagan: This is of course 100% up to the RIAA or the entity suing its customers. As far as I know (and you could do a quick web search to confirm or disconfirm) the recent law suits have targeted people sharing around 1,000 or more files.

This is in no way a strict rule, simply what I recall reading in the press accounts of the lawsuits.

_______________________

David McGuire: Unfortunately, we're out of time. I'd like to thank Sam Yagan for taking the time to join us today and our audience for asking so many thoughtful questions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May12.html

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House Panel OKs Identity-Theft Bill
Lisa Friedman

Registering an Internet domain name under a false identity while committing a copyright felony could bring an additional seven-year prison sentence under legislation passed Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee.

The panel also approved two bills co-sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena. One cracks down on identity theft, and the other creates criminal and civil penalties for falsely reporting a chemical, biological or nuclear threat.

The Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, and Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is aimed at nabbing copyright infringers.

The bill is supported by the Motion Picture Association of America. It increases to seven years the prison time for anyone who provides false or misleading contact information to a domain registrar, and then uses that online location to infringe on a trademark or copyright.

Opponents, which include the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, say the bill shackles Internet users' right to privacy.

The Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, which Schiff introduced with Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, increases the sentences for identity-theft convictions by about two years. It also creates a separate crime of "aggravated identity theft" for anyone who uses another person's identity to commit certain felonies.

The Senate passed similar legislation by Sen. Dianne Feinstein last year.

The Anti-Hoax Terrorism Act, which Smith introduced and to which Schiff is one of several original co-sponsors, makes perpetrators of terrorism hoaxes subject to at least five years in prison in addition to liability in a civil action and liability for reimbursing any costs connected to the false alarm.

The legislation came in response to false anthrax alarms and other hoaxes after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Currently it is a felony to perpetrate a hoax like falsely claiming there is a bomb on an airplane, and it also is a felony to communicate in interstate commerce threatening harm to another. The law, however, does not address hoaxes related to biological, chemical or nuclear dangers.

The bills now go to the House floor for consideration.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1...44559,00.html#

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

Napster Gags University Over RIAA's Student Tax
Ashlee Vance

Napster moved into damage control mode today after a university gave some idea as to how much a RIAA music tax will add to student costs.

Ohio University has put up a survey site to see if students are willing to pay $3 per month for the Napster music service. The $3 figure is the first concrete number given by any school indicating how much Napster and its RIAA bully force are looking to muscle out of students. Ohio University believes it will need 5,000 students to pay the $3 fee to make Napster a break-even proposition for the school. Napster has demanded that Ohio University stay silent about the price before anyone catches wind of the cost.

"Napster called us today and said we should not publicize the details or discuss our contract," said Sean O'Malley, spokesman Communication Network Services at OU. "The price was an idea they had suggested early on."

So far, Napster has refused to provide exact details as to how much Penn State University and the University of Rochester are "paying" for the company's service at their schools. Napster bills the public $10 per month for its service, but both Penn State and Rochester have admitted to getting steep discounts.

Napster and the RIAA have billed Penn State and Rochester as "models" to follow, if schools hope to avoid lawsuits by offering a legal music downloading service. The model concept, however, is a tough sell given the secrecy being employed by Napster. Universities across the country would end up shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars if they paid full price for Napster.

OU is taking the commendable step of not making Napster mandatory. It's simply trying to see if enough students are willing to pay $3 to make the service worthwhile."We just need to be careful not to lose money on it," O'Malley said. "Our state is having major budget issues, and we are a state-funded university." OU students have yet to face lawsuits from the RIAA, and peer-to-peer services are not really posing a problem to network bandwidth, O'Malley said. Still, the school hoped to be "proactive" with copyright protection.

On the plus side, Napster users at the school would be able to download as much music as they like for $3 per month - Windows users only, of course. Sadly, the DRM restrictions with Napster run high. Users can only make 3 copies of a song before the files become unplayable. In addition, students must pay 99 cents per song to move the file from their computer onto a CD or music playing device.

Students would also only be able to download songs while they are on the school network. Once they leave school their music disappears. Has renting culture ever been more fun?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/12/ou_napster_tax/

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

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: File Swappers Find Security in Waste
Erin Sherbert and Dan Goodin

Over the past two decades, the popularity of gated communities has soared as suburban dwellers sought refuge from criminals, speeding cars and next-door neighbors who stored junky boats and RVs in the side yard. That phenomenon is spreading to file sharing.

Worried about the recording industry's monitoring of Kazaa and other larger peer-to-peer networks, many file sharers are turning to Waste, a program that lets them securely swap music and videos in groups of small, trusted members

The software verifies a person's identity using what's called public key cryptography, the same technology spies and government spooks have relied on for years. It also wraps instant messages and downloads in a cryptographic envelope, making it practically impossible for outsiders to eavesdrop or figure out what kind of files are being transmitted.

Similar to the walls and guard houses in the upscale gated communities all over the U.S., Waste's security features appeal to file sharers who worry they might be the next to be sued for copyright infringement.

"I like it because of the security," said Kurt Makiewicz, a college student in Michigan. With Waste, "it's hard for people to see what you are transferring."

Waste also makes packets -- the bite-sized parcels data files are broken up into when they travel over the Net -- a uniform size, preventing universities and Internet service providers from detecting users who are trading music.

The software, created by the same wunderkind-cum-rebel that spawned the Winamp jukebox and the Gnutella peer-to-peer program, is the latest evolution in file swapping. The Recording Industry Association of America, once content suing only the networks that made music downloading possible, set it sites on individuals in September. To date it has sued thousands of people it accuses of illegally making copyrighted songs available online.

The legal assault has pushed people who once swapped music in open bazaars into exclusive private communities.

"I like the idea of encryption and private networks," said a 44-year-old user from Melbourne, Australia, who goes by the nick name Multi.
Users tend to be a low-profile gang that's selective about who they admit to their file-sharing lair, known as a mesh in Waste parlance. Often members know each other from previous networks such as Napster or Morpheus. Others meet on Web sites that let them exchange the cryptographic keys needed to connect to a network.

Another draw of Waste: the ability for to create clubs where members share the same obscure interest.

As a fan of decade-old Saturday morning cartoons, Nate, a Waste user from Washington who didn't want to give his last name, said it was hard to find animation files on larger networks and when he did they were often incomplete.

But on his Waste mesh, Nate says, he's been able to find copies of rare Spiderman shows. Users on the larger networks either don't have the same kind if hard-to-find cartoons, or they don't stay online long enough for others to download the large files.

"Waste is more reliable," he says.

Waste is the brain child of Justin Frankel, creator of the Winamp program for playing music on PCs. Winamp, installed more than 320 million times in the past seven years, impressed America Online enough that in 1999 it paid a reported $100 million for Frankel's company, San Francisco-based Nullsoft.

A year later, Frankel ran into trouble with his new employer when he released Gnutella, a program for sharing files. Unlike Napster, which the recording industry was in the process of shutting down, Gnutella didn't rely on a central server, making it far less vulnerable to legal challenges. AOL, now owned by Time Warner, responded by pulling Gnutella off Nullsoft's Web site.

Last May Frankel incurred Time Warner's wrath again when he posted Waste to his Web site. The company ordered that the software be pulled a day later, but by then other Web sites were offering the wares. Today programmers from organizations such as Sourceforge, a group that collaborates on open source projects, is busy creating updates.

So far programmers at Sourceforge are fixing bugs and adding minor enhancements, such as color-coding nick names so each one is more distinctive. Eventually, they plan to make Waste easier to use for the average non-technical person and to reengineer the program to work with larger numbers of users. They'd also like to see Waste code translated so it will run well on Macintosh and Linux computers. Right now it only runs on Windows machines.

Waste becomes sluggish once a mesh grows much beyond 50 people, a much bigger limitation than programs like Kazaa, which tend to coral its millions of users into groups of 350 or so. As a result, members usually pull down most of the content they want within a couple weeks, then the group either dies or morphs into a place where members socialize via Waste's instant messaging feature.

Waste's members-only character presents challenges that don't exist with larger networks. Whereas Kazaa welcomes anyone and randomly groups members together, Waste requires that a user be invited to a mesh. Once someone becomes a member there's no way of banishing the person.

"If this is a private party and we're having fun, how do we make sure we start inviting the right people?" said a 47 year old Waste user from Western Connecticut who goes by the pseudonym Jack Spratts. "If you let someone in who's bad for your health, you can not get rid of them."

Though many file swappers say they feel safer using Waste, the fear of getting caught in the web of copyright infringement lawsuits still lingers. The program, they say, is too quick to reveal users' IP addresses, the unique numerical listings the RIAA uses to go after suspected file sharers.

Spratts has woken up some mornings to find that his mesh of a handful of members he has known for months is suddenly populated with dozens of users he's never heard of, threatening the sense of security that came with being in a small community of people he knew. His only alternative was to leave the mesh and start a new one.

"That is a problem that has not been solved, and it's destroyed more meshes than anything else," said Spratts, who belongs to about 14 groups at the moment. Groups are usually organized by users' particular interests, be they an affection for 1970s punk rock, left-leaning politics or film noir.

"Waste was invented to provide a level of security that was unheard of the peer-to-peer file sharing," Spratts said. "It's its greatest strength and its greatest weakness, because it can lead to anarchy."
http://mjuice.com/is3_f1_waste.html

Until next week,

- js.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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telefunkin_u47 · 14-05-04, 05:28 PM

I'm a loyal Hip fan, I've purchased every cd they've released and have seen them live many time. I don't think they should see this copying binge as a bad thing. Alot of people that downloaded the single are people like me, I was just so excited to hear a new hip song that I had to have it then and there. This instance will not affect the sale of their new cd. I'm still going to buy it and I imagine most of the people who downloaded the single will too.

14-05-04, 05:28 PM	#3
telefunkin_u47 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: atlantic canada Posts: 95	Canada's Tragically Hip have decided file sharing is bad for their wallets. I'm a loyal Hip fan, I've purchased every cd they've released and have seen them live many time. I don't think they should see this copying binge as a bad thing. Alot of people that downloaded the single are people like me, I was just so excited to hear a new hip song that I had to have it then and there. This instance will not affect the sale of their new cd. I'm still going to buy it and I imagine most of the people who downloaded the single will too.

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