Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 17th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Early Edition


Quotes Of The Week

"I'm a holder of a copyright myself. But it's a book on homelessness and I don't mind if anyone wants to copy it." – Canadian politician Jack Layton

"People eventually realized that the VCR wasn't going to kill the movie industry and they should learn to use the technology." - Adam Eisgrau

"This type of legislation leads to something that looks like a 'police state,' with the persecution of intentions, compulsory espionage, violations of private life, freedom of opinion and personal communication. And all of this isn’t done to fight terrorists (who may gain considerable advantage from the resulting overburdening and dilution of anti-crime resources) but to satisfy the ego of one or another politician (who wants his own law against the internet) and the powerful lobbies and selfish interests of music, show business or software conglomerates, who don’t care if legislation is inefficient and messy, but enjoy the idea of "terrorizing" people into obedience." - ALCEI

"It's sometimes best to muddle along, take things one step at a time and see what happens. Society can have a way of sorting things out." - Jack Layton






New Frame, Same Picture

The movie companies are bent out shape. It's a full court media press! Now that Jack the Ripper’s stepping down ("I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone!”) they must've hired a new PR firm. Monday night they were on the Newshour with Jeffrey Kaye spewing bs about their “terrible problem” and so after some brief coverage of people who siphon legitimate sales (bootleggers selling burned discs on the street etc), they jump right onto downloaders, blaming them for who knows what since in reality home sales are up 150%. Said Warner Brothers Entertainment CEO Barry Meyer “You would not grow as many tomatoes if you couldn't sell them and protect people from stealing them. It is just a basic economic fact.” Wrong! Nobody’s stealing the movies! Repeat after me Mr. Meyer: “No-One-Is-Stealing-The-Movies.” “No-One-Is-Stealing-The-Movies.” “No-One-Is-Stealing-The-Movies.” Copying maybe, sharing definitely, but the analogy is nonsensical because while nearly everyone I know “copies” and “shares” tomatoes – it’s called “growing them” (God says it’s ok lol), the farmers are still raising ‘em by the railcar load and everybody’s happy! What a nutter. Unfortunately the Newshour didn’t question his premise or his loony analogy, just gave him a pass and swallowed it whole. I’ll tell you what’s basic economic fact and not scare mongering - the movie companies’ sales have increased faster than almost any other industry, and so has the enjoyment of file sharing. If you’re going to claim downloading affects sales at least be honest, because if downloading does affect sales it makes sales go up.

The fact of the matter is the movie companies have gotten addicted to their own greed. Where once they prospered selling tickets in theatres they're now obsessed with an unworkable corporate pyramid scheme that only let’s them see massive profits by selling to every single new aftermarket stream the audience embraces – P.P.V., cable, broadcast, videotape, DVD and now the internet, so of course they'll complain they can't make any more movies because people are downloading since it obscures the basic weakness in their economic plan. But it’s not true. File sharing does not negatively affect sales. How do we know? Because the aftermarket is exploding and sales are skyrocketing. It’s also backed up by serious studies. If the movie companies simply concentrated on their jobs making movies the audience wants to go out on the town and see, the whole file sharing bug a boo would be non-starter. Instead they're sounding more and more like the record companies: huge amounts of bitching – while home sales shoot up. The media then swallows it whole and uncritically parrots it back to us with no analysis. Why? Hmmm, let’s see. Oh yeah, because the movie companies are the media. The problem is not file sharing, the problem is big media.

File sharing is the solution.









Enjoy,

Jack.









Candaian Minister Freaking Out - Vows To Crush File Swapping

Schérrèr seeks to close existing loopholes
Keith Damsell

Music downloaders may have a short honeymoon from potential prosecution as the new federal Heritage Minister has promised to punish music file sharers.

"We are going to make sure that downloading stays illegal," said Hélène Schérrèr, a rookie Quebec MP sworn in as minister last December. "We will make it a priority so it is done as quickly as possible."

Officials at Heritage Canada, in tandem with Industry Canada, will soon meet to draft legislation to amend a loophole in the Copyright Act that permits music downloading, Ms. Schérrèr said in a recent interview. In addition, the minister will push to have the federal government ratify two international treaties that protect the ownership of copyright materials. In a judgment last month, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that swapping songs on the Internet for personal use does not break the law.

"Downloading a song for personal use does not amount to infringement," wrote Mr. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein. "I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory."

Judge von Finckenstein refused to grant the Canadian Recording Industry Association a court order to identify 29 so-called uploaders, Internet users it claimed had illegally posted hundreds of songs illegally on the Web. The ruling was hailed as a triumph for the privacy rights of Internet users and a major setback for the music industry's battle to fight music file sharing. CRIA will appeal the decision.

On April 4, Ms. Schérrèr attended the Juno Awards in Edmonton and spent much of the time in meetings with music industry officials.

"Everybody was so worried," she said after the event. The court decision "will have a huge impact . . . it sends a message to all young Canadians that downloading is not illegal. They will start downloading all over again.

"Now I really know what the music industry is all about . . . I am going back to Ottawa with the will to do something."

Brian Robertson, CRIA president, applauded the minister's commitment. The music industry has spent the past eight years lobbying Ottawa to amend copyright legislation and ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization's two copyright treaties.

"Canada is being sort of viewed as a copyright pariah for its inability to keep its copyright up to date," Mr. Robertson said. Judge von Finckenstein's ruling "is essentially saying you have no copyright protection on the Internet."

But Howard Knopf, an Ottawa lawyer who represents the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, suggested Ms. Schérrèr do more homework.

The bulk of music sold and downloaded in Canada is foreign, he said. If the music industry's lobbying efforts are successful, the costs of blank CDs and tapes will rise to pay levies to foreign performers.

"It strikes me that the minister's first job is to defend the interests of the public and not the music industry. It's a multibillion-dollar industry and hardly needs assistance," Mr. Knopf said.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...iness/Canadian


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Not So Fast Says Canadian Pol Jack Layton

Jack Layton has brought NDP out of the wilderness: A fire-in-the-belly politician, he has led the party to its highest polling numbers in years, and even has Stephen Harper taking notice (Edmonton Journal)
Alan Kellogg

Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton has been dissed as a past-master publicity hound, but was he actually trying to get recognized on the red carpet at Sunday's Juno Awards?

A colleague on the scene swears he was. If so, it was lost on the CTV pre-show host, whose grasp of current affairs might only extend as far as Avril Lavigne's latest outfit.

As it turned out, the former Toronto city councillor, who enjoys the support of musicians like Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page and Parachute Club founder Lorraine Segato, fared better than some politicians on the crimson runway. Ralph Klein was booed, which shows that we should invest fully in the aspirations of younger Albertans. Bill Smith pressed the flesh of perplexed kids on hand to toss flowers at Sarah McLachlan or Sam Roberts. Politics is no place for the easily shamed.

Hours earlier, Layton sat down for Sunday brunch in an Old Strathcona cafe just below the office of Alberta New Democrat Leader Raj Pannu.

Even if his party doesn't stand a chance in most Alberta constituencies, Layton claims voting NDP will "make a difference by energizing ridings" and strengthening the party via new legislation governing party donations. "We supported those reforms because of the dominance of the corporate sector.

"Now, anyone can have a real impact."

It was the end of Junos week, and with friends in the recording business -- along with serious initiatives to attract young supporters -- where does Layton stand on Internet music-file sharing?

"I'm a holder of a copyright myself. But it's a book on homelessness and I don't mind if anyone wants to copy it," he says with a grin. "I'm still not so sure how (file sharing) impacts sales -- some studies even say it enhances them. I don't think the dust has settled on this yet. When I was at university there was a great fear that photocopying was going to destroy the publishing industry and that hasn't happened. It's sometimes best to muddle along, take things one step at a time and see what happens. Society can have a way of sorting things out."

That's not the sort of loose, nuanced reading we've come to expect from federal NDP leaders of late. When pressed, though, he can still summon an old-fashioned Tommy Douglas-style analogy, distilled for the sound bites of today.

"When it comes to the Martin budget, you can imagine an emergency family meeting. The roof is leaking, granny is sick and needs medicine, there's no money for the oldest daughter's university books and the fridge is empty. And the father says: we should pay off the mortgage."

One thing he's mostly staying away from is the sponsorship scandal.

"It's deplorable, but how does it really affect people? I'm more interested in ideas. What about the fact that people are having to pay $500 more for their insurance, or why we're not supporting our front line troops, or the fact that with the GST hybrid cars cost more here than elsewhere? There's no action on Romanow, and the reality is that the Martin government is quietly about to support the American Star Wars initiative they know Canadians are against.

"Forget the esoteric Ottawa stuff, let's talk about down to earth, day-to-day issues that affect Canadians."

Given the obvious fact that Layton gets up the prime minister's nose, that party poll numbers are the highest in years, and that even Stephen Harper has discovered the NDP, it's clear the man is doing something right. He says he's not gloating, but recent internal surveys have him 20 points ahead of longtime Liberal MP Dennis Mills in their contested Toronto riding.

All through the talk, there's this nagging sense that there's something fundamentally different about the guy that separates him from his predecessors, something you can't quite put your finger on, since they say much the same things. It suddenly dawns.

Jack Layton is a professional politician, the real thing, with fire in his belly, and he loves his job. The NDP is out of the wilderness, and he's the reason.
http://action.web.ca/home/ndpnpd/en_...f25c33106e7b2f


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Recording Industry Appeals Judge's Uploader Ruling
Ottawa Business Journal Staff

The Canadian Recording Industry Association has filed its appeal of a court decision made last month that protects the identities of people who upload music files to the Internet for sharing.

The court decision on March 13 by Judge Konrad von Finckenstein of the Federal Court quashed a request by the CRIA that Internet Service Providers be forced to reveal the identities of alleged music uploaders.

The CRIA wanted the identities of 29 alleged uploaders in order to pursue legal action against them.

In addition to denying the CRIA's request, the judge also made additional rulings on issues involving copyright, online privacy and the liability of Internet Service Providers. None of his decisions were considered favourable to the recording industry.

"Today we filed an appeal of last month's court decision," CRIA General Counsel Richard Pfohl said in a statement. "We will argue that the decision was in error on a number of legal bases.

"In our view, Canadian copyright law does not allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers on the Internet," he said.

The recording industry has claimed that the proliferation of file-sharing services such as Kazaa has eroded sales and profits. However, a number of industry reports have contradicted that claim.
http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com...0965855021.php


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UK Music Industry Gets Tough On Serial Swappers
David Graham

RECENT reports that the UK’s record industry has threatened music pirates with court action if they do not stop uploading music have highlighted how common

file sharing and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology now are.

According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), 7.4 million people in the UK are using the internet to swap music files illegally. Financially, this is hitting the music industry hard.

The BPI claims that sales of CD albums are down by 32 per cent and singles by 59 per cent in the past year as a result of downloading. Well publicised cases, notably Napster, Grokster and now KaZaA, demonstrate how the music industry has tried to adapt to the problem of file sharing and how it is likely to deal with it in the future.

File sharing, to give it a definition, takes place when information is shared through P2P networks. A P2P network is a type of network in which each computer connects to another directly without the need for a central server. All computers (or "nodes") in a P2P network which communicate directly with each other may switch between the role of server and client at any time, according to the needs of the network.

Napster, set up in 1999 by 19-year-old US computer expert Shawn Fanning, was a less "pure" P2P network because a central database was generated containing the music files available on the network.

Fanning’s P2P software let Napster users connect with each other and transmit music files (MP3 files) directly from each other’s hard drives.

Napster was set up for new bands to post their music on, but was soon used to swap tracks from users’ collections, meaning that users no longer had to buy CDs. In early July 2000 there were said to be eight million users of Napster’s services in the US, each swapping an average of 20 tracks per month.

An action was brought against Napster by A&M Records, under the American principle of contributory copyright infringement. In the subsequent appeal, the injunction initially granted to A&M Records was recalled, holding that although the Napster system could be used to infringe copyright, it also had substantial legitimate purposes.

The court did not, however, order that Napster shut down. Napster had to shut down as it did not comply with a "zero infringement" standard in the operation of its centralised file-indexing service.

New file-swap websites quickly replaced Napster, most notably KaZaA and Grokster. Unlike Napster, KaZaA did not hold any information on its servers about the indexing, receipt, possession, searching or transfer of any media files by its users. Instead, it used the software FastTrack, which turns individual users’ hard drives into servers. If any server breaks down, other "servers" can keep transferring the data. In this way, the main KaZaA server was not needed to do file swaps.

In the case of KaZaA v Buma/ Stemra, the Supreme Court in the Netherlands overturned the District Court’s ruling that KaZaA was liable for copyright infringement. The appeal court found that KaZaA was not responsible for the illegal actions of its users.

This is the first European decision to protect a file swapping website against liability for copyright infringement (although there has been a similar decision in the US relating to Grokster), but it did not, as is widely believed, rule that file sharing is legal. It ruled that KaZaA could not be forced to take measures against illegal use of the software, which means that for now there is no legal obstruction restricting the use of KaZaA in the Netherlands.

Notwithstanding the decision over KaZaA, the UK music industry has started its own "get-tough" campaign against internet piracy and has threatened to prosecute offenders.

The BPI plans to send on-screen messages to pirates, warning them of possible legal action. This campaign will be aimed at "serial uploaders" - people who make their music collections available to others - rather than the millions of people who download music.

The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry has also said that it will pursue serious offenders across Europe through the courts. This represents a shift in attitude from the aftermath of Napster, when action was threatened against almost every user that had attempted to file share.

In the light of these recent campaigns, it will be interesting to see how this area of law develops. While, at least for the moment, P2P networks appear to be able to operate without immediate risk of liability for copyright infringement, "serial uploaders" are at serious risk of prosecution, which may well have the cumulative effect of rendering P2P networks such as KaZaA obsolete.
http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=411442004


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G.I.'s in Iraq Tote Their Own Pop Culture
Thom Shanker


Specialist Abbey Cayanan is the
D.J. of "Abbey in the Afternoon"
on the Armed Forces Network.
Photo: Lynsey Addario/Corbis, for
The New York Times


BAGHDAD, Iraq — American troops arrive for duty in Iraq with a rifle in one hand, a wrench in the other and a lot of American pop culture in their rucksacks.

Personal CD players, MP3's, portable DVD movie systems, satellite dishes and laptop computers with Internet access allow soldiers to stay current with American music, movies and television, even inside the concertina wire at bases deep in a foreign society isolated by years of dictatorship, embargo and war.

When a day's combat patrol or reconstruction mission is over, the troops join the global consumer culture, retreating into the the privacy of headphones to recapture a bit of territory in the war zone, free from the collective of military life.

The new technologies have had a potent impact on the military, ending its monopoly over the supply of news and entertainment for American troops serving in a foreign land whose borders include a language barrier.

Senior officers have responded with daily newsletters for unit commanders and the troops via e-mail. The American Forces Network continues to splice official messages into its satellite TV programming and mingle them with the songs on its radio station here.

But when the troops peel off their flak jackets, they largely tune into their own play lists. While musical tastes among the troops are as varied as they are in civilian life, in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates let it be recorded: Soldiers assigned to civilization's cradle will rock.

At the Kirkush Military Training Base in the eastern Iraqi desert less than 15 miles from the frontier with Iran, an hour's wait for a helicopter was spent listening to Marilyn Manson, Eminem and Shania Twain before the Black Hawk fired up its turbines and somebody back in the barracks, as if on cue and with a dark sense of irony, cranked up Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."

The songs came from a European satellite music channel and a communal computer where 12.8 gigabites of tunes had been downloaded for sharing on MP3's. The rule was simple: Take some music, add some music.

"Any time anybody on the team gets a new CD, they load it in, so we stay pretty current," said Sgt. Thomas R. Mena.

As the new CD from Tool blasted in the barracks, Sergeant Mena scrolled through the computerized music library, which ranged from Abba and AC/DC, through Limp Biskit and Metallica and on to Van Halen and ZZ Top.

Émigrés from West Africa who joined the Army for citizenship and career training arrived with the latest Nigerian pop CD's. Chinese-Americans hauled along hot Hong Kong video imports.

"We've got the whole world under one tent," said Pfc. Nicholas Allen of the First Infantry Division's Third Brigade Combat Team.

Troops running a checkpoint near the Kuwait border end their day by listening to Bush, not their commander in chief but the grunge riffs of a band with the same name.

Inside the Baghdad Green Zone, the walled-off sector of central Baghdad whose palaces are home to the American-led occupation authority, Ludacris and R. Kelly were heard within earshot of the broad promenade where Saddam Hussein celebrated victories under crossed swords that reach five stories into the sky.

A Green Beret sergeant in his 40's, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and now in Iraq to train new domestic security forces, said he packed Grateful Dead CD's next to his laser rangefinder.

The country and western of Dwight Yoakam blared from a mechanics' bay at Taji airfield, north of the Iraqi capital, even as a bass drum of captured ordnance rumbled in a controlled detonation.

So in the spate of anniversary stories, one year after the start of the war, 12 months since the capture of Baghdad, as nearly a quarter million American troops trade places in Iraq with 130,000 veterans clearing out their tents to make way for 110,000 fresh soldiers, it is time to take stock.

This is not Vietnam and Jimi Hendrix. In the American war in Iraq there is no obvious soundtrack save the thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors, which set the rapid tempo for missions all across the combat zone.

Sgt. Daniel Kartchien of the 419th Transportation Company has been in the Army since 1973. He said that when troops go off duty, "it's all individual stuff now."

"Back in Vietnam you had those doing recreational drugs on one side and the heavy drinking on another," he said. "Here there's no alcohol allowed. And drugs aren't the thing anymore. Everybody has their own MP3 player to pass the time."

The Great War had George M. Cohan to lead an all-American chorus to remember our boys "Over There." The Dorsey brothers helped G.I.'s march through Europe to a big band rhythm. Deep in the jungles of Indochina, Jimi Hendrix boomed from cassette players to men lost in "Purple Haze" and the fog of war. Popular military D.J.'s, like Adrian Cronauer, portrayed by Robin Williams in a fictionalized account of 1965 Saigon, spoke straight from the heart, straight to the troops, in must-hear radio shows on the old armed forces radio network.

But for troops serving today in Iraq, the American Forces Network is most popular for its satellite television, which reels in sports, news and shows from "The Simpsons" to "Seinfeld" to "Friends" to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

The network's Freedom Radio broadcasts live from inside Iraq for half the day and takes feeds from its headquarters in Riverside, Calif., for the rest. But there is no radio personality who has seized popular acclaim as the voice to wake up troops with an irreverent "Good morning, Baghdad!" In fact soldiers came up with their own salutation here, greeting comrades in the ranks with, "Who's your Baghdaddy?" (No doubt T-shirts are on the way.)

"Our format is `Bright Adult Contemporary,' which is mainstream hits," said Lt. Col. Mathew Durham, who is in charge of the American Forces Network in Baghdad. "Naturally we have to be careful about what we play in an Islamic nation. But we've got a big play list."

Soldiers at checkpoints, where headphones are prohibited, are among the most loyal network radio listeners. The messages they hear between the songs are mostly lowest common denominator public service announcements, urging soldiers to clear their weapons before entering dining halls, to drink more bottled water as March temperatures push toward 100 degrees, to write home more often and file their taxes on time.

Unit commanders have learned it is their responsibility to get important information to the troops, even in the earphone age.

The First Armored Division, for example, publishes The Old Ironsides Daily, which is distributed both as hard copy and as a PDF document via e-mail. The March 23 issue paid tribute to the division's fallen soldiers, listed electoral primaries state-by-state and advised soldiers about a new generation of DVD burners with added capacity.

At a field encampment, Camp Warhorse outside Baquba, the military's forward operating base that carries the grim distinction of being mortared more often than any other, commanders order a total blackout at night: no streetlamps illuminate the roads or walkways, and windows and doors are blanketed.

But satellite TV dishes sprout like mushrooms in the dark, so the dining hall and a cratered hanger that is a recreation center are lighted with the blue light of sitcoms.

The delegation traveling with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, watched the Super Bowl live with troops of the 101st Airborne Division at Mosul this year, a treat for veterans of the first Persian Gulf war, who recalled not knowing the winner of the 1991 championship for up to a week.

Movie fans among soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division kept up with the Academy Awards in real time before rotating home from their headquarters in Tikrit.

The military works hard to fill the shelves of base and post exchanges across Iraq with surprisingly new product.

"The PX gets all the new CD's, and only about two months late," said Specialist Roland Hall of the 14th Air Defense Artillery. "So we get all the new music we need."

Hollywood's hottest films are here on the local markets, usually illegally.

"If a movie has been out in a theater for a week, you can get it here," said Specialist Michael Trujillo with the 819th Military Police Company. He said bootleg DVD copies of "50 First Dates," starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, were on sale just days after it opened in the United States.

Not surprisingly, soldiers tend to favor action flicks like the "Matrix," "Mad Max" and "Terminator" trilogies, "Tomb Raider" films, "Scorpion King" and "Cop Land."

Officers prefer "The Sopranos" and slightly more cerebral combat movies, like "U-571," a submarine thriller about World War II. Once you get enough stars on your collars though, the tube is turned to 24-hour news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/ar...ic/13TROO.html


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Plea in Movie Piracy Case
Bloomberg News

An Illinois man pleaded guilty yesterday to federal charges related to Internet posting of copies of first-run movies supplied by an Academy Awards voter, prosecutors said.

Russell W. Sprague, 51, of Homewood, pleaded guilty to one count of copyright infringement before Judge George King in United States District Court in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sprague admitted to pirating promotional copies of videos, known as screeners, that are sent to Oscar voters and film critics.

Mr. Sprague could face as much as three years in prison and might have to repay the studios for any losses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/business/13movie.html


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Police Search French Offices Of Amazon.com To Check DVDs Being Sold

PARIS (AFP) - Police searched offices of the French subsidiary of the US-based Internet retailer Amazon.com in a check on DVDs they suspected were being sold illegally, officials said.

The operation took place at the headquarters of the subsidiary, Amazon.fr, in an eastern Paris suburb, and in a warehouse belonging to the company in the central city of Orleans.

Law enforcement officials said officers were scrutinising DVDs to see where they came from as part of a preliminary investigation into "audiovisual piracy".

A source close to the inquiry said there were suspicions that some of the DVDs sold online did not "conform to the laws" in France governing such items.

The website of Amazon.fr offers DVDs in many categories, including those made for the French market, DVDs imported from the United States and Britain, and second-hand discs.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040406/323/eqgok.html


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Michigan Man Pleads Guilty To Selling Bootlegged Recordings Of Bands
AP

A Michigan man pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal charge that he sold bootlegged recordings of performances by Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, KISS and Bruce Springsteen two years ago.

Jeffrey Smittle, 44, of Ceresco, Mich., faces as much as five years in prison and $250,000 in fines when he is sentenced in July.

Federal prosecutors said a search of Smittle's former home in Canonsburg, a Pittsburgh suburb, turned up more than 11,000 pirated recordings, which he allegedly sold to music dealers, at record shows and over the Internet.

Smittle's attorney, federal public defender Crystina Kowalczyk, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment after business hours on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors said the case was rare for western Pennsylvania but mirrored efforts nationwide by the recording industry and law enforcement to curtail bootlegged recordings.

The RIAA, which represents the nation's five major record labels, has set up offices with detectives, hired private detectives and worked with law enforcement to crack down on pirated recordings.

The millions of pirated CDs routinely sold coast to coast are costing its members $300 million domestically and $4.2 billion worldwide in lost sales and royalties, according to the RIAA.
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/...6_20040414.htm


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Two Arrests Under Camcorder Law
BBC

Los Angeles police have made the first arrests under a new law targeting pirates who use camcorders in cinemas.

Ruben Centero Moreno, 34, was arrested after the projectionist used night vision goggles to spot video cameras. And Min Jae Joun, 28, was arrested on suspicion of recording a screening of The Passion of the Christ on 10 April.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he hoped it would "send a clear signal such crimes will not be tolerated".

"In both cases, the LAPD's fine work would not have occurred without the swift actions of the employees of Pacific Theatres," he told the Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Federal authorities estimate the illegal copying of films costs the entertainment industry as much as $3bn (£1.7bn) a year. The MPAA has established a nationwide telephone hotline for cinema employees to report violations. Studios and cinemas are also investing in metal detectors and night-vision goggles.

Mr Moreno was arrested on 12 April after a screening of The Alamo at the Pacific Winnetka Theatre in the Chatsworth area. No hearing date has yet been set. Mr Joun was arrested after another audience member complained about a red light on a camcorder at the Pacific Theatre at the Grove. He was released on bail and ordered to appear at a hearing on 5 May. If convicted, both men face up to 12 months in jail.

The California anti-camcorder law, which came into force on 1 January, makes it an offence to take a camcorder into a cinema with the intent of taping a movie. Similar laws are on the statute books in nine other US states and the District of Columbia. The new laws enable local authorities to act on offences that would normally be considered violations of federal copyright law. The MPAA claims that between May 2002 and May 2003, over 50 major movie titles were "stolen" by camcording before their US cinema release. MPAA spokesman Matthew Grossman said many illegal recordings were obtained by people who sneaked into advance screenings held for film critics.

The latest arrests follow that of Chicago resident Russell Sprague, who pleaded guilty to copyright infringement earlier this week after being charged of illegally copying movie preview tapes, known as screeners. The 51-year-old faces up to three years in prison for creating pirate copies of films including Mystic River, Kill Bill Volume I and Seabiscuit.

But his sentencing has been postponed for six months to allow the movie studios to calculate the losses incurred.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/3628049.stm


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Stay Sought On U.S. Cable Ruling
Reuters

Cable operators said Tuesday that they are seeking to suspend a ruling that would subject their Internet offerings to extensive regulation while they take their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, a U.S. appeals court refused to reconsider its decision that regulators mistakenly insulated cable companies that offer high-speed Internet from regulations that could force them to offer a choice of Internet providers.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco had ruled in October that the Federal Communications Commission should have classified cable broadband as a telecommunications service instead of an information service.

On Tuesday, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and several cable operators asked the appeals court to stay its decision, due to go into effect Wednesday, until the high court decides if it will hear the appeal.

"This case centers on the regulatory status of a service that is of key importance to national communications policy: broadband Internet service," said NCTA, which represents major cable operators like Time Warner and Comcast.

If the FCC labeled cable broadband as a telecommunications service, cable companies would likely have to offer consumers the ability to have a rival Internet service provider unless the FCC decided otherwise.

But the FCC decided in March 2002 that high-speed Internet service from cable companies was an information service, and therefore not immediately subject to access requirements.

The FCC has asked for comment on whether it should require cable companies to give consumers a choice of Internet service providers. Some cable companies already provide consumers some choice.
http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5186010.html


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Lindows Shopping for New Name
Wired News Report

Lindows, the scrappy vendor of Linux-based operating systems for bare-bones PCs, is looking for a new moniker.

Lindows founder Michael Robertson said Tuesday his company will change its name under enormous pressure by Microsoft. Microsoft has sued Lindows saying the name is too close to its Windows brand and violates its trademarks.

On Friday, a Seattle federal judge denied Lindows' motion to stop Microsoft from pursuing international lawsuits against the Linux company. Microsoft had won injunctions against Lindows in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, but the Seattle judge said U.S. courts don't have jurisdiction to challenge those decisions.

Robertson announced the name change in a letter on the Lindows site. He expressed frustration with his legal dealings with Microsoft. Lindows won a trademark lawsuit filed by Microsoft in December 2001. But since then, Microsoft has pummeled Lindows with lawsuits overseas.

"Microsoft is publicly demanding that the EU respect the U.S. court actions concerning their monopolistic behavior and not impose their own rulings," Robertson said. "Microsoft hypocritically has no such respect for the U.S. court decision which determined we can operate under the term Lindows pending a final resolution of the litigation."

He said the company is perusing suggestions and will announce its new name on April 14.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,62966,00.html


OK, Try Linspire
Dinesh C. Sharma

Lindows, bowing to legal pressure from Microsoft, has renamed its operating system.

The company announced on Wednesday that its Linux operating system will now be called Linspire and that a similarly named Web site will be the primary online destination for consumers who want to purchase the company's products or who need support for previously purchased software.

The name change had been expected, following recent court rulings in Europe. The company last week acknowledged that lawsuits by Microsoft challenging the Lindows name would force it to adopt a new moniker for Europe and other foreign markets.

But in the United States, where Lindows has had more interim success in its legal battles with Microsoft, the name Lindows will still be used in certain instances and as the corporate name.

"Despite our victories in the United States and overseas, a name change is still necessary to counter Microsoft's strategy to sue us in courts around the world. We're hoping that this puts a halt on the international lawsuits," Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows, said in a statement.

The San Diego-based company is locked in a 2-year-old legal battle with Microsoft, which says that the Lindows name is an infringement of its trademark for the Windows operating system. Lindows argues that the trademark is invalid, because "windows" is a generic computing term.

The U.S. case, already delayed several times, is likely to go trial later this year. The judge overseeing that case has denied Microsoft's requests for an injunction that would bar Lindows from using the name. But the software giant has been more successful overseas, where judges in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands all have granted such injunctions.

Linspire is similar in features and capabilities to the original open-source Lindows operating system and customers will not need to upgrade, the company said. All Lindows software products will carry the Linspire brand within two weeks, it said.

As of Wednesday, the Lindows.com site carries a prominent notice that "pending Lindows' appeal, visitors from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg are not permitted to access the Lindows.com website or purchase Lindows products." The identical Linspire site carries the same message.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5191333.html


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Concern Grows Over Browser Security
Marguerite Reardon

Browser-based security threats are on the rise and may pose the next significant risk to information technology operations, according to a technology trade association.

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) on Monday released its second annual report on IT security and the work force. The survey asked nearly 900 organizations to rank their top 15 security concerns. According to the results, 36.8 percent said they were plagued by one or more browser-based attacks in the last six months. That's up from 25 percent in last year's survey.

"Browser-based attacks are a logical evolution," said Randall Palm, director of IT at CompTIA. "The better we get at stopping attacks, the
more creative hackers get at writing new ones. Ten years ago, most viruses were distributed on floppy disks. Then came e-mail and instant- messaging software. Now, they are targeting browsers."

Browser-based attacks are typically unleashed when a person visits a Web page that appears harmless but actually contains hidden code intended to sabotage a computer or compromise privacy. Some attacks simply crash a browser, while others pave the way for the theft of personal information or the loss of confidential proprietary data.

One of the most common ways of disseminating these attacks is through e-mails that include a link to a malicious Web server. Because the attacks usually aren't launched until the user clicks on the link, many firewalls don't catch them. Traditional firewalls examine traffic coming into the network, but guarding against browser attacks requires that traffic leaving the network also be inspected.

Some companies are using products from start-ups such as SurfControl and Websense that are designed to monitor and control corporate Web usage in order to help protect against browser-based attacks. Firewall vendors, like Check Point Software Technologies and NetScreen Technologies, have also added some protection. But Palm said these companies still have a long way to go before they eliminate the problem.

"Stateful inspection of inbound vulnerabilities is not Check Point's or NetScreen's main focus," he said. "All the firewall vendors are playing catch-up, when it comes to protecting against this threat."

Browser vendors also are taking action to minimize the risk to their products. In January, Microsoft said it would release software updates to Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer designed to protect Web surfers from being lured to Web sites that could contain malicious code. In December, a Danish security firm alerted the security community to an IE bug that would let hackers display false Web addresses.

While concern over browser-based security threats is growing, companies still view computer viruses and worm attacks as the most threatening security risk. But these threats are significantly less common than they were a year ago, according to the survey. Last year, 80 percent of organizations identified worm and virus attacks as their most common IT security threat. This year, that number is 68.6 percent.

Last year, network intrusion issues were the second-most common security threat, garnering 65.1 percent of the vote. This year, network intrusion issues dropped significantly, falling to 39.9 percent. This drop could be attributed to the high percentage of companies using antivirus applications to fight viruses and worm attacks. According to CompTIA, 95.5 percent of organizations use some form of antivirus technology.
http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5190037.html


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P2P Telephone News

Canada Leans Toward Regulating VoIP
Ben Charny

Canadian utility regulators on Wednesday said that their existing telephone rules apply to most Internet phone calls--a tentative decision that phone executives say worsens an already haphazard regulatory landscape governing Net phone service providers.

Any Net phone provider that supplies 10-digit phone numbers to subscribers, then lets them make or get calls from traditional dialers, would have to follow the regulations, according to the nonbinding decision released Wednesday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

Net phone services, which use the Internet rather than traditional circuit-switched phone networks, share enough "functional characteristics" to their circuit-switched competitors to merit regulating, according to the CRTC. "VoIP service providers...should be subject to the regulatory framework for local competition," the commission wrote.

Reaction from U.S. VoIP providers signals an oncoming fight. "On the surface, it sounds like CRTC got whole thing wrong," said Jeff Pulver, whose free VoIP dialing service, Free World Dialup, recently won an exemption from the Federal Communications Commission's telephone rules. "They are treating the service the same, whether it's VoIP or traditional, and not taking into account the major differences."

Pulver and other U.S. VoIP executives believe not only that Canadian authorities are wrong, but that they're complicating an already confusing VoIP regulatory landscape that threatens the spread of commercial services. In the United States, the FCC wants a light approach to coddle the young industry, while dozens of individual U.S. states would like VoIP regulated in order to receive the essential services funding they usually get from traditional phone companies.

An FCC representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

Meanwhile, outside North America, VoIP regulation is also mixed. Because the technology is still predominantly a North American phenomenon, the services are generally unregulated, but some countries are creating policy. Panama has been particularly proactive in trying to regulate VoIP calls that originate or terminate within its borders.

The CRTC's decision could impact 8x8, VoicePulse, Vonage and other U.S.-based Net phone providers that sell dialing plans across North America, U.S.-based Net phone executives say.

A Vonage representative said the decision supplies some measure of clarity to the Canadian rules. However, the representative added that, because the decision is still under review, it is too early to comment further.
http://news.com.com/2100-7352-5186851.html



FCC Urged To Keep VoIP Regulation-Free
Declan McCullagh

Dozens of conservative and lower-tax advocacy groups on Wednesday urged the Federal Communications Commission to protect Internet telephone services from crushing regulations.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Michael Powell, the organizations asked him to make sure that the weighty quilt of regulations blanketing traditional phone services will not apply to fledgling voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) companies.

"We urge the commission to send a clear signal of forbearance on new taxation and regulation," said the letter's 34 signers, which included many groups that are influential within the Republican Party. Among the signers are the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Republicans United for Tax Relief, and the Family Research Council.

The FCC is considering what rules, if any, will govern VoIP services that partially travel over the traditional phone network. The FCC has already ruled that Internet-to-Internet phone calls and instant-messaging communications that do not touch the phone network are immune from the hefty stack of government rules, taxes and requirements that applied to 20th-century telephone networks.

Glaringly absent from the letter was any mention of the controversial topic of wiretapping VoIP conversations. Last month, the FBI published a sweeping proposal that would require all broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police.

The language could even force companies to build backdoors into everything from instant-messaging and VoIP programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The deadline to submit comments to the FCC responding to the Bush administration's request is Monday.

"We chose not to get into that area," said John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union, which organized the ad hoc coalition. "We wanted to maximize the number of groups and focus on a limited number of issues. There's a trade-off. You broaden the topic, you lose people."

Some of the coalition members are close to the law-and-order wing of the Republican Party and might not agree to sign a letter that could be seen as opposing the FBI. Other members, like Americans for Tax Reform, have been strong defenders of encryption and electronic privacy in the past.

Wednesday's letter also calls for a renewal of a temporary federal ban on Internet access taxes, which expired in November. "In the period since the moratorium has expired, many state and local elected leaders have begun eyeing new charges on Internet access and commerce," the letter said.
http://news.com.com/2100-7352-5186747.html


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Stumbling Blocks For Skype
Mike Langberg

Skype is not hype.

This new Internet service really does let you make computer-to-computer phone calls anywhere in the world absolutely free, and the audio quality is outstanding. There are some significant drawbacks, however, that will keep Skype from becoming hugely popular right away.

If you've already heard about Skype (www.skype.com), it's probably because its two European founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, previously created the peer-to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa.

Like the voice chat built into America Online's Instant Messenger and other IM programs, Skype's voice-over-Internet protocol connections are free but require people on both ends of the conversation to be sitting in front of a computer and running the same program.

You'll need a newer Windows computer running either Windows XP or Windows 2000, equipped with a broadband connection plus speakers and a microphone or a PC headset. You start by downloading the Skype software from the company's Web site. Installation takes a few minutes, and the final step is creating a user name and password.

From home, I was startled by the lifelike voice quality. It was as if I was playing a CD.

From the overburdened Internet connection at my office, however, the experience was about on the level of the worst of cell phone calls. The Internet moves data in little packets, reassembling them at their destination. For a Web page, it doesn't matter if the packets get delayed half a second. But even small disruptions can degrade Internet phone calls.

Skype's other big drawback is that you have to be sitting in front of the computer to make calls. This might not be a problem for office workers or college students in small dorm rooms, but Skype doesn't fit well into a typical home existence.

Still, that free price tag is hard to resist. A Skype spokeswoman said 3.5 million people have created Skype user names, and -- depending on the time of day -- anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 users are online. Those aren't huge numbers, but it's an impressive start for a service that's only 7 months old.
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/vobox14_20040414.htm


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Score One For Song-Swappers

The University of Ottawa's tech-savvy law clinic, led by Philippa Lawson (above) jumped in to make online privacy and copyright arguments no one else was making. A judge last week ruled against Big Music -- and the defeat is resounding across the online music world
Andrew Mayeda

It was Wednesday, the last day of March, and Philippa Lawson and her team of University of Ottawa law students were watching the fax machine like hawks, waiting for the decision to arrive. Federal Court Justice Konrad von Finckenstein had promised that his ruling would be ready more than a week and a half ago.

At 11:49 a.m., the first pages of the ruling quietly spilled out. Alex Cameron, a graduate student in the U of O's law and technology program, was the first to notice. Too bad there wasn't enough paper in the fax to print the 31-page decision. Cameron, who weeks earlier had argued in a Sparks Street courtroom for the protection of individual privacy and online anonymity, rushed to feed the machine with paper.

Minutes later, page 23 came through. Near the bottom were the words that dealt a crippling blow to the recording industry's campaign to smoke out rampant file-sharers who swap songs using online services such as Kazaa and Grokster: "This motion is denied."

In the next few days, those words resounded across the online music world. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Economist, to name a few, analyzed their significance in the wider battle between the industry and file-sharers. "Canada Puts Arctic Chill on Music Industry," blared a headline on the Post's website. "A haven has been created for millions of Canadians to do file-sharing lawfully," an Ohio State professor told USA Today.

In Canada, it meant Geekboy@KaZaA and 28 other defendants were spared the wrath of The Canadian Recording Industry Association. CRIA, which represents the big labels accounting for 95 per cent of the music made and sold in Canada, would not be able to extract their identities from Internet service providers and follow up by suing them.

For the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), a fledgling student law clinic at the U of O directed by Lawson, it was an unquestionable victory. Many arguments presented by the clinic, which had been granted the right to intervene in the case, were echoed by the judge in his ruling.

Two days later, Lawson looks back through the whirlwind of cobbled-together press releases, hasty website updates, media calls and congratulatory e-mails and tries to remember how she felt.

"This is great," she says. "This is what we argued. We made a difference.

"We really made a difference in this case, because we were the only ones asking (the judge) to rule on the copyright issue. That was very important... because otherwise this very grey and misunderstood area of the law would remain grey and misunderstood."

It's been a long week. Lawson is tired, fighting a cold. Her voice trails, only to return in rapid, expansive bursts of thought -- as when she talks about the clinic's mission. "Free speech, civil liberties, fundamental human rights values are what underlie the work the clinic is doing," she says. "And a desire to make sure we're not shutting down opportunities to use new technologies in new and beneficial ways."

Team Effort

Lawson assembled a core team of four to put together CIPPIC's case: Cameron, who practised intellectual property law in Vancouver for several years before joining U of O's graduate program in law and technology last year; Jason Young, Cameron's classmate; and Howard Knopf, a veteran copyright lawyer at the Ottawa law firm Macera and Jarzyna. Both Cameron and Young are doing work on electronic privacy and have been actively involved with the clinic since its fall launch.

Lawson is no stranger to going to bat for the Little Guy. The daughter of activist parents, she honed an interest in third-world development and international human rights as a Trent University undergraduate and while attending Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. After finishing her law degree at Queen's University, she began volunteering at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, where she later worked for 12 years. Parachuted into a case on long- distance phone competition, Lawson quickly developed expertise on the effects of new technologies on the privacy of consumers and citizens. She has also represented consumer and public-interest clients in major telecom regulatory proceedings, appearing before all federal-court levels, including the Supreme Court.

When Lawson decided to apply for leave to intervene in the case, she knew she'd need more firepower. Knopf, whom she had known for several years through legal circles, was the answer. "I felt confident on the privacy law issues, but I don't have an intellectual property law background. So we were very lucky to be able to retain the services of Howard Knopf," Lawson explains.

Knopf has worked in copyright law for close to 25 years. As a former senior advisor to the federal government, he helped write a batch of amendments to the Copyright Act in 1988. Before attending law school, he was also a professional clarinetist who toured internationally and appeared on several radio recordings. "Maybe you'll find them on Kazaa," he jokes. "If you find them, you're welcome to them."

CRIA had announced before Christmas it planned to sue excessive file sharers. Soon after, Lawson met with officials at a few major ISPs to scope out how they would respond to lawsuits against their subscribers. She got the impression they wouldn't put up much resistance.

"We knew if the suits went ahead, the defendants would be needing some kind of legal assistance. But we don't have the kind of resources to be taking on big legal cases." She began to consider the precedents for intervening in cases and arguing on behalf of the public interest.

On Feb. 10, CRIA filed a motion asking the court to order five ISPs to disclose the identities of 29 alleged music uploaders. Von Finckenstein soon adjourned the case until March 12, and Lawson saw a window of opportunity for the clinic to get involved. The ISPs had addressed the costs of complying with the motion, and in some cases, the effect on their customers' privacy. But none had tackled the fundamental question of whether file sharing was legal under current copyright laws, nor the case's broad privacy implications. If ISPs were forced to identify customers in this case, what precedent would that set for governments or corporations seeking to identify those who deprecate them in online chatrooms or websites?

Lawson decided to intervene, enlisting Knopf to help present CIPPIC's application for intervenor status in court. Electronic Frontier Canada would eventually intervene as well.

On March 1, von Finckenstein granted CIPPIC leave to intervene, but gave it only until the end of the week to submit its arguments. "That's when things started getting really interesting, because we had to work fast," says Lawson.

The next four days were a blur. Lawson, Cameron and Young crafted the privacy argument. Knopf handled the copyright side. Drafts criss-crossed the e-mail ether. Lawson called on more than a dozen students connected to CIPPIC to research bits and pieces. The night before the deadline, Young and Cameron pulled an all-nighter at the lab, and a final document was eventually patched together. As the deadline neared, they had to fax copies to other parties in the case. With the fax tied up, it was faster to run the main submission to the court registry on Elgin Street. Carim Lawrence Kiwan, a CIPPIC student, did the legwork. They were under the wire with minutes to spare.

"It was a really good team effort," recalls Knopf. "It was actually one of the most successful team efforts I've been involved with. It just worked out that way. Sometimes you do all the advance planning in the world and it doesn't work out, sometimes it just spontaneously does."

That teamwork continued into the final hearings. Cameron and Knopf appeared in court to argue CIPPIC's case. Young kept an online log of the proceedings.

When the decision came, legal experts were shocked. The judge not only found the evidence presented by CRIA unsatisfactory. He also concluded that making music files available in a computer's shared directory is not an infringement of copyright. The Copyright Board had already ruled that downloading is legal because of a levy consumers pay on blank media including CDs. Von Finckenstein's decision effectively cleared the whole file-sharing circuit.

That put Canada on a starkly different path from the U.S., where the recording industry has aggressively sued a few thousand file sharers and reached settlements with several hundred of them. Are copyright laws really so different in Canada, or is it how judges interpret them?

A little of both, says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S. civil liberties organization. To this point, both downloading and sharing music on peer-to-peer networks have been ruled illegal under U.S. law, she notes.

"There are some differences in the copyright law, but they're not all that different. I think the bigger difference is the Canadian courts actually have embraced the idea of copyrights as a balance (between copyright holders and users)," she says.

Diversity in the Lab

Law students chat near the entrance of the lab, on the fifth floor of Fauteux Hall, the home of the U of O's law school. Others tap away at spacious workstations with black flat-panel screens. All seem to have a relaxed stylishness about them. A mock hazard sign on an office divider reads, "Think, your ideas bring the future."

Yet a few months ago, there was no CIPPIC. Less than a year ago, in fact, this bright, well-equipped lab was a seldom-used corner of the law school's library. Then, the idea of a research lab and legal clinic specializing in technology issues was merely a vision for Michael Geist, Ian Kerr and others in the U of O's technology law community.

The lab and clinic became realities thanks to about $1.2 million in grants and in-kind contributions. Geist and Kerr, leading Canadian experts in technology law, applied for funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and received more than $254,000, leveraged by $443,000 in in-kind contributions from partners such as IBM and Entrust. Last fall, Geist received a $250,000 grant from an Amazon.com Cy Pres fund. The Ontario Research Network for Electronic Commerce, a consortium that includes the U of O and Carleton University, matched that grant.

With $500,000 of the funding in hand, Geist established CIPPIC and set about finding an executive director. After roughly six months, the school hired Lawson.

"We've been building at the University of Ottawa a strength in technology law for some time," said Geist. "But I think there was always a recognition that one thing we needed was an emphasis on the practical and an ability to really play a policy role outside the confines of the campus."

Geist had seen technology law clinics sprout at Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford Universities. He felt it was time for U of O to produce its own version.

The lab, officially known as the Canada Research Chair Laboratory for Law and Technology, was completed last summer. In September, CIPPIC was launched. It shares the lab with researchers working under Geist and Kerr as well as the program's flagship publication, The Law and Technology Journal.

Though CIPPIC has made waves in the file-sharing case, the clinic is about more than battling industry giants in court. Upper-year undergrads and grad students have filed a submission to the government on copyrights for photographers and portrait artists, sat in on parliamentary hearings on copyright reform, and provided legal advice to individuals and small businesses on technology law issues. Students can take a credit course offered each term, or becoming volunteers, research assistants or summer fellows at the clinic.

Lawson and her crew have also been busy updating the clinic's website (www.cippic.ca), which they hope will become a useful public resource. In addition to a primer on the legal aspects of file-sharing, the clinic has posted information on spam, online anonymity and biometric systems such as retinal scanners.

A similar diversity is evident in the lab. Marty Finestone, a third-year common-law undergrad, sits across from Young, one of the key members in the file-sharing case. Young took the inaugural CIPPIC course in the fall, while Finestone is enrolled in this term's course, in addition to doing research for Kerr. Finestone and classmate Michael Yang, who also took the inaugural course, have been working on iCommons Canada, a project that aims to develop a more flexible copyright scheme that allows creators to choose what rights they confer to users.

Marcus Bornfreund, manager of the law and technology program and managing editor of the journal, leads this project. "In other fields of law, you just don't have progress at this speed, you don't the ability to participate in lawmaking. It's a priceless opportunity across the board, and our students are definitely experiencing that," he says.

Elsewhere in the lab, doctoral candidate Marina Pavlovic explores whether legal procedures can disrupt the balance in copyright law between creators and users. Nur Muhammed-Ally, a third-year undergrad, helps Kerr with research on anonymity in the online world. Fourth-year undergrad Pauline Lin is absorbed by a position paper on spam. Warren Yeung, a third-year undergrad, helps Geist update his textbook, Internet Law in Canada.

Despite their range of interests, the students feel united by a common cause, says Young. "The students in the tech program here have a sense of mission, that we're on the frontier and in many cases the laws are unclear or ambiguous -- which is not necessarily a bad thing -- that technology is creating new opportunities, good and bad, and it's our role to help define those in the public interest."

Not one to be shy, Kerr says he wants to see the U of O cement its membership in North America's "Internet Ivy League," if it hasn't already done so. "There's big stuff going on here, and CIPPIC is just a great example of it. We're definitely doing some empire building," he says.

Technology law observers are noticing. "They have done a very good job of increasing their faculty complement, of attracting research money and of building a wide-ranging curriculum," said Richard Owens, executive director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto.

Diane Cabell, director of clinical programs at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a member of CIPPIC's advisory board, is impressed by the U of O clinic's accomplishments. "CIPPIC has really staked out the legislative road, and they're doing a fabulous job. They've been very effective in helping the legislative community understand new technologies and the impact of the laws they're trying to make."

CIPPIC may not be able to rest on its laurels. CRIA is expected to appeal the court decision this week. Officials at the Heritage Department, which oversees a House of Commons committee on copyright reform, have rallied to support CRIA. A spokesman for the heritage minister has declared the ministry's commitment to "protect the Canadian music industry." At a Junos event last Friday, Prime Minister Paul Martin vowed he would not let the "second most important music industry in the world" be "jeopardized."

Lawson says the clinic will stay involved if CRIA appeals, and continue to weigh in on copyright law reform. She doesn't see an easy solution to the copyright debate that can satisfy all sides. For that reason, she says Canada needs a public debate on any changes to the law.

"I am not, and CIPPIC is not, opposed to copyright. We absolutely see that as a very important legal construct that we must continue to have to protect artists and allow them to continue to create and make a business out of it. The problem is when you get the balance out of whack, when the rights are too great on the owner side and not enough on the user."
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawac...f-bae1f155e766


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Microsoft, Business Partner Concocted 'Scheme' to Protect Copyrights
Kelly Cramer

A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has awarded a Boca Raton, Fla., software sales company $1.1 million in damages because software giant Microsoft and one of its business partners engaged in a "scheme" to defraud and deceive the firm as part of Microsoft's effort to protect its copyrights.

U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn issued the bench verdict against Houston-based Wetmore Printing in February after a weeklong trial in December. Microsoft was not a party to the case, styled HGI Associates Inc. v. Wetmore Printing Co., but it was part of the fraud, Cohn said in his ruling.

Amy Petty, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, declined comment.

Ron Swartz, the owner of Lauderhill-based HGI Associates Inc., sued Wetmore in July 2001 for breach of contract, alleging that Wetmore failed to deliver thousands of licensed software kits it promised to sell him for $2.50 each. The suit was filed in federal court on diversity grounds. Swartz claimed he suffered nearly $1 million in lost profits and lost future earnings of $16.7 million.

In HGI's amended complaint, the company contended that Wetmore and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft conspired to enter into a sales agreement with him for the sole purpose of determining whether HGI was violating software copyrights. Cohn found the plaintiff's contentions meritorious.

The attorney for HGI, Michael L. Feinstein, said Microsoft's arrangement with Wetmore to essentially entrap his client was typical of the software giant's aggressive efforts to protect against copyright infringement, but that this time the firm went too far.

"It's clear this was their standard operating procedure," Feinstein said. "Their whole lifeblood is protecting the integrity of their distribution network."

Wetmore's lawyer, Rick Hutchison, a partner at Holland & Knight in Fort Lauderdale, denied that his client committed any fraud, and has filed a notice of appeal. "They were trying to protect consumers from buying unlicensed software," Hutchison said.

HGI's business is the so-called secondary software market. It sells software at a reduced price, mostly to businesses in Europe. It acquires the software largely from computer manufacturers that have purchased the products through software companies' authorized distribution chains, and have left-over kits, which include certificates of authenticity.

In 2001, a federal judge in California found such transactions legal. The judge ruled in Softman v. Adobe that businesses that do not install software they have purchased may legally resell it on the secondary market regardless of the manufacturer's end user license agreement.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1081348843696


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Copyright Ruling Favors Site That Aggregates Yacht Sale Listings
AP

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled a Florida company's Internet-searching software program did not infringe on copyrights held by another Web site.

Nautical Solutions Marketing Inc. of St. Petersburg runs a Web site called YachtBroker.com which uses a software program to harvest yacht sale information from other Web sites, including one owned by Boats.com of Lake Forest, Ill., and then compiles it for its subscribers.

Nautical's practice of collecting yacht listings, photos and product descriptions from various Web sites represented lawful use of facts that weren't protected by copyright law, Judge Steven D. Merryday ruled April 1.

In a seven-page ruling, Merryday also said the rights to the photos and descriptions listed on Boats.com's YachtWorld.com were held by individual yacht brokers, not Boats.com itself. In addition, Merryday said, Nautical did not infringe on any Boats.com copyrights related to the design of YachtWorld.com or the manner in which the Web site compiled and presented information.

Paul Rabe, president of Boats.com, said his company will respond by changing the terms of use for its Web site and by making sure it has ``the correct protections'' for its content.

Merryday's ruling comes after a federal jury in Tampa found in favor of Nautical in a defamation lawsuit against Boats.com, awarding Nautical $300,000 in damages last December, including $50,000 in punitive damages.

G. Donovan Conwell Jr., an attorney representing Nautical, said Merryday's ruling will lend a boost to online brokers and so-called ``aggregator'' Web sites such as Nautical's YachtBroker.com.

``This has pretty broad implications across the Internet because a lot of companies are using their own private search engines to build databases like this,'' Conwell said Thursday.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8395931.htm


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Boaters Lost In Marine Chart Fight

HALIFAX - A legal dispute over electronic marine charts may prevent up to 100,000 Canadian boaters from accessing accurate navigational tools.

'Boaters have been using illegal information and dealers have been selling illegal information' – Greg Mercer, NDI

In a few weeks, thousands of boat owners across Canada will be gearing up for the season. There are almost four million fishing, commerical and pleasure boats in Canada, all of them navigating shallow coastal waters using a network of lighthouses and bouys.

Most boaters use marine charts, which are like road maps of coastal areas, to find their way around. Many boaters use paper charts to locate bouys and lighthouses, but in the past few years people have begun using devices with built in electronic charts. What many boatowners don't know is now most of those electronic charts are illegal.

It's all because of a nasty copyright issue. Charts are made at taxpayer expense by the Canadian Hydrographic Service, but 10 years ago the service made a deal with a Newfoundland company called NDI, and handed the company sole rights to all Canadian charts in electronic form.

NDI spokesperson Greg Mercer says two other companies that dominate the electronic chart market worldwide have never recognized NDI's ownership to the Canadians charts and have refused to pay royalties. "Boaters have been using illegal information and dealers have been selling illegal information."

Last month, the dispute came to a head. The government warned marine dealers not to sell C-Map or Navionic electronic charts because the companies were in copyright violation, and that means up to 100,000 boat owners no longer have access to current electronic charts.

Ken Cirillo speaks for the Boston-based company C-Map. His company has warned Canadian boaters it can no longer do business in Canada. "There are 10,000 C-Map and Navionics users who now will have no access to updated charts," he says. "It's a safety issue."

The Canadian Hydrographic Service won't reveal details of its exclusive deal with NDI, but it does recognize the looming safety issue and says its reviewing its relationship with NDI.

"When we made the deal 10 years ago it was good for everyone," says Steve Outhouse of the Canadian Hydrographic Service. "We know understand that its got to change."

But that position surprises NDI's Greg Mercer. "That is news to us that they are considering a change."

There is an urgency here. In a few weeks, thousands of boats will go in the water and as it stands now, many could leave the the dock without current charts, a situation everyone agrees is extremely dangerous.
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regional/servl...tfight20040409


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Italians Forcing ISP’s To Spy On Users

Should Music, Video Or Software Copying Be Treated As Terrorism?
ALCEI

The decree-law issued by the Italian government on March 12, 2004 adds to an already long list of laws and rules that, with a variety of pretexts, interfere with freedom and personal rights.

Its alleged purpose is to "urgently intervene on matters of cultural goods and properties". It does nothing that relates to such objectives – and of course there is no "urgency", except for the government’s desire to put the rules in place before they are discussed in parliament.

A detailed analysis (also in English) of the faults and problems of this "decree law" is available on the ALCEI website

The original draft of this decree included some of the messy rulings on data retention that had been placed in the December 24, 2003 decree (that became a law on February 26, 2004, with a few mild amendments in parliament that don’t change its substance – see the ALCEI statement on that matter.) They were removed before the new decree was issued. Repressive regulation now comes from another angle: unnecessary and improper "innovation" on the already distorted and warped legislation on copyright. Introducing additional restrictions and violations of personal and human rights.

This decree-law is a messy and poisonous mixture of unrelated issues, treating peer-to-peer sharing of music, video or software with criteria that were conceived to fight terrorism. The result is useless, ineffective and dangerous.

It’s useless because it does not provide any useful tool for the prevention of serious crime (such as terrorism and violence.)

It’s ineffective because it’s cumbersome and poorly conceived, therefore likely to produce dispersion of energies, uncontrolled persecution of innocent people, overloading of inquires with no sense or purpose, cluttering of police proceedings and already overburdened law courts, getting in the way of any useful activities for the persecution and prevention of serious crime.

It’s dangerous because it introduces, in matters where it’s totally unacceptable, the persecution of "intention", whereby people can be punished not for hat they have done, but for what is assumed they might "intend" to do. (If such a violation of basic human rights and principles of law can, sometimes, be admissible in the case of extreme violence, such as terrorism, it’s obviously intolerable that it be extended to situations where there is no danger for the life and safety of people and institutions).

Like many other such laws it reveals, in the redundancies of its text, a specific desire to control the internet and interfere with the freedom of people using communication networks.

The absurdity and the repressive purpose of this decree are revealed also by specific rulings.

This type of legislation leads to something that looks like a "police state", with the persecution of intentions, compulsory espionage, violations of private life, freedom of opinion and personal communication. And all of this isn’t done to fight terrorists (who may gain considerable advantage from the resulting overburdening and dilution of anti-crime resources) but to satisfy the ego of one or another politician (who wants his own law against the internet) and the powerful lobbies and selfish interests of music, show business or software conglomerates, who don’t care if legislation is inefficient and messy, but enjoy the idea of "terrorizing" people into obedience.

http://www.alcei.it/english/news/cse040315.htm


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Internet-Censorship Russian Style
English Pravda

Russian State Duma plans to pass a new law limiting Internet access
Dmitry Chirkin

In September of last year British law enforcers have published a research study proving that limited Internet access and censorship of all communication sources worldwide reached unbelievably high level. Another research study ?Silenced¦ was led by Internet-experts and law enforcement organizations on behalf of Pravacy International and GreenNet Educational Trust in more than 50 countries around the globe.

According to the authors of the research study, the US and Great Britain were the first two countries that most actively lobbied mass media regulations including the Net.

Western states promote such rapid spread of censorship in developing countries, since the latter receive all the needed technologies and equipment from the West to enable thorough control of telecommunications. According to the experts, if it wasn't for the West, those developing countries would not have been able to implement censorship so easily and efficiently.

Some of the positive aspects of censorship are as follows: many countries are currently in the process of adopting new laws of confidentiality, new technologies are being developed that suppose to protect one's privacy.

Internet-regulation Asian style

Burma is number one in terms of depriving people of Internet-freedom in Asian region, surpassing even such countries as China and Vietnam, where Internet is fully controlled by the government. Burmese authorities prohibited Internet users to publish any materials of political content, which could in any way ?do harm to the government.¦ Burmese authorities made it clear that they do not wish to see this new technology to cause major riots in the country. Therefore, they are willing to destroy it fully. In China on the contrary, dissidents still find ways for their purposes. For now at least-

A couple of years ago, China adopted a new law concerning telecommunications aimed mainly at regulating Internet-business. The law limits intake of foreign capitals into Chinese Internet-Companies as well monitors all the information placed on those sites. Legally, companies have to store all the Internet data for 60 days and be able to provide that data upon request of law enforcement.

According to a human rights organization Amnesty International, amount of Chinese citizens involved in expressing their alternative opinion on-line keeps rising. In comparison to last year, a number of Internet-victims has increased by 60%, reports The Inquirer. Aside from those people who have been imprisoned for spreading radical ideological views, those who informed the entire country of the SARS epidemic were also among the imprisoned. Amnesty International also criticizes such American companies as Microsoft, Cisco and Sun for providing China with technologies to enable total Internet censorship.

Internet-censorship Russian style

Rumor has it that in a not so distant future Russians will have to have special permission from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to access the Net. Russian authorities have been preoccupied with the Internet issue for quite some time now. Special services for instances claim that the Net often contributes to divulging information of national importance. Police also complains at the rising number of crimes in the technological field; politicians don't like wandering megabytes with discrediting information.

The new bill mainly aims at protecting Internet users from pornography, spam and intellectual piracy. It is also planned, for instance to deny access to anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime. However, it is still unclear how those individuals will be denied access to Internet-cafes. In the meantime, the new Duma's bill is highly confidential.

Everyone keeps quite about the project, like partisans. Deputy Chief of the Information Committee Boris Reznik states the folloinwg: ?I have never heard anything about such bill. However, this is not the first attempt.¦

Anyway, according to some unidentified sources, the bill does in fact exist and is currently in Kremlin. Most likely, it will be introduced in the lower chamber for consideration sometime next Fall. It may just as well be adopted right after the New Year's.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/88/...ensorship.html


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Australian Online Petition Against IP Provisions In FTA

Open source advocates in Australia have set up an online petition to campaign against adoption of provisions in Chapter 17 of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement.

They say these provisions will "harm the flourishing Australian Open Source community both directly by making legitimate and useful Open Source software illegal, and indirectly by preventing the Australian Parliament from considering changes to our intellectual property laws on their own merits."

Linux Australia recently voiced fears about the FTA, saying it would lead to the acceptance of American-style patent and intellectual property laws which, in turn, would cripple the local software industry.

The organisation has set up a page on its website devoted to information about the FTA and the ways in which, in its estimate, it can harm the local open source industry.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...326915388.html


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New Korean Internet Anti-Libel Law Unenforceable For Now: NEC

An article of the revised election law stipulating that Internet users must use their real names has been set-aside in the upcoming general elections. The article aims to prevent anonymous posts slandering specific politicians or political parties.

The National Election Commission (NEC) announced that it will delay adopting the Internet real-name system and focus on guidance in the April elections. This is because the definition of targeted Internet mediums is ambiguous and a real-name authorization system connected with credit information companies or the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs has not been completely established.

According to the revised election law, which was promulgated on March 12, the Internet real-name system was supposed to take effect from April 12.

As the enforcement of the Internet real-name system became difficult to enforce due to inadequate preparation, the National Election Commission decided to just issue warnings to violators instead of fining them. An official at the NEC said that the Internet real-name system is necessary because illegal activities are rampant on the Internet. The system will be complemented and fully enforced from the next election, the official added.

Pundits are strongly criticizing the NEC for its failure to fully enforce the system. Meanwhile, some Internet users have strongly opposed the system, saying that it might violate freedom of expression.

The NEC said that it sent official documents to the Webmasters of each political party asking for their cooperation, such as voluntarily deleting slanderous messages, in order to prevent cases of Internet libel, which appear especially at the final stages of campaigning.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...404120028.html


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Vietnamese Cops Tighten Controls On Internet Access

HANOI: Authorities in a southern Vietnamese province have restricted access to Internet sites critical of the government, state-controlled media reported Saturday.
AP

Owners of Internet cafes in Dong Nai province, next to Ho Chi Minh City, are required to prevent customers' access to websites with "bad content" and to install software to control the information available, the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said.

Police are also requiring Internet cafe owners to keep for 30 days customers' personal information such as names, addresses, identification numbers and the duration of their Internet access.

The newspaper said the measures were meant to comply with a Minister of Public Security directive announced on Jan 29. It was unclear whether the restrictions were to be applied throughout the country. Officials weren't available for comment Saturday.

Last year, the Culture and Information Ministry proposed a slew of regulations aimed at policing the Internet, such as requiring Vietnam-based websites to obtain licences and seek approval each time content is changed.

The ministry also wanted to hold Internet service providers and cybercafe owners responsible for monitoring customers' activities. It's not known whether the Public Security Ministry's decision was related to the earlier proposals.

There are more than two million Internet users in Vietnam, which introduced the service in 1997. Most of the customers at the country's estimated 5,000 Internet cafes are students between the ages of 14 and 24, according to a 2002 survey.

Vietnam maintains tight control over all information, with the government using firewalls to block websites with pornography, violence, and especially criticism of Vietnam's one-party communist system.

At least four dissidents have been jailed in Vietnam in recent years for posting Internet articles critical of the government. --
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology


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FTC To Explore RFID Consumer Implications
Richard Shim

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday it is seeking comments and requests to join a June 21 workshop looking at consumer uses and impacts of radio frequency identification technology. The workshop will look into the increasing number of applications of the technology and will address privacy and security concerns, especially fears of tracking users through their RFID products--something privacy groups have been vocal very about. Those seeking to participate in the workshop should notify the FTC by May 7. Workshop members will discuss policy issues and encourage development of best business practices that don't infringe on privacy or security concerns.p>

Government agencies and politicians are taking an increasing role in the evolution of RFID technology. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has discussed federal regulation of RFID technology. Several states--California, Missouri and Utah--have introduced bills to ease privacy concerns related to RFID.
http://news.com.com/2110-7343-5190155.html


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California Legislator Moves To Block Gmail
Reuters

A California state senator said Monday she was drafting legislation to block Google's free e-mail service "Gmail" because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words.

"We think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home," said Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, Calif.

"We are asking them to rethink the whole product," she said.

In late March, the Web search giant announced plans to launch Gmail--a service that would offer users 1GB of free storage, more than 100 times the storage offered by other free services from Yahoo and Microsoft.

But in return for the extra storage, users would agree to let Google's technology scan their incoming e-mail, then deliver targeted ads based on key words in the messages. For instance, a user receiving a message about a friend's flu symptoms might also receive ads for cold and flu remedies.

Gmail is now being tested with a limited number of users. Privacy advocates are assailing Gmail even before its formal launch. Google faces heavy opposition in Europe, where privacy laws are stricter than they are in the United States.

European groups recently lodged a complaint with U.K. authorities, charging that Gmail may violate Europe's privacy laws because it stores messages where users cannot permanently delete them. Europe's privacy protection laws give consumers the right to retain control over their communications.

Google said in a statement that it intends to work with "data protection authorities across Europe to ensure their concerns are heard and resolved."

Industry analysts see the service as a key product for Google because it would boost revenues from advertisers and expand its business as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company nears an expected initial public offering of stock.

Figueroa, who was the author of California's do-not-call law that allows citizens to block telemarketing calls, said she was pursuing the legislation because she had not yet received a response to a letter sent Thursday to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in which she laid out her concerns.

"We received the letter from Sen. Figueroa. We appreciate her feedback and will take it into consideration as we build the best possible Webmail service for our users," Google said in an e-mailed statement.

The Gmail service would bring Google into the market for free e-mail services now dominated by Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN. Those rivals have been challenging Google's core Web search business.

More than two dozen privacy groups in the United States and Europe have demanded that Google suspend Gmail's launch until privacy issues are adequately addressed.

The groups charged, among other things, that scanning e-mail for ad placement poses unnecessary risks of misuse and that the system sets "potentially dangerous precedents and establishes reduced expectations of privacy" in e-mails.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5190219.html


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Downloading Music Gets More Expensive
Ethan Smith

To see the future of online music prices, look no further than "Fly or Die," the new album by rock-meets-hip-hop trio N.E.R.D.

For months, digital-music services have been touting albums for $9.99 to entice more people to buy online. But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. The same pricing shifts are showing up on albums by a growing slate of artists, from Shakira to Bob Dylan.

Unburdened by manufacturing and distribution costs, online music was supposed to usher in a new era of inexpensive, easy-to-access music for consumers. In many cases, buying music online is still cheaper than shopping for CDs at retail outlets. But just a year after iTunes debuted with its 99-cent songs and mostly $9.99 albums, that affordable and straightforward pricing structure is already under pressure.

All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases - to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn't clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles - prices have remained at 99 cents - still account for the majority of online music sales.

The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.

Several record-company executives acknowledged that pricing changes are being discussed at all five major companies.

The new pricing developments come as digital-music sales are growing steadily. Some 25 million digital tracks were sold in the first three months of this year, versus 19.2 million for all of the second half of last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

That growth is why some in the industry are uncomfortable with the talk of price increases. Most music-company executives believe that the download market is still in a critical early-growth stage, which could be disrupted by raising prices. "For us right now the issue is not, 'Do we make another $300,000 by raising the price five cents?"' says a music company executive. "It's making sure the market grows."

Revenues in the music industry have been dragging in recent years, in part because of the rise of illegal downloading services. Raising digital-music prices could spur additional illicit downloading. Weaning people off those illegal services by giving them an alternative that they consider viable is critical to the industry's future profitability.

N.E.R.D's "Fly or Die" is far from the only album that now costs significantly more to download from iTunes than to buy on CD. And many high-profile albums from two of the big five music companies, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group PLC, are now priced on iTunes and its competitors well above the $9.99 norm. Sony artist Pete Yorn's "Musicforthemorningafter," for example, costs $13.99 on iTunes and $10.88 on average in retail stores, according to the NPD Group. Albums by EMI artists from Kylie Minogue to Blur also cost more in digital than physical form. (EMI also distributes N.E.R.D.)

The reason this disparity is so pronounced at EMI and Sony is that both companies routinely set wholesale prices for online albums higher than their competitors, according to people familiar with the matter.

A much smaller number of titles from the other major music labels also cost more than $9.99 on iTunes. A handful of albums from Bertelsmann AG's BMG, Warner Music Group, and Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group also cost more online than they do as CDs. But these tend to be double discs such as OutKast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," which incur higher costs in certain kinds of royalties when sold online than as traditional CDs.

"There's a lot of experimentation in the industry," says Peter Csathy, president and chief operating officer of Musicmatch Inc., which sells digital music.

The music companies are reluctant to talk openly about their wholesale-pricing strategies, but they are quick to blame the retailers for higher prices. A spokeswoman for EMI, for instance, stresses that the retailers, not record companies, ultimately set the prices consumers pay.

However, the digital-music services say they base their retail prices directly on the wholesale prices the music companies charge. "Our pricing comes when the fees come in from the labels," said Musicmatch's Mr. Csathy.

ITunes, the market leader among downloading services, and its competitors offer music at two distinct price points: Single tracks cost 99 cents. A full-album has generally cost $9.99, regardless of how many songs are on it.

Napster was until recently the lone holdout among the major online services on full album prices, charging $9.95 for numerous titles that cost between $12.87 and $16.99 on iTunes. But two weeks ago, it relented and created a higher tier of album prices, set at $13.99.

Separately, Walmart.com, the online arm of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., recently rolled out a slightly cheaper 88-cents-per-track price. Many observers, however, argue that any advantage conferred by the 11-cent difference will be offset by a user interface that early reviews have called less friendly than those of other services. Executives at competing services also contend that research shows that consumers don't care much about price differences within the band of about 75 cents and 99 cents.

The issue of online music prices raises philosophical debates for music executives. Some executives, for example, believe they should be charging a premium for the online versions of older tracks because consumers may be willing to pay more for harder-to-find material.
http://www.azcentral.com/business/ar...ing07-ON.html#


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Coming Soon: The Smut-Free DVD
BBC

American cinephiles will soon be able to enjoy their movies without sex, violence, swearing - indeed, without any of the interesting bits. Wal-Mart, the country's mightiest retailer, is preparing to ship a $79 DVD player that automatically strips out potentially offensive content. The gadget, made by French-owned RCA, aims to tap into mounting concern in the US about media standards. But the self-censoring technology has run into protests from Hollywood.

The RCA player is the first to incorporate the screening technology of Clearplay, a Salt Lake City-based company. Many firms provide bowdlerised versions - not always legally - of Hollywood films, but Clearplay operates at a higher level of sophistication. Clearplay scans movies for dodgy content, and then programs that data into its system. Subscribers can then watch standard copies of the 500-or-so films on its list, with the assurance that they will automatically skip over mute anything that children or the squeamish may not like. Until now, Clearplay has only run through a PC.

The launch of the new player, which RCA says was at Wal-Mart's urging, could hardly be better timed. Ever since the singer Janet Jackson bared a breast during the SuperBowl, US regulators have been highly jumpy about what goes out over the airwaves.

"Increasingly it seems the media is not playing close to the line, but is outright leaping past the line and in fact daring the audience and daring the government to do anything about it," Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a media seminar last month.

"Some of the transcripts I have been forced to read reveal content that is pure trash, plain and simple."

The FCC has fought shy of tougher state regulation, but has handed out some unprecedented indecency fines in recent months. But Clearplay and its rivals face a challenge from the other direction. A Hollywood consortium, including some of Tinseltown's top directors, has sued Clearplay and others, arguing that they are abusing the films' artistic integrity. By producing - without permission - altered versions of intellectual property, censors are effectively pirating directors' and studios' work, the lawsuit argues.

Clearplay hopes to escape through a loophole: instead of making new versions of films, it argues, its technology is simply another way of playing the existing movie - no more an abuse than a viewer fast-forwarding a tape in his own home.

The case is pending, but RCA has decided to press ahead regardless.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ss/3611969.stm


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Microsoft, Time Warner Take DRM Stake
John Borland

Digital rights management company ContentGuard said Monday that Microsoft and Time Warner each made substantial new investments in the company, taking over Xerox's former role as part owner.

ContentGuard holds several content protection patents and has previously licensed them to the likes of Microsoft and Sony. It also has seen them adopted by standards bodies including the Motion Picture Experts Group. The technology was originally developed by Xerox's PARC research facility. Microsoft and Time Warner said the investment showed that their landmark strategic alliance, formed last May, was bearing fruit. Both companies declined to give details on how they might use ContentGuard's technology.
http://news.com.com/2110-1032-5185139.html


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Microsoft squares Intertrust DRM suit for $440m
Drew Cullen

Microsoft is paying $440m to settle its long-running digital rights management (DRM) patent infringement dispute with Intertrust. The one-off pay-out means that Microsoft customers can use their software "as they are intended to be used without requiring a license from InterTrust".

Anything else would have been intolerable, which may be why Microsoft opted to draw a line under this case. Marshall Phelps, Microsoft lawyer, said: "One of our goals with this and our broader intellectual property (IP) licensing program is to provide peace of mind for our customers and partners by letting them know that patent licensing is our responsibility." Quite.

Software developers working solely on the Microsoft platform will not be required to sign up for an Intertrust license. But they must sign on the dotted line if they are combining MS software with that of third parties.

Intertrust filed its initial suit against Microsoft in June, 2001, and added more complaints along the way to take in just about all Microsoft platform software. Originally a lossmaking digital video software company, Intertrust ditched its operating business in May 2002, to concentrate solely on licensing technology developed inhouse to deliver content securely. The same month, it claimed an early IP licensing success in Sony, which paid $28.5m and agreed to pay royalties for the technology.

Sony was so convinced by the Intertrust claim that it teamed up with Philips to buy the firm for $453m in early 2003.

Microsoft has been in settling mood, lately. Last week, it settled an anti-trust dispute with Sun, perhaps its most vociferous opponent in the computer industry, for $2bn. The hush money means that Sun is withdrawing its complaint with the EC. However, the Commission's investigation into Microsoft's on competition grounds has long since developed its own momentum. Last month, the EC imposed a record fine on Microsoft and ordered the firm to unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows. Microsoft will appeal the ruling - the next step is a submission to the EU's Court of First Instance, in time for the 8 June deadline.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04...es_intertrust/


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Music Sales Strong Despite Digital Piracy

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Online file-sharing and other digital piracy persist, but a gradual turnaround in U.S. music sales that began last fall picked up in the first quarter of this year, resulting in the industry's best domestic sales in years.

Overall U.S. music sales -- CDs, legal downloads, DVDs -- rose 9.1 percent in the first three months of the year over the same period in 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Album sales were up 9.2 percent. Sales of CDs, which represent 96 percent of album sales, rose 10.6 percent. For the first time since 2000, two recording artists -- Norah Jones and Usher -- managed to sell more than 1 million copies of their albums in a single week.

"We've had a big run so far," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst for Billboard Magazine. "Because we've had three years of erosion, at least for the first eight months of the year, it will be relatively easy for the industry to post increases."

The sales data are a bolt of encouragement to an industry hit by a three-year sales slump it blames largely on file-sharing. The downturn prompted a wave of restructuring by record companies and thousands of layoffs.

Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, called the first-quarter figures "good news," but cautioned that the results were measured against a dismal period.

"The numbers of 2003 were down about 10 percent to 12 percent from the year before," Sherman said. "If we didn't have that kind of increase it would be really terrible."

U.S. album sales declined annually in the three years following 2000, the biggest year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking U.S. music sales.

In 2001, sales were down 3 percent. The next year, sales dropped 11 percent. Last year, until September, sales were down 8.5 percent, but the pickup in sales at the end of the year narrowed the total decline for 2003 to less than 4 percent.

The burgeoning online music market accounted for the sale of more than 25 million tracks between January and March, eclipsing the 19.2 million tracks purchased in the last six months of 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Stores also saw gains. Chain stores' music sales were up 7 percent, while independent music retailers saw a 3 percent increase. Discount chains such as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart posted a 13 percent jump in sales compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Industry observers said no single factor has driven the turnaround.

Mayfield sees similarities with the industry's slump 20 years ago.

Sales of disco music dried up after the dance scene fell out of vogue in the early 1980s. In the late 1990s, the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and Britney Spears drew millions of teenage fans who had been out of the music marketplace, but sales didn't keep up as the audience got older.

"That music was hot and nothing moved in to replace it," Mayfield said.

He also draws comparisons between the loss of eight-track sales in the early 1980s and the more recent phasing out of cassettes, a format that provided customers with a cheaper alternative to CDs.

The early 1980s and the early part of this decade were also marked by economic downturns. Conversely, the music industry was better able to weather the recession in the early 1990s because of CD sales driven by consumers replacing their vinyl record and cassette tape collections.

Still, the recording industry has focused on Internet piracy, and its trade group cites surveys that indicate the number of people engaging in file-sharing has declined since the group began suing computer users.

But other research shows millions continue to download music, movies and software over peer-to-peer networks.

A recent study by two professors at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may suggest how the industry's sales could be improving amid file-sharing.

The study, conducted over 17 weeks in the fall of 2002, was based on data compiled in the user logs of two OpenNap servers that host traffic by U.S. users of file- sharing programs including WinMX.

The researchers plucked 680 songs on albums by artists like Eminem and compared how often their songs were downloaded on the network to their weekly sales figures. The authors concluded that file-sharing has a statistically insignificant impact on record sales.

The findings are disputed by other researchers whose studies, mostly based on consumer surveys and willing monitoring of computer users, have shown that music fans who download songs for free pay for music less often.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/interne....ap/index.html


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A Man, a Plan, a Can: Boosting Wireless Signals
Peter Wayner

When Keith Walter, a wireless network technician, came to install a network on the grounds of an estate in northern Maryland, he ran into a problem. The guest house was 150 yards from the main building, beyond the reach of the base station he had installed, with its standard antenna.

But instead of running wires to the guest house or installing a separate base station there with its own Internet connection, Mr. Walter established a wireless link between the two buildings using two special antennas to beam signals back and forth. That way, guests could hook up their computers to the Internet with the same connection as the main house.

Such artful use of antennas to expand the range and efficiency of wireless networks is becoming increasingly common. Home users are discovering that a well-placed antenna can fill out dead spots and stretch the reach of a base station to include a back bedroom, a backyard or even a neighbor's house.

Antenna design and placement is a science with enough strategies and options to keep a lunch table of wireless engineers locked in debate for hours, but most Wi-Fi users can improve performance without worrying too much about the details.

An antenna's ability to increase a Wi-Fi signal's strength is called its "gain," and it is measured on a logarithmic scale, in decibels.

Dewayne Hendricks, a consultant to the Federal Communications Commission and chief executive of the Dandin Group, a company based in Fremont, Calif., that develops wireless networks, said that at their most essential, antennas focused energy. Gain, he said, measures how good a focusing job they do.

Mr. Hendricks said each antenna manufacturer should include a chart that shows how strong the signal is in each direction so home owners can aim their signals. A good omnidirectional antenna may offer 5 decibels of gain, which translates roughly into a signal that is about three times stronger. A good directional antenna may offer gain that is about 12 to 13 decibels, which may be about 18 to 20 times greater.

Some antenna designs are intended for do-it-yourselfers. One, the can antenna, can be made by adding a wire to an old metal can. Some hobbyists have used soup cans, but Pringles potato crisp canisters have a particularly strong following. The signals bounce off of the metal in the can, focusing the signal in much the same way that a cheerleader's megaphone focuses sound energy. For those who don't want to try making one, one company, Cantenna, sells a version.

Designing the antenna is only half the job because its placement can affect its behavior. Mike Cheponis, of California Wireless, a consulting firm in Santa Clara, Calif., said that some of the antennas in his office were only "nominally omnidirectional" because "the pattern can be affected by materials close to the antenna, like walls, ceilings, and especially metal."

Frank Caimi, the chief technical officer of SkyCross, a developer of wireless communications technology based in Melbourne, Fla., explained that sometimes the simplest and cheapest solution to expanding the range of a Wi-Fi system does not involve any new antennas, but just putting the base station higher up or in a more central location. If that doesn't work, he said, adding another base station or a more basic piece of equipment known as a signal repeater may, and the popularity of Wi-Fi technology has driven the price of many base stations below that of some antennas.

Mr. Caimi warned that an installation using a high-gain antenna with a base station may violate F.C.C. regulations intended to reduce interference among neighboring wireless systems.

The antenna designs currently available are just the beginning of the evolution of the technology. "Intelligent" antennas, which aim and focus a signal through software, have been developed for commercial applications. But these antennas, often called "adaptive" or "phased array" systems, are a long way from home use.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/te...ts/15howw.html


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

New Intel Chips Ensure Better Security
Matthew Fordahl

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The next generation of Intel Corp. microprocessors for cell phones and handheld computers will, for the first time, include hard-wired security features that can enforce copy protection and help prevent hackers from wreaking havoc on wireless networks.

Intel's PXA27x processors, announced Monday at a conference in Taiwan, contain a security "engine"

that's on the same piece of silicon but separated from the area where general processing takes place. The engine also has access to secure memory.

Today, security tasks such as handling the keys that unscramble data are typically processed like any other task. As a result, it's possible that an errant program can alter, intercept or damage jobs that are supposed to be secure.

With Intel's new chips, cell phone makers and carriers can guarantee a greater, hardware-based level of security for customers who use the devices to access corporate networks or need to lock down information.

Carriers, for instance, can secure the software that boots up a phone, making it next to impossible for hackers to tweak the device and cause trouble.

"Carriers want to be able to identify the handset on the network. They want to make sure nobody is doing anything malicious with that handset," said Dave Rogers, Intel's wireless marketing manager.

The same technology also can be used to ensure that content such as music or movies is used in a way dictated by the copyright holder. A purchased song, for instance, would not play unless it's sure that it's authorized and running on secure hardware.

Intel and other supporters of trusted computing believe the extra layer of security will spur content providers to make more songs and movies available on the Internet.

But critics complain that such technologies will be used by content owners to lock down software, music, movies and any other media with draconian digital rights management schemes. As a result, people will lose control of what's on their computers, cell phones and handhelds.

Similar efforts are underway for desktops and other computers. Intel is working on a technology it has code-named LaGrande in its Pentium 4 processors. Microsoft Corp. also is working on what it calls the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base."

"We're taking some of the learnings from LaGrande technology," said Rogers, who declined to elaborate further on the similarities and differences between LaGrande and the PXA270x family.

With its cell phone and handheld chips, Intel is working with all the major operating system vendors — including Microsoft, Symbian Ltd. and PalmSource Inc. — to ensure their software can work with the new security technology. Rogers declined to name manufacturers who will sell phones with the new chips.

Some observers question whether Intel will make inroads into the markets with the chips, which also are designed to consume little power yet be robust enough to handle video and other multimedia.

The world's leading supplier of processors for personal computers has not seen much success in the cell phone market. Its mobile business was reorganized in December after its failure to meet expectations resulted in a $600 million impairment charge.

"They're at an early place in this marketplace," said Michael King, an analyst at the research firm Gartner Inc. "Being able to dictate standards requires that you have a commanding position and I don't think they're there yet."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...l_secure_chips


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

Is Hollywood Undercutting Music Sales?

[ed-Sorry for the lack of links/source. This was sent via email. I think it's from Variety.]

Update: here is the link to the Variety story, although a subscription is required to see the whole thing.

By MEREDITH AMDUR
Is Hollywood to blame for the music industry's woes?

According to market research group NPD, it's not just illegal downloads of electronic MP3 files that are eating into traditional music sales but the ever-increasing popularity of DVD movies.

In a survey of consumers who admitted to spending less money on CDs in the last year, some 21% blamed an increased spending on DVDs for their reduced appetite for CDs. Only 15% of respondents blamed their DVD habit in the same survey a year and a half earlier. NPD noted that the increase was the largest single jump in its survey. At the same time, the number of consumers who cited downloading as their excuse for lower CD spending fell from 30% in 2002 to only 21% this month.

NPD, which just finished up a study into understanding why people are buying less music, said the chief reasons remain the high price of CDs (48% cited) and the general quality of content available recently (42%).

One household entertainment budget

While music and movies are vastly different pastimes, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick argues that the decline in CD sales is increasingly attributable to the rapid rise in DVD sales. (Similarly, many publishers believe the lure of inexpensive DVDs, available in big chains like Borders, has eaten into book sales.) Researchers note that purchases and rentals of movies and music, along with videogames, typically come out of the same household budget for entertainment, so an increase in one can have a direct impact on the other.

"As DVD prices fall, especially for catalog titles, the price-to-value proposition only gets higher," noted Crupnick.

NPD reported that the average full length CD sold for a still-hefty $13.47 in the fourth quarter of last year. This price represents a fairly modest 2% reduction from the same period in 2002 and 4% down from 2001. Many DVD movies can be purchased for $15 or less.
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/002787.html


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

Sharman Shuffles Legal Team
Patrick Gray

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Sharman Networks, maker of the peer-to-peer file-sharing software Kazaa, has shaken up its legal team following the filing of a lawsuit by the Australian recording industry.

The company has engaged the services of Clayton Utz, but insists it hasn't sacked the legal team it has been using until now, Phillips Fox. However, a Sharman representative would not confirm or deny there would be a reduced reliance on Phillips Fox following the move, and refused to comment on its satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with the firm's handling of the current federal court proceedings under way in Australia.


"Sharman Networks has made the strategic decision to reinforce its legal representation in Australia by retaining the services of Clayton Utz," a Sharman representative told Wired News.

The move comes at a critical stage in proceedings against Sharman, as the record companies officially filed suit against the company last week.

The statement of claim lodged in Australia's federal court in Sydney alleges not only that the respondents have directly infringed on copyright works, but that Sharman Networks and companies affiliated with it have breached Australia's Trade Practices Act and fair-trading laws by engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct. The recording industry wants the company shut down, and is seeking as-yet unspecified monetary damages.

The six record labels, EMI, Sony, Warner, BMG, Festival Mushroom and Universal Music, filed the 55-page document last Wednesday.

The labels insist it's possible for Sharman to stop users from trading in copyright works, a claim that has been vigorously denied by the peer-to-peer software maker. These denials constitute misleading and deceptive conduct, the record companies say.

Because it's possible to buy some licensed content through Kazaa, the claim that the software is incapable of controlling what is distributed through the peer-to-peer network is simply a lie, the music companies insist.

"They can pick and choose what they control ... and they are actively manipulating an illegal process for commercial gain," said Michael Speck, the Australian music industry's chief piracy investigator. "They revealed their hand. By version 2.5 they were able to apply licensed and unlicensed product as they see fit."

The labels are also alleging that Sharman has made several misrepresentations to its users.

"Each of the representations was made in trade or commerce in Australia ... and was at the time it was made, false," the statement of claim reads.

It also cites Sharman's claim that users operating peer-to-peer "super-nodes," which operate one level higher in the P2P food chain than the average user, will not experience an increase in computer-operating costs, or a decrease in performance, as a bogus statement.

Sharman Networks declined to comment on the lawsuit. Also, Clayton Utz and Phillips Fox did not respond to requests for comment.

Australia's Trade Practices Act is a fairly uncommon law, according to Ben Fitzmaurice, a lawyer with Abbott, Stillman and Wilson Barristers and Solicitors in Melbourne.

"It's pretty unusual: misleading and deceptive conduct. In other (international) jurisdictions it would be a contractual claim, (but here) you don't have to show a legal relationship between the parties per se, just a reliance on a representation," he explained, adding that "a Trade Practices Act claim is easier to make than a copyright claim."

The filing of the suit comes after a series of raids conducted on several sites in February, including Kazaa's Sydney offices and the homes of its executives. Sharman had tried unsuccessfully to have the court order allowing the raids quashed.

Other sites raided included the offices of Brilliant Digital Entertainment and LEF Interactive and the home of Kevin Bermeister, the CEO of Altnet and BDE. Because Sharman Networks is registered in Vanuatu for "tax purposes," exactly who owns it is difficult to ascertain.

In all, the statement of claim names 10 respondents. It's not about killing online music, Speck insists, merely a step toward a legitimate online industry. "All sorts of technologies are going to create opportunities for artists," he said. "When we win this case ... this operation will disappear into the ether."

The music industry has experienced limited success in similar proceedings in other jurisdictions. Sharman, in defense of P2P technology, cited a 1984 U.S. court decision relating to Betamax video recorders as proof it hasn't broken the law.

At that time the courts found Sony was not liable for piracy, despite distributing technology that could be used to infringe on copyright works: the video cassette recorder.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63062,00.html


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

Disharmony Drives Digital-Music Debate
Emily Kumler

A punk rocker defended file-sharing sites while a music-industry representative quoted a rapper blasting the practice, in a lively debate before hundreds of American University students in Boston.

Participants at the event, sponsored by American University's School of Communications, offered different interpretations of the impact of peer-to- peer sites that sometimes distribute copyrighted music.

Cheating the creators?

"Most importantly, songwriters are left behind," said David Sutphen, vice president of government relations for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). "People think, well, artists can make money by touring, but if you are a songwriter you aren't touring." The RIAA's stance against sharing digital tunes is well established, as the organization has sued hundreds of people it contends are stealing copyrighted material.

Peer-to-peer sites actually promote music sales by introducing people to new bands and by allowing consumers to sample music before buying it, says Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, an industry association of file-sharing sites.

Also, Marty Lafferty, CEO of the industry group Distributed Computing Industry Association, pushed for congressional action to change current copyright law. He encouraged the music industry to explore new technology to find a compromise with digital-music fans who want to share files.

"Look, people eventually realized that the VCR wasn't going to kill the movie industry and they should learn to use the technology," Eisgrau said. He suggested the recording industry build a royalty pool or some system that embraces the new technology while also meeting their financial goals.

Sutphen maintained that file-sharing is detrimental to the music industry and implored students to consider the consequences.

"I think LL Cool J said it best when he testified before the Senate, 'if I steal a necklace from Tiffany and tell people I got it from Tiffany does that help Tiffany?,'" Sutphen said.

Musician plays to crowd

As the debate escalated, the various representatives defended their positions apparently
unwilling to compromise. Roughly a half-hour into the discussion, punk legend Ian MacKaye of the band Fugazi rallied the audience and took control of the discussion.

"All this going on up here is so far away from music," MacKaye said. "I grew up in DC so I know how deep this bureaucracy goes. If you want to do something don't ask, just do it, because the answer is always no," he advised the audience.

MacKaye also offered a brief history lesson in musical distribution. "Music predates language. At some point in time musicians played and people went to hear them – some may have been paid and some not. At the turn of the century there was this great invention that allowed music to be recorded. Soon there was a market for this music and soon after there was a business established to make money off of this market. You can't take music away from people, it is free in the air." As MacKaye spoke, many in the crowd cheered in agreement.

Others on the panel labeled MacKaye an anomaly among artists.

"Ian made a choice," said Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, which has also sought to protect its copyrights in court. "He made a decision to put music out there, but artists have the right to make a living."

Debate continues

MacKaye noted after the discussion that he is hardly a struggling artist.

"I run a record label. I pay everyone in my band, and all of the band members have bought houses. We are making a living," MacKaye said.

Sarah Van Ballegooijen, a sophomore at American University, said she thought MacKaye made the most impressive argument.

"Anything legal like this is bipolar, two sides," she said. MacKaye "brought in a third, which is really good to hear. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think to a certain degree this is the record companies' own fault for not adopting the technology when they could see it coming. If they had adopted a convenient service like iTunes, under record company licensing, the problem wouldn't be as severe as it is now," Van Ballegooijen said. She added she thinks the recording industry's lawsuits will not solve the problem.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=8426

[JackSpratts]

Wanted: Deep Thinkers
Jack Spratts

I've been wondering if there's any way to estimate the number of Waste users in the world. If it's even possible to know how many times Waste has been downloaded. Well it might be - but you’d first need to ask “Downloaded from where?” Most of the people I know using Waste regularly send the program around themselves - and have since it came out in June of 2003. There may be sites where you can get a copy and many people may do that but it’s not the way we’ve done it and there’re probably of lot of experimenters around like us. So my gut feeling is no, it's not possible to know how many copies are out there, how many are installed and most importantly, how many are actually being used.

Unlikely as it is, even if you found the information you’d only be scratching the surface because soon you’d probably start looking into more detail. Take frequency of use for example; is it monthly, weekly, daily or hourly? Is the program simply running all the time? And what exactly is it used for? Downloading, uploading, chatting? You’d want to know what kind of chatting, what kind of swapping. Are people moving copyrighted content around? Public domain? Open source? Their own works? On the job files? Potato salad recipes? So it gets complicated pretty fast, with plenty of questions and few answers, and then only after spending some serious loot taking surveys and let’s face it, at this point the margins of error would be too high to produce usable statistics. But say somebody gave you a bunch of cash and barked “Do it!” Where would you start? Forums like this one? Schools, IT people, record collectors, hackers? I’m not sure you’d get dependable data even then.

I was asked by a reporter last week, he needed to know and since I don’t know myself my curiosity’s been sparked. So, I’m asking. I’m asking readers for suggestions on how to begin getting some meaningful user stats for a network that’s defined by it’s privacy. If you have any thoughts PM me here or email me at the Zer0share project (thezer0shareproject (at) lycos (dot) com) - just put “stats” in the subject line. If you’re as stumped as I am well then that’s that, but if you’ve got any good ideas and anything interesting makes it to my inbox I’ll cover it here in a later column. I’ll even mention your nic.


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

Circuit Benders Unlock the Long Riffs in Short-Circuits
Matthew Mirapaul


SEEKING NEW SOUNDS - Thomas Uliasz,
top, a circuit bender who makes music
using various modified toys; Reed Ghazala,
who began making circuit-bent instruments
in the 1960's, with one called the Cat Box.
Photo: Ting-Li Wang for The New York Times
and Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times.



DARTH VADER voice changer. A small library of educational Touch & Tell toys. A battery of Happy Rock drum machines.

Thomas Uliasz came to play. But in his hands, those toys were not meant to amuse a roomful of unruly preschoolers. Mr. Uliasz had modified them by adding keyboards and other sound-triggering tools so he could play them as musical instruments.

Mr. Uliasz (pronounced YOU-lee-us), a musician in Danbury, Conn., is engaged in the art of circuit bending, the creative alteration of electronic devices - usually toys - so they can produce new and unusual sounds. Benders delve beneath the sometimes fuzzy underbelly of talking dolls, toy instruments and basic keyboards. They rewire circuits, experimenting until they hear tones, beeps or squawks they like. Then they solder on switches, buttons and knobs to be able to recreate the novel noises on cue.

A member of the duo Burnkit 2600, Mr. Uliasz is playing many of his homemade instruments during the Bent Festival, a weeklong event of circuit-bending concerts and workshops. The festival, which ends on Saturday, is at the Tank, a center for the visual and performing arts at 432 West 42nd Street in Manhattan. A festival schedule is at thetanknyc.com/bent.

Turning electronic toys into musical instruments involves much more work than switching on the synthesizer in his recording studio, but Mr. Uliasz does it, he said, because, "I'm not going to get the same sounds out of that synthesizer."

The Darth Vader toy, for instance, was essentially an audio processor that deepened its owner's voice. Mr. Uliasz added an input jack and a pitch-control knob and renamed it the Dark Side Box. When it is connected to a rhythm machine, the circuit-bent toy can convert a mechanical cadence into a snarling, stomping beat.

Mike Rosenthal, who organized the festival with Daniel Greenfeld, said circuit bending was "a great way to get people excited about electronic music." Because bending relies on exploration rather than engineering or instrumental skills, anyone can do it. Electronic guinea pigs in the form of battery-powered parrots and purple dinosaurs can be found in thrift shops and rec-room closets, so the entry cost is low. There is only one rule: for safety's sake, never bend anything that is plugged in.

On stage, circuit-bent toys can be used in a solo recital or as a part of an ensemble containing conventional instruments. And whether the music is rooted in rock, techno or the classics, compositions are generally free-form. "The performances tend to be somewhat improvised," Mr. Rosenthal said. "What people really enjoy about these instruments is that a lot of them are very unpredictable."

Circuit bending is a hybrid of digital culture and a certain strain of avant-garde music. The practice reflects the creative misuse of technology pursued by hackers, as well as the do-it-yourself ethos of computer-game players who modify popular game titles. At the same time, it is very much in the spirit of maverick composers like Harry Partch, who built new instruments to realize sounds he could not hear elsewhere. Circuit bending can also be viewed as part of the fine art movement in which everyday objects are employed for artistic purposes.

Circuit bending has probably been around for as long as there have been circuits. Lee de Forest, the inventor in 1915 of the vacuum-tube-based audion piano, wrote of the "very weird and beautiful effects" that could be obtained by touching parts of the circuitry. But the genre's leading proponent has probably been Reed Ghazala, a Cincinnati artist who began bending in the 60's after a battery-powered amplifier in his desk drawer accidentally shorted out, generating the sound of an expensive synthesizer. Mr. Ghazala is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. today at the festival.

Derek Sajbel, a Los Angeles artist who will perform during the festival as Dr. Rek ShyBel, said circuit bending has flourished with the maturation of a generation raised on electronic toys. Mr. Sajbel, who is making a documentary film about circuit bending and has put excerpts online at absurdity .biz, said, "A lot of the people who do bending grew up with electronic toys, so there's a certain sense of nostalgia that makes it that much cooler."

Indeed, the toys prized by benders, like various versions of Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell products, date from the 80's and early 90's, when complex, infinitely bendable circuits had yet to be reduced to a single integrated chip.

Tod Machover, a composer and professor at the M.I.T. Media Lab who develops educational musical toys for children, said he understood the urge to find new sounds. But he sees circuit bending more as a subversive commentary on the toys themselves. With sophisticated music-making software so readily available, he said, "I can't help thinking that there's easier ways to make nice music than taking these toys apart."

Such thinking will not deter dedicated benders like Mr. Uliasz. On Sunday, he said, he bought his cats a stuffed toy that purrs electronically as they bat it around. He said, "Of course, I'll be taking that thing apart when the cats' interest wanes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/te...ts/08bend.html


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

Interview

Clay Shirky, Internet Technologist

The Basics
Age and occupation. How long have you lived here, where did you come from, and where do you live now?
39. Professor, writer, and consultant on internet technologies. I came from a state in the Midwest you probably have not heard of. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a lighting designer who worked on big Broadway musicals. My 16th birthday present was a trip to NYC, and after a couple of days here, I swore I'd move here, which I did, 4 days after I graduated from college. I have lived here ever since. I currently live opposite the dolphin in the kid's part of that little park on Congress Street, Brooklyn.

Three Queries
1. Blogs: beloved little observations grouped sequentially. I'm almost afraid to ask the question but what's your brief take on where all this blogging is headed?
It's headed everywhere, because the underlying pattern of cheap amateur publishing is what's important, not the current manifestations. The word blog itself is going to fade into the middle distance, in the same way words like home page and portal did. Those words used to mean something relatively crisp and specific, but became so overloaded as to be meaningless.

Already blogs are used for groups of teenagers to bitch about their lives, as on many LiveJournal sites; to track gossip, politics, and tech trends, as with Gawker, Wonkette, and Gizmodo; as an adjunct to political campaigns; and as a kind of giant distributed OpEd page. Too much for one little word.

So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.

2. With all the various projects/papers you work on, the magazine freelancing, teaching at NYU's ITP program, I assume you've seen the future. I'm sure Friendster and blogs won't change the world, so what do you think will? (At least in terms of this technology stuff.)
The thing that will change the future in the future is the same thing that changed the future in the past --- freedom, in both its grand and narrow senses.

The narrow sense of freedom, in tech terms, is a freedom to tinker, to prod and poke and break and fix things. Good technologies -- the PC, the internet, HMTL -- enable this. Bad technologies -- cellphones, set-top boxes -- forbid it, in hardware or contract. A lot of the fights in the next 5 years are going to be between people who want this kind of freedom in their technologies vs. business people who think freedom is a shitty business model compared with control.

And none of this would matter, really, except that in a technologically mediated age, our grand freedoms -- freedom of speech, of association, of the press -- are based on the narrow ones. Wave after wave of world- changing technology like email and the Web and instant messaging and Napster and Kazaa have been made possible because the technological freedoms we enjoy, especially the ones instantiated in the internet.

The internet means you don't have to convince anyone that something is a good idea before trying it, and that in turn means that you don't need to be a huge company to change the world. Microsoft gears up the global publicity machine its launch of Windows 98, and at the same time a 19 year old kid procrastinating on his CS homework invents a way to trade MP3 files. Guess which software spread faster, and changed people's lives more?

So while things like FCC regulation of the internet have that MEGO quality (My Eyes Glaze Over), they matter, a lot, because the only way for 19 year olds to change the world in this medium is to give them the freedom to ignore all previous work to date, and come up with something new.

Describe that low, low moment when you thought you just might have to leave NYC for good.
Early 90s. I am separated but not yet divorced, because my then-wife and I don't have $300 for a lawyer. I am also unemployed. I am crashing at a friend's place on 25th and 6th, where she is graciously letting me stay while she's away.

On a hot Saturday night in July, I'm heading back from Brooklyn to "home." It's one of those nights just walking down the street feels like you're wrapped in a warm damp blanket and standing in bus exhaust.

I go down into the Borough Hall Station, where the air is even hotter, stiller, and smellier than the street, and head for the 2/3. When I get to the platform, I've just missed a train, and now the platform is empty, except me and one very tough looking guy.

Who starts walking towards me.

And I panic. (I'd been held up at gun point in Williamsburg earlier that summer, so I was especially jittery.)

I literally run back down the platform, up the stairs, and stop, shivering, just inside the turnstile where the clerk can see me. I can't go through, because I don't have enough money for another token, so I decide I'll ride the 4/5, which I can see from where I'm standing, then get off at 23rd and walk the rest of the way home.

After a long time, the train comes. I get on it, and begin working on two different problems. The first, and larger problem is how to get the fuck out of New York City, which is dirty, dangerous, disgusting, I hate New York, I have to get out. Soon. To anywhere else. Maybe a trailer park in Idaho.

The second, more immediate problem is beer. There is a bodega at 25th and 6th, run by these crazy Iranian guys. I don't know if it will be open (it is by now two in the morning), and if it is, I don't know if they'll sell me beer, as it's technically Sunday. These are minor problems, though, compared to money.

I am sitting on the 4, simultaneously visualizing my new life as an Idahoian and scrounging pennies out of my jeans pockets. "82, 83, 84, 85." Bingo! Budweiser time. Budweiser has the obvious downside of tasting bad, but has the twin upsides of being 5% alcohol and 85 cents a can, which tips the scales.

This realization depresses me even more -- five years busting my ass at my chosen profession, and I'm sitting on the subway at two in the morning counting pennies so I can get a single can of lousy beer and go home alone.

I get out at 23rd, and start walking west, then north on 6th. The bodega is still open, and as I walk in, one of the guys standing by the door holds up his hand to stop me, and says something I will never forget.

"Who is the better designer? Yves St. Laurent, or Bill Blass?" (except it was more like 'Beel Bless'.) These options are presented as if I am facing the Judgment of Paris, and his body language makes it clear that I'm not getting to the cooler 'til I answer.

Now this is jolting, in part because it's so random, but also because I am definitely not the guy to ask. My sartorial sensibilities veer between dress-down Friday and last man out of a mine collapse, and that evening had me closer to the West Virginia end of the spectrum -- ratty sneakers, no socks, paint stained cut-offs, a t-shirt with holes and coffee stains.

And so, transported from my "I hate New York" funk into an unexpected interrogation, I fall back on two habits of mind common to generations of New Yorkers. First, never let the fact that you know absolutely nothing about the matter at hand stop you from delivering a firm opinion, and, second, when in doubt on matters of culture, go for the French-sounding name.

"Yves St. Laurent." Obviously.

His face lights up, and he turns and backhands his partner in the chest. "See!" Then he turns back to me. "Thank you. You are my friend," and steps aside.

When I get back to the counter to pay, he waves his hand as if pardoning a sentence of death. "You are my friend," he says again. Free beer! From Muslims! On the Sabbath! What could be bad?

A little dazed, I head for the door, and he stops me a third time. "You are my friend. Here, don't get AIDS." (Except it's "Doan ge'Daids", so it takes me a moment to process.) Then I see he's holding a little stack of condoms, and he takes one off the top and hands it to me. I stand there for a minute, and he just smiles and nods. I am free to go.

And so I head out one Bud, one Trojan, and 85 cents to the good, and walk the last half block home thinking how much I love this town.
http://www.gothamist.com/interview/a...chnologist.php


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

Recording Industry Crusade Stumbles On
Opinion - ComputerWire

The legal debate surrounding peer-to-peer file-swapping sites has shifted up a gear in the past few months, beginning with the Recording Industry Association of America filing hundreds of lawsuits against serial downloaders, who they claim are costing the industry millions.

But the crusade against copyright infringement has met more than a few stumbling blocks. At the end of March a Canadian judge ruled that use of the Kazaa P2P network didn't constitute copyright infringement, in a case brought by the Canadian Recording Industry Association that was attempting to identify 29 Canadian people who had been downloading music.

The judge opened a whole new can of legal worms by ruling: "No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service."

More surprising is the action taken by a New Jersey mother, Michele Scimeca, who received an RIAA notice in December after her child used the Kazaa network for a school project. She has countersued labels Sony, Universal and Motown by claiming that the demands for reimbursement of $150,000 per infringement falls foul of the 1970 Organized Crime and Control Act.

Scimeca's attorney explained the reasoning behind the lawsuit to the New Jersey Star ledger: "They're banding together to extort money, telling people they're guilty and they will have to pay big bucks to defend their cases if they don't pony up now. It is fundamentally not fair."

The recording industry's position was further eroded by a report released last week by Harvard Business School associate professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee and professor Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina. These two academics claim that music downloads had "no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album" in their research sample.

The professors used data taken directly from file-sharing networks over a 17-week period, comparing them to official US CD sales, and factoring in network congestion, song length and seasonal trends. The research states that it would take 5,000 downloads of a song to reduce sales of the album which it is on by one copy.

Of course, the RIAA has its own research that claims file-sharing is killing the industry and hurting artists. These claims are countered by those that argue CD production has been falling over the past few years, and that record companies need to restructure their business to focus more on artists, and spend less on marketing bad products.

In spite of the rights and wrongs of file-sharing, there must be an underlying belief within the recording industry that the majority of users do want to reward artists and their management for their art. However, the increasingly tough stance taken by organizations such as the RIAA will only work against them, and could increase resentment of the industry and its stranglehold on audible art.

Given that the film and computer games industries are not up in arms despite the large amount of downloading of their intellectual property, the recording industry may increasingly be seen as a spoilt brat throwing a tantrum. Although strong-arm tactics have filled the pockets of the world's biggest recording companies for the past 50 years, the estimated billions of file-sharers in the US, Europe and Asia may be a harder nut to crack.
http://computerwire.info/cwdirection...256E77004AEF8F


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Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Music Of The Fears
Stewart Kirkpatrick

If you want to appear like you’re at the cutting edge of net culture but can’t be bothered to spend hours online, then never fear. Scotsman.com’s pathetic team of geeks, freaks and gimps will do the hard work for you. While you sip wine, read a book or engage in normal social interaction, they will burn out their retinas staring at badly designed web pages and dodge creeps in chatrooms to prepare for you: Scotsman.com’s lazy guide to net culture.

If music be the food of love, play on. But if music be downloaded then, oh boy, get ready for a whole heap of trouble.

The music industry is dying, apparently. It is being killed by amoral reprobates who get songs for nothing from the internet. (For a list of the places where you can carry out such nefarious acts, check out afternapster.com.)

The effects of this have been devastating, as can be seen from the obvious poverty of the likes of Madonna, Elton John and Ronan Keating.

Now the industry is going after people who swap music over the net. The Recording Industry Association of America has been serving writs on "file sharers", claiming thousands of dollars for each "pirated" track. Its UK equivalent is also going to target people who make their music collections available to others online.

It's important to note that falling music sales have nothing - repeat, nothing - to do with the quality of the product on offer. The fact that the charts are packed with anodyne, pre-packaged, worthless pap with all the invention, soul and guts of an empty crisp bag is completely irrelevant. Nasty internet bogeymen are solely to blame for falling sales.

The situation has reached crisis point, according to the music industry. Of course, we should take all this very seriously. Downloading unauthorised music files from the net is theft, unlike, say, charging £14 for a CD that costs pennies to make or putting out an album featuring one decent song and packed with filler. That's just sound business.

As is suing your customers, which is bound to win them round.

By the way, does anyone remember the "home taping is killing music" campaign of the 80s? It was remarkably similar to the P2P (peer to peer, aka file sharing) imbroglio and oddly enough the music industry seemed to survive that one.

The whole anti-sharing campaign is doomed anyway. Police forces worldwide have struggled to stamp out genuine criminality on the net. What chance do a few record companies have of tracking down the millions of people who share their songs?

However, if you are worried at the prospect of music industry lawyers crashing through your front door there are many ways to enjoy music for free online without any legal risks.

Sites like ifilm.com showcase music videos. That site gives you free, no- naughtiness-involved access to large number of songs, including decent ones you'd actually want to listen to.

For the more adventurous there are some really interesting music animations created by independents. A good example is a Flash movie by 512kb set to Cranky's Party 4u (holy nite mix) (no I hadn’t heard of it either). It's at http:// 512kb.net/flash5.htm. Given that it's a trance track (the young people tell me that this is a form of disco music) the Japanese video is fast, furious and trippy, featuring flashing images of animated figures and swirling numbers. It's a really exciting combination of sound and vision.

A rather more sedate aural experience can be found at home.comcast.net/ ~mrartemis/ddautta_play.html, which features Japanese ska and a video that depicts a cat trying not to fall in love with a rabbit. It's rather charming - as well as a bit weird. (OK, it's very weird and very Japanese).

My favourite homemade video, however, deals with the thorny issue of downloading. It samples Apple's famous "1984" commercial that depicted the liberating of users from an Orwellian nightmare and unfavourably compares the company's message of liberation with its involvment in the attack on file sharers. It's at slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/000610.html.

It ends with a shot of a new iMac whose screen shows the same images as the Orwellian telescreen that launched the Macintosh 20 years ago. Beside it are the slogans: "War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. Don't think different." The last phrase is not Orwell's but a parody of the Apple slogan "Think different".

It's savage but sums up the anger that many users feel about the file sharing crackdown.
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=420142004


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Downloaders Pay Up To Wilco
From Baltimore Sun and Associated Press

Showing that even freeloaders have a heart, fans of the rock band Wilco have contributed more than $3,500 to the band's favorite charity as a token payment for downloading Wilco's new record off the Internet.

The new record, "A Ghost Is Born," won't be released until June 22. But when copies leaked out last month, the band responded in a novel way. Instead of filing lawsuits or issuing cease-and-desist letters — a common practice in the piracy-crazed music industry — Wilco cooperated in setting up a website where downloaders could cleanse their consciences.

The charity site, justafan.org, went up Friday and has brought in almost $4,000 for Doctors Without Borders.

Meanwhile, Wilco singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy has entered rehab for addiction to painkillers, a spokeswoman for the band said.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Interview

Copyright In The Digital Age
Lawrence Lessig

Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig was online to discuss his book, "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity." In his book, Lessig argues that the entertainment industry conspires with Congress to use copyright law to destroy our traditional notion of freedom in culture.

washingtonpost.com reporter David McGuire moderated the discussion.

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: Dr. Lessig, thanks for joining us. In your new book: "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity," you argue that the debate over piracy has obscured a larger movement on the part of the media industry (movie, music and software makers) to "remake the Internet, before it remakes them." How, practically, is that movement unfolding? Where are those battles being fought?

Lawrence Lessig: The content industry has done a good job convincing the world that the internet will enable what they call "piracy." That has obscured the fact that the internet will also enable an extraordinary potential for creativity. And it has obscured the fact that the weapons they use to eradicate "piracy" will also destroy the environment for this "creativity." They spray DDT to kill a gnat. We say: "Silent Spring."

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Bellingham, Wash.: What are your thoughts on the debate on anticircumvention regulations and how they may impact fair use? Do antipiracy concerns outweigh the importance of allowing legitimate uses of circumvention software (for example, by DVD owners making backup copies)?

Lawrence Lessig: The anticircumvention regulations of the DMCA have been interpreted in a way that does plainly restrict any sensible understanding of "fair use." They are therefore regulations that will be found, imho, to violate the constitution. As the Court indicated in Eldred, fair use has a constitutional basis. Congress is not free simply to remove it. Thus whether Congress -- "persuaded" by the content industry -- believes that antipiracy concerns outweigh the constitution or not, no law may outweigh the constitution.

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Washington, D.C.: You are on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has recently volunteered to defend alleged copyright infringers that are being sued by copyright holders, the RIAA.

As a law professor and a copyright holder yourself (Free Culture book), do you feel that the RIAA has a legitimate gripe in protecting what property is legally belongs to them?

Would you support a foundation established to defend literary copyright suits, if professors were to crack down on student text book copying - or even worse, yours?

Lawrence Lessig: I believe that copyrights, properly defined and reasonably balanced, ought to be defended by copyright owners, and organizations (whether the RIAA or others) devoted to defending such rights. I'm sure everyone at the EFF believes the same. But just as a lawyer who defends someone charged with auto theft does not therefore support auto theft, so too with the EFF: They are, rightly, defending the rights of individuals that they believe, rightly, should not be prosecuted in this way under this law.

As a law professor -- and more importantly, as a citizen of the United States -- I absolutely support their actions. We here are supposed to believe in the right to a defense. We are supposed to believe that laws are not to be overreaching in their effect. We are supposed to oppose abuse of the power of prosecution. And I fundamentally oppose those who would question anyone who would defend rights that our constitution was designed to guarantee.

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Washington, D.C.: Good afternoon - Prof. Lessig, will you state once and for all that the widespread theft (or whatever term you wish to apply) of copyrighted works online is illegal? Can the conversation about copyrights in the digital age at least recognize this? Don't you feel that it is a dangerous society that believes that because the Internet lets you do something, it is permissible to do so...whether morally or legally right or wrong? I find that in all of your articulate presentations, you seem to blame the people who create and invest in the creation of music, movies etc. and place no blame on those who take those works without compensating the artists/copyright holders.

Lawrence Lessig: Great question. First, I have "recognized" this. Here's a great derivative work of my book -- permitted because I released my book free under a Creative Commons license. (http://trevor.typepad.com/blog/free_...e_numbers.html) On that page, each paragraph of my book has been marked by its own url. As you'll see at paragraphs 84, 110, 367, 372, 377, 382, 388, 389, to mark a few. Or go to (http://free-culture.org) and download the book and look at the section "Why Hollywood is Right" beginning at 124.

But my whole point is that if we as a people can think about only one issue at a time, then we as a culture are doomed. For if we set our policy focused on one end only - - ending piracy -- then we will end a tradition of free culture as well.

Yet the content industry has done so well because they've convinced DC that there is really just one issue out there -- piracy. And they certainly are more successful than I in shaping this debate. So it may well be that we as a people can think about only one issue at a time. And again, if so, then we as a culture are doomed.

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Takoma Park, Md.: Is it fair to call pervasive free availability of any copyrighted song anyone can think of a "gnat"? I appreciate your concerns but it seems to me that you're downplaying the impact of file-sharing on creative industries.

Lawrence Lessig: Is it fair? Well, what's the harm. In my book, I assumed there was a substantial harm, and the question I asked is: how might we minimize the harm while not destroying the internet or its potential. So I would push for different policies even assuming the gnat is a lion.

But since my book was published, there has been substantial work -- by independent researchers, not paid by the content industry or anyone else -- to suggest that there is no substantial harm from p2p sharing. More precisely, that when you add up all the effects (people exposed to new content which they buy, etc.), the effect of sharing is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Whether you buy that analysis or not -- and, I think we should remain skeptical about it until it has had a good chance for further peer review -- I do think that relative to what we lose by waging this war, the interests of one particular industry are small.

By this system of federal regulation, we are creating a regime of creativity where the only safe way to create is to ask permission first. You might think that's simple, but just try it someday. But I'm with those who think that there's something fundamentally wrong about this regime, whether it is simple or not. I as an academic don't need anyone's permission before I write an article criticizing someone else. But the same freedom is not accorded a filmmaker, or webmaster, under the rules as they exist today.

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Madrid, Spain: Do you really think there will be a unbreakable technology to protect CD, video or stop MP3 exchanges in the web? In others words, is it possible to protect intelectual property with a piece of software? Do you really think the technological measures will be effective?

Lawrence Lessig: By "do you really think" you make it sound as if I've suggested such a "solution." I have not. Indeed, I think all solutions that rely upon technology to control access suffer important and unavoidable costs. More importantly, an arms race around technologies for locking up and liberating content is a waste. We should push for a regime that helps assure artists get paid without simultaneously breaking the most valuable features of the internet.

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New Orleans, La.: Do you think that the Court's strict constructionist reading of the Copyright Clause in Eldred blows open the door to the continued and expanding success of special interests appropriating the public domain?

Lawrence Lessig: Yes, it absolutely does. By ignoring the original meaning of the constitution's text -- indeed, by ignoring even the text, for the Court does not even try to explain what the words "to promote the Progress of Science" means -- the Court has given Congress, and lobbyists, a green-light to continue what they have done so well over the past 40 years -- extend the term of existing copyrights. It is totally obvious that in 2018, there will be another bill to extend copyright terms. It is totally obvious that all the money in the world will be spent by those who have copyrights that are about to expire. And totally obvious that nothing (yet) in the Court's jurisprudence that would stop such an extension.

Now of course, there's lots that can, and must be done, independent of the Court. PublicKnowledge.org, for example, is doing a great deal of good to get Congress to consider reasonable balances in the field of copyright. They have, for example, taken up the challenge of getting congress to pass the Public Domain Enhancement Act, which would require a copyright owner, 50 years after a work has been published, to register the work and pay $1. If the owner pays the $1, he or she gets the benefit of whatever term Congress has set. If he or she does not, the work passes into the public domain. We know from historical data that more than 85% of copyrighted work would pass into the public domain after just 50 years under such a regime -- clearing away a mass of legal regulation governing the ability of people to reuse culture. But even this reasonable proposal is being resisted by, for example, the MPAA.

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Georgetown: Isn't the source of the problem in copyright law the extension of the copyright to derivative works? This aspect of copyright should be limited or eliminated after, say 50 years. That way Disney would be able keep selling its classics while the others would be able to use the work as the basis for new creations.

Have there been any such proposals in Congress?

Lawrence Lessig: This is a great suggestion. Yes, the one really radical way in which copyright law today differs from the copyright law our framers gave us is derivative rights: They didn't protect them, and we do. And that extension does, in my view, muddy many issues. I understand and support laws which control the ability of A to sell a verbatim copy of B's copyrighted work without B's permission. But whatever wrong that is, it is totally different from the "wrong" of building a work based on B's work. Our law does not adequately distinguish between the two, and it should. A shorter term might be one solution. I suggest others in my book. But it is plainly an area where serious reform could do serious good.

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Washington, D.C.: How is distributing copies of copyrighted works to a stranger without the authorization of the artist, as in P2P, not a violation of copyright? Do you not agree that an artist's ability to copyright his work, if he chooses to, creates incentives for that artist to innovate and create? Without intellectual property protections incentives to innovate disappear.

Lawrence Lessig: So I answered something close to this question before, so I won't repeat what I said there. But in summary:

(1) "How is distributing copies of copyrighted works to a stranger without the authorization of the artist, as in P2P, not a violation of copyright?"

It may be under the law as it is just now. I've not contested that generally.

(2) "Do you not agree that an artist's ability to copyright his work, if he chooses to, creates incentives for that artist to innovate and create?"

OF COURSE I do! Absolutely it does. And most of my work these days is devoted to making it easier for ARTISTS to choose how best to deploy the rights the law gives them. (see, e.g., http://creativecommons.org).

(3) "Without intellectual property protections incentives to innovate disappear."

In some contexts, absolutely correct. In other contexts, no. There's plenty of incentive to innovate around Shakespeare's work, even though no one has a copyright in Shakespeare. There's would be plenty of incentive for law professors to blather on endlessly in law review articles, even without copyright protection. In my view, rather than treating (3) as a matter of ideology, we should treat (3) as a question of fact: IP is a form of regulation; regulation makes sense where it does more good than harm. So we should be asking where IP protection does more good than harm.

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David McGuire: Does the pending case of 321 Studios over its DVD X Copy software -- which allows users to make copies of their DVDs -- seem to you a likely vehicle to address some of these fair use concerns before the Supreme Court?

Lawrence Lessig: I don't think the Supreme Court is ready for these issues. I thought it was. I was wrong. I believe 321 should prevail in the case, and I hope it does. But the hysteria around this "war" is too great just now for this Court to consider the matter with the usual balance of judgment it has displayed in (most) copyright cases.

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Alexandria, Va.: If a company has a valuable copyright and it wants to continue making money off it, why should it not be able to renew that copyright forever? I understand what copyright law says, but isn't it naive or even greedy to suggest that everything we create should ultimately be given away?

Lawrence Lessig: Well, first one might point out that the Constitution says Congress can grant copyrights to "Authors" not companies. Second, one might observe that the Constitution says Congress can secure "exclusive rights" for "limited times." And third, one might ask when the term granted corporations is already almost a century, who's being "greedy" here?

Of course one might well say the framers were idiots about this, and we should reject their wisdom and follow the wisdom of corporate lobbyists on this. Maybe.

But I'd rather focus on the agreement we have: you write, "why should it not be able to renew that copyright forever?" I'm all in favor of a renewal requirement. Indeed, I've proposed a relatively long term (75 years) so long as the copyright owner "renews" the copyright every 5 year. No doubt that might sound like a hassle -- and it is, given the way the government typically does things. But imagine one-click renewal. Imagine a system that was simple. In that world, I'd be totally ok with terms as long as they are, so long as terms had to be renewed. We know from history that the vast majority of copyrights -- 85% - 95% -- would not be renewed even after 28 years. So my aim -- to minimize the senseless burden of endless terms -- would be achieved with a renewal requirement.

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Scranton, Pa.: It seems like you think the entertainment industry's endgame is to control all content from the cradle. At that point, presumably, all content would be puerile trash. But the industry likes this idea because we've seen that the average American consumer loves the smell of garbage. Is this the depressing landscape that you see on the horizon based on our present course? Or is this scenario extreme?

Lawrence Lessig: I hope it is extreme. But it is an aspect of what I fear. I think ARTISTS and CREATORS are great. I think our framers intended them to be benefited by copyright law. But I believe our Congress (and FCC) has produced a world where PUBLISHERS (in the broadest sense of that term) are the real beneficiaries of our copyright system. And as they become fat, slogging giants, the stuff they produce (or allow to be produced) will be increasingly awful.

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Anaheim, Calif.: Hello, Dr. Lessig. Is there any way to clearly define the line between fair use and infringement? I am not a copyright expert nor am I a lawyer. Is there a way to explain your answer in plain English?

Lawrence Lessig: No, there is not, and that 95% of the problem. Fair use in America is the right to hire a lawyer -- which is fine for CBS, or NBC, but useless for most creators. That's why I've proposed changes that produce clear lines, rather than lines requiring the services of $300/hr plus professionals. The great thing about the public domain, for example, is that it is a lawyer-free zone. Anyone can use anything in the public domain without asking permission first (except if you use Peter Pan, but that's another story all together...).

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Arlington, Va.: Reps. Boucher and Doolittle have introduced a bill (H.R. 107) that seeks to provide the kind of balance to the DMCA that you suggest is important. Are you familiar with and, if so, do you support their legislation?

Lawrence Lessig: Yes, and yes. Boucher and Doolittle have been rare but important voices of balance in this debate. Zoe Lofgren and Chris Cox too. All who believe in sanity in this "war" should be doing whatever they can to support these few, brave souls. Especially Congressman Boucher, who has a well funded opponent in this race (funded by whom I wonder?)

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Flatland Crest, Mont.: You said earlier that if we can only examine one issue at a time - in this case piracy - then we as a culture are doomed. Doomed to what? Will artists fail to flourish because the entertainment industry has a lockdown on copyright? I doubt that a 13-year-old who set his or her pen to paper and suddenly produces a precocious, beautiful novel even knows what "Fair Use" means.

Lawrence Lessig: I guess it depends on what you think "fail to flourish" means. There were many who thought art flourished in the soviet union, even though the artist couldn't publish or distribute his or her art. Of course, we're not the soviet union, but the same point is true nonetheless: I don't believe we have a FREE CULTURE if creativity is criminal. I don't believe we respect the tradition of FREE SPEECH if the act of remixing culture is an act that requires permission from publishers first. I don't believe we will have a vibrant FREE MARKET if it is so heavily regulated by lawyers. So even if in the dystopian future I describe, a 13 year old is physically able to create an "precocious beautiful novel," we don't live in a free culture unless she can create that work without hiring a lawyer first.

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Washington, D.C.: In a recent article published in Forbes by Stephen Manes, he says that you are going to harm the creator and reward the people doing illegal activity as well as put "the U.S. at odds with international law." How do you respond?

Lawrence Lessig: I've responded at length on my blog: http://lessig.org/blog. But I'll say that there was no review that more disappointed me than Mr. Manes'. I've got great respect for Forbes the man, and Forbes the magazine. And as, for example, Stu Baker in the Wall Street Journal noted, my argument is not really an argument for the left. Indeed, as he argued quite effectively, it is more powerfully an argument for the right. (Copyright law, as he put it, is the "asbestos litigation" of the 21st century). So I was very surprised both with the substance of Mr. Manes's review (which was unthinking and ill-informed) and with its tone (which was rude and abusive). Both seemed to me to be beneath the quality of the publication. And as I said in my first response to Mr. Manes, it just goes to show how much more work we in this movement have to make to make our ideas understandable.

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Washington, D.C.: Hi Prof. Lessig - with each book that you release on the subject of IP rights and the 'net, I think you've become more readable for the masses. I'm thrilled with this, because I think these issues are of incredible importance for everyone. However, I think that there remains a long way to go before the general public thinks of "fair use" as anything other than an excuse used by those music-stealin' college kids. How can we better present your (our) concerns to the public in a way that helps them better understand the importance of these things to their lives?

Lawrence Lessig: Thanks for the kind words. It is extraordinarily easy as a professor to believe your ideas are clear and obviously right. And the hardest lesson of the last 5 years for me has been the recognition of how many ideas I was sure are right are, it turns out, wrong, and how hard it is to make the rest understandable. That's especially hard for me, and it has taken many years to learn differently.

I agree that it will take a great deal of work to make these ideas even more understandable. But I think the way to do it is by showing people the law, not arguing about it. Show parents the extraordinary creativity the technology of Apple enables. Show them what their kids can do with it -- the music they can make, the films they can produce, etc. And then show them the billion ways in which the law would deem that creativity criminal. When people begin to see that this is a war we're waging against the next generation, they might begin to wake-up to its threat.

(Then again, it's not as if our policy today is really much concerned with our kids at all. We don't tax ourselves so we can tax our kids (deficits); we don't pay to clean up our environment so our kids will; we wage wars that will excite a generation of hatred directed against -- again -- our kids. Etc. So I guess it is not surprising that here again, we wage a war whose primary target and victims will be our kids.)

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Edgartown, Mass.: Good afternoon. Is this the first time that you have permitted your book to be made available for free on the Internet? How are the sales of your latest book stacking up against your previous works?

Lawrence Lessig: It is the first time I've succeeded in convincing my publisher, yes. I have tried before, but am blessed this time to have a great and innovative publisher (Penguin Press) and an astonishing editor. (It was my editor who did the real work convincing the publisher). And sales are going much better than with any other book. But the part that has been the most interesting and surprising to me is not the sales. It is the derivative works. I released my book under a Creative Commons license, which left others free to make derivative works. If you go here http://free-culture.cc/remixes/ you can see a list of the amazing number of "remixes" of the book that people across the net have made. There are many different formats available now (we released a PDF only). There are audio versions. There is a Wiki (which allows anyone to change or extend the book). I never expected the energy that the net has demonstrated. And as that energy will assure the ideas spread broadly, I am extraordinarily grateful.

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San Francisco, Calif.: During the mid to late 1970's, the music industry be came moribund by it marketing ploys of only promoting large sales music groups who could fill arenas and stadiums. The response of musicians and consumers to the lack of creativity in rock music were the punk movements and new wave which developed on small independent labels. These were later coopted into the larger music industry just as rap was in the '90s. Are such consumer/artist uprisings still possible in our media controlled environment?

Lawrence Lessig: They are possible, but would be more possible if the law was not such a heavy handed regulator in this space. More important to me, it would be possible if labels would be more tolerant of experiments by authors. Creative Commons, for example, has launched a number of licenses that enable authors to mark their content with freedoms -- freedoms that will, many believe, lead to more sales of records. But these artists have been met with strong resistance by the traditional labels. We should all recognize something that no one admits: None of us know what will work best in the future. So in the face of that ignorance, we must depend upon a competitive market offering alternatives, and encouraging experiments. And a room filled with lawyers is not a great way to inspire experimentation.

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David McGuire: Professor Lessig was good enough to take an extra half hour to answer more of the many insightful questions we received. Unfortunately we're out of time. I'd like to thank the professor for taking the time to join us today and our audience for contributing so many thoughtful questions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Apr7.html


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Alleged Israeli Hackers Nabbed
Roni Singer

Police have interrogated four young hackers suspected of gaining illegal access to hundreds of computers in Israel and abroad by introducing a "Trojan horse" that enabled them to gain control of those computers.

The four, aged 14 to 16, are residents of Ashdod and Kfar Saba. The investigation was carried out by computer experts at the Tel Aviv police's fraud division. The four youths reportedly confessed and are likely to be charged soon.

Police were alerted to the racket by SPD, a company that provides Internet storage services. They complained that the Trojan horse had been introduced into one of their less-used servers. The team that conducted the investigation soon tracked down the four youths, who had not succeeded in covering up their tracks very well. Nir Nativ, the officer who headed the investigation, said: "They're kids with limited capabilities. They were not able to penetrate computers of firms they wanted to reach, so they chose those they found did not have good security. They're not very sophisticated."

The four would send a large package of information together to these computers and thus would block their servers and they would fail. Police say that one 14-year-old from Kfar Saba managed to penetrate a certain company and to follow its internal business correspondence on a regular basis. Had these firms been involved in highly secret activities, police said, they would have had better protection against hackers.

The youths managed to access a large number of credit card numbers, particularly from sites abroad, but when they tried to use them, they were unsuccessful.

The 14-year-old told police he had been hacking since he was 12. He said he had set up his own Web site where he explained how to send a "Trojan horse" into various computers.

During the interrogation, the youths are believed to have admitted their guilt and said they were aware that what they were doing was illegal.

The parents, who were surprised to hear what their children were up to, are cooperating with the police.

Police describe this case as "merely the tip of the iceberg." They say there are numerous groups of youth who are illegally hacking, "out of sheer hooliganism and not to make serious money." Some of them, Nativ said, use more sophisticated methods.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/415493.html


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Using Peer-to-Peer to Launch a Music Career
Press Release

How The G-Man Got Played, Got Signed, Got a Publisher, & Got on iTunes... All by Giving His Music Away For Free.

The G-Man is a musician who knows how to "work the Web," perhaps because he's also deeply involved in the worlds of advertising and marketing. Some of his marketing savvy was put to use in launching his music career.

DEFYING THE RIAA:
What did he do that was so extraordinary? Defying the wishes of the RIAA and the major record labels, he offered all the music on his first album for free.

In fact, he went even farther than that: he contacted thousands of DJs and remixers, established peer-to-peer filesharing relationships with them, then offered to send them individual tracks (bass, synth, vocals, drums, guitar, etc.) if they wanted to mix new versions of his songs.

The results have been spectacular, involving reviews, remixes, club play, radio play, a record deal, publishing and licensing agreements, and awards. All three of his albums have been nominated Electronica Album of the Year by the Los Angeles Music Awards, and he won for his "Grin Groove" album in 2002.

INDIE SIGNING & HIS OWN COMPANY:
He is signed to Delvian Records, all of his albums are on Apple's iTunes, his song catalog is administered by Janssongs.com, and he has opened his own company, G-Man Music & Radical Radio, where he creates songs, sonics, radio spots, and music for film, TV, and games.

Perhaps best of all, two of his songs have been remixed by Matt Forger, best-known as Michael Jackson's recording engineer on "Thriller," "Bad," "Dangerous," and four other albums, and who also worked with Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, and many more. These tracks are a part of The G-Man’s "The Platinum Age of the Remix," an album featured on StudioExpresso, home to more than 100 of the world’s best music producers and engineers.

Additionally, The G-Man has become a creative director for NARIP (National Association of Record Industry Professionals), an associate writer for MusicDish.com, and a content supplier for Circle of Songs, L*A*M*P, Bitchin Entertainment, and Venus Music.

RAVE REVIEWS:
Reviewers have compared his songs to such artists as Devo, David Bowie, Art of Noise, Brian Eno, OMD, Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, Spandau Ballet, and Frank Zappa. From mainstream media like the New York Times and the All Music Guide, to respected Web sites and eZines, music by The G-Man is written about with zeal.

AIRPLAY:
The G-Man is also receiving airplay on college stations in many cities across the United States and Internet radio around the world. Most important from the business aspect, his songs are being licensed for use in radio and TV commercials.

HOW IT BEGAN:
"The 'give it away' approach may be a cool new way of starting a career," G-Man states. "And some people say this method puts me in the vanguard of changes that are overwhelming the music industry. Perhaps it's both," he says with a grin.

"I think that the music business as we know it is splintering into a million shards," he states, "and it is being built up into something new right before our eyes."

SIX YEAR OVERNIGHT SUCCESS:
Six years ago, Scott G was an advertising writer, radio commercial producer, and sometime music critic. But he wanted to make sounds, not just write about them, so he picked up a guitar and began learning to play.

In 2001, he started recording his first album, creating music that fuses today's dance grooves with pop melodies and then adds sly commentary. Some have called it dancebeat, some have called it Zappa-esque, but Scott calls it "grin groove music."

Using "Grin Groove" as his album title, The G-Man did several things that together represent the beginnings of a quantum shift in the way music is created, marketed and disseminated to listeners around the globe.

First, he put up a simple, graphically clean, "100% animation-free" Web site at http://www.gmanmusic.com . Next, he combed other Web sites for the e-mail addresses of media as well as 25,000 DJs, remixers, and those involved with raves, clubs, electronica, dance, and drum 'n' bass genres. "This took as much time as it did to record the songs, but it was worth it," he says.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE:
Then, two simple e-mail messages were created. He followed the ideas recommended by Indiespace's Pete Markiewicz, namely, put the basic idea in the Subject line, keep the message short, and do not include any graphics.

One e-mail message announced his new genre of music to the media. The other e-mail offered to send tracks for free to anyone who wished to remix his music -- and that is perhaps the most significant part of his approach, as you will see.

IT'S IN THE REMIX:
Remixers have been using his tracks all around the globe. "I have had five songs remixed in Russia by a sonic master called Random Distribution," The G-Man states, "and one of these tracks went to #1 over there. Meanwhile, an Australian DJ known as Zero Point Energy has done a remix that is now showing up on Web sites around the world. A jazz artist known as il moroso has begun remixing more of my songs and we have now agreed to collaborate on an album of acid jazz music."

Perhaps most interesting is the reaction from the European community. A consortium of remixers called The Allianz, led by DJ Insane, created remixes of every song on "Grin Groove." One of the DJ Insane tracks reached #5 on a European dance chart.

PART OF A PLAN:
All of this could be viewed as just a series of fortuitous accidents, but The G-Man doesn't think so. "I believe that the music world is breaking up and is at the same time transforming into something new, and you have to address the peer-to-peer file sharing in order to exist in this new world."

More - http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/4/emw116996.htm


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College Unlikely To Adopt New File-Sharing Filter
Zachary Goldstein

In recent weeks, multiple colleges and universities across the nation have implemented a new network filter promoted by the Recording Industry Association of America in its latest attempt to end illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing. Dartmouth, however, will not join the pack, according to Computing Services director Robert Johnson. The College has not adopted the CopySense Network Appliance, a mechanism that some believe will help schools combat the growing problem of illicit file-sharing on high-bandwidth networks.

Central Washington University was the first school to implement the filter, though "a couple dozen universities are currently in some stage" of implementation, CopySense chief executive officer Vance Ikezoye said. The filter, produced by California firm Audible Magic, examines the "digital fingerprint" of every file transferred over the network it patrols, cross-referencing fingerprints with a 4 million-song database. The appliance can then be set to automatically cancel the transfer of any copyrighted files. It is its ability to differentiate files within the peer-to-peer network that sets the CopySense Network Appliance apart. In addition, the database grows by 5,000 to 10,000 songs per week, Ikezoye said. "Our appliance has the unique ability to say that peer-to-peer file-sharing itself is not bad," Ikezoye said. "We allow peer-to-peer exchanges to continue, except for the ones that are illegal." The product has been received quite favorably by the RIAA, which despite hundreds of subpoenas against individual illicit file-sharers is still in search of a silver bullet.

In recent months, the RIAA has promoted Audible Magic's product as one possible option. "Our role has been to help inform law makers and higher education leaders about the fact that this kind of technology does exist," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. "It is a viable and really promising new technology because it is neutral. There is nothing wrong with peer-to-peer, except when it is hijacked." However, the new technology comes with an important caveat that is of concern to privacy-oriented network operators. Because the appliance analyzes the content of files on the network, some are concerned about its invasion on users' privacy. "That's a level of surveillance that I think is just completely unacceptable," Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. The EFF is the primary opposition force against the RIAA in its recent lawsuits. "If we searched every house in America, we could find out more evidence about who the bad guys are, but we don't tolerate that." These same privacy concerns have made Dartmouth network operators leery of such a device. "Dartmouth takes privacy concerns very seriously," Johnson said. "Anything that would begin to look at the content over the network would be very difficult to implement here." Ikezoye, on the other hand, claims his device does not interfere with privacy at all. Though some versions of the appliance -- those for businesses, according to Ikezoye -- have the ability to track which users were caught sharing illegal files, the version he sells to colleges and universities does not keep a record of who is trading songs, but rather monitors anonymously. Instead, the appliance monitors the number of blocked transfers and a list of the content that was blocked. "We know privacy is a big concern for academic communities, but what we've done is provide a product that provides a good balance between privacy and legality," Ikezoye said.

Though it unlikely that Dartmouth will look into such a filter, it would be possible and, in fact, "quite easy and cheap" to set up on the campus network, according to Ikezoye. For a network of Dartmouth's speed and capacity the cost of the appliance would be approximately $16,000 for the hardware appliance and approximately $3,500 for the database subscription and technical support. Most colleges that have employed Audible Magic's product did so to monitor peer-to-peer traffic over the network border which would catch students sharing or downloading files over clients such as Napster or Kazaa. However, such a set-up would not regulate intra-campus file-sharing which has become popular at many schools across the country because of the almost-unlimited capacity of colleges' internal bandwidth and the emergence of network clients like Direct Connect. Ikezoye said he expects that his appliance would work equally well regulating internal sharing, but noted that it has not been tried.
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article....=2004041301020


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What is Nodezilla?
From the site.

Nodezilla is a secured, distributed and fault tolerant routing system (aka Grid Network). It's main purpose is to serve as a link for distributed services built on top of it (like File Sharing, chat, efficient video multicasting streaming, secured file store ...). Nodezilla provides cache features; any server may create a local replica of any data object. These local replicas provide faster access and robustness to network partitions. They also reduce network congestion by localizing access traffic. It is assumed that any server in the infrastructure may crash, leak information, or become compromised, therefore to ensure data protection redundancy and cryptographic techniques are used.

Introducing persistant sharing

Persistant sharing is the ability to share a file and makes it persist (i.e. available to other users) even after the sharing node disappears from the network (or the file disappears from the original node). The way File Sharing Service is implemented over Nodezilla's distributed router also allows to download at very high rate (theoretically), as all parts pertaining to the requested file come from numerous nodes, no easy bandwidth bottleneck should popup. To achieve this the Nodezilla Network needs of course some room to store the persistent files, this room will be found in a space provided by each Nodezilla user (like 30MB by node). This storage place will be used to store blocks of persistent files.

In Nodezilla's Persistent File Share Service (NPFS from now on) a file is not made persistent as soon as it is made shared, it's only when this file has been downloaded several times (i.e. gains some popularity) that the persistent process starts. The file is split into blocks, which are encoded using an information dispersal algorithm. Blocks are then disseminated all around the nodes, the more download they are the more nodes will cache blocks. The blocks will be cached in the storage size made available to the whole network by each user, i.e. on a 20 Meg storage size you can store around 78 blocks of 128K. This cache will be managed by the NPFS and will hold blocks of popular files. When the original sharer goes offline (or the file disappears from the original node), all blocks or at least enough of them should be available from other Nodezilla nodes to reconstruct the original file. Over time, the least popular files will see their cache rate decrease to finally completly disapear, making space available for other blocks.

What about free-loaders ?

A free loader is a person who downloads files from other people, but does not share files (i.e. doesn't contribute back to the network content). They consume bandwith and CPU power selfishly, and that is Bad. To try to reduce the impact of freeloaders, the NPFS introduce the notion of credits. A minimum amount of credits is required to download a given file. The credits available are determined by the disk space you give to the NPFS to store cached blocks, the running time of your node and some other things. This way a "regular" user will have no problem to download whatever he wants, and free loaders will give some room to cache making them effectively share files (even if its not their files) through the cached blocks.

Anonymity and cryptography

Cryptography is a very important part of Nodezilla's router and services. From communication between nodes (through TLS) to object identifcation and signatures, all important data is encrypted and signed using current algorithms (no home made weak crypto algorithms). Cryptographic certificates are used all over Nodezilla, more details in the Nodezilla Architecture Document. Anonymity is also an important thing, no user names, no identifiers, no file names. Someone spying the network can't tell what you're doing on the Nodezilla network. A node can't know what files are downloaded from him (it is only capable of recognizing blocks and not the file to which they belong) and a node can't know which nodes share a file.
http://membres.lycos.fr/nodezilla/

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Via's Padlock Tightens Up Security

Review Network chastity belts

LAST YEAR Via integrated some hardware security features into its range of C5P-Nehemiah based C3 CPU's (stepping 8) , Via Eden (ESP), Via Antaur (notebook) and the recently demonstrated nano-ITX motherboard. This feature, incorporating the Via Padlock ACE (Advanced Cryptography Engine) and Via Padlock RNG (Random Number Generator), is part of Via's Padlock Security Initiative.

So, what use is hardware-based security without software to take advantage of it? CeBIT 2004 saw the release by Via of the Padlock SL Utility that takes advantage of these new hardware security features. It is not only a good demonstration of these features, but highlights an often overlooked security issue with today's Instant Messaging products – that of secure messaging. This utility is not restricted to Via CPUs – it works on any x86-based machine running Windows 2000/XP or Red Hat Linux V9.0, with further Linux distribution support on the horizon. On Via CPU- based hardware it automatically detects and takes advantage of the hardware-based security features, on older Via CPU's, Intel or AMD- based machines then all encryption features are done in software.

Its software features include: · Instant messaging
· Group chat/secure meeting
· Remote/Local file browsing
· File Transfer
· Automatic exchange of public keys

OK, so it is not abundant with snazzy features/gimmicks, or indeed, adverts found in other popular IMs like Yahoo, AOL, MSN and the like, nor does it have a wonderfully fine-tuned user interface - this is not the point of the software. It is built from the ground up to solely work over point to point or point to multipoint secure links over a user-configurable IP port and will only establish a connection with someone else running the same messaging client that you a) know and b) have exchanged public keys with. This in itself can be a barrier, but what price security or privacy? In the current climate of “internet anonymity”, this messaging client authenticates that the two (or more) parties involved in the conversation do actually know each other and wish to communicate securely over an encrypted link – without expensive, difficult to implement, support and maintain VPNs.

Most "text-based" methods of communication – email, instant messaging software etc generally leave an abundance of "evidence" behind, if not complete conversations or mail messages in log files (firewalls, proxies, email servers, local machine logs etc) as well as being transmitted "in- the-clear" to be potentially eaves-dropped on “over the wire”. Most people, business as well as private, do not often think that this is an important consideration until it is too late, when they have been personally or professionally compromised. How many ministers rue the day they sent that email? How did it leak? How did the employees find out the company was in take-over talks before it was announced? Do we realise how much we actually rely on those "unseen" and poorly paid techies we employ to support or maintain segments of networks? Are they tempted to analyse or have a good laugh at the odd log file from time to time? The odd CEO's mailbox? Shuurely not …. After all, your system is only as secure as the people who've set it up … right?

How about you taking control of what is important, private or requires a secure file transfer safe in the knowledge that it is only to be seen by the person you trust? Or in a school for example, how can you let your students communicate solely between themselves without worrying that email addresses, personal information and at worst conversations being compromised? How can a CEO collaborate with his CFO and another CEO interested in taking over his business without anyone else in the organisation being privy to the conversation? The Padlock SL utility claims to do just that.

Installation is fairly simple and to see the hardware acceleration in action, or rather a Via C3 1Ghz Nehemiah outperform a 2.4GHz P4, you enter a display name and user information screen followed by "Create a key pair" and enter your own private password. This is used in the key pair generation and to be used whenever you use the software client, followed by the required encryption level. The default level (1536 bits) sees an EPIA-M10000 based system create the key in 10 seconds, my Sony 2.4Ghz P4 Vaio Laptop in 28 seconds … a dual-Xeon 2.4Ghz in 24 seconds. Playing around with some of the higher encryption levels (2048/ 3072 or 4096 bits) does even things out a bit but the C3 is still no slouch. At the highest level the software does warn you it may take up to 30 minutes to generate the key pair, but on the EPIA-M 10000 2 minutes 30 was the maximum time it took to generate. You then select a download directory i.e. where you want to store any files that you download from another user or get sent, and a share directory if you want to share any of your files.

The C5P hardware security features are then called into play during data transfer between clients, taking the load off the rest of the system in encrypting and decrypting the data streams. In machines without this hardware, all is done in software on the client PC

. A quick check-list of how to check two systems can communicate:

1) Check software is using the same port (by default the software uses port 1337)
2) Check you have exchanged each others' public keys
3) Connect via IP address or via hostname (if setup in either internal or external DNS or local hosts file)

If connecting through firewalls or proxy servers then some rules may need to be added to allow port-forwarding for the port being used to allow both incoming calls and to make external connections. Like most software of this kind corporate networks will need more advanced setup and configuration.

As it is not directory-based a little more knowledge from the end-user is required to "roam" and still communicate – however this can be overcome with a little thought. Setting up a workgroup comprising several users in disparate locations can be reasonably straightforward, it just depends on the network scenario.

An immediate use I found for the software is using its secure peer-to- peer file sharing capabilities. As in my day to day existence I support multiple web servers for various clients invariably on the move, setting the software up as a secure "ftp" server without messing with web ftp/SSL settings was a great boon. It's a very simple use, but effective nonetheless. Setting up multiple copies listening on different ports is also possible.

As the software, source code, an SDK and more detailed documentation are available from Via, it is possible for serious corporate customers or 3rd party development companies to overcome some of the shortcomings of this initial release of Padlock SL and extend the functionality into such areas as Voice over IP and video conferencing. Dr Brian Gladman has already posted an updated version of his code incorporating support for the Via Padlock ACE (Advanced Cryptography Engine), along with performance results. He concludes "with the aligned data the Via engine provides spectacular performance. It is also spectacularly fast even with unaligned data….. will make the Via range of processors highly attractive in a wide range of security applications". His site (including code for download) can be found here.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15191


Via "Violates" GNU GPL With Padlock

But Via says it does comply
Inquirer staff

THE SOURCEFORGE project administrator has claimed that Via's "Padlock" software violates the GNU general public licence (GPL).

Via Padlock, said Eric Harmon, breaks the conditions of the GPL in three ways.

He said that Via has removed Nullsoft and AOL copyrights, as well as Sourceforge's. "Copyrights are always standing, even in open source, so it breaks international copyright laws to remove these," he said. Further, he claims that the source code for the entire application is not available, and the GNU GPL requires the entire source code to be released.

He points to this this page and this page to underline the points. This latter URL says that source code should be included in the distribution, the copyright notice of the holder should be included, and the source code should be available.

A Via representative said that his firm had posted the full source code on its Arena web site, here, and that, he said, meant there is full compliance with the GPL.

He said: "If people feel we should also post the source code on sourceforge we are more than happy to do this; we do have other projects there already"
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15329

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Valenti Seeks Hollywood Perspectives on Screener Issue
Gregg Kilday and Ian Mohr

Keeping to a promise he made in the heat of last year's screener battle, MPAA president Jack Valenti met Monday in Los Angeles with a broad cross section of the Hollywood film community to discuss the piracy concerns that led the MPAA to institute a screener ban in September.

"It's the meeting that should have been held before they ever announced the screener policy," said Jean Prewitt, president and CEO of AFMA, the trade association that represents the independent film and television industry worldwide. She, like a number of the other participants, called the meeting "very informative."

The 1 hour, 45 minute meeting, held at the Peninsula Hotel, drew representatives from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., AFMA, the guilds, the British Academy of Film and Television Artists, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and various film critics associations. Also present were IFP and several independent producers, who had joined together to successfully overturn the ban. Publicists from both the major studios and several specialty divisions also attended.

Valenti, who has announced his pending retirement, was accompanied by Frank Harrill and Ken McGuire of the Los Angeles field office of the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Arif Alikhan and Christopher Johnson, all of whom have been active in the fight against piracy.

"It was educational," Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. president Jean Oppenheimer said of their presentation.

According to the MPAA, in 2002 its member companies and their subsidiaries sent out 69 titles for awards consideration, and 31 screeners were pirated.

Last year, according to several sources at the meeting, 52 titles were sent to awards groups, and 16 of them fell into the hands of pirates.

Watermarking, which was introduced last year, appeared to have had an effect in curtailing piracy, a number of those present argued.

"The FBI found watermarking as an important enforcement tool," said IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd. "It just seemed like the first time that we heard that watermarking is without question an effective enforcement tool for finding out (who leaks screeners)."

In the discussion that followed, Valenti argued that if piracy is allowed to cut into film profits -- including DVD earnings, which can contribute as much as 40% to a film's profitability -- then there will be less risk capital to fund new production.

"Even after all we've seen and all the arguments, people had very different perspectives," said Prewitt, who explained that from her perspective at AFMA, she could see both sides of the screener debate. AFMA opposed the ban, arguing that decisions about screeners should be made on an individual basis "in the best interests of each film." At the same time, she described how piracy affects independent producers in their business dealings abroad because a single instance of piracy in a foreign territory can lead a distributor to refuse to pay agreed-upon guarantees.

"Frankly, our members feel the impact of piracy," she said. "There isn't such a thing as piracy that doesn't affect smaller independent films."

According to sources, the awards bodies present at the meeting said they will each individually start to introduce the concept of a "code of conduct" by which members would be asked to sign a commitment to not contribute to piracy.

That, however, already began to occur last year, said Joey Berlin, president of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. and executive producer of the Critics Choice Awards, when other awards groups began to follow the signed agreements pioneered by the Academy.

Speaking at the meeting, he urged the studios to maintain the aggressive screening schedules they adopted last year. Having created a new membership list by metro area to encourage studios to hold screenings outside of Los Angeles and New York, he suggested that other awards groups with members across the country coordinate their membership lists to facilitate such screenings.

But the bitter battle between the MPAA and the indies still had some leaving the meeting arguing over the ideology of how best to fight piracy.

"The meeting was hopeful and fruitful just given the fact that all the parties were in the same room," producer Jeff Levy-Hinte said. "There was some very useful discussion. But the tenor of the meeting was for the MPAA to try to promote and reinforce (the concept) that piracy must be seen from a law enforcement perspective. That closes off (some) avenues of discussion."

He said he would like to see a discussion about how to make "peer-to-peer file sharing remunerative to copyright holders."

"It was encouraging to hear that watermarking was a quantum leap forward -- we all agreed on that," Hudson said. "What is frustrating is that the MPAA's view on how to fight piracy is so narrow. (The policy only deals with) prosecuting pirates and not how to coexist with new technologies."

Ironically, when Hudson suggested forming a new group to continue discussing the issue, an MPAA attorney interjected that because of the federal antitrust ruling that struck down the ban, the MPAA's member companies, which must decide future screener policy individually, could not join together to recommend future policies.
http://www.backstage.com/backstage/n..._id=1000485718


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P2P Faces the Addressing Problem
Andy Oram

The peer-to-peer movement had to face the problem of addressing head on because people at individual PCs had to be reached in a wide variety of environments. One of cleverest ways to solve the addressing problem is to design applications so that user addresses don't matter. This is the solution chosen by Gnutella and many related file-sharing systems: you just broadcast that you want a certain file. The request passes from your system to a few systems you know and then to a few systems each of them knows; eventually some system comes back saying, "Here is the file." Another way of saying this is that the addressing problem is moved from the user to the desired resource. Individual users are free from the addressing problem.

It's interesting how many applications can function with anonymity. As we have seen, the Web requires the client to identify the server, but the server does not have to identify the client (except to obtain a temporary IP address); the server is happy to display its home page to anyone. Once someone wants to view sensitive data or buy something, the server will put up a password dialog box or require a credit card; that's a more advanced situation.

On the other hand, anonymity is currently being allowed in many places where it's creating trouble, largely because of the rise of wireless networks and the risk of drive-by intruders. For instance, corporate file servers routinely put up public sites that anyone on the network can read; it's assumed that everybody behind the firewall can be trusted. This was always a bad assumption, but if the network adds a wireless hub, the administrator has to worry constantly about who's sneaking up to it and snooping around. In a similar fashion, many corporate mail servers accept mail from anyone on the LAN. That problem has been highly publicized because intruders have been using such hubs to send unsolicited bulk email. So more and more, we are discovering the need to assign persistent identities to users. In the case of wireless, organizations are doing so by making them log in before using the network.

Sender Policy Framework, which has been in the news a lot as email software designers and ISPs call for its adoption, works on a slightly different level. It doesn't identify end users. Instead, it provides checks to ensure that mail messages correctly identify the hubs and relays through which they pass. This is more of a routing issue than an addressing issue; the basic form of addressing (DNS) is no different when SPF is used.

Solutions to the addressing problem fall into a few categories. In the case of a wireless LAN, the first solution is simply to make users authenticate themselves with a central repository that contains their identities and to record their addresses for a single session. This is what most instant messaging systems do. It was also the quick-and-dirty solution chosen by Napster, which is why it could easily be dismantled for vicarious and contributory copyright infringement while modern Gnutella-based file-sharing systems cannot.

This dependence on central servers scales well. AOL Instant Messenger shows that such a system can serve millions of users. Still the system suffers from a flat namespace (once someone chooses the name John, no one else can use it), and it puts control in the hands of the people who run the servers.
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/04/07/p2p-ws.html


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Apple

RealNetworks Seeks a Musical Alliance With Apple
John Markoff and Steve Lohr

RealNetworks made a direct appeal last week to Apple Computer, its Internet music rival, suggesting that the two companies form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business.

The offer to create a "tactical alliance" was made on April 9 by Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based Internet music and video service, in an e- mail message to Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chairman.

But if an alliance with Apple could not be struck, Mr. Glaser strongly hinted in the e-mail message that he might be forced to form a partnership with Microsoft to pursue "very interesting opportunities" because support for Microsoft's media-playing software seems to be growing.

A pact with Microsoft would be a startling reversal for RealNetworks, whose complaints about Microsoft's business tactics form a major part of the European Commission's antitrust case against the company.

Mr. Glaser, the founder of RealNetworks, is a former executive of Microsoft who left on friendly terms but later became a bitter rival after Microsoft decided that media- playing software would be crucial to its long-term growth. The overture from Mr. Glaser to Mr. Jobs also reflects the scramble among major technology and media companies to jockey for advantage as the market for music - and eventually movies - distributed legally over the Internet is starting to take off.

Apple is clearly the early leader with its iTunes online music store, which downloads and plays songs only on Apple's popular iPod handheld devices. Besides RealNetworks, a pioneer in software for distributing and playing music and video, major companies are entering the market.

Microsoft is gaining ground and making deals. This week, it agreed to pay $440 million to settle a private suit over patent claims and to strike a licensing deal with InterTrust Technologies, an early developer of copyright protection software.

Microsoft is expected to offer its own digital music store before long. And Sony has said it will start a music store later this year. It is developing its own media-player devices, which, given Sony's reputation for stylish design and clever marketing, could prove to be strong competition for the iPod. Sony has not announced when its devices will be introduced.

It is against this backdrop that the timing and details of Mr. Glaser's offer to Mr. Jobs are particularly intriguing. In his message, which was obtained by The New York Times from a person close to Apple, Mr. Glaser asked Mr. Jobs to consider licensing Apple's Fairplay digital rights management system to RealNetworks to permit customers of the RealNetworks music service to play their digital music collections on iPod players.

In exchange, RealNetworks would make the iPod its primary device for the RealNetworks store and for the RealPlayer software.

The message notes that both RealNetworks and Apple support the same digital music technology standard, known as AAC. But because it is not possible for RealNetworks' encrypted music services, Rhapsody and the Real music store, to be played on iPod, RealNetworks is considering switching to Microsoft's competing WMA format, which would make the RealNetworks services work seamlessly with Microsoft's technology.

"We are seeing very interesting opportunities to switch to WMA," Mr. Glaser wrote. "Instinctively I don't want to do it because I think it leads to all kinds of complexities in terms of giving Microsoft too much long-term market momentum."

Apple executives would not comment on the message. But it seems likely Mr. Jobs will rebuff the offer. Mr. Glaser said he had not received a response from Mr. Jobs, and in his e-mail message Mr. Glaser said he was going to be in Silicon Valley this week and suggested that he meet with Apple executives today.

Mr. Glaser has been vocal in his condemnation of what he considers Apple's proprietary strategy and he has said he believes the strategy is a mistake. Apple is running the risk of following the same path it took in its development of its personal computer, he argued.

It is widely believed in the PC industry that Apple's refusal to license its Macintosh operating system in the late 1980's contributed to the operating system monopoly of Microsoft's Windows.

Mr. Glaser has recently tried to act as a neutral broker in the competition between different hardware standards, while Mr. Jobs has been pursuing a more proprietary approach, making digital music from Apple's iTunes store playable only on iPod.

Apple, however, notes that it is open to deals with other companies. It recently formed a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, allowing Hewlett to distribute iPod devices and load Apple's iTunes software on its consumer PC's.

Subscribers to AOL, Apple adds, can also download music from the iTunes music store. Still, these deals are mainly distribution agreements with other companies, and do not require Apple to open its technology so that other music services and devices can work with the Apple offerings.

"Apple is not into interoperability," said an industry executive with connections to both the computer and music industries. "Steve's bet is that he can beat the big guys, Sony and Microsoft - with better marketing."

A number of industry executives said, however, that Mr. Jobs was under increasing pressure from both his music industry partners and from Hewlett-Packard to open up his digital music service.

The situation in the digital music industry is complex and changing very rapidly. Events like the European ruling against Microsoft's bundling of its media player into the Windows operating system could force the company to rethink its digital media strategy.

At the same time Microsoft has clearly been moving to settle as many of its legal entanglements as quickly as possible. In recent weeks it has settled lawsuits with Sun Microsystems and with InterTrust.

By putting many legal problems behind it, Microsoft would be freer to compete aggressively with Apple in the music market, analysts said.

"Real understands how incredibly powerful the Microsoft music initiative will be," said Richard Doherty, a computer industry consultant and president of Envisioneering. "I don't think that Jobs understands this. He doesn't realize how big the juggernaut is about to get."

In his e-mail message to Mr. Jobs, Mr. Glazer said that he was reaching out to Mr. Jobs before making a move to switch camps. Mr. Glaser said he was surprised that the proposal had been leaked.

"Why is Steve afraid of opening up the iPod?" he asked in a telephone interview. "Steve is showing a high level of fear that I don't understand."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/bu...15real.html?hp



Profit at Apple Almost Triples on a Sharp Rise in iPod Sales
Laurie J. Flynn

Apple Computer Inc. said Wednesday that its profits nearly tripled in its second quarter because of continued strong sales of the iPod portable music player and notebook computers.

For the three months ended March 27, Apple reported a net profit of $46 million, or 12 cents a share, compared with $14 million, or 4 cents a share, in the quarter a year earlier. Revenue was $1.91 billion, a 29 percent increase from $1.48 billion.

"We feel great," Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said in an interview. "We sold a lot of Macs, but we've sold more iPods in the quarter than all the Macs put together."

Mr. Jobs said the company sold a record 807,000 iPods in the quarter, a 900 percent increase from the period a year earlier. The company sold 749,000 Macintosh computers in the quarter, up 5 percent.

The earnings beat Wall Street's forecast by a significant margin. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had forecast earnings of 10 cents a share on $1.8 billion in revenue. Excluding a restructuring charge of $7 million, the company had a profit of 14 cents a share.

The company also forecast third-quarter revenue of $1.93 billion and earnings of 12 to 13 cents a share.

Apple announced its results after the close of regular trading. Shares of Apple closed down 29 cents, at $26.64, but rose as high as $27.07 in after-hours trading.

In the last year, several major new players have entered the market for portable music devices, including Dell. But Mr. Jobs said that the iPod had a 40 percent share of the MP3 player market and that the company had seen little pressure from competitors. In only two years, he said, Apple has sold 2.9 million iPods. In January, Hewlett- Packard announced a partnership with Apple that calls for Hewlett to resell the iPod and offer its iTunes service to its customers.

But the company's latest entry in the digital music market, the iPod mini, has been in tight supply since it was introduced in February, and Apple executives said that problem would continue in the third quarter. "The demand is a lot higher than we thought, and we're limited in how many we can manufacture," Mr. Jobs said.

Executives said they expected to solve the supply problem before the end of the fiscal year. "We feel we will reach a supply balance in Q4," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's senior vice president for finance and its corporate controller, who will become the chief financial officer on June 1 with the retirement of Fred Anderson. As a result of the supply constraints, the introduction in Europe of the iPod mini, which weighs about as much as a cellphone and sells for $249, has been delayed until July from April.

Apple executives also denied that reports of problems with iPod minis were serious or widespread. In the last few weeks, some customers have described problems with static in the earphones. "We're highly confident with the minis we're shipping," Mr. Oppenheimer said. "The number of complaints we've had through AppleCare tech support is extremely small."

Mr. Jobs also pointed to success in the iTunes business and said the company recently reported that it had sold 50 million songs. During the last year, new rivals have entered the music download business as well, including low-cost notables like Wal-Mart Stores, which is offering songs for 88 cents each compared with 99 cents for iTunes.

William R. Fearnley, an analyst with FTN Midwest Research, said the company had strong momentum in several product areas and should focus on expanding its core Macintosh business. The company, he said, was on the right track with its introduction of a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, OS X, as well as with the G5, a powerful version of the Mac.

"We continue to like what they're doing," Mr. Fearnley said. "Now they need to grow the Macintosh sales and Macintosh's share."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/te...y/15apple.html



Apple Probes Reports of IPod Mini Static
AP

Apple Computer Inc. is investigating complaints that its popular iPod mini is prone to static and other sound distortions when playing back music.

The diminutive music players, which have been shipping since February, sometimes generate the noise when users touch areas around the headphone jack, according to a handful of reports posted at iPodlounge.com and Apple's own discussion forums.

``Apple is aware of a few isolated reports online of iPod mini audio static and is looking into it,'' Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira said Tuesday. She urged users with any problems to contact the company's technical support.

The devices come with a one-year warranty.

Last month, Apple delayed the gadget's international release to the end of July, citing extremely strong demand in the United States. In February, the company reported receiving more than 100,000 pre-orders for the $249 mini since its January unveiling.

The waiting list is now between one and five weeks, Sequeira said. The company is expected to reveal more information when it posts its latest financial results Wednesday.

The iPod minis, which weigh less than most cell phones and are slightly larger than a business card, have a tiny 4-gigabyte hard drive and are available in a variety of colors. Apple also continues to sell its regular iPods, which are physically larger and have drives up to 40 gigabytes.

Shares of Apple were down $1.11 to close at $26.93 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...ni-Static.html



Apple To Halt Production In Sacramento
Ina Fried

Apple Computer said on Wednesday that it is shuttering its Northern California manufacturing operations and transferring the work to an outside contractor in the southern part of the state.

"As part of an ongoing effort to make our operations more efficient, Apple is closing its Sacramento manufacturing operation and moving most of its California-based manufacturing activities to a supplier in Southern California," the company said in a statement.

Apple would not say how many workers are affected by the closure, but the company had told local government officials it planned to cut 235 jobs, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker will continue to employ workers at the facility in nonmanufacturing areas. Apple also has a call center operation at the 752,000-square-foot facility, according to its most recent annual report, filed in December with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Employees from various other functions of the company will continue to work in Apple's Sacramento facility, and while this action will result in a reduction in operations staff, Apple's overall headcount worldwide continues to grow," the company said.

The plant, which once cranked out Apple's fruit-flavored iMacs, opened in 1992, according to the Bee.

The company has gradually reduced the number of manufacturing workers in the Sacramento area in recent years. In 2002, Apple cut some manufacturing jobs at its Elk Grove plant. In 1999, the company let go 25 to 50 full-time employees and about 300 contractors.
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_210...3-5191453.html


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Toppan and Sony Develop 25GB Paper Disc
Press Release

Toppan Printing Co., LTD and Sony Corporation today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.

Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper. The two companies jointly began this optical disc project approximately a year ago. Blu-ray Disc is commonly known for allowing more than 2 hours of high-definition program recording.

Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, Toppan CO., LTD commented: "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc".

Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: "Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information."

The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely. The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage.

Toppan and Sony will continue development of the disc for practical use.
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=7101


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The Humble Hard Drive, Transformed Into a Video Grab Bag
J.D. Biersdorfer

Digital video and computers may go together like a horse and carriage, but getting the video out of the camera and onto the PC is where many people get tangled up in the reins - especially those whose computers lack the FireWire connection common to digital video cameras. There is equipment that can help you burn that footage of the peewee hockey game onto a DVD, including video-capture cards that can be installed in your computer to connect the camera directly to the PC and bulky external decoder boxes that can connect it via a U.S.B. port. The new AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300 External TV Tuner gives you a pocket-size solution, and it can also play and record live television on your laptop or desktop PC.

With a coaxial cable or antenna connection and the UltraTV software, the TV tuner built into the AVerMedia unit can turn your hard drive into a digital video recorder to catch your favorite shows, including recordings scheduled in advance. In addition to TV recording, the device can capture video from digital and analog camcorders as well as VHS tapes. The UltraTV USB 300, which is roughly 3.5 inches square and slightly more than a half-inch thick, uses a high-speed U.S.B. 2.0 connection.

The UltraTV USB 300 has a suggested price of $130 and works with computers running Windows XP on at least a Pentium III one-gigahertz processor; full specifications are at www.avermedia.com. And no worries about what to do with the footage once you have recorded it onto the computer: $150 worth of software, including Ulead DVD MovieFactory, is included to get you on the road to moviemaking.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/te...ts/15code.html


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You’ll watch those commercials and you’ll like them!

Liberty Eyes Digital TV Security
Clint Boulton

Emboldened by consumers' desire for more control over broadcast programming, the Liberty Alliance Project on Wednesday agreed to work with the TV-Anytime Forum to hash out digital identity requirements for the digital video recorder (DVR) market.

Liberty, a consortium of companies working to preserve the identity of Internet service users, hopes the initiative with DVR standards body TV-Anytime will pave the way for new markets and lower costs for content holders, broadcasters, advertisers and equipment providers.

Liberty will look to apply its Federated Identity Architecture to privacy, security and interoperability requirements in TV-Anytime's upcoming Phase 2 specifications, which address how games, enhanced TV, graphics, music files are transferred and stored in home networks.

While DVRs, such as the popular TiVO service have produced more choice and convenience for consumers, who can record, store and playback live TV, it has created a number of technical challenges for broadcasters and manufacturers, the groups said in a statement.

"For example, the lack of a universal format means delivering content across various types of DVRs has become an expensive proposition," the companies said. "In addition, DVRs' limited ability to network with other devices makes it difficult for consumers to fully realize the benefits inherent in the technology."

TV-Anytime needs Liberty's help to secure the management of content within compliant devices, including DVRs, as well as ensure the privacy and security of data associated with user identity and interaction.

Launched by Sun Microsystems, (Quote, Chart) AOL (Quote, Chart) and American Express (Quote, Chart) in 2001, the Liberty project has been since viewed as a standards group whose goal is to provide open single sign-on services as an alternative to proprietary software from Microsoft or other companies looking to grasp the federated identity space.

Originally, Liberty was seen merely as a group that would enable Web services on PCs and mobile computing devices and an alternative to work being done in the IBM/Microsoft-led Web Services Interoperability organization.

But by partnering with TV-Anytime, Liberty seems assured of breaking free from the perception that it caters strictly to the enterprise, and is simply interested developing an open standard for network identity that supports all network devices -- including DVRs.

The timing seems ripe. Industry experts have said they see a convergence of digital television, Internet and communication technologies creating an overabundance of programs and personalization options from which the average consumer can choose.

This has caused the popularity of DVRs to skyrocket. Market research firm IDC said worldwide DVR shipments reached over 4 million in 2003, fueled by strong demand in the United States and Japan.

Moreover, the firm said shipments could increase at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 50 percent over the next five years, reaching over 28 million global shipments by 2008.

The proliferation has turned to a potential cash cow for some companies eager to capitalize. For example, Time Warner Cable, and Direct TV have built the DVR capabilities into their cable and satellite boxes.

And as the convergence of TV, Internet and communications continues to tighten in consumers' homes, it's not a stretch to think consumer-minded companies like Microsoft, (Quote, Chart) Dell (Quote, Chart) or Gateway (Quote, Chart) might come knocking in search of ways to sink their teeth into the DVR technology and service pie.

In the meantime, Liberty Alliance and TV-Anytime said they will forge business use cases and address technical issues for scenarios such as permission-based sharing of viewer information, television commerce, compliant advertising distribution, and peer-to-peer transfer of personal content.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3340121


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Set-Top Boxes May Put A Lid On Rewritable DVDs
Rick Merritt

"Rip, Mix, Burn" will apparently not become the mantra of set- top box makers.

The slogan used by Apple Computer is anathema among cable companies that specify set-top boxes, according to Ken Morse, vice president of client architecture at Scientific-Atlanta Inc. (Lawrenceville, Ga).

At a Digital Hollywood panel here on Tuesday (March 30), Morse said cable companies want rewritable DVDs in future set-tops to archive video. However studios are lobbying the network providers to build a security mechanism into the DVD players.

The current scheme under discussion is preventing disks made on a set- top burner from being played on any other system by linking the content to the serial number of the set-top using triple DES encryption.

That's the approach current digital set-tops already use with content stored on their hard disk drives.

Morse said no one has made a formal proposal for a security mechanism yet, but he expects rewritable DVD players will appear in set tops in about a year.
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/show...e ID=18700235


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Court Lets Cable Off The Hook--For Now
Reuters

A court ruling that could have forced cable companies to offer customers a choice of Internet service providers has been suspended while regulators and cable companies appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco on Friday said it would grant petitions from the Federal Communications Commission and cable companies for a stay, pending consideration of the case by the high court.

The appellate court ruled in October that the FCC should have classified high-speed Internet service over cable as a telecommunications service instead of as an information service--including requiring a choice of Internet service when customers sign up for cable broadband.

The appeals court last week refused to reconsider its decision that regulators improperly insulated cable companies from strict regulations.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which represents major cable operators like Time Warner and Comcast, welcomed Friday's order.

"We will now turn our attention to developing our formal appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and look forward to having this case decided on its merits," NCTA Senior Vice President Dan Brenner said in a statement.

The FCC decided in March 2002 that high-speed Internet service from cable companies was an information service, and therefore not immediately subject to access requirements.

The FCC has asked for comment on whether it should require cable companies to give consumers a choice of Internet service providers. Some cable companies already do provide some choice.

ISPs like EarthLink hailed the appeals court's original decision as finally giving consumers a choice.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5189485.html


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ISPs Look For The Value-Add
Steve Hill

Providers push security, spam busting and antivirus services to increase revenues per user

Internet service providers (ISPs) are shifting from simply growing subscriber numbers to the longer- term goal of increasing revenues per user by developing new services.

Broadband value added services revenues are running at the rate of $3.3bn a year globally. But a relatively small number of services account for the majority of value- added revenue.

Tim Johnson, publisher at broadband market research firm Point Topic, told vnunet.com: "Broadband has been sold to consumers based around the benefits of 'speed' and 'always-on'.

"But this is no longer enough. Consumers want to do a lot more with their connections."

He added that existing value added services often had lots of users, but do not generate much revenue.

For example, peer-to-peer file sharing services places high demand on networks, yet provides ISPs with little in the way of revenue.

Security is the most lucrative value added service, generating $1bn in revenue worldwide, followed by online gaming ($839m) and home networking ($778m).

Teleworking services were found to be generating very little revenue. "Lots of people use broadband for teleworking, but we found few ISPs offering value added services," said Johnson.

"Most teleworkers would really appreciate a company that came along and solved all their problems."

Nick Godsell-Fletcher, sales and marketing manager at ISP Proweb, said that his company offers services including security, anti-spam and antivirus.

"We offer services to Boots, Derbyshire Constabulary and solicitors, and many of these are data sensitive," he explained, adding that after-sales is also an important value-added service.
http://www.whatpc.co.uk/News/1154367


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Verizon to Add Internet Surcharge
Matt Richtel

Verizon Communications announced plans yesterday to add a $2 to $3 monthly surcharge to the cost of its high-speed Internet connections, a move that could fuel further debate over the taxation of online services.

Verizon said its new charge would start appearing next month on the bills of roughly 2.5 million subscribers to its high-speed data line service in Eastern states. The company said that, because of logistical problems, the surcharge would not be levied on high-speed Internet customers in Western states until June.

Verizon and other providers of digital data lines say they are required by federal regulations to pay into the Universal Service Fund that subsidizes telecommunications service in rural areas, schools and libraries. Verizon said that until now, it had paid the surcharge, rather than passing the cost on to customers.

BellSouth, another large regional phone company, also said yesterday that it would add $2.97 in fees to the bills of its 1.4 million high-speed Internet customers starting April 15.

The fee is 85 percent of the combined amount of the surcharge and administrative costs that the company currently bears, Joe Chandler, a BellSouth spokesman, said.

In February, SBC Communications began levying a monthly charge of $1.84 on the bills of new customers and existing customers who sign new contracts for high-speed Internet service, a company spokesman said.

The phone companies already include the Universal Service Fund fee on bills for lines used for telephone service. But they had hoped that politicians, regulators or the courts would relieve them of having to pay the fee on high-speed Internet lines.

"We've been hoping it would go away," said Eric Rabe, a Verizon spokesman. Verizon charges $34.95 for high-speed Internet service, but customers who also use Verizon for long-distance and local telephone service pay $29.95 a month for the Internet line.

The fate of the federal fee - along with other state and local taxes levied on Internet access - is being debated on Capitol Hill and is the subject of litigation.

Telephone companies, like Verizon, point out that cable companies that offer similar high-speed Internet connections are not required to pay the surcharge. As a result, the telephone companies say, they are at a competitive disadvantage.

Complicating the matter, some states and cities levy additional taxes on phone lines used for Net access, while other states do not.

Cable and telephone access to the Internet are treated differently for tax purposes because the Federal Communications Commission has defined telephone data lines as a telecommunications service, thus subjecting it to certain surcharges. But cable Internet access has been defined as an "information service," a category that has been shielded from taxes under federal law.

Two competing bills in the Senate are seeking to address the issue and the larger question of taxation of Internet services. One bill, sponsored by George Allen, a Republican from Virginia, would eliminate all tax on Internet access, whether provided by telephone or cable companies.

A competing bill, sponsored by Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, would allow states that collect taxes on phone companies for high-speed Internet access to continue doing so.

John Reid, a spokesman for Mr. Allen, said the senator hoped to see his bill voted on the Senate floor later this month or in early May.

The courts have had to address the discrepancy of treatment for telephone and cable services as well. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in October that vacated the F.C.C.'s determination that cable Internet services were entirely information services, and said they had elements of telecommunications services. Last Friday the appeals court stayed its ruling pending an appeal by the commission and the cable industry to the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court does not take the case, or the appeals court decision is left in place, cable companies could be required to pay the surcharge, Mr. Rabe of Verizon said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/te...14verizon.html


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Music Industry In Uproar Over UNC Research
Jonathan B. Cox



Koleman Strumpf, of UNC-Chapel Hill, was
surprised by the reaction of his economic research
on file sharing.
Staff Photo by Harry Lynch


Koleman Strumpf, associate professor of economics at UNC-Chapel Hill, finished a paper last month that was sure to bore.

The title, "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," was enough to send laymen scampering. The mathematical formulas, tables and appendices would lure only other academics, he figured.

He was wrong.

The paper lit the fuse on a volatile topic, music downloading, and touched off a firestorm of controversy. Strumpf, 35, and a Harvard University colleague concluded that online file sharing doesn't hurt music sales, contrary to contentions of the nation's recording industry executives.

The industry's trade group began a counteroffensive, blasting the paper as incomplete and flawed. National news organizations, including The New York Times, wrote stories about the study. Strumpf received hundreds of phone calls and e-mail notes. Countless Web users and music fans posted their views online.

"I wouldn't have guessed anything at all like this" Strumpf said of the response. "Being a Monday-morning quarterback, I can understand because people are very passionate about this."

The Recording Industry Association of America has long bemoaned declining sales, which it blames on illegal downloading. According to the association, the industry shipped almost a third fewer units in 2003 than in 1999. The industry is suing consumers to stop the free downloads.

"If illegal downloading is not the cause of the precipitous decline in sales of recordings, what is?" asks a six-page paper the recording industry group released in response to the study by Strumpf and Harvard's Felix Oberholzer-Gee. "The results are inconsistent with virtually every other study."

There could be many causes for the decline, Strumpf said. The economy is weaker. More entertainment choices might be drawing consumer dollars. Radio consolidation has reduced variety.

He says the industry's response amounts to, " 'We have 20 studies, they have one.' If 20 or 100 or 1,000 people say the sun revolves around the earth, it doesn't make it so."

Two years ago, Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee set out to research the matter. Strumpf's interest was piqued by the Napster trial, where the recording industry alleged copyright violations that led to the demise of the pioneering Web site in 2001. In the testimony, experts argued that music downloads had to be the cause of slumping sales.

Strumpf read the studies they cited. They were horrible, he said.

"I was like, 'Boy, this is pretty amazing,' " said Strumpf, a Philadelphia native. "Nobody has done a serious study."

Plus, Strumpf had a personal interest in the topic. He owns several hundred CDs and a 20-gigabyte digital music player that is almost full. He tells visitors seeking his office to simply listen for the music.

Instead of relying on user surveys, as other studies have done, Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee got logs for two computers servers belonging to OpenNap, a file-sharing community. They were able to see what files users searched for and which ones they downloaded over a 17-week period in late 2002. They compared that activity with sales numbers from Nielsen Soundscan, which tracks music purchases.

By the recording industry's logic, sales of popular albums should decline as song downloads increase. That wasn't supported by the researchers' findings.

The pair concluded that file sharing doesn't hurt sales because those who do it wouldn't buy music anyway, Strumpf said. For the most part, those who download music don't have much money.

While they might download 20 CDs' worth of music, they wouldn't have bought 20 CDs, he said. "At most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction" of the decline in music sales, the professors' paper said.

Of the phone calls and e-mail he has received, Strumpf says about two-thirds favor the findings. When he surfs the Web in search of comments on the paper, about half support the results.

Those who disagree, however, are equally vocal. Some people have told Strumpf he is stupid or killing their business. He's satisfied to have the dialogue.

"It's good to see people thinking a little more carefully," said Strumpf, who doesn't typically download tunes.

But some of the attention is flattering. Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks who cemented his fortune with a site that pioneered online broadcasts, wrote saying he was glad the paper confirmed views that he has long espoused. Harry Shearer, a comedian and the voice of Monty Burns on "The Simpsons," mentioned Strumpf recently on National Public Radio.

But Strumpf concedes that the paper might not be perfect. It was released so the two researchers could get feedback and make tweaks before it it is published in a journal, a process that could take years. It gained attention after it was posted on Web logs and floated by some in the recording industry.

And no matter the ultimate fate, the industry should take note, Strumpf said. "There are huge numbers of people who think the record industry is trying to pull the wool over their eyes," he said. "These are their customers, and I would be awful concerned."
http://www.newsobserver.com/front/st...-3114131c.html
















Until next week,

- js.














~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Current Week In Review.




Recent WiRs -

April 10th, April 3rd, March 27th, March 20th, March 13th

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

[multi]

Australian Online Petition Against IP Provisions In FTA

Open source advocates in Australia have set up an online petition to campaign against adoption of provisions in Chapter 17 of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement.

They say these provisions will "harm the flourishing Australian Open Source community both directly by making legitimate and useful Open Source software illegal, and indirectly by preventing the Australian Parliament from considering changes to our intellectual property laws on their own merits."

Linux Australia recently voiced fears about the FTA, saying it would lead to the acceptance of American-style patent and intellectual property laws which, in turn, would cripple the local software industry.

The organisation has set up a page on its website devoted to information about the FTA and the ways in which, in its estimate, it can harm the local open source industry.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004...1326915388.html

there is a lot more than this.(and this is pretty bad)that we are going to have to worry about when this FTA goes through..