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Old 12-08-04, 07:19 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – August 14th, '04

Quotes Of The Week


"I've released JustePort, a tool which lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express." - Jon Lech Johansen


"New digital technologies are creating a crisis in the business models of the companies that depend on having a monopoly on distribution. Look at MP3 blogs: We're now seeing bands that are saying, 'Please pirate my material. Here it is.' They make money from that. They get bookings from that. They build an audience on that." - Howard Rheingold


"If you look back, technology today is standing on the shoulders of giants. We should recognize the contributions of those people. Nowadays we just take existing technology and revamp it." - Scott Asmus


"On average, there's probably 15 analog chips needed for every digital processor you use." - Gregg A. Lowe


"We should have thought about it when we sold all those computers and chips overseas. These aren't just widgets. These are the building blocks of innovation." - Howard Rheingold


"It has another special request for Muzak: All of the artists must be dead." - Barbara Hagenbaugh



















Disney Making Laws Again
Fred von Lohmann

The FCC is considering whether to impose a "broadcast flag" content protection scheme on digital broadcast radio (a.k.a. DAB or HD Radio). The RIAA is pushing for the flag, which would impose FCC technology mandates on all future digital radio receivers. Apparently, the MPAA's success in getting preemptive FCC regulation of next generation televisions emboldened the RIAA to seek a similar regime for digital radio.

EFF has filed two sets of comments on this issue. Now, you may be wondering why we care about this little FCC backwater proceeding. After all, nobody has an HD Radio yet. The format might not even succeed. So who cares?

Well, in their latest comments, Disney (which is an RIAA member, and owns ABC Radio Networks and four record labels) let slip what this is all about:

In addition, to the extent the Commission considers such a content protection mechanism, it should also consider whether to extend that mechanism to all music distribution platforms, including satellite digital audio radio service, the Internet and broadcast radio service.

Got that? Disney wants the FCC to regulate all devices capable of recording from any audio broadcasting medium or from the Internet. FM radio, XM, Sirius, Streamripper, Total Recorder, you're all in the crosshairs. It's the Hollings Bill all over again.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001805.php


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File-Sharers Offer Windows Update
Alfred Hermida

File-sharing activists are using Microsoft's key update for Windows XP to highlight the benefits of peer-to-peer technology. A lobby group called Downhill Battle has set up a link using file-sharing software to distribute the SP2 update. Microsoft told BBC News Online it was investigating the site.

The SP2 update has already been released to PC manufacturers and is expected to be widely available to home users for free in late August. Microsoft hopes to have the Service Pack 2 security update installed on more than 100 million machines in the next two months, but it is limiting daily downloads of the software in order to prevent an overload on its servers.

The file-sharing lobby group, Downhill Battle, has taken matters into its own hands. It has made a copy of SP2 available using BitTorrent file-sharing technology. Using BitTorrent software, users get pieces of the file from the original server, and from anyone else who is downloading. It means that other people looking for the same file can start downloading more quickly.

"Even Microsoft, which has incredible server resources at their disposal, is limiting downloads of their SP2 release, but file-sharing technology can let everyone download it right away," said the group on its site.

"This project shows how file-sharing technology gives people without budgets or huge server space the power to solve problems themselves, without waiting for the government or some corporation to do it for them."

In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: "The Microsoft Download Center site is the only authorized web source for downloading a licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2." They added: "To report a website offering unlicensed copies of Windows XP SP2 for download, please send an e-mail to piracy@microsoft.com"

The version of SP2 offered by Downhill Battle is intended for computer professionals and developers downloading and installing multiple computers on a network, rather than for home users. Microsoft is advising customers not to download this version, which weighs in at 266MB, if they are updating just one computer. It says that a smaller, more appropriate download will be available soon on Windows Update service.

Delayed update

Microsoft has advised users to turn on Windows auto-update to make sure they get the right version of SP2. The update was originally supposed to appear in 2003 but successive technical hitches have delayed its arrival. It is designed to close many of the loopholes that Windows viruses have exploited over the last few years. It installs a security centre that lets people see and manage the measures installed on their machine to block viruses and hack attacks. The update also blocks pop-up ads and lets users know when spyware is trying to install itself on their machine.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3551576.stm


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Taiwan's Officials Declare War Against IP Infringers

MOEA vows to lower piracy rate to less than 40%
Marie Feliciano

Saying Taiwan's anti-piracy campaign was gaining traction, top government officials yesterday vowed to cut the country's piracy rate to less than 40 percent and eventually get Taiwan off the "hot spots" list.

"We will not stop until we've won the war against IPR infringers," Economic Affairs Minister Ho Mei-yueh declared at the nation's largest government summit on intellectual property rights protection.

The summit also featured Minister without Portfolio Lin Yi-fu, Justice Administrative Vice Minister Yen Da-ho, and Interior Minister Su Chia- chuan.

At the groundbreaking meet, the officials said their respective ministries had already come up with a joint strategy to protect copyright owners. The interior ministry was slated to form a permanent IPR police force that would put those counterfeiters and technology violators out of business while the justice ministry had already proposed the designation of IPR prosecutors, officials said.

The government was already acting on the five appeals submitted by 10,000 IPR advocates, they added. The list called on Taiwan to comply with international standards with regards to IPR legislation and enforcement; to make the IPR police force permanent and enhance the unit's training program; to introduce a software management system to the public and private sectors, strengthen training programs for software auditors, and accelerate the full legalization of software; to set up a good Internet management system to curb Internet piracy; and to conduct a long-term IPR education campaign.

"In late July, we announced that our IPR task force would be transformed into a permanent IPR police team," Su said. The group, which would belong to the 2nd Peace Preservation Police Corps, would be commissioned in three months, he added.

"This unit has 220 members but we will be recruiting more people," Su said. The team had a prescribed personnel base of 315 people. Each member would receive continuous training in tracking down copyright and technology infringers, said the official, adding that the Ministry of the Interior would be setting aside a budget for the purchase of hardware and software tools that would make this unit more effective in the area of online investigation.

Taiwan had been pulling out all the stops to reinforce its IPR protection strategy since the launch of its "Action Year for IPR Protection" in 2002, Ho said, adding that her ministry had since amended the Patent Law, Trademark Law, and the Copyright Law. The minister noted that a number of legislators had proposed that the Copyright Law be re- amended to include technological protection measures, to restore the minimum penalty on copyright infringements, and to authorize the customs bureau to confiscate pirated goods.

The economic affairs ministry would work with legislators to ensure the quick passage of those proposed amendments, she said.

Although participating government agencies had succeeded in reducing IPR piracy in Taiwan, the government still needed to do more to thrash those infringers, Ho said. Taiwan's piracy rate for audio-visual products, music, and software stood at 40 percent, said the official, adding that this was still higher compared with other advanced nations.

At the summit, Justice Administrative Vice Minister Yen Da-ho proposed the creation of a team of prosecutors that would specialize in IPR-related cases. Those government lawyers would receive training at the Institute of Technology Law at National Chiao Tung University, Yen added. IT experts would also be called in to assist them in their investigation, he said.

The business sector had been calling on the government to introduce specialized IPR courts.

David Chang, chairman of the Taiwan Intellectual Property Alliance, lauded the government-led IPR protection campaign.
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Business/...1091761456.htm


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Massachusetts Houses Passes Movie Piracy Bill
Michael Kunzelman

A bill outlawing the electronic piracy of movies cleared the state House of Representatives yesterday and now heads to the Senate.

The legislation, sponsored by state Rep. James Vallee, D-Franklin, would make it illegal to bring a video camera into a movie theater and shoot a bootleg copy of a film.

Vallee, who was lobbied by the Motion Picture Association of American to file the measure, said the sale of bootleg movies - primarily over the Internet - costs the industry an estimated $3 billion annually.

"Admittedly, it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for people who make that much money," Vallee said of film studios. "But (movies) are a huge export that makes our country a lot of money." Although movie piracy already is a crime under federal copyright infringement laws, the practice isn't specifically outlawed in Massachusetts.

Vallee's legislation creates a new crime, "criminal use of real property in a movie theater," punishable by up to three years in prison and a $100,000 fine or up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for a second or subsequent offense.

Vallee is House chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, which heard testimony on the bill from an MPAA lobbyist in March.

The House engrossed the legislation yesterday during an informal session, when a single lawmaker could have blocked it.

"I don't think there is any opposition to it," Vallee said. "People recognize this is multibillion industry that can fall victim to a tremendous amount of criminal activity." If the Senate engrosses the bill, then both chambers must enact the measure before it could reach Gov. Mitt Romney's desk.

Five states - New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California and Ohio - and the District of Columbia already have passed similar anti-piracy laws.

Under Vallee's bill, theater owners would be exempt from civil prosecution if they report a case of suspected movie piracy to authorities.

Law enforcement officials also would be exempt from the proposed ban on using video cameras in movie theaters.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/lo...rticleid=74882


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Software Groups Warn Of FTA Dangers
By Online Staff

The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement poses a grave threat to the entire Australian software development industry due to the legal framework on intellectual property which is required upon adoption of the pact, the Open Source Industry Association and Linux Australia have warned.

In a statement issued in Melbourne today, both organisations said the FTA would hamper Australia's ability to efficiently compete in global markets. "Much like the introduction of a flawed patenting regime for pharmaceuticals, adoption of a flawed patent regime for software is not in Australia's interests," the statement said.

Brendan Scott, a spokesman for the groups and a lawyer himself, said the effects would be felt by all developers, not merely those who worked with open source software.

He said the wording in the FTA suggested Australia's software patents law and US laws would be harmonised. "The US patent system for software has been broadly condemned as flawed by many industry observers, even by the former Patent and Trademark Office director himself," Scottt pointed out.

He said any non-trivial piece of software could contain as many as thousands of code processes, algorithms or software modules, any one of which could infringe one or many US software patents.

"Most Australian developers have probably built products which 'infringe' on US software patents. Introducing a system which makes it simpler for these patent holders to bring such legal hooks into Australia is very damaging to the local industry," Scott said.

He pointed out that Australian developers would face huge fines if they recreated software processes while being unaware of the possibility that they may been patented. "Ignorance of such patents is no excuse. In future, Australian developers may not be able to make any software without the fear of paying ransom," he warned.

Scott said a majority of local developers lacked the money and time needed to check their software code-bases against the tens of thousands of software patents which could flood the market if Australia degraded its stringent software patent laws.

"US patent law allows for the imposition of punitive damages. If Australia adopted a similar law, local developers could be sued for many times more than any actual 'damages' they may have caused the patent holder, merely as a warning for others," he said.

He said huge software houses had the resources to obtain patents. "The introduction of US-style software patenting will therefore be a one-sided affair, and definitely not in the local industry's favour," he cautioned.

Even if an Australian developer owned a patent, he or she, in most cases, would not have the money and time to pursue a case against a big company. "Most software patents are owned by huge ICT firms, which keep them to be used when necessary to do an opponent serious damage or for legal leverage in deal negotiation. They are not used to 'extend the art and science' of technology," Scott claimed.

He was of the opinion that a large number of software patents in the US had been granted for processes or algorithms which are exceptionally vague or, even worse, quite obvious to most competent software development practitioners.

"They should not have been granted in the first place, as they are not 'novel'. By degrading Australia's patent system to match the US approach we will handicap our local developers needlessly."

Scott also warned that there were an equal number of issues which would arise with the introduction of DMCA-style legislation, also mandated by the FTA. "...anything which stops academic research into security and which also stops any endeavour towards software interoperability engineering is a serious problem for R & D in this country," he said.

He was referring to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which was signed into law in the US on October 28, 1998. The DMCA's stated purpose is to update US copyright laws for the digital age.

Both organisations said they backed the proposals made by David Vaile of the UNSW's Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre as a means of starting to tackle the problems posed by the FTA.

Vaile's proposals:

Tighten the criteria for software and 'business process' patent applications.
Establish a public interest litigation fund to enable Open Source software developers, integrators or users to respond to anti-competitive and tactical patent infringement claims, if they would otherwise be unable to do so.
Official support for global 'prior art' research projects to assist research of the viability of such claims.
Change the IPaustralia.gov.au page to make lodged patents easier to track, so that developers can protect themselves from bogus patents.
Limit the implementation of controversial DMCA-style laws, to the extent they'd inhibit development of open, compatible tools for common file formats and networks.
Introduce US 'Fair Use' amendments to Copyright Act.

http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/0...732077487.html


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Virgin: Apple's Not Playing Fair With iPod
Ina Fried

French online music store Virgin Mega has filed a complaint against Apple Computer, claiming that the company's refusal to license the copy protection technology used in its iPod is harming competition.

The action was filed with the French Competition Council in June and disclosed along with several other legal matters on Thursday as part of Apple's quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the filing, the online store, part of the Virgin family, is seeking various unspecified "interim measures," pending a decision on the merits of the case. A hearing on that request is expected in either October or November, Apple said in the filing.

An Apple representative declined to comment further on the Virgin dispute. A Virgin representative was not immediately available for comment.

A number of media companies, most prominently RealNetworks, have called on Apple to open up its FairPlay digital rights technology so that other digital music services can securely transfer files onto Apple's iPod player. FairPlay blocks people from making unlimited copying of songs but also makes sure that the iPod doesn't work with any other kind of copy-protected formats.

Apple has refused to unlock the software for other companies. Last month, however, RealNetworks released "Harmony", which it said is copy protection software engineered to be compatible with FairPlay that will also enable music purchased from Real to be securely transferred to and played on an iPod.

Apple has criticized the move as akin to hacking and warned that it could always break Real's approach in the next software update to the iPod.

Also in the SEC filing, the Mac maker noted that it has settled several actions, including a lawsuit with Tibco over the Rendezvous trademark and another suit over the technology used in the Apple PowerBook to make the keyboard light up. The company did not offer details but said that in both cases, the settlement would not have a material impact on its financial results.

An Apple representative declined to say what the impact of the Tibco settlement was and whether Apple will continue to use the Rendezvous name.

Separately, Apple has brought an end to a legal dispute over the iTunes Music Mtore, E-Data announced on Wednesday. The iPod maker has agreed to license patents from E-Data, which says its owns intellectual-property rights to the process of selling music online. Microsoft has also settled with E-Data.

Apple expects to capitalize $5 million worth of research and development costs related to its development of Tiger, the next version of the Mac OS X that is due out next year, the company said in the filing. It also anticipates recording about $5 million in restructuring costs related to vacating certain European sales offices in the current quarter.

The filing also stated that if Apple had included the cost of stock-based compensation as an expense, its earnings for the three months ended June 30 would have been 9 cents per share instead of the 16 cents reported in third-quarter earnings.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5298642.html


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Is Real's 'Hacking' Of iPod Legal?
John Borland

Code-crackers risk fines and prison time when they defeat copy-protection technology, but such draconian rules likely don't apply in the case of RealNetworks and its iPod "hack," legal experts said.

Efforts by both code-crackers and Real could undermine Apple Computer's plans for its popular digital music player and its iTunes Music Store, which together have put Apple so far ahead of the competition that companies such as Real appear ready to do virtually anything to catch up.

In a move Apple said reflected the "tactics and ethics of a hacker," RealNetworks this week essentially replicated Apple's proprietary digital rights management software. Known as Fairplay, the software prevents consumers from making unlimited copies of songs and ensures that the iPod doesn't work with any other kinds of copy-protected formats. As a result, songs purchased on Real's music download service will now play on the iPod--something Apple contends may be illegal.

But legal experts say there's a big difference between RealNetworks' product and the work of code-crackers who have helped break through DVD copy protection, or who have previously helped strip FairPlay protection from iTunes songs.

Those underground programmers, at least in the United States, risk running into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars "circumvention" of digital copy protection. By contrast, legal experts note that RealNetworks is "hacking" Apple's technology in order to protect music in its own way, not to pirate or otherwise copy it without permission. This kind of reverse engineering for compatibility purposes happens routinely in corporate America, and is allowed as long as competitors aren't actually using copyrighted code, attorneys say.

"What the DMCA was meant to protect wasn't this," said Ken Dort, an intellectual-property attorney with Gordon & Glickson in Chicago. "In fact what (RealNetworks) has done is what people do all the time. They buy the latest, greatest widget of a competitor and take it apart."

Some attorneys have said Apple might have a better case under traditional contract or copyright law. The iPod comes with a license agreement that bars reverse engineering, and if Apple can argue that RealNetworks violated that agreement, the company might have a stronger case.

"There's a question as to whether those agreements are enforceable," said Bruce Sunstein, a Boston patent attorney. "It is an area of uncertainty."

Apple 'stunned'
The spat between RealNetworks and Apple could be a critical element in the evolution of digital music. Record labels and consumers have pushed for interoperability between digital music services like Apple's iTunes and Napster. But today, songs purchased from specific stores will only work with specific players.

Because it has the largest market share, Apple has been at the center of this interoperability debate. The company has declined to license its FairPlay digital rights management software to rivals, or to support any other copy-protection software on the iPod. As a result, songs sold by Napster, RealNetworks and other stores have been unable to play directly on the iPod.

RealNetworks' release of its Harmony software this week has changed that. The company has simulated the FairPlay software well enough that songs from its own store can now be played on the iPod.

After several days of silence, Apple said Thursday that it was "stunned" at the move.

"RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws," Apple said in a statement. "We strongly caution Real and their customers that when we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods."

The DMCA, passed in 1998, was largely meant to protect digital media against piracy. The law forbids people from "circumvent(ing) a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work." It also blocks people from selling or "trafficking" in devices or software that are primarily aimed at breaking through copy-protection technology.

It also contains an exemption for people who are reverse engineering "for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability" with that program.

But judges have ruled inconsistently on nontraditional DMCA cases in the past.

Last year, a Kentucky judge barred a Lexmark rival from selling a printer cartridge that was compatible with Lexmark printers. Lexmark had invoked the DMCA to say that its own cartridge system was copyrighted, and rival Static Control Components had broken through the copyright protection.

That case is now on appeal, and the U.S. Copyright Office has weighed in on the side of Static Control.

However, later in 2003, an Illinois federal court dismissed a similar DMCA-based lawsuit by a maker of garage door openers against a rival that had made a compatible product.

Reverse engineering
In order to support unlicensed formats, RealNetworks has been forced to rely on reverse engineering, a technique of analyzing and reproducing code under strictly controlled methods that aim to ensure the target's intellectual-property rights are respected.

Reverse engineers must reconstitute code from hints provided by reading data in files and by watching the behavior of the playback applications. These activities must take place in a "clean room" to provide a record of the reconstruction of the code in the event of a legal challenge. In effect, reverse engineers must be able to show that they re- created the target software without knowledge of the underlying source code.

RealNetworks has used reverse engineering techniques before in order to make its products compatible with rival technology without the permission of the technology's owner. In 2002, the company unveiled a streaming server and digital media player with unlicensed support for Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media video streaming format.

Some observers speculated at the time that Microsoft might sue RealNetworks over the move, but the software giant has largely ignored the action so far. In an interview with CNET News.com earlier this year, Microsoft's digital media head, Dave Fester, said his company had no plans to challenge RealNetworks over its use of Windows Media.

In a statement Thursday, RealNetworks said it had taken considerable care to stay within legal lines while making Harmony.

"In fact, the DMCA is not designed to prevent the creation of new methods of locking content and explicitly allows the creation of interoperable software," the company said. "Harmony follows in a well-established tradition of fully legal, independently developed paths to achieve compatibility. There is ample and clear precedent for this activity, for instance, the first IBM compatible PCs from Compaq."
http://news.com.com/2100-1030-5290814.html


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Hacker Cracks Apple's Streaming Technology
AP

The Norwegian hacker famed for developing DVD encryption-cracking software has apparently struck again -- this time breaking the locks on Apple Computer Inc.'s wireless music streaming technology.

Jon Lech Johansen released on his Web site -- defiantly named ``So Sue Me'' -- a software key that helps to unlock the encryption Apple uses for its AirPort Express, a device that lets users broadcast digital music from Apple's online iTunes Music Store on a stereo that's not plugged into a computer.

Some security consultants say that with the key and another program he released, Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, has helped pave the way for other software applications other than Apple iTunes to work with AirPort Express.

Johansen, an open source advocate, has been critical of Apple's proprietary system, which largely restricts Apple's hardware and software products to work only with each other.

On his Web site, for instance, Johansen praised a newly developed technology by RealNetworks Inc. that will make songs from its online music service compatible with the market-dominating Apple iPod portable music player.

Johansen's latest endeavors, which he posted Wednesday, mark the third instance he's circumvented Apple's music copy-protection technologies this year.

Apple officials did not immediately return calls for comment Thursday.

Johansen, now 20, was 15 when he posted on the Internet software that unlocked the codes the film industry used on DVD movies to prevent illegal copying. The act made Johansen a folk hero among hackers.

After the film industry complained, Norwegian authorities charged him with data break-in, but Johansen was acquitted at trial and on appeal.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...Kid-Apple.html

*

So sue me

Jon Lech Johansen's blog

Wed, 11 Aug 2004

Reversing AirTunes

I've released JustePort, a tool which lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express.

The stream is encrypted with AES and the AES key is encrypted with RSA.

AirPort Express RSA Public Key, Modulus:
59dE8qLieItsH1WgjrcFRKj6eUWqi+bGLOX1HL3U3GhC/j0Qg90u3sG/1CUtwC
5vOYvfDmFI6oSFXi5ELabWJmT2dKHzBJKa3k9ok+8t9ucRqMd6DZHJ2YCCLl DR
KSKv6kDqnw4UwPdpOMXziC/AMj3Z/lUVX1G7WSHCAWKf1zNS1eLvqr+boEjXuB
OitnZ/bDzPHrTOZz0Dew0uowxf/+sG+NCK3eQJVxqcaJ/vEHKIVd2M+5qL71yJ
Q+87X6oV3eaYvt3zWZYD6z5vYTcrtij2VZ9Zmni/UAaHqn9JdsBWLUEpVviYnh
imNVvYFZeCXg/IdTQ+x4IRdiXNv5hEew==
Exponent: AQAB

MD5(JustePort-0.1.tar.gz) = fe13e96751958c6e9d57cce0caa7b17b

Update: JustePort is not Windows-only. Thanks to mono it runs under GNU/Linux, MacOS X and Windows.

Update: List of all iTunes RSA Public keys.


http://www.nanocrew.net/blog/


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Muzak Thinks Outside The Box
Barbara Hagenbaugh

FORT MILL, S.C. — Every day, Muzak is heard by 100 million people, the equivalent of more than a third of the U.S. population.

But if you're straining to remember the last time you heard sleep-inducing orchestrations of the Beatles played in an elevator or grocery-store frozen-food aisle, you have it all wrong. That was the old Muzak.

Today's Muzak is played in the Gap, McDonald's and Barnes & Noble and in homes via the Dish Network, to name a few. It sounds completely different, featuring combinations of upbeat, toe-tapping songs.

Listen to the Muzak: Hot FM mix
Want to hear more? Visit www.muzak.com/muzak.html.


And there are words, real words sung by the artists themselves. Muzak has been doing that for decades. If it's a Beatles song, you'll actually hear Ringo, Paul, George and John. Unless, of course, it's a rendition sung by Tori Amos, Aerosmith or Nirvana.

It's, dare we say, hip?

"It's been one heck of a ride," says Alvin Collis, who is head of strategy and branding and joined Muzak 19 years ago. Collis, a thin 52-year-old wearing a dark T-shirt, pants and high-top sneakers, once played in a punk-rock band and admits to being fired as a child by his violin teacher. Not exactly how most people picture the typical Muzak employee.

Yet Collis is one of the people who has orchestrated Muzak's transformation into a much more modern company, an effort that officially began in 1997.

But Muzak's mission is still the same: provide music for offices, restaurants, retailers and other businesses to help maximize productivity, morale and sales. While the company has been successful in its 69 years — more than half of companies that play music play Muzak — it's still fighting the "elevator music" stigma. And Muzak officials have their sights set on the numerous businesses sitting in silence.

"If we have a problem, it's that we haven't told the story loud enough and clear enough," Collis says.

Muzak watches every word

Putting words to Muzak has made song selection more challenging.

Before songs are added, a group of employees pores over every word and phrase to make sure they're not offensive.

Workers also listen for what they think is being said. A song is out if workers think they hear an offensive word, even if the artist didn't say it.

Example: Any song with the word "funk" is immediately scrapped.

But it's not always clear what some might find offensive.

Alvin Collis, head of strategy and branding, remembers when the song Devil Inside by INXS was popular in the 1980s. After some debate, Muzak decided to put the song on its soundtrack. But a Christian woman shopping for a suit heard the song in a store and walked out before buying.

She wrote a letter to the president of the retail company, who complained to Muzak. Muzak cut the song from its playlist forever.

By Barbara Hagenbaugh


Muzak was founded by Gen. Owen Squier, who during the Great Depression patented the transmission of music over electricity lines. The name Muzak combines the word "music" with "Kodak," Squier's favorite company.

Squier introduced music into typing pools to help boost productivity. In the 1930s, as buildings grew taller and elevators became more prominent, Muzak was piped in to soothe the nerves of riders leery of the new contraptions. Thus, elevator music was born.

In the subsequent decades, Muzak spread into retailers, restaurants and other businesses countrywide. During Eisenhower's administration, Muzak was played in the White House. Astronauts even listened to Muzak in the Apollo lunar spacecraft.

Today, Muzak is a privately held company. The principal owner is ABRY Partners, a Boston-based media investment firm.

Muzak estimates it is heard in about 60% of the U.S. businesses that subscribe to music programming.

Its products:

•Music. "Audio architects," who act as the firm's DJs (in fact, many are weekend club DJs), design 74 music programs in 10 categories, such as jazz, classic rock, country, classical and current hits. The music is changed monthly, but the songs' order changes every day, so no two days are exactly the same. The programs are delivered to 350,000 locations primarily via satellite but also through CDs, tapes and other methods. Charges average $65 a month per location.

•Voice. Muzak creates programming for businesses that want to get their message out while customers are on hold on the phone or are browsing or waiting in line in a store. For example, customers at Popeyes restaurants hear both music and messages from a Muzak character named Jake, played by Jon Luther Jr., Muzak's director of BrandCasting. With a Southern accent, Jake discusses everything from Cajun culture to music festivals to the origins of red beans and rice in between songs, to complement the restaurants' New Orleans beginning. Charges for the voice programming average about $65 per month.

•Equipment. The firm sells, leases and services sound systems, as well as items outside the music world, including drive-through, intercom and paging systems.

Many companies seek Muzak to customize their music, creating a personal soundtrack that can be heard only in their stores.

Moe's Southwest Grill is one of those firms. Not only does the Atlanta-based company want a soundtrack for its 133 casual restaurants to reflect its fun, upbeat style, it has another special request for Muzak: All of the artists must be dead.

"Our music is a tribute to the heroes of the days gone by, the legends who will never be able to enjoy Moe's food," says Carl Griffenkranz, head of marketing at Moe's. The music "creates an energy in our restaurant that we feel makes us successful."

On a recent visit to a Moe's in Charlotte, artists as diverse as Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra and Marvin Gaye were heard. Griffenkranz says Ray Charles, who died in June, will be added soon.

About Muzak

Founded: 1935.
Headquarters: Fort Mill, S.C.
Employees: 3,000, including franchisees and 1,000 technicians across the USA. About 485 people work in Fort Mill. In 2003, approximately 4% of Muzak's revenue came from its franchises, many of which have been family- owned for decades.
Competitors: DMX Music, Music Choice, PlayNetwork and IBN. Although Muzak does not consider satellite radio firms to be a threat to its business, Starbucks signed a deal this week with XM Satellite Radio.
Revenue: $235 million in 2003, up 81% from 1999. After expenses, the company lost $34.6 million in 2003 vs. a $26.2 million loss in 1999.
Oldest client: An Italian restaurant in Kansas City, Mo., has been with Muzak since 1946.

Source: Muzak


Effort to become modern

Even though Muzak had evolved into a modern company, officials realized in the mid-1990s that to most people, Muzak was still, well, Muzak. And the company wasn't helping to change that image. Promotional materials were drab. There was no brand uniformity, be it the business cards or the 1,000 vans driven by technicians across the USA.

It became evident that a radical effort to better promote the brand was needed. Collis says it was a "necessity" from a personal level.

"People would ask, 'Where do you work?' and I wouldn't want to tell them," he says.

Collis, along with Kenny Kahn, head of products and marketing, went on a crusade, hiring a design firm to overhaul the Muzak brand.

A modern, simple logo — an encircled, rounded "M" — emerged, gracing updated business cards and vans. Edgy, oversize brochures were developed, featuring large lettering and examples of well-known, modern clients, with the words, "What does your business sound like?"

The company took its efforts to become modern to a new level at its headquarters, a futuristic-style building located just south of North Carolina's border near Charlotte. It built the 120,000-square-foot building four years ago, when the firm moved from Seattle, in part to take advantage of the South's lower operating costs.

"Once you decide to become a modern brand, you have to live that way," says Kahn, 42, a down-to-earth man who has been with the company seven years.

From the parking lot, visitors can immediately hear music. On a recent day, songs from the "New Grooves" program were being played, a combination of upbeat, jazzy music with a touch of Caribbean flair. It's hard not to bob your head a bit to the beat on your way to the door.

Kahn explains that the building was designed with an Italian city in mind. Near the entrance is the "city center," where employees hold spur-of-the-moment meetings and meet clients. Sometimes the entire staff greets potential clients. When the folks from Red Lobster restaurant came, staff members all wore Red Lobster bibs. Bowling lanes were set up for AMF Bowling Worldwide's visit.

Exposed wires snake across high ceilings, and the floor is solid concrete. There are no offices. Even the CEO doesn't have a door to close. Twenty-five conference rooms are sprinkled about, made of varying materials, including bamboo and plastic. Mailroom workers deliver packages riding an orange bicycle.

And although there is an elevator in the building, it does not have a speaker.

Everyone is dressed casually. On a recent hot day, employees were wearing shorts, jeans, T-shirts and flip- flops. There's not a tie in sight. Collis says employees often bring their families from out of town to see their workspace; he considers that a good sign.

As expected, music can be heard throughout the building. It's played fairly loudly — loudly enough that a visitor is always somewhat aware of what's playing, but somehow remains undistracted. It's a soundtrack to what seems like a fun place to work.

"There's a feeling here that doesn't exist in a lot of places. I see it. I feel it," says Lon Otremba, Muzak CEO for nine months now. He notes that when Muzak recently held a Saturday job fair to fill about 115 spots, 3,000 people showed up. Employees conducted interviews from 8 a.m. until past 10 p.m.

Fighting the stigma

Otremba, 47, is quick to point out that the company is blessed with a long legacy. In its 69 years, Muzak has established itself in the business world. That's where being a household word pays off.

"We have a legacy on which to build; we don't have to create it," Otremba says. "The intention here is not to put a keg of dynamite under it and blow it up."

Yet Otremba knows firsthand there is a Muzak stigma. Last year, when he was wooed from America Online, where he was the executive vice president of the Interactive Marketing Group, the recruiter initially told him everything about the company except for one minor point: the name. She wanted him to listen without any prejudices about Muzak. It wasn't until he had all the information that she finally told him what the company was.

Otremba laughs at the story now, saying he would have considered the job anyway.

Going forward, Muzak will continue to work to fight the elevator-music label, Otremba says. It's taken years to get this far, he says, and it will take many more years to get where they want.

As part of that effort, last month the company unveiled a new Web site design at www.muzak.com, incorporating music, quickly moving pictures and lots of company information, including its seven-decade history.

Company leaders are setting their sights on expansion both in the USA and abroad, where they have 13 offices in places such as Japan, Canada, Mexico and the Netherlands. While they note that Muzak is by far the leader in its industry, many companies still do not subscribe to any music providers. Muzak doesn't plan to enter the consumer market to compete with firms such as XM Satellite Radio, instead choosing to focus on commercial clients.

The challenge is to convince companies that do not play music that life would be better with Muzak, a challenge Otremba says the company is finally ready to tackle.

"I believe we will rewrite the rules again," Otremba says.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/...r_x.htm?csp=14


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Intel Technicians Use Delicate Silicon Surgery to Fine-Tune Microchips
John Markoff

Almost 15 years ago, Richard Livengood, a researcher for Intel, used an exotic machine known as a focused ion beam to painstakingly deposit a missing wire on the surface of a 486-microprocessor chip.

The chip was then placed into a personal computer, which, to the astonishment of Mr. Livengood and a small group of Intel engineers, booted Microsoft's Windows operating system without a hitch.

The technique, now referred to as silicon nanosurgery and routinely used at nine Intel chip factories around the world, has completely transformed the way modern computer chips are developed.

In a building next to Intel's corporate headquarters here, the focused ion beam technology is now employed - often around the clock - as part of an arsenal of microimaging and "surgical" tools used to locate design flaws and performance bottlenecks and make changes in circuit wires that are frequently no more than several hundred atoms in width.

In a cluster of windowless rooms known as the debug lab, the company also uses lasers and photo detectors, often aimed at single transistors.

One of the newest machines, using what is known as laser-assisted device alteration, makes it possible to change the switching speed of the tiny switches that make up a silicon chip. This allows Intel chip designers to quickly fine-tune circuits to generate more speed from their microprocessors.

Similar systems are widely used throughout the semiconductor industry today to accelerate the time it takes to go from prototype chips to manufacturing.

Rather than keeping the technologies it pioneers proprietary, Intel often licenses them to semiconductor equipment makers in an effort to keep the industry advancing uniformly as well as to ensure a less-expensive supply of the multimillion-dollar machines.

At the same time, Intel tries to keep some technologies in reserve to maintain a lead in an industry in which a technology generation lasts about two years.

The company's silicon surgeons are proof that chip makers are now within a decade of creating electronic devices made from molecular-scale components.

"We've moved well into the nano world," said Mr. Livengood, who has worked at Intel for 17 years.

Techniques for peering into semiconductor chips date to the early 1980's, when Intel scientists pioneered an approach known as voltage contrast technology.

By scanning an electron beam across the top of a running computer chip, they were able to watch each transistor and wire in the chip switch on and off. It made it possible to look for hard-to-diagnose timing problems, like a transistor that was turning on and off too slowly.

During that decade, however, the industry was forced to find new techniques when it developed sophisticated methods for packaging chips, known as "flip chip" modules. This advance made it possible to attach many more wires to each chip to move data in and out more quickly.

The task of looking inside working chips that had been turned upside down and sealed shut was much more complicated. To gain access to the transistors again, Mr. Livengood's researchers developed an approach based on etching away most of the back of the chip until only an ultrathin sheet of silicon was left. It acted as a window, making it possible to use ion beams and lasers to see the transistors as they turned on and off.

The researchers were then able to devise ways to use the ion beams to cut holes less than a micron in diameter through the back of the chip. The holes make it possible to both cut metal wires and add new ones inside the chip.

On some occasions, Intel technicians even fashion ultrasmall capacitors or change the width and thickness of the metal lines to speed up or slow down the switching speed of transistors.

The tools are used routinely now as part of the process of tuning new chips as they are readied for manufacturing. Mr. Livengood estimated that it was possible to increase speeds as much as 20 percent by tweaking individual transistors in a process similar to that of a piano tuner adjusting different wires on a piano.

Recently, Intel's president, Paul S. Otellini, said the company was changing its strategy to focus less on pure chip speed and more on adding features to its future microprocessors.

That will not give Mr. Livengood's design team any chance to relax, however.

"Moore's Law hasn't changed," he said, referring to the industry's track record of constantly shrinking the size of transistors. "We're busy trying to figure out how to do what we do in only half as much space."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/te...gy/09chip.html


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A Digital World With Analog as Its Workhorse
Barnaby J. Feder

Phonograph records are relics. Traditional cameras sit in closets gathering dust. Clocks with hands? How quaint.

Digital technology, as every marketer knows, is synonymous with speed, precision and the future.

The challenge, though, for those designing digital products is that no human experiences reality as a pattern of 1's and 0's. The natural world is, in engineering terms, a thoroughly analog realm of endlessly variable waves of sound and light, temperature and pressure fluctuations, and shifting magnetic fields.

So it turns out the digital revolution is driving strong demand for advances in analog electronics, an arcane realm in which tens of thousands of products translate reality into 1's and 0's for computers and retranslate digital results into forms humans can perceive.

In a digital camera, for example, analog chips translate wavelengths and intensities of light into digital code and, if the photographer wants to check the image, they retranslate the code into a visual display. Analog or mixed analog-digital chips also manage timing functions, signal filtering and amplification and battery performance.

Few companies understood the interplay better than Texas Instruments Inc., which in the late 1990's decided to invest heavily in analog devices along with its higher- profile digital products. Last year, it moved past STMicroelectronics of France to become the global leader in the $26.8 billion analog chip market, according to Databeans, a market research firm in Reno, Nev.

"Most people think that the world has gone digital and analog is old and not hip," said Gregg A. Lowe, the senior vice president who oversees most of Texas Instruments' analog business. "On average, there's probably 15 analog chips needed for every digital processor you use."

In fact, analog semiconductors have become Texas Instruments' biggest business, generating about 40 percent of its $8.36 billion in semiconductor revenue in 2003.

"The only thing exciting about analog electronics is the results," said Richard K. Templeton, who has been at the company for 20 years and became its chief executive in May.

Of course, when executives at Texas Instruments show off their products by popping open cellphones, digital cameras and hand-held music and video players, the first thing they point to is usually a digital signal processor. Such digital processors, which manage images and sounds while consuming 30 times less power than a standard desktop microprocessor operating at the same speed, made up 35 percent of the company's semiconductor business last year.

One of the most successful strategies Texas Instruments and others have applied to improving analog microchips has been to integrate them with digital monitoring and control circuits. Just as digital controls get higher efficiency out of an automobile engine, tiny digital circuits on such mixed signal chips can fine-tune the performance of the analog portion of the chip or help it avoid damage.

"The line between pure digital and pure analog chips is rapidly blurring, with both incorporating a little bit of the other," said Kevin Hawkins, a business development manager for the company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/te...y/09texas.html


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Spin Doctorate: Learning How to be a DJ
Kelefa Sanneh

DJ is someone who controls the music, so you're all already DJ's." That's what Rob Principe, president and chief executive of Scratch DJ Academy in Greenwich Village, told the class on the first day. Anyone who had spent time fiddling with an iPod or stuffing CD's into a stereo, he reasoned, had already grasped the basic concepts. Now all that remained was to follow the technological trail backward, from iPods and CD's to turntables and vinyl records.

The class was an intensive one-week program called DJ 101, and the instructor, an enthusiastic and — more important — patient turntablist named DJ Damage, started at the very beginning. "How many people have used a record before, not just seen one?" he asked, and nearly all of the 25 students raised a hand. He breathed a sigh of relief, and on that note introduced the day's special guest, a stocky, wisecracking guy named Grandwizzard Theodore. The Grandwizzard is a turntable hero, credited with inventing the art of scratching. Having him stop by your DJ lesson was the equivalent of having Bill Gates stop by your Intro to Computers class. (Although Mr. Gates, unlike the Grandwizzard, probably wouldn't use the phrase "You gotta lick it before you stick it.")

Scratch DJ Academy is the most prominent of a number of young schools that provide professional instruction to just the sorts of people who might once have spurned it. Until recently, aspiring DJ's had to rely on a combination of osmosis and experimentation: you'd take mental notes at nightclubs, then you'd retreat to your room and keep practicing until you got the hang of it. Now, more and more people are learning how to DJ in classrooms. The turntable may be the most important musical instrument of the current era — it's certainly the most ubiquitous — so it's only fitting that turntable conservatories are starting to emerge.

The University of California, Berkeley, started offering student-led DJ'ing courses in 1998, and this spring, after a few years of wrangling, Berklee College of Music in Boston began offering formal instruction, too. Stephen Webber, the Berklee professor who helped establish the school's course, recently published "Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ" (Berklee Press), and the DJ historians Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster recently published "How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records" (Grove Atlantic). Scratch DJ Academy, founded in 2002, is the country's best-known DJ school, but other academies — not all of them reputable — are springing up.

Oddly enough, the professionalization of DJ'ing seems to be lowering the barriers to entry, not raising them. The vast majority of DJ's still learn their trade informally, on their own; no club would penalize a DJ for not having a diploma. But formal instruction can help novices (and veterans) get better quicker. So it's getting even easier to become a DJ, and at a time when — as you may have noticed — there seem to be too many DJ's already. Could this possibly be good news?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/ar...ic/08SANN.html


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Lawyers Unearth Early Patents


Scott Asmus, left, and Andrew Cernota, who recently unearthed some long-lost patents
of the inventor Samuel Morey, with a replica of his internal combustion engine.
Robert LaPree for The New York Times


THE X-patents are out there - it just takes a little faith and a lot of persistence to find them.
Teresa Riordan

The Patent and Trademark Office has issued nearly seven million patents; the first 10,000 are known as the X-patents. They were issued from July 1790, when the United States patent system was created under an order signed by George Washington, to July 1836, when every one of them burned in a fire. Virtually every patent is available to the public on paper, microfiche, CD-ROM and the Internet - except the X-patents.

In the 168 years since the fire, only about 2,800 have been recovered. Over time, the appearance of missing X-patents grew fewer and farther between, so that now no one at the patent agency, which does not have an official historian, can remember the last time it happened.

Until this spring, that is, when two lawyers with a passion for patent history uncovered a clue to several important patents from the 1790's - including one from 1826 for the first internal combustion engine. Following the trail to Dartmouth College, they discovered inventor copies of 14 patents that had been written off as lost forever.

"We found them by accident," said Scott J. Asmus, a partner in the law firm of Maine & Asmus in Nashua, N.H., who found the documents with an associate, Andrew P. Cernota.

When they told the Patent and Trademark Office what they had found, the agency was immediately interested in adding the documents to its archives.

"This isn't something that happens all the time," Brigid Quinn, chief spokeswoman for the agency, said. "Our information service people, who keep track of this, were pretty excited."

In its first 46 years of existence, the Patent Office, as it was known then, issued the first patent received by a woman, and the first by an African-American. But all its records were lost when a fire gutted the building where the patents were being stored temporarily while a more modern, fireproof headquarters was under construction. There was a fire station right next door, but it was December, and in the frigid early morning hours the volunteer firefighters discovered their leather hoses were cracked and a pump did not work.

No copies of the patent descriptions and drawings were kept anywhere else, and only a copy of the official patent certificate was sent to the inventor. Patents were not numbered then; they were referred to only by name and issue date.

When the fire destroyed the originals, most of the patents seemed lost forever. Congress immediately passed a law allowing the patents to be reissued, and an effort was made to piece together the lost files. When the Patent Office began issuing patents again, it numbered them. Thus, Patent 1 was issued in 1837. As the patents lost in the fire were restored, they also were assigned sequential numbers starting with 1, and an "X" was added to distinguish them from the post-1836 patents. Some were recovered out of order, and when that happened, the recovered patent was given a fraction number, like Patent 127.5, to keep the patents in the proper sequence.

Reconstituting the patents is difficult because, in many cases, the patent office cannot even name the inventors.

"They lost everything in the fire and didn't know quite where to start," Ms. Quinn said. "There weren't any other copies. Even finding out who the inventors were was difficult when all the records here were destroyed."

Mr. Asmus and Mr. Cernota were researching Samuel Morey, who holds the first patents issued to a New Hampshire resident. Ms. Quinn describes him as the inventor "who arguably discovered the first internal combustion engine." Their search took them to Dartmouth's library.

"Somewhere along the way, we saw a reference to Dartmouth College library," Mr. Asmus said. "We were looking for Morey's patent on the patent Web site and couldn't find it. Then we saw something written about the patent in a handbook from the 1960's, and went to the library."

He and Mr. Cernota found references to Mr. Morey's papers in Dartmouth's online directory. They asked to see the documents, and knew they were real when they saw them, Mr. Asmus said. The two men found 14 lost patents at the library, 10 of which belonged to Morey. Apparently, his descendants donated the patents - among them, one for an automatic spit roaster - to the university sometime in the 1960's.

"We confirmed they were originals. They had big gold stickers and red stickers with wax on them," he said. Some of Mr. Morey's earliest patents were signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Asmus said. "Those people signed all the patents then. They didn't have the volume they have today."

The Patent and Trademark Office knows of some missing patents that belong to historical archives and academic institutions. Mr. Asmus said the same trail that led to Mr. Morey's patents has led him to about a half-dozen other lost patents in university and private collections.

"As we found the first set of patents in an old college, we figured that there might be similar patents in the other old colleges," Mr. Asmus said. "Sure enough, you can do an online search of the college library holdings and we identified at least a few others that describe 'letter patent' original prints" and were located in special collections sections.

Mr. Asmus is keen to recover the patents because he sees early American inventors as more than pioneers in their fields.

"As patent attorneys, technology is our bread and butter," he said. "These older patents represent a renaissance in engineering from the mid-1800's onward. An enormous amount of intellectual property and wealth was developed in that period. By 1850, the internal combustion engine existed that is still in use today.

"If you look back, technology today is standing on the shoulders of giants," he said. "We should recognize the contributions of those people. They did fascinating things with primitive instruments. Nowadays we just take existing technology and revamp it."

But Mr. Asmus's enthusiasm notwithstanding, Jim Davie, a patent examiner for 32 years and an agency history buff, said that the agency lost interest in filling the gap in its early records over the years.

"I thought it would be of at least historical interest to restore some of the lost patents to the P.T.O. records," said Mr. Davie, who is now retired, in an e-mail discussion of the X-patents. "Let's just say that I found such a lack of enthusiasm for restoration of lost patents that I did not deem it worthwhile to pursue. I have information, files, contacts, etc., that would probably lead us to be able to recover perhaps a couple dozen lost patents."

Ms. Quinn said the patent agency was "proud of its collection of nearly seven million patents, representing not only advancements in science and technology since 1790, but also the history of the American economy from its agrarian roots through today's information age.

"We are extremely interested in fully documenting this history," she added. "If Mr. Davie has any information that would help fill the gaps, we welcome it."

Patents may be viewed on the Web at www.uspto.gov or may be ordered through the mail, by patent number, for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/te...wanted=2&8hpib


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Windows XP SP2 Available As P2P Download
Laurence Norah

A site which is attempting to highlight the benefits of file sharing technology as a legal download aid has set up a peer to peer downloadable version of Microsoft's latest Service Pack for Windows XP.

Downhill Battle are a non-profit organisation who are working towards trying to create a better and fairer music industry. However, they have obviously seen the potential publicity that they can gain for peer to peer technologies by offering users this must have download at a potentially higher availability than from Microsoft's own servers.

Downhill Battle are hosting a torrent of the file which can be downloaded using the filesharing BitTorrent application. The idea of this system is that as a user downloads sections of a file, they simultaneously start uploading the file to other users. In this way everyone is able to share the file quicker. Although slow to start off with, with a high volume of users participating the total download speeds reached can be pretty high.

Of course, this is a highly dubious publicity stunt which is not without risk. To start with, downloading such a major piece of software from a site which is neither endorsed nor supported by Microsoft is not necessarily a great idea. Add to that the fact that Microsoft have not given Downhill Battle redistribution rights to their software and Downhill Battle suddenly appear on the wrong side of the law. Not a great idea for a site which is trying to promote the benefits of legal software distribution over Peer to peer applications.

No doubt Microsoft will intervene at some point. We'll let you know when they do.
http://itvibe.com/default.aspx?NewsID=2801


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'OutKast' Not Allowed In Kansas Libraries
AP

The Kansas attorney general has withheld more than 1,600 compact discs from distribution to state libraries because officials determined the albums promote violence or illegal activity, records show.

The albums removed by Attorney General Phill Kline's office were part of 51,000 discs given to Kansas as part of a nationwide settlement to resolve allegations of price fixing.

The CDs included recordings by 25 musicians, including rap artists such as OutKast and Notorious B.I.G., rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Stone Temple Pilots, and even older acts such as Lou Reed and the 1980s experimental group Devo.

The list of albums was obtained by The Associated Press last week through an open-records request.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the decision amounted to censorship.

"What he's doing is enforcing his concept of decency on libraries around the state of Kansas, and that's not his business," said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the ACLU in Kansas and western Missouri.

Whitney Watson, a spokesman for Kline, said the attorney general would not discuss the screening of the CDs but said the decision to remove some albums was made to ensure state officials were not disseminating objectionable material.

Watson said the office's consumer-protection and antitrust division vetted the list. In some cases, they were familiar enough with the albums to determine if they had questionable content. In others, they looked at Internet databases of lyrics.

"We don't have the manpower to look at every album and every song lyric, but we feel we removed most of the albums that did not mesh with the values of a majority of Kansans," he said.

Kansas is one of 40 states receiving the free CDs for public libraries as part of a 2002 court settlement with the music industry over claims of CD price-fixing.

Attorneys general in several other states also have screened their CDs, often removing controversial artists or albums including explicit lyrics. Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter removed 5,300 discs, or 5 percent of the 107,000 his state was scheduled to receive.

The Kansas Library Association, which advocates for public libraries, said it had no objection to the attorney general's actions.

"This was very similar to what libraries do all the time," said Rosanne Siemens, the group's executive director. "It wasn't so much an issue of taking things out but determining what would be best. They did libraries a big favor by selecting these CDs because there's no way libraries could have said what they wanted."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Musi....ap/index.html


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Record Industry Duel: Disc Duos

Plans to sell new hybrid CD/DVDs have hit legal and licensing snags that threaten to scuttle a mass rollout that the hard-hit music industry had been counting on to aid its recovery, people familiar with the matter said this week.

Record makers are enjoying a rebound after a three-year sales slump blamed largely on online piracy. Efforts to control piracy and the growth of legal Web music services like Apple Computer's iTunes have helped.

The labels also have spurred sales by packaging "bonus" DVDs with CDs. In February, several began test marketing the new hybrid discs -- CD on one side and DVD on the other. They see these DualDiscs as a next generation product that marries the booming market for DVDs with declining CDs.

"It's not like the coming of the CD, but we did really well with them," said Greg Harrington, manager of Tower Records in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which took part in the test.

Some 13 titles by artists like David Bowie and Linkin Park were sold in Boston and Seattle. The idea is to put music on the CD side and concert, interview or recording session video on the DVD. They have sold for about $20 in retail stores.

But before the products can be ready for mass markets, several issues remain including a contract dispute between a technology developer and manufacturer and questions dealing with the licensing of "CD" and of music rights.

Major labels like Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, EMI, Warner Music and newly merged Sony BMG Music Entertainment have high hopes for the DualDiscs but have stayed relatively quiet about them. They all declined to comment for this story.

Retailers had expected the discs for the fourth quarter, but industry sources said they now believe the labels, which have grappled with playability and thickness issues before, are now targeting early 2005 in light of new snags.

"They're hijacking our technology," said Phil Carlson, North American Division president of German-based DVD Plus International, who said "there are ongoing conversations" between lawyers for his firm and the major music labels.

DVD Plus founder Dieter Dierks claims Warner Music's distributing and manufacturing arm, known as WEA, breached a 2000 contract in which Dierks bought the patent position for hybrid disc technology and perfected it.

That agreement called for the DVD Plus logo to be placed on the discs for a set period of time, but WEA's manufacturing operations were later bought by Cinram International. Cinram is now making the hybrids and calling them DualDiscs for most of the labels, except for Sony. A Cinram spokeswoman said there were no issues preventing it from making DualDiscs, but DVD Plus's Carlson disagrees.

"We did have a signed agreement and are disconcerted the industry should attempt to call it by any other name," Carlson said.

Philips Electronics, the licensor of the CD logo, also has refused to allow the hybrid discs to be sold with the logo because it doesn't fit CD specifications, a spokeswoman for Philips said.

Discs involved in the industry's February trials included warnings of possible playback problems on some devices, but retailer Harrington said there were no issues. "We got a couple of emails, but nobody came back to us with them," he said.

Finally, record companies normally license content separately for different formats -- cassettes, CDs, albums or DVDs. The new hybrid discs require new licensing agreements that have yet to be worked out, industry sources said.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64513,00.html


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Big Business Becoming Big Brother
Kim Zetter

The government is increasingly using corporations to do its surveillance work, allowing it to get around restrictions that protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, according to a report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that works to protect civil liberties.

Data aggregators -- companies that aggregate information from numerous private and public databases -- and private companies that collect information about their customers are increasingly giving or selling data to the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track the activities of people.

Because laws that restrict government data collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance. Congress needs to close such loopholes, the ACLU said, before the exchange of information gets out of hand.

"Americans would really be shocked to discover the extent of the practices that are now common in both industry and government," said the ACLU's Jay Stanley, author of the report. "Industry and government know that, so they have a strong incentive to not publicize a lot of what's going on."

Last year, JetBlue Airways acknowledged that it secretly gave defense contractor Torch Concepts 5 million passenger itineraries for a government project on passenger profiling without the consent of the passengers. The contractor augmented the data with passengers' Social Security numbers, income information and other personal data to test the feasibility of a screening system called CAPPS II. That project was slated to launch later this year until the government scrapped it. Other airlines also contributed data to the project.

Information about the data-sharing project came to light only by accident. Critics like Stanley say there are many other government projects like this that are proceeding in secret.

The ACLU released the Surveillance-Industrial Complex report in conjunction with a new website designed to educate the public about how information collected from them is being used.

The report listed three ways in which government agencies obtain data from the private sector: by purchasing the data, by obtaining a court order or simply by asking for it. Corporations freely share information with government agencies because they don't want to appear to be unpatriotic, they hope to obtain future lucrative Homeland Security contracts with the government or they fear increased government scrutiny of their business practices if they don't share.

But corporations aren't the only ones giving private data to the government. In 2002, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors voluntarily gave the FBI the names and addresses of about 2 million people who had studied scuba diving in previous years. And a 2002 survey found that nearly 200 colleges and universities gave the FBI information about students. Most of these institutions provided the information voluntarily without having received a subpoena.

Collaborative surveillance between government and the private sector is not new. For three decades during the Cold War, for example, telegraph companies like Western Union, RCA Global and International Telephone and Telegraph gave the National Security Agency, or NSA, all cables that went to or from the United States. Operation Shamrock, which ran from 1945 to 1975, helped the NSA compile 75,000 files on individuals and organizations, many of them involved in peace movements and civil disobedience.

These days, the increasing amount of electronic data that is collected and stored, along with developments in software technology, make it easy for the government to sort through mounds of data quickly to profile individuals through their connections and activities.

Although the Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the government from keeping dossiers on Americans unless they are the specific target of an investigation, the government circumvents the legislation by piggybacking on private- sector data collection.

Corporations are not subject to congressional oversight or Freedom of Information Act requests -- two methods for monitoring government activities and exposing abuses. And no laws prevent companies from voluntarily sharing most data with the government.

"The government is increasingly ... turning to private companies, which are not subject to the law, and buying or compelling the transfer of private data that it could not collect itself," the report states.

A government proposal for a national ID card, for example, was shot down by civil liberties groups and Congress for being too intrusive and prone to abuse. And Congress voted to cancel funding for John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, a national database that would have tracked citizens' private transactions such as Web surfing, bank deposits and withdrawals, doctor visits, travel itineraries and visa and passport applications.

But this hasn't stopped the government from achieving the same ends by buying similar data from private aggregators like Acxiom, ChoicePoint, Abacus and LexisNexis. According to the ACLU, ChoicePoint's million- dollar contracts with the Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies let authorities tap into its billions of records to track the interests, lifestyles and activities of Americans.

By using corporations, the report said, the government can set up a system of "distributed surveillance" to create a bigger picture than it could create with its own limited resources and at the same time "insulate surveillance and information-handling practices from privacy laws or public scrutiny."

Most of the transactions people make are with the private sector, not the government. So the amount of data available through the private sector is much greater.

Every time people withdraw money from an ATM, buy books or CDs, fill prescriptions or rent cars, someone else, somewhere, is collecting information about them and their transactions. On its own, each bit of information says little about the person being tracked. But combined with health and insurance records, bank loans, divorce records, election contributions and political activities, corporations can create a detailed dossier.

And studies show that Americans trust corporations more than they trust their government, so they're more likely to give companies their information freely. A 2002 phone survey about a proposed national ID plan, conducted by Gartner, found respondents preferred private industry -- such as bank or credit card companies -- to administer a national ID system rather than the government.

Stanley said most people are unaware how information about them is passed on to government agencies and processed.

"People have a right to know just how information about them is being used and combined into a high-resolution picture of (their) life," Stanley said.

Although the Privacy Act attempted to put stops on government surveillance, Stanley said that its authors did not anticipate the explosion in private-sector data collection.

"It didn't anticipate the growth of data aggregators and the tremendous amount of information that they're able to put together on virtually everyone or the fact that the government could become customers of these companies," Stanley said.

Although the report focused primarily on the flow of data from corporations to the government, data flow actually goes both ways. The government has shared its watch lists with the private sector, opening the way for potential discrimination against customers who appear on the lists. Under section 314 of the Patriot Act, the government can submit a suspect list to financial institutions to see whether the institution has conducted transactions with any individuals or organizations on the list. But once the government shares the list, nothing prevents the institution from discriminating against individuals or organizations on the list.

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI circulated a watch list to corporations that contained hundreds of names of people the FBI was interested in talking to, although the people were not under investigation or wanted by the FBI. Companies were more than happy to check the list against the names of their customers. And if they used the list for other purposes, it's difficult to know. The report notes that there is no way to determine how many job applicants might have been denied work because their names appeared on the list.

"It turns companies into sheriff's deputies, responsible not just for feeding information to the government, but for actually enforcing the government's wishes, for example by effectively blacklisting anyone who has been labeled as a suspect under the government's less-than-rigorous procedures for identifying risks," the report states.

Last March, the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee, created by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to examine government data mining, issued a report (PDF) stating that "rapid action is necessary" to establish clear guidelines for responsible government data mining.

The ACLU's Stanley said companies are in the initial stages of the Homeland Security gold rush to get government contracts, and that the public and Congress need to do something before policies and practices of private-sector surveillance solidify.

"Government security agencies always have a hunger for more and more information," said Stanley. "It's only natural. It makes it easier for law enforcement if they have access to as much info as they want. But it's crucial that policy makers and political leaders balance the needs of law enforcement and the value of privacy that Americans have always expected and enjoyed."
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,64492,00.html


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

A Blueprint For Better Copyright Law
Michael Geist

Imagine an Ontario government initiative that responded to rising concern over speeding on provincial highways by installing hundreds of automated radar guns to identify cars that failed to obey the speed limit. Rather than sending a speeding ticket to those caught by the system, however, the government instead sent a bailiff to confiscate the car keys so that the alleged speeding car could no longer be used.

Such a system would obviously be criticized for being unfair and unworkable. Opponents would note that for every serial speeder taken off the road, there would be many more people wrongly identified. Moreover, the system would unfairly capture innocent parties, such as a parent who loses the ability to use their car to go to work due to a momentary mistake by a teenage child.

While such as scenario may seem far-fetched, it is the offline equivalent of the Canadian Recording Industry Association's latest proposal in its battle against music file sharing on the information highway. Since the emergence of Napster several years ago, the number of recording industry lawsuits have gradually escalated, catching ever-more people in the crossfire. What started with a handful of actions against online music and file sharing services has expanded to include thousands of suits against individual Internet users.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851


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

Aimed at political dissenters

Zambian Parliament Passes Tough Cyber Crime Law
AFP

Zambia's parliament has unanimously passed a tough law to curb cyber crime that would see convicted computer hackers and other offenders get jail sentences ranging from 15 to 25 years.

The Computer Misuse and Crimes law, which was passed by lawmakers without any debate on Tuesday, will come into effect after President Levy Mwanawasa gives his presidential assent.

"If there is no debate or objection, then the bill passes third reading," said deputy speaker Jason Mvula when the bill was presented for the last stage of enactment in the National Assembly.

The government said the new law would help curb cyber crimes that had become a problem in the poor southern African country where only one in 1000 people have access to computers, according to unofficial figures.

The new law enjoys support from bankers and some computer experts who argue that electronic fraud has become rampant in the country's financial sector.

The most famous cyber offence in Zambia was committed by a young computer expert who accessed the State House website and replaced the picture of then president Frederick Chiluba with a cartoon.

He was arrested and charged with defaming the head of state but the case was dropped as there was no provision in Zambian law to deal with cyber crimes.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/1...102488282.html


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

Vienna Joins Open Source Trend
Agence France-Presse

VIENNA will next year join a growing number of European cities opening the door to Linux, the free internet-based computer operating system that is encroaching on the dominance of Microsoft's Windows program.

The municipality of Vienna will offer about half of its officials the choice of switching from the Windows computer operating system to Linux in 2005, according to the mayor of the Austrian capital.

The city's information services head, Erwin Gillich, says about 7500 of 16,000 municipal officials will be allowed to choose Linux, which is considered less virus- prone, and an evaluation will be made in 2006.

Vienna is the latest of several European cities and institutions to switch to Linux, the open-source system invented in the early 1990s.

Munich municipality, in southern Germany, has been operating exclusively on Linux since 2003.

Vienna is opting for "a slow transformation", Gillich says, and those expecting to make the switch are mostly personnel with strong information technology knowledge.

Installing the new system will cost some E1.1 million ($1.88 million) over five years.

The main aim of the project is to make the city less dependent on Microsoft, Gillich says.

Linux was invented by a Finn, Linus Torvalds, and has become one of the biggest competitors of Microsoft, which is the operating system used on nearly 90 per cent of the world's computers.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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

Getting the Army on your side

U.S. Armed Forces Enlist Napster For Download Deals
AP

Napster has struck an agreement with the U.S. government to offer its online music download service to members of the military and their families at a reduced price.

As part of the arrangement with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, Napster agreed to discount the price of its song downloads and subscription service by 10 percent, Napster spokesman John Conroy said Wednesday.

Several AAFES Web sites that cater to military and other government officials stationed overseas began offering the Napster service Wednesday. About 11 million current and retired members of the military, as well as their families, are eligible to access the service, the company said.

Napster normally sells individual song downloads for 99 cents, full albums starting at $9.95 or monthly subscriptions for $9.95.

In recent months, the company has also signed deals with several universities to offer its service at a discount to students.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based software maker Roxio Inc. launched Napster 2.0 in October. The company revived the Napster brand from its previous incarnation as a free online file-swapping service. The original Napster shut down in 2001 after a protracted legal battle with recording companies.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9375301.htm


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

Part One

Changes In The Air

There's radical talk at the BBC, with its charter under review and convergence likely to transform the way we use TV. In the first part of a three-part special report on the BBC's Research and Development labs, Clive Akass talks to engineers studying the feasibility of putting the BBC archive online.

The convergence of computing with communications technology gave us the Internet and shook the movie and music industries to the core. Now the convergence of computing and consumer electronics is about to do the same to broadcasting.

Digital broadcasts, which use less bandwidth than analogue, have already brought many more TV and radio channels, giving more choice but reducing per- programme audiences. Multimedia broadcasts of web-like content are in their infancy but could add a new dimension to the use of portable devices. And personal video recorders (PVRs) and media centre PCs, which facilitate recording and time-shifting, are changing the way we view TV.

Driving many of the changes has been the BBC, thanks partly to freedom from commercial restraints afforded by the licence fee. Notably it has one of the world's best websites. The first was set up experimentally by research leader Brandon Butterworth at the BBC's Research and Development Lab at Kingswood Warren, Surrey, in the face of some scepticism.

The BBC's online presence has since reached the point where it is compounding the challenges to traditional programming. It will be multicasting many events in the Olympics this year, which is expected to lead to more online coverage of events and add to the already bewildering choice of viewing. The BBC site enables time-shifting by providing access to some radio programmes up to a week after they are broadcast. The ultimate would be to offer access to the entire BBC archive - and, amazingly, this (or a near equivalent) is on the cards.

The BBC charter is under review and radical ideas are being thrown about. Michael Grade said shortly after being appointed BBC chairman this year that the public owns BBC content and should have access to it for non-commercial use.

He also pointed out that access would be limited by formidable problems over copyright and repeat fees. But the technical issues are already being assessed, as I found on a visit to the splendid Victorian neo-Gothic mansion that houses the Kingswood R&D labs, where the groundwork was done for many of the developments in UK broadcasting in the past 50 years.

Millions of gigabytes

BBC engineer Michael Sparks reckons the archive could be stored in 14petabytes (14 million gigabytes), which is not too much to stack on hard disks. Sparks estimates that at today's data densities they would occupy five to eight floors of London's Canary Wharf. With densities likely to increase by orders of magnitude, storage should not be a problem.

The existing content could be transferred, and reformatted if necessary, as part of the refresh cycle all such archives need. It would be a costly business, but Sparks pointed out: 'We need the archive anyway. The best way to think of it is not as a back-end store for streaming but as a way of modernising the archive.'

Sparks stresses that just because the labs are looking at the idea does not mean it will happen. He said: 'It's not our role to decide whether these things will happen... we have to be there to help the BBC make an informed decision.'

Storage is, of course, not the only technical issue. You need an infrastructure able to deliver the content. One possibility the labs are exploring as part of an EC-funded project called Share It, is to use rights-managed peer-to-peer networking. Instead of loading a server with a request for a file, you find someone else who has downloaded it and get it from them. Sparks raises another intriguing possibility. The main archive has to use a production-quality format, but with high compression it could be packed small enough to fit on a laptop or home server with the data densities of the near future.

This level of storage would not be needed with P2P, which makes the entire network your archive. It's an eerie prospect: what amounts to a national memory bank, spreading itself resiliently through homes and offices across the country.
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1157046


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

Downloading Laws

The Induce Act could stifle tech innovation
Hanah Metchis

A few short years ago, technology enthusiasts used to claim that technology moves too fast for the law to hold it back. Those predictions turn out to be overly optimistic. In fact, lawmakers trying to put a stop to one evil are likely to create dozens more with legislation about a field they don't fully understand. Vague language designed to catch potential technological workarounds can put a stop to innovation in completely unrelated areas.

The latest example of this dangerous mix of law and technology is the Induce Act, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch. Its intent—to stop downloading of copyrighted material by making peer-to-peer file trading networks illegal—is bad enough. P2P networks have legitimate uses, like the distribution of taped Senate hearings. But the language of Hatch's bill is so open-ended that many other electronic devices, from the iPod to TiVo to email-to-RSS converters, would be called into question.

The Induce Act, also known as the IICA, says that anyone who "intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures" a copyright violation can be sued for copyright infringement. That surely applies to the file trading networks, which make it easy to find and download a free copy of any song you desire. Apple's iPod could also come under fire for its huge hard drive, which would cost about $10,000 to fill with legally downloaded music. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has prepared a sample complaint against the iPod, pointing out the dangers of the Induce Act against established, respectable companies and technologies.

Others have gone even farther in pointing out the absurdities that could result from an expansive reading of the Induce Act. Tech blogger Ernest Miller is keeping track of an Induce Act "Hit List", pointing out products and companies that might be seen to "induce" copyright infringement. Among the everyday companies on Miller's list are The New York Times, which in a recent article "painted a romantic picture of copyright infringers who violate the public performance right for films," and Lego, which lets users upload pictures to create a Lego mosaic template. One commenter even joked that the manufacturers of Silly Putty could be liable for promoting the gooey toy's ability to lift an impression off a printed page.

The Induce Act would have a definite chilling effect on technological innovation. Even if judges are not inclined to interpret it broadly, the vague language opens the door to harassing lawsuits. Companies creating multipurpose technologies would have to be prepared to defend themselves against copyright infringement allegations. To avoid that, the Business Software Alliance has proposed changes to the bill, including a limit on frivolous lawsuits and a provision for products with legitimate commercial purposes to be exempted from liability. The latter would reaffirm the Supreme Court's 1984 Betamax decision which held that the VCR maker was not responsible for copyright infringement by its customers.

Faced with so many unintended consequences, Congress needs to consider whether this solution to copyright infringement is worse than the original problem. Digital content distribution is still in its infancy, but iTunes and other legal download services are growing in popularity. The digital music landscape could change next year, or even next month, in ways that the Induce Act would be unprepared to deal with. The law can undoubtedly cut off some avenues of technological innovation. But at the same time, the tech lovers of 1999 are right—the law cannot anticipate where technology will turn next. In the worst case scenario, a bad tech law could be simultaneously stifling and irrelevant.
http://www.reason.com/links/links081104.shtml


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

Howard Rheingold's Latest Connection
The tech guru sees a "new economic system" in the unconscious cooperation embodied by Google links and Amazon lists

Howard Rheingold is on the hunt again. With his last book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, in 2001, the longtime observer of technology trends made a persuasive case that pervasive mobile communications, combined with always-on Internet connections, will produce new kinds of ad-hoc social groups. Now, he's starting to take the leap beyond smart mobs, trying to weave some threads out of such seemingly disparate developments as Web logs, open-source software development, and Google.

At the same time, Rheingold is worried that established companies could quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world. He recently spoke with Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief. Here are excerpts from their conversation:

Q: Where do you see the social revolution you've been talking about going next?

A: It's too early to say. The question is: What does it point toward? Some kind of collective action...in which the individuals aren't consciously cooperating. A market is a great example as a mechanism for determining price based on demand. People aren't saying, "I'm contributing to the market," [they say they're] just selling something. But it adds up.

Q: Can you give me some specific examples of what you mean, beyond the market?

A: Google is based on the emergent choices of people who link. Nobody is really thinking, "I'm now contributing to Google's page rank." What they're thinking is, "This link is something my readers would really be interested in." They're making an individual judgment that, in the aggregate, turns out to be a pretty good indicator of what's the best source.

Then there's open source [software]. Steve Weber, a political economist at UC Berkeley, sees open source as an economic means of production that turns the free-rider problem to its advantage. All the people who use the resource but don't contribute to it just build up a larger user base. And if a very tiny percentage of them do anything at all -- like report a bug -- then those free riders suddenly become an asset.

And maybe this isn't just in software production. There's [the idea of] "open spectrum," coined by [Yale law professor] Yochai Benkler. The dogma is that the two major means of organizing for economic production are the market and the firm. But Benkler uses open source as an example of peer-to- peer production, which he thinks may be pointing toward a third means of organizing for production.

Then you look at Amazon (AMZN) and its recommendation system, getting users to provide free reviews, users sharing choices with their friends, users who make lists of products. They get a lot of free advice that turns out to be very useful in the aggregate. There's also Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles.

Q: What will all those trends produce ultimately?

A: All these could dramatically transform not only the way people do business, but economic production altogether. We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.

But I think we're seeing hints, with all of these examples, that the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices - - these are all like those technologies...that made capitalism possible. These may make some new economic system possible.

Q: If so, it's a good bet not all companies will be happy with the changes.

A: New digital technologies are creating a crisis in the business models of the companies that depend on having a monopoly on distribution. Look at MP3 blogs: We're now seeing bands that are saying, "Please pirate my material. Here it is." They make money from that. They get bookings from that. They build an audience on that.

Q: Are there more such conflicts and opportunities to come?

A: Assigning frequencies to license holders...is an old-fashioned scheme...based on technologies of the 1920s. We now have technologies that make it possible to use the spectrum the way packets use the Internet. Instead of having a circuit-switched analog system in which you have to have an end- to-end connection, you just send your packets out with their addresses through this network and they find their way. It's much more efficient. It makes for millions more broadcasters in the Internet space. This is all pointing to a kind of voluntary sharing of your property.

Q: Does the pushback by companies threatened by these trends, such as the record and movie companies, threaten innovation?

A: Yes. Never before in history have we been able to see incumbent businesses protect business models based on old technology against creative destruction by new technologies. And they're doing it by manipulating the political process. The telegraph didn't prevent the telephone, the railroad didn't prevent the automobile. But now, because of the immense amounts of money that they're spending on lobbying and the need for immense amounts of money for media, the political process is being manipulated by incumbents.

Q: What might keep these powerful incumbents from holding back this tide?

A: You've got to have some huge force outside of the United States, where it's getting locked down. What if China says, "The FCC doesn't rule us. We're going to stop assigning frequencies within our borders. We're going to regulate devices so that they play fair with each other, and we're going to open up spectrum." That's going to make the U.S. an economic and technological backwater.

Then there's always the idea that maybe we're just beginning to see disruptive technologies. Maybe something is just going to blow it away. Certainly we've seen that over and over again in recent decades.

Q: Where will we see that happen?

A: We now have a world out there where billions of people have in their pockets technologies for innovation that far surpass what entire industries had just a couple decades ago. If you're talking about the communications industry, your innovation is happening with 15-year-old girls. That was where [Japanese cellular network provider NTT] DoCoMo (DCM) won big. I think the total number of text messages sent is approaching 100 billion a month. Of course, the revenues on that are only a fraction of a cent each, but multiply a fraction of a cent by 100 billion, and it begins to add up to real money.

You're seeing that now with the picturephones. People are not using them the way it was predicted. They're using them to share their days: Here's a picture of somebody's haircut. Here's a picture of somebody's melon. Look at this shoe in a store. It wasn't determined by an expensive R&D lab. It was determined in practice by young people who appropriate these devices in unexpected ways. There's nothing more inventive than a 15-year-old.

I don't think that's going away. If I was a Nokia (NOK) or a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), I would take a fraction of what I'm spending on those buildings full of expensive people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a while, you're going to make a billion dollars off it.

Q: A focus group on steroids.

A: This would be more like ethnography, where you let them loose and watch what they do. If you want to think out of the box about innovation, let's not put all of our bets on 50-year-old PhDs in laboratories. We now have dispersed the means of individual and collective innovation throughout the world.

Here's where Wikipedia fits in. It used to be if you were a kid in a village in India or a village in northern Canada in the winter, maybe you could get to a place where they have a few books once in a while. Now, if you have a telephone, you can get a free encyclopedia. You have access to the world's knowledge. Knowing how to use that is a barrier. The divide increasingly is not so much between those who have and those who don't, but those who know how to use what they have and those who don't.

Q: Some folks in the U.S. are worried about the competition from overseas that comes from that dispersal of knowledge.

A: We should have thought about it when we sold all those computers and chips overseas. These aren't just widgets. These are the building blocks of innovation.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5671750/
















Until next week,

- js.














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Old 12-08-04, 10:18 PM   #2
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Quote:
link The File Sharing Experiment


[Official Project Start: Jul 31 05:08pm EST]

The file sharing experiment is an attempt to catalog some financial figures about how much revenue the industries backing organizations such as the RIAA, MPAA, and SPA have gained by file sharing. The file sharing database consists of a list of items and prices which contributing users have both purchased, and would not have purchased if they hadn't first downloaded/shared identical or related files. The ultimate goal is to show what (if any) significant revenue the RIAA, MPAA, and SPA have to credit to the file sharing community, and hopefully convince some of the organizations supporting them that their money would be better spent taking advantage of this market rather than trying to exterminate it.

It has always been my belief that various industries have actually earned more revenue as a direct result of file sharing, and that file sharing works FOR the industry. Recent figures such as the music industry's latest earnings report have shown results contrary to what the RIAA has consistently complainted about in that file sharing hurts the industry. So if you would like to contribute, click submit above. Post your merchandise, how much you paid, and why you wouldn't have bought it if you first hadn't downloaded something. No IP addresses or personal information is logged - so there's nothing to subpoena. The complete (growing) catalog is available for review by clicking here. The totals shown below are only temporary, and may be reduced later once the logs are crunched through a filter (to detect bogus entries or flooding), or as users help identify suspect or bogus entries.

Things not to report on:

* Software purchased after a beta test, demo, or other manufacturer-authorized distribution
* Items purchased after 'word of mouth' recommendation (unless of course you also downloaded it yourself)
* Music or movies purchased after previewing using an authorized distribution channel (Amazon, Real, Internet radio, etcetera)
* Generic collections of albums for which you can't recall the names


The catalog will be analyzed by multiple individuals before any final numbers are made available, so it's only a waste of time to post bogus entries.
and an update to this
Quote:
Windows XP SP2 Available As P2P Download
Laurence Norah

A site which is attempting to highlight the benefits of file sharing technology as a legal download aid has set up a peer to peer downloadable version of Microsoft's latest Service Pack for Windows XP.

Downhill Battle are a non-profit organisation who are working towards trying to create a better and fairer music industry. However, they have obviously seen the potential publicity that they can gain for peer to peer technologies by offering users this must have download at a potentially higher availability than from Microsoft's own servers.

Downhill Battle are hosting a torrent of the file which can be downloaded using the filesharing BitTorrent application. The idea of this system is that as a user downloads sections of a file, they simultaneously start uploading the file to other users. In this way everyone is able to share the file quicker. Although slow to start off with, with a high volume of users participating the total download speeds reached can be pretty high.

Of course, this is a highly dubious publicity stunt which is not without risk. To start with, downloading such a major piece of software from a site which is neither endorsed nor supported by Microsoft is not necessarily a great idea. Add to that the fact that Microsoft have not given Downhill Battle redistribution rights to their software and Downhill Battle suddenly appear on the wrong side of the law. Not a great idea for a site which is trying to promote the benefits of legal software distribution over Peer to peer applications.

No doubt Microsoft will intervene at some point. We'll let you know when they do.
http://itvibe.com/default.aspx?NewsID=2801
Quote:
Sorry, no more downloads here...
Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. We've stood up to these kinds of legal threats before (see the Grey Tuesday protests), but we decided not to bother this time, because we started this site primarily as a demonstration and to that end it's already been a huge success. SP2torrent.com showed how filesharing technlogy gives people without budgets or huge servers the power to solve problems themselves, without waiting for the government or some corporation to do it for them. For another demonstration that's still in action, check out p2pcongress.org

http://sp2torrent.com/
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