Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – April 12th, '03

[JackSpratts]

If Thine Eye Offends Thee, Pluck It Out

Steady readers know the RIAA sued a handful of college swappers last week for having the nerve to run a few campus P2Ps at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Michigan Technological University and Princeton. Not that the individuals in question were doing any down loading themselves mind you, that wasn’t at issue, sure a little distribution maybe…well ok maybe a lot ahem, but it was the facilitation of swapping for others, lots of others that got the RIAA’s goat (Warner/Electra/Atlantic records [WEA], EMI, BMG, Sony etc.).

Seems like a pretty straightforward case to me since just about anything having do with computers can be seen as facilitating file-sharing, including say AOL Time Warner itself, Atlantics’ parent company. I mean after all AOL gets you on the Internet then goes ahead and sticks a really good server based file sharing program (AIM) right on your computer – without you even asking! They also own high speed Internet cable pipelines.

Now that I think about it it’s true - AOL owns it all, the Big Three of file-sharing: The Servers, the High Speed Connections, The Programs. AOL facilitates copyright infringement on an unprecedented and massive scale!

My god AOL, if you want to save Atlantic, if you want to save Warners, if you want to save music itself, then Shut Yourself Down NOW!

Yes, well, that doesn’t seem too likely - or that Warners will sue itself. On the other hand AOL is looking to spin off the music subsidiary so maybe someday Warner Bros. will sue AOL. That would be interesting. Still and all I’m not holding my breath. What’s interesting about it at the moment is the analysis of the suit that shoots down the Princeton case – before it even goes to trial. You’ll find it right here in this weeks WIR.








Enjoy,

Jack.







Legal Eagle Analyses RIAA Suit Against College Swapper, Finds It Lacking
Tears it apart like a Duck L’Orange

The plaintiffs' rhetorician was in rare form, but their logician was asleep at the switch. Unlike Napster, the facilities supplied by the allegedly-infringing Wake system are neither necessary nor sufficient for file-sharing. Unlike Napster, Wake-like systems only provide an catalog of available files. All of the actual file sharing is handled by Microsoft Windows File Sharing programs, which run, can be run, and are often run independently of Wake- like software. Napster users, on the other hand, were dependent on the Napster company's MusicShare software to merely share files, much less search shared files. Without a Wake-like system, users can still find music by word-of-mouth, or by browsing the machines on the network using Microsoft's Network Neighborhood tool. They can search the files on individual machines using the "Start->Find..." command in Microsoft Windows. All that Wake could do was speed the process --- it allegedly performed the equivalent function of searching all of the computers simultaneously, saving the user a lot of pointing, clicking, and typing. But it did nothing that a dedicated user could not do with time, or that a savvy user could not do with her own software. In modern versions of Microsoft Windows, a user does not even need copious spare time or technical know-how: Microsoft incorporated a network-wide search tool directly into Windows XP, which functions as a personal Wake-like system.

The defendant cannot be described as having converted Princeton's file-sharing network into an "emporium of music piracy" because for his alleged search service to even function, people must have been sharing files in advance. (They were; file sharing at Princeton started long before the defendant arrived in Fall 2001, as did the first Wake-like search service.) The Web would be useful in the absence of Google.com, but Google.com would be useless if no one placed web pages online. Likewise, the alleged file sharing on the Princeton network is independent of the existence of Wake. It existed before Wake, and we've no reason to presume that it stopped now that Wake was voluntarily shut down.

The Full Magilla: http://barillari.org/papers/peng/peng.html

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When in doubt, sue somebody
Mathew Ingram

Is your business in decline? Here's a good way to appeal to your prospective customers — sue their pants off. That way, instead of thinking of you and your
products as something desirable that they should pay for, they will instead be forced to buy your products out of shame and guilt, or as some kind of court- ordered settlement. If that approach strikes you as odd, you obviously don't work for the record industry.

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America, a group dominated by the five major labels — Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI — launched simultaneous lawsuits against students at several universities for running networks that infringe on their music copyrights. The suits against students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic and Michigan Technical University are asking for $150,000 per file.

Given that the networks provided access to between 500,000 and one million files, the students named face potential damages of between $75-billion and $150-billion, if all of the files are found to be infringing. As a lawyer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation pointed out, that's more than the profit generated by the entire music industry since sheet music was created. At least one of the students wasn't even operating a file-swapping network — his service was simply a search engine.

Obviously, the record labels have no intention of collecting on these suits. Their plan is to convince students running file-sharing networks, and the universities that provide Internet access, that doing so isn't worth it. In that sense, the RIAA suit is the file-sharing equivalent of the 900-kilogram "bunker-busting" bombs the United States is using in Iraq — a way of trying to generate shock and awe in the enemy.

One of the problems with the record industry's approach to file-swapping is that term: the "enemy." The RIAA may not use that kind of language, but it's obvious from the way it treats file-sharing that the industry sees the majority of people who do so as the enemy. The dilemma is that the group the record labels have targeted for destruction is the same group that it relies on for its salvation — music fans.

The RIAA regularly releases reports about the decline in sales of compact discs and other music formats, and calculates how much money it is "losing" as a result of digital downloading, something it compares in its TV commercials to shoplifting and car-jacking. Presumably the $150,000-per-file figure it came up with in its recent lawsuits is based on a similar kind of calculation of the revenue that its member labels are "losing" when students choose to trade music files rather than buying CDs.

That kind of calculation, however, assumes that all of those students would have gone out and bought dozens of CDs if they hadn't been able to download songs. Is that a reasonable assumption? Maybe. Or maybe those students wouldn't have bought CDs anyway — in which case the industry hasn't lost a cent. If anything, the artists in question have gained as a result of the publicity their songs are getting by being traded. The people sharing all those files are the industry's core customers.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...th0408/GTStory

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Verizon Says Subpoena Process in Piracy Case Violates Constitution
Josh Long

In a fight with the recording industry over whether it should be required to divulge the names of its Internet customers, Verizon Communications Inc. is poised to make its case before an appeals court based on the First Amendment and an article of the Constitution designed to block abuse of the judicial system's authority.

The case pits the recording industry's battle to block piracy versus the desire of ISPs to protect the privacy of their customers and limit the number of names they are required to disclose to a third party.

The recording industry is winning the fight. A federal judge ruled in January Verizon must disclose the identity of a customer the Recording Industry Association of America alleges distributed more than 600 music files through peer-to-peer software without the permission of the copyright holders.

Verizon has its supporters, however, including the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In a filing with the appeals court, Juley Fulcher, director of public policy for the coalition, said the organization is worried an ex-spouse or other person with access to a victim's e-mail could request a subpoena through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and then find the battered women or children.

"We understand that the Recording Industry Association of America is concerned about the infringement of their members' copyrighted works. We believe, however, that even if one beating, rape or other harm occurs as a result of this subpoena process, the potential harm clearly outweighs whatever benefits are allowed under this process," Fulcher wrote.
http://www.phoneplusmag.com/hotnews/34h3145612.html

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Copy protected CDs: artists can be the losers
Staff

Music companies which use copy protection may be denying the artists under contract to them legitimate play time on radio stations, if the happenings at one outfit are any indication.

This radio station, which recently received its regular bag of freebies from EMI, finds that it is unable to play any of the CDs it received - the copy protection on the discs gets in the way.

EMI started issuing the copy-protected CDs in November last year. Many people have complained about them.

Record companies regularly send out free copies of most singles and hot albums hoping to get airplay on radio stations.

The station in question has no standalone CD players, just desktop PCs (all running Windows 2000) and a couple of old Denon CD Cart players.

"The CD tries to install some files to allow the PC to play the CD but my boss won't authorise the installation of these files because he has no technical info on the software,"
wrote the gentleman who let us know about this.

"And if we can't transfer the CD tracks to our digital playout system the CD ain't going to get any airplay at all!"

This won't help the career of Dave Bridie one bit - one of the CDs which landed at this station was Hotel Radio.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...962867084.html

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No Code Is Unbreakable - So What's Good Enough?
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

Any computer security expert will confirm there is no such thing as unbreakable protection for networked systems. However, there are products and methods that are so time-consuming and computationally expensive to crack that they are "good enough" for all intents and purposes.

But how can an IT manager who is not a security guru tell the good from the bad? Fortunately, there are a number of ways to evaluate security products that do not require deep knowledge of computer security.

The first thing to watch out for are claims that cannot be met. As Forrester Research analyst Laura Koetzle told NewsFactor, "You can't claim unbreakable encryption technology." If a company is not honest in its advertising, it is generally a good idea to avoid doing business with that firm.

"It's just like buying any large consumer durable," Koetzle said. "Look for stuff that's too good to be true."

Bob Toxen, one of the original Berkeley Unix programmers, told NewsFactor that customers also should beware of fad technologies. "Somebody who claims their product is new and unique, it's probably snake oil."

In addition to bragging, companies trying to pass off shoddy security products usually are slow to show proof of their claims. When shopping for a new security solution, therefore, IT executives should look for a company that backs up its hype with detailed information on how its product works, what algorithms are used and how the product has been tested.

"Are they willing to talk about the algorithm and let other people analyze it?" Toxen said. "A good security expert will tell you the only thing that is confidential should be the passwords." If a company does not want to explain how its product works in detail, buyers should take a pass, he advised.

Toxen added that enterprises should shy away from becoming guinea pigs for new theories. "Don't use anything that hasn't been time-tested. People come up with an idea, and five years later there's a bug in the algorithm or in the code itself."

Another red flag to watch for, Koetzle noted, is prices that are out of sync with the rest of the market. Competitive pricing is fine, but if a product is priced at a fraction of its usual cost, this may be a warning sign. "If you see what's supposed to be a good off-the-shelf product, but the price is way below retail, chances are you're getting the one they got off the truck," she said. For example, when spammers advertise Norton Anti-Virus for below-retail prices, chances are good that the software is either bootlegged or outdated.

Koetzle also said buyers need to factor in update prices. "One thing people don't always think of [is that] with software products that need to be updated frequently, you want to make sure you don't get into a situation where you think you're getting the updates and you're not."
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21174.html

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Painted LEDs make screens simpler and potentially cheaper

Spread it on a surface, shine tiny spots of ultraviolet light on it, and voila, a certain type of plastic turns into a full-color, high- resolution, flexible flat screen display. The simple process could make computer screens much cheaper.

The German researchers made the displays by spreading light-emitting plastic, or polymer, molecules on a surface and exposing the polymers to spots of ultraviolet light.

The method could produce color screens that are comparable in quality to current flat screens, but are more rugged and require less power, according Klaus Meerholz, who conducted the research at Munich University in Germany and is now a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Cologne. The method allows for "flat panels with high brightness, extremely large viewing angle, and fast switching times," he said.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/0...en_040903.html

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Holographic Storage on the Horizon
Evan Koblentz

System administrators who perform nightly backups to optical or tape libraries may soon need to check their mirrors: a newer medium, holographic storage, is closer than it appears, component vendors say.

Holography stores data by using multiple light beams to create chemical reactions. The result is data that's smaller and more permanent than laser-induced ridges and valleys, and as fast or faster than magnetic electron flopping. For users, that means consolidation is possible due to higher capacities, and the chance of corruption during data restores decreases.

InPhase Technologies Inc. will announce progress on this front at the National Association of Broadcasters 2003 conference, next week in Las Vegas.

Bill Wilson, chief scientist at InPhase, of Longmont, Colo., said first-generation holographic drives would appear as standard interfaces to existing libraries and servers. It won't be until successive generations that existing storage technology will be able to exploit holographic data's unique characteristics, he told eWEEK in a recent interview. A basis for that second generation will be rewriteable media, which InPhase is working to develop as part of a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program. Explaining the challenge, Wilson said, "You want to have a material that's easy to write, you want to have a material that's easy to erase. Those two things are mutually exclusive."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,997039,00.asp

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Free content: Why not?
Greg Blonder

COMMENTARY--"Ripping" a copy of a friend's music CD, or grabbing a track from a Napster-like service on the Internet, is stealing, plain and simple.

Music fans, seeking to justify this casual act of larceny, claim they're really supporting an economic boycott of a usurious and uncreative music industry. "Cybershoplifting," reply the record companies, seizing the opportunity to impose their opaque and onerous copyright schemes on the listening public.

While the battle rages on, piling up legal fees and taking the joy out of music, a simpler solution is on the horizon. The best way to stem this tidal wave of thievery is to give the music away.

Free content, by itself, is not at all that unusual. Broadcast television is "free"--at least to the viewer-- courtesy of ad-supported subsidies, as are radio, many concerts and sporting events. But even those services commanding a fee today should become free tomorrow as the economics of music distribution take radical new shape.

To understand how, we would do well to look at a very different industry, but one with surprising parallels to music: 19th-century fuel delivery. In the late 1800s, when a tenant sought to warm a cold apartment, she had to buy her own coal from passing coal wagons and then haul it in coal buckets up to her fourth-floor kitchen. This apparently straightforward transaction brought with it considerable challenges for wagon drivers.

Theft was endemic. Stories abound of coal wagons stripped of half their load by street urchins before a first delivery could be made. Various solutions to improve security were proposed, including various patented coal locks. The ultimate solution, however, proved to be something quite different: a new distribution model that made coal theft irrelevant. It was called central heating.

Coal distributors sold their product efficiently in one large delivery to apartment landlords, at the same time removing the incentive for individual tenants to steal. Landlords could pass a significant part of the savings on to tenants in their bill for monthly rent. Everyone benefited, even the families of the coal- stealing urchins.

Similarly, it is the power of low-cost distribution, combined with subsidized free services, that will save and transform the music business. Stealing will become equally irrelevant.

It is the power of low-cost distribution, combined with subsidized free services, that will save and transform the music business.

To understand how, consider these statistics: The U.S. music industry collects $12 billion per year from CD sales to about 50 million active fans. That means each person spends an average of $250 per year to purchase around 15 albums a year.

Now, $250 per year is a very interesting number. By next year $250 will buy an MP3 player with a 100GB disk. That disk will hold over 2,000 CDs. Even strapping on headphones 15 hours a day, a listener would still need over four months to cruise through every track. For many people, 2,000 CDs is all the classical, jazz or rock music they will ever care to collect. For others, it's just about enough to fill a summer vacation with tunes. But it's a lot more than 15 CDs.

With these economics, distributing music on flashy plastic disks one album at a time seems, well, like heating your kitchen with coal. And $250 is not too high a price for a marketer--even those outside the music business--to spend acquiring customers, especially those dedicated fans holding an ad- supported player in their hand 15 hours a day.

Imagine the possibilities. Buy a new Kia? Get 1,000 albums with every car. Purchase a lifetime subscription to the Boston Symphony Orchestra? Receive an MP3 player with a library of the world's 2,000 most important classical music selections. Sign up for a new cellular contract? Get unlimited access to music from over 30,000 indie bands.

The economics are such that it would take only one leading company to break the music distribution mold. Among MP3 player makers, Apple Computer, with its pioneering iPod and remnant counter- culture customers, is one possibility. Sony--rumored to earn more from player hardware than from its own music division--is another. Or it might be a local brand in China, with less to lose.

A workable payment plan?
But how will artists and their agents and lawyers get paid? This time we can turn for answers not to coal distribution, but to an industry much closer to musicians' homes: the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP licenses, collects and redistributes music royalties from music performance venues (like radio stations, concert halls and so on) to the artists. It determines who gets paid what by polling these venues to see whose music gets played and how often.

To determine reimbursement in an MP3 player world, a small sample of users could be invited periodically to voluntarily, and anonymously share their listening history stored in the player. Then, just as in the ASCAP model, payments collected from the music player distributors (Kia, the BSO and the like) would be split among the copyright owners. No fuss, no complexity and no secret CD police.

And we consumers would finally have the freedom to play music where we want it, when we want it, how we want it.

This is the future of music, if anyone is listening.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-995332.html

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Are we free to copy DVDs?
Dawn C. Chmielewski

Software that allows consumers to make backup copies of their DVDs -- or unauthorized duplicates of any movie they rent from Blockbuster or
borrow from a friend -- has raised the ire of Hollywood studios, which claim it's nothing more than a tool for piracy.

The looming court battle between software maker 321 Studios and seven entertainment companies, to be heard this month in San Francisco, is more than just another chapter in the seemingly endless legal wrangling between Hollywood and technologists.

It could further define consumer rights in the digital age.

321 Studios and technology activists say the lawsuit -- which the software maker defensively initiated last April -- could establish the right of consumers to make personal copies of DVD movies they legitimately own, just as they do now with music CDs or computer software.

The studios say that's just a pretext to gain legitimacy for a $100 software product whose real value lies in cracking the copy protection on DVDs to make flawless bootlegs.

Attorneys for 321 Studios argue that the St. Louis company's products, ``DVD Copy Plus'' and `DVD X Copy'' (www.321studios.com), say the software has perfectly legitimate uses.

DVDs are fragile objects that can be rendered unplayable by scratches and cracks. Consumers -- be they parents of small children known to use movie discs as Frisbees, or the adult son of a handicapped father who inadvertently drops and scratches the media -- have legitimate need to make backup copies of their DVDs, 321 Studios argues.

DVD X Copy is intended for these users -- and others who offered sworn legal statements in the case.

``This isn't about circumventing an access control mechanism. This is about whether you, in the privacy of your own home, can do what you want with what you already own,'' said Elizabeth Sedlock, 321 Studios chief marketing officer. ``I can buy Picasso today, cut it to ribbons and paint all over it . . . There's nothing that I own that I cannot do anything I want with, except a DVD.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/5549446.htm

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100 million copyproof CDs sold?
John Borland

Copy-resistant CDs may still be scarce in the United States, but signs are growing that the technology is becoming increasingly mainstream elsewhere and may finally break into the American market this year.

Silicon Valley company Macrovision said Wednesday that its anticopying technology had now been applied to more than 100 million CDs worldwide, the bulk of them released in Europe and Japan. Over the last six months, the company has seen shipments of 10 million discs a month distributed across those markets, it said.

"People are getting used to the idea (in those areas,)" Macrovision CEO Bill Krepick said. "I think the sense is that consumers in those countries tend to be a little less vocal than American consumers."

Technology companies touting copy-protection wares--and, to a lesser extent, record labels themselves--have been promising for two years the impending release of CDs shielded against unauthorized computer copying. But the progress of the technology to market, particularly in the United States, has been slow and bumpy, and the technology companies themselves have repeatedly been forced to retrench and rethink their techniques.

Early versions of the technology rendered albums unplayable in many CD players or computers, even breaking some machines. Several versions of copy-protection technology proved to be easily broken, some using tools as low-tech as a felt-tip pen. In addition, record label concerns about universal playability and consumer reaction have helped slow the CDs' pace to market substantially.

The development of so-called second session technology, which allows two versions of the same album to be stored on the same CD, has helped win label support, however. When this technique is used, the ordinary CD music files are accompanied by a music file--typically an encrypted MP3 or Windows Media Audio file--meant to be copied to and stored on a computer hard drive. Most, if not all, future copy-protected discs are expected to contain this type of computer-ready file.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-995273.html

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RIAA Wants Rudy Guliani For Top Job
Tim Arango

The music industry would like to lure Giuliani to head the Recording Industry Association of America, sources tell The Post.

That might be wishful thinking, however.

A spokesman for the former mayor and possible future presidential candidate said Giuliani has not been approached about the job and that he is "committed to advancing our clients' interests at [consulting firm] Giuliani Partners."

Meanwhile, Hilary Rosen, who announced in January that she would step down as head of the RIAA by the end of the year, is leaving her post June 30, sources tell The Post.

A spokeswoman for the RIAA confirmed that Rosen will be leaving at the end of June, which is when her contract runs out, but said that she will remain available as a consultant until the end of the year.

The organization is expected to name a replacement by early June, sources say.

Cary Sherman, RIAA's president, is one likely candidate, although some music industry sources say the organization is seeking a prominent Republican with extensive political connections.

Rosen, a Democrat, has served as head of the RIAA since 1998.
http://nypost.com/business/56129.htm

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Committee Wants DRM Attached to all Wi-Fi Transmissions
Jackson Pratt

A Bar Association group with the somewhat Orwellian name of The Committee on New Information Technologies has proposed permanent and unalterable Digital Rights Management markers be attached to every Wi-Fi transmission in order to track and ultimately control the movement of copyrighted material.

“At the present time, virtually all computer-based communication systems involve moving bits from a source to one or more destinations (in the latter case this may occur by broadcast or selective multi-cast as well as multiple one-to-one interactions) without regard to the meaning of the bits being communicated. For purposes of content identification, it would be most useful and practical to identify content at higher levels than either 802.3 or 802.11 now appears to allow. For example, if content capable of being independently identified and processed was present in the form of a digital object, i.e., structured data having an associated unique persistent identifier, then it would be possible to track content at various points in the communications pathway, or even identify transaction records at such points. However, since actual content may be encrypted in different networks or, more generally, in different information systems, explicit arrangements would have to be made with the system operators to leave the identifier field in the clear (if, indeed, the 802.11 standard would allow this when encryption is used), or to trust various intermediary systems along the way that see the content in the clear to extract the identifiers for the purpose of content identification and processing.”

Cory Doctorow writes “This is one of the most clueless documents I've ever read. It appears that the Bar Association believes that WiFi networks are essentially tools for infringing on copyright, with a grudging admission that offices find them useful sometimes.

“They conclude that 802.11 should be redesigned to accomodate DRM (which they sometimes call ‘DMR’), though they don't really understand how DRM works. My co-worker Seth Schoen characterized the report as reading like it was cut-and-pasted from DRM-vendors' press-releases, and it draws nonsensical conclusions about incompatible technologies, which he says is like saying 'to protect the environment, we should get recyclable toner cartridges for our manual typewriters.'"

That this is being proposed for the benefit a special interest group yet cannot be accomplished without harming the entire wireless internet seems to be lost on the proponents. It’s reminiscent of the time the content guys wanted to “close the Internet” back in the 90’s.

Word doc
http://craphound.com/Committee_703_Mid-Winter_Re.DOC

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Online File Sharing Thrives in USA

comScore Networks reports that despite growth in most sectors of consumer e-commerce, online sales of recorded music in the USA have continued to decline sharply for three consecutive quarters. At the same time, millions of Internet users continue to use online file-sharing services even as some of these applications have vanished.

The comScore analysis - based on the actual online activity of more than 1.5 million representative Internet users - shows that 2002 online music sales through the third quarter were $545 million, down 25 percent from the $730 million spent over the same period last year. In fact, the decline in online sales of recorded music has accelerated throughout 2002, with sales declining versus year-ago by 12 percent, 28 percent and 39 percent in the first, second and third quarters of 2002, respectively. In contrast, online sales of all products (excluding auctions) increased 30 percent, 28 percent and 30 percent over the same three quarters.

The decline in online music sales far exceeds the decline in overall shipments of recorded music as recently reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). While the RIAA reported in August 2002 that total U.S. music shipments dropped seven percent in the first half of 2002 versus the first half of 2001 ($5.93 billion versus $5.53 billion), comScore data shows that online sales of music fell 20 percent (from $531 million to $424 million) over the same period.

‘The music industry attributes the decline in online and offline music sales to a variety of factors, such as a slow economy, fewer hit songs, piracy, CD-burning and file-swapping among others,’ said Peter Daboll, division president of comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks. ‘While a host of factors inevitably impact consumer behaviour, the greater sales decline online as reported by comScore would suggest that Internet file-swapping and CD-burning are having a severe negative impact on music sales among Internet users.’

After the fall of legendary file-swapping pioneer Napster, comScore data shows that U.S. consumers quickly flocked to numerous alternatives, including Kazaa and Morpheus. Each of the latter two increased its average monthly U.S. home user base from less than one million in the second quarter of 2001 to 4.6 million and 7.1 million, respectively, in the first quarter of 2002. By the close of the third quarter of 2002, Kazaa had built an impressive following of 9.4 million average monthly U.S. home users.

‘comScore Media Metrix will continue to report online purchases of music as well as usage of file- swapping,’ concluded Daboll. ‘In addition, we'll be conducting more in-depth analyses and looking at key online segments such as the university population, an audience which our data show contains many heavy users of file-swapping services.’
http://www.mrons.com/drno/news1980.htm





SoulSeek To Improve Traffic Handling
Paul Rotello

SoulSeek people say a new version of the app will have protocols allowing connected network nodes to handle search requests more efficiently than at present. As a proto-decentralized Peer-To-Peer, SoulSeek seeks a balance between server and client to achieve performance that’s better than using just one or the other. So far the major problem has been search requests collapsing after about 100 results. The update will change the way information is communicated from the server to the nodes that in time should translate into wider and deeper search returns.

Progress:
http://slsk.blogspot.com/

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File-sharing of music is theft minus the rivalry
Paul Kedrosky

The big bust has begun. This week the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for the first time brought lawsuits against four U.S. university students for setting up "music-sharing networks" at their respective universities.

While the four students are getting sympathy for being made examples of when so many others are doing the same thing, it is easy to see why the RIAA is getting aggressive. The music industry is moribund, and piracy is in large part to blame. Global music sales fell 10% last year, and they will likely fall at least another 6% this year. So far this year U.S. album sales are down about 9% from the lousy levels of 2002.

Some are fond of arguing that poor product is to blame. But that is a hard charge to defend. The music industry produces as much music as ever, perhaps more. Long-time top artists are still producing product, and new artists are rising to prominence all the time. The trouble is, no one wants to pay to play.

And that has consequences. Sony Corporation, the largest music company in the world, recently announced a major restructuring of its music business.

And the music units at most of Sony's rivals -- including AOL Time Warner Inc., Bertelsmann AG, Vivendi Universal and EMI Group -- are generally thought to either be for sale, or looking at purchasing others labels.

Where do things go from here? For starters, everyone can stop pretending that they're on the side of goodness and light.

The consumer lie is obvious: calling music theft "file-sharing." Yes, music in digital form is, as economists like to say, non-rivalrous -- that is, my using it doesn't prevent you from using it, nor does my usage necessarily make your usage any worse.

So while you might want to call file-shares on their slippery language, and point out that car-jackers would similarly be thought of as gentle car-sharers, there is a difference. And that difference is that music is non-rivalrous and car-jacking isn't. If you steal my car it either prevents me from using it, or, if I am still unhappily in the car at the time, it almost certainly degrades my car-using experience.

Within reason, almost all information goods are non-rivalrous -- you can e-mail 100 copies of this column to friends and it doesn't make it any easier or harder to read. But that doesn't mean that "sharing" non-rivalrous goods therefore is absolved of the taint of theft. It's still piracy, even if it doesn't feel like it.

So that is one lie, the consumer lie that they're just sharing files. Or as it's sometimes put, the idea that file-sharing is really all about sampling music toward future purchase. As the most recent recording industry data makes clear, there is a lot of sampling going on and there hasn't exactly been a tsunami of subsequent purchasing, yet people still seemingly listen to music.

But consumers aren't the only ones lying. So is the music industry. After all, it persists in claiming that the trouble is purely one of piracy. It isn't. As a Sony executive pointed out recently in a controversial speech, part of the problem is an ossified music industry that wants to continue doing things the way it always has. It has always distributed music as collections of songs -- sometimes as an album, more recently as a CD -- so it fights stubbornly to continue distributing music that way.
http://www.nationalpost.com/financia...4E9E1E1F9FB%7D

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Businesses Plan for the Unexpected
Steve Lohr

STEP back from the war in Iraq for a few moments, if possible. The larger picture — a struggling global economy and no shortage of geopolitical tensions — looks pretty dicey. Now, imagine that events veer toward something close to a worst case. What are the implications, and how could companies cope in such an environment?

Here are some excerpts from the gloom-and-doom script: Japan goes bankrupt. Al Qaeda cements alliances with Palestinian extremists and sets off a series of terrorist attacks, mostly in Israel, hoping to create a political split in the Western alliance to thwart Qaeda-sponsored terrorism.

There are more: The belief in globalization as a benevolent economic force is shaken further, rendering the International Monetary Fund and World Bank all but irrelevant. In the United States, a new government organization, the Home Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, is created to set the national agenda for technology research, shifting the emphasis from ubiquitous computing and biotechnology to focus on the security economy. Meanwhile, major cracks develop in the world legal order protecting intellectual property rights, threatening the livelihoods of companies like I.B.M., Microsoft and Merck.

"It's all completely plausible," insisted Steven Weber, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who wrote the pessimistic, if plausible, story line for the workshop.

A higher-risk world could require the rethinking of many tenets of conventional business wisdom. The canons of globalization included shopping the world for low-cost parts, developing tighter relationships with fewer suppliers, and deploying an itinerant corps of key managers and engineers who were willing to travel anywhere on a moment's notice to meet a customer or solve a problem. Those assumptions would all be challenged if more developing nations, in particular, became politically unstable.

Another arena of possible instability, according to the scenario planners, is intellectual property rights. For Mr. Weber, the crisis in the music industry over digital piracy and file-sharing software is just the beginning of the problem, which he says goes beyond the entertainment industry. Hollywood, software publishers and pharmaceutical companies have all assumed that the United States government, through international trade agreements, would be the trusted world policeman enforcing intellectual property rights.

Yet Mr. Weber points to what happened when worries over anthrax and bioterrorism surfaced in October 2001. After the Canadian government overrode Bayer's patent for Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax, some senators said the United States should follow Canada's lead. The Bush administration resisted and anthrax fears soon waned.

The incident, however, should be unnerving to corporations whose businesses are deeply dependent on intellectual property protection, Mr. Weber says.

"The conceptual and political foundation for intellectual property rights is really insecure," said Mr. Weber, who is writing a book on open source software — code that is distributed for free.

Already, some legal scholars have advocated that the duration of most forms of intellectual property protection should be shortened. What, Mr. Weber asks, might be the effect on intellectual-property companies like Microsoft, I.B.M. or Merck?

"It has the potential to be a bit like the crash in the telecommunications business," he observed. "Is there is an I.P. bubble in technology companies? There could be."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/te...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Hacking Kazaa
One programmer has done it. The recording industry could learn something from this guy.
Jimmy Guterman

Kazaa has far surpassed the late Napster as the leading file-sharing service on the Net. With more than 200 million having downloaded its Media Desktop program, it's everything that Napster was and more: Its peer-to-peer network is more reliable, its search functionality is more precise, and it can work with a broader set of file types (not just music but also video, images, documents, and software).

Of course, describing Kazaa that way is like describing the high-tech attributes of a weapons system without mentioning that its purpose is to kill people. Developed in the wake of Napster, Kazaa was intended to provide a way for people to acquire copyrighted music files without paying for them. Needless to say, the recording industry isn't fond of this kind of distribution scheme and reaches into its legal arsenal to defend itself. That's why the original company sold the program and why Kazaa's current owner, Sharman Networks, is based in either Australia or Vanuatu, depending on which Sharman press release you believe. With the Napster case as precedent, Sharman will probably have to close down Kazaa one day -- various industry organizations (in particular, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America) and Sharman are now swapping lawsuits -- and a federal judge in California has ruled that the suit against Sharman can proceed. When Sharman goes away, something else will spring up: As I write this, some 3.8 million people are connected to the service and more than 800 million files are being shared. Future attempts to capture this huge audience are inevitable.

The recording industry's complaints aside, the most annoying thing about Sharman has been its practice of embedding programs in the free Kazaa software to make money, everything from popup ads to spyware that tracks Internet behavior. So Shaun Garriock, an enterprising programmer from Scotland, came up with Kazaa Lite, a program that removes the adware and spyware from the system. In recent months, Kazaa Lite has actually surpassed the official version in quality, adding crucial new features and exterminating several of the original's nasty bugs. It shows that even renegade programs on the Net can be altered and improved by other renegades (and renegades with more altruistic motives, at that).
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,48716,00.html

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SGI Delivers Infinite Structure for Broadcast, Production and Broadband Industries at NAB 2003
Press Release

At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, Nev., April 7-10, SGI (NYSE: SGI - News) will be demonstrating powerful solutions in booth SL3868 that put information technology (IT) to work for broadcasters, post-production professionals and broadband businesses. SGI® data management solutions transform a slow, video-based workflow into an effective dataflow. This dataflow unites a facility's entire operations through the SGI® CXFS(TM) shared filesystem with a storage area network (SAN) -- enabling the secure sharing of video as data files across high-speed networks. For broadcasters, that means getting news to air faster. For post-production professionals, it means moving multiple film or video resolution projects through their facilities simultaneously. Overall, the SGI digital data IT infrastructure can improve a staff's productivity and profitability.

"Broadcasters and post-production professionals are just beginning to see the advantages of IT, of a digital data infrastructure. They're finding that just transitioning from analog to digital video is not enough," said Chris Golson, senior director of Media Industries, SGI. "As a computing company, what sets SGI apart from our competitors is that we also understand the world of video. We're able to develop interoperability between the worlds of data and video that is of great benefit to our customers."

This infinite structure is based on the SGI® XFS(TM) filesystem, a robust, high-performance, 64-bit filesystem able to scale up to 18 million terabytes. That's thousands of years of 50Mb broadcast material or nine million uncompressed movies at full 2K resolution. Although filesystems routinely impose limitations on broadcasters and post facilities, the SGI filesystem provides an essentially limitless growth path. File transfer speed will not be an issue either. Multiple Fibre Channel connections have already allowed SGI users to achieve 12GB per second of aggregate throughput. That kind of bandwidth will allow broadcasters and post-production facilities to expand, secure in the knowledge that they won't be outgrowing their data infrastructure for years to come. The XFS file- journaling technology guarantees high reliability and restarts in less than one second after an unexpected interruption, regardless of the number of files it manages.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030404/sff011_1.html

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Movielink tagged with patent suit
Stefanie Olsen

Film-rental site Movielink, a joint venture of five Hollywood movie studios, is being sued for patent infringement by a video technology company, in a case that could have far-flung ramifications on the video-on-demand market.

USA Video Technology, based in Delaware, Conn., filed suit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Movielink, a video-on-demand service that USA Video says violates its patent rights for an online movie delivery system.

USA Video, a unit of USA Video Interactive, was awarded the patent, called "Store and Forward Video System," in July 1992; it broadly covers a method for Internet users to request and receive "a digitized video program for storage and viewing," according to the complaint. Movielink, which sells digital copies of films for download from its five partners including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Viacom's Paramount Pictures, violates this patent on the basis of its service, the complaint says.

USA Video does not operate a competing service to Movielink or others in the VOD industry, rather it develops and sells Net media delivery services and systems. But the plaintiff's attorney said that the patent rights could affect many other such VOD offerings. USA Video chose to file suit against Movielink because of the breadth of its content and service, said Erik B. Cherdak, plaintiff attorney at Steptoe & Johnson.

"This case is ripe now because the content is available and the legal landscape permits (an online movie rental service)," he said. "And the technology permits bandwidth that allows movies to be downloaded practically."

"The reality is this case has far-reaching affects on whether the corner video store will remain as a going concern in the future," he said, referring to greater movement toward delivering video programming over the Internet or IP (Internet protocol) networks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-996442.html

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Another Egregious Super-DMCA Provision
Edward W. Felten

I have written before about the danger posed by the Super-DMCA's ban on concealing the origin or destination of communication. I want to turn your attention now to a much more egregious provision of these bills -- the ban on devices and information.

Here is the relevant portion of the MPAA's model legislative language:

Any person commits an offense if he knowingly:
...
(4) possesses, uses, prepares, distributes, sells, gives, transfers or offers, promotes or advertises for sale, use or distribution any:
...
(ii) material, including hardware, cables, tools, data, computer software or other information or equipment ... for use in the manufacture, assembly or development of an unlawful access device; ...

The term at the end, "manufacture, assembly or development of an unlawful access device", is defined this way:

To [...] or modify, alter, program or reprogram any instrument, device, machine, equipment, technology or software so that it is capable of defeating or circumventing any technology, device or software used by the provider, owner or licensee of a communication service, or of any data, audio or video programs or transmissions, to protect any such communication, data, audio or video services, programs or transmissions from unauthorized receipt, interception, acquisition, access, decryption, disclosure, communication, transmission or re- transmission, or to knowingly assist others in those activities.

Note the breadth of this language -- to be in violation, the device need only be capable of circumventing a measure that somebody uses to protect their data from unauthorized receipt, interception, acquisition, access, decryption, disclosure, communication, transmission or re-transmission.

This is stunning in its overbreadth. Any device that is even capable of illegal uses is banned, and even information that could be used to build such a device is banned.

This would appear to make most computer security research illegal, since it would be illegal to even talk about how somebody might to try defeat a security measure. As a computer security researcher, I consider that a big problem. In this case, though, that problem is small potatoes compared to the greater harm this part of the bill would do.

As a thought experiment, let's try applying this approach to the regulation of non-technological goods. Imagine that it was illegal to make, use, or distribute "material ... or information" that was "capable of" being used in a violent attack on another person.

In such a world, virtually all knives would be illegal. Ditto for screwdrivers or any other pointy objects. Hammers are out, too, along with all other blunt, heavy objects, including even rocks. Vehicles are probably out too, since they are capable of being used to attack someone. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Even information about how to make or use any of these dangerous devices would be banned.

Last week I asked my class if they could think of any technological tools that are capable of only illegal uses, or of only legal uses. They were hard pressed to think of any. That's the nature of tools -- they're designed to be flexible and to admit a wide variety of uses. To ban every tool that might possibly be used illegally, and to ban even information about such tools, is simply madness.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000350.html

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Radio Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks
Richard Menta

Here is a story out of Australia that I picked up on the wire. Something that should give the record industry pause.

A few days back we wrote about how Arista records made the committment to ship all of their CDs with copy-protection to prevent their being played on PCs. Their notion is to stop users from ripping tracks to trade online. The problem we had about this scheme is that it will only distant consumers from CDs, because they won't work as expected. For many, that expectation is to play in the background on the computer as people do their job.

But working stiffs are not the only ones who have turned to the PCs as their music conduit. Many radio stations have integrated PC systems to play tracks over the air.

The Age is reporting that radio stations are finding that they are unable to play copy-protected CDs on the air. So what are they doing about it? Simple, the CD go into the wastebasket rather than get much-needed air play.

"...if we can't transfer the CD tracks to our digital playout system the CD ain't going to get any airplay at all!" said an unamed radio jock.

Radio stations in the states have also incorporated computers to serve the daily rotation. Just the other day I was listening to college radio station WRSU and the DJ was lamenting how the only place he was able to get a hold of the latest Third Eye Blind single "Blinded" was to download it from the Net. This is not unusual, the MP3 format offers radio stations quite a bit of time saving convenience in organizing and selecting tracks for airplay.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/crippled.html

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Hail to the Online Thieves
Bands can't prevent bootlegging, but they can control it more than they have so far.
Jimmy Guterman

Let's say you front a big-time rock 'n' roll band, and you've just spent the better part of a year sweating out your most recent record. It's more or less finished, and you're now in postproduction: approving art, planning a tour, getting ready to present the fruits of your labor to your large audience.

Then you find out that your large audience has it already.

This has actually happened recently -- more than once. The release of Eminem's last record, for example, was pushed forward because music-download site Kazaa had become overrun with free copies. A number of high-profile performers have even started shrink-wrapping "bonus" DVDs to their regular CD releases, because DVDs are, so far, harder to copy and share online than CDs.

Premature online album-sharing is currently hitting Radiohead in a particularly blunt way. Late last week, full copies of the band's Hail to the Thief, planned for release in mid-June, began floating around the usual online sources. At first the group seemed mostly unconcerned. Guitarist Johnny Greenwood's blithe reaction said it all: "We're not angry, really. Shame it's not a package with the artwork and all, but there you go. I feel bemused, though, not annoyed. I'm glad people like it, most of all. It's a little earlier than we'd expected, but there it is."

A day later, Greenwood had apparently reconsidered his statement, saying he and his bandmates were "pissed off" that "stolen recordings of early work" were being circulated.

Artists and their labels want to control content, and they deserve to. They created it and/or paid for the creation of it. Even in the pre- Napster era, record companies worked hard to keep to a minimum the number of advance copies circulating. (In 1992, I edited a music magazine based in New Hampshire, and I had to send an editor down to New York to sit in a conference room and listen to the latest Nirvana album for review, because the record company wouldn't part with the tape.) Desire for control is nothing new.

But I wonder whether events such as the premature Radiohead unveiling might encourage more bands to embrace the "beta" aesthetic that pervades the Net. On the software side, every company from Microsoft (MSFT) down to the shareware guy next door posts early, beta versions of software for comment. There's a notion on the Net that fixing something in public is a good thing.

Performers seem to agree. The songs on Hail to the Thief are far from new to Radiohead fans; most of them have been played before audiences, and copies of those live versions have been around the Net for months. There's probably little loss of income for the band: Anyone devoted enough to download audience-recorded live versions of a song by a favorite group will surely purchase a professionally made take. These early live outings are, in essence, the beta versions, worked out in front of audiences before they're cut in a studio. What Radiohead is demanding, however, is an environment in which it can release such test versions but control the distribution completely.

That simply isn't possible anymore. Even if a digital-rights management scheme that actually works should arrive, there is no way to prevent someone from sneaking a tiny recorder into a concert or recording studio. Radiohead may be pissed off, but that's the rule now. So why not accept it and use it to their advantage? Beta versions of software become irrelevant when finalized versions ship; Radiohead and others could agree to release early versions of songs as similar stopgaps, to keep their most devoted fans satisfied.
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,48598,00.html

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Un-public domain
Will DRM and the challenges to fair use spell the end for your local library?
Ed Foster

It was a very strange experience. I’ll admit that it had been awhile since I’d visited my local library, so I was totally unprepared -- even after our recent discussion about books vs. software -- for how much it had changed.

The first change would have been hard to miss: I found the entryway to the stacks blocked by a turnstile. When I tried to push through it, an LED panel flashed “Insert Library Card” next to a small slot at the side. My tattered, old library card didn’t look as if it would fit, and indeed, it was rejected when I tried to insert it. “Access to Reading Room Denied -- See New Accounts Desk,” the LED flashed.

Looking around, I saw signs leading me to a door I’d never seen before marked “New Accounts.” Inside, a well-dressed young lady greeted me so warmly that at first I thought she must be somebody I knew.

“What can we do for you today?” she asked, and I produced my old card. With professional restraint, she suppressed a smirk over this relic and proceeded to reveal the wonderful benefits my new library account would provide. Although I didn’t understand what a lot of the features she touted had to do with a library -- being able to use my Blockbuster card to get videos at the library seemed an incongruous benefit -- I agreed to sign up.

“Great!” she enthused. “I’ll just need to see a photo ID and a major credit card.” As I handed them over, she was not amused by my little joke about how the library must be taking overdue fines pretty seriously to ask for a credit card. She proceeded to have me sign an array of Terms of Service, Acceptable Use, and Privacy Policy documents.

“Just one more,” she finally said. “Initial this here and here to show that you agree your use of all lending library materials will be governed by the appropriate Microsoft End User License Agreement.”

She must have misunderstood, I said. I wasn’t there to get any software. I just wanted to borrow a few books for springtime reading. Why would I need to agree to a Microsoft EULA for that?

“It’s just a formality,” she assured me. “Microsoft provides the Digital Rights Management technology we use to protect the intellectual property rights of all the authors and artists represented here. So it’s really just an umbrella agreement that allows them to update that technology as needed. I’m sure you understand.”

The full satire - http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...13gripe_1.html

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Library Groups Say Sweeping State Copyright Laws Could Stifle Teaching and Research
Andrea Foster

Academic-library groups are denouncing copyright-protection bills that legislatures in several states are considering. The groups say that the bills, if they became law, could erode fair-use rights even more than the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the controversial federal law that makes it illegal to bypass technologies designed to protect digital works.

The state bills are based on model legislation pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America and cable operators and programmers. The legislation would amend state telecommunications and cable-security laws to prevent digital piracy. But the bills' wording is so sweeping that it could become illegal to view or copy radio, television, or Internet material without communications providers' express permission, says Jonathan Band, a Washington lawyer who represents the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the American Library Association.

Under the model legislation, theft of a communications service could be defined as encompassing a broad range of activities, including "the receipt, interception, disruption, and transmission" of broadcast works, says Mr. Band.

He helped the library groups draft a letter last week to Colorado and Arkansas legislators. The letters warn lawmakers that the antitheft bills could stifle encryption research, security testing, and reverse engineering, a procedure that allows users to take apart and fix defects in software.

"While digital piracy is a serious problem," the letter to the Colorado Senate reads, "some of the proposed amendments will undermine the ability of libraries to provide important information services."

Mr. Band says the state bills could also disrupt the ability of scholars to assemble databases from Web material.

The letters were sent to Colorado and Arkansas legislators because those states are furthest along in considering the antitheft legislation, says Mr. Band. But Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are also considering the legislation, according to Edward W. Felten, a Princeton University computer scientist who has been tracking the state bills, which he calls "super-DMCA" bills.

Mr. Felten is well known for his unsuccessful lawsuit against the recording industry and the U.S. Justice Department, in which he argued that the digital- copyright law is unconstitutional. That case was dismissed in November 2001 (The Chronicle, December 14, 2001).

Mr. Band says bills similar to the model legislation already have been signed into law in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Illinois, and Michigan. He says it's unclear whether the federal digital-copyright law trumps related state laws, which might make them less of a worry.
http://chronicle.com/free/2003/04/2003040101t.htm

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French Libraries
miladus

The French parliament just approved a new law that will pay publishers and authors for each book borrowed from a library. The government will reimburse publishers 1.50 € for each registered library user (1 € for each registered student). The money is to be shared equally between publishers and authors. Libraries will also pay an extra 6% when purchasing a book in order to cover 'borrowing benefits'.

Full details here (in French). http://www.assemblee-nat.fr/12/dossi...bliotheque.asp
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article....55&mode=thread

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International ring of theft?
Calif. government condemns online music, film piracy
AP

The state Assembly unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday condemning online piracy and the growing practice of free downloading associated with lost sales in the music and film business.

The resolution asks parents to teach children that "file-sharing" is the same as stealing. It also requests that businesses, government and colleges with high-speed Internet networks discourage downloading with new policies and technical obstacles.

"In the next 24 hours, millions of Internet users will illegally download copyrighted music, games, software, films and other images," said Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, D-Saratoga.

The resolution's author, Cohn cited music industry estimates that piracy costs it $4.3 billion a year. The film industry reports illegal downloading costs $3 billion in annual losses.

Media analysts say up to 61 million Americans use Internet services such as Kazaa to download music, films and software.

"This international ring of theft has now become larger than the industries it violates," said Cohn, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media.

The resolution now goes to the Senate for consideration.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...f-piracy_x.htm

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Record labels face legislators' scrutiny
Jim Wasserman

SACRAMENTO -- Record companies plagued by steadily declining sales now face legislation, both in California and in New York, that will attack contract and accounting practices.

Last year, California legislators convened hearings involving disgruntled recording artists and their record companies. The artists said the industry had cheated them; the record executives complained about spoiled superstars.

Stars, including Carole King, Montel Jordan, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, and the Backstreet Boys' Kevin Richardson, complained of short earnings and long contracts. Clint Black, the country singer, said he owed his label money, although he had sold millions of records. Merle Haggard has made similar charges of underreported royalties.

No laws were passed in California, and two major music firms pledged to reform their dealings with artists. But state Senator Kevin Murray, a former music agent who led last year's attack, is introducing four bills this year that would change how the industry signs and pays its artists.

''I still think a lot of this is ripe for discussions with the companies and the artists,'' Murray said of the industry, which employs 28,000 Californians.

Murray's bills aim generally to toughen penalties for companies that underpay recording artists. The bills also provide greater access to internal accounting within labels. Murray would also modernize and simplify royalty accounting methods, some of which date to vinyl albums.

The new bills are coming due as falling sales are shaking the industry. New York-based Nielsen SoundScan says the music business sold 104 million fewer CDs and cassettes in 2002 than in 2000.

Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said Murray's bills had hurt an industry that has seen artists and their labels fighting piracy and illegal downloading.

''Collectively, industry artists and labels alike are seeing layoffs, retail stores closing, double-digit sales declines; and that impacts the economics of everybody,'' Sherman said.

Stung by criticism last year from stars such as Hole's Courtney Love and the Eagles' Don Henley, and unsettled by attacks on the industry's financial integrity, two of the music industry's biggest players, the French-owned Universal Music Group and the German-owned Bertelsmann Music Group, have floated some reforms similar to those proposed by Murray.

Both firms are considering ideas to simplify industry accounting methods, to become more receptive to outside audits, and, for the first time, to tell artists the number of CDs they've manufactured. For years musicians have never been given the numbers. This has led many to suspect that some CDs bring them no money.

''There does seem to be a change in the wind in terms of attitude,'' said Donald Passman, a Beverly Hills music lawyer and author of the book ''All You Need to Know About the Music Business.''

But Passman, like others who interact with a recording industry dominated by five global giants, said it's too early to tell if anything is really happening.

A California auditor, Fred Wolinsky, said he has yet to see any records from CD manufacturers for his artist clients. ''I'll believe it when I see them,'' he said.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/09...crutiny+.shtml

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Microsoft's digital media mogul
Joe Wilcox

The head of Microsoft's digital media division has a problem. Should he watch the college basketball finals on television or online?

The dilemma for Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media, comes because Yahoo's new subscription service is using, in part, Windows Media technology to stream the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament online.

The Windows Digital Media division is one of Microsoft's most influential--and controversial--product groups. Critics have slammed Microsoft for giving away valuable digital media technologies, much the same way it did during its browser battle against Netscape Communications. At the same time, the division is wooing customers on the merits of Windows Media 9 Series, which introduces new capabilities such as digital music with 5.1-channel surround sound.

The group's greatest challenge, however, may not be in responding to competitors or critics but in attracting content creators and consumers. At the heart of Microsoft's digital media strategy is digital rights management (DRM) technology that could advance the distribution of online digital content.

As Fester explains to CNET News.com, finding the right balance between the demands of content creators and the expectations of consumers is a tough task.

Q: Some critics charge Microsoft has an unfair market advantage by using Windows as a distribution platform for digital media technology.
A: Digital media is and has been a feature of both Windows and (Apple Computer's) Mac OS for over a decade. Microsoft is delivering a platform that enables software developers and content providers to create their own digital media solutions. With our new licensing program for Windows Media 9 Series codecs, we expand that ability to non-Windows platforms, applications and devices.

We rely on developers and third parties to keep making great products based on our technology and grow the digital ecosystem. The fact that there are over 500 software solutions, services and devices in so many areas using Windows Media and other technologies is great proof of the opportunities that exist, and that many in the industry recognize.

Other companies wouldn't give away valuable DRM technology with the goal of recouping the technology investment through another product like Windows; they might sell it.
We sell Windows, and DRM is part of its overall value. It is really complementary to other types of security we have created in the operating system. Just like we have deep file-level security in Windows today, this is similar. Yet it also extends that protection as media travels across machines or over the Internet. In order for digital media to be a viable solution for the content industry, they require DRM to be a part of the platform. In order to build a healthy digital media ecosystem--with great content from content providers who can continually get paid for their work and consumers who demand great content--we built the DRM building blocks in Windows.

Last year, a research paper called "Dark Net," which was independently produced by some Microsoft researchers, concluded that DRMs would never succeed in the marketplace, that consumers won't ever stop file trading. What's your response to this conclusion?
This does not reflect the position of Microsoft, and that was not the conclusion of that paper. Just because piracy continues to exist does not mean there is no point in developing content protection solutions. It's critical for the IT and content industries to recognize that while legitimate content will compete with stolen goods, legitimate content distribution can thrive with a good balance of sound technology, easy access to a broad range of content that consumers really want, and the ability to take that content with you on devices while still providing a fair exchange of value to the owner for it.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-994933.html

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Massachusetts Super DMCA Hearing: Report
Derek Slater

First, I should mention that I have notes from the first hour and a half here. Sadly, I had to miss the rest. But I managed to catch John Palfrey's rousing speech and many other fantastic presentations (John's also got comments here[speech below – js.]). Given the amount of people there, I assume that the hearing went on for several more hours.

Now, onto my thoughts and feelings:

It was a good day in the copyfight

At least, that's my impression. I'd say around 20 people, maybe 25, showed up to oppose the bill. We filled the room and the committee's minds. It seemed like the state representatives understood that this bill was very problematic because of vague language. They also seemed to understand that the bill's content in general, in its target and its tactics, is troubling. They want to ensure law enforcement is effective, but they get that there's something wrong here.

They knew we were coming, too. Before the hearing, some committee members were speaking with an MPAA rep about the stir this has caused and the bill's really vague language. One of them said something to the effect of, "Professor Felten stirred up those bloggers." I was surprised that he even knew what a blogger was. Certainly, he used that mildly insulting tone that some people use when their talking about political activism - the "oh, those meddling kids are back again" tone. At the same time, his tone seemed to indicate that this band of security experts, privacy defenders, geeks, programmers, lawyers, businessmen, students, and copyfighters was actually being recognized as a coherent group. We are a set of people with a common set of concerns. We can and will mobilize effectively and quickly. You can count on us showing up when you try to pass legislation like this.

Maybe this has been the case for years. Certainly, I experienced a similar feeling when I watched local news reports about the Free Dmitry protests I attended. But it was important (for me) to watch actual legislators realize that their citizens will organize and fight for their rights.

It was a beautiful thing to watch, and I am gracious to all of you who showed up. I wish I had gotten a chance to meet you all.

While everyone there gets a gold star for the day, I should point out that David Turner of the Free Software Foundation (I think that was his name) and John Palfrey were really stellar. Turner made very clear the dangers of prohibiting all unauthorized access, touching on issues of fair use, technology innovation, and our general intuition (that is, isn't it ridiculous to think the MPAA should determine whether we can record tv programs?). Palfrey gave the committee an overall sense of the direction of Internet law and the dangers of special interests dictating the legislative agenda.

Also, everyone brought up how ridiculous the MPAA rep's focus on intent was. First of all, it's important to realize how little of the bill actually speaks of intent. For instance, 42B(c) doesn't discuss intent for using or distributing "unlawful access devices." Intent comes up in 42B(d) when addressing plans for manufacturing access devices, but it isn't really significant. Intent is only important if you were creating a device that was not intended to circumvent; all circumvention is still illegal under the definition of "unlawful access device" and 42B(c). People picked up on problems like this and spelled them out for the committee. I hope the legislators got the point.

By the time I had to leave, everyone else had basically said everything I would have. I was hoping someone would bring up the idea that even if you built exemptions into the circumvention device prohibitions, you wouldn't cover everything because fair use is an evolving concept. Perhaps someone brought this up later. (Even though I didn't get to speak, I did get to submit testimony. I presented copies of Professor Felten's criticisms and the EFF's "Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA," along with comments describing their relevance.)

In any case, I think the committee got the point. They know there's something wrong with the telecommunications and access device prohibitions. They know they have to study the issue more. They know they need to listen to more than just the MPAA.

So, a job well done.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2003/04/02#a106

Testimony regarding Massachusetts House Bill No. 2743

Good morning Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Joint Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the proposed House Bill Number 2743.

My name is John Palfrey. I am Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. I also teach Internet law and have practiced intellectual property and technology law at a large firm here in town. I would like to testify today, however, in my capacity as a citizen. I am a lifelong resident of the Commonwealth and live in Somerville.

I appreciate the work of this committee to protect our public safety and to promote justice in our state. I appreciate also the work of the Massachusetts Attorney General's office and others in law enforcement who do very good things to fight Internet-related crimes. I appreciate the very great need to grow our economy here in Massachusetts.

This proposed legislation, ladies and gentlemen of the Joint Committee, is a bad idea. It is unnecessary to achieve its stated purposes. In fact, it would have a series of unintended consequences that would do precisely the opposite of what it purports to do. Make no mistake: this is special interest legislation, plain and simple. It would favor the very few over the many -- the very few over your constituents.

There are many here today, many who have spoken already and who will speak after me, who can tell you more eloquently and more precisely than I can why this bill would be bad for computer security and terrible for the developers of software, both for-profit and not-for-profit, in this state. I will confine my comments to three substantial problems with this bill from what is more or less a legal perspective.

First, you do not need this bill if you are simply trying to keep people from stealing or hacking a computer system. We already have an alphabet soup of laws that achieve that end. Starting with the state's criminal statutes and common law, our law enforcement agencies that do good work on this front have many tools at their disposal. Consider, for instance, just the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Patriot Act, and other prohibitions against theft, copyright violation, fraud and trespass to chattels. If all you want to do is to criminalize hacking or stealing, then we need to be honest: these acts are already crimes, here and elsewhere, and hackers and computer thieves are already in jail. If our law enforcement officials really need more tools at their disposal, let's work out a properly narrow way to achieve that goal. I think it's worth noting that the state Attorney General's office is not here testifying that it needs this law, just as they were earlier on the topic of identity theft.

Second, Internet law in the United States is already a complete mess. This legislation would just make things worse. The proponents of this law would extend an already regrettable piece of federal legislation -- the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- to many state books. The DMCA, as it's called, has had many unintended consequences and we should not repeat that mistake here in the Commonwealth. This law would add new provisions for Internet Service Providers to understand, new definitions of "Telecommunication Service Providers," and new requirements that consumers will not comprehend. Innumerable people who have web sites already do not follow the meaning of the literally dozens of definitions of "Internet Service Provider" on the books. I study this topic for a living, and I don't pretend to understand my rights and responsibilities in this area; it's already too complex. This law will make a bad situation worse.

Third, this law will go much further than just banning hacking and stealing. This law will stifle research, like some of the work we do at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. One of our star researchers has already had to go to federal court to determine whether his research is lawful under the federal DMCA. This law would worsen that problem. It will chill speech. It would criminalize legitimate scholarship -- research that would further our understanding of computer security and of civil liberties on the Internet. Worse still, perhaps, it could criminalize otherwise lawful consumer behavior.

Please, ask yourselves: who wants this bill? The only person who showed up here today to support this bill has a narrow special interest. The people who showed up in opposition are your constituents, people who live and work in this state.

We must also see this bill in its proper national context. This bill is a part of a concerted national special interest campaign. This bill has been proposed as a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation in numerous states around the country. In response to Representative Linsky's good question, the representative of the MPAA here today couldn't even say whether the law is redundant when compared to the state's larceny statutes. This bill was not written for this state and it should not be enacted in this state.

We are a nation at war overseas to protect American freedoms. This special interest campaign would undercut those freedoms for one reason only: greed. It's not even the good kind of greed, that will help lots of people by creating lots of jobs. It's not going to help the economy of the Commonwealth; it will just make a few rich people richer. Make no mistake: this bill is a bad idea. It is an assault on the first amendment. It is an assault on the fourth amendment. And it will not be good for the economy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, members of the joint committee: thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey...es/storyReader$86

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Digital Media group calls it a “band aid”
Webcasters, RIAA propose new royalties
Jim Hu

The Digital Media Association and the Recording Industry Association of America agreed on Thursday to a proposal for royalty fees that Internet radio services must pay record companies for Webcasting their songs.

The proposal, submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office, will require large Internet companies such as America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks to pay 0.0762 cent for each song that they Webcast from their radio services. The rate is an increase from the 0.07 cent a song established by the Librarian of Congress last year and would pick up where the previous one left off, spanning 2003 through 2004.

The 0.0762 cent rate, as well as a rate of 1.17 cents per aggregate hour, covers individual streams for subscription and nonsubscription services. The recording industry would also receive 10.9 percent of subscription revenue but no less than 27 cents a month per subscription.

The proposal, which must undergo public hearings before a decision is made, will not affect smaller Webcasters, such as college stations and start-ups. Congress last November approved a bill that would offer substantially lower rates for small Webcasters.

Despite the agreement, the outcome has not pleased everyone. The Digital Media group, which negotiated the proposal on behalf of the Internet giants, viewed the latest proposal as a "Band-Aid" that would avoid "millions of dollars of legal fees" that would arise from going through the arbitration process with the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. The group said the negotiated rates underscored a system it considered broken.

"First, Webcasters remain at a competitive disadvantage to terrestrial radio by having to pay huge royalties for sound recordings that broadcasters get for free; and second...the arbitration process that determines these royalties is sorely in need of reform," John Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-995470.html

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HP aims DVD-burning PCs at mainstream
Joe Wilcox and John G. Spooner

Hewlett-Packard is looking to repeat its early successes with CD rewritables in the market for consumer computers equipped with DVD-recording drives.

In late 1999, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company jumped on the CD-RW bandwagon ahead of competitors, quickly making the technology standard equipment on all consumer PCs. On Thursday, HP launched its first DVD-burning notebook, the Pavilion ze5300, and a low-cost DVD-recording desktop.

Pricing for computers--$899 for the desktop and $1,723 for the notebook--marks HP's attempt to take the DVD-recording technology mainstream, NPDTechworld analyst Stephen Baker said.

Apple Computer--the early leader offering DVD burners--Dell Computer, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba are among the computer manufacturers providing the technology on desktops or laptops. Some of those companies, too, are pushing hard on the pricing front.

"Obviously, among the PC companies, HP, and in some respects Sony, has the most vested interest in moving DVD recording into the mainstream," Baker said. "They're already building awareness in the aftermarket with add-on drives, and they're looking to extend that to the desktops and notebooks."

An HP Pavilion ze5300 series notebook configured with a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor, 15-inch SXGA+ display, 512MB double-data rate (DDR) SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, a DVD+R/RW drive, 802.11b wireless networking and Windows XP Home is $1,723 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Dropping to a 2.4GHz processor and a 30GB hard drive would reduce the price to $1,574 after the rebate, which is in the range of some desktop PCs equipped with DVD-recording drives. The computers can be ordered online immediately.

"That's an incredible price point for a DVD-recording notebook," ARS analyst Toni Duboise said. "If you look at the price points they're offering, they're definitely undercutting the competition. This is definitely very aggressive pricing on the part of HP."

"Wow," said Baker about the pricing of the ze5300.

"This shouldn't surprise anybody," he continued. "We're already seeing DVD-recoding drives in the aftermarket for under $200. The cost differential between CD-RW drives and DVD drives is close enough so that we're at the tipping point of the newer technology replacing the older technology."
http://news.com.com/2100-1042-995341.html

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Prisoners of Digital Television
A misadventure in high-tech regulatory policy -- and a Harry Potter Fix
Mike Godwin

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the young student wizard Harry Potter is pursued by a horde of creatures called Dementors. To make a long, well-plotted story far too short, a future version of Harry suddenly appears and waves his magic wand, reciting the spell "Expecto Petronum!" Thus Future Harry manages to scare away the Dementors, protecting the Harry of the present.

The transition from analog broadcast television to digital broadcast television (DTV), now an enshrined part of American broadcasting policy, faces its own set of Dementors -- a horde of technical, legal, economic, and social problems. Taken together, the problems look as unbeatable as any monster. Making things worse, many factions with a stake in the outcome are at war over such issues as technology mandates, copyright protection, and fair use.

But what if we could somehow look back from the future to today’s troubled present debate, wave our wands, and magically defeat the problems that bedevil the DTV transition? Such magic is beyond us mere muggles (as Harry’s fellow wizards disparage non-magical humans). But it is possible to look back from the future we have long been imagining -- one in which various consumer electronics and information technologies have converged, and in which the broadband Internet reaches every home. From there, we can come up with our own version of a magical solution.

It’s fair to ask why we even need a solution, other than letting our DTV industrial policy collapse under the weight of its own mistakes. The short answer is this: There’s much more than digital television at stake. Bad government actions in this sphere -- and you can be sure that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission will act rather than refrain from acting -- could permanently shoehorn part or all of the computer revolution under government-driven design control. Not only would this likely kill the dynamism of the information-technology sector, but it is unlikely to do much to protect copyright interests.

Worse, by slowing technical innovation, the Hollywood studios may end up shooting themselves in the foot, since digital innovations have both lowered production costs and let new features and effects be included in modern TV and movies. Since our government is dead-set on taking action, the question becomes one of helping our regulatory Harry Potters invoke the most innovation-friendly spell rather than (as might otherwise be preferable) giving up the magic of regulation altogether.
http://www.reason.com/0304/fe.mg.prisoners.shtml

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Judge Posner at TechShow

Judge Richard Posner was the keynote speaker at ABA TechShow this morning. I tried to take as many notes as I could about the presentation...

His talk was loosely focused on the role of law in the new economy. In his words, the product of the new economy is intellectual property. "The cardinal characteristic of intellectual property is that the making of copies is extremely cheap." Wherever a producer incurs significant costs before being able to sell the product, he said, "the threat of copies - where the cost is close to zero - means that the producer of the intellectual property can't recover their costs." This, he concludes, drives a wedge between upfront costs (very high) and continuing costs (marginal).

He noted that if IP producers sell directly to their buyer (no middleman), then the producer can impose any contractual limitations they want. For instance, copyright law has firmly established that buyers of copyrighted works have the right to make a second "backup" copy. But you can waive that right by contract if you choose to. Similarly, you can contractually bind yourself to agree to never copy a copyrighted work - regardless of the actual copyright term as established by law.

Fair Use

Fair use reflects a belief that the "vitality and dynamism of intellectual property depends on the existence of a public domain." The nature of intellectual property is that today's producers build on a body of prior intellectual property by "borrowing it" or incorporating those ideas into their own. The reason that public domain is so important is that the alternative - a model where any producer today needs an explicit license in order to incorporate prior work - would be stifling to creativity.

He noted that today's IP - much of which is digital - is increasingly reliant on digital protections (i.e., encryption) to safeguard against unlawful copying. This use of encryption, he noted, can have the effect of shrinking the public domain - which can be damanging to the longer term goals of future creation.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)

"I'm concerned about the shrinkage of the public domain through the use of encryption," Judge Posner started. "However, the issue with the DMCA is more complicated than that." He noted that if you don't have some limitations on the circumvention of encryption used to protect copyrighted acts, then you "set off an arms race between the offense (the circumventers) and the defense (the producers who use encryption to protect their property)."

He allowed that if you limit circumvention, you probably also have to limit the encryption that's used too. He concluded this section by stating that the "technology may present challenges for the law that the law may not be in a position to rise to right away."
http://www.rklau.com/tins/2003/04/03.html#a936

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Musicrypt expands trials

Musicrypt Inc has installed its Digital Media Distribution System at the Canadian head offices of Universal Music and Sony Music Canada for internal testing. In addition to delivering music from record companies to radio stations over the Internet, DMDS is being tested by record companies for internal file-transfer needs. The system's design also allows digital delivery of music files directly from the recording studio to the record label. The files can then be reviewed internally at the record label and subsequently forwarded to designated recipients within the digital realm without compromising pre-release security.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...si0403/GTStory

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Piolet - The latest P2P Hero
Thomas Mennecke

As time marches on, it has become increasingly evident that dispite courtroom victories, the RIAA and MPAA is quickly loosing the P2P war. With numerous files-sharing communities establishing strongholds through the Internet, it seems the more the copyright holders tighten their grip, the more networks slip away.

One of the most sucessful communities today is the Piolet/Blubster network. With the release of the Piolet 1.0x series, this community has witnessed it population surge beyond 100,000 users. Certianly by mid spring, we project that over 200,000 simultaneus users will connect to this network, a truely remarkable milestone.

This number has become an important benchmark in the P2P community. From Kazaa to iMesh to WinMX, this number has represented the quintessential stepping stone towards the 1 million users club, an achivement reached by only the most popular P2P networks.

In addition, it should be mentioned that the powerful eDonkey2000 and Overnet communities are also within a stones throw of joining the 1 million users club, as both networks have populations that range from 500,000 to 850,000.

Piolet has managed to accumulate a large following due to its resourcefulness as an mp3 haven. A wide assortment of mp3s, from the latest top 40 to old skool ska is available on this network.

In addition, most downloads are instantaneous, as its effective multisource feature doesn't force its users to idle by and wait for a lengthy queue to wane away (cough...WimMX...cough..)

With Piolet 1.06 wrapping up beta testing, many of the remaining issues should be resolved. It is understood, and appreciated, that many cannot connect to this network. However, with numerous network enhancements, most remaining connectivity problems should be resolved.

The most important question that remains for the Piolet community is whether it should forego its mp3 only policy and open its doors to all file types. As Pablo has said in the past, that question is up to the community (if you want it, speak up!)

With truely decentralized community, a fasted paced development team and a sky rocketing userbase, Piolet has become the latest hero in the P2P world.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=128

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Flatlan shut down over legal fears
Skye Schell

Rice's Flatlan server flatlined last Thursday after the Recording Industry Association of America filed four suits against college students who run similar servers.

Flatlan, a Napster-like file-sharing program, allows users to download shared media files from other computers. Rice's Flatlan operator, a student who wished to remain anonymous, said he took the server offline to avoid legal action and does not plan to restore access.

The RIAA filed suits against four students - two at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University and one at Michigan Technological University - accusing them of music piracy. According to an April 5 Detroit Free Press article, the RIAA is claiming damages of up to $97.8 billion.

The RIAA filed similar charges against Napster in 2001.

Napster indexes files that individuals anywhere on the Internet have shared, and allows users to send files to each other through Napster's software. Flatlan, on the other hand, resides on a local area network like the Rice network. It allows users to search the network, but does not handle file transfer. Instead, it provides the user with a network address so they can retrieve the file from its home computer.

While his server made it easier to search for media files on the Rice network, students can access those files even without Flatlan, the student said. All popular operating systems, including Windows, MacOS and Linux, come with networking software that allows file transfers.
http://thresher.rice.edu/article.tcl...d=43&dept_id=1

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Sony Revisits Online Offer of Custom CD's
Matthew Mirapaul

In a venture similar to the custom compact disc sites that looked promising during the early years of the dot-com boom, Sony Music Entertainment has started a Web site where online shoppers can buy CD's containing songs of their choosing. But rather than appealing to casual consumers with a broad mix of music, the site is designed to promote particular artists. Currently the site offers only songs by Bob Dylan and the alternative-rock quintet Train.

Sony, which opened the site, www.custommixcd.com, in February, will begin promoting it today on Microsoft's MSN.com.

For $15, plus shipping, consumers can select up to 12 songs or 78 minutes of music. While many songs by the two artists are available on the service, there are noticeable gaps: Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is not available, and the version of "The Times They Are A-Changin' " is taken from a recent live album.

Yet the site does have 14 rare Dylan tracks taken from soundtrack CD's, European singles and other hard-to-find sources and 21 live tracks by Train. Those live and rare tracks are not available as file downloads from PressPlay, the online music-subscription service that Sony owns with the Universal Music Group, which is part of Vivendi Universal.

The point is to allow customers to compile customized CD's easily and quickly. But that idea is not new. Personics tried to sell custom audio cassettes at retail kiosks in the 1980's. Several custom-CD ventures were on the Web in the mid-90's. SuperSonicBoom, iMix, MusicMaker and CDuctive all promised to give consumers the ability to create personalized CD's, but they are no longer online.

Josh Bernoff, a music industry analyst at Forrester Research, said he remained skeptical of the venture's potential. Although he praised the site for offering rare tracks, he said, "What consumers have demonstrated by their use of file-trading services is that they're very interested in assembling the pieces of music they want from a wide variety of sources for use in whatever format they want."

He continued: "What they're not willing to do is back up and have only certain stuff from certain artists from certain labels."

Officials at Universal and RCA Records said they had no plans to offer a custom-CD service.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/te...gy/07SONY.html

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Cablevision Is Said to Drop Out of Bidding for DirecTV
Andrew Sorkin

Cablevision Systems has abandoned its plan to bid for Hughes Electronics and its DirecTV satellite television operation, people close to the company said

yesterday, leaving Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation as the sole suitor for Hughes.

Cablevision's decision, which was made late Friday, came a few days after SBC Communications also decided to drop out of the bidding for control of Hughes, which is a unit of /> General Motors.

With SBC and Cablevision out of the running, Mr. Murdoch's chances of finally taking over Hughes appear to have risen substantially. In 2001, he lost a bidding war for Hughes to EchoStar in a deal that was later quashed by regulators

News Corporation remains locked in talks with G.M. and Hughes, according to people close to the negotiations, and they have been working steadily on a deal. Still, people close to G.M. stress that they could decide to simply spin off the unit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/bu...ia/07CABL.html

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Disney to Test Video on Demand Service
Will use over the air bandwidth
AP

Disney will begin testing its long-awaited video on demand service, dubbed "Movie Beam," later this fall, chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner said Monday.

Eisner, speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, said the service will allow consumers to view up to 100 films when they wish.

Unlike current video on demand services, which send movie files over the Internet, Disney's system will use the same broadcast spectrum the company uses to send its ABC Television network to homes.

The system will be tested in Salt Lake City and two other markets this fall, the company said.

Disney is the last company to enter the video on demand marketplace. It announced a joint venture with 20th Century Fox in 2001, but that dissolved after Fox pulled out.

Five other movie studios have been operating a video on demand venture called Movielink since last year.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e/disney_video

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Barry Diller Criticizes Media Deregulation
Gary Gentille
AP

Ever the contrarian, media veteran Barry Diller on Monday said deregulation of media conglomerates will limit diversity in movies and television and stifle competition.

Most large media companies have been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to remove or relax the ownership cap that has limited the number of newspapers, television and radio stations one company can own in a market.

But Diller, speaking to the National Association of Broadcasters, said big media companies need to be restrained or they will push out smaller competitors.

"There are real dangers in complete concentration," Diller said. "The conventional wisdom is wrong. We need more regulation, not less."

"The big four networks have in fact reconstituted themselves into the oligopoly that the FCC originally set out to curb in the 1960s," Diller said during his keynote speech at the association's annual convention. "Five corporations, with their broadcast television networks and cable, are not on the verge of controlling the same number of households that the big three did 40 years ago."

Diller said today's "vertically integrated giant media conglomerates," are driven only to gain "world media dominance," a motive that will gain support if current regulations are relaxed.

The FCC is expected to issue new rules by this summer governing cross media ownership. Most observers believe the agency, under the leadership of Michael Powell, favors relaxing the ownership cap. Powell will address the NAB Tuesday.

Independent producers such as Universal, with no network of their own, rely on the networks buying their programs. Networks such as CBS and ABC, have been buying more shows from their own production arms, a strategy that keeps profits within the media company but shuts out independent producers, critics have charged.

"Ten years ago, independents produced 16 new series," Diller said. "Last year, they produced just one. The independents are dying in droves."

Diller also slammed the effect of media consolidation in radio, where large companies such as Clear Channel produce programs that supplant locally produced shows in their national chain of stations.

"Local broadcasters should not be simply the distribution arms of monolithic enterprises," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e/broadcasters

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Censorship and sex.
Pakistan & Pennsylvania Blocking Porn Sites, Oklahoma Forcing Citizens to Turn Each Other In
Zarar Khan, Ted Bridis
AP

Pakistani authorities said Sunday they've blocked 1,800 Web sites in a crackdown on Internet pornography in this deeply conservative Muslim country.

But it's not proving to be easy.

"Curbing porn sites is as difficult as blocking the wind," said Web engineer Farhan Parpia, of the state-owned telecommunications company. "You block one, and dozens more come up like mushrooms."

Under pressure from powerful religious parties, Owais Leghari, the information technology minister, last month ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Co. Ltd. to filter porn sites. Filtering began 10 days ago, said Ather Javed Sufi, a company spokesman.

He said 1,800 sites had been blocked by Sunday. The company regulates private Internet service providers who use its lines.

When Internet users click on a blocked site, they get a reply that the site was not found or the query was invalid.

"This is one good move on the part of the present government. The young generation should be saved from sinking neck-deep in the filth of pornography and vulgarity," said Hafiz Muhammad Taqi, a leader of the six-member political alliance of religious parties known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum.

The alliance made strong gains in national elections last October, campaigning for Islamic laws in Pakistan and opposing what it deemed corrupting Western influences. In Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier province where the alliance took power, billboards of films with scantily clad women were torn down.

Some Internet users seemed undeterred by the blocked sites, and said they were ready for the challenge of finding new ones.

Fourteen-year-old Ghayur Ahmed said: "How can the government deprive us from having fun at least through Web sites?"

"There are tens of thousands of such sites," he said Sunday, sitting in an Internet cafe in Karachi. "Will they be able to block all?"

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...et_pornography

Pa. Won't Identify Web Sites Blocked

Pennsylvania's attorney general is citing laws against distributing child pornography in refusing to identify any of hundreds of Web sites his office has forced the nation's largest Internet providers to block under a unique state law.

The legal stand by the attorney general, Republican Mike Fisher, stymies efforts by a prominent civil liberties group in Washington to challenge an unorthodox strategy in Pennsylvania to stem online child pornography.

The Center for Democracy and Technology had sought the list of sites to buttress its assertions that the Pennsylvania law blocks Web surfers visiting innocent sites located in the same electronic neighborhoods as those peddling illegal porn. Without the list of blocked sites, the group cannot find examples to support its claims.

"We will not aid and abet child pornographers by publicizing their illegal Web sites," attorney general spokesman Sean Connolly said Thursday. "This is not a First Amendment issue. This is child pornography, a heinous and destructive crime."

Fisher's office said disclosing the list of blocked Web sites would itself be disseminating such pornography, which is illegal.

"The documents that you seek contain the Web addresses of Internet sites that contain such depictions," wrote L. Kinch Bowman, director of management services for the attorney general's office.

A letter from Bowman to the civil liberties group, dated Tuesday, responded to a request under Pennsylvania's open records statute for information about the state's use of the pornography law.

The Associated Press made a duplicate request on the same day and received the same explanation this week.

"It's really amazing to say, 'If we told you what we can't tell you, it would be breaking the law.' It means there can never be any oversight of a provision like this," said Alan Davidson, the associate director for the civil liberties group.

Davidson said the group was considering an appeal under Pennsylvania's open records law or a lawsuit to compel the attorney general to disclose details about enforcement of the law.

Under the law, enacted last year, Fisher has so far instructed Internet providers with customers in the state to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world. The law is unusual because it could impose a $5,000 fine on companies providing Internet connections to Web sites with illegal photographs, but no fine on the pornography sites themselves.

Fisher says the law and his use of it is an effective way to prevent citizens from viewing child pornography.

Lawyers for the civil liberties group said the technique undermines the Internet's global connectivity by regularly blocking Web surfers visiting harmless sites that may be located on the same server computers as sites with child pornography. They have compared the tactic to disrupting mail delivery to an entire apartment complex over one tenant's illegal actions.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ernet_blocking

Oklahoma porn bill unearths deeper concerns

Oklahoma lawmakers expressed reservations Tuesday over legislation that supporters said will help stop the distribution of child pornography over the Internet.

The state House overwhelmingly passed the bill requiring computer technicians to report any child pornography they find on computers they repair. But some members said unintended consequences could lead to complaints against innocent people.

"This bill is a woolly booger," said Rep. Ron Kirby, D-Lawton.

The measure will force computer technicians to make subjective assessments over whether pornography they find on computer hard drives and discs involves someone under the age of 18, House members said.

It could also lead to complaints against people who innocently open unsolicited spam e-mail that contains pornographic images, they said.

"Just the accusation of something like this can cause damage to somebody's reputation," said Rep. Hopper Smith, R-Tulsa.

"This thing could get out of hand," said Rep. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, who operates a computer repair business.

Wilson said his technicians are not supposed to look at private information on computers on which they work. And they would have a hard time coping with any pornography they found, he said.

"These are nerds, folks. These are people who can't even deal with sexuality," Wilson said. "This is a bad, bad bill. We need to put it out of its misery."

Michael Camfield, development director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Oklahoma City, also expressed concern.

Police officers showed up at Camfield's apartment in June 1997 and asked him to give up his rented video of The Tin Drum after an Oklahoma County judge ruled the movie violated Oklahoma's obscenity law. A federal judge later cleared the film and ruled that the confiscation was unconstitutional.

"I had three law enforcement officers who mistakenly identified material as child pornography," Camfield said. "If it was a problem for police officers, it is certainly going to be a problem for computer technicians."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...orn-bill_x.htm

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Professor, lawyer weigh in on debate over file-sharing lawsuit
Josh Brodie

It only took University students a few hours to react to charges of copyright infringement against sophomore Dan Peng.

By Thursday afternoon, campus network search engines Wake, Gank, Sleep and pTunes were all absent from their normal locations, and students who had previously shared thousands of songs and hundreds of movies had removed their collections from public view.

If the Recording Industry Association of America intended to scare students into compliance with copyright law, it seems their effort may have succeeded.

"The RIAA really wants to send a frightening message," wrote David Dobkin, chair of the computer science department, in an email. "These students (Peng et. al.) are being set up to scare others away from doing this."

In fact, the scale of the lawsuit leads some to wonder if the RIAA actually expects to collect damages. "The amount of money they are asking for is larger than the entire profit of the record industry in one year, and perhaps in its entire history," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's ridiculous to think you can get that out of one person."

The suit against Peng includes two claims. The RIAA alleges that Peng committed direct copyright infringement by distributing copyrighted music files from his personal computer. It also claims that Peng engaged in contributory infringement by maintaining the Wake service, which facilitated music theft by others on a larger scale than would have otherwise been possible.

The direct infringement charges are easily proved or refuted with network traffic records, but the contributory infringement law is open to interpretation, von Lohmann said.

The RIAA must establish three facts to support their contributory infringement claim.

First, they must establish that some direct infringement occurred, for example, that users illegally exchanged copyrighted music across the network.

Second, they must show that Peng was aware of, or should have been aware of, the direct infringement.

Third, they must show that the Wake site materially aided the direct infringement, in that it made it easier for users to find and illegally download copyrighted music.

According to von Lohmann, the second point will be the hardest to establish. One of the results of the lawsuit against the Napster music-sharing program in 2001 was a legal description of what it means to know about incidents of direct infringement on a network.

"Somebody needs to tell you that infringement is going on," von Lohmann said. "In this case it appears that the recording industry hadn't notified Princeton or Mr. Peng [about copyright violations as a result of Wake searches] so there is an open question as to whether the [RIAA] filled the requirements of the 'Napster' ruling."

Because of the flaws he sees in the RIAA's contributory infringement argument, von Lohmann said he would love the opportunity to try Peng's case. The EFF has already been in contact with several of the students named in the latest RIAA suits, though he could not confirm whether Peng was one of them.

Though the Napster case will likely be cited as precedent by both sides if Peng's case ever goes to trial, there are important differences between the Wake and Napster services.

Napster required users to actively sign on for the sole purpose of sharing music files, while Wake required only passive involvement of its users. Peng's site searched the preexisting campus network for any shared files, cataloging anything and everything it found along the way.

One source familiar with file-sharing law, but who would not be named because of a possible conflict of interest, said, "It seems pretty clear that the [Wake] site is a search engine. It looks to me like a search engine."

Von Lohmann suggested that the courts should be careful not to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" by removing sites like Wake which offer valuable, non-infringing services.

"You can imagine people sharing research materials or term papers or photographs that they themselves have taken. There is no limit to the kinds of stuff you can share [legally]," he said.

According to the file-sharing expert, one of the outstanding questions about the case is how the RIAA intends to substantiate its claims of direct infringement. To support these claims, the RIAA must show that users illegally downloaded copyrighted music from shared folders on the campus network. But it is unclear how the RIAA could have obtained such information without being attached to the campus network itself, the source said.

Even if they were inside the network, it is not clear that they could have obtained that sort of information, the source said.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of a trial would be the discovery phase, in which both sides are allowed to interview witnesses and gather evidence. It is possible that the log files on the Wake server will contain lists of searches conducted by its users and that these lists could be used as ammunition for future legal actions. "There is nothing you can do having already accessed the site," the source said.

So far, the RIAA has taken action only against those who have created tools that they believe aid music piracy. But it is possible that if, in a few years, the file-sharing problem worsens, the association will resort to filing suits against individuals solely for direct infringement.

However, it is not clear that a trial would have any longterm impact on the use of peer-to-peer file-sharing systems.

"More Americans are using file-sharing [technology] than voted for the president," von Lohmann said. "The answer is to make sure artists get paid while making file-sharing legal."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ews/7846.shtml

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Been Comatose For Four Years? Serious MP3 Newbie? Here’s The Primer You Need
Just disregard the POV…
Hiawatha Bray

The CD, introduced in the 1980s, has always been a digital music format. But CDs use a recording method that takes up a lot of bandwidth. A standard audio CD's worth of music uses around 700 megabytes of digital storage.

It would take hours to transmit that much music over a slow dial-up Net connection. So people went looking for a way to compress the same music files so that they'd still sound good, but take up much less space. The most popular method by far was developed at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute in the late 1980s. The technical name for the system is Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III -- but the world knows it as MP3.

The new technology sat on a shelf for a decade, until an engineer in Croatia wrote some software that would play back music files recorded in MP3. In 1998, a couple of University of Utah students used this software to build the first popular MP3 player, a program called Winamp, which is still widely used. Soon, other developers released code that let people convert existing music recordings into MP3 files. Now a CD's worth of music could be compressed to 70 megabytes or less, with very little loss of quality.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/09...s_slide+.shtml





Another site w/P2P, RIAA etc info -
http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~zrosen/

[JackSpratts]

Hot, sweaty and scandalous
Bikram Choudhury, founder of the fastest-growing style of yoga in America, has copyrighted his poses and is threatening to sue anyone who teaches his "hot" style without permission. Is this enlightenment?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Nora Isaacs

Kim and Mark Morrison thought they had achieved small-business nirvana. Eight years after Kim borrowed $25,000 to open a tiny yoga studio in Costa Mesa, Calif., it has grown into a bustling enterprise that employs 12 instructors and offers 40 classes a week in several styles of yoga. After years of working long hours, and investing more than $100,000 in expensive renovations, the Morrisons' venture, Yoga Studio Costa Mesa, has become more than just a place to bend and stretch. The studio -- with its meditation room, yoga programs for kids and pregnant women, spaces for baby showers and weddings -- has become the nexus of a small but devoted community.

But that might be about to change.

A year ago, the Morrisons received a letter that threatened the future of their beloved business. The correspondence came from lawyers for Bikram Choudhury, founder of the fastest-growing style of yoga in America, Bikram Yoga. "It was a dagger of a letter -- long, nasty and filled with allegations," says Mark, who is also a lawyer. The missive alleged that the Morrisons were violating a recently acquired copyright and insisted that they comply with a long list of demands and pay fines starting at $150,000 -- or risk a lawsuit. The warning, the Morrisons say, makes a mockery of yoga's ultimate promise of both peace of mind and freedom. "We're not just scared about what this could do to our finances," Mark says. "Yoga is something really personal, something that we love. And that's being attacked."

If Choudhury has his way, every Bikram Yoga studio in the world will soon be franchised and under his control. To start this process, he recently obtained a copyright for his particular sequence of yoga poses—a 90-minute series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises done in room heated to 105 degrees. Choudhury says that yoga studios that want to continue teaching Bikram Yoga must pay franchise and royalty fees, change their name to Bikram's Yoga College of India, stop teaching other styles of yoga, use only Bikram- approved dialogue when instructing students, refrain from playing music during classes, and a host of other stipulations.

"From the business side, I kind of understand it," says Judith Hanson Lasater, a prominent Bay Area yoga instructor who has been teaching since 1971. "But from the yoga side I think it's really sad."

No link, it’s from Salon – $30.00 paid registration now required! They can do their own spamming.

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Legislators Need to Get a Clue
Lance Ulanoff

It's official: Our legislators need some serious face time with the country's technology gurus—and fast.

Someone near the top needs to help our leaders get up to speed on what's really happening in technology today. I came to this conclusion after reading about the testimony given by Representative Henry Waxman (D–CA) before the House Government Reform Committee. Waxman explained that peer-to-peer (P2P) file- sharing systems like Gnutella, Kazaa, and WinMX were not only enabling teens to download music, but pornography as well.

People have been downloading porn since the days of the electronic bulletin board (BBS), many of which were dedicated to porn. Of course, BBSs were a little different than today's P2P networks. First of all, you had to pay to access most porn BBSs, and you would rarely find music or other useful files alongside the garbage. Just a few years later, the Internet made possible the widespread use of anonymous File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Again, there were (and are) all kinds of files to download, but FTP never really achieved the notoriety of today's P2P networks. Early file-sharing services like Hotfiles allowed you to peruse hundreds of private servers, many of which were rife with pornography. When true P2P services like Napster began showing up, porn naturally found its place on the networks along with the music, though not necessarily mixed in. Representative Waxman seems unaware of this history.

The other amazing discovery the congressman reported to the committee was that filtering tools have no ability to stop the downloading of porn from file-sharing sites and services. He's partially right, but again this is ancient news. Only recently have Internet filtering products begun addressing file sharing. Net Nanny, for instance, cannot actually stop file-sharing software from running, but you can set the newest version to prevent the necessary peer-to-peer connections from being made. In the main, though, filtering products are designed to filter whole sites based, typically, on words and domain names, but maybe even on images, if the filtering software can open them first (zip files filled with images can pass through untouched).

I'm glad to see that those in government recognize and are publicizing these limitations so that parents don't mistakenly think filtering apps can do it all. But why weren't these public servants talking about this five years ago? This is old news getting the treatment of a major discovery. What our leaders should already know and really be communicating is that connected PCs in homes belong in central and highly visible spots, so parents can see what their children are doing online. Obviously, children under 13 really should never browse the Internet unsupervised.

I've heard stories about old 386 systems and other outmoded technology used on a daily basis on Capitol Hill. But I've also heard that a lot of congressional leaders use BlackBerry e-mail devices and have their own Web sites. I'm not foolish enough, though, to believe that many of these public servants configure their own handheld messaging devices or write their own HTML. Based on this account of Representative Waxman's statement, I have to assume that the US government operates in the dark ages.

Look, the government has no shortage of high-level advisors that legislators consult—drug experts, education experts, homeland security experts, and more. And the place is exploding with tech experts. You'd think they were all hiding, though. Someone from our industry needs to drag legislators into the 21st century. That wise technosage could give the people running our country crash courses in the latest advances and how to implement them—and perhaps head off our elected officials before they announce more of these amazing discoveries.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1012680,00.asp

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Pointless Exercise
UK Company Creates Download Chart - Ignores P2Ps

The UK's most downloaded songs will soon be compiled in a chart organised by the creators of the Top 40 Singles chart.

The Top 40 download chart will be ready by Christmas, created by the Official UK Charts Company and endorsed by the music industry according to digital music distributors, OD2.

However, it will only compile the 175,000 tracks from 7,500 artists such as Coldplay, The Streets and The Coral which are currently available for official download on such websites as MSN, HMV and Freeserve.

Tracks downloaded from illegal file-sharing sites Morpheus and Kazaa will not be included in the chart.

There are thought to be 4,500,000 people downloading up to a billion pirated tracks over the Internet at any one time.

A provisional Top 40 download chart will be compiled on April 18 after today's (April 9) second free OD2 digital download day gets underway.

OD2 co-owner, former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, will offer music fans £3 of free music, including 30 downloads, 300 streams or three recordings onto CD, from today until April 15.

Music fans can register for free downloads at digitaldownloadday.com.
http://www.nme.com/news/104732.htm

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Digital Download Day Return$
Dinah Greek

In an attempt to win web surfers over to downloading music from legal sites, digital service provider OD2 has launched its second Digital Download Day.

Following the first Digital Download Day in October 2002, which had problems coping with the number of people trying to register, OD2 has extended the pre- registration period and will give users three days in which to choose their music.

From 9 April until 15 April, users can register for downloads in one of three formats for just €5 (£3.40). After registration they have three days in which to download free tracks, although the offer closes on 18 April.

Users have a choice of streaming tracks for 1p, downloading only to the hard drive for 10p a track, or burning tracks to CD at £1 a track.

But tempting people away from popular peer-to-peer (P2P) sites such as as Kazaa and Grokster, where they can swop music files for free, has proved hard.

The recording industry has focused much effort on issuing legal threats and warnings rather than working with providers to develop a business model that appeals to the public.

But critics of the OD2 model have said it does not go far enough to discourage people from downloading files from P2P sites.

Wayne Rosso, president of file sharing site Grokster, described it as a formula for disaster.

"My message to the industry is 'get real'. How greedy can they be?" he said. "The current models are extremely expensive and restrictive."
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140068

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But it’s not FREE!
Digital Download Day touted as success

The second Digital Download Day, the music industry’s promotion of unequivocably legal digital music, kicked off in the UK yesterday with the website becoming the number 1 ‘music site’ in the UK according to Hitwise.

The site apparently accounted for 9.6 per cent of visits to UK music sites, as defined by Hitwise, and was ranked 87 in the top 100 UK sites.

In an attempt to win web surfers over to downloading music from legal sites, music fans are able to download E4.5 (GBP3) of free tracks from over 7,500 artists. Users have the choice of downloading from seven major websites – Dotmusic, MSN, Tiscali, HMV, Ministry of Sound, MTV and Freeserve – and have 3 days after registering to claim their free tracks.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15856

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MTU President Irked by RIAA Lawsuit
Ryan Naraine

The Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) decision to slap lawsuits on file-swappers at three U.S. universities has been met with an angry retort from the president of the Michigan Technological University (MTU).

In a letter to RIAA boss Cary Sherman, MTU's Curtis Tompkins accused the association of turning a blind eye to the school's efforts to curb illegal file-sharing within its network and hinted that the RIAA was more interested in lawsuits and publicity.

The MTU's Joseph Nievelt was sued along with Daniel Peng of Princeton and Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for operating "Napster-like internal campus networks" that aided the theft of copyrighted songs. The RIAA is seeking damages of $150,000 per song traded on the networks.

However, the school's president argues that the association did not make good on promises to work together to stamp out illegal file sharing within its network.

"I believe that we would not be facing this situation with Joseph Nievelt today had we been able to gain your help in providing additional information to our student body. We have cooperated fully with the RIAA, but in recent months, have not seen the same from your organization," Tompkins said in his letter.

You have obviously known about this situation with Joe Nievelt for quite some time. Had you followed the previous methods established in notification of a violation, we would have shut off the student and not allowed the problem to grow to the size and scope that it is today," he added.

Clearly irked that the RIAA had filed its lawsuit before giving MTU a chance to act on the information, Tompkins said, "I am very disappointed that the RIAA decided to take this action in this manner. As a fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being notified early and allowing us to take action following established procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of lawsuits and publicity."
http://boston.internet.com/news/print.php/2179281

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Canada's music industry fires anti-piracy broadside
Jack Kapica

The Canadian recording industry is reaching deeper into its weapons stockpile to fight the downloading free digital music, starting with a new ad campaign
Wednesday aimed at young people.

New music-industry efforts include migrating businesses on-line and offering digital music on demand, said the Canadian Value of Music Coalition, a group of recording companies and associations representing musicians and composers.

Industry spokesmen said they will also try to lure people into paying for their music by offering low-cost CD singles, enhanced bundling with video DVDs, special on-line offers and front-of-the-line ticket sales.

The public-service announcements, created by the ZiG Inc. advertising agency, are directed at people aged 9 to 17, and will be aired on radio and TV stations across the country.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ckapr9/GTStory

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

CD sales down 6%, Music Video sales up 9%

World sales of recorded music fell by 7% in value and by 8% in units in 2002, according to figures released today by the IFPI. Mass downloading from unauthorised file sharing services on the internet and the proliferation of CD burning were cited as major causes of the fall in CD sales, combined with competition from other entertainment sectors and economic uncertainty on consumer spending.

The IFPI, or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, comprises a membership of 1500 record companies, including independents and majors, in 76 countries.

It found that recorded music sales worldwide fell to $32 billion in 2002. Compared to 2001, sales of CD albums fell globally by 6%, and there were continued declines in sales of singles (down 16%) and cassettes (down 36%). Music videos saw a growth in value of 9%, driven by strong growth in DVD.
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?...1299&area=news

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ITD restricts file-sharing to halt copyright infringement
Jennifer Sutcliffe

A firewall blocking outside Internet users from accessing files shared within the Emory network will be tested on campus computers beginning tomorrow.

Network Communications and Information Technology Division will test the effectiveness of the firewall until Friday in an effort to boost network speeds, which they say are slowed by popular peer-to-peer sharing programs such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

Administrators will implement the final version of the firewall this summer. Designed to regulate the transfer of information through Internet pathways, firewalls block connections between the outside Internet and a computer on Emory's network.
http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/disp.../3e923c9ad7dff

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Commission increases pressure over France Telecom

The French government is about to be accused by European regulators of giving preferential treatment to state-owned France Telecom compared to its competing cable providers of telephony and internet services.

The European Commission will mount legal action against the government in the European Court of Justice if they do not amend regulations that the Commission says restricts competition.

This week the Commission has said that France Telecom must pay back millions of euros to private competitors who paid the incumbent telco to provide telephone services to poorer areas.

Concurrently, the Commission is investigating whether the government’s E9bn credit line to the troubled France Telecom breaks European anti-trust laws.

France Telecom’s internet service provider, Wanadoo, is also under investigation over a possible similar breach of anti-trust laws.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15806

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Anonymous backer funds patent foe
Paul Festa

Bruce Perens has found what every open-source activist needs: a sugar daddy.

A sponsor has provided Perens with a $50,000 annuity to support his advocacy for open-source organizations and his opposition to the software patents that he says are stymieing industry standards on which open-source groups depend.

"I'm very concerned about software patents," Perens said. "They remain a blocker for open-source software. It's really difficult for us to coexist with them, and what we're trying to do right now is mitigate the problem in the standards arena by encouraging standards organizations to engineer standards that are royalty-free."

The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, and Perens--who until last September was on Hewlett-Packard's payroll--would not say whether it was a company, a nonprofit group or an individual.

"I've been working the past two years on this issue, sometimes with very generous support from HP," Perens said. "But it became kind of a problem for HP, because I would say things for open source that would be very embarrassing to the company. I need to be able to say what I want to say, and thus people who send me money may prefer not to have their names associated with the donation."

Perens is a Linux developer who co-founded the Open Source Initiative, founded a group called Software in the Public Interest, and helped develop the Debian version of Linux. Following HP's acquisition of Compaq Computer, Perens found himself with a pink slip.

Since then, he has worked on government policy for George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy & Research Institute and consulted on open-source implementation for companies including the Open Group, Novell and HP.

The problem with software patents, according to Perens and other open-source advocates, is that companies working with standards organizations may assert their ownership over a certain piece of intellectual property that they contributed to a standard, potentially forcing implementers to pay royalties on it. Open-source licenses and royalty-encumbered licenses do not mix, advocates warn.

Corporations with large patent portfolios have pressured standards organizations, even if they have a stated preference for royalty-free technologies, to make exceptions for "reasonable and nondiscriminatory," or RAND, licenses. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently turned back an attempt to carve out a broad RAND exception. Perens said the final compromise did provide for some RAND exceptions but only under stringent conditions.

Perens has now turned his attention to other standards groups, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-996070.html

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Philips adds streaming to DVD recorder
Richard Shim

Philips Semiconductors is adding broadband connectivity and streaming media capabilities to its reference design for DVD recorders, a sign of interest among consumer electronics makers in supporting the playback of digital media.

The semiconductor division of Royal Philips Electronics announced Tuesday that it has enhanced its Nexperia DVD+RW reference design to include a media chip that will aid in the processing of multiple media formats, such as MPEG-4 and DivX, as well as adding the ability to connect to the Internet.

The company plans to sell the enhanced reference design initially to electronics makers in Japan and South Korea, where broadband access is more widely adopted. The United States will likely see products based on the new reference design in the middle of next year, according to Jeroen Keunen, general manager for consumer and multimedia within Philips Semiconductors.

"This platform will be for the high end of the consumer electronics market and will help our customers to differentiate their products," Keunen said. "There will be a premium that will be charged for these features."

The enhanced design will be in the $30 range, but developing software to help in the playback of digital content would also add to the total bill of materials for manufacturers, Keunen said. He declined to comment on what the price might be for consumers, pointing out that electronics makers may differ in what features they make available with the design.

Sony, another consumer electronics giant that is a part-time partner and part-time competitor of Philips, is also working to add digital media playback and broadband access to its devices including a plasma television project.

Philips is looking to take advantage of the growth of DVD recorders in the consumer electronics market, and enhance it with the new design.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-996117.html



Breathless Press Release:

A Jukebox in Your Pocket?

Why not?

You are your own DJ of this exclusive audio jukebox – the world’s smallest recording audio jukebox.

Weighing just 167 grams (5.8oz - js), Philips HDD100 has the awesome 15GB capacity to pack your entire music world within its svelte frame. That’s more than 3,000 songs on the go!

A real stunner, the HDD100 is decked in high gloss magnesium and hardened glass, exuding the hard-core signature allure that’s hard to resist.

It’s called Awe.
http://www.audio.philips.com/betatest_HDD100.asp

But it sounds like BS. lol! – js.

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Sony DVR to sport broadband
Matthew Broersma and Richard Shim

Sony is continuing to make its network strategy a reality with three new digital video recorders that have broadband connectivity and can be programmed from a cell phone.

Sony will release in Japan three new digital video recorders (DVRs), each with a broadband connection and Web browser, the company announced earlier this week. All are part of Sony's CoCoon line of DVRs, which are available in Japan and are expected to come to the United States once the consumer electronics giant can establish a DVR service.

Toshiba and Panasonic have similar devices, which include a hard drive and DVD recorder, but Sony is the first to add a broadband connection to receive program guide information and to access Web pages. The NDR-XR1, set to launch on April 12 for about $1,200, is a combination DVR and DVD recorder, while the NAV- E900 and NAV-E600 are combination DVRs and DVD players with an AM/FM radio tuner.

The NAV-E900 comes with a 600-watt amplifier and will cost around $950 and the NAV-E600 comes with a 500-watt amplifier and will cost about $700. The NAV devices are set for an April 26 launch in Japan. Sony representatives declined to comment on a U.S. launch.

The devices represent Sony's latest effort to network its electronics products to allow for broadband access. Its network strategy would allow the entertainment and electronics giant to make its content available over its consumer devices. Sony is also working on a plasma screen television project, which also fits well into its network strategy. Sony owns film studios, music labels and a games unit in addition to its huge electronics division, giving it all the pieces to connect the digital entertainment universe.

However, infighting between the entertainment and electronics divisions over fears of piracy and the need to distinguish products has slowed collaboration efforts to date.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-995549.html

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Sony targets pros with blue laser drives
Richard Shim

Sony Electronics is expanding into new markets with its recordable DVD products.

The company is demonstrating blue laser drives and media for professional use as well as new multiformat DVD drives with rewritable speeds of 4x DVD+RW for desktop PCs. Sony is one of the first manufacturers to announce these products.

Blue laser drives represent the next generation in DVD recording technology, using a short-wavelength violet laser--instead of the red lasers in current optical drives-- to read data from the discs. The drives allow for much higher storage density than current DVD formats, which typically hold 4.7GB of data. One blue laser format known as Blu-ray is designed to allow a single-sided, 12-centimeter disc to hold up to 23GB of storage.

In March, the Japanese parent of Sony Electronics said it would release a consumer blue laser disc recorder in Japan on Thursday of this week, priced at about $3,800. Those devices will use Blu-ray, which is currently being considered as a standard. The new professional drives announced this week will use a different format that is not compatible with Blu-ray, Sony said.

Sony's rewritable and write-once discs will come in cartridges, instead of bare discs, and will be able to store up to 23.3GB of data at a transfer rate of 9MB per second. The 5.25-inch drives use an Ultra-wide 160 SCSI interface.

The company is licensing the design for the drive as well as the media to other manufacturers and both should be available by this summer. The drives will cost about $3,000, and the media will cost around $45. A Sony-branded version of the drive and media will be available before year-end.

Sony said manufacturers already are interested in selling second-generation drives and media with 50GB capacity and transfer speeds of 18MB per second by 2005. The third-generation products would involve recorders and media with 100GB capacity and 36MB-per-second transfer rates.

Sony Electronics was also demonstrating new multiformat drives with 4x DVD+RW rewrite speeds at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas this week. The higher speed means that consumers will be able to record a full length DVD in about 15 minutes.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-995825.html

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Disney Plans to Be on Digital Frontier
Edmund Sanders

Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner said Monday that his company would not let the threat of piracy keep it from aggressively pursuing business strategies based on new digital technologies, even if that means rethinking its current business models.

Eisner's remarks at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention appeared to signal a shift from Disney's emphasis on policing copyright infractions. Last year the company was a leading proponent of a bill, which didn't become law, that would have forced electronics makers to prevent consumers from making unauthorized copies of films and songs.

In the future, Eisner said, movie studios will need to be more flexible about the way they distribute movies. He suggested that in place of the current sequence of studio releases -- from theaters to video to pay per view to television -- studios would need to offer faster distribution, directly to consumers.

"If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will," he said.

This year Disney will begin testing Movie Beam, a service that lets consumers download movies via broadcast signals transmitted to set-top boxes.

Disney's ABC also is working aggressively to offer more broadcast shows in high-definition or HDTV, including the upcoming season of "Monday Night Football," a move experts say should help increase demand for digital TV sets.

Eisner noted that Burbank-based Disney was one of the first movie studios to see television as a distribution and marketing outlet, rather than as an unwelcome competitor, and then helped popularize color television with "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" in the 1950s.

"We take this tradition very seriously and are now positioning ourselves to be on the leading edge of the next technological wave in entertainment," the Disney chairman said.

Separately at the convention Monday, media mogul Barry Diller warned against allowing the major entertainment companies to grow any larger and said he opposed efforts to relax the national 35% television audience cap.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

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Radio Tunes In Warily to Its Digital Future
Technology offers better quality, sophisticated services. But only 20 stations use it, amid concerns about making the investment pay off.
Jon Healey

Advocates of digital broadcasting technology descended on the National Assn. of Broadcasters' annual convention in Las Vegas Sunday, hoping the promise of higher quality and profits will persuade local stations to go digital long before their audience is ready to tune in.

This time, the target is radio broadcasters, not television stations, the majority of which have already started down the dimly lit path to digital. But though many radio executives are excited about the digital future, most are moving cautiously -- if at all.

The new technology delivers better reception, higher fidelity and more sophisticated services, such as providing traffic information on demand or letting listeners rewind to the beginning of a song. The concept is so appealing that 14 of the country's largest radio chains have invested in the company that developed the technology, IBiquity Digital Corp. of Columbia, Md.

The first receivers that can tune in digital signals, though, won't be sold until later this year. And there's no telling how long it will take to develop a digital-radio audience large enough to be meaningful to advertisers and other potential sources of revenue.

Record companies eye the emergence of digital radio warily because the signals aren't scrambled, making them susceptible to being copied and redistributed freely over the Internet, said Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations for the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

Gary Richardson, owner of WJLD-AM, a 1,000-watt urban station in Birmingham, Ala., has been through the new-technology drill before.

In the early 1990s, Richardson invested about $20,000 to convert his station to AM stereo, a much-hyped upgrade that never caught on with consumers. So he had second thoughts about spending $35,000 on digital technology -- calling it "a significant amount of money for a stand-alone AM station my size."

The concerns evaporated after the equipment was installed.

"Once that digital signal was turned on and I heard it on a receiver, all doubts were removed," Richardson said. "It is an awesome signal."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtech nology

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"He was like a ghost," Bales recalled. "You guys are destroying the record industry," Gieselmann told him. "You've distributed more music than the whole record industry has since it came into existence."
The Napster Book - “All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster”
Joseph Menn

It was sheer anarchy. That's exactly what transpired in the late 1990s when teenage computer whiz and college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster--a system that connected computer owners and allowed them to swap music files over the Internet. The $40-billion music industry reeled as a generation of young computer users, completely ignoring the notion of copyright, adopted a disturbing credo: Why pay for music you can get for free? By May 2000, it was estimated by the Internet research firm Webnoize that 73% of U.S. college students were using Napster.

In these excerpts from the book "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster" (to be published April 15 by Crown Business), Times staff writer Joseph Menn chronicles how a few unworldly kids almost caused the powerful music industry to implode: Artists were caught between trying to maintain their livelihoods while not appearing greedy to their fans, and at one point, the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG antagonized its peers by financing Napster at the same time its own BMG record label was suing to shut down the online service.

In her ruling against Napster, the presiding judge noted that technology had gotten ahead of the law. It also had gotten ahead of reason: If Fanning and his young colleagues didn't understand the full implications of what they had created, the professionals in charge of Napster's business didn't care. The music industry understood, but it had no idea how to stop the juggernaut.

As Napster is stymied (the site is in limbo as its new owners attempt to develop a pay-for-play service), its legacy continues to spiral outward: Pirate successors now combine for a bigger reach than Napster had at its peak; Hollywood and Silicon Valley are jousting on Capitol Hill over whether widespread anti-copying mechanisms will be mandated in future computers; and sales of blank CDs, often used to make custom discs of downloaded music, now top sales of prerecorded CDs.

It all began with a poor Boston-area kid who came west to Silicon Valley and started a revolution…

L.A. Times
Nick: peermint
Pass: peermint

All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster - excerpts
http://www.latimes.com/features/prin...s%2Dmagazin e

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“Far higher bandwidth than other wireless technologies.”
Intel Tunes In to Mesh Radio
Martin Courtney & Martin Veitch

Intel's recent developer forum in San Jose saw the vendor outline its support for one of the most promising technologies in the burgeoning wireless sector: mesh networks. Also known as multipoint or multi-hop networks, the mesh model can provide high-speed fixed wireless links into offices, industrial sites and homes. But a number of issues, including cost, security and quality of service, may cause difficulties.

So far, the use of mesh systems has been restricted to fledgling fixed wireless broadband links. There has been little enthusiasm for the services being offered by mesh specialist Radiant Networks in the UK, and BT recently scrapped its mesh network trial in Wales.

Technical problems showed that mesh may be unsuitable for providing fixed wireless broadbank links, according to BT, but another barrier is the high price of the transmitter nodes, estimated to cost about £6,000 each. If Intel's vast manufacturing resources and resulting economies of scale can bring those costs down, however, many firms may start to take a greater interest in using mesh for both broadband wireless links and to create wireless LANs that cover greater distances than the WLANs of today.

Mike Witteman of Intel's Network Architecture Lab emphasises that there are other uses for mesh networks besides giving service providers a means of providing customers with wireless last-mile access links. In enterprises, extending network range and load- balancing would be obvious applications, for example, while in industrial settings, so-called sensor networks could relay data from gauges on factory equipment.

Mesh networks use multiple wireless devices, tens or even hundreds of nodes, that relay data signals from one to the next to transmit across multiple radio links. The result is far higher bandwidth than other wireless technologies -- up to 25Mbit/s. Also, because the network has multiple communications paths, it is much more robust -- if one transmitter node is unavailable, the signal path can simply switch to another within range. "You have multiple paths that can go round any blocks, and if a path ever degraded it would move to another path," said Witteman.

In multi-hop networks, devices, such as a PDA with a radio, can act as routers, and shorter ranges mitigate against interference, provide redundancy and extend total coverage. Also, each node needs to draw only a small amount of power, which reduces installation and operational costs.

However appealing mesh network technology sounds in theory, its proponents admit that there are hurdles to be overcome: business models must be developed for service providers to justify the cost of their transmission licences; installation is time-consuming; quality of service and resource scheduling are complex; and security is inherently problematic.
http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/21169.html

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MSN: A Rabbit Hole to Nowhere?
“The computing field in general recognizes that Web services are now about smart clients and about services that can be hosted at the edge of the network via peer-to-peer computing.”
Tiernan Ray

If IDC is right about Microsoft's "techtonic shift," it's unlikely there will be anything of value to salvage from MSN.

This past weekend I had another desultory encounter with what some still believe is Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) interest in the "content" business. While trying to hook up to the Net a friend's ultralite laptop running Windows XP Professional, and bereft of the ubiquitous AOL (NYSE: AOL) software, I was taken on a tour of frustration as the preloaded Microsoft Network tried first to use a username it hijacked from another dial-up connection, then led me on a tedious and insanely slow walk through utterly irrelevant shopping and news links, none of which had anything to do with the Internet. I ultimately toasted the MSN connection and set up a third- party ISP account I had in my back pocket.

MSN won't make most people's experience of connecting to the Net very special. This is a network that doesn't care about being a network, like a supposedly hip restaurant that secretly yearns to be a car wash. And so it comes as no surprise that IDC has recently concluded MSN may soon give up on being an Internet access player. What is left after you jettison the dial-up part, the so-called "content" business, would leave MSN in the position of being a re-tread of C/Net's failed "Snap!" online service from five years ago.

C/Net, you'll recall, launched Snap! in the belief that the integrated dial-up model of America Online would give way to a flexible union of content providers and broadband services. I still have my T-shirt from Snap! that says, "Goodbye, AOL, Hello Snap!" It was, of course, the other way around, and Snap! became proof that merely declaring oneself a network does not a product make.

I don't think Microsoft would be silly enough to repeat C/Net's move, becoming, in effect, some kind of disembodied content vendor. If there is a change of heart at Microsoft, it is likely the dual realization that integrated content networks are a lot of effort for nothing, as with AOL, and that selling connections to a disaggregated network doesn't sell software.

In other words, MSN has always been a software vendor, not a content player. So the question arises as to what, if anything, Microsoft can do with nearly 9 million MSN subscribers. It can keep bundling MSN access with laptops and scoop up some new accounts, but the portal it has created increasingly seems like a rabbit hole to nowhere. After all, it has become clear that the entertainment business does not move units of operating systems.
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/21054.html

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News Corp. Seals $6.6B Deal for DirecTV Stake
Reuters

News Corp. said on Wednesday it struck a deal to take control of DirecTV for about $6.6 billion, giving media mogul Rupert Murdoch his long-sought foothold in the U.S. satellite television market.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Apr9.html

Fox stock pummelled on DirecTV deal structure
Reuters

Shares of Fox Entertainment Group Inc. FOX.N , which holds the U.S. entertainment assets of News Corp. NWS.N , plunged to their lowest level in nearly six months on Thursday, as analysts criticized the structure of the takeover of DirecTV, the No. 1 U.S. satellite television service.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said on Wednesday it would take control of Hughes Electronics Corp. GMH.N , which owns DirecTV, from General Motors Corp. GM.N in a $6.6 billion deal. But News Corp. plans to transfer ownership of Hughes to Fox, in which News Corp. owns a 81 percent stake.

The structure saddles Fox with an additional $4.5 billion of debt. The unit will also issue 74 million new shares to News Corp. as part of the transfer, which further pressures its shares.

Fox shares fell 19 percent, or $5.20, to $22.05 shortly after midday on the New York Stock Exchange, following a drop of 20.2 percent earlier to $21.75 -- its lowest level since Oct. 10. News Corp. American depositary receipts fell 6.76percent, or $1.84, to $25.38, also on the NSYE.

"Via this transaction, we are less convinced that Fox is being managed as an operating entity rather than a financing vehicle for News Corp.," said Jessica Reif Cohen, an influential analyst with Merrill Lynch.

She noted that by saddling the company with $4.5 billion in new debt, the debt would need to be serviced by Fox's cash flow. "Thus Fox shareholders in effect do not have access to this capital." She downgraded the company to "sell" from a "buy" rating.

One investment firm that sold its 1.76 million shares of Fox earlier in the year said the market is spooked by balance sheet issues.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2544648

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Internet Cafe Chain Settles Music Download Suit
Reuters

Stelios Haji-Ioannou's EasyInternet Cafe chain agreed to pay the British Phonographic Industry $326,700 in damages and fees to settle a 21-month-old feud, the trade body said on Wednesday.

In January, a High Court judge found EasyInternet Cafe guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet and copy it onto a CD.

At the time, Haji-Iannou, the Greek entrepreneur and founder of UK low-cost airline easyJet Plc, said he would appeal the verdict.

The two sides worked out a settlement, however, with EasyInternet agreeing to pay $125,000 in damages plus the BPI's legal fees, bringing the total to $326,700.

"I am glad that Stelios has seen sense and agreed to settle this case," said Peter Jamieson, executive chairman of BPI, which counts major music labels Sony Music, EMI and Universal Music, among others, as its members.

EasyInternet suspended the disputed commercial service in September 2001, citing commercial reasons. In court it said it should not be held liable for customers downloading copyright-protected materials, a defense rejected by Justice Peter Smith. The music industry has been fighting an all-out war on illicit CD-copying and Internet downloading, blaming it for falling CD sales.

On Wednesday, music trade organization, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry, said global music sales fell 7.2 percent to $32.2 billion last year. Its chairman, Jay Berman, told Reuters he expected CD sales to fall a further five percent in 2003.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2535394

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US mod chip retailer jailed and fined
gamesindustry.biz

A US man found guilty of selling mod chips on his website in breach of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has been sentenced to five months imprisonment and a $28,500 fine.

David Rocci, who sold the Enigmah mod chips for the Xbox from the site, Isonews.com (the domain was seized by the US Department of Justice last month, but the site is still operating here), pleaded guilty to breaching the DMCA by selling illegal copyright circumvention devices last December.

His full sentence is five months in prison, five months of home detention, three years of probation and a $28,500 fine - that's £18,355 in real money. While we certainly don't approve of helping people to pirate software, we see this as a massively harsh and disproportionate punishment for a man whose crime is selling devices that allow people to modify their own equipment.

However, one thing is certain; the sentence will send an extremely powerful message to anyone else involved in the production or sale of Xbox mod chips in the USA (so far, the attempts of the US Department of Justice to extend the reach of the DMCA beyond its borders have - thankfully - been a failure). Expect a lot of mod chip projects and websites to quietly disappear in the next few days.
http://www.theregister.com/content/54/30165.html

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Busted: ISP Xtra Backtracks on TOS
New Zealand ISP Terms and Conditions Said it Owned Everything You Say
Paul Brislen

Xtra is back-tracking on its decision to change its terms and conditions after a public outcry over a new clause which seemed to give Xtra ownership rights over copy sent over its network.

On Friday Xtra, the country's largest ISP, sent users an email alerting them to changes in the terms and conditions. In particular, clause four of the Xtra's service terms relates to intellectual property and says:

"By placing any content, software or anything else ("Materials") on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence".

Newsgroups were inundated with users outraged at what seemed to be an attempt to subvert their ownership of any intellectual property that passes through or resides on an Xtra server.

The clause includes the following types of communication:

"...email services, information services, bulletin board services, chat areas, news groups, forums, groups, personal web pages, calendars, photo albums, file cabinets and/or other message or communication facilities designed to enable you to communicate with others".

Auckland-based IT law specialist Mark Copeland says the owner of any artistic work is always the creator and that Xtra had clearly gone too far with the clause.

"I'd say it's unquestionably too wide. It's not maintainable and if they relied on it as a defence should they re-publish someone's work after it was sent by email to, say, an editor, then they'd be in hot water."

However Xtra says it only introduced the clause to allow it to fulfil its obligations to customers.

"The intention of these [changes] is to make clear that Xtra and its suppliers are able to deal with materials given to them by customers for the purposes of running their services."

To that end, Xtra has revised its wording to include a disclaimer:

"Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services".

However another Auckland IT law specialist, Averill Parkinson, says even that may not be enough.

http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.n...256D010019265D!opendocument

Another clause for concern with Xtra's TOS

As legal concerns over one aspect of Xtra's terms and conditions fade (see Xtra backtracks on changes to terms and conditions), questions are being raised about another clause which seems to grant Xtra the right to block email.

Xtra is still defending the terms and conditions, saying they are consistent with international best practice.

But IT law specialist Averill Parkinson says clause three, which relates to the end user's responsibilities, includes a paragraph about what Xtra deems to be an unacceptable use of the service.

"[A]ny material or communication which we consider to be unauthorised, misleading, objectionable, restricted, defamatory, illegal, inappropriate or contrary to these Service Terms or detrimental to our reputation or to our brand".

Parkinson says the first half of the paragraph is fine, and is common practice.

However, the second half, "detrimental to our reputation or to our brand", is a bit over the top she says.

"Something can be true and still be detrimental to their brand."

If anyone does use the service for such unwelcome content, Xtra requires users to agree that "we may edit, delete, block or disconnect that material or communication ourselves".

"What if I'm a lawyer representing someone who is suing Xtra? I could conceivably be using the service to transmit information that could be detrimental to Xtra's reputation. Does that mean they have the right to block it, or to edit my email?" asks Parkinson.

She is also concerned by the word "delete".

"Can Xtra then require access to my system to delete the content from the network?"
http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.n...256D02001C30C0!opendocument

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Benetton takes stock of chip plan
Winston Chai and Richard Shim

Clothing maker Benetton has clarified its plans regarding radio tags in response to reports that it is preparing to place millions of the devices in its products to help track inventory.

A company spokesman on Monday said the company has to date purchased only 200 radio frequency identity (RFID) chips and is still studying whether or not it will use controversial technology to track its products.

Spokesman Federico Sartor said there was a misunderstanding about Benetton's use of RFIDs, and though the company didn't think it was a major issue, concern in the financial markets regarding the cost of technology and its benefits caused the company to clarify its position.

"We are not using any RFIDs in any of our more than 100 million garments today," he said.

With RFID tags, it becomes technically possible for marketers to obtain invaluable information on a host of consumer preferences, ranging from the clothes they like to the food they prefer.

In addition, there are worries that such a technology could be exploited for government surveillance or be misused by hackers and criminals.

Philips, on its part, has reassured consumers that the clothing can't be tracked beyond Benetton stores and warehouses, as its chips have an operating distance of about 5 feet.

While the assurance may hold true for now, some industry experts say it is possible for criminals to increase the tracking distance by building a more sensitive RFID signal receiver.

Such nagging privacy concerns have sparked consumer furor over the initial Philips-Benetton announcement.

Soon after the announcement, U.S.-based privacy group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, lashed out at the international clothing chain and called for a worldwide boycott.

The group urged consumers to avoid Benetton products until the company publicly renounced its involvement with RFID.

While it is unclear if Benetton is bowing down to such pressures, the company did say it will consider the "potential implications relating to individual privacy" before firming up its RFID plans.
http://news.com.com/2100-1020-995744.html

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The land of the increasingly insecure
With Total Information Awareness, the government, too, can know that your sweater spent an evening in jail after a protest march.
Wendy M. Grossman

THE COMPUTERS, FREEDOM AND Privacy conference isn't exactly where I discovered the nexus of issues that make up net.wars, but it's the place where they came together for me as a related set, as opposed to a bunch of unrelated stuff I was interested in. It's good for that: the cross-disciplinary mix makes it inevitable that you will make new connections between ideas.

Blood wasn't spilled on the carpets until about 2:15pm on the first day, when Heather MacDonald, defending Total Information Awareness, called us all Luddites for not being thrilled by the capabilities of this new technology. She would, she said emotionally, be happy for her daughter to answer a few questions if it meant she wouldn't be blown up at her college. Patrick Ball, who does statistics and relational databases for a living in human rights work, challenged her with some numbers. We are, he said forcibly, talking about hundreds of millions of suspects and a few dozen terrorists. Even the tiniest error rate, he pointed out, means hundreds of thousands of false positives and therefore investigations. As retired ACLU head Ira Glasser said yesterday, "Nobody is made safer when you arrest the wrong person." (This does not, of course, worry the Department of Justice, which announced this week that records contained in its National Crime Information Center database do not have to be accurate.)

That hasn't made the litany of new initiatives less depressing: passenger profiling, anti-terrorism laws that target all of us, surveillance cameras, total information awareness, PATRIOT-II, data retention. Some of the conference attendees couldn't make it because they were refused visas; others declined to try. Here in orange alert New York, they've got clumps of gun-accessorized men in camouflage military gear searching for an appropriate desert all over Penn Station, the hotel is demanding photo ID, and bags are scanned and searched on the way into the Empire State Building. Kinda like Belfast used to be, at the height of the IRA campaigns, except that the searching hasn't spread to ordinary stores and the city center isn't cordoned off. Do you feel safer now?

Probably most people don't. I don't know a lot of people who feel safer when they walk past a clump of five guys carrying guns, even if all those guys are doing is saying, "Use the pedestrian crossing to get across there." (That happened to me in San Francisco last week; didn't they have something more important to police?)

Things are no better when you look at the non-government side. In one panel, we were reminded that free speech and open access to the Internet depends heavily on its architecture. But the conversion from dial-up to broadband is putting the Internet much more into the control of the large cable and telephone companies than before – and the cable companies want content-based routing that will let them control distribution just like TV.

Then there's the nightmare future of RFID chips, which campaigner Katherine Albrecht believes will turn the world into an all-tracking, all-surveilling global network. Manufacturers, she says, love the idea of a future in which they can follow their products post-sale. With Total Information Awareness, the government, too, can know that your sweater spent an evening in jail after a protest march.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8736

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Why we may never regain the liberties that we've lost
Dan Gillmor

NEW YORK - The lights of a magnificent, recovering city glittered from the 80th floor of the Empire State Building on Wednesday evening. The multiple ironies were not lost on the gathering of civil-liberties and public-interest activists.

The Empire State Building is now the tallest structure in the city, still half-stunned from the attacks that brought down the two taller buildings 18 months ago. As a new war raged in Iraq, the people in the room were acutely aware of the only slightly older war that has consumed their daily lives like nothing before -- the way in which the war on terrorism has also turned into an assault on individual liberties.

The activists were in New York for the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. They continued to take heart from small victories here and there, some of which were simply stopgap efforts to keep a bad law from becoming even worse. But the prevailing mood, even more so than a year ago in San Francisco, struck me as downright gloomy.

Maybe I'm projecting my own worries onto others. But I sensed a deepening fear that things are really different this time.

Liberties ebbed and flowed in America's past. Leaders curbed liberties, with the public's often ignorant endorsement, in times of crisis. But the rights tended to come back when the crises ended.

The fabled pendulum of liberty may not swing back this time. Why?

For one thing, the damage that one evil or deranged person or group can cause has grown. Even if America somehow persuades all Islamic radicals that we are a good and just society, there will still be some evil and deranged people who will try to wreck things and lives in spectacular ways. In other words, the ``war on terrorism'' can't possibly end.

Moreover, the architecture of tomorrow is being embedded with the tools of a surveillance society: ubiquitous cameras; the creation and linking of all manner of databases; insecure networks; and policies that invite abuse. They are being put into place by an unholy, if loose, alliance of government, private industry and just plain nosy regular folks.

The Bush administration's attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks.

But the damage we will do to ourselves if we allow our liberty to disappear is incalculable. An entrepreneurial society can't exist if political freedom disappears, and if Big Brothers, public and private, are invading our daily existence with impunity.

The damage we'll do globally will be tragic. The world looks to America in large part because of our freedoms. We are a magnet, and a beacon, because liberty means something here.

So I deeply admire the activists who gathered in New York, because they keep trying even in the toughest of times. They are fighting for all of us, and for our future.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/5571471.htm

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Cop Sold Secret Data on People to Tabloids, Suit Says
AP

A Los Angeles police officer used department computers to access confidential law enforcement records of celebrities and sold the information to tabloids, according to a lawsuit recently settled by the city.

Officer Kelly Chrisman, a 13-year veteran, acknowledged looking up the information, but said he did so at the direction of his superiors, according to internal Los Angeles Police Department records. Attorney Christopher Darden said his client never sold the information to anyone.

"There's really nothing in those records to sell to tabloids," Darden said. "He didn't do it. That's that."

The lawsuit prompted the department to launch its own investigation, which the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday turned up "hundreds of hits" on the names of famous people, including Jennifer Aniston, Mickey Rourke, Pamela Anderson, and Nicole Brown Simpson.

Between 1994 and 2000, Chrisman also accessed computer files on such celebrities as Sharon Stone, Sean Penn, Meg Ryan, Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson, Larry King, Drew Barrymore, Cindy Crawford, and Halle Berry, according to the internal documents.

Personal information available on the department's computer system includes criminal histories, birth dates, driving records, ownership of vehicles, physical descriptions, Social Security numbers, restraining orders and, in some cases, unlisted phone numbers.

The lawsuit was filed by Chrisman's former girlfriend, Cyndy Truhan, who is also the ex-wife of former Los Angeles Dodgers star Steve Garvey.

In March, the city paid $387,500 to settle the suit, which claimed Chrisman secretly used police computers to investigate Truhan along with hundreds of other people and made a substantial side income by selling the information to supermarket tabloids.

Unauthorized use of police databases is a violation of federal and state laws, as well as department regulations. Chrisman was placed on home duty, similar to paid leave, while the allegations are investigated.

Meanwhile, officials expressed concern the case could lead to other lawsuits.

"How many other situations do we have like this?" asked City Councilman Dennis Zine. "How does this go unchecked? We're spending almost $400,000 of taxpayer money on this one suit, and God knows how many more will come down the line."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...elebrity_x.htm

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Smithereens Frontman Launches Subscription Service
Barry A. Jeckell

New Jersey-based artist Pat DiNizio, lead singer/songwriter of the Smithereens, has founded Patrons & Artists Together, a boutique entertainment partnership meant to fund his recording and touring projects and reward participants with a unique music experience, as well as provide free music via the Internet. Limited to 100 subscribers at a cost of $1,200 each, the program offers CD releases that will not be available through conventional channels, private concerts, and more.

In a statement, DiNizio describes Patrons & Artists Together business model as "a 'vision quest' in which an artist partners up with his or her audience to make an end run around the way that business is done these days in the ever-imploding music industry."

Once underway, subscribers will receive a numbered and autographed copy of the two-disc set "This Is Pat DiNizio," which the artist says was equally inspired by the Beatles' "White Album" and the Rick Rubin-produced "American Recordings" albums by Johnny Cash. Subsequent albums -- including "Dark Standards," an album of standards on which DiNizio is backed by a jazz quartet and big band, a remix set, a Christmas album, a children's album, and a collection of demos for the next Smithereens release -- will follow approximately every four months.

Subscribers will also receive 50 copies of each album to distribute to friends and family members. Abbreviated versions of the releases will also appear online for free download by the general public, along with CD artwork.

Beyond the recorded music, DiNizio will perform a private "living room concert" for each patron, which includes DVD and audio copies of the performance for all in attendance. Each show will be coupled with a fund raising or charity performance to benefit a local organization of the patron's choice. Other perks include Smithereens tickets and backstage passes, and Patrons & Artists Together t-shirts.

"I believe that I've come up with a solution for any type of artist, emerging or established, to make his or her music available online for free to anyone in the world -- and still earn a living," DiNizio says. For more specific details on the venture, visit DiNizio's official Web site.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1859066


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


Gnubian: This Peer-to-Peer Says It Protects You From Copyright Cops
Site Announcement

Welcome to the Gnubian Project. Early next month, we will be launching the Gnubian peer-to-peer file sharing application, an application that promises to change the face of file sharing.

Since the death of Napster, users have longed for an easy-to use, reliable, fast way to search for and download movies, music, applications, ebooks, and other data. While KaZaA, Gnutella, and others have made a stong attempt at making this a reality, they all fall short. Gnubian's model is based on the same peer-to-peer ideas as other applications of the same nature, but we've taken the idea to next level.

The trick is to bring user participation up a notch. Popular files will be indexed, verified, and then partially distributed to all clients who have marked themselves willing to act as a "buffer" node. They won't be given the entire file, just a small chunk. When a user goes to download that file, they will be able to pull parts from many users, increasing speed and availability while freeing the users from any accountability for any material that might be copyrighted.

While we don't specifically support the trading of copyrighted material, we feel that there are legitimate reasons to download such material, such as for educational purposes or to have a backup of something you already own. Thus, we've designed Gnubian to be completely censor-proof.

Our network has spent the last several months in beta, going through a series of stress tests and scalability improvements. Our beta users have been blown away by the performance, and our developers are working out the last few bugs before launch.

At launch, only a Windows client will be available, but the source code for Gnubian will also be made available, along with a Gnubian Network SDK, for anyone interested in developing clients for other platforms, or simply for the purpose of bettering the official Gnubian client.

Naturally, there's more to what makes Gnubian special than this, but you'll have to wait until launch to find out what it is, so stay tuned...
http://www.gnubians.org/

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Internet via the Power Grid: New Interest in Obvious Idea
John Markoff aand Matt Richtel

As cable, telephone and wireless companies compete to provide high-speed Internet access to homes, a new challenger is emerging based on a decidedly old technology.

The idea is to send Internet data over ordinary electric power lines. Proponents argue that it can be a competitive alternative to digital cable, telephone digital subscriber line and wireless efforts to connect the "last mile" between homes and Internet service providers.

Power-line networking has held out promise for several decades, in part because the electric grid is already in place, running to almost every residence in the nation, and also because it was thought that power companies would leap at the idea of a new revenue source — if the technology is proven.

But the idea has elicited deep skepticism from technologists who argue that the electric power network is a remarkably difficult environment for transmitting digital information. Moreover the nation's electric power industry has for the most part remained complacent about the technology.

Still, the technology is getting sudden attention in response to several trial efforts around the country and in other nations. Today, Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave the concept a further boost when he toured a demonstration site for the technology in Potomac, Md.

The agency and its chairman have said they are backing the power-line approach in an effort to stir competition and offer greater consumer choice.

"I was struck by how it has matured," Mr. Powell said. He said the F.C.C. was preparing to undertake a regulatory proceeding that could help pave the way for commercial deployment. "I'm optimistic," he said.

The F.C.C. has licensed seven companies to conduct field tests in roughly a dozen communities around the country, including Raleigh, N.C.; Potomac, Md.; Cincinnati,; Lehigh, Pa.; and Briarcliff, N.Y.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...gy/10POWE.html

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It Adds Up (and Up, and Up)



Rob Fixmer

WHEN Jon Green was growing up in rural Massachusetts in the 1970's, his family's phone service consisted of a party line shared with several neighbors. A simple rabbit-ears antenna captured all of seven television channels.

Today, like many middle-class Americans, Mr. Green and his wife, Stacie, carry cellphones, and their home in Maynard, Mass., has a land-line phone, cable television and a high-speed connection to the Internet, each offering an array of extra services. The connections they have come to consider necessities are discreet if not invisible. The tangible reminder is the stack of bills the Greens must pay each month.

When technology executives and marketers talk about the value of their products, they tend to focus on computer chips, which are 350 times more powerful today than they were 20 years ago and cost about a third as much.

But it is not the cost of the machines that has most altered household budgets. Instead, all that cheap computing power embedded in scores of new gadgets and married to communications networks has resulted in a growing number of subscription services that most consumers cannot resist - and continuing charges that they cannot escape.

The party line phone service they had in 1974 probably cost Mr. Green's family about $19 a month, the equivalent of about $70 today when adjusted for inflation. Long-distance calls were thought of as expensive, infrequent luxuries. Watching television was free, and access to the Internet would not be generally available or billable for two decades.

Today the Greens pay more than $225 a month for services that enable them to watch television, make phone calls and communicate over the Internet. That is more than a threefold increase, in today's dollars, for communications and home entertainment.

Research at Columbia University in the late 1990's suggests that like the Greens, most other American households have spent an increasing percentage of their disposable income over the last decade to link themselves to the outside world. Other research, done at Rutgers University, suggests that the appetite for such services has not reached its limit: American families are spending only about half as much as they say they would be willing to pay for technologies that would perfectly meet their needs. That is heartening news for the companies that are trying to convince consumers of the virtues of high-speed Internet connections or digital cable or satellite television services.

Not everyone, to be sure, is happy about that continuing evolution. Some consumers say they resent the addictive nature of such offerings.

"They get you hooked, and then you can't let go," said Sari Boren, a designer of museum exhibits from Cambridge, Mass. "A big part of what bothers me about the monthly payment thing is that no matter which of these services you subscribe to, you know they're going to keep raising the rates."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10cost.html

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A Self-Powered DNA Computer Redefines Small
Ian Austen

EXPERIMENTAL computers that calculate using DNA rather than electronics have many promising properties. To start with, they are exceptionally tiny. About one trillion DNA computers would fit in a single drop of water. Yet their storage capacity is potentially vast. A single gram of DNA holds about as much information as one trillion compact discs.

Now a research group at Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has added another twist. Its latest creation makes data function as the computer's power source.

"It's not like we're going to save the energy store of the world with this," said Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist and the lead researcher of the Weizmann project. "But lo and behold, we have been able to compute without using energy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10next.html

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Q n A
J.D. Biersdorfer

Q. Can I record MP3 files to my computer in MusicMatch Jukebox Plus 7.5 from sources other than the CD drive? Can I record from vinyl records?

A. MusicMatch Jukebox Plus, a digital music management program for Windows users, is usually set by default to record audio from a compact disc in the computer's CD or DVD drive. Most people use the program for encoding songs from the CD into the compressed MP3 format for use with a portable MP3 player or for desktop listening within the MusicMatch Jukebox program itself.

But you can change the settings for the program's Recorder component to capture sound from sources other than the CD drive, including a cassette player, a turntable or a microphone.

To record songs from vinyl records or cassette tape, you will need to connect your stereo receiver or tape player to the computer with an audio patch cable.

In most cases, you will need a Y-shaped cable with two RCA connector plugs on one end to plug into the output jacks behind the stereo receiver, and a single 3.5-millimeter stereo mini-plug on the other end to connect to the Line In port on your computer's sound card. You can find a selection of audio cables at Radio Shack and other electronics shops.

While in MusicMatch Jukebox Plus, go to the Options menu and select Recorder. Under the Source submenu, choose Line In to change the sound source for MusicMatch Jukebox. Then go to the View menu and select Recorder to open the program's recording controls.

You will be asked to enter a name for the file you are about to record. Click the Start button on the Recorder window when you are ready to record the song from the external music source, and click the Stop button when you are finished recording.

To get the sound quality you want, you may have to adjust the volume level on your stereo and experiment until you find the right balance.

MusicMatch Jukebox Plus can accept input from a microphone if you want to record an MP3 from a live source - for example, to make a recording of a song to study before a guitar lesson. The recording process is similar, except that in the Options menu for Recorder you should change the Source to Mic In.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10askk.html

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Play Fascinating Rhythms, for Your Ears Only
Ian Austen

Except for the models designed to be children's toys, digital drum sets have been beyond the budget of many musicians who perform only at home. But at $300, Pacific Digital's DrumXtreme might find an audience among amateurs.

"We're not just trying to go after professional musicians who want a digital drum set that is compact and light," said Robert Horton, director of product marketing for Pacific Digital (www.pacificdigital.com), a company more widely known for its digital photo frames. "We think a digital set with a lower price point would be of interest to intermediate and beginning drummers."

The DrumXtreme, the first musical instrument from Pacific Digital, replaces acoustic drums and cymbals with digital pads that are arranged on a collapsible frame. It connects to a Windows-based computer through a U.S.B. port. The software supplied with the drum set includes some instructional and practice exercises as well as what the company calls play-along scores. An additional pad and foot pedal are available for $50.

Neighbors and family members of DrumXtreme owners should especially like one feature: DrumXtreme owners can keep their rhythms to themselves by listening to the set through headphones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10drum.html

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Zap a Foe, Surf the Web: Keys to Suit Your Software
Charles Herold

It's often difficult to remember which key does what when you're playing a PC game; a key that fires a gun in one game may operate a flashlight in another. Ideazon's solution is its Zboard, which offers keyboard interfaces for specific games and other applications.

The Zboard has two parts, a keyboard base that connects to your computer and an interface that can be inserted into the keyboard base or folded up and stored on a bookshelf.

The initial selection of interfaces will be limited to Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Excel and Word; Adobe Photoshop; and the games Age of Mythology and Medal of Honor. The game interfaces are especially interesting, with many keys that correspond to esoteric game actions, and colorful themed designs.

A base unit is available for $29.99 and a base with one interface for $39.99 at www.ideazon.com; each additional interface will cost $19.99 or more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10zboa.html

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No Holds Barred for a Roving Office
Rob Fixmer

FOR the frequent business traveler, the need to stay connected to the office and home is often paramount, and the cost of technology may be no object if it can provide a competitive edge.

"My laptop bag is my office," said Richard Ginsburg, chief executive officer of Protection One, a security monitoring company that operates nationally. Mr. Ginsburg, who travels about 300,000 miles a year from his home in Miami Beach, spends a minimum of $608 a month for a collection of communications services. "It's a lot of money," he said, "but I have to live on the road. I can't be in a city and not have the proper tools."

Each month, in addition to paying for his home phone and a cable-modem Internet connection, he spends $330 for three cellphone lines, $50 for a pager, $30 for interactive access to an investment service on his BlackBerry device and - by far the most important expenditure of all, he said - at least $25 for Boingo Wireless (www.boingo.com), a service that offers high-speed wireless Internet access at airports, hotels and other Wi-Fi "hot spots" around the country. The service has become so essential, he said, that it dictates which cities he visits and which hotels he chooses.

Mr. Ginsburg, 34, admitted to being a "gadget guy" who travels with a digital camera and a satellite-navigation unit and spends $13 a month for TiVo television recording service at home. But he said he would give up any of those gizmos or services before he would let go of his Boingo subscription.

"Over the last year and a half, the Wi-Fi service has made the biggest change of any technology in the way I work," he said. It enables him to send and receive huge files, including spreadsheets, graphics and video.

But he may be nearing the limit of his comfort level in paying for all this convenience. "I would say over $800 is starting to get into nosebleed territory," he said, "and I would look to pare down other services."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10trav.html

NYTimes -
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Interesting Web Sites
Connecticut artist Sam Brown





Entertainment industry goes after little guy
Ken Hamner

The totalitarian iron fist of the "entertainment" industry has closed its grip upon the little guys now. It wasn't enough for them to destroy Napster and other "corporate" file swapping systems. It has now decided to target individuals who swap files, not with just warnings, but with lawsuits.

Students attending the universities of Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Michigan Technological University are being sued for having computer systems that, without charge, transferred thousands of songs to people interested in listening to fresh music not readily available on corporate radio or that costs up to $20 on a CD.

While it probably would have been possible to warn the students and have the universities shut down their systems, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) instead decided to file lawsuits in New York, New Jersey and Michigan. The RIAA, having been made very sad and infinitesimally poorer by these individuals, has decided to ask the courts to make these students pay reparations for their heinous deeds. The amount? A maximum of $150,000 per song.

That seems like a lot of money to charge for file sharing. How does it break down? The worst case involves the Michigan student who stored 650,000 songs on his server, in addition to 1,866 of which he actually owned, that were available to everyone on his network. At $150,000 per song, that means he would owe the RIAA $97.5 billion. Just to compare with other monetary statistics, the cost of the space shuttle Endeavour was $2.1 billion, the projected sales of Kellogg's cereal in the year 2000 was $2.5 billion and the gross domestic product (GDP) of China was estimated to be $1.2 trillion in 2002. As we can all see, ladies and gentlemen, these songs are worth a lot!

How long would it take these students to pay off their debts to the RIAA they ripped-off and humiliated so shamelessly? Let's take a smaller example. Recently, The RIAA told Verizon to sell out a client suspected of allowing people to download (for free) 600 songs, which the company had to do, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Assuming the maximum fine the RIAA seems to believe every song is worth would be levied against this individual, he would be forced to pay $90 million. Next, let's assume this individual has a good job that allows him to make $20 an hour. Since everyone is required to sleep, we'll assume he works 112 hours a week, and since everyone needs to eat and pay rent, we'll assume at least $3 an hour go toward food and rent. This means that, at $17 and hour, at 112 hours a week, it would take roughly 909 years for this man to pay off his damages to the RIAA.

Let us all hope, for the sake of the persecuted and wronged RIAA, that this man is incredibly long-lived if convicted.
http://www.collegian.com/vnews/displ.../3e9363ef38f06

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Ice T Offers Album for Sale to Kazaa Users - It’ll Run You $4.99
Sue Zeidler

Rapper Ice T, one of the few artists to support file-sharing and the now-defunct Napster, said on Wednesday he is making his music available for purchase to users of the controversial Kazaa service.

Under the deal, marking the service's first commercial distribution of music by a hit artist, Ice T's new album, "Repossession," will be available for $4.99 to Kazaa Media Desktop users through a secure platform for peer-to-peer services developed by Altnet, a unit of Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. BDE.A

Since last year, Altnet has placed pay-content listings among Kazaa search results, leading to authorized, protected files instead of the unlicensed type normally traded on Kazaa.

While Kazaa's parent company, Sharman Networks, has touted the partnership with Altnet as a potential and legitimate revenue source for the music industry, the world's big record labels consider it a foe and have sued Kazaa for copyright infringement, hoping to shut it down.

So far, Altnet and its content partners have received payment for 18 million licensed content files, spanning music, software, games and videos.

But the songs Altnet embeds with copy protection are mostly obscure and make up a tiny fraction of the pirated files traded through Kazaa. Analysts say at any moment, about 4 million Kazaa users are sharing some 800 million movie, picture, music and pornography files, most of which are unauthorized.

Kazaa has argued in court that by incorporating Altnet, it has significant legal uses.

Kevin Bermeister, Altnet's chief executive, has said he has tried to establish a working relationship with music companies and was optimistic that signing on Ice T would help open the door to other distribution deals.

The deal also provides for future distribution of an additional 16 Ice T audio or video files.

"We are thrilled to have Ice T as the first multi-platinum artist using Altnet's technology," Bermeister said in a statement. "Altnet enables content owners to tap into the promotional and commercial power of a peer-to-peer environment."

Ice T, an outspoken critic of big record labels and an advocate for new distribution channels, said teaming with Altnet was an easy decision.

"With technology today, artists don't need to rely on the workings of a traditional label to get their music to consumers, and without the label being in the middle to get a stake, it enables artists like myself to generate more revenue through selling product ourselves," Ice T said in a statement.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2539762

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Widespread Panic Gave It Away
Barry A. Jeckell,

Widespread Panic made the track "Nebulous," from its forthcoming Sanctuary album "Ball," available free online (April 9) to users of Altnet's Kazaa Media Desktop peer-to-peer file-sharing software. As previously reported, the jam band broke its tradition of road testing songs for months prior to recording. Therefore, no material from the new album has previously been heard by fans in any setting.

"Widespread has always been committed to bringing music to their fans by encouraging tape- trading and the like," a band representative said in a statement. "This is simply another step forward in that direction. We're excited about this technology and think it should be embraced." For more information or to download the KaZaA Media Desktop software application, visit Kazaa.com.

Widespread Panic kicks off its spring tour tonight in Madison, Wis. Following the tour's end May 16-17 in Indianapolis, the group has plans to co-headline the second annual Bonnaroo festival in June in Manchester, Tenn. "Ball," the band's first album since the death of founding guitarist Michael Houser and first studio set for Sanctuary, is due Tuesday.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1861485

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Technology of many
In the post-web services world, amorphous computing or swarm computing will leverage on the strength of multitudes of components to overcome the power of monolithic systems.
Louis Chua

Peer-to-peer technologies, web services, grid computing and all kinds of clusters
are some of the hottest forms of distributed computing. These are the technologies that will capture the industry's interest for the next couple of years. But ever wonder what will come after them? Looking at the billions of very different smart devices with communication capabilities threatening to flood everyday lives, amorphous computing would probably be a good bet.

Amorphous – which means lacking definite form, of no particular type and lacking organisation – is a concept that accepts heterogeneity as a way of life, yet allows very different components the ability to interact with one another in their own manner. This allows for many different interpretations for amorphous computing.

Also known as swarm computing, amorphous computing emphasises the concept that a collective result that emerges from individual micro-level behaviours could provide a more efficient system. It is, in a sense, a form of bio-mimicry in which scientists get inspiration from nature. Amorphous computing is similar to the concept of a colony of cells cooperating to form a multi-cellular organism under the direction of a genetic programme shared by the members of the colony.

Using biological systems as a metaphor or inspiration for computing machines has been a recurring theme in technology. In the mid-1940s, John von Neumann spent considerable time studying how biological systems processed information, and used this to help formulate his theory of automata, both natural and artificial.

Instead of a single monolithic system, the concept of amorphous computing tries to obtain coherent behaviours from the cooperation of large number of unreliable parts that are interconnected in unknown, irregular and time-variable ways. The first tentative steps have already been taken by technologies like web services. However, for web services, there is a lack of an overall mechanism that can direct a group of cell-like computing devices.

There is still a lot of fundamental research to be done into the organisation of computing systems, such as the methods for instructing myriad of programmable entities to cooperate to achieve particular goals. In fact, we haven't even begun to identify or categorise the problems that might manifest themselves in the amorphous world. There is a need to identify the engineering principles and languages that can be used to observe, control, organise and exploit the behaviour of programmable materials.
http://computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.ns...6?OpenDocument

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P2P Helps Small Business
Scientific supplies distributor VWR International selects GridNode's GridTalk communications software to automate previously batch-based EDI transactions with RosettaNet protocol and processes.
Tan Ee Sze

Singapore business process automation software provider GridNode has announced
the successful completion of RosettaNet-based business processes automation and integration for VWR International, a leading global distributor of scientific supplies. RosettaNet is a global business consortium which is creating an ecommerce framework to align processes in the IT supply chain.

VWR International, a Merck company with worldwide sales of more than US$2.5 billion ($4.35 billion), has a highly diversified business which spans a spectrum of products and services, customer groups and geography. The company offers more than 750,000 products, from more than 5,000 manufacturers, to over 250,000 customers throughout North America and Europe.

"Since VWR has thousands of trading partners in a variety of different industries, it is necessary for us to work with flexible and reliable communication technology solutions for our mission-critical internal and external needs," said Mary Ann Donlon, manager of Electronic Integrations, VWR International.

According to Donlon, GridNode deployed the out-of-the-box RosettaNet business automation solution in just three days. Using a highly-optimised, distributed architecture for business-to-business (B2B) integration and collaboration, GridNode's peer-to-peer (P2P), XML-based (extensible markup language) product suite enables supply chain data to be exchanged, synchronised and analysed in real-time via the Internet infrastructure. The company also offers a RosettaNet Basics-compliant solution for enterprises of any size to connect directly to their trading partners.
http://computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.ns...5?OpenDocument

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P2P Helps Small Churches
Press Release

Kingdom Ventures, Inc., a rapidly growing church development company, announced today that it has launched UCAN - Undercover Angels Network. UCAN is a private label community program for churches that enables young disadvantaged individuals or single parents to receive a free car by simply performing 100 hours of service to their local church. The program has been created - and is administered and managed - by Kingdom Ventures, a publicly traded church development company.

Only six percent of the country's churches have more than 1000 members. The remaining 94% rarely have the time or money to manage this type of community outreach program. This is why Kingdom Ventures created UCAN. It is a private label community program for smaller churches, completely administered and managed by Kingdom Ventures.

"We will provide the church with material they can use to inform their members about their new local program, including a description they can include in their church newsletter, a sermon and a brochure that describes the program. The material will help churches solicit members for unused or unwanted cars. They can use it to inform the disadvantaged members of the church, or the community, about the launch of their own UCAN program. And, utilizing our state-of-the-art peer-to-peer system called KingdomNet, churches can even access necessary IRS forms, applications and customizable service pledge agreements. Everything is private labeled - Kingdom Ventures operates in the background, making the program as easy for the churches to manage as possible," describes Jackson.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...m&footer_file=

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Polish internet use statistics

According to SMG/KRC, a public opinion research institute, around 20 per cent of Poles aged between 15 and 75 use the internet. This represents a total of 5.95m people. 30.9 per cent of people with access to the internet use it every day. The most popular portals are Onet.pl, which is visited by 73.6 per cent of all internet users, followed by Wirtualna Polska (63.3 per cent) and Interia (40.9 per cent).

According to Ipsos, a research company, around 25 per cent of Poles are internet users, 78 per cent of whom use the internet every week. 42 per cent of users access the internet at home and 33 per cent at school. Around 28 per cent of respondents visit internet cafes.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15828

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The Real-Time War
Cynthia L. Webb

Communications technology -- the Internet, e-mail, satellite video and voice-only phones, digital video and more -- is feeding the appetite of a worldwide audience hungry for news about the war in Iraq. Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf War, today's viewers can watch battles unfold in real-time on the their televisions, communicate directly with loved ones fighting in Iraq, and read news coverage from around the world -- all with one click of a mouse or TV remote control.

In a piece earlier this week, the BBC Online noted: "There can never have been a war when so much information was available to so many. Newspaper pages galore, special supplements, magazines, rolling TV and radio channels, and extended bulletins all jostle for people's attention. And, of course, there is the worldwide web, whose birth wasn't announced until some months after the end of the first Gulf War. (Tim Berners-Lee posted his message heralding the first browser on the alt.hypertext newsgroup in August 1991.)." The BBC cited the view of Web guru Jakob Nielsen, who argues that those who use the Web to get information about the war, opposed to those just watching TV reports, might have access to more and better information.

"This was not what [Nielsen] was expecting to find. But he says people who get their news from the web could be benefiting from a significantly different perspective from those who are restricted to newspapers or TV. 'I usually find myself saying that the web is a secondary way of communicating information,' he says. 'But people are getting a good deal from the web in terms of war coverage.'" Nielsen: "Usually the web has this downside that people don't want to read so much stuff online. ... So it gives you a bit of an abbreviated view -- which in this case I think is really good as this gives you a much better perspective of what is going on. And of course the web is still 'real time'... With the web you get the best of both worlds."

DMCA Challenge Fails

A federal judge yesterday tossed out a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.. The suit, filed on behalf of a Harvard Law student, argued that Internet filtering software used to enforce the law was blocking more than just its intended adult-themed and nefarious sites. The Associated Press explains: Student Ben Edelman "had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed. He then went to court to seek permission to reverse-engineer N2H2's product, saying he needed court permission because the controversial 1998 law forbids the dissemination of information that could be used to bypass copyright-protection schemes. CNET's News.com says the ACLU hasn't decided yet whether it will appeal Wednesday's ruling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Apr10.html

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Students put their own spin on downloading music
Jefferson Graham

As the record industry starts to come down hard on unauthorized music downloading on college campuses, students are responding with defiant words and defensive actions.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which had relied on warnings and educational programs aimed at campuses, last week filed its first legal suits against students at Princeton, Michigan Tech and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The record industry says the students infringed on copyrights by operating song-sharing sites on university servers.

Since then, according to the record industry and other sources, students on at least 15 campuses, including UCLA, Brandeis, Rice and Syracuse, as well as the four defendants, have pulled down their sites.

But students on the UCLA campus said this week that they weren't cowed by the threat of legal action. "I'm not scared," says UCLA history major Ean Plotkin, 21, who says he still downloads regularly. "The record labels will never be able to stop downloading. It's too widespread."

In fact, he says, he doesn't see it as theft. "This is exactly like going to the library. Do I have to pay to check out a book? I'm just listening to the song, not selling it."

Meanwhile, students who don't indulge in swapping remain rare. Jackie Vayntrub says she's the only one she knows on campus who won't do it. "My roommate even just bought a second hard drive to hold all of her MP3s."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-04-09-download_x.htm

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Interview: Lawrence Lessig on Copyrights
Russell Roberts

Roberts: Let's talk about the Eldred case that ended up in the Supreme Court challenging the Sonny Bono Act. Give us a little background on the Sonny Bono Act and the goal of the case.

Lessig: The Constitutional background is that the Constitution requires that copyrights be granted for the purpose of promoting progress, the progress of science, and they be granted for only limited terms. But our Congress has gotten into the practice of extending the terms of copyright that they've already granted. So in the last forty years, they've extended the terms of existing copyrights eleven times. In 1998, Congress extended the term again, this time, the longest they've ever extended existing terms, 20 years. So for the next 20 years after that passage, no work would pass into the public domain from copyright expiration at all.

To keep that in context, in the same 20 years, one million patents would pass into the public domain. So we brought a challenge after the Bono act was passed claiming that this practice showed that Congress was no longer respecting the requirement that the terms be limited, but in effect, copyright had become perpetual, on the "installment plan" as Peter Jazsi put it.

Our claim was that the court should step in to attempt cut back on this practice to guarantee that the constitutional vision of work once created and earning its copyrighted return should pass into the public domain for others to build upon.

Roberts: Seems kind of open and shut. The Constitution says copyright should be for a limited duration. The Congress seems to make it perpetual. What issue came into play in the 7-2 decision upholding the extension?

Lessig: There's an argument that what Congress is doing is respecting the Constitution. And then there's the historical practice which led the Court to do what it did. The argument is, Well, as long as each extension is itself a limited term, then you still have a limited term. That's an argument which ordinary people laugh at. It's the sort of thing your child says when you say, take one cookie and the child takes five. The child says, I did take one. Five times. But it's a technical way of saying Congress is complying with the Constitution. And what the Supreme Court said was that because Congress had done this in the past, that had established a practice of deference to Congress's decisions in the past.

Roberts: Let's go back to the details. Any copyrighted material before 1923 is in the public domain. Anything after that is protected. Correct?

LL: It's a little bit more complicated. We used to have a very sensible system. It required that you both register and renew your copyright in order to gain copyright protection. So work after 1923 had to have been renewed in order to continue the copyright protection. But in the 1990s, Congress passed a statute that basically said you didn't even have to renew any existing copyrights. So there's a period of time where copyrighted works were subject to falling into the public domain if they were not renewed and a bunch of that work did fall into the public domain. But from now on it's automatic and will continue to be.

Another part of this problem which we emphasized but the Court didn't take account of, was that it's so hard to know what material is available and what material is not available. There are no good records of who copyright owners are (because renewal isn't required anymore) and not even a requirement of registration. You can't even know who's claiming a copyright over what. So there's this mass of unsorted material out there that could or could not be available for public use creating vast uncertainty. As we said, just at the time that technology is enabling all sorts of new creativity, to build on this material and do stuff with it, the law is getting in the way and locking it up. Supposedly for just another 20 years, but I'd bet a lot that—

Roberts: Just by chance it might be extended again?

Lessig: Exactly.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Colum...copyright.html

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The progress of greed
South End Editorial Board

The news that the Recording Industry Association of America has sued four college students who allegedly run file-sharing networks is absurd to say the least.

The RIAA claims these "pirates" are stealing intellectual property without roper compensation. People share music without paying the industry for it every day at used records stores, garage sales or just giving CDs to someone else.

How the RIAA expects to collect on the $150,000 per song charges is interesting considering the students charged in the lawsuits didn't make money off of file sharing, and their range of influence was limited.

The RIAA is trying to make an example of these four students. Its tactics amount to nothing more than intimidation. The recording industry has a death grip on music, radio stations and retail outlets. Their power is nothing more than a monopolistic dictatorship.

Theses young adults are learning a valuable lesson about American business - entrepreneurs beware! The long-existing monolith of corporation will crush any upstarts who threaten to improve the general welfare, unless the corporation can make money off of them.

The RIAA is passing the buck for its own incompetence. As technology evolves, so too must businesses. The fact is the industry is losing the war against technology. They were slow to embrace the Internet and now they are struggling to catch up. Rather than run a fair race, they're throwing roadblocks in their competitors' paths.

The RIAA has no more authority or capability of being the moral police, judge, jury and executioner of the Internet than any other industry does. The industry is creating new "pirates" every time it shuts down one file sharer. The industry can't stop people from creating Web sites just as it can't stop people from making mixed tapes, burning CDs or videotaping television programs.

There's an obvious market for file sharing and exchanging individual songs. Rather than get on board with what consumers want, the industry is offering what it feels is fair.

The problem is most albums don't have enough quality tracks to justify spending so much on what amounts to a luxury item. If the album is quality, then people will buy just to add it to their collection.

Some groups and their labels have made CDs more valuable by offering more than just music. Videos, exclusive artwork and merchandise will make the CD more attractive.

Copyright laws, as stated in the Constitution, were meant to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Nowhere in Article I, Section 8 does it mention corporations, businesses or industries. If the Internet and all creations within it are not the "Progress of Science," what is?
http://southend.wayne.edu/days/2003/...eed/greed.html









Until next week,

- js.








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Current Week In Review.


Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15843 April 5th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15729 March 29thth
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15623 March 22ndth
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15526 March 15th



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

[SJ56]

Very interesting reading .....but very long

Take me nearly 1 hour going tru it.

Could this be done on a daily basis instead?

[assorted]

Originally posted by SJ56
Very interesting reading .....but very long

Take me nearly 1 hour going tru it.

Could this be done on a daily basis instead?

or you could read a little bit each day during the next week? :P

good work again mr. spratts.

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by SJ56
Very interesting reading .....but very long

Take me nearly 1 hour going thru it.

Could this be done on a daily basis instead?

Originally posted by assorted
or you could read a little bit each day during the next week? :P

Probably the easiest way…




Something so big makes many waves and many waves make many stories. (Sprattsian proverb)

The genesis of the week in review was to have a repository of the week’s p2p related news – in one place and easy to find – that didn’t dominate the Peer-to-Peer forum but yet was in that forum and not somewhere else. I was posting so much news last year that I felt my news threads were taking over and the forum was at risk of becoming a news only site. There’s nothing wrong with a news site per se but that’s not how I perceived "Peer-to-Peer". It made me hold back even more stories. News in general is a kind of pipeline information. It's mostly one way and it never stops. People read it and it’s important but it doesn’t always lend itself to conversation – it is more the background for dialog, the foundation for conversation if you will and a bulletin board in my mind should be freewheeling with plenty of give and take, with the ideas that make the dialog coming from the members for the most part. The risk was that at 10-12 stories a day the news would crowd out the other potentials and it’s those “other potentials” I wanted – they’re interesting! Also during this time I wanted to incorporate a lot more peer to peer political and legislative information in the forum and was even considering starting a new board altogether. Eventually I thought a digest was the best way to deal with it. Instead of dozens of daily news and political threads packing the top of the board we’d have just one thread per week but one that would have all the stories parked inside it. Kind of a super thread. That way there’d be no risk of domination. So that’s what I’ve done. It makes it easy to find P2P news, it’s a good way to store information I think and it’s a major time saver not having to search the web for all those items (believe me I know - I have to search the web for these items lol). While the size is large, you can read it at your leisure at one go or copy it and read it later, especially if your browser copies hotlinks like Opera does. Perhaps the best way to approach it is to do like assorted says - take a little at a time and keep coming back for more. It’s not going anywhere, as long as we have the web space I’ll keep it up. Just read as much or as little as you like and skip as much as you want, it’s not homework after all. It is big, there’s no denying that (How big? Well it’s a 400k word doc of 90 pages and 35,000 words ), but there is so much happening in the world of P2P it’s affecting nearly every aspect of our lives, in every part of the globe (the U.S. military is using Peer-to-Peer to wage war in Iraq for instance at the same time small churches in America are using Peer-to-Peer to assist their local communities ).

There’s no rush to the finish line. There is no finish line. Take your time.

Enjoy it.

- js.

[multi]

this is a great idea....
i could even imagine it as a front page
of a forum and be able comment to idividual topics even if it were updated daily it sort of deserves to be..imo
ala
UTC and napjunk and slyck and SR and ZP....ect



but is just fine as a weekly roundup of p2p stuff....im missing WT newspapershop tho from underground
always good overview of the week and researching TIA-js

takes me usually about 2 sittings to get thru it..

anyway saw this interesting article at slyck and thought i might add it here...

Independents' day

By Lynne Margolis
Eight years ago, Nan Warshaw, Rob Miller, and their Chicago friends were lamenting the dearth of "new and exciting music - music that ignited their passion the way punk and alternative rock had before big record labels and Gap commercials co-opted their sounds.

Then they began noticing that several area bands were putting Hank Williams twists on their Nirvana and Elvis Costello influences. So they decided, for kicks, to put out a compilation album of "insurgent country." Warshaw and Miller anted up a few grand apiece.


"We had no expectation that this was going to become a business," Ms. Warshaw says. "The first few years, we'd put out a record and when it broke even, we would say, 'Oh, what record should we do next?' "

But 3-1/2 years after it first started, Bloodshot Records finally hired its first paid employee. Today, it's a popular and healthy independent label, one of many operating outside the grip of the five mega-majors: Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment, EMI Group, and Warner Music Group.

While executives at those labels wail about the industry's imminent collapse, indie labels and artists are singing a much happier tune. Profits are up - in some cases by 50 to 100 percent. That's in contrast to overall album sales, which dropped about 11 percent in 2002.

"We don't do too much crying over here," Cameron Strang, founder of New West Records, admits proudly. The home of artists like Delbert McClinton, the Flatlanders, and John Hiatt has doubled its business for the past three years and is projecting a $10 million income in 2003.

Paul Foley, general manager of the biggest independent label, Rounder Records of Cambridge, Mass., happily brags, "2002 was actually Rounder's best year in history. We were up 50 percent over 2001."

You won't hear many of these labels' artists on pop radio - and ironically, that's one of the secrets to their success. By avoiding the major expenses associated with getting a tune on the air - which can cost upwards of $400,000 or $500,000 per song - independent labels are able to turn a profit far more quickly, and share more of those profits with their artists. Another secret of their success is that the labels target consumers - namely, adults - who are still willing to pay for their music, rather than download it for free.

Other artists, such as Aimee Mann and Michelle Shocked, are going even further - forming their own labels so they don't have to answer to anybody (see "Artists Sing Their Own Notes," at right).

At a major label, most artists are unlikely to earn anything unless they sell at least 1 million albums, and even then, they could wind up in debt. Everything from studio time to limo rides are charged against their royalties, which might be only $1 per disc sold. That compares with an indie artist, who can sell a disc for $15 at a concert. If they make $5 profit a disc on 5,000 discs, they pocket $25,000.

"That's the difference between us and them," Mr. Strang says. "Artists on our label who sell 200,000 copies make a very good living."

Independents also pay profits only after recouping expenses, but they keep those down by curbing marketing and overhead costs. They also have more equitable arrangements with artists, often sharing profits 50-50.

But perhaps the biggest difference is that they let artists keep the rights to their work. Michael Hausman, who manages Mann, says once the large labels get those rights, they may choose not to release a note of music but won't let the artist work for anyone else - essentially bringing career momentum to a halt.

Loved, then discarded

When rock critic and author Dave Marsh spoke on a panel at last month's South By Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, he pronounced bigger-label contracts a bad deal for artists from Day 1, "because of unequal leverage."

John Doe, who gained fame with then-wife Exene Cervenka in the '80s punk band X, says majors pump artists' expectations to unrealistic levels.

"With majors, your visibility is much higher, but it's for a much shorter period of time," he explains. "I feel bad for today's bands because they're loved and then they're discarded."

Doe, now on ArtistDirect imusic imprint, also says there's no word to appropriately describe the meddling of major-label A&R people, whose job is to "hear a hit" on each album.

"I personally wouldn't like to be told what kind of album to make," Doe comments. Most indie labels pick up already-recorded albums, or give artists creative freedom to make the music they want.

Adds Doe: "You can't replace the feeling [of] making a record that you're proud of."

Many industry participants, including Michael Caplan, cofounder of just-launched Or Music in New York, go so far as to predict that the current major-label model is as doomed as the dinosaur - partly because majors are unable to read and react quickly enough to market activity. If a record stops selling, it takes weeks for them to "turn the semi around." And if an artist's sales pick up in a market, the majors can't capitalize quickly enough to maximize profits.

"The idea is to keep it lean and mean," Mr. Caplan says. "We're gonna be nimble."

Caplan, who spent 21 years as an A&R (artist & repertoire) man with Sony-owned Epic Records, says big labels also have lost sight of what music is about - the artists, not the songs.

By seeking home-run hitters at the expense of solid team members, he notes, "They're just ceding a whole big part of the marketplace that we can go after."

Even some major-label executives agree that the current model isn't working. Zach Hochkeppel, director of marketing at Capitol/EMI-owned Blue Note Records (home of multiple Grammy winner Norah Jones), admits, "There's a lot wrong with the record industry as a whole, and a lot of it comes from the fact that the major labels have too much power."

Who needs pop radio?

Majors have the muscle to pay radio-promotions people to push for airplay, and product-distribution systems that far exceed the reach of indies. Bigger distributors won't deal with indies because the numbers are too small for their chain-store clients.

Big-box stores won't carry an album unless they know it will sell at least 5,000 units - which new artists won't necessarily do right away.

And few indie labels even market to big commercial radio stations, much less press for hits. They usually can't afford to pay independent promoters to "work" a song.

Instead, they build relationships with college and public radio stations and local retailers who are more receptive to less mainstream music.

While Rounder does use radio promotions people for Adult Album Alternative and Adult Contemporary formats, the label may work a release for 12 or more months, not 60 days, as some majors do. Many of Rounder's artists don't get airplay and still have solid sales. Raffi is the No. 1 children's artist in the world. (The label's biggest success story is Alison Krauss, whose two latest releases are about to become her second and third platinum albums.)

But Rounder never signs artists based on sales projections, Mr. Foley says. "The decision is made based on whether we want the artist to be heard."

Artists moonlight as record execs

Self-described folk singer Ani DiFranco is the poster child for the Do It Yourself label movement. Her successful Righteous Babe Records has helped inspire artists Aimee Mann, Jonatha Brooke, and scores of others to go it alone.

But unlike DiFranco, most choose that route after miserable major-label experiences or a lack of offers. Pittsburgh artist Bill Deasy has encountered both. Some years back, Deasy and his band, the Gathering Field, were signed to Atlantic Records. Just days after, their recruiter - whom they thought was in line to head the company - was overthrown. It took them two years to get out of their contract.

Deasy, best known as the cute guy whose "Good Things are Happening" video plays at the opening of the "Good Morning America" TV show, just formed what he considers his first real record label. Last week, he released his second solo disc, "Good Day No Rain."

He says the experience has given him his "most acute awareness" of the difference between trying to get signed and going indie. After recording four songs with Greg Wattenberg, who produced the Five For Fighting hit, "Superman (It's Not Easy)," Deasy says, "I really had an eye toward the prize of the record deal.... And then [i] just came flat up against the wall of the music business. You know, when you're over 25, you're a senior citizen."

But he admits now, "I'm sooo glad I didn't get (another) record deal - and I'm not just saying that. It's just so obvious to me that the music business isn't really about music."

He and his manager formed Bound To Be Music and released the disc themselves. "I am just feeling so thrilled and relieved that it worked out this way," he says. "If you're making $10 a CD and you sell 10,000, that's not so bad."

Brooke and Mann spent time in their own label purgatories before giving up on the system.

After starting her own label, Bad Dog Records, Brooke also confessed, "I gotta say [I'm] the most fulfilled and content I've ever been."

With the ease of Internet sales and new support systems such as United Musicians, an organization formed by Mann; her husband, Michael Penn; and their manager, Michael Hausman, to provide support services to indie artists, bucking the system truly seems like a smarter option than joining it.from