Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 28th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week

Post invasion second thoughts -

"I'm not saying I was misled, but I do have the feeling that there was a lot more to the story than I was told." – Australian judge Murray Wilcox after authorizing secret RIAA raids into the homes of ISP and file sharing executives.

"Litigation is their Prozac, they're just not happy unless they're suing somebody." - Wayne Russo

"If the RIAA supports this move, then I wonder why they would prosecute file-sharers who are giving music away. Let's face it, in these promotional giveaways, the corporations running these things usually are the greatest beneficiaries of the results." - Composer-Singer Paul Korda on Pepsi’s planned giveaway of 3 million songs.








20 Questions

So I read about this website in the New York Times and I go there and take a look. Maybe you've heard about it. It’s the one with the artificial intelligence things and it can guess what you’re thinking in 20 questions. So it says.

OK, I’m thinking about plywood. Well, I have to think about something don't I? Plywood happens to be a good thing to think about because as you’ll see if you play, the answers to the questions can be open to interpretation. Like, “Does it have writing?” Well, yes actually, plywood often does. “Is it used in an office?” Depends. If the office is built after 1980 or in a skyscraper it probably isn’t etc. and so on until it gets to 20, and no surprise, it guesses wrong.

But, it doesn’t give up. It asks me five more questions, is wrong again, then asks five more. Bingo.

“Is It Plywood?”

Wow!

Nails it.

Some grumbling follows, with the program arguing plywood doesn’t have writing on it, is used in offices etc (it’s not a builder apparently), but blunts the harangue with some boilerplate about how “we’re all learning here,” as if that makes getting your mind read by a piece of software with an attitude any better. I have to say it feels more than a little strange when a program on the Internet knows what I'm thinking, even after 30 questions. I mean sex, money, downloads ok – but I'm thinking about plywood!

Next up: I think “Candle.” 20q gets it in 19. Then it gets “Watermelon” in 10. It’s on to me now.

Do the cops know about this thing? Do women?

(They do now.)

You can find it here.

And oh yeah – that piece in the Times? It’s about the handheld version. It goes for ten bucks.

It’s a toy.













Enjoy,

Jack.













The Answer to Piracy: Five Bucks?
Katie Dean

Can $5 a month solve the file-sharing problem?

Perhaps, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital-rights group recently proposed the idea of having file sharers pay a monthly surcharge in exchange for the right to share away. The charge would be voluntary and could be levied through the sharers' Internet service provider, software client or university dorm fee. And the money would go to the artists.

The idea sparked a spirited debate Wednesday at a music law conference at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, an event that brought together lawyers, musicians and students, among others.

File sharing is still a rampant problem. The millions who use services like Kazaa and Grokster to share music run the risk of getting sued for copyright violations by the Recording Industry Association of America, and the record labels still complain of lost sales.

EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann, speaking as part of a panel on peer-to-peer music sharing, proposed that music fans pay a small monthly fee -- perhaps $5 -- to share files with impunity, using whatever software they like. The money could be collected by a central organization and then distributed among those who own the rights to the songs, based on popularity.

The idea has worked before. Broadcast radio stations paid a similar flat fee to ASCAP and BMI -- organizations representing songwriters, composers and music publishers -- to play their music as much as they wanted, he said.

David Sutphen, vice president of government relations for the RIAA, immediately pooh-poohed the idea. File sharers still would search out a way to download music for free, he said, and under the proposed system, all music would have the same value, which doesn't make sense. One-hit wonder Vanilla's Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," for example, would have the same value as The Beatles catalog.

He said these types of compulsory licenses are "not a wise or logical thing to do."

Sutphen's opinion was in the minority on the panel.

"I think file sharing is one of the most positive things to happen to music in a long time," said Madigan Shive, a musician and composer. "I say share away. That really is our best hope," she said.

Hastings law professor Margreth Barrett said the proposal is a good one. She dismissed the RIAA's objection that all music would be valued equally because those musicians whose songs are downloaded most would receive a larger chunk of money. To make up for money lost by those who still share music illegally, a small surcharge could be tacked onto music products like CD burners, which would be put into a fund divided among copyright owners.

Canada already has imposed such a fee.

Sutphen called the idea of a levy "pie in the sky" and said technology companies would never go for it.

Peer-to-peer sharing continues to be the best way to distribute music to the greatest number of fans, von Lohmann said, and using voluntary collective licensing would spark investment in P2P services. It also would eliminate the RIAA's need to discourage file sharing using methods of interdiction, like spoofing tracks on P2P networks.

What won't solve the problem is the continued suing of music fans. The RIAA is harboring false hope if it thinks legal threats will "drive them into the arms of Steve Jobs," von Lohmann said, referring to Apple Computer's legal music service, iTunes.

"There's nothing novel about suing people for breaking the law," the RIAA's Sutphen said. "Enforcement will always be part of the equation."

However, Sutphen said the RIAA realizes that suing people will not solve the piracy problem completely. He admitted that "record labels will have to change the role that they play," but said there will always be the need for someone to invest in artists, promote them, make the videos and distribute the music.

Sutphen called the EFF proposal a "step in the right direction."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0...w=wn_tophead_1


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File-sharing Organizations Play Different Comms Tunes
Matthew Creamer

While the media remains fixated on legal and ethical ramifications, Matthew Creamer finds that file-sharing services remain focused on customers' wants and concerns.

In the course of becoming a record company's biggest nightmare, Wayne Rosso has become a reporter's dream.

Accessible, profane, and apparently uninhibited, Rosso is an unofficial spokesman for the radical fringe of the file-sharing world, an insurgent place where people talk about the free flow of information with a fervency that used to be reserved for politics. Rosso's former company, Grokster, whose software is one of many available applications that allow people to share music files without paying for them, remains a b?te noire to the industry whose profit margins it has eaten away. A no-publicity-is-bad-publicity kind of guy, Rosso revels in the criticism he takes - "I'm the Paris Hilton of file-sharing," he says - even boasting how a famous newswoman told him a well-known media executive dubbed him a "mobster." At his new company, Optisoft S.L. and its peer-to-peer software applications Blubster and Piolet, Rosso vows in no uncertain terms even more headaches for content moguls.

Whether Rosso, a music-industry vet who takes credit for advancing the careers of Crosby, Stills & Nash and Fleetwood Mac, is to become the face of the music industry's future or will go down as a painful symbol of its chaotic present remains to be seen. Through its trade association, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the industry itself has sought to cut off the market for Grokster and its kin by filing a series of lawsuits against people who download unlicensed music files. As of earlier this month, the RIAA had filed almost 400 lawsuits, settling many of them. Though the legal effort was at first widely dismissed as a PR faux pas, a recent Pew telephone poll concluded that the lawsuits have led to a dramatic decline in music downloads. But that poll, though widely reported, has come under heavy criticism, and not only from the file-sharing services. Big Champagne, a kind of Nielsen for peer-to-peer networks, states that downloading is as popular as it ever was.

To be sure, Congress will eventually take up the issue, but that's unlikely in an election year. In the meantime, a wide variety of players are staking out positions on an issue that poses a number of tough legal, political, economic, and moral questions. A relaunched Napster, which is now a paid service, joins Apple's iTunes as the most popular places to pay for music downloads. In the peer-to-peer world, Kazaa is attempting to recast itself as a legitimate company where people can swap and sample licensed music files. It currently distributes music from independent outlets and is seeking alliances with the major record companies. To that end, it gave seed money to establish a trade organization, the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), whose goal is to find a middle ground that makes the record industry, the file-sharing services and software distributors happy.

Kazaa's rebranding challenge

In essence, Kazaa, a popular software brand purchased two years ago by Sharman Networks, has had to mount a rebranding campaign, hiring Magnet Communications to execute a $1 million advertising initiative and a publicity push for its CEO. Its image was once closer to Grokster than iTunes, and now it's trying to achieve an air of legitimacy by appealing to both the recording industry and consumers. "The big challenge for the Kazaa brand name and for Magnet is to communicate to a very wide user base a new brand promise and value proposition," says Magnet president Paul Jensen.

In many ways, Kazaa's challenge is that of all but the radical end of the spectrum: figure out a business model that will work, get the major parties to sign on, and then attract consumers.

The importance of consumer behavior is often understated in coverage of the issue, though organizations like the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America have made several coherent attempts to appeal to customers' sense of right and wrong when it comes to copyright issues. In the very near future, if it's not already so, it will become nearly impossible to go to a movie, read a newspaper, or even watch television without being reminded about the economic effects and moral problems caused by violating copyright law. But for all the efforts to demonstrate how skirting copyright law can affect not only artists and entertainment executives, but also peripheral players like engineers and stuntmen, there are still thinkers, such as New York magazine media critic Michael Wolff, who conclude that the rise of the internet has made it un-American to pay for content. If people like Wolff are correct, then an entirely new way of thinking has become ingrained in a matter of years and provides a clear challenge for marketers and PR people.

Carol McGarry, EVP and creative director at Schwartz Communications, has found this attitude in her work for Peppercoin, a micropayment system that allows merchants to charge miniscule amounts of money for individual songs. Her job is, of course, to publicize the service to business and consumers.

"What we're doing," she says, "is showing that there's an inexpensive way to buy songs legally." McGarry says the RIAA's lawsuits have made this somewhat easier "by building in a disincentive to swap music."

But they've also made Wayne Rosso's job easier by giving him a nemesis: a rich, institutional enemy who resolves its business-model problems by suing teenaged girls.

Magnet's Jensen does not think the lawsuits should have any effect on the way file-sharing organizations do business, but he does think they need to follow Kazaa's lead and find a way to do business without infringing on copyrights. Kazaa, after all, is banking on consumers flocking to its brand, not in small part because of the legitimacy to which it aspires. Kazaa is up to 45 million licensed music, video, and software downloads per month, which, Jensen says, is a significant increase.

"The customer we're going for wants to do what's right and is not interested in downloading with the potential for lawsuits," he says. "Wayne Rosso's organization is targeting a different customer. There will always be people out there who think information should be free."

Impact on consumers

To a degree, this cuts to the issue of how much time and energy consumers spend in choosing how to consume content. Kelly Larabee, senior strategist and SVP at The Rose Group, which does PR for the DCIA, disagrees with the suggestion that consumers won't discern between a service that offers a free product in a way that's at best unethical and at worst illegal and one that charges, but is undoubtedly law-abiding.

"Americans and most people who have the resources love to support the art that speaks to them," she says. "I do think that we've gotten used to sampling. And our who-we-trust meters have changed quite remarkably. Our questions regarding what is true have changed a lot in the cross-pollination of media. For example, you can question the 20th Century Fox movie plug you see on a Fox channel if you hear somewhere else that it's not a great movie. We've had to be more skeptical as consumers."

It remains to be seen whether skepticism toward even established media and entertainment brands will translate into big business for the online content sites that work with content providers. It's less ambiguous that PR people have their work cut out for them in affecting attitudes, especially those of that desirable young demographic.

McGarry, for one, has already noticed how pervasive the notion has become among younger people that music should be free. She says, "The hardest thing to change is something that's become part of culture."
http://www.brandrepublic.com/digital...gin=DB19022004


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Canada Needs File-Sharing Test Case
Mathew Ingram

Following through on a promise it made late last year, the Canadian Recording Industry Association has launched a court battle against digital music swappers. Unfortunately for the CRIA, however, its fight against file sharing may not be quite as easy as the one waged last year by its U.S. counterpart, a controversial campaign that snared teenaged honour students and retired war veterans, among others.

First, the Canadian industry has to get Internet service providers to cough up the names of the CRIA's targets, and one ISP -- Calgary-based Shaw Communications -- has said it will resist that request in court. Canadian law is also not as amenable to such requests as U.S. law, which was reworked in the late 1990s to specifically deal with digital copyright issues. And even after it identifies its targets, CRIA will still have a fight on its hands.

In December, the industry group said that it planned to follow the example set by the Recording Industry Association of America and sue selected Canadian file swappers beginning some time in 2004. "The industry continues to be devastated by file sharing," the CRIA's president Brian Robertson said at the time. "It is regrettable that we'll have to take this action, but we've been forced to."

The RIAA launched a widely publicized legal campaign against users of popular file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and iMesh last year, hitting more than 350 individual downloaders with lawsuits accusing them of copyright violations.

The U.S. industry group's continuing battle -- 532 more lawsuits were launched just last month -- got a boost initially from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Under the act, record companies were able to force Internet service providers to give them the names and addresses of specific file swappers without having to go before a judge and apply for a formal court order.

In December, however, a Federal Court of Appeals judge ruled that this "streamlined" DMCA procedure was not applicable to the downloading and sharing of digital music files, but was designed for cases in which copyright-infringing material was being stored by an ISP on its own servers. As a result, the RIAA has had to go through the time-consuming process of filing "John Doe" lawsuits in order to force ISPs to identify specific users. But still the digital battle continues.

It remains to be seen what kind of response Canada's Federal Court will have to the CRIA's request. Mr. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein -- the former head of the federal Competition Bureau -- postponed his decision until March 12, saying he needed more time to study the details of the case.

Shaw Communications has said it plans to fight a court order to identify its customers if one is issued. The company argues that because it regularly changes the IP (Internet protocol) addresses it gives to customers, identifying a specific user based on his or her IP address would be problematic, and potentially an invasion of an innocent person's privacy. Other ISPs such as Rogers, Telus and Bell Sympatico have not said what their response will be if a court order is issued.

That's just part of the battle the CRIA is heading into. Even if Judge von Finckenstein orders the ISPs to reveal the names of individual customers -- which some observers believe is not at all a sure thing, given the traditional strength of privacy rights in Canadian courts -- and even if the majority of those sued decide to settle out of court (as most have in the United States), at some point the industry will have to fight an actual court battle.

The main complicating factor for the CRIA is that under Canadian law, downloading of music from the Internet -- even music a user has not actually paid for -- may turn out to be legal, because of the copyright levy that Canadians pay on blank CDs (21 cents per disc). A ruling by the Copyright Board in December, which extended that levy to hard-drive-based music players, specifically said that the downloading of music files is permitted under Canadian copyright laws.

The CRIA was quick to point out at the time that this is not a legally binding decision, merely the opinion of the Copyright Board. However, the industry also said it planned to focus its lawsuits on users who are sharing a lot of files -- in other words, providing them for others to download -- rather than those who have downloaded a lot (networks such as Kazaa allow users to share or not share their files). The CRIA said that it would target those with more than 1,000 files.

Left out of all this, as usual, is the question of whether suing some of your biggest potential customers is the best way to promote your industry. While the RIAA claims that its campaign has slowed the popularity of downloading, other surveys show little or no impact -- and some argue that the industry has actually increased the chances that music lovers will stop buying CDs and download music instead.

All the CRIA has at this point are unanswered questions. Will the court order ISPs to provide names of file sharers? Will they resist such an order? And if a case proceeds, will the court decide that downloading is legal but sharing is not? Although volunteers may be hard to come by, it might be worth having a test case just so Canadians know what is legal and what isn't.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...ess/TopStories


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Proposed Racketeering Suit Against RIAA Called 'Absurd'
Gene J. Koprowski

A proposed federal lawsuit by a woman in New Jersey alleging racketeering by major music labels is "preposterous" and has little chance of prevailing, entertainment industry lawyers tell TechNewsWorld.

The forthcoming lawsuit by Michele Scimeca, said to be a countersuit against members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), comes as the woman tries to fight off a claim that she allegedly uploaded 1,400 copyrighted songs over the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.

The woman claims her 13-year-old daughter downloaded the songs for a school project.

"The suit, at least on its face, is absurd," Thomas G. Field, Jr., a professor of law at the Franklin Pierce Law Center, a leading law school, told TechNewsWorld in an interview.

Another lawyer, leading entertainment law attorney Jay Cooper of the Los Angeles office of Greenberg Traurig, told TechNewsWorld that the lawsuit is "preposterous."

Word of the forthcoming lawsuit emerged earlier this week when a media industry trade magazine reported Scimeca had filed a lawsuit under the antimobster statute, the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known by the acronym RICO.

A call by TechNewsWorld to the clerk of the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday, February 20, 2004, however, indicated that Scimeca still has not formally filed the claim. In the conversation, the court clerk said that Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings and Motown filed a lawsuit against Scimeca on December 3, 2003, under the U.S. Copyright Act.

The court clerk said the last filing in the case was on February 9, 2004, by Scimeca, "making an application to extend time" to file a response to the Sony suit.

U.S. District Judge William J. Martini has been assigned to hear the original complaint, whose case number is 03CV5757.

The burden of proof in a racketeering case is quite high. According to lawyers, before civil liability can emerge under the racketeering laws, the complainant must demonstrate that the culpable person has committed two or more acts of racketeering.

The racketeering must include two unlawful acts, usually involving intimidation, violence or fraud.

Mobsters and thugs who interfere with interstate commerce are the targets of the federal statute under which Scimeca may bring suit. The law was passed in 1970 to prevent racketeering.

To be sure, to a regular person, receiving a letter about a lawsuit from a lawyer might feel like an act of intimidation, but, if the case is based on facts and supported by law and evidence, no judge would ever likely agree that it constituted an act of racketeering, lawyers say.

Scimeca may have a defense to the lawsuit by the music companies, however. If her child was the individual who downloaded copyrighted songs illegally, and was not acting as the agent of the mother, the mother might not be liable. "I doubt that parents are liable if kids shoplift, for example, although they might lose custody if the situation is egregious," said Field, the law professor.

But lawyers from the music companies could defeat an argument like that by demonstrating that the mother was the party who paid for the online access and was responsible for the activity on the account. Lawsuits by the record industry are being used to stop the dramatic decline in sales of recorded music, said to be 45 percent of volume during the last four years, and said to be a factor pushing music makers and distributors, such as Tower Records, into bankruptcy or insolvency.

The right of artists to copyright work is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But the suits by the music industry are not popular among many devotees of file sharing.

"Litigation is their Prozac," said Wayne Russo, CEO of Optisoft, a developer of P2P technology, located in Madrid and London. "They're just not happy unless they're suing somebody."
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32918.html


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Music Industry's Search Orders On Trial
James Pearce

Lawyers representing record labels and those acting for peer-to-peer companies on Friday argued in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney whether a controversial order used by the music industry to obtain information about file-sharing companies should be overturned.

Two weeks ago, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) obtained Anton Pillar orders encompassing 12 premises across Australia, which allowed it to search for and seize material on the premises it believed may contain evidence of copyright infringement. The following week, lawyers for Sharman Networks told Justice Murray Wilcox that they would challenge the orders on the grounds that not all appropriate evidence was presented during the discovery phase of the orders.

Sharman Networks, the parent company of the popular Kazaa software, is arguing that the case the Australian record labels bought is substantially the same case currently being fought in the United States and should therefore be set aside or deferred until the U.S. case is finished. Lawyers for the record labels argued that the two cases were distinct and independent. Early in the proceedings Friday, Justice Wilcox questioned whether this case was a duplicate of the one in the United States and indicated that it would be deferred, if it is.

"If it's not a duplication, the fact that Sharman has to fight two unrelated battles on two fronts is unfortunate," said Justice Wilcox, who indicated that the case would continue.

Lawyers for the music industry argued that some of the evidence they collected under the Anton Pillar orders took place while "the system was in action." This meant that they wanted to ascertain the technical detail of the processes involved in file-sharing via the Kazaa network. This level of detail, the lawyers said, was not being collected in the U.S. case. They added that the evidence was "of its nature, likely to be ephemeral."

"The U.S. copyright law is more concerned with structural aspects of the technology...rather than the operation of the software (as the Australian law is)," the lawyer representing the record labels told the judge as a possible reason why the evidence MIPI sought wasn't sought by the U.S. legal team under subpoena.

He said that in the United States, a person had to either personally transmit a copyright- infringing MP3 file or substantially assist that transmission, while in Australia, ancillary acts constitute infringement.

The lawyer representing Kevin Burmeister, the owner of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, which was also raided, brought up some issues for the court concerning the Anton Pillar order. He pointed out that much of the evidence seized during the raid was from Altnet, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital that wasn't itself mentioned in the Anton Pillar order as a target.

The lawyer also raised the issue that the Anton Pillar order had the effect of seizing the source code of the Altnet software. In the United States, the record labels and Altnet are wrangling over the conditions under which the code will be produced, and Altnet is now concerned that it may have lost control of that process.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5162498.html


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P2P Could End Flat-Rate Broadband
Dinah Greek

ISPs consider unpopular pricing packages to reduce costs incurred by file-share sites

Consumer flat-rate broadband packages in the UK could be replaced by tiered broadband services as soon as next year.

Speaking at the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) forum in London this week, peer-to-peer (P2P) management equipment vendor Sandvine claimed that UK ISPs are reviewing how they sell and package their services.

Broadband services in the UK are currently priced at how much bandwidth a customer wants to buy, typically anywhere from 150Kbps to 2Mbps, usually with no cap on how much data they can download.

The growing popularity of P2P sites is driving ISP costs to unacceptable levels. Since much P2P traffic does not originate from ISPs' networks it costs them more to deliver it, leading to their consideration of unpopular measures such as port throttling P2P sites, data download limits or pay- as-you-go pricing.

But ISPs are still deeply reluctant to change to alternative pricing models because of the unpopularity of such schemes with consumers.

"None is going public with this yet because there is a real risk they could lose customers, but 10 are thinking about introducing application intelligent services rather than using the speed-equals-price business model," said Chris Colman, Sandvine's EMEA managing director.

Currently, only around five per cent of broadband subscribers are deemed heavy users, but they account for 55 per cent of broadband traffic.

But ISPs expect the number of heavy users to grow as more people choose broadband for P2P applications.

A spokesman for AOL told vnunet.com: "P2P is clearly an issue for ISPs. Judging what goes beyond what is reasonable usage and what impacts on other users is difficult, but as more people go online with broadband it is entirely possible that different packages will be introduced.

"It is not on the agenda for AOL at the moment because people are happy with the flat-rate model and are still getting to grips with broadband. But you could see ISPs bringing in different products next year."
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1152929


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Ofcom Warns On Tighter Internet Regulation
Matt Loney

If the Internet industry does not better regulate itself, then public and political opinion may force tighter regulation upon it, warns Ofcom, which still has an eye on local loop unbundling

The Internet could face tougher regulation unless the industry does a better job of sorting out pressing issues, the deputy chairman of Ofcom said on Thursday night.

Speaking in Central London at the annual ISP Awards, or ISPAs, Richard Hooper warned of action on everything from improper content, spam and piracy to local- loop unbundling. If you do not regulate yourselves," said Hooper, "then the danger is that the political and public opinion machines will come down the turnpike at you. Don't underestimate the power of these bodies."

As the new super-regulator, Ofcom oversees the UK's broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, and rolls up several agencies, including the Oftel, the Radiocommunications Authority, the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Commission and the Radio Authority.

"Newspapers are intensely interested in [content, spam, and piracy] issues," warned Hooper. "You are working in an area where public opinion and political opinions can come together very forcefully."

Hooper also issued a thinly veiled warning to BT over the state of local-loop unbundling. "We will do our very best to ensure there is fair and effective competition in broadband retail and wholesale," he said, to a cheer from the audience, which comprised most of the UK's Internet industry: "We have not forgotten local-loop unbundling."

LLU forces incumbent telecoms operators -- BT, in the UK -- to open up their local exchanges and allow competitors to install their own kit and offer wholesale broadband services. It was intended to break the stranglehold that Europe's incumbent telcos enjoyed over their national markets in the 1990s, but in practice few exchanges have been opened up.

In a hint that Ofcom may take action on the issue this year, Hooper said "I hope that next year you'll do us right" -- in a reference to the Internet Hero Award, which was presented later that evening. Ofcom was not nominated, though Hooper appeared more concerned that Ofcom was not nominated for the Internet Villain Award.

The only companies making notable progress in local-loop unbundling in the UK are Easynet and Bulldog.

Easynet plans to have installed its broadband equipment in 229 local exchanges by the end of 2004. Bulldog -- which claims to be the only telco using local-loop unbundling to provide alternative products for consumers as well as businesses -- offers its services in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Cambridge and parts of South-East England
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040220/152/emi50.html


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Australian Govt To Make Email Interception Easier
AAP

THE federal Government today moved to give greater powers to spy agencies to intercept people's emails.

The Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 2004 also allows warrants to be sought in connection with the investigation of a wider range of serious offences, including terrorism.

The bill, if passed by parliament, will allow recording of calls to ASIO public lines.

It will also amend the definition of interception to ensure that the protections conferred by the Interception Act keep up with technological developments.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said as a result of recent advances in technology many communications passing over the telecommunications system now take the form of written words or images, not covered by current legislation.

"The bill will allow the definition of interception to include reading and viewing, as well as listening to and recording, a communication in its passage over the telecommunications system," he told parliament.

"The amendment will ensure that the protections afforded by the Act extend to all forms of communication passing over the Australian telecommunications system."

Other amendments allow for agencies to obtain warrants to assist in investigating terrorism offences involving firearms and state and territory cybercrime.

Debate on the bill was adjourned to a later time.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...E15306,00.html


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Korea`Web Real-Name Law' Faces Tough Challenges
Kim Tae-gyu

Civic groups and Internet companies are hooking up to oppose a pending Internet act, which urges Internet users to use real names on the online bulletin board whenever they post writings related to elections.

Sixty-three civic groups and Internet companies issued a joint statement Feb. 19 that they would resist the Internet law even if the National Assembly approves it.

``The Internet law should be scrapped because it would threaten people's freedom of expression and their access to information,'' the statement said.

The Korea Internet Corporation Association (KICA), also pledged a day earlier that it would tackle the law, because ``it will choke the Internet's two-way communication, thus impeding participatory democracy.''

The protesters also cast doubts on the constitutionality of the act's draft, which is a product of Won Hee-ryong, a majority Grand National Party lawmaker, and promised to bring the case to the Constitutional Court of Korea.

Should the law go into effect, Internet users would be required to forward their names and residence numbers, Korea's equivalent to social security numbers, to register election-associated letters on Web site bulletin boards. Web site managers would have to take measures to prevent the use of online pseudonyms or anonymous logos, and violators would face fines up to 10 million won.

In the United States, Georgia legislated a similar Internet law that criminalizes the use of anonymous messages in online communications, but the Federal Court ruled it unconstitutional, they added.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/...8032211860.htm


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FTC Fines Music And Software COPPA Violators
Roy Mark

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) collected it largest fine to date for a privacy violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Wednesday when UMG Recordings agreed to pay $400,000 to settle civil charges brought by the watchdog agency.

In a separate civil settlement, Bonzi Software, distributor of the BonziBuddy software, agreed to pay $75,000 in the first COPPA case to challenge the information collection practices of an online service in connection with a software product. Previous COPPA cases have addressed only Web site operators' information collection practices.

The FTC alleged the two firms knowingly collecting personal information from children online without first obtaining parental consent. In addition to the fines, the settlements prohibit future COPPA violations, require that the companies delete any information collected in violation of COPPA, and contain certain record-keeping requirements to allow the FTC to monitor the companies' future compliance.

The COPPA rule applies to operators of commercial Web sites and online services directed to children, general audience Web sites and online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information from children under the age of 13.

Among other things, the rule requires that these Web site operators post privacy policies, provide parental notice, and obtain verifiable consent from a parent or guardian before collecting personal information from children.

UMG Recordings operates hundreds of general audience Web sites that advertise and promote its numerous music labels and recording artists, many of whom are popular with children. UMG sites offer activities such as e-mail newsletters and updates, fan clubs and bulletin boards.

The FTC complaint charges that UMG's Web site registration forms collected extensive personal information including full name, birth date, e-mail address, home address, phone number, gender and other information such as visitors' preferences in music, sports and apparel.

According to the FTC, UMG gained actual knowledge that a child was registering on the site whenever a child entered a birth date indicating he was under the age of 13. Yet, the FTC alleges, UMG collected this personal information from children without first notifying parents and obtaining verifiable parental consent.

In some instances, UMG sent notices to parents after collecting their children's personal information. The complaint alleges that these notices violated the COPPA's parental consent requirement because they were sent after the collection of personal information and were "deficient in other regards."

The complaint also claims that, in some instances, UMG used the children's personal information to e- mail them marketing materials on other musicians and Web sites.

Bonzi markets free, downloadable software that display an interactive, animated purple gorilla on users' computers. The BonziBuddy online registration form requires users to provide a birth date and several other types of personal information. Like UMG, the FTC claims Bonzi had actual knowledge, as a result of collecting birth date information, that thousands of children were registering for BonziBuddy.

The FTC complaint alleges that Bonzi failed to provide direct notice to parents of what information it sought to collect from children or obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting such information.

It also says that Bonzi software failed to post a clear and complete privacy notice for its online service or to provide a reasonable means for parents to review the personal information collected from their children.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3315291


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

For Musicians, Solid Walls Make Good Neighbors
Sabrina Tavernise

Jay Braun, a guitarist for a New York City rock band called the Negatones, is well versed in the science of soundproofing.

"Sheetrock, sound board and plywood, over and over," said Mr. Braun, a fast-talking 32-year-old who has put up soundproofing in two New York City living spaces. "We really did want to be good neighbors."

Although musicians began recording in their homes as early as the 1970's, the migration away from professional studios to homes expanded in the 1980's, as drum machines and multitrack tape recorders came into widespread use. Now that computers and recording software are household items — new Apple computers come with a program called GarageBand — recording at home, for musicians, has become routine.

"It's becoming harder and harder to find people who do not have their own home studio," said Alan Fierstein, a SoHo-based acoustic consultant, whose own professional studio, Sorcerer Sound, recently closed.

"Twenty years ago, a studio was the only place you could make music," said Russell Simins, drummer for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a New York City band.

"Ten years ago that was less true," he said. "Now studios are being avoided. People have computers. They sit at home."

But with home studios came the noise. And the efforts to contain it.

"It's the neighbors that create the soundproofing equation," said Gary Silver, a sound designer who has been soundproofing homes and professional studios since 1984. "New York being what it is, that really makes it a problem."

For Michael Mehler, who lives directly below a home studio in a building on the Lower East Side, the most frustrating thing about the musician upstairs is his choice of instrument.

"Jumping up and down with the electric guitar is different than playing Bach," Mr. Mehler said on a recent Saturday. "It's not like he's a violinist."

Mr. Mehler added that the musician "could do it with headphones."

That is precisely the advice offered by Richard Murdock, a property manager in Manhattan, who has had to handle complaints about a tenant with a studio in a Lower East Side building.

"That boom boom boom, and the rattling of the dishes," he said. "Most of these old tenement buildings are not steel and concrete. Playing live music in an apartment, it's impossible not to encroach upon your neighbors."

Muffling music is often harder than it seems. The first mistake, Mr. Silver said, is the assumption that sound can be trapped in a room by putting up some carpets.

"I constantly have people talking about foam, fabric and egg cartons," he said. "You need mass. Sheetrock, concrete, wood. Expensive, heavy things have to be built."

Mr. Braun, like most people, began on the low end of the learning curve.

His first attempt at soundproofing came in 1996, when the band rented part of an artist's loft in Williamsburg. The band members marched to a Home Depot and bought plywood, and slabs of Sheetrock and layers of soundboard.

"We thought we were so sophisticated," recalled Mr. Braun, dressed in a rumpled suit jacket and sneakers on a recent Thursday afternoon. "We were all high-fiving each other up to the time we brought in the bass and the drum set."

But the new walls had a puzzling effect. Instead of sounding softer, Mr. Braun said, the music "seemed to have gotten louder."

It was a defining moment. Mr. Braun realized that "there is, in fact, a reason for science."

The band left the building. For a while, they rented part of a woodworking studio, where they played among table saws. Meanwhile his peers were playing in rented Manhattan Mini Storage spaces.

Mr. Braun began wrestling with physics in a basement space on Stanton Street. He hired a carpenter to design an elaborate semi-suspended ceiling in the space, which was not supposed to be lived in, but often was — several of the band members called it home from time to time. The ceiling was made of five layers of material: particleboard; two layers of sound board, which functions as a thick cushion; plywood; and Sheetrock.

"Sound is like water," said Mr. Braun, flanked by a laptop computer and a console in the band's newly rented recording space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "If you drill one hole in the wall, the sound will leak right through."

Month after month the band added new layers. They removed a water pipe that carried sound into a neighbor's apartment. They spent $20,000, by Mr. Braun's calculation. "We became handymen," he said.

They recorded albums in the space in the meantime, not bothering to wait for perfection. But the noise and activity was eventually noticed by city inspectors, and they were given two months to leave.

Mr. Fierstein said that many penny-pinching musicians skipped soundproofing altogether. Instead, bathrooms and closets become recording spaces.

"People can't afford soundproofing, but they have to have the ability to record a singer," Mr. Fierstein said. "The bathroom is the closest thing to a concert hall."

As more musicians stay at home to make music, professional recording studios have suffered. Bill Tesar, the owner of the Toy Specialists, a large sound equipment rental company, said improved technology for home recording and reduced budgets from record companies have caused business with studios to decline over the past three years. His company, in business since 1983, closed last week. "I'd say more than 60 percent of the midsize recording studios that were in business five years ago are now out of business," Mr. Tesar said. "That's not an inflated guess. There were literally hundreds of them in the New York metro area. Now, if there are 40 or 50, that's a lot."

Even freelancers are worried. Adam Kendall, who plays in an electronic music group and also records bands out of his apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, says he is concerned that the amount of work he's had the past several years will decline.

"I'm the person big studios hate," he said. But he added that Apple's release of GarageBand "is my karmic return."

He added, "I gave up hope for making money recording music."

Some musicians said home studios and computer equipment were making recording quieter. Richard Bernstein, lead guitarist for Rammstein, a German heavy metal group, said the recording process was less collaborative now, more a solitary plinking on a computer keyboard than a group playing effort.

"You don't have to listen loud anymore," said Mr. Bernstein, whose concerts feature feats of pyrotechnics.

Music today is "everyone is cooking in his own kitchen by himself," he said, in his home studio on the first floor of a former firehouse on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. "It used to be five guys playing together, but that doesn't happen as much anymore."

"You can do everything without other people's presence," Mr. Bernstein said.

Besides, says Mr. Kendall, "am I really making more noise than a guy on Sunday who is watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in surround-sound?"

There are those musicians for whom such questions are not rhetorical. Howie Statland, the musician who lives upstairs from Mr. Mehler, said he could not afford soundproofing and, even if he could, his neighbors' blaring music and yelling children would give him the right to make noise freely. He has a guitar amplifier in his bedroom and plays often. Drums were his one concession.

"The guy downstairs gets upset when I put the guitar too loud," Mr. Statland said.

A basic philosophy, however, prevails. "I've had people yell, `Shut up,' but they're out there, and I'm in here. What are they going to do?"

Not everyone records at home all the time. Many musicians still use large studios for much of their final products.

"People who are making big money music are still going to the two or three big studios in Manhattan," said Mr. Simins, whose own small recording studio is not in his home. "Britney Spears doesn't sit at home in front of her computer."

As for Mr. Braun, he sums up his hard-earned wisdom in soundproofing succinctly. "You can follow the rules note for note, but if you have an old lady sleeping downstairs, that's it," he said.

Recognizing that there are advantages to a separate studio, his band rented one in Williamsburg last year. The main criteria: no soundproofing required. The studio is in an industrial zone on a corner, just beneath the Williamsburg Bridge.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/nyregion/21NOIS.html


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

Huge Web Protest Has Websites Uploading “The Grey Album”
Jack Spratts

In a riff on Mardi Gras’ Fat Tuesday this week saw “Grey Tuesday,” and websites throughout North America and the world protesting RIAA-member EMI’s decision to stop distribution of the Grey Album, a critically acclaimed hip hop mash-up with tracks sampled from both the 35 year old Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album of 2003.

The original Grey Album had a small pressing of a few thousand copies and then was withdrawn under protest by the artist DJ Danger Mouse after EMI threatened legal action.

The web sites participating in Tuesday’s action hosted the Grey Album in it’s entirety. Many of the sites received EMI cease and desist orders but continued with the act in spite of them. In addition to the hosting sites many other sites “went grey” in sympathetic protest.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=18867




Sites That Hosted The Grey On Tuesday, Feb. 24th

(M) Productions - m-productions.org
113b.tk - 113b.tk
83tilinfinity.com/ - 83tilinfinity.com/
860design.com - 860design.com
Ai-em.net - ai-em.net
bootyhouse.org - bootyhouse.org
B.R.I.D.G.E.Z. - bridgezmag.com
Bracha Goleshet - goleshet.com
BurningAnnie.com - BurningAnnie.com
Consortium For Undermining Conservative Thought - cfuct.org
DJ Variable - windmond.dyndns.org/djvariable
Digispace Records - digispacerecords.com/
Downhill Battle - downhillbattle.org
eyesun.dhs.org - eyesun.dhs.org
Fatal Mistake - fatal-mistake.net
Free The Media - www.freethemedia.com
Horklog - horkulated.com/index.php
In My Room - inmyroom.omnihosts.net/blog
Ingenuitous - ingentious.com
Judolight - thejudomadonna.kicks-ass.org/phpBB2
Kingcanyon.org - www.kingcanyon.org
Kunfuzed Mynds - kunfuzedmynds.com
Light From An Empty Fridge - www.fridgemagnet.org.uk
Lyrical War - lyricalwar.com
Mancuso Media - mancusomedia.org
Mathcaddy.com - mathcaddy.com
Michael Herring Design - michaelherringdesign.com
michaelhanscom.com - www.michaelhanscom.com
Musical Bear - musicalbear.com
Musick For Our Children - mfoc.de
mostlymuppet.com - mostlymuppet.com My Analog Life - nofi.org
News Trolls - newstrolls.com
Normlife.com - normlife.com
trainque.com - trainque.com
Nubytes - nubytes.com
Numia - numia.org
OHM - saviorsofpop.net
Our Nation Of Thoutlessness - ournationofthoughtlessness.com
Philosophistry - philosophistry.com
Riot Grrrl Fredericksburg - rgfb.8m.com
sequent.org - sequent.org
Sir Bump - sirbump.com
Sound Slam - soundslam.com
Stephen Laniel's Unspecified Bunker - (long link)
synthesize.us - synthesize.us
aypwip.org - aypwip.org
Stephen's Web - downes.ca
Strange Interlude - strangeinterlude.net
Team Shocker - teamshocker.com
TDBRecords - TDBRecords.com
That's How It Happened - howithappened.com
The Little Room - kylehebert.blogspot.com
The MP3 Truth - themp3truth.com
The World Around Me - mancusomedia.org/blog
Thee Butterscotch Threshold - www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com
This Cathartic Nail - freethinkersmovement.com/cathartic
Vauss - www.vauss.com
Writing My Name In Water - danwinckler.com
akenanet.com - akenanet.com/grey
arellanes.com - arellanes.com
benquilter.com - benquilter.com
blueskin.bloguje.cz - blueskin.bloguje.cz
bluetack.co.uk - bluetack.co.uk
bwilms.com - bwilms.com
chezlubacov.org - chezlubacov.org
cpmwww.com - cpmwww.com
cscott.net - cscott.net
dabeatz.com - dabeatz.com
damodred.net - damodred.net
darkcalgary.com - darkcalgary.com
death-watch.com - death-watch.com/thegreyalbum
deepsea.force9.co.uk - deepsea.force9.co.uk
deliciousentertainmentmusic.com - deliciousentertainmentmusic.com
denyerec.co.uk - denyerec.co.uk
diggastyle.com - diggastyle.com
druhkram.com - druhkram.com
edgeEye - edgeeye.com
edverb.com - edverb.com
elramsay.com - elramsay.com/caught/ fatherstorm.com - fatherstorm.com
fobiopatel.com - www.fobiopatel.com foundationdeckstands.com - foundationdeckstands.com
fourstones.net - fourstones.net
francisco.terawap.co.uk - francisco.terawap.co.uk/grey_album/
ftp://ftp.whatthedale.com/dm_grey_album - ftp:// ftp.whatthedale.com/dm_grey_album
ftp://grey:album@amplify.myftp.org - ftp:// grey:album@amplify.myftp.org
www.girlsareweird.com - www.girlsareweird.com
gisleson.com - gisleson.com/blog
ginaric.com - ginaric.com
gomercentral.com - gomercentral.com
grey.green-blue.org
grey.servemp3.com - grey.servemp3.com/~grey
greytuesday.raxian.com - http://greytuesday.raxian.com/
grinder.freeshell.org - grinder.freeshell.org
hektik.org - hektik.org
hiphophobbyklub.nl - hiphophobbyklub.nl
hiphopinjesmoel.com - hiphopinjesmoel.com
hipinion.com - hipinion.com/grey.php
horseforce.net - horseforce.net
insanefame.com - insanefame.com
jaydeflix.com - jaydeflix.com
jeweledplatypus.org - jeweledplatypus.org
joegrossberg.com - joegrossberg.com
joopy.nu - joopy.nu
keepitonthedownload.com - www.keepitonthedownload.com
kembrew.com - kembrew.com
kiosk-of-love.com - www.kiosk-of-love.com
laslo.co.uk - laslo.co.uk
ld50.com - ld50.com
m4hireentertainment.ipbhost.com - m4hireentertainment.ipbhost.com
members.lycos.nl/freedownload1500/music - members.lycos.nl/ freedownload1500/music
mijnkopthee.nl - mijnkopthee.nl
mine.nu/ - greyalbum.mine.nu/
miserychick.net - miserychick.net
music2g.com - music2g.com
musiccollection.nu - musiccollection.nu
naraznik.vozovna.cz - naraznik.vozovna.cz
nebulose.net - nebulose.net
null-a.org - null-a.org
offmessage.com - offmessage.com
oniochalasia.tk - oniochalasia.tk
oracle.zenic.net - oracle.zenic.net
partiallyblind.com - partiallyblind.com
peteashton.com - peteashton.com
phark.typepad.com - phark.typepad.com
pieceoplastic.com - pieceoplastic.com
piratetv.net - piratetv.net
radioaid.com - radioaid.com
rawr.net - www.rawr.net
reddoktoba.com - reddoktoba.com
rednoise.org - rednoise.org
republicum.se - republicum.se
retchandcrynge.com/ - retchandcrynge.com/
savedelete.com - savedelete.com
seren.net - seren.net
sixfoot6 - sixfoot6.com
slumdance.com - slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/ 000647.html
splinterdata.com - splinterdata.com
spygeek.com - spygeek.com
stoneorchids.net - stoneorchids.net
stungeye.com - stungeye.com
sugarbooty.com - sugarbooty.com
tastypopsicle.com - tastypopsicle.com
teamgoodguys.com - teamgoodguys.com
textz.com - textz.com/greyalbum
thegreyalbum.blipsqueak.com - thegreyalbum.blipsqueaks.com
tomservo.net - tomservo.net
trash.dork.cx - trash.dork.cx/grey_album
undergroundmusicshoppingchannel.com - undergroundmusicshoppingchannel.com
wheresthebeef.co.uk - wheresthebeef.co.uk
somethingentertainment.co.uk - somethingentertainment.co.uk
vauss.com - vauss.com
www.damodred.net - www.damodred.net www.gregsmithies.sytes.net - www.gregsmithies.sytes.net
www.neilchilson.com - www.neilchilson.com
www.seldik.com - www.seldik.com
www.sleep-dream-die.com - www.sleep-dream-die.com
www.xanga.com/plus_c - www.xanga.com/plus_c



Sites That Have Turned Grey

2guysnogirlnawebsite.com - 2guysnogirlnawebsite.com
90% Crud - george.hotelling.net/
Academix Records - www.academixrecords.com
Action Slacker - actionslacker.com
albumgeek.com - albumgeek.com
Allure Promotions - allurepromotions.tk
thehiatus.net - thehiatus.net
andreastein.org - andreastein.org
A Whole Nother Studio - awholenotherstudio.com
AmpMinot.com - AmpMinot.com
Aural Delight - auraldelight.net
angryguy.org - angryguy.org
BarfBarfMarina - cigarettesandwater.com/bbm
beatsareus.com - beatsareus.com
Belita Adair Music Medium - belitamusicmedium.com
Belita Adair Music Medium - www.belitamusicmedium.com
Belmont University Copyright Society - belmontcopyright.com
Bigmalik - bigmalik.com
Blogcritics.org - Blogcritics.org
BobbyBurbank.com - BobbyBurbank.com
Boing Boing (!) - boingboing.net
Brian Hamilton - bdhamilton.com
burntchicken.com - burntchicken.com
Comic Toast - comic-toast.com
crashingjets.nu - crashingjets.nu
Culture Kitchen - culturekitchen.com
Discarnate - discarnate.org
Disturbed Confusion - disturbedconfusion.com
cyphersex.com - cyphersex.com
Solhosting - http://www.solhosting.com
Dorx.cx - www.dorx.cx
Download Music Mart - downloadmusicmart.com
DrEaMs In DiGiTaL - www.DrEaMs-In-DiGiTaL.tk
desktopsareus.com - desktopsareus.com
Damn Your Ayes - dya.manxblogs.co.uk/
Dustyhouse.org - Dustyhouse.org
Everichon - everichon.com
Ewawoowa - ewawoowa.com/ewawoowa/
Filters Magazine - filtersmag.com
Focus Media - www.focusmedia.org
grey.green-blue.org - Gentle Jones - gentlejones.com
gether.org.uk - gether.org.uk
GobletWillRockYourCocksOff.com - GobletWillRockYourCocksOff.com
Grabbing Sand - grabbingsand.com
Gravatt - integrationresearch.org/gravatt
entroporium.com - entroporium.com
somethingentertainment.co.uk - somethingentertainment.co.uk
HipHopMag.com - HipHopMag.com
jimmature.blogspot.com - jimmature.blogspot.com
greytuesday.holotone.net - greytuesday.holotone.net
Industrial Something - industrialsomething.org
International Music Industry Reform Association - imira.org
G.A.ME - kickgame.com
KRBS-lp 107.1 FM - radiobirdstreet.org
nerdysouth.com - nerdysouth.com
hornbuckle.org - hornbuckle.org
Kottke - www.kottke.org
Lyrical Headbustas - littleeyeontheworld.com - littleeyeontheworld.com
m4hireentertainment.ipbhost.com
Man, Myth, Morland - morland.theoretic.org
Miniscule Wombat - minisculewombat.com
Music For America - musicforamerica.org
maximumletdown.com - maximumletdown.com
Nu-teztament.com - nu-teztament.com
injusticebusters.com - injusticebusters.com
OSBRadio.comand - OSBRadio.comand
One Man And His Blog - 20six.co.uk/bulentyusuf
Pixod - pixod.com
Redlucite - www.redlucite.org
Sampo: The Journal Of Abundant Media - www.charm.net/~pete/ pete.cgi
radicaldreamer.org - radicaldreamer.org
www.ill-natured.com - www.ill-natured.com
rantings And Ravings 2.0 - rantings.shaghaghi.net
skylab.ws - skylab.ws
Shift - www.shiftfilm.com
Simpatico Buttons - http://www.simpaticobuttons.com
Skratchlab Radio - www.skratchlab.com
Slabathon - slabathon.cjb.net
Stephen's Stuff - stephen.speedwebdesign.com/
strangerecords.com - strangerecords.com
Oz Productions - www.ozproductionsmusic.com
Submit Response - submitresponse.co.uk/mt
Subterranean Notes - hine-digital-art.com/weblog/weblog.html
Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons - Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons The Comatorium - thecomatorium.com The Counter Flip - jonferrer.com/counterflip
The Weinerboard - wienerboard.com The Wireless Weblog - thewireless.blogspot.com
Thoughtrepository - www.thoughtrepository.com
Ultimateinsult - www.ultimateinsult.net
WSMF - wsmf.org
vlokfeest.net - vlokfeest.net
Yahtzee Ninja - livejournal.com/users/yahtzeeninja
agentshiphop.com - agentshiphop.com
alesandra.net - alesandra.net
andread.typepad.com - andread.typepad.com
angelfire.com/ks3/acidsuicide - angelfire.com/ks3/acidsuicide
angelsonico.com - angelsonico.com
atmaspheric | endeavors - www.atmasphere.net/mt
badadmin.net - badadmin.net
balderstone.ca - balderstone.ca
bangsplatpresents.com - bangsplatpresents.com
bassnote.tk - bassnote.tk
blog.condimentking.com - blog.condimentking.com
blog.jonhenshaw.com - blog.jonhenshaw.com
blogged.co.uk - blogged.co.uk
blogger bloggen blogs - onlinetagebuecher.de
blogundanga.com - blogundanga.com
carolynhack.com - carolynhack.com
citizenkeith.com - citizenkeith.comcitizenkeith.com
cloudsinthehead.org - cloudsinthehead.org
colorwhirl.livejournal.com - colorwhirl.livejournal.com
condsc.com - condsc.com
consumerwhore.biz - consumerwhore.biz
d8uv.com - d8uv.com
damien.nu - damien.nu
darius.hipjones.com - darius.hipjones.com
deepshell.net - deepshell.net
donewaiting.com - donewaiting.com dork.cx - dork.cx
dqshrine.com/~draquestar - dqshrine.com/~draquestar
draves.org - draves.org
ecaon.homelinux.org - ecaon.homelinux.org
electricsheep.org - electricsheep.org
fairsharers.com - fairsharers.com
flam3.com - flam3.com
fotap.org - fotap.org
free-conversant.com/thom - free-conversant.com/thom
losratones.com - losratones.com
freon84.blogspot.com - freon84.blogspot.com
fujichia.com - fujichia.com
garrettguillotte.com - garrettguillotte.com
geekpunk - www.geekpunk.net
geocities.com/stevejvancamp/VanCamp.html - geocities.com/ stevejvancamp/VanCamp.html
giagia.blogspot.com - giagia.blogspot.com
grillo.tk - grillo.tk
groonk.net - groonk.net
groups.msn.com/Cryingbutstrong/messages.msnw - groups.msn.com/Cryingbutstrong/messages.msnw
hiphopmusic.com - hiphopmusic.com
hobbsnfam.com - hobbsnfam.com
home.earthlink.net/~starwrek - home.earthlink.net/~starwrek
homepage.ntlworld.com/s.huda - homepage.ntlworld.com/s.huda
idledays.net - idledays.net
indexconcept.com - indexconcept.com
j-san.net - j-san.net
jashter.com - jashter.com
john-book.com - john-book.com
jointz.com - jointz.com
karlmuzziklab.blogspot.com - karlmuzziklab.blogspot.com
ctown.blogspot.com - ctown.blogspot.com
leisurely.com - leisurely.com
livejournal.com/users/avalanche641 - livejournal.com/users/ avalanche641
livejournal.com/users/fullofstarz - livejournal.com/users/fullofstarz
livejournal.com/users/helloapollo - livejournal.com/users/helloapollo
livejournal.com/users/sedesdraconis - livejournal.com/users/ sedesdraconis/
livejournal.com/users/soyfeo408 - livejournal.com/users/soyfeo408
livejournal.com/users/umopepisdn - www.livejournal.com/users/ umopepisdn
livejournal.com/~thirty2seconds - www.livejournal.com/ ~thirty2seconds
lwray.mit.edu - lwray.mit.edu
make-believe.org - make-believe.org mediaandshopping.co.uk - mediaandshopping.co.uk
members.tripod.com/RomanaImperia - members.tripod.com/ RomanaImperia
mindnumbles.org - mindnumbles.org
miqrogroove.com - miqrogroove.com
modal.hipjones.com - modal.hipjones.com
muteme.cz - muteme.cz
netzoo.net - netzoo.net
www.nomig.net - www.nomig.net
nuttnet.net - nuttnet.net
odawg003.blogspot.com - odawg003.blogspot.com
p2pnet - p2pnet.net
phallacy.net - phallacy.net
pentdego.com - pentdego.com
perceptionalism.com - perceptionalism.com
peterparkeronair.com - peterparkeronair.com
porcelainrocks.com -porcelainrocks.com
potatoland.com - potatoland.com
radiobots.tk - radiobots.tk
raef.dyndns.org - raef.dyndns.org
randypavelich.com - randypavelich.com
redvolume.com - redvolume.com
remoconscious.com - remoconscious.com
rhapsodic.org - rhapsodic.org
rickbradley.com/chron/20040224/ - rickbradley.com/chron/ 20040224/
rybanaruby.net - rybanaruby.net
scheme23a.com - scheme23a.com
savehiphop.org - savehiphop.org
scottandrew.com - scottandrew.com
sjarvis.com - sjarvis.com
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zenarchery - zenarchery.com


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FBI Warning Labels To Appear On CDs
AP

The FBI said Thursday it is giving Hollywood film studios, music companies and software makers permission to use its name and logo on their DVDs, CDs and other digital media in hopes the labels will deter consumers from making illegal copies.

FBI officials said the idea was conceived jointly by the agency's cyber crime division and representatives of the entertainment and software industries, who claim they've lost billions of dollars due to digital piracy.

"This anti-piracy seal should serve as a warning to those who contemplate the theft of intellectual property, that the FBI will actively investigate cyber crimes and will bring the perpetrators of these criminal acts to justice," said Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division.

Like the warning messages that have appeared on VHS tapes and DVDs for years, the new labels spell out that unauthorized copying and distribution of digital content is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

It will be up to the individual entertainment companies and software manufacturers to decide whether to display the new FBI warnings. Representatives of the various trade groups for the film, software and music industries said Thursday their members were studying whether to affix the warnings on packaging or directly on the CDs and DVDs, so it's unknown how soon they may begin to appear in the marketplace.

U.S. software companies lose up to $12 billion a year to piracy, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. Music companies lost more than $4.6 billion worldwide last year, according to the RIAA, and movie industry officials pegged their annual losses from bootlegged films at more than $3.5 billion.

The entertainment and computer industry has tried to stem piracy by making CDs and DVDs harder to duplicate. But the rise of free file-sharing networks on the Internet the past five years has made it easy for millions of individuals to distribute songs, movies and software worldwide.

The companies have tried civil litigation against firms who enable online file-sharing and last year, the recording industry launched an ongoing wave of lawsuits against individual file-sharers.

"We hope that this is an attention-grabbing reminder to music fans," said Brad Buckles, executive vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America. "Piracy is no victimless crime."

Monroe, whose FBI cyber division was created 18 months ago, said cyber crime is now the agency's third priority behind terrorism and counterintelligence.

Fred von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he doubts the new warning program will work.

"I'm under no illusions that this kind of label is going to change public perceptions," he said, adding the labels will likely get the same reaction that many people have had to the warnings that appear at the start of movie rentals.

"They found that much more annoying than edifying, and I think that's probably how this will be viewed."

Von Lohmann added the warnings are misleading because they don't explain to consumers that there are exceptions under copyright law, such as one that allows people to make backup copies of their software and other media.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html

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Labels Quietly Seeking P2P Deals
Brian Garrity

The record business is showing increased interest in selling music through peer-to-peer services.

Billboard has learned that the major labels are engaged in private conversations with companies connected to popular P2P services with an eye toward making authorized label content available through the likes of Kazaa and Grokster.

However, significant stumbling blocks remain. The labels do not want to align themselves too closely with services that traffic in unlicensed content, especially in light of the music industry's litigation agenda.

The P2P operators, meanwhile, are reluctant to filter out unlicensed content, as the labels are demanding.

"It's a fundamental problem," one major-label technology chief says. "We'd like to legitimize the P2P systems as much as possible. But we are not going to be setting up our shop in the middle of a street where everyone is distributing pirated goods. It just doesn't make sense."

Most of the talks are with Altnet, a commercial service distributed through Grokster and Kazaa. Exploratory discussions with P2P operators also are taking place on a limited basis, sources say.

Altnet sells digital downloads in much the same way as a mainstream service like Apple's iTunes Music Store. But consumers search for the Altnet files on P2P platforms.

"The major labels are all willing to explore this," says Derek Broes, executive VP of worldwide operations at Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Altnet. "We discuss potential scenarios with them quite often. But striking the right chord is difficult."

Major-label sources say they are not interested in allowing their content to be sold through P2P networks unless network operators filter out unlicensed content and flood their networks with commercial files.

P2P operators -- many of which are embroiled in copyright infringement lawsuits with the recording industry -- have long held that they cannot control the flow of content through their networks. The argument is a key component in their legal defense.

Reaching a resolution on the filtering issue in the midst of litigation is a difficult balancing act, executives from both camps say.

Broes acknowledges that the label decisions in this realm are not entirely being made by "the business leaders" at the labels.

"Those decisions are still being made by the attorneys," he says. "That complicates it."

Altnet is having greater success in the indie-label community, where it claims content deals with more than 30 labels.

In the latest example, Altnet announced a deal Feb. 13 with Artemis Records. Artemis executives say that they are viewing distribution through Altnet as an anti-piracy tool, as well as a commercial opportunity.

"The re-education of the consumer has to start somewhere," says Jordan Flaste, Artemis director of new media. "The new Napster and iTunes are good services, but if I'm a kid already using Kazaa, why am I going to stop?"
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4407352


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Music Industry's Search Orders On Trial
James Pearce

Lawyers representing record labels and those acting for peer-to-peer companies last Friday argued in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney whether a controversial order used by the music industry to obtain information about file-sharing companies should be overturned.

Two weeks ago, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) obtained Anton Pillar orders encompassing 12 premises across Australia, which allowed it to search for and seize material on the premises it believed may contain evidence of copyright infringement. The following week, lawyers for Sharman Networks told Justice Murray Wilcox that they would challenge the orders on the grounds that not all appropriate evidence was presented during the discovery phase of the orders.

Sharman Networks, the parent company of the popular Kazaa software, is arguing that the case the Australian record labels bought is substantially the same case currently being fought in the United States and should therefore be set aside or deferred until the U.S. case is finished. Lawyers for the record labels argued that the two cases were distinct and independent. Early in the proceedings last Friday, Justice Wilcox questioned whether this case was a duplicate of the one in the United States and indicated that it would be deferred, if it is.

"If it's not a duplication, the fact that Sharman has to fight two unrelated battles on two fronts is unfortunate," said Justice Wilcox, who indicated that the case would continue.

Lawyers for the music industry argued that some of the evidence they collected under the Anton Pillar orders took place while "the system was in action." This meant that they wanted to ascertain the technical detail of the processes involved in file-sharing via the Kazaa network. This level of detail, the lawyers said, was not being collected in the U.S. case. They added that the evidence was "of its nature, likely to be ephemeral."

"The U.S. copyright law is more concerned with structural aspects of the technology...rather than the operation of the software (as the Australian law is)," the lawyer representing the record labels told the judge as a possible reason why the evidence MIPI sought wasn't sought by the U.S. legal team under subpoena.

He said that in the United States, a person had to either personally transmit a copyright-infringing MP3 file or substantially assist that transmission, while in Australia, ancillary acts constitute infringement.

The lawyer representing Kevin Burmeister, the owner of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, which was also raided, brought up some issues for the court concerning the Anton Pillar order. He pointed out that much of the evidence seized during the raid was from Altnet, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital that wasn't itself mentioned in the Anton Pillar order as a target.

The lawyer also raised the issue that the Anton Pillar order had the effect of seizing the source code of the Altnet software. In the United States, the record labels and Altnet are wrangling over the conditions under which the code will be produced, and Altnet is now concerned that it may have lost control of that process.
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/person...9169314,00.htm


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FBI Ratchets Up Fight Against Music Piracy
Erika Morphy

"If you're on a P2P network, you could be bumping up against all the worms and viruses carried by other users of that network. And you could become a carrier of worms and viruses that are written by misanthropic hackers specifically to spread via popular P2P networks," the FBI warns.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched the latest salvo in the war against digital piracy, joining forces with such organizations as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) to combat this multibillion dollar problem.

But for all the hoopla -- representatives from all groups spoke at a Los Angeles press conference -- the new campaign largely amounts to relaunching some low- tech weapons that already have been tried. However, the FBI will be wielding them this time.

The government agency announced the start of a letter campaign to users and potential users of peer-to-peer networks. It also unveiled a new anti-piracy seal and warning text to be displayed on future copyrighted materials.

Do's And Don'ts

"It is our hope that when consumers see the new FBI warning on the music they purchase, both physically and digitally, they will take the time to learn the do's and don'ts of copying and uploading to the Internet," said Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president and director of anti-piracy. The seal is meant to reinforce the fact that making unauthorized copies or uploading music without permission are "serious crimes with serious consequences, including federal prosecution," he said, "and consumers should be aware of them."

The seal, which is similar to the FBI logo in many respects, has five stars but no laurel leaves; also, the shield is displayed at the top of the blue field. At some date in the relatively near future -- nothing specific has been decided -- the anti-piracy shield will start popping up on the warning screens of videos and DVDs, as well as the millions and millions of CDs, games, software packages and other digital media that are produced each year.

The primary targets of the campaign are the users of the peer-to-peer networks that have flourished in the wake of Napster's demise. "If P2P software isn't configured correctly, it can open up your entire hard drive for others to see and download," the FBI warns. "If you're on a P2P network, you could be bumping up against all the worms and viruses carried by other users of that network. And you could become a carrier of worms and viruses that are written by misanthropic hackers specifically to spread via popular P2P networks."

At Your Own Risk

Certainly, it is true that users log onto P2P networks at their own peril. Besides the legal issues, P2P applications -- along with spyware and Trojans -- are a huge security risk, not only for personal users but also for corporate networks, according to threat-analysis research from I.T. security firm TruSecure.

For example, the firm found that up to 60 percent of the files collected via Kazaa are viruses, Trojan horse programs and backdoors. Indeed, mega-disaster MyDoom was seeded, in part, via the popular music Web site.

"Hackers are putting Trojans in Kazaa using words like 'XP,' 'crack,' or 'porn' in hopes that they will be picked up by users," Bruce Hughes, director of malicious code research at TruSecure's ICSA Labs, told NewsFactor.

Seal the Deal

But somehow one gets the impression that it is the US$3 billion in lost revenues that most concerns the participants -- at least the private-sector cadre. It is debatable how effective the new push will be. Much, of course, depends how hard the FBI will start policing these networks and whether it makes examples of individuals caught in its sweeps.

The feds, in general, have been stepping up investigation and prosecution of online crimes, Paul Robertson, director of risk at TruSecure, told NewsFactor. "They are going after more people and getting better and better at it," he said. And they are garnering better and more coordinated cooperation from their international and foreign counterparts. "That is a huge accomplishment as well," he added.

It is unlikely that a new seal and a letter campaign will stem the tide of illegal online music sharing. Despite the high-profile stories of preteens and grandparents caught up in the RIAA's lawsuits, the impact of the hardball tactics has been slight, says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, a company that tracks P2P activity.

"Even if they keep suing 500 people a month for the rest of our natural lives, the odds are against them getting to any one specific individual -- after all, there are 100 million people online swapping files," he told NewsFactor.

Basically, he said, the music industry missed the boat. It should have been there to offer a viable alternative to the P2P sites when people began flocking to them.

Now, he said, the best solution is to make the point of the transaction the payment vehicle. "I think having ISPs licensed to distribute music is the ultimate solution." For now, the FBI is going to give its way a shot.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtm...story_id=23216


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Cashing In On Ring Tones
Bob Tedeschi

TURNS out, teenagers are happy to pay for digital music - as long as they are forced to listen to cheap facsimiles of songs on speakers the size of a dime.

O.K., maybe that is a bit unfair. But there is no denying that ring tones, those synthesized melodies like 50 Cent's "In Da Club" that are programmed to play when a cellphone rings, are fast becoming a big business for record labels and mobile phone services. Last year, cellphone users worldwide, most of them young people, spent $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion on custom ring tones. Total music industry sales worldwide for 2002, the last year for which figures are available, were $32 billion, according to the IFPI, a trade group.

The American ring tone market is a couple of years behind Europe and Japan's, and is just beginning to take off, with an estimated $80 million to $100 million sold over the wireless Web last year. Cellphone users in the United States are expected to spend $140 million to $200 million this year.

For record labels, this bonanza is good news from what has been the music industry's bugaboo, the Internet, where peer-to-peer services like Kazaa and Grokster have sprung up to allow the industry's most avid customers to download, free, to a personal computer just about any song they want.

But the hopes of record companies for extra riches from selling ring tones could be tempered by the emergence of other Web-based businesses like Xingtone, which has started selling a $15 software kit that allows consumers to turn digital music files, whether acquired legitimately or illegitimately, into better-sounding "ring tunes" - cutting the labels and wireless carriers out of the deal.

Until now, there has been no effective way to cut a clip from a song available digitally as an MP3 file and put it on a cellphone.

Xingtone's software gets around that obstacle. The president of Xingtone, Brad Zutaut, says that more than 40,000 people have downloaded the software, most of them in the last two months when the company was giving it away to build awareness.

Mr. Zutaut said that music labels and cellphone companies could reasonably view Xingtone as a threat, but he contended that they should look at him as a potential business partner.

"This is quite an attractive market to us," said John Rose, executive vice president of the EMI Group, the London-based record label. "We think it'll be a significant multibillion-dollar market over the next couple of years as the new handsets roll out."

For music labels, ring tunes may prove significantly more profitable than ring tones, which generally generate publishing royalties of roughly 15 percent. With ring tunes, licensees also pay master recording royalties of 30 to 50 percent, industry executives said.

That is where Xingtone could make a big difference. On one hand, by making it easy to create one's own ring tunes, it could force cellphone companies and record labels to sell their own tunes at lower prices. On the other, it could also serve as a vehicle to encourage wider sales of music in various forms.

Mr. Zutaut pointed to the approach of Sugarcult, a pop band that will include a limited version of Xingtone's software on its new CD's, allowing users to make their own ring tunes. To make ring tunes with other music, users would buy Xingtone's full software program, and Sugarcult would split the revenue.

"It's an incredible promotion vehicle," Mr. Zutaut said.

Mr. Zutaut also contends that the practice is legal because it represents a fair use of music that consumers already own. Industry executives, and representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America, declined to comment on Xingtone's legality.

Many in the industry are watching Xingtone, as well as emerging hardware technologies that could allow people to share ring tones between phones, because they could damage the market.

"The threats to this business,'' a Yankee Group analyst, Adam Zawel, said, "will only increase over time."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/23/te...rtne r=GOOGLE


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Colleges Regulate File Sharing, Downloading
Erin Anthony

So, have you seen the Paris Hilton videos, the ones that aren’t in grainy night-vision? What about the Super Bowl? Did you look away for one second and miss the infamous “wardrobe malfunction?” Have you heard the newest Kanye West song?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should probably come out from underneath that rock and begin file sharing.

Most students have seen the videos or heard the music and probably have copies of them stored on their computers. Cherish them. Someday such indulgences may no longer be available at Lehigh.

Many students have committed the heinous act of file sharing. They enhance their own digital libraries with copyrighted songs and movies stolen from the rich. But the rich will not take it anymore.

The Recording Industry of America and Motion Picture Association of America have launched an attack on file sharers. In the United States alone, record labels have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against more than 900 people who use file sharing networks, according to the Los Angeles Times.

During the spring of 2003, Library and Technology Services received 148 cease and desist orders from copyright holders, The Brown and White reported. The students cited were required to remove copyrighted materials from their computers, according to Vice Provost Bruce Taggart.

The university has not had to divulge the identities of any offenders, and no students have been referred to the office of judicial affairs, said Chris Mulvihill, assistant dean of students.

The record and movie industry are targeting people involved in person-to-person file sharing. This most often involves downloading software like Kazaa to access copyrighted files. The service allows for users to freely download music and movies from one another without the consent of the artists.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association targets high-volume song traders who have slightly less than 1,000 to 3,500 songs stored on their computers and available for others to download, according to the Toronto Star.

Even though the Internet seems anonymous, it is not. Each computer can be identified through an IP address. When high-volume users are pinpointed, officials match the IP address to subscriber information.

In Lehigh’s case, computers would be identified as belonging to Lehigh’s ISP. The university could then be required to divulge the identities of the individuals involved. Lehigh has only been required to tell users to delete the files and has not been forced to disclose names to copyright holders. However, colleges faced with subpoenas under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act must cooperate and provide copyright holders with the identities of the offenders.

Rather than dealing with legal action, many colleges and universities opted to police their own networks. The most severe cases of policing involve the University of Florida and the United States Naval Academy.

The University of Florida (UF) developed a program called ICARUS (Integrated Computer Application for Recognizing User Services), according to the St. Petersburg Times. ICARUS monitors network activity on UF’s dorm intranet, which is used by 9,000 students.

The program shuts down file sharing at sites containing copyrighted music, movies and games. If students continue to download files after warnings, ICARUS will restrict their Internet use to on-campus sites for five to 30 days.

Some institutions have gone a step further. In November 2002, the United States Naval Academy cracked down on illegally downloaded movies and music. One hundred midshipmen were stripped of their computers, according to The New York Times.

Most universities are taking less severe approaches to contain illegal file sharing. The Washington Post reported that students at Pennsylvania State are required to pay for downloads. Using Napster, now a paid service, students will have access to more than 500,000 songs and 40 radio stations. The service fee is included in the university’s technology fee of $160 per semester.

The possibility of Lehigh implementing a similar fee based program was mentioned a September 2003 Brown and White article. Taggart said Lehigh would consider this option after seeing how it fared at other universities first.

Student reactions to a fee based program are mixed.

“I guess it depends on the fee,” Apurva Upadhyay, ’06, said. “I personally do not think that downloading is wrong, but I do feel guilty that I can get it for free when others cannot. But I think Lehigh would have to charge for music in a manner that would still make it cheaper than other internet services and the cost to rent a movie or buy a CD.”

Other students refuse to pay for downloads.

“I would never pay to download music,” Matt Kershener,’04, said. “With how much money these artists make from selling records and going on tour, not to mention their endorsements. How can you feel sorry for them? They still make more money than most people will ever see in a lifetime. Besides, if their album is really good enough to buy, people are going to buy it anyway.”

Instead of charging for downloads, Lehigh, like Northeastern University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles, chose to limit the bandwidth available for downloads through a technique called “traffic shaping.”

Bandwidth can be thought of as a pipe. The bandwidth speed indicates the rate of information flow to the Internet, like water through different pipe widths.

Lehigh students are allowed to download two gigabytes per 72-hour period. If a student should exceed two gigabytes of uploads or downloads, they will be placed in the “Penalty Box” for 72 hours. The Penalty Box automatically reduces the connection speed to all off-campus Internet sites. Students sentenced to the Penalty Box experience slower loading of Web pages, dropped instant messenger conversations and general problems connecting to the Internet.

File sharing programs such as Kazaa are the primary cause of students exceeding their off-campus internet traffic limit, according to the LTS.

For now, file sharers at Lehigh are safe. They can download music hampered only the occasional annoyance of a slow connection.
http://www.bw.lehigh.edu/story.asp?ID=17243


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CD Sales Rise, but Industry Is Still Wary
Chris Nelson

For the last three years, bad news about the music industry has been as steady as a synthesized drumbeat. But a turnaround that began quietly last fall has become unmistakable with the success of Norah Jones's new album, "Feels Like Home." The CD, which recently sold more than a million copies in its first week in stores, helped extend a nearly consistent five-month string of industry growth, as measured by weekly sales compared with year-earlier periods.

So why are so few people in the music world ready to celebrate an industry comeback?

"The past four or five months has turned the predictive ability of all of us on its head," said Michael Nathanson, an investment analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company who specializes in the music business. "I think people are holding their breath."

Although executives at some music labels and retail outlets are proclaiming a turnaround, much of the industry remains clouded by uncertainty. The planned merger of the music divisions owned by Sony and Bertelsmann is awaiting regulatory approval, for example, while Time Warner's music group is still ironing out details of its sale to an consortium of private investors.

And certainly the uptick in music retail sales since last September has not been enough to keep the parent company of the 93-store Tower Records chain, MTS, from filing for bankruptcy protection. Meanwhile, while song sales on iTune and other licensed downloading services are growing, unauthorized song swapping on the Internet still outnumbers paid downloads more than a hundredfold. Last week the recording industry's trade group sued 531 additional computer users, accusing them of illegally trading music files.

"We're still suffering as an industry," said Monte Lipman, the president of Universal Records, whose artists include the rapper Nelly and rock group 3 Doors Down.

And yet, it has been hard to ignore signs of a rebound. First-week sales of Ms. Jones's new album were only part of the industry's good news for seven-day period that ended Feb. 15. Through that period, the most recent for which data are available, album sales for the beginning of 2004 were up 13 percent from the comparable period of 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales.

It was the biggest Valentine's Day sales week since SoundScan began operating in 1991. And it was also the first week ever in which downloaded song sales topped two million.

Several factors are at work in the rising sales figures, Mr. Nathanson said. For starters, by the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, CD sales had dropped so significantly that they were easy to top. This year's growth of 13 percent for the first six weeks compares with a decline of 3.6 percent in the corresponding period last year.

Last fall also benefited from a strong release schedule, with albums that became hits from the rappers OutKast and Ludacris; the pop singers Ruben Studdard, Rod Stewart and Josh Groban; and the rocker Sheryl Crow. Price cuts have also helped; some major-label albums now sell for closer to $10 than the nearly $20 that was formerly the industry standard.

Artists who appeal to music-buying baby boomers - like Ms. Jones; Mr. Stewart; the former Doobie Brother, Michael McDonald; and the retro-crooner Harry Connick Jr. - continue to contribute a significant portion of overall sales. And Universal, for one, is hoping boomers flock to CD's due this year from Stevie Wonder and Elton John.

The success of "Feels Like Home" by Ms. Jones, the follow-up to "Come Away with Me," her 2002 debut album, which sold eight million copies, bodes well for the industry, said Bruce Lundvall, the president and chief executive for jazz and classics at EMI Music, which owns the Blue Note label on which Ms. Jones records. Until recently, "there's been an awful lot of trash out there,'' Mr. Lundvall said, "and I think a lot of people are disenfranchised."

While the music labels have tended to blame Internet music sharing and CD copying for the slump of the last three years, the industry's critics have cited high CD prices and substandard music as the real reasons that annual album sales fell to 687 million units by last year, down by almost 100 million units, or 12.5 percent, from 2000.

Whatever caused the slump, it has forced the industry to try new marketing tactics, said Will Botwin, the president of Sony's Columbia Records Group. Columbia, for instance, sought to stoke demand for Mr. Connick's recently released "Only You" by first issuing a Christmas album, "Harry for the Holidays," in October. That was a reversal of the time-honored strategy of issuing Christmas collections to ride the success of recent hit albums. In the first two weeks after its Feb. 3 release, Mr. Connick's "Only You" sold 360,000 copies in stores.

The industry's big challenge, though, is still unauthorized online trading of music files. Even as download sales through Web stores like as iTunes are increasing, so is the number of people who illegally share music files, according to BigChampagne, which tracks file swapping. At the end of 2003, the most popular services for unauthorized file sharing had 5.6 million users, compared with 3.93 million a year earlier, a spokesman for BigChampagne, Eric Garland, said. Those users are now illegally trading about 250 million songs each week.

Although there is no hard data to support their view, music labels and retailers say that legal action taken against computer users accused of illegal song swapping has helped drive people back into stores for music. When the Recording Industry Association of America filed its first round of suits in September, it received a raft of bad publicity. But two rounds of litigation so far this year against more than 1,000 computer users have prompted little public outcry.

"People are over this, 'I should get my music free,' " said David Munns, the chairman and chief executive of EMI Recorded Music North America. "I think there's a tide turn in the American psyche on that."

With the industry insisting that piracy remains a serious enough problem to warrant lawsuits, it might not make good public relations sense for executives to crow about a turnaround in sales.

And music specialty retailers, for their part, know that general merchandisers like Wal-Mart and Target are cutting into their earnings. Michael G. Spinozzi, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at the Borders Group, the big record and book retailer, acknowledged the effect the big discount retailers were having. But he added that record companies could drive sales up across the board if they devoted more resources to developing new talent instead of relying on back catalog sales.

Recording executives realize that it will take more than a Norah Jones album to bring stability back to the industry. That is why, in the months ahead, executives will be closely watching the public's reaction to albums from Janet Jackson, Avril Lavigne and the Beastie Boys, among others.

"The sense from both labels and retail is a desire to be cautiously optimistic," said Rob Sisco, the president of Nielsen Music, which operates SoundScan. "And I can understand that because we're coming off of very severe times."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/23/bu...rtn er=GOOGLE


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Do Lawsuits Deter File-Sharers?
Jason Straziuso

GREG Kullberg first started downloading free music off the internet as a college freshman in 1996.

He stopped — mostly — after the recording industry started filing lawsuits against file- sharers last year.

"Right away when I heard about it I actually went home and uninstalled my software," the 25-year-old Boston software consultant said. But like many users, he still downloads: "I'd say one song a week instead of before, it was maybe 20 a day."

The music industry, which filed suit against another 531 internet users last week, says its tactics are slowing the tide of free downloads, citing cases like Kullberg's.

A study released in January that surveyed 1,358 internet users in late fall found the number of Americans downloading music dropped by half from six months earlier, with 17 million fewer people doing it nationwide.

But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued 1,445 people since September, with the latest batch of 531 coming this month against people in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., and Trenton, N.J. Most of the earlier cases have been settled, for an average of $3,000 each.

"I think the RIAA's campaign is clearly and demonstrably having a tremendous effect, I'm just not sure to what end," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, an online media tracking firm.

Graham Mudd, a researcher at comScore Networks, said the number of consumers paying for music via services like Apple's iTunes and Napster pales in comparison to the file-sharing sights like Kazaa. But he says the lawsuits are decreasing free downloads.

"The faucet is still absolutely on," he said. "I just think the flow may have been slightly limited."

Mitch Bainwol, the chairman and chief executive of the RIAA, said the record two million songs legally sold last week, mostly on iTunes and Napster, prove the lawsuits are educating users.

"There will always be piracy — there is on the physical side, there will be on the online side — but most people won't do it when they understand the legal consequences," Bainwol said.

The January study from comScore and the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 52 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds downloaded music last spring, but only 28 per cent did after the lawsuits were filed.

Like Kullberg, others say their habits have changed.

Marissa Sinclair, a 22-year-old Philadelphia school teacher, said she and a half dozen friends stopped downloading because of the lawsuits.

Jeremy Spurr, 26, a financial planner in Boston, said the suits, which were filed only against people who share music, have stopped his friends from sharing songs with each other, but not downloading it for themselves.

Kullberg and Spurr both say the suits have driven file sharers to private servers or anonymizing services that mask internet users' identities.

"I think people realise that, hey, if we're going to do this, we have to be quiet," Kullberg said.

BigChampagne's Garland said he thinks the January study — which did not measure computer use but surveyed users only about their habits — shows the lawsuits' biggest effect was educational: People now know file sharing is illegal so they lie about doing it.

"They have effectively put music downloading in the same stigmatized category as teen smoking," Garland said. "People know when they should be shy about an issue."

Garland said that while Apple hopes to sell 100 million US99c songs in one 12-month period, "10 billion, or more than 100 times that, will be downloaded in MP3 form for free."

Industry numbers can be confusing. The NPD Group found the number of songs downloaded increased from September 2003 to November 2003, when it was 166 million. Nielsen/NetRatings, though, found the number of unique users on Kazaa dropped by half to 7.3 million users in December 2003 from a year earlier.

Still, many point out, that's 7.3 million users compared with 1,445 lawsuits.

"No matter what they do, it's not going to work," Spurr said. "To me the lawsuits are useless because the internet is about sharing."
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...despite_suits/


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Spinning Off The Web

Independent music stores face a rocky reality in the age of file sharing and easy downloads. But some local store owners roll with the punches.
Louis Hau

Fifteen-year-old Samantha Schultz, a student at Dixie Hollins High School, plunks down $29 to buy a four-compact-disc live album by Phish, a band she first heard when a friend burned her a CD of their music.

Brian Mellgren, the assistant manager at Daddy Cool Records on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, expresses relief after Samantha leaves with her purchase.

"That one worked in our favor," Mellgren says. "I overhear quite a bit "Don't buy it, I can burn it for you,' or "I got it for free off the Web last night.' "

That has the 24-year-old Mellgren wondering what the future holds for such stores as Daddy Cool.

"I just love CDs, I love getting new CDs," he says. "I'm worried that people don't share that thrill, and that frightens me."

Mellgren has good reason to be scared. According to Billboard magazine, four retail music chains and four wholesale distributors filed for bankruptcy protection or were liquidated in 2003. The trade magazine also estimates that upwards of 1,000 music stores closed during the year, about twice the number expected a year earlier.

The recent shakeout in the industry has been so severe that just one company - Trans World Entertainment Corp. of Albany, N.Y. - now controls what remains of the once-prominent national and regional chains Camelot Music, the Wall, the Wherehouse, Strawberries Music, Spec's, Disc Jockey and SecondSpin.com. Trans World also owns FYE, Record Town and Coconuts Music & Movies.

Even pioneering music chain Tower Records of Sacramento, Calif., has been hit hard. After closing stores and liquidating inventory during the past few years, heavily indebted Tower finally filed for bankruptcy protection this month.

It's a trend that's also playing out in the Tampa Bay area. A little more than a year after taking over Planet Grooves on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater, Park Avenue CDs of Winter Park closed the Clearwater store in January because of poor sales. The Music Network, the Norcross, Ga., parent of Turtle's Music, went belly up last year. Daddy Cool Records closed its Sarasota store in late 2002 and another one in October just a few doors down from its current location in St. Petersburg.

The shakeout has been toughest for music retailing's endangered species: the independent record store.

Competition is hardly new for independents. "Mom and pop" record stores have always been under pressure from larger rivals - department stores in the pre- and early-rock era and large retail chains such as Musicland, Sam Goody and Tower in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

But the competitive pressures have multiplied many times over. Big-box discounters such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City price many of their new CD releases at or below cost. The music is used as a "loss leader" to pull in customers who might buy more profitable merchandise such as TVs and DVD players, according to Scott Krugman, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.

Then there's the Internet boom. File-sharing software such as the original version of Napster and the more recent Kazaa have grabbed the most headlines and have spurred legal action by record labels. But the wave of the future may be music subscription services and 99-cent-a-song downloads, led by the successful rollout of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store. For those who don't want to burn their own CDs, sales of CDs by Amazon.com, Half.com and other online merchants present another shopping option that didn't exist in the pre-Web days.

Phil Leigh, an industry analyst who heads Inside Digital Media Inc. in Tampa, thinks the recording industry should make its peace with music downloading. Leigh points to study data suggesting that the explosive popularity of Napster in its initial incarnation as a file-sharing site was based more on its vast catalog and instant access to music than the fact that its downloads were free.

The subsequent success of iTunes and the popularity of digital music players, such as Apple's iPod, provide further evidence that consumers are ready to pay for Internet distribution of music, even if the recording industry is still wary, Leigh says.

While that may be good news for record companies in the long run, Leigh predicts it will also sound the death knell for music retailers, particularly independent ones.

"Unless they're trust babies or they've got a wealthy spouse, these businesses are not going to last," Leigh says. "All businesses need some kind of growth, but . . . growth in prerecorded CDs is as dead as Gen. Custer."

Sales forecasts from Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., appear to bear out Leigh's long-term outlook.

In a recent report, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff projects U.S. CD sales will rebound from $10.7-billion in 2003 to about $11.3-billion in 2006, then begin a decline the following year, sliding to $9.3-billion in 2008. He expects rapid revenue growth in fee-based downloads and online music subscriptions as more American households connect to the Internet via high-speed connections.

"Music labels should get out of the plastic business," Bernoff says in his report. "Spend less energy on manufacturing and distributing a shrinking number of CDs and focus more on the new source of growth - downloads and subscriptions."
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/02/22/Bu..._the_Web.shtml


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Your Money

Citrix Systems Inc. advanced $1.15, or 6 percent, to $20.41, for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. The maker of file-sharing software for clients such as Mary Kay Inc. will have ``strong'' growth in 2004 revenue and earnings, Tom Ernst, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners, wrote in a report. He raised his rating to ``outperform'' from ``peer perform.''
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...gME&refer=home

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Tuning Out Radio
Ben Rayner

For all their "playing what we want" marketing ploys, the JACKs and the BOBs in this country still pull from playlists of only about 600 songs apiece which, sadly, is way more variety than most stations bother to offer that emphasize the same, tired batch of artists you'll hear on CHUM or Q-107, anyway. What has all this hard-fought freedom brought us? Phil Collins, Meat Loaf, Aerosmith and Hall and Oates. Great to finally hear those guys getting their due on radio, isn't it? Been a long time coming.

Meanwhile, the most successful mainstream milieu for "breaking" an artist these days remains the TV commercial. Moby knew it, the Dandy Warhols knew it and, most recently, the Flaming Lips appear to have caught on, offering up their Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots single, "Do You Realize??," for round-the-clock airing on a Mitsubishi commercial. Although I can honestly say I never, ever need to hear that song again, the ubiquitous "Do You Realize??" ad has likely been responsible for nearly as many record sales in the past month as the likeable Lips have managed over the past 20 years and 10 albums. It has also helped the band reach an entirely new, demographically broad-ranging audience that never would have come into contact with its music via radio.

Until now, anyway: I heard "Do You Realize??" on that bastion of mom 'n' pop soft rock, CHUM-FM, while riding in a cab last week. Good on the Lips, I guess, but when TV advertising is responsible for breaking new songs at radio, the airwaves are far worse off than we thought.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969483191630


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Hand Delivered Radio
Jack Spratts

What’s the opposite of “Broadcast”? Narrowcast? Well in this case, try microcast. The show is called Acts of Volition Radio. It’s all about obscure gems and it comes from Canada. Each program is prerecorded, then hosted from a server, not streamed, and available to you in however long it takes to download a 30 to 60 megabyte file. It’s yours to keep of course, although the CRIA may chime in with something to say about that, even if the new artists themselves are happy to be featured.

The host is Steven Garrity, a gentle musical elitist with a sweet sense of humor (he’s knows he's an elitist, but he’s from Canada so how superior can he be?)

This is a great way to do a show. I’d like to give it try myself. It’s both low and high tech and at the same time points up the folly of the RIAA’s policy of hyper control. It sounds like fun. If you do get one of his programs why not share it…

I am.

http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=18869


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He actually said “Preserving the quality of life for individual consumers.”

Federal Attorney Warns U.S. Copyrights, Patents under Electronic Siege
Bob Mims

America's aging safeguards for copyrights and patents are proving increasingly ineffective as schemes for copying and illegally sharing digital information grow more sophisticated, an intellectual property expert says.

Yet the economic danger posed by such erosion of product and technology rights is practically unknown, lamented Thomas D. Snydor II, an attorney for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

"People need to understand how critical these rights are -- not just to the success of businesses, but to preserving the quality of life for individual consumers," he told a Wednesday breakfast meeting of the Utah Information Technology Association.

Copyrights, patents and trademarks not only protect revenue for inventions and methodology, but provide seed money for further entrepreneurism. They also act as a quality guarantee for products consumers buy, Snydor said.

Predicting technological advances will continue at a dizzying pace, Snydor said it will be inevitable that "all the systems of [defining and protecting] intellectual property rights are going to be challenged.

"How do we make those rights function as intended, and remain relevant moving into the new millennium?" he asked, noting that in the past decade alone, patenting activity in the United States has increased threefold.

Today, the nation's music and movie industries struggle against millions of computer users sharing files illegally. Further, new copying technology emerges almost in tandem with the recording giants' latest protection schemes -- and encrypted file-sharing programs are making it more difficult to ferret out offenders.

While the recording industry has been aggressive in prosecuting pirates, Snydor said only swift attention by the nation's lawmakers can ultimately rebuild crumbling copyright barriers.

"There is a basic threat to the continued relevance of those rights as more forms of intellectual property become digitized," he said.

Earlier, Utah House Speaker Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, agreed that technology-related issues "have a transformation going on" in the business of the Legislature. More than 40 bills introduced this session are somehow tech-related, he said.

Among those are bills to create a Child Protection Registry to shield minors from harmful e-mails; require public libraries to filter personal computers used by children; and restrictions on "radio frequency tags" -- tiny transmitters that track customers shopping habits -- and "spyware," programs that are secretly placed on consumers' PCs to report similar data to third parties.

Senate Majority Whip John Valentine, R-Orem, identified Utopia, a $540 million proposal to install fiber-optic broadband service to 18 Utah cities, as among the hottest of the tech debates.

"It's a huge issue that is polarizing people," he said. "It is so close right now in the Senate that I don't know where this is going to go."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...al/8001391.htm


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Even cheaper to use SoulSeek

How To Never Lose Pepsi's iTunes Giveaway
jonknee

After the Super Bowl, Mac fans everywhere went to their local convenience stores to look for the iTunes labeled Pepsi bottles. If your store was like mine, you probably went home empty handed. It takes a few weeks for new bottles to make it down the supply chain, but they are now finally at most stores. Read on to find out how to never get a bottle that doesn't win.

Pepsi has stated they believe they will have to pay for about 1/3 of the 100 million songs it's giving away. That means 2/3 of the people that win don't care about iTunes. So I say, let's let them have the unlucky caps. They weren't going to cash them in anyway.

Your first task is to find a store that has the coveted sugar water. Just look for the yellow caps. Diet Pepsi, Pepsi and Sierra Mist all have them.

Once you've captured a bottle, use the below image as a guide to try and uncover its destiny.
http://www.macmerc.com/article.php?sid=1270


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Low-Tech 'Hack' Takes Fizz Out Of Pepsi-iTunes Promo
Jim Hu

It doesn't take a code breaker or a math whiz to lift songs from Apple Computer's iTunes online music store--it just takes a good pair of eyes and a trip to the corner store.

iTunes fans have "hacked" a high-profile Pepsi promotion aimed at giving away 100 million songs through special codes marked on the underside of bottle caps. The codes can be entered on the iTunes site to download a single for free. One in three bottles is a winner, but it turns out that the markings can be read without removing the cap.

CNET News.com confirmed that it is not only possible to pick out winning bottles in advance; careful scrutiny can reveal the full 10-digit redemption code, meaning no purchase is required to get a free iTunes single courtesy of Pepsi.

"I've always been looking under caps whenever they had a giveaway," said Jon Gales, Webmaster for MacMerc.com, an online community for Macintosh users and developers, which published a detailed description of the code-grabbing technique on Wednesday. "I thought it was human nature. People have been doing it for years."

The bottle cap loophole could disrupt Pepsi's ambitious marketing campaign, which kicked off with splashy TV spots that aired during the Super Bowl and also took a shot at file-swappers. The giveaway comes amid growing interest in music as a promotional tool for soft drinks and other products. Pepsi's archrival, Coke, has also jumped into digital music, launching a digital download store in Europe.

Pepsi said that as a precaution against prying eyes and other shenanigans, the company restricted the number of codes a given customer could redeem in a day.

"We always put redemption limits in place on promotions like this," said Dave DeCecco, a Pepsi spokesman, "but we found that most consumers played by the rules."

Apple declined to comment.

Macmerc Webmaster Gales said he discovered the exploit shortly after seeing the bottles in stores. But he said he paid for the bottles after selecting winners.

"The store's happy because they're still making a sale, and Pepsi is happy too," Gales said. "The difference between this game and other games is you don't have to save caps, send them away and wait 8 weeks to get a T-shirt. The instant gratification made it more fun to get a winner."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5162098.html


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Thomson And Philips Move Away From Consumer, Cut Jobs
Junko Yoshida

The return to profitability by European electronics giants Thomson and Philips signals that their drastic restructuring strategies are working, the companies said after reporting strong fourth quarter 2003 financial results.

Still, the two companies differed sharply on where to go from here, and how each plans to execute plans for building a new core business that will be better shielded from the brutally competitive and low-margin battleground of consumer electronics.

Neither Thomson nor Philips, despite the fame of their brands and their similar roots as leading TV manufacturers, wants to be known primarily as a consumer electronics company.

Thomson is angling to become a one-stop shop for megamedia companies such as News Corp., after completing a series of landmark acquisitions that included Grass Valley and Technicolor. The French company, which owns the leading consumer brands RCA and Thomson, is moving quickly into the more profitable professional video market by offering broadcast equipment, post-production and replication services and broadband access products such as set tops. Thomson's new mantra is to serve those in “the content creation, distribution and access” businesses.

Thomson's focus on content creators, distribution and access businesses makes sense, as long as media companies continue to merge. Thomson's Dehelly said, “It will give [media conglomerates] comfort if they know that one company — like us — can make sure their content can securely stay encrypted throughout the video chain,” he explained.

Doherty agreed. Thomson offers “a bridge that works.” He said. That includes "embedded Meta data and rights management, from camera to consumer.”

Beyond the satellite market, Thomson is also emphasizing IP video boxes. Michelle Abraham, senior analyst at In-Stat said, “IP video boxes have enormous growth potential, but this requires investment by telcos."

IMS Research has forecast annual shipments of satellite set tops reaching 31.8 million units by 2008, while TV-over-DSL boxes could reach 1.4 million units.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20040219S0001


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Microsoft Creates a Stir in Its Work With the U.N.
John Markoff And Jennifer L. Schenker

The chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, won widespread applause in January when he trumpeted an agreement to give $1 billion in software and cash to the United Nations as part of a job-training program for the developing world.

But Microsoft did not seek any attention for a much smaller amount that it contributed earlier to pay some travel expenses for a United Nations business standards group.

That payment, critics say, had a much more opportunistic motive than the big donation.

Several software industry executives and technologists contend that Microsoft has been moving behind the scenes to undercut support for a set of business-to-business electronic transaction standards jointly developed by the United Nations and an industry-sponsored international standards group.

Microsoft and senior United Nations officials said that the accusation was false and that the company's contributions were relatively modest, complied with United Nations guidelines, and did not unduly influence decision making.

Microsoft and I.B.M. have been trying to gain backing for a competing approach to writing Internet software, which the two companies argue would be a better, more general solution for business-to-business computer communications than the original United Nations-developed standard, known as "electronic business using extensible markup language,'' or ebXML in the trade.

The previously hidden dispute may seem arcane, but it revolves around computing standards that are likely to help determine control over an emerging generation of Web services software that is designed to automate buying and selling through networks of computer connections. Many industry executives predict that the new software will ultimately supplant computer operating systems as the linchpin of the industry.

This new fight is occurring as Microsoft, the world's largest software company, moves to the final stages of its legal dispute with antitrust regulators in Europe over its right to integrate features of its competitors' products into its Windows operating system. On another front, Microsoft is being challenged by an array of open-source programs - starting with Linux but expanding to other arenas - that are being developed by a loosely organized group of software programmers and distributed at little or no cost.

"Microsoft would love to live in a proprietary world," said Robert J. Glushko, director of the Center for Document Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and an initiator of the ebXML standards effort. "They are finding it difficult to live in a standards-based world."

Several technologists who have participated in the United Nations-supported standards-setting effort said the dispute was a new, critical stage in the long fight between Microsoft and its competitors over what they see as Microsoft's overly aggressive business practices. One United Nations official said the bitter industry infighting was inescapable.

"It doesn't matter which side you are on with this company," said the official, Klaus-Dieter Naujok, a software designer who is the chairman of the United Nations standards committee involved in the dispute. "You're doomed if you bring them in, and you're doomed if you exclude them." Microsoft paid Mr. Naujok to write a position paper on Web services last year.

Microsoft executives said that their critics were complaining because they are in danger of being left behind by the Microsoft-I.B.M. push in Web services, which the executives said would be based on standards that give the two companies no commercial advantage over others.

"There has been an incredible amount of momentum around Web services,'' said Steven Van Roekel, Microsoft's director for platform strategy. "This was about industry momentum more than anything else.''

Microsoft's critics see it differently. They point out that Microsoft did not initially participate in the development of the open ebXML standard, which does not require users to rely on its proprietary Biztalk Server product line. The standard was originally developed as a low-cost alternative to a traditional business-to-business computer standard called electronic data interchange.

But as the new standard started gathering considerable support in Asia and Europe, they say, Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., began to mount its own efforts to blunt its momentum. Despite that, the Pentagon recently adopted ebXML.

Last month, the dispute moved beyond the insular world of experts who set technical standards when Jean-Pierre Henninot, a French official who wrote a letter charging that the United Nations business standards group - the Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, or Cefact - was privately turning its back on the ebXML standard.

The letter, which will be discussed at a United Nations meeting this spring, was prompted in part by a decision last August by the United Nations group to end its cooperation with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, the industry standards body with which it developed ebXML.

Critics contend that Microsoft drove a wedge between the two groups by quietly providing financial support to several members of the United Nations standards body.

According to several people involved in developing the ebXML standard, Microsoft first hired two members of a small subcommittee of the United Nations group in late 2002 and early last year. In March 2003, a Microsoft employee introduced a software framework for electronic business to the United Nations subcommittee as an alternative to ebXML.

The issue recently came to a head after Microsoft's opponents learned that the company had paid the travel expenses to Europe and Asia for three United Nations committee members. In September the officials, including two Microsoft employees also serving on the committee, traveled to six countries on a trip that critics said was a thinly disguised effort to promote Microsoft and I.B.M.'s software alternative for developing Web services, known as the business collaboration framework or B.C.F.

I.B.M. was not involved in the travel payments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/23/te...gy/23soft.html