Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - Jan. 25th, ‘03

[JackSpratts]

Subpoena Stampedes

Score another big win for the RIAA. Say what you will about them (they’re sharks) but give them the credit they’re due, anything less is head in the sand.

On Tuesday they won their fight with the ISPs. From now on a record company or anyone, even you or your enemy, can receive detailed information about an ISP customer as long as a clerk is convinced the customer has shared copyrighted files. Previously subpoena warrants were issued by judges only. Verizon had protested the requirement, saying it was bad for business, bad for precedent, expensive, unwieldy and intrusive but the judge disagreed. Strongly. Cary Sherman president of the RIAA thinks the decision was a Great Day for America, but he might want to read his history. Warrant-less searches have been tried before and have ended in disaster. Germany comes to mind. Verizon plans an appeal.

As bad as it’s getting in the States, the Lillehammer has really dropped on another poor kid in Norway, where a court ruled in favor of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), fining student Frank Bruvik 100,000 crowns ($14,520 gulp) for building a Napster clone site and running it for just three months. That now makes them 3 for 4 in the North Countries. The IFPI has previously won suits in Sweden and Denmark and the one case they did lose - Norways’ “DVD Jon” - will be appealed.

Extra Extra

Not one to lose international momentum Hillary Rosen this week at the Midem conference in southern France proposed an extra “new idea” (it’s actually been kicked around for a while). ISPs should pay for all those files we trade. As you can imagine the ISPs weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect but if it happens they will of course pass the extra costs along to us. I suppose it’ll eventually work like this - it’s complicated so follow closely:

Hapless customers download files. Hapless customers send extra big checks to ISPs. RIAA takes extra big checks and hires extra big lawyers. Extra big lawyers use extra big checks to buy extra big SUVs. Extra big SUVs are perfect for extra big vacations and have extra big phones that lawyers use to send hapless customers to extra big prisons. So get your friends to practice baking extra big cakes with extra big files inside.

In an extra big twist the RIAA has denied the report. Reuters stands by it.

Are we clear?

When the internet is finally dead and we have to trade files on foot will Hillary’s clone subpoena the shoe companies (with the consent of the courts of course)? Stay tuned.

Every time you buy a record or pay to see a movie a fair bit of your cash goes to industry lobbying groups like the RIAA, MPAA and the IFPI. They use it to create laws like these. Indeed, without your money these laws wouldn’t be possible. Something to think about.

And your little dog too.

The very bright spot this week was the not totally unexpected announcement of the resignation of Hillary Rosen, storm trooper extraordinaire and head lobbyist for the “Damn the Peoples’ Rights” RIAA. Citing personal reasons (“They hate me, they really, really hate me!”) she’ll be melting at the end of the year. Can’t come too soon toots. You and your even creepier pal Valenti have done more harm to this fair land than you’ll ever know. Ding dong the witch is dead.


Enjoy,

Jack.










"She can punch you in the face, and you're still smiling after she does it."

"I never thought of myself as one of those separatist dykes," she says, "But I suppose if people see me that way, that's fine."

Hating Hilary
Matt Bai

Hilary Rosen paces the creaking oak floor of the Oxford Union debate hall, eyeing the empty pews the way a Roman gladiator might have surveyed the Colosseum. Rosen is the chair of the Recording Industry Association of America, and in a few hours she'll be standing here in a black formal gown, getting ripped to pieces. Along with several other industry executives, she's charged with defending the proposition: "This house believes that the free- music mentality is a threat to the future of music."

Of course, the students of "this house" believe nothing of the sort. "I myself have about 900 megabytes of music on my computer," Dave Watson, the union's president, tells me before the debate. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a group of students who've never downloaded music. You can't stop them, as long as it's free."

"Are you nervous?" I ask Rosen. She's checking out the two doors students will exit through to cast their votes - one for "ayes" and another for "noes." She looks a little hurt by the suggestion. "I just want to win," she says.

Most people in Rosen's place would consider themselves lucky just to make it out alive. Reviled by college kids, music fans, and more than a few recording artists for the RIAA's role in forcing the shutdown of Napster, Rosen is seen as the embodiment of a venal corporate culture hurtling toward obsolescence. It seems she'll stop at nothing to frighten those who share music online instead of buying it in a store - hacking into networks, threatening universities and businesses, sending out subpoenas to unmask music-swappers. Some Hilary haters have protested her speeches and urged others to mail her excrement. On a scale of odiousness, devotees of the Web site Whatsbetter?com rated Rosen just below Illinois Nazis but better than Michael Bolton (and way above pedophile priests). On the more serious side, death threats once prompted Rosen to travel with security.
"People take their free music seriously," Rosen says wryly.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/hating.html

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Norwegian student fined for online music piracy
Reuters

A court has fined a Norwegian student over his song-swap website in a ruling hailed by the music industry on Thursday as a victory for giants like EMI and Sony whose revenues have suffered from online music piracy.

The case, the first in Norway on downloading of music without copyright holders' approval, followed similar rulings in neighbouring Sweden and Denmark in favour of the industry.

The court in the southern city of Lillehammer ruled on Wednesday that Frank Bruvik broke the law when he made his own version of the now-closed U.S.-based website napster.com, enabling users to download songs by clicking on links on his site, napster.no.

"This was the most high-profile piracy site in Norway for downloading music and an important victory for us," Saemund Fiskvik, director general of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Norway, told Reuters.

The IFPI sued Bruvik together with Norway's TONO performing rights society, the Nordic Copyright Bureau and major music companies including EMI EMI.L , BMG [BERT.UL], Sony Music and Universal Music EAUG.PA V.N .

Bruvik, 24, was ordered to pay 100,000 crowns ($14,520), about a fifth of the music industry's original claim for estimated losses of sales caused by napster.no. Big music labels blame online piracy for a dramatic drop in CD sales.

"I call it even," said Bruvik's lawyer Magnus Stray Vyrje.

"The ruling said it is illegal to distribute the links, but that it's legal to use them. That is a victory for all Internet users in Norway," he told Reuters, estimating Norwegians make about 60-100 million pirated music copies per year.

Bruvik would probably appeal, he added. The deadline for any appeal is four weeks.

Fiskvik said Bruvik, who had developed the program as a school project in 2001, shut down the service after the lawsuit was filed late that year -- after a few months in operation.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2098420

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Quicker than you can say “Taliban”
Southern Methodist University Officials Ban All Peer-To-Peers
Katy Blakey

After checking his mailbox, Clark Castle, a sophomore advertising major, tore open a letter from the Information Technology Services Department and quickly discarded it on his way out of Hughes-Trigg. Like most of his peers he ignored the letter, which warned students about using file-sharing software applications to download music or movies that may be copyright protected.

"I didn't really give the letter much thought," said Castle. "It seemed just like another letter warning us about consequences that would never really be put in effect."

That night as Castle sat at his computer, he opened up the LimeWire program, which he had regularly used while at SMU, and began downloading new songs. After downloading a few songs he shut down his computer for the night.

"The next morning, I tried connecting to the Internet and it wouldn't let me," said Castle. "I thought at first that the server was just down until I tried logging on to a friends computer and could check my e-mail."

An e-mail from Information Technology Services told Castle that the network had detected illegal use of file sharing software and that his network connection had been disabled. To regain access to his connection he would have to either show proof that he had been given authorization to download copyrighted material or confirm in writing that he had deleted the program from his computer.

"I immediately deleted the program from my computer and wrote a letter and took it up to the center," said Castle. "When I got up there, I didn't even need to turn in my letter because there were already forms to fill out regarding the violation."

Until classes resumed for the Spring 2003 semester, users on the SMU server were able to download copyrighted computer games, movies and material from programs like LimeWire and Kazaa Media Desktop without any consequences. Starting this semester, students will no longer be able to download these commonly used file sharing programs.

If use of one of these programs is detected, the user will receive one warning to remove the program from their computer. If the user continues to participate in file sharing, his case can be taken to the Student Judicial Affairs and SMU Legal Affairs.
http://www.smudailycampus.com/vnews/.../3e2c92ebce33c

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Faster than you can say “Southern Methodist”
Islam Officials Destroy Tapes and CD's in Pakistani Province
AP

Officials in a deeply conservative Pakistani province destroyed audio and video tapes and compact discs today as part of a campaign to wipe out material the authorities deem obscene.

In front of a crowd of more than 1,000 people, officials doused gasoline on the materials piled up in a bazaar in Peshawar. The police chief, Tanveer ul-Haq Sipra, then set the pile on fire.

"We are determined to fulfill our promises about Islamization and cleaning up society," said Maulana Haji Ihsan ul-Haq, general-secretary of the Muthida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/in...ia/19TAPE.html

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RIAA monitors downloads while Carnegie Mellon U cuts off students
Matt Rado

A seemingly innocent download of the popular Disney film Monsters, Inc. gave one student a firsthand demonstration of Carnegie Mellon’s copyright policies.

First-year H&SS student Nayoung Joe was participating in what has become a fixture in college dorm rooms across the country when on December 12 she received a surprising email. Computing Services informed her that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was able to download copyrighted material off of her computer, and that Computing Services would suspend her Internet service for at least one full semester.

She thought a simple apology would correct the matter, but when Joe responded to the email, she was told she must wait at least one semester before CMU would consider reinstating her access.
http://www.thetartan.org/97/14/news/2843.asp

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The Deal
Amy Harmon

The major recording companies said yesterday that they would not seek government intervention to prevent digital piracy, in a compromise with computer companies that may hurt the movie industry's efforts to win support for its own anti-piracy plan.

As part of the agreement, the Recording Industry Association of America said that under most circumstances it would oppose legislation that would require computers and consumer electronics devices to be designed to restrict unauthorized copying of audio and video material. Technology executives have hotly opposed such measures, which they say would slow innovation, make their devices more expensive and do little to stop piracy.

In turn, the Business Software Alliance and another technology group, the Computer Systems Policy Project, said they would not support legislation that seeks to clarify and bolster the rights of people to use copyrighted material in the digital age, which the recording industry has opposed as unnecessary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Microsoft Introduces CD Copy-Protection 'Fix'
Bernhard Warner

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O announced on Saturday the introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry's side.

Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or "burning," new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers.

For example, most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too.

Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's 6758.T proprietary technology simply by scribbling a magic marker pen around the edges of the disc, thus enabling playback on any device.

Microsoft believes it may have come up with a solution. The new software is called the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit.

It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.

The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2068044

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Hillary: ISPs should pay for music swapping
Reuters

A top music industry representative said Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.

The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy.

Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source--Internet service providers (ISPs).

"We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera.

"Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981281.html

RIAA Denies Story
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,46652,00.html

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U.S. becoming Big Brother society: Report
Associated Press

San Francisco — The United States is evolving into a Big Brother society as technology advances and post-Sept. 11 surveillance increases, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a new report.

"The reasonable expectation of privacy has been dramatically diminished," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, said in an interview following Wednesday's release of the report "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society."


"A combination of lightning-fast technological innovations and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from an oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life," the report said.

A growing "surveillance monster" is emerging, it argues, in which the private and the public sector are monitoring Americans with video cameras to the extent that it is becoming almost impossible to walk the streets of major cities without being filmed. Yet there are virtually no rules governing what can be done with those tapes.

Computer chip technology currently in use to speed motorists through tollbooths might one day be used on identification cards to allow police officers to "scan your identification when they pass you on the street," the report said.

The study points to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is exploring amassing a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records. There are few privacy laws to prevent businesses from selling the government such information, Mr. Steinhardt said.

"If we do not act to reverse the current trend, data surveillance - like video surveillance - will allow corporations or the government to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day," the report said.

Moreover, under the Patriot Act - the anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks - the government can demand that libraries turn over reading habits of patrons. Authorities can more easily attain telephone and computer wiretaps, and conduct searches in secret without immediately notifying the target.
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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New WinMx Trojan? UTC’s Lion says maybe. http://www.unitethecows.com/forums/s...?threadid=5625

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Pentagon database plan hits snag
CNET News.com

Washington — A Pentagon antiterrorism plan to link databases of credit card companies, health insurers and others — creating what critics call a "domestic surveillance apparatus" — is encountering growing opposition on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a bill on Thursday to halt the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program. A representative said on Wednesday that if passed, the legislation would suspend the TIA program until Congress can "review the data-mining issues."

Even if Congress never acts on Mr. Feingold's proposal, the unusual step of trying to suspend a military program may prompt the Defense Department to review the TIA program in a way few other tactics could. The bill will also provide TIA critics with a focal point for activism.

If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor vehicle departments for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists. It's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Over the last two months, scrutiny of TIA has been growing, with newspaper editorials claiming that one of the project's leaders, Adm. John Poindexter, is unfit for the job because of his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. As a protest gesture, activists and critics of TIA have posted Mr. Poindexter's personal information on-line, which may lie behind the removal of information from the TIA Web site on at least three occasions.

On Tuesday, a coalition of civil liberties groups sent a letter to Congress asking that hearings be convened to investigate TIA.

"Why is the Department of Defense developing a domestic surveillance apparatus?" the letter asked. "What databases of personal information would TIA envision having access to?"


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Battered Record Execs Set to Face the Music
Fri January 17, 2003 09:38 AM ET
Bernhard Warner and Merissa Marr

Global recorded music sales look set to fall for the fourth straight year in 2003 thanks to piracy and the economic downturn, and its bosses are desperate for solutions.

Executives gathering for the global music industry conference Midem in southern France this weekend know it's make or break time.

The bruised industry needs a new formula as fans increasingly spend their disposable income on video games and "burn" their own CD compilations while labels desperately seek a new crop of long-lasting stars.

Major music labels have so far responded by slashing jobs, axing B-list artists and trimming back their bloated businesses. However, the industry appears no closer to a long-term solution than last year and talk of consolidation among the big five music companies is growing louder by the day.

"2003 will be the tipping point. The fundamentals continue to deteriorate and consolidation will have to happen," said Michael Nathanson, media analyst at U.S.-based investment research firm Sanford Bernstein.

"The outlook is miserable. It's going to take at least two years to get out of this and a lot of people will disappear in the process," one music executive predicted.
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=2064138

Music Official: Online Piracy Costs Jobs
Bernhard Warner

In its harshest indictment yet of Internet piracy, a top official of the music industry said Sunday Europe's 600,000 music professionals risk losing their jobs unless the industry fights back.

"They are all potential victims of online music piracy," Jay Berman, the CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told music executives in his annual address at the Midem music conference in southern France.

"In truth, online music piracy is not about free music. The music creators and rights holders, denied the right to choose how their music is used and enjoyed, are in fact paying the price," Berman said in a fiery speech.

The music industry is facing its fourth straight year of declining sales. Executives blame the rise of Internet file-sharing services such as Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus, plus rampant CD copying by consumers and organized criminal groups.

Berman challenged music executives at the major music labels, which include Warner Music, Vivendi Music, BMG, EMI and Sony Music, to tackle its nemesis head-on.

He urged them to pump more money into promoting industry-backed subscription download services and step up lobbying efforts to bring a new piece of European legislation, The Copyright Directive, into law on the local level.

Berman accused the telecommunications industry of derailing the Copyright Directive, which has won support in Brussels, but still requires 13 of the 15 European Union member states to adopt on the local level.

If passed, it would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to play a more vigilant role in the protection of copyright-protected materials. The ISPs have challenged the directive on the grounds that it put them in the costly role of having to police their customers.

Compared to the United States, which has the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Europe lacks strong laws that would penalize individuals for distributing and reproducing copyrighted materials such as music, films and software.

Berman also criticized comments made by chart-topping British pop star Robbie Williams, who Saturday called file-sharing "great."

There are a lot of artists out there who haven't signed Robbie-like deals," Berman said, referring to Williams' estimated $125 million mega-deal with Britain's EMI.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2070260

International music business closes ranks to fight Internet threat
Audrey Stuart

Faced with the seemingly unstoppable flood of free music accessible on the Internet the world's music business is finally pulling together to fight back, industry trade body chiefs believe.

"I sense a huge coming together in the music industry around the world," Hilary Rosen, head of the powerful Recording Industry Association of America told MidemNet here.

Held on the eve of MIDEM, the music industry's largest trade show, the one-day MidemNet meeting is focused on the new technologies like the Internet that are driving and transforming the music sector business.

But having turned from music business darling into its greatest challenge as free online music services drain revenue away from the recording industry and artists, there was a palpable feeling of anxiety at this year's MidemNet.

How to turn consumers into paying customers - or "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free" - are among the conundrums facing the industry today and the focus for the brainstorming MidemNet meeting.

Worldwide music sales nose-dived 9.2 percent last year with the U.S., home to music recording giants EMI and Universal Music to name two, one of the hardest hit with sales down 11 percent. With the total world market worth a cool $30.3 billion in revenue in 2002, pressure to staunch this flow is mounting.

Most of the blame has been placed on the surge in downloading from free Internet music services.

"We're talking about hundreds of millions of unauthorized music files being shared around the world and made available, just by the click of a mouse. The magnitude of it is staggering," Jay Berman, chairman and CEO of the world industry trade body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said.

"This (downloading) is already having a profound impact on the business. The number of releases is down substantially," Burnham added.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/techn...-5307323c.html

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The Rolling Heads
Sue Zeidler

Jay Boberg, president of Vivendi Universal's MCA Records, home to acts such as Mary J. Blige and Sublime, resigned on Thursday, becoming the second high-profile record industry executive to step down in a week.

The departure of Boberg, 44, came on the heels of the sudden resignation last week of Thomas Mottola, the powerful head of rival recording giant Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment, replaced one day later by an industry outsider, Andrew Lack, a top NBC executive.

Both shake-ups at Sony and Universal, as well as recent layoffs at Bertelsmann AG's BMG, underscored to many in the industry the fragile state of the recording business.

"We're just having a huge leadership shake-up in the music industry as it repositions and redefines itself and tries to experiment and redetermine the winning formula," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research. "It's unclear how the music industry intends to make money with the CD becoming less and less a desirable product for consumers."

Boberg, a Harvard Business School graduate, is credited with overseeing the growth of big acts like Blink-182, Sublime, Shaggy, and Blige at MCA.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2060702

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eMule v0.25b is now available http://www.emule-project.net/

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Mix master iPod makes music of juxtapositions
Tom Moon

Last spring, the New York Times Magazine devoted a full page to the contents of the musician Beck's iPod portable MP3 player. The list wasn't terribly surprising -- obscure Brazilian pop of the '60s, several pieces by 20th-Century dissonance master Anton Webern, some Bing Crosby and Blind Willie McTell.

I remember wondering: What's the big deal? Of course an artist who revels in curious juxtapositions and collisions of "found" sounds would feed his head with minor classics and arcana, lost beats from every hidden corner of the globe.

What I didn't appreciate then was what Beck and other MP3-enabled types had been saying: That having so much music at your fingertips, with the ability to organize and quickly regroup tunes to follow one stylistic path or mix several, actually changes the listening experience.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...isuretempo-hed

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Campuses License Xythos Technology
Press Release

Boston College, University of California at Irvine, and University of Memphis have selected Xythos Software, a developer of Internet file management software, to implement file management solutions for their campus communities. More than 20 colleges and universities have licensed the company's products to address file sharing needs both on and off campus. With Xythos, students, faculty, and administrators can access and share any type of education related content including course syllabi, records, lesson plans, and assignments from any Internet connection while maintaining control and security of this information.
http://www.econtentmag.com/ecxtra/20...03_0117_4.html

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This Is Your Deep Link on P2P
Michelle Delio

Following links from one Web page to another may soon require users to run special stealth applications, if a Danish search company's experience is a sign of things to come.

To link directly to some newspapers' content, Danish search firm Newsbooster now must use the sort of decentralized subterfuge utilized by companies that distribute file-sharing applications.

File-sharing systems such as Kazaa and Gnutella have so far avoided the sort of legal hassles that brought down Napster by networking their users' computers together, instead of serving up files from a single server. The accepted wisdom is that it's easier to pursue corporations whose software may be used to violate copyrights, but tracking down and stopping a dispersed network of individual violators is significantly more difficult.

"Newsbrowser" offers all the same features as Newsbooster's original Web-based service, but through a separate, downloadable program that runs on a user's own computer.

"Newsbooster cannot and will not accept limits on the free possibilities of the Internet," Lassen said. "We will continue to fight for a legal ruling that recognizes the difference between a referral via a link and the copying of protected information. But in the meantime, there is Newsbrowser."

"Since copyright is intended to promote authorship and dissemination, it is best served by encouraging these deep links, not threatening and suing them out of existence," said Wendy Seltzer, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney and founder of the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, a project to study and combat the legal threats to the Internet.

"However, as we've seen from some of the silly cease-and-desists Chilling Effects has received, and the Newsbooster case, not all copyright holders are so sensible. Newsbrowser sounds like a rational response to ill- considered enforcement."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57230,00.html

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Court Rules Against Network Associates' Software Review Policy
Matt RichelI

New York court has ruled that Network Associates, a maker of popular antivirus and computer security software, may not require people who buy the software to get permission from the company before publishing reviews of its products.

The decision, which the company has vowed to appeal, could carry a penalty in the millions of dollars, according to Ken Dreifach, chief of the Internet bureau of the office of the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.

Last spring, Mr. Spitzer sued Network Associates, which has its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., asserting that the company's software included an unenforceable clause that effectively violated consumers' free speech. The clause, which appeared on software products and the company's Web site, read: "The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates Inc."

In a decision the parties received late Thursday, Justice Marilyn Shafer of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the clause was deceptive and that it warranted a fine, which she wrote that she would determine in the future.

Mr. Dreifach said the decision had implications beyond Network Associates. "These types of clauses are not uncommon," he said. The decision "raises the issue of whether these types of clauses — whether they restrict use, resale or the right to criticize — are enforceable," he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/business/18SOFT.html

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“So please, be online. But be protected.”
Optimum Online - Scare mongering and propaganda

Please note that "upstream" refers only to the sending of information or files from your computer out to the Internet (which is what a server does) and not the receiving of files or Web pages at your computer. In other words, even if your upstream speed were throttled due to abuse, your "downstream" speed would not be affected--and you would still be able to download music, video, games and Web pages in seconds with your Optimum Online service.

In fact, Optimum Online is a great, fast way to download music! We encourage you to try out the Optimum Online Rhapsody service for one week free to see for yourself the power of unlimited access to 20,000 albums with CD- quality sound from any computer you choose. Just click here to get started!
http://www.optonline.net/Home/Articl...%3Dreg,00.html

Encourage? Don’t be modest OOL, you downright insist! If ISPs succeed in stopping uploads then the only way most of us will be able to get any content at all will be through your paid gateways, sharing with friends will be a bitter memory.

“Click here to end P2P’s!” is what they’re really working towards and that’s what I call abuse.

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“It is ludicrous for the illicit toll-collector to argue that if people can learn how to cross the Brooklyn Bridge without paying the illicit toll, then legitimate toll collectors will be at risk.”

The DMCRA is Consistent With the DMCA
John T. Mitchell

Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), along with Representatives John Doolittle (R-CA), Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), introduced the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act of 2003 (H.R. 107, or “DMCRA”), which would, among other things, make it no longer unlawful to circumvent access control technologies for the purpose of making lawful (noninfringing) use of a work protected by copyright. This is just common sense. We make it a crime to break into cars, but we don’t criminalize breaking into your own car when you locked the keys inside. And even in the case of criminals, we’ve never found any valid reason for letting an automobile manufacturer sue people for breaking into cars the manufacturer no longer owns. Why should record companies and movie studios be allowed to sue people for breaking into their own music and film collections? This was certainly an unintended side effect of the DMCA.

This amendment is long overdue. It protects the DMCA from potential invalidation, it brings the DMCA in line with our treaty obligations, it creates a powerful incentive for copyright holders to use technological access controls for lawful purposes only, and it protects the rights of the least advantaged.

Opponents of H.R. 107 claim that the DMCRA would weaken, undermine, gut, eviscerate, or otherwise wreak havoc with the DMCA – that the exception would swallow the rule. They are only kidding themselves – Congress should know better.

To call the DMCRA as just a “fair use” bill does it a disservice. None of the uses described…constitute “fair use” under the Copyright Act. Because none are infringing in the first place.
http://interactionlaw.com/interactionlaw/id9.html

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From Filter – varied reactions to the courts’ Kazaa/ISP ruling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan22.html

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After the copyright smackdown: What next?
Don't despair at the Supreme Court's gift to Disney, says one expert. The fight has really only just begun.
Siva Vaidhyanathan

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Congress was within its constitutional bounds to extend the duration of all copyrights by 20 years -- up to 70 years beyond the life of the author and potentially infinitely -- many saw the ruling as a knockout blow to the movement to reform copyright.

Some on the public interest side are tempted to lament what could be called the "Dred Scott case for culture," unjustifiably locking up content that deserves to be free. After all, six of the nine justices concurred with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she issued a stark opinion that cavalierly dismissed the historical "bargain" that justified American copyright in the first place: We the People agree to grant a limited, temporary monopoly to a creator or publisher in exchange for access to creativity and the eventual return of the work to a state of freedom.

And Ginsburg's opinion did not allow that the purpose of copyright is to encourage future production, not lock up works already created. She ignored the fact that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 does nothing to "promote the progress" of science or art because it grants no incentive to produce and distribute new works.

So out of despair some might see civil disobedience -- hacking and freely distributing songs and films over digital networks -- as the only remaining response to the excesses of the copyright regimes and the hold they have over courts and Congress.

While disobedience might be more fun, the power of civil discourse remains. In fact, the ruling gives public interest activists both motivation and ammunition in the continuing battle against the excessive expansion of the power to control information and culture.

As is so often the case, the best rallying cry came from a dissenter in the case. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: "It is easy to understand how the statute might benefit the private financial interests of corporations or heirs who won existing copyrights. But I cannot find any constitutionally legitimate, copyright-related way in which the statute will benefit the public." This is the key to any public interest movement: Show that narrow special interests are getting away with everything and the public interest is suffering.

Yet Ginsburg herself aided the public's rhetorical cause even while ruling against its interests. While dismissing the notion that excessive copyright expansion has severe First Amendment implications, she invoked two of the classic democratic safeguards of American copyright: the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use. Because of these two concepts, Ginsburg concluded, the court need not take the censorious power of copyright seriously.

The idea/expression dichotomy means that copyright does not protect facts or ideas. It only protects specific expressions of facts or ideas. This allows us to cite a fact or idea while criticizing another writer or building on another's work.

Fair uses are small allowances for the public good, exceptions to the sweeping powers that a copyright holder enjoys. A teacher may invoke fair use, for instance, when showing a film in class. A student uses another's work fairly if she quotes a small portion in a research paper.

Ginsburg's expression of faith in the power of the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use does not recognize that both these rights are under attack in Congress and lower courts right now. The motion picture, music, publishing, and software industries are trying to expand their control over the machines in your home to limit the uses you might make of material you have lawfully purchased.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ght/index.html

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Court Deaf to Public-Domain Pleas
Michael Grebb

The Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday to uphold a controversial law extending copyrights for 20 years came as a blow to public-domain advocates.

The 7-2 ruling (PDF) in Eldred v. Ashcroft gives Congress free reign to hand out copyright extensions as long as media companies are around to lobby for them -- all while rejecting most arguments brought by the plaintiffs to the contrary.

"Litigation is not the path anymore," acknowledged Joe Kraus, co-founder of DigitalConsumer.org, a consumer rights group that focuses on digital copyright issues. "The pressure needs to now turn toward our elected officials in Congress.... The domain just got taken off the table. Now all we have is fair use."

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he was "pleased that the court reaffirmed the absolute authority of Congress to set copyright terms."

Broussard, however, noted that the decision could someday haunt copyright owners because it clarifies that Congress is the ultimate forum for copyright law. If Congress someday took away terms now enjoyed by copyright owners, he said, it might be more difficult to argue that it's an act of "taking away" under the Fifth Amendment.

"That seems to be the other edge of this decision," he said.

While the lobbying strength of media companies makes such prospects unlikely any time soon, the future balance of power may depend on the success of grassroots efforts.

"It's my hope that there's actually good to come out of this decision," said Kraus of DigitalConsumer.org. "It's a wake-up call. It's a rallying cry."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57237,00.html

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Boo Hoo. Poor Aussies Getting Sheared like Sheep By Shrewd U.S. Telcos
Garry Barker

United States telecommunications companies are "screwing" Australia on Internet content transmission, says the Minister for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Richard Alston.

He said Australia paid for transmission in both directions and the US paid nothing.

"We and other countries have made repeated efforts to (correct the situation) but nothing has been done and is not likely to be done," he said. "The Americans take the view that might is right."

Senator Alston was speaking after the publication in Melbourne of the report of the Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) set up by the Federal Government a year ago to examine the development of broadband communications in Australia.

The report urges a national broadband strategy across all levels of government and industry and makes 19 recommendations, most of them touching on issues already well accepted in the communications industry - even self-evident.

Although it stops short of proposing price caps or controls, the BAG urges the government to require the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate industry concerns about domestic Internet "peering" arrangements (charging between peer companies) and monitor progress towards an open, competitive broadband market.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...911531247.html

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Austrailian ISPs ignore US copyright attack

Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have doused reported attempts by a US digital copyright solutions company to force them to terminate the Internet contracts of customers suspected of breaching copyright rules.

MediaForce, a US digital copyright solutions company claiming to act on behalf of Warner Bros, has reportedly sent a letter to at least one Australian ISP listing a series of IP addresses it claims have been used to illegally access copyrighted material. The letter goes on to request the user of the IP addresses be denied access, and that their account be terminated.

"Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following: 1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you," read the letter, a copy of which has been posted on broadband forum site Whirlpool.

None of the five ISPs contacted by ZDNet Australia claimed to have received the letter, but most indicated they would be unlikely to comply with the requests in the letter if they did receive one.

"We wouldn't act on it because Warner Bros is not a government body that would act on those things," Iain McKimm, Pacific Internet's director of technology and strategy told ZDNet Australia . "We can't act as police, we have to act on what the guidelines are."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/sec...0271225,00.htm

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RIAA can't touch UK ISPs, says lawyer
Dinah Greek

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is unlikely to be able to hold UK internet service providers (ISPs) accountable for customers downloading illegal music files, according to a lawyer.

The RIAA has said that ISPs must be made to pay a charge to offset revenues lost to the music industry from people illegally downloading music.

But according to Stuart Nuttall, of solicitors Fladgate Fielder, the grounds on which the music industry intends to 'fine' ISPs are flawed. The move is simply an attempt to look for someone else to blame for falling CD sales, he said.

Nuttall indicated that the RIAA is unlikely to be successful in the UK.

"It is part of a trend by the RIAA to hit soft targets. But it flies in the face of economic developments and stops the music industry looking closely at other ways of selling music," explained Nuttall.

But a judge in the US has already given the music industry the power to force American ISPs to name those who trade music files across their servers.

In a landmark judgement, a US judge ordered the online division of Verizon Communications to give the RIAA the name of a customer who had downloaded as many as 600 songs a day using the popular Kazaa music file-sharing service.

But Nuttall suggested that even a move like this in the UK could fall foul of a number of laws designed to protect consumers.

"In the UK I would seriously question the validity of any claim and think it would be unenforceable," he said. "Monitoring customers' internet activities could fall foul of UK data protection laws."

ISPs are open to forming alliances with the music industry, according to online music distribution company OD2.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1138202

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Congress needs to codify fair use
Ted Como

Kudos to Rep. Rick Boucher, who will carry on efforts to protect consumers' fair use of digital material regardless of an agreement last week between music and technology industries over digital copyright.

Earlier this month, Rep. Boucher reintroduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which would grant rights under the fair use exemption of copyright law to repurpose digital media that you pay for. Boucher knows well that absent all interested parties, the agreement, though a major advance on behalf of consumers of digital media, likely will not prevent efforts to handicap use of digital content. That's why it's important to codify fair use and it's past time Congress acted.

The agreement is hailed as a truce in an ongoing battle over piracy of digital content, and I take no issue with efforts by factions of the music industry to protect the rights of artists whose material is stolen and distributed over the Internet. We all are entitled to the fruits of our labor and downloading music without paying for it is no different that stealing a paycheck.

But while music representatives who signed onto the agreement with various purveyors of technology are to be commended, others who did not would take a different approach - the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) foremost among them. MPAA would dictate how we all use technology and in the process, strangle technological development. That's what Rick Boucher wants to prevent.

MPAA would require makers of computers, DVD players, CD-ROMs and other devices build copyright protection technology into their products. A bill introduced in the last Congress by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and co- sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Outer Limits) would allow government to mandate how technology is developed and used - something citizens of China may be accustomed to but nothing we need in a free enterprise system.

Even should such an effort succeed legislatively, it won't work practically. As with evolution, technology is unstoppable and there's no better way to energize something than government telling us we can't do it.
http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3168899

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Web pirates raise flags on college campuses
Ryan Smith

The bedtime stories that Sheldon Steinbach read to his daughter when she was young always included something a little extra.

"I always read the copyright notice," he said. "She must have been mind-boggled when she was 3."

Now that she’s grown, Mr. Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education in Washington, figures that if anyone appreciates copyright laws, it’s his daughter.

For many of today’s youths, however, copyright law is little more than a pesky thing to be ignored en route to burning the latest Eminem CD or Star Wars prequel. And with the speed and capacity of college computer networks, universities have increasingly found their systems a breeding ground for offenders.

Some students say they just don’t care.

"I think especially with college students, the feeling is, ‘If I can get if free, I’ll take it free,’" said Matt Vandermeulen, a BGSU senior from Chicago.

Mr. Carroll used to count himself among that group. When the online music-swapping service Napster became popular a few years ago, he admittedly downloaded around 400 songs.

Now he discourages his friends from helping themselves to free tunes.

"I began to realize that that’s what made the Internet so slow," he said. "It just became so ridiculous."
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs...1190075&Ref=AR

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SmartRight demonstrates digital content protection system
Press Release

SmartRight has demonstrated a complete smart-card based end-to-end digital content protection system for home-networked consumer electronics devices at last week's International Consumer Electronics Show.

The demonstration showed how usage rights associated with content are enforced on a digital home network comprising a set-top box, a hard disk drive and a TV set linked together over IEEE 1394. SmartRight is based on the use of removable security modules, such as smart cards, which provide a cost-effective and renewable solution to protect content against hacking.

Member companies participating in the initiative include Canal+ Technologies, Micronas, Nagravision, SchlumbergerSema, STMicroelectronics, SCM Microsystems, and Thomson. Olivier Lafaye, General Manager, Innovation Projects at Thomson, has said "The initiative has gained and continues to gain rapid momentum and acceptance, highlighted recently by SCM joining the initiative last month."

SmartRight aims to offer a complete solution to ensure copy protection and content management on digital home networks. The new copy protection system has been proposed to the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) ad-hoc group on Copy Protection Technology which is currently defining technical requirements for content protection in digital home entertainment networks, which include devices such as TV sets, set-top boxes, DVD players, digital video recorders, and PCs.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14498

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STM demonstrate 'advanced satellite broadcast services'
Press Release

Switzerland's STMicroelectronics (ST), the world's third largest semi-conductor company, has announced that it
successfully operated a live 8PSK turbo-coded satellite digital TV broadcast during a satellite test in "France Telecom Reseaux et Services Internationaux" premises in Rambouillet, France.

The demonstration, which took place on 5 December 2002, was based on ST's STV0499 8PSK Turbo Coding technology, which increases throughput for advanced satellite broadcast services up to 50% over today's commercial satellite links.

The demonstration, which featured an actual satellite connection, highlights STMicroelectronics' collaboration with French satellite pay-TV operator TPS and Eutelsat, which provided the satellite link. The system that has been demonstrated provides satellite broadcasters with an efficient method of increasing throughput over existing satellite infrastructures and providing new services for their customers. Additional services that may be offered include increased numbers of standard TV channels, HDTV and internet download.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14496

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K-Lite forums off the boards. Host trouble or something internal? Reaction http://www.internal-technologies.net...3ffa42ae3682e6

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Court mulls Madster restart request
Deep representing himself
Kevin Harlin

Madster founder John Deep was in U.S. District Court on Wednesday asking a judge to let him restart his file-swapping service so he can defend himself against piracy accusations and eventually pay off creditors.

Deep, who represented himself before Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, said Madster -- shut down since Dec. 2 by order of a federal judge in Chicago -- is suffering irreparable financial harm and that is threatening his ability to pay off creditors in a separate bankruptcy case.

Deep wants Kahn to temporarily freeze the Chicago copyright case, which would essentially void the Dec. 2 order.

It also would force the major record companies and movie studios to move their efforts to shut down Madster to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albany.

"Jurisdiction battles really matter when you're the one going up against some of the biggest companies in the world, represented by some of the biggest law firms in the world," Deep said after the hearing. "I really do think I can win if we can make it a fair fight."
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories... te=1/16/2003

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Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB
Michael Lasky

Take a look at one of those credit cards in your wallet. That's the exact size and thickness of an upcoming, revolutionary removable storage device called StorCard.

Created by a company with the same name, StorCard can contain from 100MB to more than 5GB of data on a plastic card. At first glance, it looks like a credit card, and even has a magnetic strip like a credit card, for potential use in standard credit card readers.

The hard disk data, however, is accessed on a tiny spinning disk inside the thin card.

"The card actually has moveable parts inside its thin shell," says Bill Heil, vice president of StorCard.

A spinning wheel made of Mylar is engaged when the card is inserted into a StorReader, a USB-connected drive or PC Card that reads and writes to the StorCard. The reader is expected to retail for under $100 and the cards for under $15 each, Heil says.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108816,00.asp

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No Future For Record Labels Speculates Sony CEO
Steven Levy

It is the only company with premium positions in both the gizmo world and the media world. At AOL Time Warner, synergy is an epithet, but in Tokyo the promise not only survives, but thrives. To Idei, everything comes together with his beloved buzzword: broadband. Sony will create not only network-connected products but also devise services that deliver the content—much of which Sony owns through its own music, movie and game divisions. (The early models for this include the wildly popular online game called EverQuest and an interactive television guide.) Sony may even have a hand in new forms of currency used to purchase such services: through its own bank, the company offers Tokyo train commuters a smart-card payment system.

To realize this vision requires not only imaginative new products that exploit the vaunted “Sony DNA,” but altering the dynamics within Sony itself.

“The company was built in a vertical silo fashion, to cultivate the independence that was prized by Mr. Morita,” says Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony USA. “At the end of the analog age, the operating companies actually didn’t get along well.” Idei realized that this had to change. “Now everybody in every aspect of the company is talking to each other,” says Sir Howard.

The necessity for such bridge-building led to the recent ouster of Sony Music’s longtime leader Tommy Mottola, whose unwillingness to confer with the rest of Sony on a new business model forced the change to an outsider, NBC television executive Andrew Lack. “If you keep talking about networks, you have to practice good networking in your own company,” says Stringer. Lack’s new job will be to try to figure out how to add value to Sony’s music division by integrating J. Lo and Bob Dylan into the interlocking stream of revenue generators that Sonyites call the Ubiquitous Value Network.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/861338.asp?0cv=TB10&cp1=1

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In blow to consumers, Canada blocks internet TV
John Borland

Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses.

The long-awaited decision helped close what some had seen as a loophole in international copyright law, potentially allowing American and Canadian TV signals to be streamed online without the TV stations' or copyright holders' permission. However, regulators said they were wary of undermining traditional producers and distributors of TV content by allowing it to be distributed on the Net without regional restrictions.

"At present, there is no completely workable method of ensuring that Internet retransmissions are geographically contained," the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission wrote in its decision. "The likelihood that a program retransmitted over the Internet would become available worldwide could significantly reduce the opportunities" for copyright owners.

The commission's decision comes largely in response to a string of start-ups that had hoped to take advantage of Canadian law to create businesses streaming live television on the Web. The prospect horrified programmers and TV producers and prompted one high-profile lawsuit against an early start-up.

The decision had been closely watched by the industry. However, the urgency of the issue dissipated somewhat late last year, when Canadian legislators independently blocked the loophole that would have allowed Internet retransmission of TV programming without the broadcasters' permission.

The United States National Association of Broadcasters, which assisted in the IcraveTV case and filed comments with the Canadian Commission, welcomed the decision.

"We regard this decision as a major victory for consumers in the protection of free, over-the-air television signals and programming," the group said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981254.html

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Sprint DSL's Gaping Security Hole
Brian McWilliams

Sprint DSL customers are at risk of having their e-mail addresses and passwords stolen -- even when their computers are powered off -- due to weak security controls on their DSL modems.

Experts warned this week that the security problem could enable Internet vandals to wreak havoc from afar with the ZyXel Communications DSL modems issued by Sprint to tens of thousands of its FastConnect broadband customers.

Sprint officials acknowledged that remote access to the administrative software embedded in the ZyXel Prestige 642 and 645 modems is by default protected with a password of "1234." But the company said users are responsible for securing the equipment, which stores login data, including the user's e-mail address and password.

"We recommend that customers change the (administrative) password to increase security, but we recognize that not all customers change the password as recommended," said Sprint FastConnect spokeswoman Laura Tigges.

Tigges admitted that Sprint does not provide instructions for resetting the administrative password in the documentation provided to FastConnect customers.

Sprint could not say how many of its more than 110,000 DSL customers might be affected by the security issue. But a scan of a sample of Internet addresses used by Sprint DSL customers revealed that more than 90 percent of the ZyXel DSL modems found had the widely known default administrative password.

Not to be confused with the Sprint DSL account password, the administrative password allows a remote user to access the modem's configuration software over the Internet.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,57342,00.html

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Prosecutors Appeal DVD Case
AP

Norwegian prosecutors will appeal the acquittal of a Norwegian teenager charged with digital burglary for creating and circulating a program online that cracks the security codes on DVDs.

Rune Floisbonn, a prosecutor with Norway's economic crimes police, told the NTB news agency Monday that an appeal would be filed. He did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

Jon Lech Johansen, 19, was found innocent of violating Norway's data break-in laws Jan. 7, in a ruling that gave prosecutors two weeks to decide whether to appeal the high profile case. That deadline expires Tuesday.

"An appeal was expected," Johansen's attorney, Halvor Manshaus, told AP by telephone. "I haven't gotten it confirmed ... but I believe it is correct and that there will be an appeal."

Floisbonn told Nettavisen, a Norwegian online newspaper, that prosecutors would challenge the Oslo City Court's interpretation of the law and the evidence presented in their case against Johansen.

In its unanimous 25-page ruling, the three-member court found Johansen -- known in Norway as DVD-Jon -- innocent on all charges.

The ruling was a key test in how far copyright holders can go in preventing duplication of their intellectual property. It said that consumers have rights to view legally obtained DVD films "even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57301,00.html

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Xlife Updates Acquisition With Improved Filtering

Xlife has released an update for Acquisition, bringing it to version 0.72. Acquisition
is a gnutella client designed for peer-to-peer file sharing. The update ships with support for pervasive contextual menus and improved filtering. According to Xlife:

Acquisition 0.72 has just been released.

Acquisition is a gnutella client supporting modern gnutella features such as Ultrapeers, swarm (multi-source) downloads, download resumption, and distributed network discovery. Acquisition is built using code from the LimeWire gnutella client, and consequently supports the same rich set of protocol features.

Acquisition features an elegant single-window user interface with a convenient drawer summarizing current searches, network activity, and active transfers. Unlike other P2P clients, Acquisition is designed with usability and simplicity as the primary goals.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/20.11.shtml

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Five ways Sony’s new chief can save the music biz
Randall Rothenberg

Make KaZaa your friend -- for research. Andy, if you haven't tried KaZaa, Limewire, or another peer-to-peer program, do it now. You'll notice something interesting: They not only allow you to illegally download music from peers; they also allow you to legally peer directly into their music collections. On a mass scale, that means it's possible to do consumer research that was unimaginable in the era of surveys and focus groups. With a bit of rocket science and a few clever algorithms, you can cross-reference peoples' music preferences in a way that will revolutionize target marketing, and dramatically improve the recording industry's marketing ROI.
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36931

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New box throttles campus uploads
Andrea James

Students, faculty and staff have a small purple box to thank for maintaining a high- speed Internet connection on campus this semester.

The device, called Packetshaper, was purchased by AU e-Operations last fall to prevent file- sharing programs, such as Kazaa, from causing another network standstill, according to Director of Network Security Eric Weakland.

University officials had to react quickly last fall when a new version of Kazaa—a popular file-sharing program—caused the school’s network to slow down and to utilize 99 percent of its communication capacity, as previously reported in The Eagle.

Packetshaper, composed of hardware and software, physically sits between AU’s network and the outside world, according to Weakland.

“The software looks at network traffic and applies rules that we set,” he said. “If it sees Kazaa usage going through the roof, it will basically tell it to slow down.”

The software is not an invasion of privacy because it doesn’t actually read data such as e-mails, according to Weakland.

Because AU has a high-speed Internet connection, Kazaa users worldwide like to download files from AU students. Consequently, the University uses methods to control Kazaa traffic without blocking it completely, according to Weakland.

The purchase of the new hardware was made necessary last fall when a new version of Kazaa was released that functioned different from earlier versions and therefore took a heavy toll on the network’s speed and accessibility, Weakland
http://www.theeagleonline.com/section.cfm/94/2/4304

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The Eric Eldred Act FAQ
Larry’s Lessig’s got a great idea to get stuff back into the pubic domain.

Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...ves/EAFAQ.html

Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art's Expense
Lawrence Lessig

The Supreme Court decided this week that the Constitution grants Congress an essentially unreviewable discretion to set the lengths of copyright protections however long it wants, and even to extend them.

While the court was skeptical about the wisdom of the extension, seven justices believed it was not their role to second-guess "the First Branch," as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it. As I argued the opposite before the court for my clients, a group of creators and publishers who depend on public domain works, I won't say I agree. But there is something admirable in the court acknowledging and respecting limits on its own power.

Still, missing from the opinion was any justification for perhaps the most damaging part of Congress's decision to extend existing copyrights for 20 years: the extension unnecessarily stifles freedom of expression by preventing the artistic and educational use even of content that no longer has any commercial value. As one dissenter, Justice Steven G. Breyer, estimated, only 2 percent of the work copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 continues to be commercially exploited (for example, the early Mickey Mouse movies, whose imminent entry into the public domain prompted Congress to act in the first place).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/opinion/18LESS.html

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Cruelty to Analog
Chronicling efforts to control digitization technology http://analog.blogs.eff.org/archives/000239.html#000239

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Supreme Court copyright decision:
A Mickey Mouse Ruling
Chris Sprigman

Honesty requires that I begin this column with an embarrassing admission: I am now 0 for 1 in predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases.

Last March, I wrote a column for this website predicting that the Supreme Court, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, would strike down the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The CTEA, enacted in 1998, extended by 20 years the duration of both future and subsisting copyrights.

On January 15 of this year, the Court upheld the Act, 7-2. (Justice Ginsburg wrote for the majority; Justices Stevens and Breyer filed separate dissents.)

Not only is the result, in my view, erroneous, but the opinion that reached it is deeply flawed. It also bodes ill for the future, for it is yet another step in the direction of complete privatization of our culture, at the expense of the public domain.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/comment..._sprigman.html

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European Commision to extend high-speed internet rules

Brussels may be on the verge of issuing new guidelines that will give national regulators increased power to limit
the activities of cable companies, the Financial Times (FT) reported yesterday.

The FT claims to have seen a draft report suggesting the need extend the scope of regulations, that could result in cable companies finding themselves subject to the same restrictions on high-speed internet access that incumbent telecommunications operators have been vocal in protesting against. The European Commission previously argued that telecoms operators had an unfair advantage over cable companies from their initial position of market dominance. The EC had sought to prevent such operators making their positions unassailable through predatory pricing, but now the Commission appears to be trying to take pre-emptive action before things swing too far the other way.

The debt-piles of existing cable companies means that the proposed legislation is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the sector. Financial restraints have meant that many cable companies have so far failed to gain a significant position in the broadband market and are finding it difficult to be pro-active in promoting the service. Telecoms operators are likely to welcome the proposed legislation, however, having renewed their protestations about the discriminatory effect of existing regulations at a November meeting in Brussels.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14512

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Keeping Track of the Online Music Industry
Ellen McCarthy

Patrick Breslin, who was a bass guitarist in a Boston rock and roll band before joining a consulting firm, a radio station and a start-up, always seems to wind up at the nexus of music and technology.

While managing the music Web site for National Public Radio during the late 1990s, Breslin became increasingly interested in the organization and distribution of audio files on the Internet.

Eventually Breslin and Sean Ward, an NPR co-worker, left the organization to establish Relatable, a start-up that provides music-tracking technology.

"Both of us obviously had an interest in how technology was changing music. This was the time of a lot of online music distribution -- MP3.com, Napster," Breslin said. "But there really weren't very easy ways to find what is interesting to you. There was a fundamental problem identifying music that you find."

Relatable's software does not protect audio files from being illegally downloaded. Instead, it imprints files with a code, allowing music distributors to track songs that are downloaded by users and pay the appropriate record company.

The firm's first client was Napster, Breslin said, but Napster's effort to charge for its service eventually failed, ending the deal with Relatable. The Alexandria start-up has plenty of competition, but Breslin said the speed and accuracy of Relatable's technology will be key to its success.

Still, the company's fate depends in part on the willingness of consumers to pay for Web-based music files. It also sells software to track the popularity ratings for recording companies and provide identifying data for songs on the radio.

"Some believe that they can actually protect content, others believe it is more important to track it. Copy protection is a really difficult problem and there have been some significant failures," Breslin said. "Ultimately we believe the better approach is tracking the music."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jan18.html

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Juniper Networks profit rises
Bloomberg News

Juniper Networks, the No. 2 maker of equipment to direct Internet traffic, had a fourth-quarter profit of $8.45 million as expenses fell. Sales climbed 2.8 percent. Net income was 2 cents a diluted share, in contrast to a net loss of $5.13 million, or 2 cents a diluted share, in the year-earlier period, the company said yesterday. Revenue rose to $155.3 million from $151 million. First-quarter sales and profit, excluding certain items, will be unchanged from the preceding period, beating analysts' forecasts, the chief financial officer, Marcel Gani, said. Juniper, which trails Cisco Systems in sales of data-traffic routers, had losses in five of the six preceding quarters as customers slashed spending after overbuilding fiber optic networks. Shares of Juniper dropped 33 cents, to $8.90, in after-hours trading. Earlier, shares fell 46 cents, to $9.23, in regular trading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/business/17TBRF.html