Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 16th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"I don't think anybody should make any money on music. Maybe we would pay audiences." - Wilco


"The television audience today has a coliseum mentality, and they are not cheering for the gladiator, they're cheering for the lion." - Robert W. Arnhym


"I don't buy the reports that the classical record market is collapsing. It's just a question of recording the right repertory, marketing it convincingly and applying the right discipline." - Michael Smellie


"Mr. Hetherwick pointed out that in the 15 months he ran BMG Classics, before the merger [with Sony/CBS], he was able to turn a profit with a line devoted fully to classical repertory." – Allan Kozinn


"Sony has avant-garde productions from the 1960's that are important but that we couldn't afford to remaster, put into a plastic box and sell in stores. What the Internet offers is a place where nonspecialists can go and listen to samples to see what they like in the privacy of their homes, without being embarrassed. For the collector, you could have the complete Toscanini always available online." - Gilbert Hetherwick


"So if you, your sister or your daughter is walking around in Australia listening to his #1 hit on your favourite music player, there’s a good chance someone has broken the law." - Alex Malik


"Microsoft hit the jackpot last week with the acquisition of [peer-to-peer program maker] Groove Networks. The acquisition…may well prove to be as important to Microsoft as that of Lotus by IBM back in 1995." – The Butler Group


"The publicity created by the MPAA actually drove users to find out what all the fuss was about and resulted in an increase in [Internet] traffic levels." – Andrew Parker















Supreme-Court Transcript Shows Legal Reasoning In Grokster Case
Alexander Wolfe

The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday released the transcript of last month's oral arguments in the contentious Grokster file-sharing copyright-infringement case.

The 55-page document filled in details on arguments by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, which is seeking to overturn a California court decision allowing Grokster to continue offering its peer-to-peer software. That decision relied on the precedent famously set in the 1984 Betamax case, which essentially held that technologies with legal applications couldn't be shut down due to illegal actions by some users.

"The things that seem very clear are that the Justices really do understand this problem now," said Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia Law School and general counsel to the Free Software Foundation, which is supporting Grokster. "There's no question at all that this isn't beyond their technical understanding and that they're culturally aware of what file sharing is about."

"Like most Supreme Court arguments I've heard, you couldn't tell the way the court will line up in the case from what was said in the oral argument in any way at all," Moglen said. "Both sides got a pretty tough going over."

In his oral argument, Donald Verrilli, the attorney who spoke on behalf of MGM, sought to drive a wedge between Betamax and Grokster. "Copyright infringement is the only commercially significant use of the Grokster and StreamCast services, and that is no accident," Verrilli said, according to the transcript. "The evidence in this caseshowed that 90 percent of the material on the services was either definitely or very likely to be infringing."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg interjected that there could be legitimate uses; Verrilli replied that he didn't think that was true.

Throughout his presentation, Verrilli hammered away at Grokster's legitimacy. Peppered by the judges with questions about contrasts with Xerox machines, CDs and videotape, Verrilli pointed to Apple's iPod as his model of a technology with acceptable copy protection. "From the moment that device was introduced, it was obvious that there were very significant lawful commercial uses for it," he said

Halfway through in the session, Grokster attorney Richard Taranto began his presentation. To buttress his contention that the Supreme Court shouldn't overturn the lower court's decision in favor of Grokster, he took a Betamax-like tack, stressed that peer-to-peer services have at least some legitimate uses. "This case was decided on the assumption that the respondents [i.e., Grokster] knew that there would be widespread infringing use of a product that they were putting outwhich they had no ability to separate from non- infringing use," he said, according to the transcript.

Taranto painted Grokster as a tool of autonomous communication. "The great virtue of peer-to-peer decentralized software is that it doesn't require anybody to put stuff onto a server and then bear the cost of bandwidth, of being charged by the Internet service provider when a million people suddenly want it," he said, according to the transcript.

A decision is the case could come down as early as June. "The guessing game of all time is how the Supreme Court is going to rule," said Jay Rosenthal, the attorney for the Recording Artists Coalition, in an interview. The group supports MGM in the case. "Personally, I think they're going to send it back down [to the U.S. District Court in California] for a new hearing where they hear evidence as to whether there was intent to commit copyright infringement [and] whether there's legitimate fair use."

"Everybody acknowledges here that the underlying use by the user is infringement," Rosenthal added. "So I think they're going to look at the analysis [of fair use] and whether this falls into Sony, was really not made because they didn't have enough evidence to base it on."

Moglen believes the issues raised by the case should be settled in an entirely different venue. "It's very hard to argue that this is a decision for the courts and not for Congress," he said. "All by itself, the Supreme Court is supposed to set rules to determine how big technology industries and much smaller entertainment industries are going to exist for decades? The hardest thing for the movie industry to argue is why Congress doesn't have to do anything here."
http://www.internetweek.com/breaking...leID=160702555


SCOTUS TRANSCRIPT: METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS, INC., :ET AL., :Petitioners, :v. : No. 04-480 GROKSTER, LTD, ET AL. - PDF, HTML, ASCII.

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Three File-Sharing Icons Move On

A look at careers, then and now
Benny Evangelista

The mere mention of the early file-sharing icons -- Shawn Fanning, Niklas Zennstrom or Wayne Rosso -- used to be enough to send top recording industry executives and artists into a tirade.

But times have changed in a matter of years. All three have moved on. Two head companies that offer solutions to online piracy, and one has gone on to disrupt another industry.

Here's a look at the careers of these three, then and now.

Shawn Fanning

Then: As a Northwestern University student in 1999, Fanning wanted an easier way to find and download MP3 music files, which were a growing underground hit among U.S. college students. So he wrote an online file- sharing program and named it after his own nickname, "The Napster."

Napster quickly grew into a worldwide phenomenon used by millions of people who were swapping as many as 3 billion songs a month. Fanning, who later moved to the Bay Area to help found Napster Inc., became an enemy of the major record labels and artists.

A string of lawsuits forced the company to shut down its file-sharing service and eventually close.

Now: Fanning, 24, is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Snocap Inc., a San Francisco startup that provides the record industry with digital music licensing and copyright management services for use on peer-to-peer networks.

Snocap has already signed as clients the two biggest labels, Universal and Sony BMG, and many independent labels.

Niklas Zennstrom

Then: After court rulings forced Napster offline in mid-2001, another file- sharing technology filled the void: FastTrack. Introduced in September 2000 by Zennstrom and Janus Friis, it was the underlying platform for the next generation of file-sharing programs, Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster.

Kazaa went on to become the most downloaded software ever.

Dutch courts eventually ruled that Zennstrom's company, then Kazaa B.V., could not be held liable for copyright infringement by Kazaa users. But legal costs forced him and Friis to sell to Sharman Networks, the Australian firm that still distributes Kazaa software.

Now: Zennstrom, 38, is CEO of Skype, the Luxembourg firm he and Friis, 28, founded.

Skype distributes a free program based on peer-to-peer technology that lets users make and receive free telephone calls over the Internet. In 19 months, Skype has attracted 30 million unique users worldwide, adding about 155,000 new users a day. Skype is a leading player in the Voice over Internet Protocol revolution that is transforming the telephone industry.

Wayne Rosso

Then: When Rosso, a veteran music industry publicist and consultant, took over as president of Grokster Ltd. in 2002, he reveled in his role as outspoken critic and thorn in the side of the recording industry, especially its efforts to stamp out file sharing.

Offering colorful sound bites such as calling record industry executives fools and idiots, Rosso became the de facto voice of file sharing in the news media and on shows such as "60 Minutes."

He once compared leaders of the Recording Industry Association of America to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Now: Rosso, 56, is the CEO of Mashboxx, a new company that is hoping to start a legal file-sharing service next month. Mashboxx, which will use Snocap's services, is obtaining recording industry licenses to sell songs on a new peer-to-peer network.

Rosso, based in Virginia Beach, Va., said record industry executives have become more willing to work with file-sharing firms such as Mashboxx, even if many "still hold their nose" when he's around.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...leshare31.html


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Jesus would’ve joined the RIAA

Gospel Music Association President to Address Music Piracy at GMA Music Awards Tonight
Press Release

While the Gospel Music Association (GMA) is handing out its highest honors tonight in Nashville, the music being celebrated with Dove Awards will be stolen thousand of times through illegal peer-to-peer networks.

John W. Styll, president of the GMA and executive producer of the 36th Annual GMA Music Awards, will remind the audience of artists, songwriters, musicians, producers and music fans at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, that gospel music has a great stake in the ongoing battle to eliminate music piracy, a fight currently being waged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The text of Styll’s comments: "I’d like to pose a question: Is it wrong to take something that is not yours? Even a 5-year-old knows the answer: ’Of course, it’s wrong.’ That is the bottom-line principle of music piracy. If you download music using the Internet without paying to do so, you are robbing its creators of the right to make a living-and that includes every artist nominated for an award tonight. Every time you participate in file-sharing or connect with businesses who encourage and profit from such downloading, you are making an intentional decision to do something that is just plain wrong. Yes, there are plenty of rationalizations: ’I don’t do it that much.’ ’It’s just one song or one album.’ ’That artist probably makes a lot of money.’ Or the old standby: ’Everybody does it.’ But the truth is that ’millions of wrongs don’t make it right.’ What may appear to be free actually comes with a very heavy price. It cuts short the careers of artists and others who can’t make ends meet. It hits record companies who don’t have the money to invest in new artists because of the losses they experience every day through music theft. And ultimately it is an attack on all of us who enjoy music. As piracy increases, the financial resources to create new music decreases. And when new music is silenced, we all lose. To those of you who work in the music industry, please know that the GMA is fully supportive of all efforts to protect what is rightfully yours. We pledge to continue to advocate on your behalf--both to the government and to the general public. And to those of you who enjoy owning and listening to music, I make this appeal: I ask you to take a stand to protect the rights of the music community, including the artists whose music you are passionate about. Please, don’t be a thief. Protect the music."

The GMA has been a vocal supporter of music industry efforts against music piracy. Last year, the GMA and Barna Research Group reported on a study which showed that nearly 80 percent of Christian teens were illegally downloading and copying music, a trend that has coincided with a downturn in gospel music sales.

The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in late March on "MGM vs. Grokster," the lawsuit brought by music and movie companies that will decide the legality of Internet file-sharing networks that let users exchange free copies of copyrighted movies and songs. The lawsuit was brought by 28 of the world’s largest entertainment companies against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products. The entertainment companies petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that file-sharing companies are not liable for their users’ copyright infringement. The decision upheld a lower-court ruling from April 2003.

Asking the Supreme Court to reaffirm the fundamental principles of the protection of private property, including intellectual property, the GMA joined the unprecedented coalition of movie and music organizations through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in signing the friend of the court briefs filed for the Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected in June.

The 36th Annual GMA Music Awards will be televised in national syndication in June by Central City Productions of Chicago, Ill., with an expected audience reach of at least 75 percent of U.S. television households. Top nominees for Dove Awards include Switchfoot, Casting Crowns, The Crabb Family, Michael W. Smith, MercyMe and Israel Houghton.
http://www.mysan.de/article77412.html


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Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn
David Carr

The tickets for the event Thursday sold out in five minutes on the Internet, and on the evening itself the lines stretched down the block. The reverent young fans might as well have been holding cellphones aloft as totems of their fealty.

Then again, this was the New York Public Library, a place of very high ceilings and even higher cultural aspirations, so the rock concert vibe created some dissonance. Inside, things became clearer as two high priests of very different tribes came together to address the question of "Who Owns Culture?" - a discussion of digital file- sharing sponsored by Wired magazine, part of a library series called "Live From the NYPL."

Both Jeff Tweedy, the leader of the fervently followed rock band Wilco, and Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor who has opposed criminalizing file sharing, seemed to agree that just about anybody who owns a modem also owns - or at least has every right to download - culture products.

"I don't think anybody should make any money on music," Mr. Tweedy said at one point, only half joking. "Maybe we would pay audiences."

It is a curious sight when a rock star appears before his flock and suggests they take his work without paying for it, and even encourages them to. Mr. Tweedy, who has never been much for rock convention, became a convert to Internet peer-to-peer sharing of music files in 2001, after his band was dropped from its label on the cusp of a tour. Initially, the news left Wilco at the sum end of the standard rock equation: no record/no tour, no tour/no money, no money/no band. But Mr. Tweedy released "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" for streaming on the band's Web site, and fans responded in droves. Wilco then took on the expenses of its tour as a band.

The resulting concerts were a huge success: Mr. Tweedy remembered watching in wonder as fans sang along with music that did not exist in CD form. Then something really funny happened. Nonesuch Records decided to release the actual plastic artifact in 2002. And where the band's previous album, "Summerteeth," sold 20,000 in its first week according to SoundScan, "Yankee" sold 57,000 copies in its first week and went on to sell more than 500,000. Downloading, at least for Wilco, created rather than diminished the appetite for the corporeal version of the work.

Both Mr. Tweedy and Mr. Lessig used their talk to say that the Web, in an age where conglomerated FM radio has squeezed out virtually all possibility of hearing anything worthy and new, is where fans are best exposed to music they might want to buy. And during the presentation (which was streamed live on Wilco's Web site), Mr. Lessig added that the decision to outlaw downloading would have a profoundly inhibiting effect on the creation of culture. He said that in every instance, from the player piano to radio to VCR's to cable, the law had landed on the side of the alleged "pirates," allowing for the copying or broadcasting of cultural works for private consumption. Thus far, both the music industry and the film industry has succeeded in making it illegal for consumers to download their products .

Mr. Lessig said that "the freedom to remix, not just words, but culture" was critical in the development of unforeseen works of art. He pointed to "The Grey Album," produced by the D.J. Danger Mouse, a remix of the Beatles' "White Album" and Jay-Z's "Black Album" that resulted in a wholly new and unexpected piece of music.

"What does it say about our democracy when ordinary behavior is deemed criminal?" he asked. Mr. Lessig and the moderator, Steven Johnson, a contributing editor at Wired, made much of the fact that the discussion was taking place in a library, where much of the Western cultural canon is available free.

Mr. Tweedy has little sympathy for artists who complain about downloading. "To me, the only people who are complaining are people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again," he said.

Mr. Lessig, one of the philosopher kings of Internet law, and Mr. Tweedy, the crown prince of indie music, traded places more than a few times during the presentation, with Mr. Lessig, who has argued copyright cases before the United States Supreme Court, enthusiastic about the artistic possibilities the Web engenders, and Mr. Tweedy making sapient pronouncements on the theoretical underpinnings of ownership.

"Once you create something, it doesn't exist in the consciousness of the creator," Mr. Tweedy said, telling the audience that they had an investment in a song just by the act of listening. Later, at a dinner at Lever House, Mr. Tweedy suggested that downloading was an act of rightful "civil disobedience."

All of it - high and low culture, Supreme Court rulings and mashed-up video clips ridiculing the president - was eagerly lapped up by the audience, which included musicians like David Byrne and D.J. Spooky, along with a throng of fans who would show up to hear Mr. Tweedy read from a digital phone directory.

Afterward, Alex Sherwin, a 36-year-old graphic designer, said, "It would have been better with a guitar, but I still enjoyed hearing what he had to say." Mr. Sherwin said his favorite CD was a live Jeff Tweedy performance in Chicago, one that had been recorded and distributed with the artist's happy assent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/ar...ic/09nypl.html


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The President's iPod: Is He File-Sharing?

Spencer Critchley

Following this article in the New York Times Monday (April 11, 2005), the question has popped up on some music lists: Is President Bush, inadvertently or not, participating in illegal file-sharing?

"...The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack..." (Emphasis is mine.)

If Mr. Bush didn't pay for those songs, it's not just a gotcha for the man who could probably claim the title of the world's leading defender of private property. It's an indication of the challenge the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and others are facing in trying to get the public to remember that easily cloned digital files are, officially anyway, not free.

And come to think of it, it also raises this question... Would the RIAA sue him?
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/wlg/6864


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White House Letter: President Bush's iPod
Elisabeth Bumiller

Between his return on Friday from Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome and his meeting today with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, President Bush spent an hour and a half on Saturday on an 18-mile mountain bike ride at his Texas ranch. With him, as usual, was his indispensable new exercise toy: an iPod music player loaded with country and popular rock tunes aimed at getting the presidential heart rate up to a chest-pounding 170 beats per minute.

Which brings up the inevitable question. What, exactly, is on the First iPod? In an era of celebrity playlists - Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, recently posted his on the iTunes online music store - what does the presidential selection of downloaded songs tell us about Mr. Bush?

First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. ("Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today.")

The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone in charge of music coverage, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week.

Mr. Bush has had his Apple iPod since July, when he received it from his twin daughters as a birthday gift. He has some 250 songs on it, a paltry number compared to the 10,000 selections it can hold. Mr. Bush, as leader of the free world, does not take the time to download the music himself; that task falls to his personal aide, Blake Gottesman, who buys individual songs and albums, including Mr. Jones's and Mr. Jackson's greatest hits, from the iTunes music store.

Mr. Bush uses his iPod chiefly during bike workouts to help him pump up his heartbeat, which he monitors with a wrist strap. The strap also keeps track of calories expended for the intensely weight-focused president, who has recently lost eight pounds after eating a lot of doughnuts during the 2004 campaign. Mr. Bush burned 1,300 calories on his bike ride on Saturday, Mr. McKinnon reported.

As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."

Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection."

Nonetheless, Mr. McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had not gone so far as to include on his playlist "Fortunate Son," the angry anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that Mr. Fogerty sang when he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ("I ain't no senator's son ... Some folks are born silver spoon in hand.") As the son of a two-term congressman and a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Mr. Levy sized up the rest of the playlist of the 58-year-old president. "What we're talking about is a lot of great artists from the 60's and 70's and more modern artists who sound like great artists from the 60's and 70's," he said. "This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it's not."

Mr. Jones, Mr. Levy said, was nonetheless an interesting choice. "George Jones is the greatest living singer in country music and a recovering alcoholic who often sings about heartbreak and drinking," he said. "It tells you that the president knows a thing or two about country music and is serious about his love of country music."

The songs by Mr. Jackson indicate that the president "has a little bit of a taste for hard core and honky-tonk," Mr. Levy said, adding that both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Jones "are not about cute and pop, and they're not getting by on their looks." And while Mr. Chesney "is about cute and pop and gets by on his looks," Mr. Levy said, "he's also all about serious country music."

Mr. McKinnon, who has downloaded "Castanets" by Alejandro Escovedo and "Alive 'N' Kickin' " by Kenny Loggins into Mr. Bush's iPod, said that sometimes a presidential playlist is just a playlist, nothing more.

"No one should psychoanalyze the song selection," Mr. McKinnon said. "It's music to get over the next hill."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/po.../11letter.html


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RIAA Cracks Down On Internet2 File-Swapping
John Borland

The Recording Industry Association of America filed suit Tuesday against students at 18 universities accused of operating file-swapping services on the supercharged Internet2 network.

The suits are the first to focus on the next-generation research network operated by universities. The i2Hub file-swapping service has operated for a year on campuses that are connected to Internet2.

Recording industry executives said i2Hub had become a serious problem over time as students believed they could not be observed trading files.

"i2Hub has been seen as a safe haven, and what we wanted to do was puncture that misconception," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA. "This has been a subversion of the research purposes for which Internet2 was developed."

The suits mark a substantial expansion of the record labels' approach to universities, which have been a core of the file-swapping population since the emergence of Napster in early 1999.

The RIAA has already sued the operators

Record labels also have given discounts to authorized services such as Napster, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Cdigix and Ruckus to offer cheap, legal music subscriptions on campus, hoping to attract students away from peer-to-peer networks.

i2hub had taken advantage of a feature in universities that let student transmissions--e-mail, Web surfing or peer to peer--default to Internet2 if both sides of a connection were connected to that network. Thus, two students at Internet2 universities who wanted to trade files would automatically see their traffic flow over the fast network, instead of the ordinary Internet.

That has meant that songs and videos could be downloaded extraordinarily quickly--just minutes for a full-length movie, and 20 seconds for an average song, assuming perfect conditions.

The RIAA said its suits will be filed against no more than 25 students at each of the 18 universities, which include Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Drexel University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at San Diego, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Southern California.

As with its other lawsuits against individual file-swappers, the recording industry group said it is filing anonymous "John Doe" lawsuits, based on individual computer users' Internet addresses. The identities of the students will be determined later though a court process.

Sherman said that no suits are being filed against the operators of the i2Hub network for now, although the group does have names of individuals who created the service. He declined to give details on how the RIAA gathered the data on the individuals who are being sued.

A representative of the i2Hub service could not immediately be reached for comment. Since launching as a pure file-trading network, i2Hub has expanded into other services such as textbook exchanges.

According to Sherman, the Motion Picture Association of America will also take legal action against i2Hub file-swappers. An MPAA representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

The MPAA opened discussions with Internet2 officials last year, hoping to be help test high-speed content delivery on the network, as well as monitor it for piracy. Sherman said he would like the RIAA to join those discussions.
http://news.com.com/RIAA+cracks+down...3-5667385.html


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File-Sharing Suits Again Target Princeton
Brian Kladko

Princeton University students, for the third time in two years, are being sued for using the school's computer network to illegally distribute copyrighted music.

The lawsuits to be filed today against 25 Princeton students, plus 380 other students throughout the country, are similar to thousands of others filed by the recording industry since the fall of 2003. This time, however, the recording industry is targeting users of a superfast network available only to university staff and students.

Known informally as Internet2, the network allows a song to be downloaded in 20 seconds and a movie in five minutes. By comparison, downloading a song with a DSL or cable connection takes one or two minutes, and a movie could take several hours.

"Quite simply, this special high-speed Internet technology designed for important academic research has been hijacked for illegal purposes," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Sherman called on university presidents to do more to ferret out illegal activity on their computer networks, such as filtering or blocking. "We would hope that they would be a little more proactive in identifying these problems and helping us avoid the need to file the kind of lawsuits we're filing today," he said.

Sherman said many students have been using the network through a service called i2hub, created by a student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I2hub is software tailored for Internet2 that allows users to share files from their own computers with a wider audience.

Sherman believes students have migrated to i2hub from better-known file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Grokster, drawn by faster downloads and the belief that Internet2 is a "safe zone," beyond the reach of the recording industry's monitoring.

"What we wanted to do was puncture that misconception and let people know that when you're on the Internet, there's no such thing as a safe zone for lawlessness," Sherman said.

The recording industry previously notified Princeton that it would seek a court order to identify 39 people who had been caught distributing copyrighted music.

But the industry ultimately decided to sue no more than 25 students at each school.

"There were 14 lucky students who will have escaped a lawsuit," Sherman said.

Two years ago, the recording industry sued Princeton student Daniel Peng, accusing him of creating a Web site on Princeton's network that listed songs available for download. Peng agreed to pay $15,000 without admitting wrongdoing.

A year ago, the industry filed suit against a handful of students at Princeton and 13 other schools. Like this latest batch, they were accused of using the university's network to share music.

Princeton officials would provide only written comments in response to Tuesday's news.

"We're not aware of effective technology that would block someone from illegally sharing copyrighted material while at the same time continuing to allow legitimate file sharing used for academic work," wrote Eric R. Quinones, a university spokesman.

A university document tells students that the university "does not actively monitor its computing network" for illegal activity, out of respect for students' privacy. But if network administrators discover that a student's computer is causing a drain on the network, it will alert "the appropriate disciplinary authority."

The students to be sued - each of whom will be identified as "John Doe" because their names are not yet known - distributed an average of 2,300 music files, the equivalent of 175 CDs, Sherman said.

Besides the Princeton students, the industry will file lawsuits against students at Columbia University, New York University, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It's also preparing to bring suits against students at 140 other schools.

Of the 10,000 people the recording industry has sued, it has reached settlements with about 2,000, forcing them to pay an average of $3,000 to $4,000 and to promise to stop sharing copyrighted music.
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?...ZxZWVFRXl5Mg==


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MPAA Follows RIAA Lawsuits

Motion picture group sues college students, but Harvard is spared
Matthew S. Lebowitz

Following similar actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed lawsuits yesterday against students at 12 universities for allegedly violating copyright law.

The MPAA is targeting users who allegedly have shared movies illegally over the Internet, while the RIAA’s suits focus on copyright violations concerning online music sharing.

In a press release Tuesday, the MPAA said that such copyright violations perpetrated over the Internet have become a serious problem on college campuses.

Like the RIAA, the MPAA specifically cited file-sharing applications such as “i2hub” that take advantage of special networks used by academic institutions.

The MPAA sued students at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas, Columbia University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Rochester, Boston University, the University of Ohio at Cincinnati, the University of Ohio at Columbus, Ohio State University, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, according to spokeswoman Kori Bernards.

Bernards said the MPAA, like the RIAA, will litigate against college students using “John Doe” lawsuits—meaning that each lawsuit is filed against an

In such cases, the plaintiff typically would subpoena the colleges and universities involved in order to obtain the names of the people using those IP addresses.

Bernards said the MPAA wants to send the message to students that their illegal actions can be detected.

“A lot of people who are stealing movies over the Internet think that they’re anonymous, and the more we point out that they’re not, the less likely they are to do it,” she said.

While the MPAA has not announced any suits against Harvard students at this time, Bernards said that it will continue to pursue legal action “as needed.”

Boston University will comply with the MPAA’s subpoenas, Spokesman Colin D. Riley said.

“We’re in the unenviable position of having to comply with subpoenas to identify individuals who allegedly have broken the law,” he said.

Riley added that students have no excuse for pirating copyrighted material.

“We communicate with students that they should not be illegally downloading material, and if they do, they run the risk of having to obtain lawyers and defend themselves from lawsuits,” he said. “Students...are certainly intelligent enough to understand that.”

In addition to the lawsuits against i2hub users on college campuses, the MPAA also filed several dozen lawsuits against named defendants yesterday, according to Bernards.

This marks the first time the MPAA has sued individuals under their actual names instead of using the “John Doe” suits.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=507077


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Microsoft Sues Over Counterfeit Software

Microsoft is filing lawsuits against eight computer system builders and resellers in seven U.S. states, accusing them of distributing counterfeit and unlicensed software and components, the company said on Monday.

The lawsuits follow similar action in November 2004 against eight dealers. Legal amendments in 2003 provide criminal and civil penalties for distributing software without authenticity certificates.

"Our partners are coming to us and asking for our help," Microsoft senior attorney Bonnie MacNaughton said in a statement. "They are being undercut and forced out of business by having to compete with dishonest PC manufacturers and resellers who continue to sell illegitimate software."

Microsoft said the lawsuits, filed in California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Alabama, Maryland and Rhode Island, allege distribution of counterfeit, illicit and unlicensed software and components.

The lawsuits stem from an ongoing test purchase program started by Microsoft in 1997. Through it, the company acquires software, components or computer systems from dealers and tests them for authenticity.

If they are not legitimate, the dealer is generally sent a cease-and-desist letter and told how it can obtain legal, genuine software before Microsoft takes further action.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft cited the Business Software Alliance, which says 22 percent of software being used on computers in the United States is unlicensed, including counterfeit and pirated software.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+sues+o...3-5663516.html


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File-Sharers Fighting the Good Fight in Canada
Jon Newton

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E- Commerce Law and a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said recently, "File sharing is certainly here to stay and the lawsuits and attempts at new legislation are attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube."

Canadians concerned about attempts to have Canada's Copyright Act re-written to suit the entertainment industry's desires are marshaling their efforts to make sure it doesn't happen.

Member of Parliament Peter Julian has introduced "Petition for Users Rights" signatures in Canada's Parliament. More than a thousand people have signed so far, and MPs will continue to hand in additional signatures by the batch.

"Petitioners want this House to maintain the balance between the rights of the public and the rights of the creators," said Julian. "They demand that the government not extend the term of copyright, and preserve all existing users' rights to ensure a vibrant public domain. The petitioners also call upon Parliament to ensure that users are recognized as interested parties and are meaningfully consulted about any proposed changes to the copyright act."

Creeping into Canada

If Canadian heritage minister Liza Frulla has her way, the Big Four record labels will soon be feeding their self-interested messages directly to Canadian kids in schools. And, "We'll also be addressing the peer-to-peer issue," she says. "It will give the tools to companies and authors to sue."

In the U.S. and Britain, "copyright law" has already been added to the three Rs; and the members of the Big Four music cartel routinely invade classrooms pushing "educational" programs to kids, with teaching institutions acting as sales and marketing outlets, and administrators, supported by taxpayers, working as unpaid staff.

The CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) has been trying to do the same in Canada, but with a marked lack of success.

Frulla wants to remedy this. Using the 2005 Big Music Juno advertising fest in Winnipeg as her vehicle, she made it clear she'll follow the path laid out by her predecessor Helene Chalifour Scherrer, who a year ago this month promised to re-organize Canada's copyright act to enable the music cartels to sue Canadians for sharing music online.

Labeling 'Criminals'

"Frulla expressed her intention to toughen Canada's 'antiquated' intellectual property laws through proposed new copyright legislation to be tabled in June," said the Winnipeg Free Press.

When the minister talks about "tools" to "sue," she's referring to the fact that at the moment, the cartel (none of whose members have a significant presence in Canada) can't use Canadian law to terrorize online music lovers into buying over-priced and inferior "product."

In the U.S., close to 10,000 ordinary people have been mis-characterized as criminals and, thanks to cartel propaganda, most American are under the entirely false impression that file-sharing is a crime.

The music industry says it's successfully 'sued' these people for sharing files. In reality, every one of Big Music's victims has settled out of court (see story), being unable to take the multi-billion- dollar industry on by themselves. The labels use this to imply the people they're persecuting have admitted guilt of some kind.

The music industry, "has long blamed peer-to-peer file-sharing and music downloading for declining music sales," says the CBC.

Here To Stay

This isn't the case, however, as an ever increasing body of evidence, such as the most recent, a Japanese study, clearly proves.

Big Music also claims its legal actions are significantly reducing file sharing. In fact this, too, is manifestly untrue, as a number of academic and other studies, including an OECD report, amply demonstrate.

And as professor Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law and a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said recently, "File sharing is certainly here to stay and the lawsuits and attempts at new legislation are attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/c...ary/42179.html


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Letter Sent To MPs: High Cost And Minimal Benefit To Current Government Copyright Proposals

Submitted by Russell McOrmond on Tue, 2005/04/12 - 11:14. Jeanne-Le Ber | Ottawa South | Ottawa--Vanier | PCT | Vancouver Kingsway | Winnipeg South

The following cover letter was used in packages sent to a few key MPs.

David McGuinty, my MP
Hon. Mauril Bélanger, who was previously my MP when I lived in Sandy Hill
Hon. Reg Alcock, who I have had many conversations about FLOSS
Hon. David Emerson, Minister of Industry, as I believe it would be better for creativity and innovation if Industry Canada took over copyright policy from Heritage

Included in the package were:

Piercing the peer-to-peer myths
Heritage minister pledges anti-downloading law
CDs that demonstrated peer-production or peer-distribution such as TheOpenCD.org, copies of the Fading Ways Share samplers, and Ubuntu Linux.

Dear Hon. Mauril Bélanger,
Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Minister responsible for Official Languages, Minister responsible for Democratic Reform and Associate Minister of National Defence
MP for Ottawa-Vanier

I am sending you a copy of an article published in First Monday. First Monday is one of the first peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. This article is by Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. It discusses the myth that unauthorized peer-to-peer distribution of music has led to billions in lost sales in Canada.

This myth is being used to justify radical changes to the Copyright act. Any legislation should have adequate cost-benefits analysis. My analysis suggests that proposed changes come at a very high cost and offer minimal benefits if any. I have sent articles in the past that discussed the high costs of proposed legislation to new-media creativity and innovation. This article suggests that even if unauthorized peer-to-peer was entirely eradicated that this would have minimal or no beneficial effect on the bottom-line of the recording industry.

It appears Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla has not yet spent the time to read the legal or economic analysis, and is currently acting on misinformation. When organizations like the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) claim that they are being harmed by unauthorized peer-to-peer, she accepted this without question. When CRIA claims that the copyright act makes it hard to sue copyright infringers she believes them, even though the problem with the recent court case was a lack of evidence of infringement offered by CRIA.

"We'll also be addressing the peer-to-peer issue," Frulla said. ``It will give the tools to companies and authors to sue."

"Everything starts with the children," she said. "They're the ones who say `recycle' and `don't smoke.' The Internet is their world." (Toronto Star, Apr. 4, 2005, "Heritage minister pledges anti-downloading law")

Believing the Chicken Little "sky is falling" rhetoric of CRIA, the Minister seems intent on making it easy for CRIA to sue children without adequate evidence of wrongdoing. Legislation is planned to be introduced as early as June. This is not the type of message that the Liberal party wants to be offering if we head into an election, especially as other parties in Canada are modernizing their thinking about copyright and new media.

Thank you.

Russell McOrmond


http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/777


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Newspapers Support Bloggers In Apple Trade Secrets Case

More than a half-dozen news organizations are supporting three online reporters who wrote about a top-secret product that Apple Computer Inc. says was protected by trade secret laws.

In December, Apple sued 25 unnamed individuals -- possibly Apple employees -- who allegedly leaked confidential product information to three Web publishers. The Cupertino- based company said the leaks violated nondisclosure agreements and California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

In Apple's attempts to identify the source of the leaks, the company asked the reporters' Internet providers to turn over e-mail records.

The reporters -- Monish Bhatia, Jason O'Grady and another person who writes under the pseudonym Kasper Jade -- tried to block the subpoenas. They said that identifying sources would create a ``chilling effect'' that could erode the media's ability to report in the public's interest.

But Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled in Apple's favor last month, saying that reporters who publish ``stolen property'' aren't entitled to protections. The reporters appealed.

Now the mainstream media have weighed in: Eight of California's largest newspapers and The Associated Press submitted a court brief Thursday asking that the online publishers be allowed to keep their sources confidential.

The media companies said Kleinberg's ruling, if upheld, could impair the ability of all journalists to report important news. Before demanding that the online publishers' Internet providers turn over e-mail records, the companies said, Apple should ``exhaust all alternative sources'' of identifying the source of the leaks.

``Recent corporate scandals involving Worldcom, Enron and the tobacco industry all undoubtedly involved the reporting of information that the companies involved would have preferred to remain unknown to the public,'' the 38-page brief stated. ``Just because a statute seeks to protect secrecy of such information does not mean that the First Amendment protections provided to the news media to inform the public are wiped away.''

Signing the brief were the Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times, Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, Knight Ridder Inc.'s San Jose Mercury News, The Copley Press Inc.'s San Diego Union-Tribune, Freedom Communications Inc.'s Orange County Register, and The McClatchy Co.'s Bee newspapers in Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto.

Also signing were the California Newspaper Publishers Association, Society of Professional Journalists, Student Press Law Center and the California First Amendment Coalition.

On Friday, the U.S. Internet Industry Association and NetCoalition filed a separate brief. The trade groups, which represent search engines and other online companies, said Internet service providers should be able to protect their clients' confidentiality.

``These protections are critical to ISPs and their ability to provide safe, reliable and secure communications channels to their subscribers,'' the brief stated.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling wouldn't comment on the briefs but emphasized that Apple must protect its product secrets. In November, the reporters published information on their Web sites, Apple Insider and PowerPage, about a digital music product code-named ``Asteroid.''

``Apple's DNA is innovation, and protection of trade secrets is crucial to our success,'' Dowling said Monday.

In a 46-page document that Apple filed to the appeals court Thursday, attorneys said two investigators from the company's security department questioned employees who had access to the confidential product specifications, threatening to fire them if they lied. They also conducted ``broad forensic searches'' of Apple's e-mail servers.

Other than subpoenaing Nfox.com, a Las Vegas-based Internet provider that may have e-mail records for at least one of the reporters, Apple attorneys said they had ``no other recourse'' to finding the source of the leaks.

Apple has also questioned the credentials of the reporters, who publish entirely online and have become a cause celebre among people who produce independent Web logs, or blogs. Although California's largest newsrooms are backing the reporters, in court documents Apple always uses quotation marks around the word journalist, noting that one article was written by someone named ``Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem.''

Apple also says the reporters merely reproduced technical specifications that may have tipped off competitors or bungled a planned product launch.

``There may be public curiosity about an individual's wealth, but that would never justify the theft and publication of the individual's tax returns,'' Apple's court filing stated. ``Similarly, no legitimate public interest was served by the theft of Apple's trade secrets.''

But Peter Scheer, executive director of the San Rafael-based California First Amendment Coalition, said the reporters were members of the media -- and the case could impair all journalists' abilities to develop sources.

``Even if these stories had been written by The New York Times, not only could The New York Times be forced to disclose its sources but because of the nature of the information, The New York Times might even be at risk for criminal prosecution for publishing such a story,'' Sheer said. ``This started out as an important but quirky case about bloggers but it morphed quickly into a much more important case about First Amendment protections when newspapers are writing about information that can be characterized as being a trade secret.''

Dave Tomlin, assistant general counsel for the AP, said the case has implications for bloggers, online reporters and traditional journalists.

``For us, this case is about whether the First Amendment protects journalists from being turned into informants for the government, the courts or anybody else who wants to use them that way,'' Tomlin said.

Shares of Apple, which is scheduled to release quarterly results Wednesday, fell $1.82, or 4.2 percent, to close at $41.92 on the Nasdaq. The stock rose 15 cents in after-hours trading.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11368329.htm


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New House Bill Protects Political Bloggers
Declan McCullagh

Political bloggers and other online commentators are gaining more support in the U.S. Congress.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, introduced a bill Wednesday that would prevent the federal government from extending campaign finance laws to the Internet.

The bill mirrors a companion measure in the Senate that was introduced last month by Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Both would effectively rewrite a 2002 campaign finance law popularly known as McCain-Feingold in a way that would bar the Federal Election Commission from regulating political Web sites.

Bloggers beware:

As the Federal Election Commission takes its first steps to shape campaign rules for the blog era, FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith warned that proposed rules present unanswered questions for bloggers:

· The draft rules provide some protections for "individual" political commentators. But what if a group of people jointly publish a blog? "If one of the bloggers received payment for an activity, would it turn the group into a political committee" subject to campaign finance regulation, Smith asked. He pointed to the academic-leaning Volokh Conspiracy blog, which has multiple contributors.

· Some blogs, such as Daily Kos, are published by a corporation. If they endorse candidates, they must be approved by the FEC as legitimate news organizations or run afoul of the law, Smith warned. If such a site "did not qualify for the press exemption, the mere fact that they're unpaid does not get them out from under the regulation."

· The FEC's proposed regulations talk about "announcements placed for a fee on another entity's Web site." Smith asked: What if those are pop-up political ads generated by a software program such as Claria's "adware," instead of by a Web browser? Should the FEC target Claria, the advertiser or the Web site that happens to be in the background?

"Within the next 60 days, the FEC is expected to finalize rules and regulations that could squash not only free speech and political activism, but could well impede innovation and technology--unless Congress acts now," Hensarling wrote in a letter to his colleagues that his spokesman said would be circulated Thursday.

The Hensarling and Reid bills represent a bipartisan departure from Congress' earlier decision to sweep the Internet into the McCain-Feingold law. In a recent interview with CNET News.com, FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith warned that the law could regulate everything from Web links to political campaigns to a party activist who forwards e-mail from a political candidate.

During the debate over McCain-Feingold, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, offered an amendment saying that "none of the limitations, prohibitions or reporting requirements of this act shall apply to any activity carried out through the use of the Internet." But the House of Representatives rejected the measure by a 160-268 vote, with only five Democrats voting for it.

The FEC voted on March 24 to go forward with its Internet regulations, which are now required by a federal court order. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed regulations, which can be done through e-mail to Internet@fec.gov, and a public hearing is scheduled for June 28.

Mike Krempasky, a contributor to conservative Web site RedState.org, applauded the Hensarling bill. "I've already heard from some liberal colleagues in the blogosphere, and we're going to push this bill--and hard," he wrote Wednesday.
http://news.com.com/New+House+bill+p...3-5669806.html


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Yurp n Asia

French Data Protection Authority Allows P2P Monitoring

The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) has decided that the software industry may track and monitor file exchanges on P2P networks. The software lobbying organisation SELL is allowed to send "piracy prevention messages" to file-sharers and collect their IP addresses in databases. These are common anti-piracy practices and widely used.

In Sweden the collection of IP addresses by the national anti-piracy organisation was reported to the Swedish Data Inspection Board, because "it is illegal to archive information that purports to, and can be linked to, individual data (i.e. IP-numbers that can be linked to subscribers) and to try to link this to criminal actions." While the Swedes still have to decide, the French now have.

CNIL said that IP addresses will only get a "personal character within the framework of a legal procedure". It also thought that the actions presented by "SELL were likely to preserve a balance between the protection of the rights of the people of which data are processed and the protection of the rights from which the authors and other rightsholder profit." [translation mine-RL]

Interesting to call this the "preservation" of a balance. That's a new balance then, with less privacy protection due to increased monitoring and registration of individual internet behaviour. You can argue that this provides the preferred balance, but it certainly does not preserve the (in)balance that was.
http://constitutionalcode.blogspot.c...authority.html


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Irish Face Net Copyright Crack Down
Correspondents in Dublin

IRELAND'S music industry plans a series of lawsuits against 17 people who have illegally uploaded hundreds of thousands of copyrighted music tracks on the internet

Abuse of copyright on the Internet has contributed to a €28 million ($46.6 million) drop in music sales in Ireland between 2001 and 2004 - a decline of 19 percent - the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) said.

"This action is being taken against serial file sharers," IRMA director general Dick Doyle said.

"The top six offenders have uploaded in excess of 2,000 illegal files which is equivalent to 200 albums," he said.

"This is wholesale mass distribution and is effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music."

The association had been issuing warnings for 15 months now, Doyle noted.

"It is time to take action - we are not accepting this situation anymore," he warned.

Last year, IRMA were involved in piracy raids throughout the country that led to the seizure of 38,085 pirated CDs and 380 cassettes compared to 18,822 CDs and 1,098 cassettes in 2003.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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Indies Plan Assault On UK Singles Chart
Lester Haines

A UK independent record label boss has warned that indies may this week launch an assault on the UK singles chart to prove that it is not secure following the incorporation of downloads into sales figures. The plan is simply to download specific songs as many times as possible to improve their chart position - an armchair version of the old "send out the manager to buy every copy in HMV" ploy.

Gut Records supremo, Guy Holmes, told the BBC: "I know of two different labels who are considering buying records online because they believe it's the only way they can teach the chart people that the security of the chart is no longer there. The people who have instigated the chart have failed dismally in their responsibilities to make and keep our charts secure and to stop people with large amounts of money being able to take advantage of it."

The Official UK Charts Company (OCC) has already said it would monitor the chart "very, very carefully" in the lead-up to this weekend's first "integrated" Top 40. OCC rep James Gillespie asserted: "It's very important that the chart isn't open to corruption, isn't open to being hyped." He added: "We're very confident that [the security system] is going to ensure that the singles chart remains the most accurate barometer of people's music tastes."

The Beeb notes that said security system will keep an eye out for "the same credit card or mobile phone numbers buying multiple copies of the same song".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04...chart_assault/


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The #1 Song In Oz
Alex Malik

Everybody in Australia is getting to know Jesse McCartney. He’s a likeable young pop star and actor who epitomises all of the attributes the recording industry likes to push.

He’s young, wholesome, American and you could describe him as a typical teenaged girl’s heart-throb … a kind of male Ashlee Simpson.

McCartney has just turned 18 and so far, he’s done well: a hit song in the US, and his Beautiful Soul is number 1 in Australia on the ARIA singles chart.

There’s only one problem – in Australia, you can’t buy his hit as a download.

In the meantime, the ARIA, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BMI (Broadcast Music

International) and IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) have been busily pushing so-called legitimate downloads.

In their recent sales figures press release ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) had this to say:

“In 2004, there was a ten-fold increase in the global market for legitimate digital music downloads – a trend that the industry anticipates will start to be replicated locally during 2005. Whilst the online services currently operating in Australia have yet to break through in the same way that they have overseas, the industry is encouraged by the overseas results during 2004 and looks forward to similar success locally during 2005.”

In the ARIA recent court proceedings against Kazaa-owner Sharman Networks and others, it was clear the ARIA was also attempting to disseminate these messages:

(1) Don’t download music from peer to p2p services such as Kazaa. Buy your CDs.

(2) But if you have to download music, pay for it – and buy it from one of the three authorised retailers of downloads in Australia – Bigpond music, Ninemsn or Destra (through Sanity or one of their other partners).

So after all of this, and all of the money spent in the Kazaa case you’d think you could buy a download of Jesse McCartney’s national #1 single.

Right? Well, wrong!

This left fans with two choices: either buy the CD singles (or the newly released album) and rip then them into a compressed digital format; or, download an mp3 from an unauthorised peer to p2p service/mp3 website.

Both alternatives are illegal under Australian copyright law, and Australian consumers still can’t access iTunes and other download services from the United States without a US credit card.

The Federal Government will be reviewing Australian copyright fair use laws. But that’s some time in the future.

In the meantime, Jesse is #1 this week.

So if you, your sister or your daughter is walking around in Australia listening to his #1 hit on your favourite music player, there’s a good chance someone has broken the law.
http://p2pnet.net/story/4508


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Finnish authorities gear up for strikes against peer-to-peer file sharing networks

IFPI Finland Sends 28 Requests For Investigation By Police Over Piracy

In keeping with moves in several other countries, steps are now being taken by Finnish authorities to stamp out illegal distribution of copyright music material via the Internet.
Suomen Ääni- ja kuvatallennetuottajat (ÄKT, the Finnish Branch of IFPI) have sent police requests for investigations of 28 individuals who they would like to see brought to justice for net piracy through the peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
ÄKT wants prosecutions brought against persons who have been spreading music through file sharing applications such as BitTorrent, KaZaa, eDonkey, and eMule.

The intention is not apparently to target those users who have been downloading small quantities of music for their own use, but individuals who have offered up files for thousands to download. ÄKT argues that these persons are guilty of illegal distribution of music that is subject to copyright, and that the time has come to put a stop to the practice, through the courts if need be.
In cases elsewhere in the world, fines have usually been handed down for persons found guilty. In May 2001 a 25-year-old man from Jyväskylä was obliged to pay fines and compensation totalling FIM 32,000 (EUR 5,400) in a similar case.

The requests to the police represent the first concerted Finnish involvement in an extensive international operation targeting illegal file sharing and safeguarding authors' rights and the legal end of online sales.
Cases have already been brought against users of peer-to- peer networks in the United States, Denmark, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. Aside from Finland, countries such as Iceland, The Netherlands, Ireland, and Japan have now come on board.
This week a record number of 963 cases have been launched, and in all nearly 12,000 such cases are being heard.

In the background to the dispute over file sharing are the fears of the music industry, which has seen a decline in sales worldwide of around 20% over the past five years.
Last year alone, legal sales of recorded music in Finland fell by 12.5% in value terms.
Film producers, manufacturers of computer games, and software suppliers are equally dismayed and angry at the free distribution of their wares among potential paying customers.

The increasing public awareness of the illegality of the activity has had some effect.
Apparently the number of users of one such peer-to-peer arrangement, KaZaa, have declined from 4.2 million to 2.3 million, in spite of an increased number of people now enjoying the broadband connection speeds that facilitate large downloads - for example entire feature films, often available illegally online before they reach the cinemas.
However, if KaZaa's popularity is waning, it has been replaced by another application, BitTorrent.
Sites using BitTorrent have been forced to close by action from authorities in several countries, Finland among them. In December of last year, the country's largest file-sharing server was forced to go offline following a request to police from the Business Software Alliance
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/engli.../1101979127547


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New Wave Of Lawsuits To Hit 'Illegal Song-Swappers'
Charles Arthur

The record industry is targeting nearly 1,000 people in a new wave of lawsuits against alleged "illegal song-swappers" in actions in 11 countries in Europe and Asia.

Following its first year of legal actions in Europe, which resulted in 248 people paying fines or facing "sanctions", the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said this morning that it will bring lawsuits to four new European countries, specifically the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland and Iceland.

Japan is also joining in the fun, becoming the first Asian country to take legal action against people who use P2P services to trade the record business' wares without payment.

Those found guilty by a court, or who settle with the IFPI, are likely to face compensation payments of thousands of pounds, or euros. Or hundreds of thousands of yen.

The IFPI claimed that the first round of European lawsuits, which began last autumn, have already seen illegal file-sharing fall by one third in Germany, where CD sales have dropped precipitiously in the face of widespread CD-burning. "The number of music files downloaded there fell to 382m files in 2004, compared to 602m the previous year," the IFPI said in a statement.

John Kennedy, the IFPI's chairman, said: "Today, people across Europe can be in no doubt that uploading copyrighted music on to file-sharing networks is against the law, affects jobs, investment in music and livelihoods, and carries the risk of financial penalties. We have spent two years raising public awareness of this, and ignorance really is no longer an excuse."

However Julian Midgley, of the Campaign for Digital Rights, thinks the lawsuits are a bad idea. "The CDR has always stood up for copyright law," he said. "But we will say that we aren't convinced that the record industry is going about keeping its buying public on its best side. There's still plenty of evidence that the people who are using file sharing services buy more music than they would otherwise. And it's obvious that suing your customers isn't likely to make them happy." He said the money being spent on lawsuits could better be used providing more - and cheaper - services like Apple's iTunes Music Store.

The IFPI is also extending the range of P2P services it targets, so that it's not just users of KaZaA who are in its sights, but also those of what it calls "newer" file- sharing services such as eDonkey, eMule, Bearshare, OpenNap, DirectConnect and BitTorrent.

Pretty much everyone who uses such services is now a target of the IFPI. Initially, it is chasing what it calls "uploaders", who let files on their machine be available for download by anyone else using the services. The largest case it has settled was a French man with 56,000 tracks - "equivalent to more than 5,000 CD albums" - in his music library. However people who have "uploaded" even a few hundred tracks are in the spotlight in the latest legal cases.

We wondered whether that didn't mean that the IFPI is targeting people who have large music collections, and are thus in a sense already its best customers. The IFPI disagreed. "The default settings of the file-sharing software makes all your files available, but you can change that," said a spokeswoman for the IFPI.

The IFPI is happy that its strategy - of going after those who make big libraries available, rather than download - is working in a 'softly softly' manner, especially as broadband - the technology it sees as assisting evil file-sharing - spreads. The lawsuits have had "a noticeable effect on file-sharing figures despite the growth of broadband penetration," it said today. "Overall, the number of infringing music files on the internet dropped from its peak of 1.1bn in April 2003 to 870m in January 2005, a drop of 21 per cent. In the same time period global broadband penetration grew by 75 per cent, from 80m to 140m households worldwide."

Last month the British Phonographic Industry won settlements (http:// http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03...e_settlements/) from 23 Britons accused of distributing copyrighted music over file-sharing networks. Three cases are still pending, and expected to reach the courts sometime.

The IFPI's latest assault brings it in line with the US's RIAA, which has filed more than 900 lawsuits, though it made what many saw as the strategic mistake of targeting both downloaders and "uploaders" indiscriminately, leading to bad publicity when one of the first turned out to be a 12-year-old girl.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04...ring_lawsuits/


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Wirelessly Wired To The Max
Devangshu Datta

An Indian student at an English university recently had a spot of bother with the constabulary. He was found at 0300 hours sitting in a moonlit field with a laptop. He said he was a student, a resident of the college visible on the edge of the field. And, he claimed to be surfing the Internet.

The English policemen refused to believe him. Being comparatively cyber- savvy, they pointed out he couldn’t be on the Net without a cellphone handy. Ergo, he must have stolen the laptop (his dark clothes and the hour may have triggered this leap of logic).

Our hero stuttered out an explanation of Wi-Fi but the coppers let him go only after a very sleepy professor vouched for him. They also watched an impromptu demo of Wi-Fi before wandering off, marvelling.

In a Wi-Fi hotspot, anybody who switches on a Wi-Fi-enabled device receives Net access, with an extremely fast connection. Some network providers charge, many don’t. Companies, universities, government offices, airports, railways stations, and so on, all install Wi-Fi networks and leave them open for passerbys.

It costs less to be generous. It is a messy job securing a Wi-Fi network while allowing multitudes of people to use it in passing doesn’t make much difference. Data transfer speed slows down more due to distance rather than network crowding.

Even as far away as 100 metres from an access point, in a flat, open area, the user might get a 1 Mbps connection. Near an access point, it could be as high as 11 Mbps.

Wi-Fi is a low-power, short-range technology, open to interference. The next thing in wireless could be “Wi-Max”, which has greater range (several km), better encryption and interference protection. But Wi-Max costs over 10 times as much as Wi-Fi.

People near hotspots are developing creative uses for them. In downtown metro areas, on wired campuses, and in “smart” cities like Orlando, Florida or Singapore, a mesh of hotspots has caused viral changes in cyber-culture.

“War-driving” has become a new geek recreation. People drive around with a laptop and a packet-sniffer. The sniffer is a software utility that finds Wi-Fi networks. A sniffer combined with a global positioning device maps access points.

War-drivers create hotspot lists and sometimes leave graffiti at access-points as user-guides. Some companies have started using hotspots for promos by delivering “welcome to the ABC Corp network” messages.

In a couple of US universities, music downloads at very reduced rates are offered on the campus Wi-Fi networks. The cheap songs won’t play off the network. It’s an interesting, if partial, solution to file-sharing.

Wireless gaming is another entertainment option and so are “silent discos”. High data speeds make rich audio-visual content delivery possible. In a hotspot, everyone can put on wireless phones and listen to music or play interactive games with other users.

The entertainment industry and event managers might find this a godsend in urban zones with noise-pollution laws. Live concerts where the audience wears wireless headphones are being experimented with. The “silent disco” will go mainstream at the Glastonbury Festival this year.

For municipalities, Wi-Fi might be the best option in terms of broadband access. Wi-Fi doesn’t require digging or expensive subscription patterns. To put a citywide mesh in place cost just Rs 10 lakh per square km in cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans. One US service provider estimated that just 2,000 subscribers at $ 16 per month paid for a 25-square km network in three years.

A wired city has enormous service delivery benefits. A Wi-Fi public safety video surveillance system in New Orleans reduced murder rates by 57 per cent, and auto-theft by 25 per cent in six months. Police can improve reaction time due to easy access to HQ and databases. Wi-Fi based meter-reading systems can scan as many as 70 water meters or power meters every second.

As Wi-Fi catches on, more uses will be found and more innovative revenue models developed. What we need in India now is enabling legislation to ensure that the 2.4 GHz band where Wi-Fi operates, is intelligently regulated.
http://www.business-standard.com/com...&autono=186070


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Testing Copyright Limits

Grouper's Creators Say It's Not Like Other File-Sharing Programs. The entertainment industry isn't so sure.
Jon Healey

Jennifer Urban, a law professor at USC, wanted to watch home movies of her 7-month-old nephew Peter in England, but nothing seemed to work. The videotapes and DVDs were in the wrong format, and the digital movie files were too big to e-mail.

Then Urban hit on a software program called Grouper. And in addition to movies of her nephew, Grouper offers Urban, who specializes in copyright law, insight into how technology is testing the boundaries of copyright in a digital age.

For the record:

Grouper program —An article in Tuesday's Business section about the Grouper file-sharing software misquoted Jennifer Urban, a law professor at USC. Urban talked about wanting to download a copy of a home video from her in-laws in England and was quoted saying, "That's non-profit-infringing." In fact, she said, "That's non-infringing."

Like Kazaa and other popular file-sharing programs, Grouper allows Urban to copy movies and pictures of young Peter directly from her brother and sister-in-law's
computer without worrying about formats or oversized e-mail attachments. Unlike those global networks with millions of users, though, Grouper also lets Urban pick and choose with whom she shares online — and sets a strict limit of 30 people per group.

"I'm very attracted to the privacy afforded by having a private group protected by encryption, particularly for sharing letters, family photos, movies, etc.," Urban said. "This isn't the case with other peer-to-peer networks."

What makes Grouper troubling to some entertainment industry executives are the other things people can do with it. For example, the program lets people copy bootlegged Hollywood movies and listen to songs on one another's computers, all without paying a dime to the studios, artists or songwriters.

Grouper Network Inc.'s founders, Josh Felser and Dave Samuel, say the built-in limits of their peer-to-peer software make it a poor substitute for more controversial file-sharing programs such as Kazaa and Grokster, which are hotbeds for piracy. In addition to limiting the size and accessibility of groups, they say, their program requires songs to be streamed — that is, played through the Internet — not downloaded.

Those limits may not add up to a legal service, argues Nicolas Firth, chairman of BMG Music Publishing Worldwide.

"I'm not so sure that I see a big distinction between this and, say, Grokster because you're at 30 people," Firth said. "Where are you going to draw the line at what constitutes unlicensed use of copyrighted music?"

Firth's question has no clear answer yet, copyright experts say. Nor have the courts settled many issues surrounding streaming, such as whether streaming a song to a private group online violates a songwriter's copyright over "public performance."

This murkiness has opened the door for Internet entrepreneurs like Felser and Samuel to test the limits of copyrights.

Their innovation supplies a steady stream of new ways to access, use, store and copy digital goods, raising a succession of unanswered questions about how laws from the era of turntables and tape recorders apply to a digital age when virtually every device can connect to and share with other devices.

The Supreme Court is expected to clear up a few knotty issues later this year when it issues a ruling in the major studios and record companies' lawsuit against Grokster and StreamCast Networks Inc., the company behind the Morpheus file-sharing software. Although that ruling probably will affect a variety of technologies that can be used both for legal copying and piracy, its most direct effect will be on file-sharing programs that enable people to download whatever they please from an unlimited number of anonymous people online.

Grouper, by contrast, is part of an emerging trend in the file-sharing world to let people swap digital goods with a limited audience of invited guests. Even if the justices rule against Grokster and StreamCast, their decision will not necessarily affect these more constrained approaches.

And Mill Valley, Calif.-based Grouper is just one of many new faces in the ever-evolving world of file sharing. Like water behind a dam, technological innovation continually flows through the cracks in the legal shield erected around copyrighted works.

Felser and Samuel's previous effort had been San Francisco-based Spinner.com, a pioneering online radio outlet. The pair sold Spinner to America Online in 1999 for $320 million worth of AOL stock. They continued working for AOL for a year or two before dropping out of the high-tech world — Felser said he thought about buying a carwash, and Samuel got into the high-end toilet business.

They got back into the software business a few years later, Felser said, because they kept running into problems similar to professor Urban's.

The last straw came in 2003 when Felser returned to the Burning Man festival, an annual party for artists and others in the Nevada desert east of Reno.

"I couldn't share all the video clips I had with my friends," said Felser, an annual Burning Man pilgrim whose festival nickname is "the Frog Prince."

The two set about developing a way to link people's hard drives into private groups. The idea was to let people use the Internet to show off their homemade goods and music collections, just as they might do in their own homes.

The company's free software lets people invite others into secure networks where each member can browse through the others' computers and download files. Users are not anonymous, however; in compliance with a new California law, the software requires people to reveal a real e-mail address.

The company, funded by $3.5 million from private investors, plans to make money by selling premium versions of the software, presenting targeted advertisements and offering users the chance to buy images, music and other digital goods.

To deter piracy, Grouper does not let users search for items outside the groups they've been invited to join. And MP3 files may only be streamed, not downloaded, although the program cannot stop users from copying songs in some other formats.

"We try to limit the opportunities for people to use our technology in ways that might put us in legal hot water," Felser said. He added that as the technological and legal environment changed, Grouper would do whatever it was required to do to stay on the right side of the law.

What the company does not want to do, he said, is monitor or control what users do with its software.

"It's a friends' network. We shouldn't be involved at all in what they're sharing," he said.

A spin through the directory reveals a number of groups with seemingly innocuous titles along with several others with eyebrow-raising descriptions, including ones devoted to sharing episodes of the "Lost" and "Veronica Mars" TV programs and bootlegged DVDs.

"Any swapping of copyrighted materials on the Internet is a cause for concern," said Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Assn. of America. "We hope Grouper will adapt its program to prevent the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material."

A spokesman for the Recording Industry Assn. of America declined to comment.

One Grouper backer is Strauss Zelnick, a former top executive in the music and movie industries who now is a partner in Zelnick Media, a wide-ranging media and advertising company. To Zelnick, Grouper promotes "fair use" of media by limiting the size of groups and enabling streaming, not downloading, of MP3s.

"Fair use is beneficial to the record companies, I think," Zelnick said. "Sampling is what music marketing is all about."

Still, Zelnick said the same was not true for movies because one viewing might be enough for most people. "When you share a movie, you've kind of stolen the intellectual property," he said.

Although the courts have yet to rule on the issue, several copyright-law experts said there was little difference legally between file-sharing with large groups or small ones.

"There's no family-and-friends exception in copyright law," said attorney Robert Schwartz of O'Melveny & Myers, a Los Angeles firm that has several entertainment- industry clients.

"Every time you make a copy, technically it's a copyright law violation," said attorney Mark Radcliffe, a copyright expert at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary in Palo Alto. "But for a long time, there's kind of been an unspoken agreement that if you make copies for your friends, people weren't going to go after you. There's been an argument that that might be a fair use in some way…. The whole issue of private copying is a big challenge to American copyright law."

Urban of USC said Grouper appeared to have been designed to fit into several exemptions that copyright law provides for nonprofit or educational uses. "They really have mined the Copyright Act for all the opportunities for sharing digital files," she said.

To Urban, though, the most compelling thing about Grouper has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

"I want to see my nephew crawl," she said. "That's non-profit-infringing."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,1076225.story


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VoIP Calls Get Podcast Treatment
Ben Charny

Calling all music players.

A growing number of people are sharing the digital music on MP3 players and other music devices using freely available software and Skype, a free Internet phone service.

The enthusiasts are borrowing heavily from another personal broadcasting phenomenon called podcasting, in which digital recordings are posted on a Web site for download to a variety of music players, including desktop PCs and portable gadgets like Apple Computer's wildly popular iPod. "Skypecasters," as they call themselves, use Skype's peer-to-peer telephone network to distribute recordings over the Internet directly to each other for free.

Some evidence suggests that Skypecasters may be becoming more widespread, even though it requires a high level of technical know-how.

The "implications are very disruptive," according to the SkypeJournal, a well-known Web community that provides Skypecast instructions. "Many Skypers want to record their Skype conversations and turn them into podcasts."

Skype is the largest of the new breed of companies offering voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which lets Internet connections double as telephone lines by treating calls no differently than e-mail, Web pages or other common Internet travelers. Skype gives away its VoIP software, and phone calls that stay on the Internet are free. Skype also has premium services that charge about 2 cents a minute to call cell or landline phones.

The Luxembourg-based upstart has so far signed up 29 million registered users for its free PC-to-PC Net phone calling service. Earlier this month, the company reported that its SkypeOut service, which connects PC calls to traditional phone lines for a fee, reached 1 million customers since launching in July 2004. To some extent, Skype competes against Vonage, which at 550,000-plus subscribers is among the world's largest commercial VoIP providers, as well as some cable companies, which have commercial VoIP services of their own.

Skype's peer-to-peer infrastructure--similar in construct to Kazaa, Morpheus and other file-swapping programs--makes it well- suited for turning Net phones into a broadcasting system, as Skypecasters now do. Skype and Kazaa were both developed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

Other possibilities discussed by Skypecasters at Unbound Spiral or Moodle are to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line. Instructions also are available on how to record a personal soap opera and use Skype to distribute it en masse. Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet.

All of the work is being done without Skype's active input. But it has made some of its source code public so developers can tinker with new applications, such as Skypecasting, said Skype spokeswoman Kelly Larrabee. "We're aware of this and encourage developers to help facilitate it," she said.

"It's a relatively complicated set-up that requires some technical sophistication and awareness of one's entire hardware and software environment," she added.
http://news.com.com/VoIP+calls+get+p...3-5645776.html


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Get Ready For Corporate P2P Apps

They're coming, and they'll dramatically change how your applications load up your network.
Frank Dzubeck

Peer-to-peer networking has caused a dramatic increase in Internet traffic. Today, the major P2P user is the consumer, and the major application is media file sharing. Music, films and the like now are available to consumers using P2P technology. Depending on the analysis methodology, P2P networking accounts for 60 percent to 89 percent of all Internet traffic.

P2P uses the computing power at the edge of a connection rather than within the network. The concept of clients or servers does not exist. Instead, peer nodes function as both clients and servers to other network nodes.

Although pure P2P networks exist, almost all efficient P2P networks use a hybrid approach in which the critical applications of indexing and searching are implemented in a client/server form, and data transfer is accomplished in a P2P manner. This technology is analogous to a router's use of a route or table look-up processor and multiple forwarding processors.

There is a fundamental difference between P2P and client/server network traffic. For example, when using the classic client/server Internet FTP application, a user uploads a file to the FTP server and then other users can download that file, without any user-to-user communication. The only network bandwidth being consumed is that of the client and the contended server. As the number of clients increases, the available server bandwidth decreases. If the same file distribution application is implemented using P2P networking, the download bandwidth increases with the number of distributed peer nodes.

Don't think it's just for consumers

Most corporate networkers believe P2P, with its ability to hog bandwidth and its myriad security issues, is a consumer phenomenon. This is a misconception that in the future may be the undoing of the corporate network. P2P network applications such as KaZaA or Napster may not have a place in the corporate environment, but the same cannot be said for BitTorrent's File Sharing technology, currently being used for Linux software distribution, and Groove Networks' Virtual Office application, designed for shared workspace/online collaboration.

The use of BitTorrent and Groove software currently does not impose a significant bandwidth demand on corporate networks. But Microsoft's recent acquisition of Groove may drastically change the bandwidth consumption equation. One of Microsoft's stated intentions is to add Groove's P2P technology to its next- generation operating system called Longhorn. With Longhorn's arrival on the desktop and server, Microsoft may single-handedly redistribute and accelerate corporate bandwidth demand.

Grid computing is P2P too

Also on the horizon is another corporate networking nightmare called the grid. Lo and behold, the underpinning of all grid technology is P2P. With the adoption of Globus 4.0 as the new XML-based protocol standard, grid services will become the P2P of Web services.

As corporate terminal-mainframe centralised networking evolved into client/server distributed networking, so shall all forms of corporate networking eventually evolve into P2P. The networking traffic dynamics are not trivial in the P2P world. Complexity is the norm, with today's clients and servers becoming next- generation IT peer nodes.

This seems to be a natural blueprint for the future. All edge nodes will become highly intelligent, simultaneously and randomly capable of dynamically participating in the combined execution of an application as well as interfacing directly with the user. The corporate network also will become more internally intelligent, being required to optimise applications bandwidth demand dynamically while simultaneously managing network latency/jitter and corporate policy.

Be forewarned, get educated and be prepared for the network implications of corporate IT P2P applications. The corporate next-generation network future may be just around the corner in 2006.
http://www.techworld.com/networking/...FeatureID=1332


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It's a P2P World

Microsoft hit the jackpot last week with the acquisition of Groove Networks, as not only does it acquire a ready-made .NET Peer-to- Peer (P2P) platform, but it also gets a new CTO, in the shape of Mr. Ray Ozzie, inventor of Lotus Notes and one of the world's great software pioneers.

The Big Picture

Microsoft will be hoping that the acquisition of Groove Networks - a company specialising in super-secure P2P collaboration software - will make corporate IT managers think again about the innate power of the corporate PC, and also re-establish the company as a leader in the provision of information worker tools and technologies.

Founded in 1997 by Ray Ozzie, Groove has, over the last three years or so, steadily acquired key accounts, keen investors, and critical acclaim. Microsoft's own interest in Groove Networks goes back to October 2001 - just a few months after Groove 1.0 became commercially available - when the company invested US$51 million in the Windows-centric P2P platform. It would appear that Microsoft is now finally going to harvest the fruits of that investment; plugging the last major gap in the company's portfolio of collaboration products and technologies.

Ray Ozzie started development of what was to become Lotus Notes over 20 years ago, under contract and funded by Lotus. Now, some 15 years after the launch of Notes 1.0 (yes, it really is that old!), and nearly a decade since that technology was acquired by Microsoft's staunch rivals IBM, Groove Virtual Office (with a little help from the Microsoft marketing machine) may be about to start a whole new revolution in PC software - déjà vu anybody?

Today, however, despite the best efforts of enterprise-centric vendors, such as Groove Networks, P2P is still perceived as being 'dark' technology - something used by adolescent file-swappers to download illicit music from dubious sources; therefore Microsoft will have its work cut out trying to convince the traditionally conservative corporate IT manager that P2P is something worth investing in.

The companies, consultancies, government agencies, and small firms that are already using Groove Virtual Office, however, clearly understand that the world of the information worker has changed: co-workers no longer work in the same location and at the same time; project team members do not always work for the same company or organisation; and high-speed network connections are not always safe or available.

So why is it, despite huge corporate investment in centralised collaboration products and technologies, most of us turn to e-mail when a project involves information sharing and working with others? The answer: we are a P2P (i.e. person-to-person) species. When we require important or valuable information we usually like to get it from a person; not a faceless portal or corporate Web site. Corporate e- mail systems are bursting at the seams for this very same reason - P2P is the way we prefer to work given the choice.

Butler Group Opinion

P2P technology is just as important in the enterprise as centralised technology, and so the acquisition of Groove Networks may well prove to be as important to Microsoft as that of Lotus by IBM back in 1995.
http://www.enterprisenetworksandserv...nw/art.php/174


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Hollywood Looks To BitTorrent For Distribution
Renai LeMay

Hollywood is anxious to embrace BitTorrent as a method of movie distribution, according to the father of the Internet, Dr Vinton Cerf.

Cerf, who wrote the original TCP/IP protocol and is currently chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), told a roundtable on Internet governance in Sydney this week he had recently discussed peer to peer file-sharing program BitTorrent with at least two interested movie producers.

"I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content," Cerf said. "I've spoken with several movie producers in the last month."

However Cerf was adamant the entertainment industry still did not understand the online environment. "They are only just now starting to come to honest grips with the possibilities of using the Internet," he said.

The ICANN chairman was particularly enthusiastic about pointing out what he said was a flawed perception about the Internet's ability to deliver movies in real-time.

"People think of video and they think of real-time, watching it as it's coming out [downloading]," he said. "But most video doesn't have to be watched in real-time. With Tivo and those other things it doesn't have to be watched in real-time."

"It doesn't matter whether it's delivered by a real-time video stream, or a triple-charge thing that drops packets into a file like BitTorrent. Who cares? At some point you get the whole file and then you watch it. You don't care how long it took to get a file before you watch it."

Cerf concluded that too many people got caught up in the real-time functions of the Internet, rather than realising only a very small number of Internet applications actually needed real-time capabilities.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communi...9188314,00.htm


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P2P Fuels Global Bandwidth Binge
Joanna Glasner

Internet users consumed more bandwidth than ever last year, driven by the growing popularity of peer-to-peer networks and heightened demand for video files.

Burgeoning demand also prompted internet carriers to upgrade their network capacity to handle the upswing in traffic, a new report indicates.

According to TeleGeography, a telecommunications research firm, international demand for bandwidth grew 42 percent in 2004, with the largest upswing in usage coming from Asian nations. Last year marked the second consecutive annual upswing in demand, the firm said, after carriers added 62 percent more capacity in 2003.

"It really seems to be picking up again," said Alan Mauldin, senior research analyst at TeleGeography, regarding demand for bandwidth among internet carriers surveyed for the report, released this month.

As internet service providers and operators of backbone networks sucked up more capacity, so did end users.

Researchers singled out peer-to-peer file trading as the single fastest-growing consumer of network capacity. Currently, Mauldin said, the amount of traffic from peer-to-peer trading rivals that generated by regular web surfing.

Growing demand for data-rich files, such as movies, is further boosting bandwidth consumption.

"From mid-2004, we saw a significant shift away from music and on to video," said Andrew Parker, chief technical officer at CacheLogic, a firm based in England that monitors global peer-to-peer traffic. "Before that it was mainly music."

According to Parker, efforts by the film and recording industries to crack down on illegal trading of copyright works haven't resulted in a drop in traffic volumes.

In North America, where the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have focused enforcement efforts, Parker said there has been virtually no change in P2P traffic levels since the groups began cracking down on illegal file trading.

"In some parts of the world we have seen the opposite happen. The publicity created by the MPAA actually drove users to find out what all the fuss was about and resulted in an increase in traffic levels," Parker said.

Today, CacheLogic estimates that P2P applications consume between 60 percent and 80 percent of capacity on consumer ISP networks. The fastest growth in P2P usage is coming in Asian nations with high broadband penetration rates, Parker said.

The average size of traded files is growing, too, Parker said, and today exceeds 100 MB. In one period of observation, which took place just after a much-anticipated film release, CacheLogic found that 30 percent of peer-to-peer traffic at one ISP was from a single 600-MB file.

While ISPs aren't suffering from a shortage of bandwidth yet, Parker believes demand for video content could be a problem in the future for broadband providers who charge a single price for all-you-can-eat access.

"ISP business models were based on the idea that not everyone would be using their internet capacity all the time," he said. If customers are using their broadband connections to download movies and television programs all day, that could put a strain on networks.

But Roopak Patel, senior internet analyst for Keynote Systems, believes ISPs will be able to cheaply increase capacity or fine-tune their networks to handle a rise in video traffic.

"It's not as if we're hurting for bandwidth," Patel said, noting that there are still plenty of under-used fiber-optic networks that were built early in the decade, a boom period for telecommunications infrastructure investment.

"I wouldn't say (ISPs) are worried about delivery of video content. They probably say, 'Bring it on.' That's what will drive their revenue," he said.

While P2P activity accounts for the lion's share of rising bandwidth consumption, internet traffic analysts said the growing popularity of voice over internet protocol, or VOIP, is a factor, too. However, Patel said VOIP calls typically require a data-transmission rate of less than 30 Kbps, compared to more than 300 Kbps for a video file.

"It's important to note that VOIP is all the rage, but as far as what it means in terms of bandwidth, it's not very big because VOIP is not a very bandwidth-intensive operation," Mauldin said. He estimates that VOIP accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of most carriers' traffic in 2004.

In 2005, TeleGeography predicts that international VOIP traffic will grow by more than 30 percent from last year and that the volume of global internet traffic will continue to rise sharply.

Prices for bandwidth capacity, meanwhile, will continue to drop, Mauldin said, until carriers use up the glut of bandwidth capacity created during the fiber-optic building boom five years ago.

Mauldin takes comfort in the fact, however, that bandwidth prices aren't falling as much as they have in past years. If this keeps up, he said, prices may actually start going up.

"Obviously, traffic can't grow faster than the underlying capacity forever," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,67202,00.html