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Old 17-02-05, 10:48 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 19th, '05

Quotes Of The Week


"It is my view that anyone with a Libertarian streak would support P2P file sharing. Our goal is to enable free speech and a free market for the exchange of ideas, art, educational material and digital media." - Greg Bildson


"It would take 10 hours to convert 10 hours of music in this manner." – Napster


"The performing rights organization BMI projects that the ring-tone market will more than double this year, to $500 million in sales." - Noah Robischon


"They're going to push music on them. It's just corporate America infiltrating the college campus music scene." - Jorge Gonzalez


"ChoicePoint maintains a dossier on virtually every American consumer." - Bob Sullivan


"The Stasi or the KGB could never have dreamed of getting a spying device in every household." - Andrew Pelling


"Eleven years ago, the tag was implanted in the usual spot behind the head, but it's heading for the tail at an astonishing pace." – Open Source


"Alcohol with a meal can lower the risk of food poisoning." - Anahad O'Connor












Someone’s pushing

Apple's Subpoenas Challenged In Court
Declan McCullagh

Lawyers for news Web sites targeted by Apple Computer asked a California court on Monday to block subpoenas seeking to identify who leaked information about unreleased products.

The subpoenas should not be permitted because Internet journalists deserve the full protection of the First Amendment that their traditional brethren have long enjoyed, the lawyers said in a brief filed in Santa Clara Superior Court.

These writers "cannot be compelled to disclose the source of any information procured in connection with their journalistic endeavors, nor any unpublished information obtained," the brief says. "The reporter's privilege applies to online publication and print publication equally." The brief was prepared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two local law firms.

In December, Apple filed a "John Doe" lawsuit against unnamed people who leaked information about the company's purported plans to release a product that would help to link Macintosh computers and musical instruments. In short order, Apple fired off subpoenas to PowerPage and Apple Insider, which had published reports about such a product.

"This information could have been obtained only through a breach of an Apple confidentiality agreement," the computer maker argued in court documents at the time. A lawyer representing Apple at the O'Melveny & Myers law firm was not immediately available for comment on Monday.

The subpoenas directed against PowerPage and Apple Insider raise the question of whether online writers, especially those who might be part-time or have other jobs, enjoy the same legal protections as their paper-based colleagues. California law shields journalists "connected with or employed by" newspapers, magazines, periodical publications and wire services from divulging their sources--but it doesn't explicitly mention Internet sites.

Online journalists "should enjoy as much protection as anyone," said Gregg Leslie, legal defense director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va. "The size or nature of the audience doesn't really matter."

Leslie said that in the 1950s, during the early days of broadcast TV, "television reporters had to argue they should be included in the definitions" of who is a journalist. "Anytime there's an advance like that in communications you have to argue that you're doing the same thing" as print reporters, he said.

EFF and the law firms of Tomlinson Zisko and Richard Wiebe are defending three people who have been targeted by Apple: Jason O'Grady, a freelance journalist who also edits the Mac news site PowerPage; Monish Bhatia, who publishes the Mac News Network and provides hosting services to Apple Insider; and Kasper Jade, who publishes Apple Insider under a pseudonym.

This lawsuit is related to, but separate from, a parallel case filed last month in which Apple sued Mac enthusiast site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, alleging that recent postings on the site contained Apple trade secrets.
http://news.com.com/Apples+subpoenas...3-5576037.html


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Anti-Patent Protest Planned In Brussels
Sam Varghese

Software developers and company representatives are planning a demonstration in Brussels on Thursday against the possible legalisation of software patents in Europe, according to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.

The demonstration will coincide with several moves on the patent front. The German Bundestag will vote that day on a motion jointly introduced by all four parliamentary groups which demands substantial modifications to the Council's present proposal.

The same day, the EU Parliament is expected to make a formal request to the European Commission to restart the patent process.

The FFII is an organisation which has been campaigning against the introduction of software patents in Europe.

FFII spokesman Dieter Van Uytvanck said pressure from the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain had forced the postponement of a plan to have a vote the same day in the Council of Finance Ministers on the software patents directive that was proposed in May 2004. "This has led to serious dissatisfaction in the European Commission," he claimed.

Van Uytvanck said he was pleased with the Council's decision not to pursue its proposal, "But, we should remember that this is only by virtue of the brave national parliaments and the EU Parliament," he said.

"The Council and the Commission have demonstrated over and over again that they do not show the slightest respect for the European citizen. Over and over again, they continue to promote software patents with a complete neglect of the opposing voices from a large majority in the EU parliament."

The push for adopting the directive was halted in December when Poland backed away; subsequently Denmark also reportedly said it would join Poland in blocking the directive if it was sought to be pushed through.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/...229900433.html

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It pays to push

EFF: Apple To Hold Off On Subpoenas
Ina Fried

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said Wednesday that it has reached a tentative agreement with Apple Computer to delay subpoena requests until after a court hears the EFF's objections. Apple Computer is using the subpoenas of several Mac enthusiast sites and their Internet service providers to learn the identities of those who leaked details of forthcoming Apple products.

In an e-mail, EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl said that under the agreement, which is still being finalized, Apple's subpoenas would be due five court days after a judge rules on the EFF's request for a protective order to block the subpoenas. A hearing on the matter could come March 4, depending on the court's availability, Opsahl said. An Apple representative declined comment.
http://news.com.com/EFF+Apple+to+hol...3-5579618.html


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Apple, Sony Sued Over DRM In France
Jo Best

Apple Computer and Sony are to appear in court over claims that their respective music download sites have been deceitful and have forced consumers to buy products because they are tied together.

French consumer association Union Federale des Consommateurs-Que Choisir has launched legal action over the two companies' proprietary music formats, claiming that the respective digital rights management used by both Sony and Apple, which prevent songs bought from their online music shops from being played on other manufacturers' media players, is limiting consumers' choice.

The consumer group announced that it would take legal action against the pair after conducting interoperability tests last year between a selection of download services and digital music players. The group criticized the two companies' lack of interoperable DRM.

"The total absence of interoperability between DRM removes not only consumers' power to independently choose their purchase and where they buy it from but also constitutes a significant restraint on the free circulation of creative works," the group said.

Despite railing against Microsoft's similar locked-down stance on interoperability during its compatibility testing and indicating that the company was in its legal sights, UFC-Que Choisir has not filed suit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software behemoth.

The suit was filed against Sony France and Sony United Kingdom, as well as Apple's French unit and its iTunes Music Store. Apple's case will be heard in a Court of First Instance in Paris; Sony's will be held in a Nanterre court. Both cases are expected to be heard later this year.

Apple declined to comment. Sony did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This isn't the first time the issue of interoperability in music has made its way through the French legal system.

Recently, VirginMega, a subsidiary of Virgin Group, brought an anticompetition case against Apple before the French Competition Council. The case was rejected late last year.
http://news.com.com/Apple%2C+Sony+su...3-5575417.html


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90 days in the hole

UA Student Incarcerated For Possessing Illegally Copied Movies, Music

A University of Arizona student has been sentenced in Mesa to three months incarceration in a movie and music piracy case.

Eighteen-year-old Parvin Dhaliwal of Mesa was accused of uploading digital copies of recently released movies and music. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas says the defendant pleaded guilty to possession of unauthorized copies of intellectual property, which is a felony. Thomas says the illegally copied material included movies that at the time they were copied were only showing in theaters. Besides incarceration, Dhaliwal also was sentenced to three years' probation, 200 hours of community service, and fined 54-hundred dollars. He also was ordered to take a copyright class at the U-of-A and to avoid file sharing computer programs.
http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2934754


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No MP3 for you!

Norway Proposes New Copyright Law

The government has proposed a new copyright law to make it illegal for Norwegians to copy songs from their own CDs onto MP-3 players, but legal to do so for making a CD duplicate.

The proposal, intended to bring Norway's law in line with European Union rules, drew immediate praise from the music and film industry as well as criticism from opponents.

Even though Norway is has remained outside the EU, it is bound by most of the bloc's directives through the European Economic Area Agreement.

The new proposal would allow fines and a maximum penalty of three years in prison for violating copyrights and engaging in computer piracy.

The amendment, which requires parliament's approval, would make it illegal to crack security codes on DVD and CDs or to provide software or hardware for doing so, a news release said. It would still be legal for a person to make a copy of their own CD or DVD for private use, even if that means cracking the code, as long as it was being copied onto the same digital medium and not onto another one.

"For example, a CD's (security code) could be cracked to play a recording on a car stereo, since a CD-player would be seen as an appropriate medium," the news release said. "But the security code could not be cracked to copy the recording onto an MP-3 player, since such a device would not be seen as an appropriate for a CD."
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=37608


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Bill Gates And Other Communists
Richard Stallman

When CNET News.com asked Bill Gates about software patents, he shifted the subject to "intellectual property," blurring the issue with various other laws.

Then he said anyone who won't give blanket support to all these laws is a communist. Since I'm not a communist but I have criticized software patents, I got to thinking this might be aimed at me.

When someone uses the term "intellectual property," typically he's either confused himself, or trying to confuse you. The term is used to lump together copyright law, patent law and various other laws, whose requirements and effects are entirely different. Why is Mr. Gates lumping these issues together? Let's study the differences he has chosen to obscure.

Software developers are not up in arms against copyright law, because the developer of a program holds the copyright on the program; as long as the programmers wrote the code themselves, no one else has a copyright on their code. There is no danger that strangers could have a valid case of copyright infringement against them.

Patents are a different story. Software patents don't cover programs or code; they cover ideas (methods, techniques, features, algorithms, etc.). Developing a large program entails combining thousands of ideas, and even if a few of them are new, the rest needs must have come from other software the developer has seen. If each of these ideas could be patented by someone, every large program would likely infringe hundreds of patents. Developing a large program means laying oneself open to hundreds of potential lawsuits. Software patents are menaces to software developers, and to the users, who can also be sued.

A few fortunate software developers avoid most of the danger. These are the megacorporations, which typically have thousands of patents each, and cross-license with each other. This gives them an advantage over smaller rivals not in a position to do likewise. That's why it is generally the megacorporations that lobby for software patents.

Today's Microsoft is a megacorporation with thousands of patents. Microsoft said in court that the main competition for MS Windows is "Linux," meaning the free software GNU/Linux operating system. Leaked internal documents say that Microsoft aims to use software patents to stop the development of GNU/Linux.

When Mr. Gates started hyping his solution to the problem of spam, I suspected this was a plan to use patents to grab control of the Net. Sure enough, in 2004 Microsoft asked the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to approve a mail protocol that Microsoft was trying to patent. The license policy for the protocol was designed to forbid free software entirely. No program supporting this mail protocol could be released as free software--not under the GNU GPL (General Public License), or the MPL (Mozilla Public License), or the Apache license, or either of the BSD licenses, or any other.

The IETF rejected Microsoft's protocol, but Microsoft said it would try to convince major ISPs to use it anyway. Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the U.S. Department of Defense.

With Microsoft's market clout, it can impose its choice of programming system as a de-facto standard. Microsoft has already patented some .Net implementation methods, raising the concern that millions of users have been shifted to a government-issue Microsoft monopoly.

But capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style capitalism does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free to write complex software, they are communists, says Mr. Gates. But these communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom. Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us "communists."

If you're not afraid of name-calling, visit ffii.org (the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure), and join the fight against software patents in Europe. We persuaded the European Parliament once--even right-wing MEPs are "communists," it seems--and with your help we will do it again.
http://news.com.com/Bill+Gates+and+o...3-5576230.html


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Incendiary in Academia May Now Find Himself Burned
Kirk Johnson

Prof. Ward L. Churchill has made a career at the University of Colorado out of pushing people's buttons, colleagues and students say, clearly relishing his stance as radical provocateur and in-your-face critic.

Whether it is getting arrested by the Denver police for trying to disrupt Columbus Day, which Professor Churchill has described as a "celebration of genocide" because of the deaths of Indians that resulted from European colonization, or ruffling feathers in the faculty lounge, hyperbole and bombast have always been ready tools in the Churchill kit bag, people here say.

Now many of the offended are pushing back. The storm of controversy that has blown up around Professor Churchill over his essay about the Sept. 11 attacks, with its reference to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann - the "technocrats" at the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns," Professor Churchill said - has turned the professor into a talking point and a political punch line. On conservative talk radio, on campuses across the country, and especially here in Boulder, debate about Professor Churchill means debate about freedom of speech, the solemnity of Sept. 11 and the supposed liberal bias of academia.

Many people here say that the professor - with his scholarly record under investigation by the university l and with Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, calling for his dismissal - has become a symbol of academic expression under fire. Others worry that subjects like Sept. 11 have become "sacred," and cordoned off from unpopular analysis. Some say that the vitriolic debate itself is the message and that people have been transformed into mirror images of the man they love or loathe - little Churchills, as it were, who are just as entrenched, over-the-top and, apparently, eager to offend as he himself.

"Two sides are being presented without a lot of people listening," said Joe Flasher, 24, a graduate student in astrophysics. "You already have your opinion, right. So it's one person saying what they think and then the other person saying the complete opposite. It seems very polarized. But I guess it is the ultimate exercise in free speech."

Student organizations like College Democrats and College Republicans have skirmished over Professor Churchill, a member of the ethnic studies department. The Democratic group began a petition this week saying, "The attacks on Professor Ward Churchill are attacks on the academic freedom of the university." The Republicans, in calling for his dismissal, said that alumni should freeze donations and that parents should send their children elsewhere until political balance is brought to the professorial ranks.

"It's probably in their best interest to get rid of guys like that, but why hide what this place really is: a bunch of lunatic leftists," said Matthew Schuldt, senior vice chairman of College Republicans.

The undercurrent of the debate, faculty members and students say, is anxiety about how the outside world regards the university. A football recruiting scandal and several alcohol-related deaths among students over the last year created waves of bad publicity for the institution. Now some people fear that everyone will think the university is full of people like Professor Churchill, whose essay, which drew little attention at its publication after the attacks, gained notoriety when he was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York last week. It suggests little emotion about the deaths of thousands of people on Sept. 11 and a cold logic of foreign policy analysis salted with terms that seemed calculated to enrage rather than enlighten.

"If he had just been a little more thoughtful, nothing would have happened," Uriel Nauenberg, a professor of physics and the former chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said. "He did not have to say these things in the manner that he did."

Nonetheless, Professor Nauenberg said he did not believe that Professor Churchill should be forced out because of the essay, though he added that he personally found the expressions in the essay obnoxious.

Professor Churchill, 57, a Vietnam War veteran who became a lecturer at the university in 1978 and was granted tenure in 1991, has claimed affiliations over the years with many vociferous left-wing groups, including the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society and the American Indian Movement. He said in an interview that winning peoples' attention often meant not being nice. The United States' foreign and domestic policies, he said, are brutal, and the words to describe that can be painful.

"I don't believe in the theory that we get to treat people like dogs, but you have to talk to us in a polite way," he said.

Faculty members say that an objection to his writing style or opinions, however outrageous or unpopular, is not enough to justify firing him. The 30-day review of his "writings, speeches, tape recordings and other works," that was announced last week by the university's governing body, the Board of Regents, must find evidence of outright academic dishonesty, said R L Widmann, a professor of English and the chairwoman of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Boulder Faculty Assembly.

" 'I published a falsehood and I knew it to be untrue' - that's what they'd have to find," Professor Widmann said.

But the passions have led to some dishonesty. University officials said on Monday, for instance, that they were canceling a speech by Professor Churchill because of security concerns. The student organizers of the speech had received death threats because of their support for the professor, university officials said, and safety could not be guaranteed.

The students, whose names were not released, admitted on Tuesday that the death threats were embellished.

"They said, 'We were just being political,' " Ron Stump, the vice chancellor for student affairs, said. "We expressed our disappointment."

The speech came off without incident - and without any apologies from Professor Churchill.

Many students interviewed on campus in recent days said they feared that the lines being drawn around Professor Churchill were also creating boundaries about what could be freely and safely talked about in the United States.

"I think it's no longer about free speech - it's turned into this kind of thing that we can't talk about Sept 11, that it's kind of become a sacred issue," said Erin Langer, 22, a senior humanities major from Naperville, Ill. "People forget we're in a university setting, and the way ideas are challenged is by looking at an extreme view. The fact that he is so extreme challenges people to think more."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/na...wanted=2&8hpib


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EU Restarts Review Of Contentguard Deal
David Lawsky

The European Commission raised new doubts about Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) joint purchase of anti-piracy software firm ContentGuard as it renewed a probe of the deal on Friday.

The Commission set April 7 as the new deadline to complete its review, at the same time raising questions about the way the software giant had conducted itself so far.

The probe was suspended in December until Microsoft provided more information to the Commission.

"Microsoft has provided the information which was necessary, we are examining the original deal," Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said.

The deal involves key patents for the potentially lucrative market in digital rights management software, which prevents the sort of swapping of music and movies that Web surfers once did through Napster.

Microsoft and Time Warner expected no problems in gaining approval but the Commission surprised them in August by opening an in-depth probe. It said Microsoft might gain or boost a dominant position in digital rights.

Thomson Joins In

The companies responded by bringing in France's Thomson as a third equal player. The Commission cannot review deals that are controlled equally by more than two companies.

Now the Commission is asking if the companies followed Commission rules when they brought Thomson on board by selling it shares in ContentGuard.

"The shares which were subsequently sold on to Thomson were acquired as part of the deal which is now under investigation," spokesman Todd said.

"The general rule is that normally you cannot use the shares until such time as the Commission has authorised the transaction," he said, stopping short of saying Microsoft had violated the rule.

A Microsoft spokesman said: "We remain in a constructive dialogue in this case."

ContentGuard of Bethesda, Maryland, is one of the world's key patent holders of software that protects digital media, including music, films and documents.

It was mostly owned by Xerox until the purchase by Microsoft and Time Warner.

Time Warner, the world's largest media company, has made it part of its mission to use the Internet to market its vast library of media, including Bugs Bunny, America Online, CNN and People magazine. Digital rights management is an essential part of that equation.

For Microsoft, digital rights management software will become an important component in its bid to compete in the digital music arena and to transform the personal computer into a hub for all digital entertainment in the living room.

Thomson, for its part, is in the process of trying to transform itself from a low-margin consumer electronics company into a high-margin provider of services to media companies and film studios.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7606331


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New Copy-Proof DVDs On The Way?
John Borland

Macrovision is expected to release a new DVD copy-protection technology Tuesday in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort.

The content-protection company is pointing to the failure of the copy-proofing on today's DVDs, which was broken in 1999. Courts have ordered that DVD-copying tools be taken off the market, but variations of the software remain widely available online.

Macrovision executives said that even if it's not perfect, the new RipGuard DVD technology can prevent much of the copying done with such tools and can help bolster studios' DVD sales.

"Encryption standards either work or they don't," said Adam Gervin, Macrovision's senior director of marketing, "Now the cat's out of the bag. (DVD sales) are going to be one of the main sources of revenue for Hollywood for a long time, so why leave billions of dollars on the table when you can do something about it?"

The company could be hard pressed to break into the DVD protection market, which has historically been managed by companies or industry groups closely associated with the Hollywood studios themselves. However, studios have been deeply concerned by the failure of today's DVD copy protection and may be willing to experiment with an alternative if it proves practical.

The original DVD copy-protection tool--called Content Scramble System--was developed by a technology coalition that included studio representatives. The tool is licensed by a group with close ties to Hollywood.

A new coalition, which includes Warner Bros., Walt Disney, IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Intel, is working on another content-protection technology for next-generation DVDs. That technology called the Advanced Access Content System, which is not designed for today's DVDs, is being designed to let movies be moved around a home though a digital network.

The group has said little about its progress since announcing the project last year, but companies involved have said they expect to have it ready in time for the first expected release of high-definition video on DVD late in 2005.

Meanwhile, Macrovision is promoting its alternative. The company, which has worked with the studios in the past, was responsible for the technique that makes it difficult to copy movies from one VCR to another, and it has updated that technique to help prevent people from making copies of movies using the analog plugs on DVD players.

The company is using a new version of that analog guard to create copy protection for video-on-demand services. That new guard will be included in TiVo devices and other set-top boxes beginning later this year.

Macrovision's new product takes a different approach to antipiracy than it has taken for analog or audio CDs. Gervin said Macrovision engineers have spent several years looking at how various DVD-copying software packages work and have devised ways to tweak the encoding of a DVD to block most of them.

That means the audio and video content itself requires no new hardware and isn't scrambled anew, as is the case with most rights-management techniques. Someone using one of the ripping tools on a protected DVD might simply find their software crashing, or be presented with error messages instead of a copy.

Macrovision's analog copy-protection business means that it receives pre-market versions of most major DVD players in order to test for compatibility, and it has been performing RipGuard DVD tests on these machines for months. As a result, the company says it is confident that discs encoded with its new product will be playable on all major DVD player brands and PC drives.

Gervin said that the technique would block most rippers, but not all, and could be easily updated for future discs as underground programmers find ways to work around RipGuard.

If adopted, the technology could be a welcome financial shot in the arm for Macrovision. The company has seen its revenue from DVD copy protection fall over recent quarters and has increasingly been looking to other businesses to make up for the shortfall.
http://news.com.com/New+copy-proof+D...3-5576375.html


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The Unassociated Press
Aaron Weiss

YOU may, in the course of reading this article, spot a factual error that made it to press. A certain bit of grammar may makes you bristle, or you may think the writing is biased. But by now the ink has dried; all you can do is send an e-mail message or a letter of complaint.

If this article had been published on Wikinews, a Web site begun recently, there would be something more you could do: change it, fix it, expand it or delete it.

Wikinews (www.wikinews.org) is an experiment in collaborative news gathering and reporting, and the latest in a collection of Wikis (pronounced WIK-eez or WEEK-eez) under the umbrella of Wikimedia, which cultivates free and open information resources written by its users.

The largest Wiki project, Wikipedia, has been online for four years and contains more than 450,000 articles, all written and open to revision by its more than 150,000 users. By comparison, Wikinews is a newborn, having opened its doors to interested news writers and reporters in December.

Central to Wikinews is its commitment to neutrality, said Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia and president of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. In a community that largely sets its own standards, Mr. Wales's policy of a neutral point of view may be the single most important driving principle.

Ilya Haykinson, a Los Angeles software engineer and contributor to several Wikinews articles, said that policy set the effort apart from some other citizen journalism projects, like Indymedia (www.indymedia.org), OhmyNews of South Korea (english.ohmynews.com) and news blogs.

The system's primary check is its transparency. Inspired, in part, by the success of open source software development, the writing process is completely public. Anyone at any time can compose a new Wikinews article, edit an existing one and see an inventory of all prior changes.

Mr. Haykinson, for instance, wrote an article on Dec. 11 about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental campaigner. At least five people have since contributed revisions. One, filed about two weeks after the original, was submitted by a user identified only by his Internet protocol address. (Users have the option to register and log in.) It was annotated as having removed pro-environment, anti-Kenyan government bias.

For Wikinews proponents, the evolution of content is one of the system's strengths, and one of its challenges. The larger and more mature Wikipedia project is often cited by Wiki users as an example of how consensus can evolve into truth. But Wikinews articles do not enjoy the same luxury of time.

Larry Sanger, a lecturer in philosophy at Ohio State, who was involved in the creation of Wikipedia but is not affiliated with Wikinews, suggested that the Wiki system worked well for encyclopedic content because there were no deadlines. "But there are necessarily deadlines in news reporting, because news changes every day," he said.

Will a need for speed affect the incentive for volunteers to contribute? This is a concern of Erik Möller, a technology journalist in Berlin who drafted the original Wikinews project proposal. "Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime," he said.

What contributors do enjoy is a firsthand role in helping to shape a self-organizing community that is still grappling with significant questions of structure. Sometimes news - the dioxin poisoning of the Ukraine leader Viktor A. Yushchenko, for example - unfolds in a series of developments. The Wikinews community is debating whether such continuing stories should be folded into one updated article, as in an encyclopedia, or published in a series, as they would be in a newspaper.

The project also aims to include more original reporting, as in the article "Unrest in Belize," which was written by the user Belizian based on his observation of the recent protests there. The item was the site's first scoop, appearing in Wikinews 12 hours before it was reported by a wire service, Mr. Wales said.

Above all, the central question about the Wikinews effort is its credibility. "Making a newspaper is hard," said Robert McHenry, former editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Someone who wants to do it but doesn't really know how hasn't solved the problem by gathering a lot of other people who don't know, either."

Mr. McHenry was skeptical about Wikinews's ability to provide a neutral point of view and its claim to be evenhanded. "The naïveté is stunning," he said.

Despite the obstacles, the Wikinews community has produced more than 500 articles in its first two months. One contributor, Lennart Regebro, a consultant from Paris, said he was drawn by the opportunity to shape online news delivery. Another, Seth Matheson, a junior at St. Mary's College of Maryland and editor of the college newspaper, said he was interested in bringing diverse news sources together. And Wiki Wickramarathna, a freelance photographer and journalist from Sri Lanka, saw an opportunity for reporting on recent events from his location.

Ultimately, these contributors and others like them will define whatever it is that Wikinews will become, which is exactly the way Mr. Wales wants it to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/te...ts/10wiki.html


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BitTorrent

Loki’s Map Leads MPAA on Road to Nowhere
Michael Ingram

“By Court Order [Edward Webber, former LokiTorrent owner] must provide the MPAA with access to and copies of all logs and server data related to his illegal BitTorrent activities, which will provide a roadmap to others who have used LokiTorrent to engage in illegal activities.”

The MPAA’s press release is chilling. Not only has the money donated to the legal defence fund disappeared into a black hole, but all former registered users of LokiTorrent are placed at risk of future lawsuits.

However, registered users will be relieved to hear that very little, if any, useful information will end up in the hands of the MPAA.

“They don't have anything, they have air,” an ex-torrent site owner told Slyck. He chose to remain anonymous. For arguments sake, we will call him Paul.

Paul also ran a Torrent site based on the same scripts and source used by LokiTorrent. They conferred regularly.

Referring to the website logs:

“Those access logs have no value it all. They only display whether you downloaded the .torrent file, not if you actually downloaded the content using that Torrent,” Paul explained to Slyck.

The Torrent file is merely a key; the MPAA can not prove that it was used in any locks.

Paul went on, “We both didn't log [seed and leech] information because first it would allow us to know too much about the people using the network and what they were sharing. 2nd it would require huge resources to keep track of all that. That's the tracker's job.”

At best, the information could be used in conjunction with other research to target “serial uploaders”. Much like the RIAA target those who share more than a set number of music tracks, the MPAA can now target those who have a history of trading Torrent files, although such a system would rely on static IP addresses.

But Paul does not believe that there will be enough information even for this.

“Logs files tend to grow at a rate of 1GB per day on this kind of site. Most site owners … either disable logging or purge the logs every few days. So there's little to no information for them,” he explained. “Perhaps Loki [Webber’s alias] even disabled his logging completely recently because of the large influx of new users.”

LokiTorrent did kept track of which Torrents each user had uploaded, but the information was stored in the database by username, rather than IP address.

The MPAA will find even less information in the logs for the trackers, which were also run by LokiTorrent. Unlike the website, the trackers do know who is uploading and downloading the actual files.

“Me and Loki both used XBTT as our tracker software. For a fact, XBTT is volatile, meaning that if you shut it down the active user list is immediately purged from memory and is NOT stored on disk,” Paul explained.

“The only thing they do know is who uploaded a torrent, but uploading and seeding is completely different. Even then, that information is only available for a few days [at most],” he concluded.

The MPAA would be able to gather more usage statistics and IP addresses by monitoring public trackers themselves. The announcement that they have acquired a roadmap to those behind file sharing appears to be nothing short of a scare tactic.

Paul also had a few words in defense of Webber, who has been accused of selling out those who donated to his legal defense fund, only to settle out of court.

“People should not think he ran with the money because he lost. Victory is not the only outcome of a costly lawsuit,” he said. “The gag order is the weirdest thing, it seems that it's purely there to prevent him from telling the truth.”
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=665


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Actually there are many apps and protocols in various stages of development that provide protection, either thru encryption, misdirection, shielding thru proxy, replacing the ip with a hashed id, even DRM.

There's;

The Chord Project --http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/chord/

The Circle--http://thecircle.org.au/

TOR--http://tor.eff.org/

Tarzan--http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/tarzan/

Mute--http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/

ANts--http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/

And these are just a few.

True, most of these projects are stalled, mostly due to lack of interest, but they shouldn't be.
Also true that nothing can provide 100% guaranteed anonymity, but if you make the nut hard enough to crack, they go find easier prey.

The reason why people haven't been interested in these so far is that they sacrifice speed and multiple sources and swarming and other goodies for the sake of security.


There's no reason why people can't get involved in these emerging protocols, pick up the reigns and move forward with them.

And of course bit is useful, it's genius, just not for filesharing as we know it.
http://www.p2pconsortium.ipbhost.com...showtopic=2144

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Grrrr. Angry parody site



You Can Sue, But You Can’t Catch Everyone

http://www.shutdownthis.com/


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MPAA Wins File-Sharing Suit
Elizabeth Millard

The MPAA has a long way to go to reduce piracy, says Yankee Group senior analyst Michael Goodman. "In the end, it's a lost cause. It's understandable that the MPAA would go after these servers, because they can't just stand by and do nothing. But people determined to swap movies will just find a different way to do it."

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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has won a legal victory in its fight against file-sharing.

A U.S. federal court ruled that LokiTorrent.com, a large file-swapping site, can not operate, and its server logs must be turned over to the MPAA.

Once the logs are delivered, the MPAA will have the ability to use them to file suit against individual LokiTorrent users.

Closed Doors

On the LokiTorrent site, the MPAA has placed a large headline reading, "You can click but you can't hide."

Under that heading, the group has included a message telling visitors that the site has been shut down permanently by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures.

"Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous," the MPAA message continues. "Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop."

Ongoing Action

The ruling against LokiTorrent is part of the MPAA's larger global effort. In November, the group announced that it would follow the recording industry's example and begin suing individuals for file sharing, along with companies that assisted them.

A month later, the MPAA took action against over 100 servers in the U.S., the UK, France, Finland and the Netherlands. Actions in the U.S. went to civil courts, while those in Europe were candidates for criminal prosecution.

The decision in the LokiTorrent case could be repeated in coming months, as other file- swapping sites face the MPAA in court.

Down But Not Out

The shuttering of LokiTorrent may be claimed as a victory by the MPAA, but the organization has a long way to go to reduce piracy, Yankee Group senior analyst Michael Goodman told NewsFactor.

"In the end, it's a lost cause," he said. "It's understandable that the MPAA would go after these servers, because they can't just stand by and do nothing. But people determined to swap movies will just find a different way to do it."

User behavior is shifting as sites get closed down, Goodman noted. Instead of using file- sharing networks, users increasingly are swapping movie files by e-mail or instant messaging .

"Pirates will always find a way," said Goodman. "That means the MPAA and the RIAA have a long road ahead of them."
http://www.cio-today.com/wrldwd/stor...ategory=wrldwd


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I Hear You Knocking

OPEN Source understands Sharman Networks was "disinvited" from the Internet Industry Association's 10-year anniversary celebrations last week, as the peer-to- peer file-sharer was considered too controversial.

The company was expected to play a prominent role in proceedings but the organisers were forced to change their plans after objections were raised in some quarters.

Sharman and number of associated companies are in the midst of a high-profile copyright battle in the Federal Court over peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa.

A filter too far

OPEN Source was polling Canberra on conservative political newcomer Family First's idea of a mandatory ISP-based filtering system when the story was almost undone by, you guessed it, a filter.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan's press secretary promptly responded to our query with a helpful email on the Government's role in the war against net nasties.

Only one hitch, as it turns out: "I just emailed you some comments, and it has been picked up by our filter because it mentions the word porn," an apologetic press secretary said in a phone message.

"I've asked them to release it ASAP."

Which probably says all we need to know about filtering.

No chip on this shoulder

LIKEWISE Open Source remains wary of another hot technology. We have no plans to pop an RFID chip under our skin anytime soon. Especially when we ponder how far and wide our pooch's microchip travelled inside his essentially fully packed (indeed, overweight) body.

Eleven years ago, the tag was implanted in the usual spot behind the head, but it's heading for the tail at an astonishing pace.

Right now, it's lodged at the top of his left hind leg - took the vet 15 minutes to find it.

Many cans make light work

HOW many cans of Diet Coke can one man safely consume?

SAP Asia-Pacific president Hans-Peter Klaey appears to be determined to test the limits on this one.

When Open Source was invited to Singapore earlier this month for a SAP conference, we were impressed by the amount of soft-drink consumed by the Swiss-born chief.

In a one-hour press conference, five cans of the Real Thing were placed on the panel table and only three were left unopened at the end -- only one man was consuming the Nutrasweet-flavoured drink. When Open Source inquired about this feat, Klaey said in Europe the drink was known as "light" not "diet" and he had been on the stuff for more than 20 years. He added quickly that Pepsi was a great drink too -- and a big SAP client.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...nbv%5E,00.html


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Entertainment Industry Attempts To Curb Piracy
Kiyoshi Martinez

Editor's note: This is part three in a three-part series. Names of students have been changed to protect privacy.

The MPAA and RIAA may not be able to herd all copyright-infringing file-sharers into court just yet, but locally, the University has taken measures to prevent students from using the school's bandwidth for p2p purposes to protect the student and the educational process.

Mike Corn, Director for Security Services and Information Privacy at Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES), warns that while students may think they might not be doing anything wrong or harmful, it is still illegal and possible to get caught.

"We make a real effort to not peer into network traffic in the interest of privacy," said Corn. "We do, however, receive copyright violations and notices from the RIAA. What they do is actively scan the internet for illegal file-sharing."

While he acknowledges that p2p networks are legal and do have legitimate purposes and that students do use them on the University network, he notes that the University of Illinois has received less violation notices than peer schools.

"The University policies are very clear that the UIUC network is really for educational research and teaching purposes," said Corn.

The CITES network has built in measures to prevent excessive bandwidth usage and curb piracy.

"Once you begin exceeding your quota, the speed of your connection to the Internet drops. If you're doing a lot of file sharing, you're going to be going at a slow pace and not do a lot of file-sharing," said Corn.

Jerry, sophomore in engineering, experienced this problem firsthand while living in the residence halls.

"I was sick of being on bandwidth warnings," said Jerry. He has since given up trying to download using BitTorrent while in the dorms.

His greatest problems came from trying to use BitTorrent for legitimate purposes. Jerry was using BitTorrent to download video game demos and patches, but quickly discovered that the nature of the program also meant that he was uploading to other users at the same time.

"I'm really pissed at Blizzard for using a BitTorrent client to release their patches," said Jerry referring to Blizzard's latest massive-multiplayer role playing game, World of WarCraft.

Corn explained that file-sharing presents a concern for the University network beyond just copyright issues.

"For file-sharing, it's conceivable that traffic could pretty much take over the network and damage our ability to be a research institution," Corn said. "Our primary mission here is to make sure you can get your coursework done."

While the critics and opponents to the piracy scene do claim that the actions of file-sharers hurt the industry, the digital pirates share a very different opinion.

"I basically use this to watch a movie and not pay for a rental and if I like it I still buy it," said Robert. "I don't feel like it's taking away from the movie industry."

"I still buy music. I still buy DVDs," said Brian. "There's a few movies I've seen that come out online way before and I tell my friends about it, and they all go see it."

"I'm sure it's hurting the industry and they're losing money, but then again, I'm not sure they need the money either," said Derek, who still purchases music, movies and television shows on DVD. "I don't think anyone is going bankrupt over it."

The future of file-sharing, piracy and p2p networks is uncertain except that none of them will ever fade away anytime soon. After the fall of Napster, more p2p programs appeared and pushed the scope of file-sharing even further. While the most popular file-sharing utilities don't obscure users now, several programs are already available that make tracing users virtually impossible.

Can anything be done to stop file-sharing, copyright violation and piracy in the near future?

"If the punishment was severe enough and there was enough collaborative effort to end it, yes," said Derek, but he is doubtful. "You have to have this huge force of people come and take over and seize these electronics and punish these people. It's very hard to do that."

And the topsite scene is nowhere near being defeated anytime soon.

"There's no way to gauge the scope of the scene," said Derek. "It's massive."

A solution to movie piracy could be providing alternatives to illegal downloads with legitimate services. Napster CEO Chris Gorog recently has made remarks about showing an interest in offering an online movie download system. Other legitimate movie download services are already available. The scene could be transformed in the tradition of iTunes, where the public once again pays to play.

"More people are going to want to start accessing movies online," said Brian. "It'll get bigger once more studios back it up.

Only one thing is for certain: nothing gonna stop the flow.
http://www.dailyillini.com/news/2005...y-863404.shtml


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RIAA Seeking More Morrisville Music Pirates
Casey Dickinson

The recording industry has again filed suit against anonymous, alleged music pirates it believes are located at Morrisville State College.

Eight record companies are seeking injunctive relief, attorney’s fees, and damages against two alleged music pirates known only by their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The addresses identified with the alleged copyright infringement are registered to Morrisville State College. An IP address is a unique number that can identify which particular computer performed particular actions on the Internet.

The complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of New York, alleges that the two unknown defendants made copyrighted songs available for downloading without permission. Many computer users illegally “share” copyrighted songs over “peer-to-peer” (P2P) networks that provide free music in MP3 file format to anyone who wants to download it.

Plaintiffs named in the action are Interscope Records; Elektra Entertain-ment Group, Inc.; BMG Music; Arista Records, LLC; Warner Brothers Records, Inc.; SONY BMG Music Entertainment; UMG Recordings, Inc.; and Virgin Records America, Inc.

Several of these record companies filed a similar suit in October against two unknown music pirates operating from a Morrisville IP address. Those defendants remain unidentified, according to court records. A Liverpool resident named in another song- sharing copyright suit filed in December has reached a settlement with the recording industry, according to court records filed in the Northern District of New York.

The latest suit identifies the defendants as “John Does 1 and 2” and asks the court to allow it to serve Morrisville with a subpoena for its computer-usage records in an effort to identify the defendants. United States Magistrate George H. Lowe granted the companies’ discovery motion Jan. 31.

“The college is complying with all legal requests in relation to this matter,” says Jessica DeCerce, director of public relations for Morrisville State College.

Documents filed in the case identify an eclectic list of eight songs each defendant is accused of pirating. The list includes songs by Kenny G, Eminem, Wyclef Jean, Faith Hill, Busta Rhymes, Martina McBride, and UB40.

Investigators for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) downloaded copyrighted songs from the two unknown users at Morrisville, according to the supporting declaration of Jonathan Whitehead, RIAA counsel for online-copy protection.

“The RIAA could not, however, determine the physical location of the users or their identities,” says Whitehead’s supporting declaration filed with the suit.

Media theft is a factor in the growth of broadband Internet, Whitehead writes in his declaration.

“The infringers thus tend to subscribe to services such as DSL and cable modems, that are far more expensive than ordinary telephone services,” writes Whitehead. “One publication recently estimated that 50 to 70 percent of the bandwidth of cable broadband network was being used for P2P file copying.”

Morrisville State College is known nationwide as a technically advanced school. The college introduced laptop computers and wireless-computing networks before most other schools, earning accolades as the “most wired” school from computing magazines. The “wired” designation is an anachronism as Morrisville has even done away with its telephone lines, switching students to Nextel phones so they can Direct Connect when they’re not using the college’s computing network.

While song-theft is a popular online activity, legitimate music services such as the reborn Napster and Apple’s iTunes offer legal music for sale.

The recording industry uses lawsuits to show infringers that stealing is wrong, says Steven Marks, general counsel for RIAA.

“The great music created by hard-working writers, artists, and technicians continues to be stolen at an alarming rate through illegitimate peer-to-peer services on the Internet,” says Marks. “If the legitimate music services are to continue to grow and prosper, we must continue to let individuals know that they bear responsibility for illegally stealing the work of those who make the music and we need to educate them about the widespread availability of legal music sites on the Web.”
http://www.cnybj.com/art_fullstory.cfm?article_id=1985


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Committee Considers File Sharing
Eddie Beeby

Syracuse University may soon offer an optional legal file sharing service to students in an effort to reduce illegal file sharing, according to university officials.

In September, Vice-Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund formed a committee comprised of both students and faculty members to determine if SU should facilitate access to online file sharing services.

The committee completed their report in January, recommending the university offer a legal, low-cost online multimedia service by negotiating a preferred vendor agreement with a file sharing service, said Paul Gandel, chief information officer of Computing and Media Services and chairman of the committee.

"I started the committee because other universities had gone to preferred vendors and I wanted to find out if it was a good idea for us," Freund said in an e-mail.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Freund want to go forward with the committee's recommendation, Gandel said.

"We looked at the points that were made that we felt were great ideas for the training organization here in Computing and Media Services and we're running with those," said Deborah Nosky, manager of Information Technology Communications and Professional Development for CMS.

The committee did not decide on a specific file sharing service to negotiate a preferred vendor agreement with, nor did Gandel set a timetable to make that decision. The committee has not decided whether the service will be available to both on and off-campus students.

"We'll be talking to vendors to see what kinds of services they'd be willing to offer to Syracuse University," Gandel said. "We're just starting to work on exploring that - certainly students will be involved in that process."

One file sharing company that will be considered is Cdigix, according to Tony Bartocci, a senior in the College of Information Studies, a member of the file sharing committee and president of the Residence Hall Association.

"Ideally we want to be able to give the students on campus a chance to experience (legal file sharing) before we make a decision," Bartocci said. "We want to have it in some form by the end of the semester."

Since the committee does not yet know what service will be used, the size of the music library is currently unknown.

"The vendor will have to sign agreements with the music companies, and most often there won't be a full library," said Jorge Gonzalez, co-founder of zeropaid.com, a San Diego-based file sharing portal. "These companies will not be able to outperform what the world and what peer-to-peer will be able to offer."

Gonzalez said he is also skeptical of the quality of commercial file sharing services.

"They're going to push music on them," Gonzalez said. "It's just corporate America infiltrating the college campus music scene."

The committee made its recommendation after examining the different file sharing options available. The committee's decision was unanimous, Bartocci said.

"Most university committees - and this was no exception - essentially operated by consensus," Gandel said.

The committee decided to make the file sharing service optional, according to Gandel, because they wanted to leave students the choice of subscribing to another file sharing service without being required to pay for the university's preferred vendor.

"Some universities have done it as a fee where everyone has to pay the fee - so basically you're going to subscribe to that service whether you want to or not," Gandel said.

The file sharing committee also recommended the university educate students of copyright laws and the digital security risks of illegally downloading copyrighted material.

"Sometimes when you go to sites of questionable reputation or content you could download more than what you bargained for," Gandel said. "Sometimes you can get programs that can run in the background and turn your computer into a file sharing service without you even knowing."

Gandel plans to work with Student Affairs to provide information about the risks of illegal file sharing to students.

The committee also recommended that the university reconsider its enforcement regarding illegal file sharing by students.

"The consequences go beyond the university - there's a personal and legal risk," Gandel said. "The university can't protect students if they choose to take that risk."

CMS hopes that a low-cost file sharing service and increased education will help reduce the frequency of illegal file sharing.

"We feel that students will respond to reasonably priced, campus-based alternatives to other downloading practices," Gandel said. "The more we make those services available, the more students will take advantage of such services."
http://www.dailyorange.com/news/2005...g-857091.shtml


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The Search For Digital Music Nirvana
Steven Patrick

IT'S the day after tomorrow – figuratively speaking – and you’re still a huge Radiohead fan. The band has – released a “preview” track from its upcoming album, and you've put in a pre-order via your prepaid card.

On the date of its release, the song is “beamed” to your cellphone, and you transfer it to your iPod player. You savour Thom Yorke's tortured vocals and the band's guitar-cum-electronica histrionics.

But you have some guilty pleasures too. You want the new Britney “comeback” single with that radio-friendly chorus, and you don't want your friends to know.

You do the same and begin to create your own, a la carte version of the week's best music.

Your next-door-neighbour, on the other hand, tries to get the Britney track for free via an illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) service. He gets the track and boasts about it to his wife and kids.

Two weeks later, he is threatened with possible legal action and his wife files for divorce on the grounds of bad taste ... but that's another story.

What a difference a couple of years and Steve Jobs can make to the music business. It seemed like only yesterday (when we were partying like it was 1999) that Napster ravaged the music industry, shaking the very pillars of its foundation, threatening to turn it into a rubble of free digital downloads.

It was raining songs in cyberspace for a while. Hard rock act Metallica, concerned by the popularity of free music, took legal action against Napster users – its own fans, in other words.

But before the doomsday clock could hit the big 12, along came Apple's iPod (in November, 2001) and the iTunes online music service, and the cancer of downloading went into remission.

iTunes replaced the Napster generation's renegade, s***w you mentality with a legitimate service.

Thou shall not steal

But it wasn't all Jobs’ doing. The record industry's slew of lawsuits against illegal music downloaders helped too, said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive officer of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), the organisation representing the international recording industry.

The move wasn't popular but it was unavoidable, he told the 1,000-odd crowd at the sixth MidemNet, an offshoot of the popular 39th Midem (www.midem.com) conference in Cannes, France.

“We sat back and let people steal for years. It was a painful experience, both emotionally and financially,” he said.

Kennedy said 7,000 people worldwide were sued in 2004 for sharing music illegally online, including a 12-year-old girl.

“There will be more (lawsuits) in 2005. We look forward to the day when they won't be necessary,” he added.

Kennedy said that these people could have avoided legal action as it was as easy to buy music online as it was to steal it.

“There's simply no excuse to steal anymore,” he said.

Midem is the annual five-day brainstorming/deal-making event for the music industry. As digital music rapidly transforms the music business, the fat cats of record companies have had to rewrite their business rulebooks.

The old-school ways of running the music business don't apply any more. The future of music is intertwined with the future of technology, and record companies are learning to work with the cellphone, Internet and software players which are now driving the industry.

Days of wine and roses

The forecasts presented by Forrester Research at last year's Midem continue to ring true.

The market research and analyst firm predicted that the music downloading market would continue to grow over the next three years and could represent a third of the estimated US$3.2bil (RM12.2bil) business in 2008.

iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) itself has sold over 230 million downloads since its launch. The digital music market was worth about US$330mil (RM1.25bil) last year, a figure that will double this year, according to research firm Jupiter.

However, Public Enemy rapper Chuck D told MidemNet that record companies need to concentrate on “making a living rather than making a killing.”

Napster global president Brad Duea told British-based trade publication Music Week, “Digital services such as Napster have already reconnected many people who have either become detached from buying records or who have gone to illegal download sites.

“It would be foolish to put a hard and fast date on when digital (downloads) will outperform the other revenue and distribution models but it is quite possible within the next five years,” he said.

IFPI's Kennedy predicts that digital music sales will continue to grow alongside revenue from sectors such as mobile. “Fifty per cent of mobile premium revenues could be generated by music,” he said.

Mobile Entertainment Forum chairman Ralph Simon estimated that by 2008 a whopping US$11.2bil (RM42.6bil) in revenues would be made from music- related mobile entertainment content.

Vodafone's global marketing director of the consumer section Guy Lawrence however said that before that can happen, the music industry would need to “sort out the mess between publishers and labels and figure out who owns what, during the next quarter.

“The bickering has to stop,” he said.

Another additional moneyspinner for the music business is music on mobile phones, either downloaded from a PC or wirelessly over 3G (third-generation cellular telephony) networks. Cellphone ringtones are already a US$1bil (RM3.8bil) a year industry, said Lawrence.

Music on mobiles has yet to become mainstream but British operators like Vodafone (www.vodafone.co.uk) are already offering full-song downloads on 3G, while Apple and Motorola are designing phones that can play songs purchased from the iTunes music store.

“This is not about trying to kill iPod,” said Vodafone's Laurence. But the iTunes- Motorola phone “is not an industry-wide solution.”

“The cost of those devices is outside the industry norm. We'd have to think very carefully before we subsidise the cost of those phones for our subscribers,” he said.

No celebration yet

Now, that's a lot of potential revenue for the music business, but don't crack open the champagne bottles and light up those Cuban cigars just yet!

The critical situation may have subsided, but it isn't quite digital nirvana yet. IFPI's Kennedy said that the industry had not quite escaped the perfect storm yet.

“I do know that we will make it to the shore. The music industry has suffered enough in recent years,” he claimed.

Microsoft's MSN Marketplaces general manager and head of MSN Music (music.msn.com) Mike Conte put the so-called digital music revolution in its place. “It's been more of an iPod revolution than a digital music revolution,” he said.

“Even the most optimistic reckonings say that the digital music space is 2% of music sales right now. There is no point fighting over 2%. We all need to float more boats,” he said.

British-based Warp Records managing director Steve Beckett said, “It is possible to become obsessed with the future and find yourself not doing anything about the present.”

Dilip Mehta, managing director of Indian-based music company Saregama, said, “Like all disruptive technologies at the beginning, we still don't really know what they can do.

“However, we remain convinced that the digital medium will make life easier in the longer term,” he said.

Kennedy said that there were a lot of kinks that the music business still had to iron out.

“The prosperity of the music industry lies in the ubiquity of music. Any music, anywhere, on any device, on any format, for any consumer at any time – just as long as it is properly paid for,” he said.

EMI Music senior vice-president of digital development and distribution Ted Cohen said that incompatible Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is preventing consumers from listening to music. He urged the industry to harmonise its efforts to provide ease-of-use and flexibility to consumers.

As it stands presently, an owner of an iPod can only purchase music from Apple's iTunes music store and nowhere else. An attendee at another Midem event said that “Apple doesn't care about selling music, it cares about selling iPods.”

Incidentally, Apple now sells more iPods than computers. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant said recently that it has sold more than 10 million iPods since its launch in 2001, and now claims a 65% share of the hard-drive- based portable music player market.

All you can eat

Subscription services like Napster (www.napster.com) and RealNetworks Rhapsody (www.rhapsody.com), which offer unlimited access to their music catalogues for a monthly fee of roughly US$10 (RM38), are going head-to-head against online stores like iTunes, which sells music by the track.

However, none of these services have been made available locally. No Asian announcements have been made.

As more music is available online, music fans will have the option of accessing “buffet-style, all-you-can-eat music” for a fee.

The reality is that “it will take dozens of millions of dollars to market the message to consumers,” said Sony BMG Music Entertainment's global digital business group head Thomas Hesse.

The now-homogenised Napster is going for the jugular. Once the bane of the music business, it is now fully legitimate.

“We're unconcerned about the installed base of iPod users,” said Napster chairman Chris Gorog.

“Our primary market is people who have not entered the digital music market. As soon as Napster2Go (which allows Napster subscribers to transfer their music to portable devices) is released, its (Apple's) market share is going to go down,” he said.

“The subscription model will be incredibly popular once people understand it and get their heads around it,” said Universal Music International's new media division vice-president Barney Wragg.

“The difficulty is that it's so radically different from what people have seen in the past. It's not like an electronic version of a record store,” he added.

As Chuck D summed it all up to the press later, “It's a complicated conference” reflecting a complicated business.
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...&sec=itfeature


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Web-Only Album Wins Grammy

Jazz composer Maria Schneider took home a Grammy on Sunday for her album "Concert in the Garden," without selling a single copy in a record store.

Schneider, 44, financed her Grammy-winning album through an Internet-based music delivery service called ArtistShare that opens the financing of production to dedicated fans.

Schneider said she believed she might be the first artist ever to win a Grammy for an album distributed solely on the Web. But she said that other musicians had already approached her about trying similar experiments of their own.

"It's been very gratifying for me. It's a new way for fans to be closer to artists and artists to be closer to fans," Schneider told reporters after receiving her award.

"They (fans) came into the project long before I completed my CD," she said.

Schneider, who was ArtistShare's first participating artist, said she had funded the cost of her original budget before she started recording, an anomaly in recording, particularly with jazz albums.

The "Concert in the Garden" CD was limited to 10,000 copies, with 9,000 available for pre-order to participants and 1,000 held in reserve for later auction, through ArtistShare.

"This record cost $87,000 to make. I already made my money back," she said. "I'm not splitting the profits with the distributor, the record store and the record company. It's working so well for me,"

To be sure, big record labels were also humming at the 47th annual Grammys on Sunday about the fast-growing digital music market.

Sales of digital downloads, while still a small piece of the overall music business, rose to more than 143 million tracks in 2004 from 19.2 million in 2003.

In 2004, sales of digital music players like Apple Computer's iPod exploded, and recording artists are also relying increasingly on revenue from other nontraditional sources like films, videogames and cell phone ring tones.
http://news.com.com/Web-only+album+w...3-5574470.html


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Apple’s iTunes Discounts Grammy Winning Albums
David Silverberg

Are you a fan of John Mayer, Ben Harper, Motorhead or Green Day? Ever chilled out to Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Kanye West or Herbie Hancock?

Buying downloaded songs from these Grammy-winning artists is now funneling less cash from your bank account. Apple’s iTunes Music Store is offering discount pricing on all albums that include a Grammy award-winning track, slicing $2 off an album’s original cost, which brings the price of most albums down to $7.99.

“We want to extend our congratulations to all of the Grammy nominees and winners,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re thrilled to be able to honour the industry’s top artists by showcasing their award-winning music on iTunes Music Store.”

Also announced is the availability of the Grammy-telecast song “Across the Universe,” performed live by legendary musicians including Bono, Steve Wonder, Alicia Keys and Tim McGraw. The track will cost 99 cents on iTunes in both Canada and the U.S. Apple says all proceeds go to the Southeast Asia tsunami relief efforts.

The Grammy-linked announcement is an emboldened effort to wean MP3 fans away from peer-to-peer file-sharing sites. iTunes is already doing a successful job: as of mid-2004, it claimed 70 per cent of the paid music download services market while Napster nabbed just 11 per cent, according to NPD Group.

iTunes features more than one million songs and close to 9,000 audiobooks, and has sold more than 250 million songs since it went online.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4233


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CinemaNow Unveils a New Chapter in Television Viewing
Alexander Grundner

A new chapter in content distribution is emerging. According to Lost Remote, CinemaNow has announced a partnership with NBC Universal to stream selected movies and TV shows on a per-episode rental basis, making it the sixth of the seven major Hollywood studios to sign-on – only Paramont/Viacom remains. While each partnership is different in regards to what content is made available, the new offering is a welcome format for CinemaNow users to view televison shows before they get released to DVD (that's if the studios even decide to).

“As the DVD market has proven, television content can find new life and new revenue streams through ancillary forms of distribution,” said Bruce Eisen, executive vice president of CinemaNow. “What CinemaNow provides, even beyond the traditional DVD release, is an opportunity for smaller, niche shows to reach their target audiences while also giving users the flexibility of per- episode rentals without having to pay for an entire box set.”

There's been much hype about people downloading TV shows using BitTorrent (which can be limiting if you don't have the technical savvy to utilize it), but if there was ever a legal alternative... CinemaNow's offering would be it. The only two things holding it back from being a success that I can see is: One, lack of CinemaNow users. Two, not enough premium TV content available. Of course, the second may soon change if the studios fully back the format by making all their hottest TV series available, but I'm not so sure about the user base.

Home networks and broadband content services still intimidate people, or even worse... consumers don't understand why they even need a network, as noted by a recent research study by Harris Interactive. But hope still remains. I think if CinemaNow wants to breakdown the barrier the company needs to partner with cable/satellite providers and integrate their service into the set-top box. Think of it as “enhanced” video-on-demand where cable/satellite subscribers can order past episodes (not to mention CinemaNow's entire movie rental library) through the interface they're already familiar with.
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/58...ow_unveils_new


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Thanks to Cellphones, TV Screens Get Smaller
Noah Robischon

New from the creators of "24": a spinoff series about a rogue Washington antiterrorism agent who is trying to infiltrate the Department of Defense. It's called "24 Conspiracy," but unlike "CSI: Miami" or "Law & Order: SVU," it is not broadcast on a different night, or on television at all. It is seen exclusively on Verizon's newest mobile phone.

Each of the one-minute mobile episodes (referred to as mobisodes) is specially shot and edited for the small, small screen. "Conspiracy," produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, a division of the News Corporation, is one of three original series making their debut on Verizon's V Cast, a high-speed cellular phone network that delivers broadband Internet-quality video.

Mobile video is already popular in Korea, Japan and Europe. "24 Conspiracy" made its debut last month in England, where it costs 50 pence for a single episode and £9.99, or about $19, for the series.

V Cast, which began its service on Feb. 7, is the most ambitious wireless video offering in the United States to date. The network gives subscribers access to some 300 video clips, most from two to three minutes long. There are CNN news updates, ESPN sports briefs, music videos and jokes from the previous night's edition of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

Cingular and Sprint currently offer video as well. The primary source of their content is a service called MobiTV, costing $9.99 a month, which makes more than 20 channels of television, including NBC News, Fox Sports and C-Span, accessible from compatible handsets. But Verizon's content is pushed through a significantly faster and more robust third-generation network known as EV-DO. That means the video on V Cast runs at closer to 30 frames per second, the same as broadcast television. Cingular and Sprint have both announced plans to upgrade their networks and begin selling EV-DO enabled handsets starting later this year.

The two other original V Cast programs, which were created by Twentieth Television , another News Corporation unit, are cut from entirely different genres. "The Sunset Hotel" is a scripted, and rather salacious, soap opera about a bartender and a call girl who meet at an upscale Los Angeles hotel. "Love and Hate" is an unscripted drama about a man who is going through a nasty divorce, and his sister, who is about to marry. A quasi-reality series, it mixes actors with non-actors, a style that Twentieth Television's vice president of production, Daniel Tibbets, calls "manipulated reality."

In the first minute-long episode of "24 Conspiracy," a Defense Department employee is lured to a hotel room and killed for his identity. The action unfolds in about the time it takes Kiefer Sutherland, the star of "24," to shoot the camera one of his smoldering looks during Fox's prime-time series. But Mr. Sutherland does not appear in "Conspiracy," nor do any of the show's other cast members. All 24 episodes were written and filmed by an outside production company.

Asking the series regulars to put in extra hours on an experimental side project was out of the question, said Gary Newman, co-president of Twentieth Century Fox Television, which produces "24." And there are the fans to think about, he said.

"We didn't want to put scenes in the mobile area that a loyal viewer of '24' would somehow feel they had missed because they didn't have the technology to adapt to it," Mr. Newman said.

Still, the pace, music and jump-cut style of "Conspiracy" will be familiar to viewers of "24." And attentive viewers of the television series might recognize an actor from the mobisodes walking through a scene, or hear one of the counterterrorism agents making reference to the alternate plot, Mr. Newman said.

The 26 installments of both "The Sunset Hotel" and "Love and Hate," which are shot on digital video, follow traditional dramatic story lines. But watching the 26 minutes in sequence will not add up to a broadcast-style half-hour show.

"All 26 of them really do contain the arc of an entire season," Mr. Tibbets said. "We just condensed each episode into one minute."

"The Sunset Hotel" is directed by Joseph Rassulo, an independent filmmaker, and written by Jana Veverka, who was a writer on the Nickelodeon series "Caitlin's Way." "Love and Hate" is directed by Guy Shalem, a producer of the television series "Worst-Case Scenario." Both shows are produced by Twentieth Television's Fox Labs division.

The experience of watching television on a tiny screen takes at least a minute to get used to. "When you're holding it 10 or 12 inches away from you, it doesn't feel too small," Mr. Newman said.

But, said Bob Cook, the president and chief operating officer of Twentieth Television, the viewing habits of the latest television generation demonstrate "what a constant source of information, entertainment and communication that hand-held device is."

Lucy Hood, News Corporation's senior vice president for content and marketing, who oversees mobile entertainment for the company, added: "You always have your phone with you. If you can pick up your phone and see one minute or five minutes of media that you enjoyed, that's a rich media experience in its own way. So that's what we're creating for."

The current audience for mobile television programming is tiny, in part because the wireless network that delivers it is so new. But the potential is clear. "We already know that people want to download ring tones," said Stacey Lynn Koerner, executive vice president and director of global research integration for the media services company Initiative. "Imagine they can now download music videos."

The performing rights organization BMI projects that the ring-tone market will more than double this year, to $500 million in sales.

Companies from TiVo to Texas Instruments are also planning to bring TV to the mobile masses. "A huge area of emphasis for us right now is the mobile entertainment space," says Mike Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment. To promote the sequel to the movie "XXX," set to be released in April, Sony will offer premium video clips that might include behind-the-scenes clips, outtakes or bloopers.

The inspiration for V Cast's episodic shows is a string of commercials for Taster's Choice coffee from the early 1990's, Mr. Tibbets said. Each one told a miniature story that ended in a cliffhanger. The next installment picked up where the last one left off. And just as Taster's Choice was out to sell freeze-dried coffee, mobisodes are a promotional vehicle too. "First and foremost we saw this as a marketing opportunity," Mr. Newman of Fox said.

For Verizon, it is a way to encourage customers to buy the company's latest phone and service - in this case, a $200 handset with a high-resolution screen. Along with the $35 basic monthly service fee, mobile viewers will pay an extra $15 per month for the V Cast service. Some of the video programming can be downloaded only for an additional fee that gets added to a monthly bill. Watching the Green Day music video "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," for example, costs $3.99. The same video can be found at no cost on the Web from Virgin.net and MTV.com.

With "24 Conspiracy," Twentieth Century Fox Television gets another conduit for attracting young viewers to its hit show, Mr. Newman said.

The creators of "Love and Hate" and "The Sunset Hotel" also say the shows put their company on the cutting edge of a new medium that could one day be a source of revenue, whether through subscription fees, pay-per-download or advertising.

In an era of giant flat-panel television screens, there is some irony in television arriving on its tiniest screen yet. "You've got half the population going out and buying 60-inch television screens, and the other half is pulling down content onto smaller and smaller devices like phones and P.D.A.'s and iPods," said Initiative's Ms. Koerner. "You have the need to have enormous immersive experiences, and you also have the need to take your own personal entertainment experience with you everywhere you go."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/ar...on/15cell.html


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Sony Ericsson Set to Unveil Walkman Phones
Jan Strupczewski and Lucas van Grinsven

Swedish-Japanese mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson will launch digital Walkman phones in March to better tap into the mobile music market, seen as a top growth area for 2005, its head said on Monday.

"We are tapping into the Walkman heritage, reviving it," Chief Executive Miles Flint told Reuters in an interview, adding that more than 340 million Walkman music players have been sold since its introduction in 1979.

Prototypes of the new handsets were not yet available at the 3GSM mobile communications trade show in Cannes, but the announcement makes clear that the world's sixth biggest mobile phone maker and its wireless operator customers have identified music as major growth opportunity, Flint said.

Flint's comments come on the same day Nokia announced it had struck a deal with Microsoft to put Microsoft's Windows Audio player in Nokia handsets. In a bid to reach a wider audience, Microsoft also said it will use open standards for its compression and anti-piracy software in its audio player.

Some of Sony Ericsson's models already feature a digital music player, but the new handsets will have more music playing features and will get access to Sony's digital download service on the Internet, called Connect.

The new Walkman phones, which will be available early in the second half of 2005, will have large memory, good quality headphones and the ability to easily import tracks from a personal computer and other devices.

The Walkman phones will also be the first networked Walkmans to use open software standards for compression and piracy protection.

At the same time, Sony's Connect music store will also introduce open standard software to compress tracks and protect them against piracy, Flint said. Sony currently uses its proprietary ATRAC and MagicGate technology to do that.

"But Sony's strategy is evolving. Don't worry about (proprietary) ATRAC," Flint said.

Flint said that mobile services operators were the main force behind this drive to open standards, which gives consumers more freedom to buy music online and enjoy their legally purchased music on a wide range of devices, instead of a small selection.

"With this initiative we're not locking consumers into a proprietary digital rights management (anti-piracy) system, which is what operators want," he said.

The music-player handsets are to be "competitively priced" and are likely to work both with the fast 3G networks as well as the slower "always online" GPRS networks.

Sony Ericsson, the world's sixth biggest mobile phone maker, also announced two new 3G handsets with megapixel cameras on Monday.

The K600 will be a medium-priced mobile phone aimed more at the corporate user, Flint said. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera, which means photos taken by it can be printed in post-card size with good quality and will start shipping in the third quarter.

The other 3G phone, the Z800, will ship in the second quarter.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7622894


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Motorola Unveils RAZR Successors, iTunes Phone
Lucas van Grinsven

U.S.-based Motorola unveiled a range of new handsets on Monday that will be built around its popular RAZR model, and showed a long-awaited music phone with Apple's iTunes music player software.

The popular RAZR ultra-thin flip phone which was launched last year will be joined by three more high-tech models, dubbed the RAZR black, the SLVR and the PEBL.

The black RAZR, nicknamed BLZR, will be available for the Oscars this spring. The SLVR, a model without a flip, will be thin like the RAZR with Motorola hoping to bring excitement back to monoblock phones, which have lost ground to clamshell designs.

Bigger rival Nokia has this year started moving a large part of its portfolio to clamshells after it lost market share in 2004 due to its focus on monoblock models.

The SLVR will come out in the third quarter, which is when Motorola will also introduce a round mobile phone dubbed the PEBL. Under Jim Wicks, who was elevated to chief designer last year, Motorola will develop two families of phones, one square and one round.

"We finally discovered the right direction," Amer Husaini, vice president for Motorola's mobile devices group in Europe, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, said at 3GSM in Cannes, the world's biggest mobile trade show.

Under new Chief Executive Ed Zander, Motorola has turned around its handset operations last year. It gained global market share to 15.3 percent from 14.5 percent, and more than tripled operating profits after introducing popular new models of which it could make sufficient quantities -- breaking with a tradition of problems with logistics and manufacturing.

Four-Letter Models

While the new four-letter models will be for the standard second generation networks, Motorola also unveiled three new handsets and one datacard for faster third generation mobile networks aimed at multimedia consumers and computer users.

Many operators opened third generation (3G) networks to consumers last year, with 61 UMTS networks open by late 2004, connecting 16 million subscribers. Vodafone started selling 3G services to consumers in November in 13 countries.

Motorola will introduce the E1120 monoblock model with a built-in camera of 3 megapixels for high detail pictures, and the E1060 model which is aimed at music afficianados and which will feature iTunes Music Player of which Motorola said last year will become the default music player on Motorola handsets.

"We're committed to have iTunes as the default music client, but we'll also continue to support other music players such as RealPlayer (from RealNetworks), Husaini said.

Apple's iTunes Music Player has become popular on the back of the company's iPod music jukebox, which is the world's leading portable music player. Motorola phone users will be able to carry a limited number of songs in the iTunes format.

The A1010, available in the first half, will succeed the current A1000 3G phone, by adding more features. All phones will run on Motorola's own operating system, except the A1010 which will run on Symbian. More Linux phones are in the pipeline for this year, but it is not clear if they will be sold outside Asia, Husaini said.

The computer datacard will be able to handle the higher speeds that come with HSDPA networks, the improved version of UMTS that will be used by some operators toward the end of 2005. That is also when Motorola's card will be ready.

At the trade show, Motorola's network division is showing how HSDPA can boost the speed of a 3G network so that 10 songs can be downloaded onto a phone in less than a minute.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7622531


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Motorola Announces Push-To-View Solution
John Saria

Motorola announced plans to deliver a complete "Push-to-View" solution on GSM PoC (Push-to-Talk over Cellular) handsets. The "Push-to-View" solution will be the first Push-to-Experience application for GSM PoC handsets.

With Push-to-View, the first in the family of "Push-to-Share" applications, consumers can now see the presence state of their contacts and spontaneously share pictures, captured on their phone, quickly and easily. Whether at work or at play, GSM PoC subscribers will have the ability to send voice or image messages -- all at the push of a button*. For operators deploying PoC networks worldwide, Push-to-View capabilities provide a new real-time multimedia services data application that can lead to increased revenue and differentiation opportunities.

Push-to-View will be the first offering in a broader category of peer-to- peer file sharing applications slated from Motorola over the next year - including video, audio and other rich media - all designed to further extend the concept of one- touch communications.

*Push to Talk ("PTT") and the other features indicated are network and subscription dependent features, and are not available in all areas. PTT connectivity requires PTT compatible phones.

"Motorola is driving the 'Push-to' revolution by creating new and different experiences for consumers worldwide," said Joel Holl, Director, GSM PTT Products, Motorola. "By continually expanding what's possible with this technology, we're enabling consumers to connect to the people and information that mean the most to them, quickly, easily, and intuitively."
http://www.pdatracker.net/archives/2...la_announ.html


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Nokia Makes Deal to Use Microsoft's Music Formats
Victoria Shannon

Nokia and Microsoft, which have a history as rivals, have decided to work together when it comes to mobile music.

Nokia, the leading cellphone manufacturer and a longtime Microsoft competitor in mobile phone software, said Monday that it had agreed to use Microsoft's music formats on its handsets.

And in another advance for mobile music, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications said it would make Sony Walkman-brand cellphones that would work with customers' digital music collections on their personal computers, as well as connect with music downloading services.

The companies made their announcements at the 3GSMWorld Congress, a cellphone trade show here. They forecast a huge increase in the number of people using their cellphones to listen to music, especially with the growth of faster, or third-generation, cellphones.

At the moment, digital music is largely carried on portable players that are intended strictly for music, like the iPod made by Apple Computer. But hardware, software, music and phone companies agree that there is a mass market - particularly among young people - for music on demand that is sent over the air to cellphones.

The bandwidth of high-speed networks "will make mobile music work for the consumer," Miles Flint, Sony Ericsson's president, said.

The Windows Media Player, the program Nokia is licensing for its phones, is already a leading software program for listening to music on personal computers.

Until now, Nokia has been using an internally developed program or music software made by RealNetworks.

"This is a big shift by Nokia," said Ben Wood, telecommunications analyst at Gartner. "Nokia is conceding they can't do everything themselves."

Nokia and Microsoft use rival software for the operating systems that run cellphones. They have been on opposite sides in other areas, notably the European Commission antitrust case against Microsoft last year over sales of its operating system.

Also on Monday, Microsoft announced that Flextronics International would make low-cost cellphones with Windows Mobile, the software that competes with Nokia's Series 60 operating system made by Symbian.

Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of Windows Digital Media, said Nokia and Microsoft had begun discussions on the mobile music deal about four months ago.

Nokia said the cooperation had come out of long-term work by both companies on industry forums to widen the use of open standards.

Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia executive vice president for multimedia, said the agreement on music software could lead to future partnerships.

Nokia also said that it had agreed to license Microsoft's e-mail synchronization system, called ActiveSync, to permit its business customers to use their Windows e-mail software on the road from their phones.

Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Nokia is also a partner with Loudeye, a digital media services company, on a mobile music service that will be sold to wireless carriers. Loudeye already supports Microsoft's Windows Media Player and WMA sound format, and will support the Advanced Audio Coding format for mobile use.

For Sony Ericsson, a joint venture based in London, the decision to make Walkman phones was less surprising, said Mr. Wood, the Gartner analyst. "It's a logical progression for Sony," he said.

Sony Ericsson, a leading manufacturer in Europe but a laggard in North America, expects to show the first Walkman phones in March. They will be compatible with the Sony Connect download service, as well as others, Mr. Flint, the Sony Ericsson president, said.

Nokia, Microsoft and Sony Ericsson are among those trying to horn in on Apple's success with the iPod, which works with Apple's iTunes software. A Motorola cellphone with iTunes is planned for the spring.

While the companies see a large demand for mobile music, they also see a place for the computer.

"I don't think the PC will ever be left out of the equation," Mr. Vanjoki of Nokia said. The computer's keyboard, mouse and large storage capacity are advantages over cellphones, he noted.

"I think this shows that there will still be one Internet but different devices using it in different ways," he said.

At the other end of the scale, Motorola announced plans on Monday to produce a low-priced handset for developing countries in conjunction with the GSM Association, a co-sponsor of this week's show.

The cellphone industry is looking at unit sales of more than 600 million this year. On Monday, Nokia forecast that high-speed networks around the world would have 70 million subscribers by the end of 2005, up from about 16 million last year.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/...ney/music.html


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Cellphones Get a New Job Description: Portable Scanner
Heather Clancy

IT'S a concept the fictional spy Maxwell Smart would adore: the means to transform the diminutive camera in your cellphone into a portable document scanner.

Imagine discreetly photographing contracts, notes jotted on a whiteboard or other handwritten information while on a research mission or a sales call, and later converting them into a format for processing, either in hard copy or on your computer.

That's what scientists at Xerox Research Center Europe in Grenoble, France, envisioned when they developed mobile document imaging software, which should reach the market later this year.

The technology works with camera phones that have a resolution of at least one megapixel to create digital images of documents or presentations. It checks and corrects for blurriness and shadows, then compresses the image into a file that can be transmitted to a fax machine, to another phone or to a computer via a multimedia messaging service - MMS - or Bluetooth wireless technology. The images can be printed later.

"When we give it to test users, they appreciate it easily," said Christopher Dance, senior scientist and image processing manager for Xerox Research Center Europe. "Even the simplest of applications, just sharing the documents and storing the documents you have captured. You could even handwrite a message and send it to someone's phone."

Xerox is talking with potential licensees through its licensing agent, IPValue Management, and the technology, which is patented, could find its way into users' hands by midyear. Among potential licensees are handset manufacturers, wireless carriers and developers of document-management software.

The Xerox software works in a four-step process. To create an image of an 81/2-by-11-inch piece of paper, you have to hold the camera roughly one foot away from the document and photograph it. Mr. Dance said it is difficult to capture smaller documents - a business card, for example - because the lenses in most phones don't focus well at closer distances.

Once an image is captured, you can fix blurriness and convert it to black and white. Next you might need to adjust contrast and eliminate shadows or reflections caused by certain types of papers or document surfaces. Finally the image is compressed using a format known as Fax Group 4, or G4. An image that started as 200 kilobytes in size, for example, could be squeezed down to 20 kilobytes. Mr. Dance said that with such compression, a phone could store about 10 page images in the space that it would take to store one digital photo.

Xerox researchers believe the technology will be useful for just about anyone with a job that requires research in the field. The theory is that someone attending a trade show or conference, for example, could capture and store pertinent documents in their cellphone.

Mr. Dance reasoned that most people are unlikely to want to view those images on the tiny screen, and will instead transfer them to a computer, where they could be converted into editable text using optical character recognition software, which is often included with desktop scanners. Others might want to send a document image as an MMS message to a business associate or family member.

Paul Withington, a manager with the research firm IDC who has seen the technology in use, envisions both personal and business applications, especially in professions still dependent on paper. An architect visiting a construction site, for example, could jot notes on a blueprint, photograph them and send the image to colleagues as an e-mail attachment, or directly to a fax machine. An insurance agent could document a contract in the field and download it later to a computer for archiving.

"To my mind, any mobile professional who spends a lot of time on the road would have an application," Mr. Withington said.

"It's one of those products that doesn't need a critical mass of users to become useful," he added. "That's because the image is independent of any particular phone or software application."

Xerox researchers are also working on complementary technology for cataloging these and other digital images. Although it's part of a different research project that hasn't come to fruition, the technology will sort through and group images using histograms, which chart the pixels associated with a particular part of a digital photograph. In some instances, text descriptions will be tied to these histograms.

One possible use might be field research: a student could take a picture of an object or animal, and then check the compressed image against a search engine for more information about its identity.

The Xerox mobile document imaging projects were actually born a half-dozen years ago as an offshoot of work the company's scientists were doing with videoconferencing cameras. Several factors made it difficult to apply the technology to mobile applications, including the amount of memory available in cellular phones. The most serious limitation was the resolution of available digital cameras.

Analysts believe, however, that this will be a breakthrough year. Alex Slawsby, senior analyst for mobile devices at IDC, estimated that roughly 89 million mobile phones with cameras will be sold this year in the United States. About 40 percent will have a resolution of one megapixel or greater, he said.

"The Xerox technology will actually be important in coming up with solutions that really utilize camera phones," he said.

Mr. Dance has been using the software on the job to capture brainstorming notes from whiteboards. He also found himself reaching for his phone to photograph notices and schedules on the bulletin boards at his son's school, which he promptly e-mailed to his wife to check against their master calendar, and to make a copy of a sales proposal drafted in his office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/te...ts/10next.html


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Study: Regulating Patents Will Not Stop Biopiracy
Darren Schuettler

A drive by developing nations to regulate access to rare plant genes -- used in drugs and perfumes worth billions of dollars -- will not stop "biopiracy" and may deter foreign investment, a trade expert said in a report Tuesday.

The report was released in Bangkok where 188 governments and parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were holding five days of talks on a new global regime governing the use of genetic resources.

"The stakes are fairly high," said Alan Oxley, chairman of Australia's APEC Study Center who wrote the 17-page report which argues that fiddling with patent laws will not stop gene thieves.

Poor nations want a binding agreement to ensure they get a share of the profits from any plant taken out of their country that ends up in a best-selling drug, cosmetic or health food.

One way of doing this is to regulate the system of international patents to prevent theft of genetic resources.

Green groups say indigenous communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America are often victims of "biopiracy," when companies or research institutes develop crops or treatments from plant varieties without rewarding the local people who originally bred them.

Some studies suggest 25 percent of all prescription drugs sold in the United States are derived from genetic resources.

The best way to control biopiracy was to set up a system of market-based contracts where companies or researchers paid for the right to search and collect genetic resources, said Oxley, a former trade ambassador.

Restricting patents would mean less fee income from "bio-prospecting" in developing countries, and less money for local communities, he said.

"Companies would not invest in research and development if they did not know if they could use new products based on patents," Oxley said.

Tough Negotiations

Adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the CBD aims to conserve the planet's diversity, or variety of life, ensure the sustainable use of genetic resources and regulate a fair distribution of benefits.

In 2002, the parties approved voluntary guidelines advising governments on how to give researchers and companies access to genetic resources and ensure that those who own them or passed on their traditional knowledge shared in the benefits. Developing countries now want to give those guidelines some teeth in Bangkok to ensure they share in the wealth.

"Access has never been interrupted. It has always been, but it must be reciprocated, or it risks being discontinued," Ethiopian chief delegate Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher said.

Rich nations worried about access and patents say the effects of the 2002 guidelines, which some countries have implemented gradually, need to be studied before taking the next step.

"Without access there cannot be any benefits to share," the head of the Dutch delegation said in his opening remarks.

Oxley said any move against patents and intellectual property rights would face strong opposition from industrialized countries where most big drug, agriculture and cosmetics firms are based.

"It's clear some countries are uncomfortable. They are politely saying they really don't want this," he said.

He expected the 17 mega-diverse nations -- a bloc of developing countries rich in species and led by India and Brazil -- to get enough support to put their proposals on the agenda of the next full CBD meeting in 2006.

But with so many contentious political, economic and legal issues to work through, the chances of any consensus emerging from the talks which end Friday are remote, organizers say.

"There will be a bit of searching here. If we get an agreement on what we will be negotiating, that in itself would be a breakthrough," said Olivier Jalbert, CBD deputy executive secretary.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7633249


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*** $1,825,000.00 ***

Italian DJ Fined For Music Piracy



An Italian DJ has been fined a record 1.4 million euros (970,000 pounds) for using thousands of pirate music files in a nightclub near Rome, police say.

Police in the town of Rieti, near Rome, said on Wednesday they raided a popular nightclub earlier this week as part of a crackdown on piracy and seized 500 illegally copied music videos and more than 2,000 MP3 music files.

Police said the files belonged to a "well-known" Italian DJ.

"For the MP3 files, which were kept on the DJ's personal computer, the DJ has received a fine of 1.4 million euros," Rieti finance police said in a statement.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said the fine was the biggest ever slapped on an individual for unlawful music copying and the use of copyrighted music in the MP3 format.

More than 7,000 legal actions have been launched against alleged uploaders in the United States, Canada and countries in Europe as the music industry fights to stop piracy which it blames for a decline over a number of years in CD sales.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050216/80/fcn1j.html
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