Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – October 11th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week:

Last Week: “If users truly have the right to speak anonymously on the Internet, as the court held, then their ISPs must protect that right.” - Julie Hilden

This Week:“Sooner or later we will need to know who everyone on the Internet is, and who confirmed their identities. Internet access providers who admit unauthenticated users will have to be shut out, even if that means shutting out whole countries. - Daniel Akst


Things Change

Insistent winds blow through the Berkshires bringing touches of fire to the Maples of New England. The days grow shorter and the nights more resolute. My thoughts travel back to Falls past and the people I knew, so impossibly young, so full of promise. Bundles of potential desperate to burst forth - barely contained within bodies perfect and powerful, Autumn just another page on a silly calendar marking time for adults. I used to hate the Fall. It meant the end of faultless, brilliant days and the beginning of darkness and solitude. It meant decay and the start of Winter.

I look at Fall as differently now as I look at Western culture. Where once I saw the passing of endless private afternoons I now see an intimate chance to spend rare moments with people precious to me. And where once I saw an amazing cornucopia of recorded plenty I see an anti-democracy - and a smothering of views and opinions by out of control media megaliths.

A few years ago if Warner Bros. sued a twelve year old for sharing a tape they might have been denounced on the floors of Congress as greedy purveyors of filth preying on the young. They would have been the butt of jokes throughout the country. Instead it’s Congress who now supports them and far from laughing at any jokes people instead are worrying. Things change. It’s not fiction, it’s real. When a company can use a law Congress passed to shove you in jail for talking about a button on your computer it’s not just some Halloween fright fest. It’s some seriously bad voodoo.

Elections are fast approaching. Register, vote, and get rid of them all.









Enjoy,

Jack.









Student Faces Suit For Using His Computers Shift Key
John Borland

SunnComm Technologies, a developer of CD antipiracy technology, said Thursday that it will likely sue a Princeton student who early this week showed how to evade the company's copy protection by pushing a computer's Shift key.

Princeton Ph.D. student John "Alex" Halderman published a paper on his Web site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently distributed by BMG Music.

On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards.

"We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged," Jacobs said. "I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace."

The cases are already being examined by some intellectual-property lawyers for their potential to test the extremes of a controversial copyright law that block the distribution of information or software that breaks or "circumvents" copy-protection technologies.

Several civil and criminal cases based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have been filed against people who distributed information or software aimed at breaking through antipiracy locks. In one, Web publisher Eric Corley was banned by a federal judge from publishing software code that helped in the process of copying DVDs.

In a criminal case, Russian company ElcomSoft was cleared of charges that it had distributed software that willfully broke through Adobe Systems' e-book copy protection.

Both of those cases dealt with software or software code, however. The issue in Halderman's case is somewhat different.

In his paper, published on the Princeton Web site on Monday, the student explained that the SunnComm technique relies on installing antipiracy software directly from the protected CD itself. However, this can be prevented by stopping Microsoft Windows' "auto-run" feature. That can be done simply by pushing the Shift key as the CD loads.

If the CD does load and installs the software, Halderman identified the driver file that can be disabled using standard Windows tools. Free-speech activists said the nature of Halderman's instructions--which appeared in an academic paper, used only functions built into every Windows computer, and were not distributed for profit--meant they would not fall under DMCA scrutiny.

"This is completely outrageous," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that has previously represented computer academics concerned that copyright law would impair their ability to publish. "This is not black hat (hackers') exploits he's revealing. This is Windows 101...It is relatively hard to imagine any better example of how the DMCA has been misused since it was passed five years ago."

Jacobs said SunnComm's attorneys would refer the case to local federal authorities, who could make the decision on how to proceed on the DMCA issue. He said the company was also exploring a civil suit based on damage to the company's reputation, since Halderman concluded that the technology was ineffective without knowing about future enhancements.

Future versions of the SunnComm software would include ways that the copy-protecting files would change their name on different computers, making them harder to find, Jacobs said. Moreover, the company will distribute the technology along with third-party software, so that it doesn't always come off a protected CD, he added.

The damage to SunnComm's reputation, while not necessarily permanent, was quickly seen in a drop in its market value, totaling close to $10 million over several days, Jacobs said. No final decisions about legal action have been made, he added.

Halderman said he's not overly worried about the legal threat. The EFF represented his advisor, Princeton professor Edward Felten, in a lawsuit dealing with academic freedom to publish computer security information, and Princeton University supported Felten in that case.

"I expect I will be well-represented in the case of a lawsuit," Halderman said. "If pressing the Shift key is a violation of the DMCA, then the law needs to be changed."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5089168.html?tag=nefd_hed


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House Votes To Lock Out P2P Threat
Reuters

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to require the government to set up its computers so they are not exposed to security risks associated with peer-to- peer networks.

U.S. government agencies that use such decentralized networks to exchange data would have to ensure they do not accidentally expose classified material or allow hackers into their systems under the bill, which passed by voice vote.

Peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Grokster allow users to copy music and other material directly from each others' hard drives, drawing millions of enthusiastic users and the legal wrath of the recording industry.

Federal agencies have begun to use peer-to-peer technology as well. The www.fedstats.gov page, for example, uses peer-to-peer techniques to pull statistics and information from computers in more than 100 different U.S. government agencies.

But if configured improperly, peer-to-peer networks can expose tax returns, medical records and other sensitive documents that users do not want to share. Worms and viruses can spread through the networks, and some also contain hidden "spyware" to track users' activities, according to testimony at a committee hearing earlier this year.

Bill sponsor Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said some peer-to-peer systems were in use in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear laboratory.

The bill, also sponsored by Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis, would require government agencies to come up with a plan to minimize such security risks through technical measures and employee training. The House and the Senate already have such measures in place for their own offices.

The bill "closes a loophole in the federal government's efforts to protect the security and privacy of its computers," Davis said.

A Waxman aide said the Senate plans to take up the same version of the bill.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5088598.html



Rapper Ludacris surveys his songs on the Napster 2.0 site. Users will have access to more than a half-million
songs from all the major music labels.
NYT


UK File-Swappers Could Face Jail Under New Law
Matthew Broersma

UK file swappers face up to two years' imprisonment under new copyright regulations, which implement the provisions of a European directive, that are expected to take effect in the UK this month.

The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 was laid before Parliament on Friday after nearly a year's delay. It is expected to be passed in time to come into force by the end of October, according to legal experts.

The Copyright Directorate, a Patent Office department, had a deadline of 22 December last year to implement the European Copyright Directive of 2001 (known as EUCD), but delayed doing so several times under pressure from groups representing copyright holder interests as well as civil liberties and consumer rights organisations.

The EUCD is intended to aid copyright holders in cracking down on counterfeiting and piracy, but organisations such as UK think tank the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) argue that it is likely to tighten the grip of large companies on consumers, because of the way it is being implemented across the European Union.

In a recent analysis of the EUCD, FIPR found that most countries were failing to protect researchers, business competition and consumers in their implementations of the directive, while giving full force to measures that criminalise the circumvention of copyright controls.

Critics argue that such measures will be used by corporate interests to block competition for such products as printer cartridges and garage-door openers -- two cases that have already surfaced under the DMCA in the US.

FIPR director Ian Brown said that although the UK law compares favourably with the implementations in some other European states, it did not appear that consumer-rights groups' criticisms had been taken into account. "I don't think there has been much change since the first draft," he said.

The UK's music industry also lobbied against the law -- but on the grounds that it was too lenient, and would drive the music industry out of the country.

Brown said that an exemption had been built in allowing cryptographic researchers to circumvent copyright protections, but said the language of this provision was "perhaps less clear than it should be". One of the DMCA-like provisions of the EUCD is the criminalisation of circumventing copyright protections, in other words cracking anti-piracy technology on DVDs, CDs, printer cartridges and the like.

Other observers noted that the new UK law could be used to imprison file-swappers on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks such as Kazaa for up to two years.

One of the law's provisions states that "A person who infringes copyright in a work by communicating the work to the public... to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright... commits an offence."

Struan Robertson, editor of the newsletter Out-Law, produced by UK law firm Masons, noted that this could be used to fine P2P users or send them to prison for up to two years. "By making a music file available for download for any other users of your chosen P2P network, you are communicating the work -- potentially at least -- to millions, i.e. to an extent that the music industry could say is prejudicing its rights," he said in a statement.

FIPR's Brown agreed the UK regulations allowed scope for abuse, but said that on this provision, the UK was bound by the provisions of the EUCD itself.

"It's the directive that's the problem," he said. "The groups who are concerned have to make sure their voices are heard next year when the European Commission reviews [the EUCD], and suggest changes."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9117002,00.htm


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Standing Tall Against Recording Industry
Johna Till Johnson

I usually don't say nice things about telcos. And I almost never say nice things about their lawyers. But here I'll do both: Kudos to the lawyers at Verizon and SBC for opposing the Recording Industry Association of America's request that the telcos compromise the privacy of their customers. Way to go, guys.

Here's the deal: the RIAA has asked the regional Bell operating companies, including Verizon and SBC, to monitor customers' usage of their DSL services and report downloads of copyrighted material. To their everlasting credit, the telcos have refused to comply and are fighting the RIAA in federal court.

"The recording industry is essentially granting itself more power than law enforcement has under the Patriot Act," Sara Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel, said in one report.

The RIAA doesn't believe that civil rights are the issue.

"[The phone companies' position] doesn't pass the laugh test or the smell test," Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of legal affairs reportedly says.

With all due respect, Mr. Oppenheim, that's horsepucky.

The former RBOCs have a long and distinguished track record of protecting their customers' privacy, even at the expense of the telcos' own interests. I worked with RBOCs in the mid-'90s on the development of quality of service that would have required IP packet inspection. RBOC executives ultimately rejected these services because they conflicted with customer privacy.

What doesn't pass the smell test is the RIAA's own position with respect to copyright enforcement. Ultimately, its approach is outdated, impractical and Orwellian - and benefits neither the artists whose interests the RIAA supposedly represents, nor the fans whose dollars fuel the entire music industry.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in copyright protection. Artists, software developers and other content creators have the right to be compensated for their efforts and deserve protection of their intellectual property.

But that's not what the RIAA is really fighting for. The RIAA acts on behalf of record companies, not artists. And record companies are fundamentally distributors and promoters - not creators - of content.

What's going on is that the Internet has dramatically cut the costs and enhanced the efficiency of distribution and promotion mechanisms, in the process is making obsolete many of the core business processes of record companies. In other words, record company executives are in approximately the same position that manufacturing workers were in during the '80s and '90s: Their jobs have been made redundant by technology.

The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.

What the RIAA needs to do is wake up and develop cost-effective distribution and promotion models that serve fans and artists well. If it can't, the organization should be replaced by one that does.

Regardless, kudos to Verizon and SBC for standing up to the RIAA's encroachment of our civil rights.
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2...29johnson.html

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Crackdown On File Sharing Has Unintended Effects

Secrecy grows with better encryption
AP

Just as Prohibition drove drinkers underground , the music industry's crackdown is pushing many song swappers away from the open Internet and into what amount to cyberspace speakeasies. These high-tech Cotton Clubs usually require users to be trusted or at least know someone inside. The files being traded, instead of out in the open, are encrypted -- the 21st-century equivalent of hiding gin under a fake floorboard.

Internet file-sharers are operating much like any society that falls under attack. And the very technologies they are using as shields have long been employed by legitimate businesses to protect their data from prying eyes and hackers.

"The software that users are moving toward, it has characteristics that businesses need -- which is a high degree of privacy, a high degree of security and the ability to handle large files," said Clay Shirky, a professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University.

Three years after the Recording Industry Association of America's lawyers succeeded in shutting down the Napster file-trading service, the music industry's battle against unauthorized digital music distribution is reaping an unintended consequence: better, easier-to-use software for exchanging data securely -- and even anonymously -- on the Internet.

"Thanks to the RIAA, ease of use surrounding encryption technologies ... is a big deal now," Shirky said.

The decentralized peer-to-peer technology that enables a computer user to share his or her music collection with strangers remains an unbottled genie. And it is now likely to evolve, so that more traffic becomes invisible not just to the entertainment industry's copyright cops but also to repressive governments, inquisitive employers and snooping relatives.

On the file-swapping front, current favorites Kazaa, Morpheus and iMesh are more decentralized and harder to sue than Napster. They are breeding more sophisticated stepchildren just as the RIAA goes after the swappers themselves with lawsuits filed against 260 alleged file sharers.

An upcoming release of the file-sharing program Blubster, for instance, not only makes users more difficult to identify. It also seamlessly encrypts files before they are transferred and decrypts them for the end user.

Another program, called Waste, can be used to set up an encrypted instant-messaging and content-sharing network of up to 50 users. Unlike traditional instant-messaging programs, Waste messages don't pass through a central server.

Waste was pulled by America Online shortly after its release by the company's Nullsoft division, but is still circulating online. Neither AOL nor Nullsoft programmer Justin Frankel returned calls seeking comment.
http://www.newsobserver.com/business...-2690946c.html

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Music Industry To Recoup Alleged File-Sharing Losses One 12-Year-Old At A Time
John Paczkowski

Does the Recording Industry Association of America really believe that suing millions of file-sharers is going to inspire them to buy more CDs? Apparently so. On Monday
the RIAA, hardened by years of CD price fixing, made good on its threat to sue alleged file swappers, charging 261 of them with "egregious" copyright infringement, potentially worth millions of dollars. Among them, a 12-year-old New York City girl. The lawsuits were filed in federal courts throughout the country and are likely to be followed by thousands more in the coming months. "Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said RIAA President Cary Sherman. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."

The first rule of life is also the first rule of business: Adapt or die. And if you choose the latter, be sure to sue your customers first...Today, many are looking askance at the RIAA's latest action. Some say the recording industry itself is to blame for the sharp decline in CD sales (see "Decline in CD sales apparently unrelated to proliferation of lousy music"). Others believe there are better ways to solve the peer-to-peer dilemma than alienating customers. "They're resorting to these kind of bullying tactics where they're suing individuals, families, threatening them with bankruptcy, and trying to intimidate them into coming back and being customers," EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz told Tech TV. "The real question will be: Are they serious about continuing to wage this war? I think this first effort will shock some people, but I don't think it'll stick unless they're willing to keep it up over the long haul...It's kind of a false trade in some ways," he said. "They agree not to spend their own money suing you on behalf of copyright owners, and you end up giving up your privacy. You end up confessing your sins, but it leaves all the actual recording companies... and all these people to come after you anyway if they want to, and sue you."

Amnesty irrational: Meanwhile, as expected, the RIAA unveiled its much discussed amnesty program, which will apply only to alleged infringers who have not yet been sued by the trade group and are foolhardy enough to use it. "For those who want to wipe the slate clean and to avoid a potential lawsuit, this is the way to go," RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Bainwol said. "We want to send a strong message that the illegal distribution of copyrighted works has consequences, but if individuals are willing to step forward on their own, we want to go the extra step and extend them this option." Bainwol failed to note that the "extra step" to which he refers WILL NOT PROTECT YOU from other potential litigants.

One final note: If the RIAA's lawsuit orgy does inspire a mass exodus of KaZaA users, you can be sure that at least some of them will turn to anonymous, encrypted P2P networks for their music. And among those networks are a few that won't cave so easily to the RIAA's heavy-handed methods. Take Earth Station 5, for example. If its stealth technology doesn't prevent copyright owners from subpoenaing its users, dealing with a venture headquartered in Palestine might.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...printstory.jsp


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File-Sharing Services Have Plan to Pay

Group Says It Can Protect Music Industry
Frank Ahrens

A group representing the Internet's most popular free music-sharing service has come up with a business plan that it says would stop piracy by allowing consumers to legally buy copyright-protected music, though the music industry remains skeptical.

Distributed Computing Industry Association, a trade group formed in July by the parent companies of song-sharing services Kazaa and Altnet, rolled out the plan at its Arlington headquarters yesterday, saying it could earn the music industry up to $900 million per month in Internet music sales.

The group characterized the plan as a starting point for peacemaking discussions with a music industry hostile toward free file-sharing Web sites, which it says rob musicians and record labels of billions of dollars in royalties and revenue they would otherwise get through music sales.

The trade group said its plan would work only if it were joined by other file-sharing sites, such as Grokster and Morpheus -- which have formed their own trade group -- the music industry and Internet service providers, or ISPs. The music industry's trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has waged a legal campaign to shut down free file-sharing sites such as Kazaa.

"We are in an earn-your-trust mode," said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the trade group. "This plan is kind of like looking at a concept car at a car show," the first of three to five business plans the group will roll out in coming months.

More than 4 million users per week employ Kazaa, many to illegally swap copyrighted songs for free, the music industry says. The RIAA sued to shutter Kazaa, as it did Napster in the past, but a federal court ruled in April that Kazaa and other song-sharing Web sites are not responsible for the actions of their users.

The trade group is meant to equally represent three interests -- file-sharing services such as Kazaa, content providers such as music labels, and digital pipelines such as ISPs, Lafferty said. Thus far, however, the only announced members are Kazaa and Altnet, the two file-sharing services that funded the group's start-up.

The RIAA maintains it wants consumers to be able to legally buy digital songs on the Internet, but it favors Web sites such as Apple's iTunes music store, as opposed to peer-to-peer services such as Kazaa.

The plan from the trade group representing Kazaa and Altnet would roll out in stages, starting with the record companies allowing their songs, protected with copyright tools rendering them unlistenable, to be distributed on networks such as Kazaa. Consumers would pay Kazaa to unzip the copyright-protection shroud, enabling their computer to play the song.

Later stages of the plan would shift the billing to Internet service providers, which would be required to monitor which songs users are listening to, raising potential privacy concerns and putting ISPs into a business they may not want to enter.

"For us to somehow be responsible for monitoring and tacking every download that might flow through our system is extremely unrealistic, and the ISP would turn into the Internet police," said Sarah B. Deutsch, associate general counsel for Verizon Communications Inc., the nation's largest phone company and a top ISP. "And it would also create the world's most complicated billing system."

The RIAA reacted coolly to the plan.

"It's nice to hear that a couple of the [peer-to-peer] services are actually interested in finding a business solution," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. But "it is hard to take seriously proposals to turn [peer-to-peer] systems into legitimate businesses when they continue to induce users to violate the law and willfully refuse to use available technologies to stop the rampant infringement of copyrighted works on their networks."

Meanwhile, the name of Napster, the service that first popularized online song swapping, will be revived today as a legal Internet music store that will go head to head with such competitors as iTunes, the Associated Press reported, citing sources familiar with the plans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Oct8.html


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Recording Industry Misses Beat In Battle Against File Sharing
Doug Bandow

The recording industry seems to believe all that is good and wonderful in the world have no greater enemy than peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies.

Thus explains the Recording Industry Association of America's campaign to sue grandchildren and grandparents who violate copyrights by swapping songs.

The association is within its rights to challenge lawbreakers, no matter how minor. Not legitimate is its lobbying campaign to shut down the P2P (peer-to-peer) business. Ultimately individuals, not technologies, such as the KaZaA Media Desktop, are to blame for copyright violations.

Copyright-cheaters have been around since copyrights were created. New technologies - photocopiers, tape recorders, VCRs, DVDs and P2P software - have simply made it easier to illicitly copy protected works.

Industry has occasionally demanded heavy-handed restrictions on and even prohibitions of technological innovation, but more often has worked to increase awareness of and compliance with the law. Firms also have cut prices and developed new markets, such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, which charges for music online.

However, the association blames a one-third decline in music sales over the last three years on file-sharing. In contrast, Forrester Research places the drop at about 15 percent, only a third of which can be attributed to file sharing.

Still, old-fashioned enforcement has its place. Of course, the association's efforts might antagonize potential customers.

And the campaign might be doomed over the long term. After all, we live in a downloading culture, observes Katie Hafner of the New York Times.

Moreover, some systems already try to shield their users from outside prying eyes. Further, programmers are working to improve their file-sharing software through use of encryption, among other techniques. Nevertheless, the association is entitled to try.

But large recording firms have not stopped trying to enforce the law. They want to destroy a technology simply because it is used by some cheaters.

The recording industry might be able to build a case if the technology served no function other than criminal. Yet, explains American University law professor Peter Jaszi, "It's far too early in the day to conclude that everything everyone does with peer-to-peer, even when it comes to copyrighted MP3 files, is conclusively infringing."

Even now, P2P is used to share government publications and private works in the public domain or where the copyright holder has granted permission. The potential is vast for file sharing to further improve computer communication and networking.

"Music was just the first killer app, but I think it will be the first of many," said Lance Cottrell, president of a software firm.

The recording industry also might be justified in targeting technology designed to facilitate lawbreaking. For instance, the old Napster maintained a directory of users whose files were being shared. That is not the case with technology like KaZaA (the most popular file-sharing software), Gnutella, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus, where there is no central server.

Unable to win its case on copyright grounds, the recording industry has resorted to demagoguery, claiming that P2P technology promotes child pornography. Andrew Lack, President of Sony Music, says "P2P stands for piracy to pornography."

It's a ludicrous argument. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that P2P accounts for just two percent of referrals regarding child pornography, compared to 77 percent for Web sites.

Indeed, as Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks Ltd., recently told the Senate Judiciary Committee, some porn merchants create sites to take advantage of misspellings, such as dinseyland.com, "so that individuals making common typing mistakes, including children, would be connected to advertising sites, including those for pornographic materials, from which they could not easily exit."

And even the most casual e-mail user is deluged with invitations to watch the most carnal activities.

Nor is P2P particularly useful for pedophiles. Explains Morris: "To make their 'collections' publicly available on P2P is counter to their cloak of secrecy. Law enforcement agencies quickly picked them off and so they retreated back to their sordid encrypted sites, news groups and the like."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/d...20031006.shtml


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New Napster To Play By Industry's Rules

The fee-based version faces tough competition from online music stores and free networks
Jon Healey

Having launched one revolution in the music industry, Napster comes back to life this week in a bid to foment a counterrevolution: persuading people who download songs free to start paying again.

Like the original, the new version of Napster being launched Thursday by Roxio Corp. offers music fans a way to build their collections that's very different from buying CDs. This time, it's an industry-authorized mix of music rentals and pay-as-you-go downloads.

But the competition is much fiercer now than it was in 1999, when 18-year-old Shawn Fanning unleashed the pioneering Napster file-sharing service. Roxio not only faces a growing number of rivals licensed by the record labels but also a slew of free file-sharing networks that attract an estimated 63 million people in the U.S. alone.

Meanwhile, advocates of file sharing are pushing ways to legitimize networks that allow users to swap tens of millions of songs a day from computers all over the world.

One such plan, expected to be unveiled Wednesday, would automatically bill file sharers for their downloads and compensate the industry for its music. Backers say the plan would generate $900 million a month for the music industry within three years, boosting revenues for labels, artists and music publishers.

The proposal has been endorsed by the company behind Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing network. But to succeed, it must be embraced by the recording industry, as well as rival file-sharing companies, Internet service providers and users.

Analyst Michael McGuire of GartnerG2, a technology research firm, said all the changes in the online music business have made this a great time for risk-taking music distributors — but not necessarily for record companies, which have watched CD sales plummet in recent years.

"If you're still trying to protect what amounts to a 100-year-old business model," McGuire said, "things must look pretty bleak right now" because music fans have voted en masse in favor of free file sharing. The issue, he said, is "how do you get them back in the corral?"

The major record labels shut down the original Napster in 2001 with a federal court injunction that barred its users from violating copyrights. Roxio, which bought the Napster name and technology at a bankruptcy auction last year, is reviving the brand just as a host of major competitors are jumping into the field with the labels' blessing.

Those businesses include online music stores that charge about $1 for each downloadable song and subscription services that charge about $10 a month to hear or rent an unlimited number of tracks. Roxio's Napster will offer both a store and a subscription service, as will soon-to-be-launched alternatives from RealNetworks Inc. and AOL Time Warner Inc.'s America Online.

Although they mimic the traditional way of buying music, the stores offer one significant improvement for music fans: Customers can buy individual songs, not just full CDs or singles chosen by the record label. But there are downsides too. Not every artist or song is available, and the tracks are wrapped in electronic locks that limit their ability to be copied or transferred.

Subscription services are a more radical departure from conventional music buying. They offer an unlimited amount of music for a flat monthly fee, but most require that the music be played on a computer. And they typically cut off access to those songs if a customer cancels a subscription.

The technology behind Roxio's Napster was built around an overhauled version of Pressplay, the online music service that Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment sold to Roxio in May. Subscribers of the new Napster would pay $10 a month to play an unlimited number of songs from an Internet jukebox or download "tethered" versions to be played when they're not online. It would cost about $1 to move a tethered song to a portable device or burn it onto a CD.

By this time next year, Napster executives hope to enhance the service by allowing subscribers to move an unlimited number of songs onto selected portable devices and take them wherever they go. But that depends on Microsoft Corp. delivering the necessary technology.

The concept of tethered songs is so alien to music buyers that some online services don't offer them. For example, RealNetworks' Rhapsody service has no downloadable songs, just music that subscribers play from an online jukebox.

File-sharing advocates say the most direct approach is to give file sharers an easy way to pay for music on the networks they already use.

The plan being revealed Wednesday, from Distributed Computing Industry Assn., a trade group for peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, will offer a two-step method for the music industry to collect for works shared online.

First, the labels would offer song files wrapped in electronic locks to enforce payment and deter piracy. Then, they would work with Internet service providers to track and bill for every song downloaded. Whoever owned the copyrights to a song would be able to register and collect if the track was shared online.

The group projected that revenue would grow from $200,000 in the first month to $900 million by the 30th month, assuming that the labels charged 50 cents per song and that downloading did not drop sharply when fees were imposed. By contrast, a plan floated by the now-defunct Napster Inc. in 2001 would have paid the record companies and music publishers $200 million per year.

The association's plan faces significant hurdles. It wouldn't work unless all the file-sharing networks and their users participated — a potentially huge challenge, given the outlaw spirit of the file-sharing world. Similarly, to ensure that the music industry and Internet providers participated and set fair prices, it may require the kind of government regulation that entertainment and technology companies have long resisted.

Still, the plan is backed by Sharman Networks Ltd., the firm that distributes the Kazaa software, and its partner, Woodland Hills-based Altnet, even though it would eliminate the free — and often illegal — downloading that drew many users to file sharing in the first place.

"This new business model offers great hope for the entertainment industry, and we look forward to discussing it with the record labels, DCIA members and others," said Sharman Chief Executive Nikki Hemming. "It's clear that selling music directly to consumers within the [peer-to-peer] marketplace is the most logical solution for curbing copyright infringement online."

Analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media, an independent consulting firm, said the proposal reminded him of a famous cartoonist who drew elaborate contraptions to accomplish simple tasks. "In principle, it might be workable, but it's going to end up being a Rube Goldberg kind of thing," he said.

Chief Executive Eric Garland of Big Champagne, a firm that monitors file-sharing traffic, added that Internet service providers weren't equipped to monitor all their customers' downloads. Nor would they necessarily want to. As one record company executive noted, Internet providers care only about the amount of traffic they handle, not what it is.

Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the Distributed Computing Industry Assn., said the point of the plan was to provide a starting point for discussions. "This is the first specific business model with robust details and assumptions, timelines with milestones and thoughtful consideration of all the technologies and parties that need to be involved," he said.

Other file-sharing advocates are exploring ways to enable people to continue downloading without having to pay directly for the activity, while compensating copyright holders. Proposals by Neil W. Netanel, a law professor at the University of Texas, and Harvard Law School professor William Fisher III would create a multibillion-dollar royalties fund by taxing Internet services and digital devices.

The major record companies have strongly opposed such ideas as these, mainly because they generate a fixed amount of money that doesn't grow even if people download more music.

Sean Ryan, vice president of RealNetworks' RealOne Music division, said the idea of requiring copyright holders to authorize the same activity that they blame for billions of dollars in lost sales was both unrealistic and strangely familiar.

Referring to the now-defunct file-sharing pioneers, he said, "This is the same type of argument that Napster essentially used two or three years ago: 'We will make the pain high enough that they'll have to negotiate with us.' "
http://www.sunspot.net/technology/ba...logy-headlines


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Targeting Porn on Pirate Sites

Police Seek Traders of Illicit Images on Song-Swap Networks
Ron Scherer

District Attorney Tom Spota does not download Britney Spears songs. But he thinks it's likely his college-aged daughter exchanges tunes from Internet file-sharing programs.

So he was incensed when a confidential source told his office that there was child pornography — lots of it — to be found by simply typing Britney's name on such services as KaZaA or Morpheus, Internet sites known for facilitating music-file trading. The Suffolk County, N.Y., district attorney then mounted an investigation, which led to the indictment of 12 people for possessing and promoting child pornography.

"I could have used the full resources of my 150 prosecutors working eight hours a day to prosecute because there is so much of it," says Spota.

The problem is just now coming to the attention of law enforcement officials from Wyoming to Long Island, N.Y. Prosecutors are serving up indictments. Federal agents are actively working on leads and anticipating their own indictments.

Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony that the programs represent "a major growth area" for the distribution of child porn. And grass-roots groups are clamoring for more controls, especially a requirement that file-sharing software providers obtain parental permission before minors can download.

Because of the nature of the Internet, it's hard to quantify the problem. But reports of child porn in shared files have jumped up to 400 percent a year recently, according to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in Washington, D.C., which acts as a clearinghouse for child-porn tips. And since 2001 the center has received 1,500 reports of child porn in shared files, out of 152,000 leads annually.

"The titles [of shared files, such as 'Britney'] are bad enough, but when you combine that with the natural curiosity of kids, there is a real risk of what they are exposed to," says Robbie Callaway, chairman of the NCMEC.

Indeed, investigators say many of the keywords that bring up pornographic files include names such as J. Lo and Mandy Moore, or words like "young" and "play." Callaway, who is also president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, recently saw a dramatic demonstration of those cues. An agent typed in "Boys and Girls Clubs" on a file-sharing site. "It had nothing to do with us," Callaway says of the pornography that came up.

Police are preparing to track down offenders. Last month in Connecticut, computer expert Detective Michael Sullivan of Naperville, Ill., taught colleagues from Portland, Ore., South Bend, Ind., Cape Cod, Mass., New York City, and elsewhere how to understand the "peer-to-peer" (P2P) shared files and identify offenders.

The file-sharing networks have attracted pedophiles because of a perception that it's harder to be identified through them. "They think there is far less risk, they leave fewer fingerprints," says Callaway.

But trained investigators say they can find offenders. Recently the Wyoming division of criminal investigation arrested a man trading child porn on a file-sharing network. "One of the comments he made was that he uses P2P because there are a lot of cops out there on chat rooms and he thought it provided some extra anonymity," says Flint Waters, the lead agent for the state's Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

Law-enforcement officials are hoping the suppliers of services will help. For example, many Internet service providers (ISPs) maintain logs of users for only a few days. "The longer the better," says Tatum King, section chief at the CyberCrime Center at U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement.

Two weeks ago, police in Germany broke up one of the biggest international child-porn rings, with 26,500 users in 166 countries. But there are still plenty of traditional child-porn Web sites, including pay sites and chat rooms.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...re_031006.html


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A CD Burner to Go, Size XS
J.D. Biersdorfer

People who are burning up the miles can also burn DVD's on the go without needing to haul around another hefty piece of hardware. The new Digistor UltraSlim DVD Multi Burner from Sunland International, which weighs less than a pound, can record and play DVD discs in three formats (DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM) and record on CD-R and CD-RW discs for data backup, archiving and video needs on the road (or on different computers around the house).



The external slot-loading drive offers a choice of high-speed connections to the computer, with both FireWire and U.S.B. 2.0 compatibility; cables are included. When connected to a six-pin powered FireWire port, the recorder can draw enough juice from the computer to function without being plugged into an outlet. An AC adapter is supplied for use with unpowered ports.

The drive records DVD-R and DVD-RAM at a speed of 2x and DVD-RW at a speed of 1x. For compact discs, the UltraSlim records CD-R at 12x and CD-RW and 8x.

The Digistor UltraSlim DVD Multi Burner works with Windows Me and later and sells for $399. (More information is available at www.digistor.com.) The drive comes with plenty of software, including Ulead's MovieFactory 2, VideoStudio 7, DVD PictureShow and DVD Player


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Broadband At The Price Of Dial-Up
BBC

Tiscali are to offer broadband net access at the same price as dial-up connection.

For £15.99 a month, the service provider will offer a 150Kbps connection, three times faster than dial-up.

"The new offer gets rid of the price gap between narrowband and broadband," said Steve Horley, Tiscali's net service director.

But analysts and net providers are sceptical that the low speed will offer the broadband experience people expect.

'Bonsai' broadband

Most people can get a standard broadband connection of 512Kbps for about £30 a month, although there are higher speed products available at a price.

Tiscali's recently appointed Chief Executive Mary Turner told BBC News Online that their new product was for people who want a faster connection that what they get with their dial-up 56kbps modem.

"There is a whole section of the population who want the broadband experience but do not require the 512Kbps speed or do not want to pay £30 for it."

She added that many cable net access providers offer the broadband speeds of 150Kbps, so Tiscali were opening up the choice for ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) customers.

Tiscali hope the cut-price package will attract about 20% of the UK net access market, which BT Openworld, Freeserve and AOL currently dominate.

With 80% of the UK able to access broadband services, Tiscali say their move will inject more competition into the high-speed net access market.

But BT were sceptical of the announcement.

"Tiscali are really just dressing up a basic product launch with spin," a spokesperson told BBC News Online.

"All they are doing is announcing yet another product, which other companies are already offering."

He added that competition between high-speed net service providers was already healthy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3174644.stm


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Time Warner Whacks Wi-Fi Users
Jo Maitland

Time Warner Cable, based in New York City, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against iNYC Wireless Inc., an ISP it alleges has tapped into its cable network, stolen its signal, and resold it for profit (see Time Warner Sues WiFi Provider).

The suit also names the cooperative board, managing agent, and superintendent of the London Terrace Towers, one of Manhattan’s largest residential apartment buildings, located in Chelsea, where iNYC Wireless is said to have been reselling the service.

The lawsuit alleges that from May of this year iNYC Wireless illegally intercepted Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner cable lines and, using the exposed lines running through the hallways and common spaces of this building, fed the intercepted signal into a network of wireless LAN, or "Wi-Fi," transmitters, amplifiers, and repeaters installed in London Terrace’s stairwells. Once the Road Runner signal reached this Wi-Fi network, iNYC wirelessly transmitted and resold it -- as its own proprietary service in return for a monthly fee -- to building residents who were apparently unaware they were paying for a service that originates with Time Warner.

”iNYC does not have an agreement to retransmit or resell our Road Runner service, nor has it ever requested permission to use the service or informed Time Warner Cable of its use of the service,” says Keith Cocozza, spokesman for Time Warner Cable.

The lawsuit seeks an order barring further interception and redistribution in any building by iNYC, as well as monetary damages from the accused. Time Warner did not disclose the financial details.

Wireless LAN services -- or “hotspots” -- are created by hanging wireless access devices off DSL or cable networks. The access device bridges one medium to the other by converting the fixed line signal to a radio signal. These hotspots are thought to be in at least 15 million homes and offices throughout the U.S.

The problem is that one paying subscriber can set up a wireless network that allows several other people, within a radius of 100 to 300 meters, to access the Internet for free, or for profit.

”It’s a problem for the cable companies when people resell the service, but it becomes an interesting question when they are sharing their connection for free,” says Richard Stiennon, analyst, Gartner Inc.. “If a customer has paid for bandwidth, they should within reason be allowed to do whatever they want with it.”

Analysts say the crackdown by cable companies is reminiscent of the industry's attempts to target cable thieves in the 1980s who would open up cable modems and “chip them” or use unauthorized decoders to get extra channels for free. Satellite providers have been through the same thing with people climbing onto roofs and tampering with dishes to increase their coverage.

Time Warner isn’t the only cable company defending its turf against wily Wi-Fi users. AT&T Broadband (NYSE: T) has sent angry letters to customers threatening to cut them off if they continue to extend their service to neighbors. And Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) makes a point on its Website of noting that it neither endorses nor supports home networking. Under its terms and conditions of use it states that customers are prohibited from:

(ix) Reselling the service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the premises the ability to use the service (i.e. wi-fi, or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, or on a bundled or unbundled basis. The service is for personal and non-commercial use only and you agree not to use the service for operation as an Internet service provider or for any business enterprise or purpose, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network.

Not everyone is taking such a prohibitive stance. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) for example, offers a Wi-Fi extension package with its Internet service; and Speakeasy, an ISP based in Seattle sells a Wi-Fi product called NetShare that enables its customers to share their connections with neighbors. If those customers charge their neighbors for the service, Speakeasy takes its cut of the profit in exchange for taking care of the billing and authentication of those users. Speakeasy does not charge its customers if they are sharing the connection for free.

”Prohibiting users from sharing a service with neighbors is eroding a market opportunity… It’s too early to say 'no you can’t do this,' and then turn around and complain that broadband isn’t growing fast enough,” says Mike Apgar, Speakeasy's founder and chairman.

Anthony Townsend, a spokesman for wireless hotspot advocacy group NYCWireless (not to be confused with iNYCwireless) says it’s shortsighted of the cable companies to be adopting such a hostile attitude to their customers. “They need to find a way to harness this demand, not cut it off,” he says.
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=40441


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Popular File Sharing Software Now Available Without Adware, Pop Ups & Banners
Press Release

ThinDivide.com has released ThinDivide v3.65, the first advertisement free and adware free file-sharing application that is being offered FREE despite its $19.99 retail value. ThinDivide v3.65 can be downloaded at http://www.thindivide.com.

ThinDivide.com has released ThinDivide v3.65, the first advertisement free and adware free file-sharing application that is being offered FREE despite its $19.99 retail value. ThinDivide v3.65 can be downloaded at http://www.thindivide.com. The release of ThinDivide v3.65 comes as a competitive response to increase installations and market share as more and more users continue to demand a file sharing application that is void of pop-up advertisements and the cluster of optional software programs that accompany all of the other major peer-to-peer software applications on the market today. ThinDivide enables seamless connection to the Gnutella Network, which includes LimeWire, BearShare, Morpheus and Gnucleus users, making one of the largest peer-to-peer networks on the Internet. With ThinDivide v3.65 you can download the hottest music, games, software, movies, pictures and more.

In addition to being connected seamlessly to the Gnutella Network, ThinDivide v3.65 is fully integrated with a built in file-sharing accelerator to ensure maximum sharing speeds, enables users to communicate through IRC chat, interacts with LimeWire, BearShare, Morpheus and Gnucleus users and much more. ThinDivide v3.65 is an advanced peer-to-peer file-sharing program that enables users to share any digital file including images, audio, video, reports, documents and more. Content developers and owners may now easily broadcast their files through the ThinDivide Network. You can now publish your works and easily share it with a global audience. ThinDivide v3.65 makes it easy to publish your work, your family photos, home videos, academic reports, travel journal, diary, recipes, music from your own band - your imagination is the limit. The only action you have to do is put your files into a folder on your own hard disk and you're published!
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2...prweb83438.htm


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4 Plead Guilty In National Software Piracy Scheme
AP

Four men have pleaded guilty for their roles in an online piracy ring that illegally distributed tens of thousands of copyrighted materials through the Internet, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday the guilty pleas are part of a national probe into pirated video games, movies, music files and computer software. Some of the file servers were located at the State University of New York at Albany, authorities said.

The investigation is continuing, and authorities say they expect to charges others in the scheme.

"The magnitude of this problem is serious and can't be underestimated," U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said. "Stealing the intellectual property of others is no different from any other form of thievery."

The defendants -- three from New York and one from Washington state -- pleaded guilty this week in New Haven to federal counts of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

Prosecutors said three of the defendants were actively involved in the "warez" scene, in which copyright-protected material is "cracked" and made available illegally through the Internet. They face up to five years in prison if convicted.

The fourth defendant helped maintain the Albany university servers, and if convicted faces a one-year maximum sentence.

The prosecutions stem from Operation Safehaven, a 15-month investigation that in April resulted in the seizure of thousands of pirated CDs and DVDs and dozens of computers and servers.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech....ap/index.html


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Group Takes Nonstandard Try At Antipiracy Standard
John Borland

Frustrated by the lack of a copy protection standard that might help the digital content business reach the mainstream, a high-profile digital media group is taking matters into its own hands.

MPEG LA (MPEG Licensing Association), a group of companies that hold patent rights that are related to the MPEG 4 audio and video standard, has created its own description of what features it thinks that digital rights management (DRM) technology should include. It's asking patent holders who think that their technologies might fit the bill to submit them for review. And it's serving as a licensing clearinghouse to make elements of those technologies readily available to other developers and manufacturers.

The group isn't trying to recreate copy protection products such as those sold by Microsoft or IBM--but it hopes to simplify the legal, technological and licensing chaos that has helped keep an antipiracy standard from evolving.

"Without a strong digital rights management system, digital content providers have limitations on their ability--and really their desire--to provide content," Lawrence Horn, spokesman for MPEG LA, said Thursday. "This is our effort to give people some level of comfort."

The group's announcement marks an end run around traditional standards-setting practices, reflecting the media community's continuing impatience for the unsettled state of the copy protection business.

During the past few years, Microsoft's products have risen to the point of a near-standard in the nascent business of digital film and music distribution, aided by the financial collapse of several potential rivals. But media companies aren't ready to cede full control of the market to a single company, particularly one as powerful as Microsoft.

As a result, they've continued experimenting with Microsoft and other rivals while watching closely for signs of open standards such as those created under the auspices of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). To date, that body's recommendations have lacked copy protection components, but it is now slowly starting to address the issue.

MPEG LA isn't waiting, though.

The group's description of an acceptable DRM technology isn't intended as a traditional standard. It hasn't been vetted over time by panels of industry experts. It doesn't describe how to do or build anything specific. It just provides a "high level" outline of the features MPEG LA thinks should be included in an average acceptable content protection system.

The group is asking any company that has patented copy protection technologies to submit them. If the licensing coalition thinks that a given technology fits the description, the technology will be placed, with the patent holder's permission, on a list of patents that can be licensed all at once. The list will be made available to people or companies that want to create their own devices or software that include an element of content protection. MPEG LA will simply provide the list of all the DRM technologies available, with a listed price, and serve as a one-stop shop for anyone who's interested.

If Samsung, for example, wanted to build a new mobile video player that included DRM support, it could come directly to MPEG LA for the licenses it needed instead of researching and licensing a myriad of others' patents.

If enough companies in the business join the coalition, MPEG LA's generic description may even take on some of the influence of a standard, driving what people expect from DRM without ever having gone through the drawn-out standards process, industry insiders say.

At least a few digital media companies are excited about the idea.

"I believe this will remove the roadblock to DRM implementations," said Talal Shamoon, CEO of InterTrust Technologies, a company that owns large numbers of rights- management patents. "Once you have nondiscriminatory published rates--history teaches (that) this is a market-enabling thing to do."

However, the effort could rise or fall on the participation of larger companies such as Microsoft. InterTrust is suing Microsoft, contending that virtually all of the software giant's content protection technologies violate its patents. But Microsoft's market position would clearly make it a key player in any central DRM clearinghouse, regardless of the outcome of the suit.

MPEG LA's Horn said the clearinghouse could launch even with big holes in its portfolio, although that would be less convenient for potential customers. A Microsoft representative had no immediate comment on the MPEG LA plan.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5085867.html


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Digital-Rights Group Knocks 'Trusted' PCs
Robert Lemos

A high-profile digital civil liberties group is criticizing a component of the "trusted computing" technology promoted by Microsoft, IBM and other technology companies, calling the feature a threat to computer users.

The paper, which was set to be released late Wednesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, analyzes the promised features of several different trusted computing initiatives. The efforts aim to develop next-generation hardware and software that can better protect data from attackers, viruses and digital pirates.

Applauded in the paper are three features of the best-known trusted computing technology, Microsoft's Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, that may be positive ways of securing consumers' computers. However, the EFF criticized a fourth feature--known as remote attestation--as a threat that could lock people into certain applications, force unwanted software changes on them and prevent reverse engineering.

Remote attestation allows other organizations that "own" content on a person's computer to ascertain whether the data or software has been modified. Such technology could easily be at odds with a computer owner's interests, said Seth Schoen, staff technologist for the EFF and the primary author of the paper.

"We have a technology that doesn't exist today, which computer users are being asked to adopt," Schoen
said. "If the new technology can be used in many ways that run counter to the interest of the people, then I think asking them to adopt it doesn't make any sense."

Microsoft, IBM, Intel and other companies have teamed to create hardware that would secure the world's personal computers and win the trust of service and digital-content providers. Microsoft initially proposed a software-hardware system, called Palladium, that would enhance security, while IBM and Intel formed a group called the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance to work on a hardware system.

The companies have formed a new group, the Trusted Computing Group, to work on a single hardware design that will be supported by a number of software programs, including Microsoft's controversial security prototype.

Many critics of the proposal have warned that such systems will wrest computer control from consumers and place it in the hands of software companies and digital-content owners.

The EFF proposes amending the trusted computing initiative to include a feature called "owner override," which would allow computer owners, whether individuals or companies, to essentially lie to an organization that attempts to ascertain the integrity of their content.

Refusing to provide the information required by remote attestation won't work, Schoen said, because such a refusal is still giving something away. "In criminal cases, you can take the Fifth Amendment," he said. "While the jury is not supposed to infer anything from that, the general public certainly infers that the person is guilty or has something to hide."

Only the ability to lie to remote software or a content owner will allow the PC user's rights to be protected, Schoen said.

A representative from Microsoft, which has spearheaded much of the development behind trusted computing, wasn't immediately available to comment on the paper or the proposed feature.
http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5085442.html


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Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk
Seth Schoen

[Download PDF 44k]

Introduction

Computer security is undeniably important, and as new vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited, the perceived need for new security solutions grows. "Trusted computing" initiatives propose to solve some of today's security problems through hardware changes to the personal computer. Changing hardware design isn't inherently suspicious, but the leading trusted computing proposals have a high cost: they provide security to users while giving third parties the power to enforce policies on users' computers against the users' wishes -- they let others pressure you to hand some control over your PC to someone else. This is a "feature" ready-made for abuse by software authors who want to anticompetitively choke off rival software.

It needn't be this way: a straightforward change to the plans of trusted computing vendors could leave the security benefits intact while ensuring that a PC owner's will always trumps the wishes of those who've loaded software or data onto the PC.
http://www.eff.org/Infra/trusted_com...0031001_tc.php


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Meditations on Trusted Computing
Fred von Lohmann

In 1641, in his Meditations on First Philosophy, mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes asked how it is that we can trust our senses. What if, he asked, everything we experience is actually part of a delusion created by an omnipotent demon bent on deceiving us?

It turns out that a similar question has been weighing on the minds of Microsoft, Intel, and a number of other computer companies. How do you know that your computer is actually what it seems? After all, hackers could have broken into your computer and replaced the software on it with software that imitates, in every particular, the software that was on your computer before. To you, things would appear unchanged. But now your computer is under the hacker's control, logging your every keystroke, copying your most sensitive information, and sending it out over your Internet connection.

This points to another nagging epistemic doubt-how can any software on your computer trust any other software running on your computer? For example, when you run an anti-virus program, how can it be sure that the operating system hasn't been subverted somehow? After all, software installed by the hackers could intercept any warnings before they were output to your display, replacing them with screens announcing "no problems detected."

In short, how can you be sure that everything you experience on your computer is not part of a delusion created by hackers bent on deceiving you?

These are not idle questions. Today, computer users are increasingly besieged by malicious, hard- to-detect software designed to subvert computers-viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and spyware, to name just a few. This specter haunts not only individuals, but also a wide variety of companies, including health care providers, movie studios, intelligence agencies, and others who routinely entrust valuable or sensitive information to computers.

Enter the Trusted Computing Group, comprised of Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and several other large computer technology companies. The TCG companies are working on technology that will let you trust that your computer is what it appears to be.
http://www.eff.org/Infra/trusted_com...editations.php

[JackSpratts]

Mass. Pair Aids Targets Of Music Industry Lawsuits
AP

Some of the people sued by the recording industry for downloading online music are again turning to the Web — this time for help raising money to defend themselves or finance settlements.

Two Worcester men have set up an online system called Downhill Battle that allows donors to contribute directly to those targeted in the suits.

On Sept. 8, the Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 people — including 20 Colorado residents — claiming they illegally distributed song files on the Internet.

The organizers of www.downhillbattle.org, have so far contacted about 50 of the defendants, said Nicholas Reville, a co-founder of the site along with Holmes Wilson.

Seven have requested help and are listed as recipients on the site. Janet Bebell of Aurora, Colo., is one of them.

Bebell told The Denver Post that her 22-year-old son downloaded the music that led to the lawsuit against her. She originally planned to fight but had second thoughts after talking to a lawyer who told her a court could level a $500,000 judgment. By Tuesday night, visitors to Downhill Battle had pledged $126 toward her campaign.

Dan Bartlett, a Sacramento-based attorney representing several other RIAA defendants, estimated that a court fight could cost between $75,000 and $100,000.

"We are telling them that it is best to open up settlement negotiations," he told The Post.

To be listed as a recipient on the site, defendants must provide the cover sheet from the lawsuit listing them as a defendant and a copy of a photo ID.

The recipient also must open an account with PayPal, the service used by eBay buyers and sellers for secure online payments. Donations go directly to the account, Reville said.

Each new donation goes to the person on the list who has collected the least. Downhill Battle set caps on the amount recipients can collect — $15,000 for those who plan to fight, $5,000 for those who will settle.

The RIAA so far has reached settlements with 64 people. Most settlements have been between $3,000 and $4,000, Bartlett said.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguid...l-battle_x.htm

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Compulsory Licensing - What is Music?
Ernest Miller

John Cage composed the once (and still) scandalous 4'33". Yoko Ono recorded the sound of a toilet flushing as a track (Toilet piece/Unknown 0:30) on her album Fly. A number of geneticists have created music from DNA sequences (Genetic Music: An Annotated Source List). Long time readers of LawMeme are probably familiar with the DeCSS Song, which puts the source code of the infamous program to music and sort of reminds me of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach.

What the heck does all this have to do with compulsory licensing? Presumably, all of the above sound recordings would be compensated under most compulsory license schemes (many of which only cover "music"). No problem, no one would argue with this, right? But what about this [.WAV] [32K] file?

Ka-Blamo Baudio

The .wav file above is the sound rendition of a .bmp file that normally represents a picture of Scott Matthews, author of the smart MP3 server Andromeda. Scott has written a small program called Ka-Blamo Baudio which:

adds a 44 byte header that transforms any type of file into a WAV file, saving it with a ".wav" extension appended to the end of the file name. So, for example, hello.exe would become hello.exe.wav.

Conversely, the Baudio decorder takes a file and removes that 44 byte header and the trailing ".wav" extension, reverting it back to its original state.

What Scott's program means, is that any digital content can easily be transformed into a sound file, or in technical copyright lingo, a "sound recording," which when fixed becomes a "phonorecord." Many compulsory license schemes only apply to "music" but since they don't define the term, or discuss changes in how audio works are categorized, one must assume that they are using the current definitions of "sound recording" and "phonorecord." Consequently, any creator of digital content can benefit from a music-only compulsory license scheme.

A Boon for Shareware Authors and Pornographers?

Such a system works for any digital content, since anything digital can easily be transformed. You can transform video, images or even software into an audio file. However, we can look at two likely users of such a capability - shareware authors and pornographers.

Generally, a shareware author relies on the kindness of strangers to receive recompense for their programs. Unfortunately, the rate of return can be pretty lousy. Many people who use shareware never compensate the author, despite requests, and even annoying reminders. Ka-Blamo can provide a solution.

Under most compulsory license schemes, a shareware author can turn their program into sound file, encourage others to download it, and receive money through the allocation fund. Users of the program can easily compensate the author, not by sending him/her money directly, but simply by downloading the version of the program with a sound file extension. Given the ease of use with which Ka-Blamo Baudio and Not-Ka- Blamo Baudio decoder work, many users would be happy to use such a system.

This even works with "voting" systems, such as Aaron Swartz's system, previously discussed on LawMeme (Aaron Swartz Invents Proto Whuffie). Instead of sending Aaron's gift certificates to musicians, you can send your gift certificate to your favorite shareware author(s).

The same works for pornography as well. As anyone who watches what is being searched for on P2P networks knows, there is an awful lot of interest in pornography on P2P systems. Unfortunately, many compulsory license schemes do not discuss how pornographers are to be compensated when their work is shared. Even if the compulsory license scheme addresses all media, there isn't any discussion devoted to the fact that politically controlled schemes will likely slight pornographers and they won't get fair compensation. Through this means, however, pornographers can freely share their works and be assured of reasonable compensation. This would be especially attractive to amateurs, I think, since they wouldn't have to run websites with passwords or worry about e-commerce issues. Their audience would also love it. No more mysterious credit card charges to explain ... your porno collection is disguised to look like part of your music collection ... there are a lot of benefits.
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/mod...ticle&sid=1241


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Freenet Developer “Recommending” Earth Station Five
Jack Spratts

Ian Clarke, developer of the anonymizing file sharing program Freenet has responded to critics claiming the program's unstable and devoid of content by saying it’s only "in development" and if they want something finished and easy to use they should "try Earth Station Five” instead. He goes on to say that he hears ES5 is “great." While his comments appear sarcastic and not meant literally (I presume) they do indicate a growing sense of frustration on his part and a departure from earlier comments where he claimed Freenet was "not just theoretical" but was being used effectively by dissidents to communicate without fear of attacks by authorities. Those same dissidents may be unnerved to discover that the developer of the program they depend on is now saying it may not be up to the task.

For more on the controversy there’s a thread at Slashdot.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17684


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Taxing Questions: Are Compulsory Licenses a Solution to the P2P Debate?
Miriam Rainsford

The concept of compulsory licenses, first proposed by Professor Lawrence Lessig as a solution to the peer-to-peer debate, has since been hailed by fair-use lobbyists as the savior of persecuted file-sharers, establishing a common ground with the major music labels and offering the possibility that both parties might, at last, be able to reach an agreement.

The idea in itself is simple: users would pay a little more for Internet access, and their ISPs would forward this contribution as a flat-rate license to a collection agency, functioning in a similar way to ASCAP or the Mechanical Copyright Protection Agency (MCPS) and distributing the levies to artists as royalties. But is the compulsory license model too good to be true? Lobby groups such as the EFF are keen to use "compulsories" as a means to get all parties seated at the discussion table. And it is indeed exciting to think that there may be a simple solution that might permit users to swap the songs that they enjoy in freedom, without fear of legal action.

In effect, the compulsory license would form an effective compromise between the music industry and the "pirates" upon whom they wage war: the users of KaZaA and Grokster, and the recipients of the RIAA's recent subpoenas. Extreme caution, then, should be taken in negotiating the inner workings of this new model. It would be all too easy to leap forward and roll out a basic infrastructure for a "compulsory" system, but in light of the power wielded in court by the major record labels, we must ensure at all times that such a system remains impartial and directed to the benefit of the artists. Even this cannot be taken for granted -- major labels have frequently been found to have withheld artists' earnings under the guise of obfuscated accounting.

The RIAA have demonstrated in recent months their great fear of losing out to P2P users, and the resources upon which they can draw if necessary. What is to stop such giants from ensuring a compulsory system is biased towards their own interests? This is technologically not so difficult to achieve, and is a situation that P2P and fair-use advocates must retain in the backs of their minds during any negotiations.

Cory Doctorow of the EFF is an enthusiastic supporter of compulsory music levies, yet is not blind to the difficulties of negotiating between such opposing parties, or to the potential problems in setting up a "compulsory" infrastructure. But he does maintain that our civil liberties will continue to be infringed unless some form of discussion takes place:

"The two answers we see before us are not: 1) have a compulsory license or 2) don't have a compulsory license, and P2P continues to go on and we continue to have an Internet and we continue to enjoy our basic freedoms. The way we see the division breaking down right now is that we can either have an Internet with compulsory licenses on it, and some of the imperfections that may accompany that, or we can continue to have things like the loss of academic freedom, where the University of Wyoming is wiretapping all of its students to find infringement, and these crazy subpoenas that are being issued by the RIAA."

The EFF themselves take no particular position in regards to the actual design of a compulsory system, but instead feel that this must be brought to debate by a panel of experts in order to arrive at the best option. For a new system such as this to work, Doctorow says:

"We need to answer three really hard questions:

· Who do you collect from?
· What do you collect?
· Who you give it to?"

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/p2p/...2/license.html


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Between the stringent provisions of the cable law and the relatively wide-open provisions of the digital copyright act, a crazy quilt of laws - a product of decades of ad hoc legislation - govern what your phone company, cable company, Internet service provider or video store may be compelled to tell about you.

Your Own Affair, More (VCR) or Less (MP3)
Seth Schiesel

THE Internal Revenue Service is not used to hearing "no."

In 1998, it was investigating Kent Hovind, an evangelist and Internet radio host in Pensacola, Fla., and his wife, Jo Delia. Mr. Hovind said he had not filed a federal tax return since the early 1970's. Naturally, that got the agency's attention.

The I.R.S. was trying to figure out how much money the Hovinds were making by figuring out how much they were spending. The Hovinds were customers of Cox Cable, so the agency asked Cox to turn over the family's account records.

Federal law gives the I.R.S. extremely broad powers to obtain financial information when it is investigating a suspected tax dodge. That is why it rarely hears "no."

Cox said no.

It turns out that consumers' cable-television records enjoy more legal protection than just about any other sort of electronic media or communications records: more than satellite-television records, more than Internet logs, more than telephone records. The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 said that before the government could obtain cable television records, it had to go to court to show "clear and convincing evidence" that the subject of the request was reasonably suspected of criminal activity. Moreover, the customer was entitled to a hearing to contest the disclosure.

The I.R.S. took Cox to court, arguing that it was exempt from those requirements. A federal judge disagreed. The I.R.S. ultimately got the information it was after, but only because the judge ruled that it had satisfied the cable act's requirements.

This year, the recording industry has had things a lot easier than the I.R.S. Since July, the music industry's lobbying wing, the Recording Industry Association of America, has obtained the names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of more than 1,000 people around the nation whom the group suspects of Internet music piracy. The group has sued 261 of them so far, and promises that more suits are to come.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 says that copyright holders may issue subpoenas signed only by a court clerk - not a judge - that require Internet providers to turn over personal information about their subscribers. The law does not require the subscribers to be notified. Every major Internet provider except SBC has complied with the record industry's requests.

Between the stringent provisions of the cable law and the relatively wide-open provisions of the digital copyright act, a crazy quilt of laws - a product of decades of ad hoc legislation - govern what your phone company, cable company, Internet service provider or video store may be compelled to tell about you.

"Consumers are almost totally unaware that different modes of communication carry with them different expectations of privacy and have different rules," said Paul Glist, a communications lawyer with Cole, Raywid & Braverman in Washington who has represented major cable-television companies. "Every line of business has a different set of regulations, and it really is a maze. There are many times when a company comes to me and they just want to do the right thing and they can't figure it out. You might have one law saying you have to disclose certain information to law enforcement and another law saying you can't disclose the information unless other conditions are met."

For instance, federal law says law enforcement agencies may monitor the phone numbers a citizen is dialing, as they are being dialed, after certifying only that the information is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." Under that provision, the person under surveillance need not even be the person suspected of breaking the law. Generally the subject of that surveillance is not notified of the government's action.

By contrast, a separate law says that even when law enforcement agencies obtain a court order to gain access to a consumer's video rental records, the consumer must be notified before those records are turned over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/02/te...ne r=USERLAND


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Altnet Signs Distribution Pact with Leading Peer-to-Peer Network Overnet
Press Release

Altnet, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment (AMEX:BDE), the leading provider of secure digital media via Internet peer-to-peer technologies, announced today that it has entered into a commercial distribution agreement with MetaMachine, Inc., developer of Overnet and eDonkey 2000, two leading peer-to-peer networks. Marking a major step forward for commercializing p2p, the agreement calls for Altnet to distribute secure music, video, software and games, on behalf of artists and rights holders, to Overnet users. MetaMachine is Altnet's latest affiliate in a growing list of distribution partners that include the Kazaa Media Desktop and Excite's My Search Toolbar.

Under the terms of the agreement, MetaMachine will integrate Altnet's TopSearch Gold Icon technology, placing licensed files aggregated by Altnet into preferential placement in the search results on MetaMachine programs. MetaMachine will also incorporate Altnet's payment gateway, which allows their users to simply and securely purchase every TopSearch file they download.

"With TopSearch, Altnet ensures that artists, musicians, and copyright holders are paid when users share and play their files. Altnet also ensures that users who download Gold Icon files they find in TopSearch are guaranteed that the file is high-quality and legal for them to download and share," said Derek Broes, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Operations of Altnet. "We're thrilled to be working with MetaMachine. Our distribution agreement underscores our mutual commitment to commercializing peer-to-peer networks and making them a place where users and copyright owners can both win," stated Kevin Bermeister, CEO of Altnet.

Added Jed McCaleb, Founder and CTO of MetaMachine, Inc, "We are dedicated to making peer-to-peer a viable and profitable marketing channel for content owners. We hope more content owners will work with us to effectively reach the immense user base in a simple and secure way."
http://www.primezone.com/pages/news_....mhtml?d=46170


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File-Sharing Group Proposes Crypto Pay Plan
Will Knight

Technical measures designed to turn free online file-sharing services into a major source of revenue for the record industry have been proposed by an industry group representing the most popular trading service, Kazaa.

The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), which represents Kazaa's parent companies Sharman Networks and Altnet, suggests that music files traded through such networks could be encrypted so that only users who pay a fee will be supplied with the software needed to unlock them.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing networks make use of smart communications and routing protocols that let users scour each other's hard drives for music or other files that may then be directly downloaded. They provide highly efficient distribution networks, but have also lead to an explosion in online music piracy, according to record industry groups.

The file-sharing companies have good reason to search for a new business model system that would generate some revenue for the music business. Record industry bodies have waged a relentless legal battle against those they alleged to be involved in illegal file-sharing, including Kazaa.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is also currently suing hundreds of Kazaa users in the US for alleged copyright infringement. Since this legal action was announced in June 2003, music file trading on Kazaa has declined. According to web monitoring company Nielsen NetRatings, activity dropped by 41 per cent from July to mid-September.

'Rampant infringement'

But the record industry has not welcomed the new proposal. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told The
Washington Post: "It is hard to take seriously proposals to turn [peer-to-peer] systems into legitimate businesses when they continue to induce users to violate the law and willfully refuse to use available technologies to stop the rampant infringement."

The DCIA reckons the scheme could generate around $900 million a year for the music industry. But it acknowledges that it would only work if competing file-sharing networks agree to cooperate.

The DCIA also suggests that internet service providers might need to track the numbers of files being downloaded by users, something that would prove both costly and controversial.

A range of paid-for online music services already exist, though none use peer-to-peer networks. Apple's iTunes has been the most successful so far, having sold around 10 million songs since launching in April 2003. The system lets users download individual songs for 99 cents and encodes files in a format that prevents customers sharing them.

Downloads currently account for one percent of music sales worldwide. But Jupiter Research predicts this figure will leap to 12 per cent, or $1.5 billion, by 2008.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/pri...?id=ns99994251


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Sold thousands of files.

Web-Based Music Pirate Gets Jail Time
Matt Hines

A New York man was sentenced to six months in jail after being convicted of using the Internet to sell hundreds of CDs that were loaded with unauthorized copies of songs.

Alvin A. Davis, 42, of Brooklyn, was also ordered to pay $3,329.50 for selling pirated music via his Web site. Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., last week sentenced Davis to one year of supervised parole, to be served upon his release from jail, and barred him from using a computer for one year.

Earlier this year, Davis admitted in court to using his site, EmpireRecords.com, to market more than 100 different CDs and cassette tapes featuring compilations of copyrighted materials from various musical artists. Davis was arrested by an undercover FBI agent who purchased more than 200 of the illegal CDs and had them shipped from New York to Washington. The Web site has since been shut down.

U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr. said the verdict should serve as a warning to others who might attempt similar schemes.

"Today's sentence sends a strong message to anyone involved in piracy that there is a significant price to pay for this kind of illegal behavior," Howard said in a statement issued after the sentencing.

According to government evidence, Davis operated the site from July 2000 to October 2002 and featured compilations of rap and rhythm and blues music.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has been actively pursuing people who use file sharing software to illegally trade music over the Web, on Wednesday issued a statement lauding the jail sentence. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, thanked law enforcement officials for holding people responsible for Web-based copyright infringement.

"These cases should put music pirates everywhere on notice," Sherman said. "Trafficking in pirated CDs and other forms of copyrighted music is illegal and can come with stiff penalties.

The RIAA also highlighted a recent case in which four individuals pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement charges the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut brought against them. The four men involved in the case were members of the so-called "warez scene," a Web-based community that illegally distributed thousands of copyrighted music files, including tracks not yet released, to the public.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5089218.html


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'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy
Barry Fox

Software pirates who make illegal copies of a particular computer game are finding the games companies are coming up with a radical new anti-copying strategy.

Illegally copied games protected by the system work properly at first, but start to fall apart after the player has had just enough time to get hooked. As a result, the pirated discs actually encourage people to buy the genuine software, the developers say.

The new protection system, called Fade, is being introduced by Macrovision, a company in Santa Clara, California, that specialises in digital rights management, and the British games developer Codemasters, based in Leamington Spa. It makes unauthorised copies of games slowly degrade, so that cars no long steer, guns cannot be aimed and footballs fly away into space. But by that time the player has become addicted to the game.

Fade exploits the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched. Software protected by Fade contains fragments of "subversive" code designed to seem like scratches. The bogus scratches are arranged on the disc in a subtle pattern that the game's master program looks for. If it finds them, the game plays as usual.

When someone tries to copy the disc on a PC, however, the error-correcting routines built into the computer attempt to fix the bogus scratches. When the copied disc is played, the master program then cannot find the pattern it is looking for, so it knows the disc is a copy.

What happens next turns the usual rules of software protection on their head. Instead of switching off the game and preventing it from playing at all, the master program begins to disable it. In the game Operation Flashpoint, which has been the proving ground for Fade, players soon find that their guns shoot off target and run out of bullets.

"The beauty of this is that the degrading copy becomes a sales promotion tool. People go out and buy an original version," claims Bruce Everiss of Codemasters.

The idea intrigues Alistair Kelman, an independent lawyer who specialises in copyright: "Fade is entirely in keeping with the spirit and great traditions of copyright." He points out that books tend to deteriorate with use and this prevents the secondhand market from competing with the market for new books. Why not the same for software?

Following its success with Operation Flashpoint, Codemasters is also using Fade with a new snooker game. Copies play normally for a while, but after a predetermined number of potshots, gravity is progressively turned off so the balls start behaving oddly and end up floating over the table.

Fade was devised by Richard Darling, who founded Codemasters 16 years ago, and has now been included in Macrovision's SafeDisc anti-piracy system. Next year, Macrovision plans to release a DVD movie protection system called SafeDVD, which will use a similar technique to make copied discs stop playing at a key point in the movie's plot.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/pri...?id=ns99994248


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EMusic Acquired, Halting Unlimited Downloads
michael

wallabywatson writes "EMusic.com have announced that they are cancelling their $9.99 a month unlimited download service after being acquired by Dimensional Associates LLC. Instead, subscribers will be limited to 40 downloads (ie 3ish albums) per month. A new premium $50 a month service will allow 300 tracks (~25 albums). The service details have been released as have new terms and conditions. If, like me, you think this sucks and want to cancel your subscription go here before November 8, 2003."
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/10/0...&tid=98&tid=99


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Close The Net To Keep Media Companies Rich? You Bet!

The New York Times examines all sides of this one sided argument.

ON THE CONTRARY

Where Nobody Knows You're a Music Thief
Daniel Akst

IMAGINE that you sell newspapers on the honor system. You put some papers out on a table, along with a can for the money. It would surprise hardly anyone if, at the end of the day, more papers were taken than were paid for.

But Dan Ariely, a professor of media and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied people's online behavior, says that when experimenters who actually tried this mounted a mirror above the newspapers, more people left money when they took a paper. Apparently, many of us can be shamed into honesty.

That's the trouble with the Internet. If it's a place where nobody knows you're a dog, as a New Yorker cartoon once said, then it's also a place where nobody knows you're a crook, either. Even you may not know. Anonymity allows honest people to sustain a higher level of dishonesty without guilt, as is obvious to many people who have tried online dating.

Nothing captures this phenomenon better than Internet music sharing. What's remarkable about the controversy over music sharing is not how many people are involved - although the number is certainly large - but rather their fervent rationalizing. Internet music sharers, and their defenders, have variously argued that the music industry is evil, that CD's are too expensive and that record companies have brought this upon themselves by failing to offer their wares online.

Even stranger than these tortured justifications is the willingness of parents and others in polite society to acquiesce. After all, Internet music sharing is "pretty clearly a copyright violation," says Joseph P. Liu, an assistant professor at Boston College Law School and an intellectual property specialist. It does not matter if the music business is tasteless, oligopolistic or foolish, as some of its critics contend. Even the greedy and the oafish enjoy the protection of the law.

How is it that otherwise law-abiding citizens do not seem to mind? One reason, Professor Ariely says, is self-deception: "People tell themselves stories they like to hear to justify what they're doing, so they can get something for nothing." That's why the mirror was so effective in the experiment; it impaired the self-deception of those who would steal a newspaper. Moreover, he says, people's willingness to pay is strongly tied to their sense of fairness about price. Consumers know that the cost of producing a CD is low, and because the music shared online is incorporeal, why should anyone mind if they don't pay?

The reason we should all mind is that Internet music sharing represents a profound assault on the very idea of intellectual property. Today it's music, but tomorrow it will be movies and then books, and the justifications will be the same. The implications should be obvious to producers of intellectual property, but the outcry has been muffled in part because universities have come to own and operate so much of the nation's intellectual life.

Many academic intellectuals, who do not seem to like business much anyway, derive relatively little income directly from their writings. Instead, they hope to profit from their intellectual output by attaining tenure and renown. If you live on an academic paycheck - instead of royalties - then the free electronic distribution of your scholarly works is probably preferable to having a university press print 500 copies bound directly for the deepest library stacks.

The absurd Robin Hood narrative that has sprung up around music sharing only obscures what is happening: that a large group of mainly middle-class individuals are not just breaking the law, but also attacking the legal concept that is essential to freedom and prosperity in the information age.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the fairest thing of all? The answer is probably authentication. Sooner or later we will need to know who everyone on the Internet is, and who confirmed their identities. Internet access providers who admit unauthenticated users will have to be shut out, even if that means shutting out whole countries.

In such a world, there would be no doubt about who was violating copyright laws or otherwise misusing the electronic commons. It's sad, I know. The ability to shed one's identity online seemed a dream for a while, but as the poet Delmore Schwartz reminds us, "in dreams begin responsibilities."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/bu...ne r=USERLAND


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Trying to Sell CD's by Adding Extras
Chris Nelson

For a glimpse into the troubled nature of the music industry in the 21st century, just conduct the following experiment: Ask five people who buy the new P.O.D. album, "Payable on Death," what persuaded them to make the purchase. Chances are, you will get five different answers.

There is the person who buys it for the hard-rock music P.O.D. performs. But then there is the consumer who picks it up for the PlayStation 2 game that comes included on a DVD. Or the one who wants it for the trading cards packed in the cover. Another P.O.D. fan is after the documentary about the band, also on the DVD. And the last wants the CD because it offers access to unreleased P.O.D. music online.

Bundling a album with a raft of value-added extras - while charging just a dollar more than the standard price for a CD - may sound like a costly move for P.O.D.'s label, Atlantic Records, part of AOL Time Warner. But it is a testament to just how desperate music companies are to stoke consumer interest and reverse a three-year sales slump by pulling fans away from making free downloads of music from Internet file-trading sites.

While the P.O.D. album, scheduled for release Nov. 4, is unusual in the amount of extra material it will carry, it is just one album in a flood of new CD's promising extras. Recent discs from artists representing a broad cross section of genres - from R.& B. diva Mary J. Blige to singer-songwriter Elvis Costello to punk band Pennywise - have come with extra material.

At the same time, retailers - who have not been nearly as vocal about the downturn as labels - are struggling to entice store traffic. Some shops, particularly independents, now invite their customers to lounge as if they were at a Barnes & Noble or Starbucks, and promise employees who know more than just the difference between the White Stripes and Whitesnake.

The newfound zeal to include extras on music CD's might just be working. On the latest weekly Billboard 200 album chart, the top six spots are held by albums making their first appearance on the chart. All of those artists - OutKast, Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit, R. Kelly, Obie Trice and Nickelback - include some type of bonus with their albums: an EP of extra songs, access to online content, a chance to meet the musician or two CD's for the price of one.

Total sales for the week ending Sept. 28, reached 12.48 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan, besting sales for the same week in 2002 by nearly 1.75 million. That is a rare bright post for the industry, which experienced a 17.3 percent drop in album sales from 2000 to 2002, down to 650 million units.

They have fallen another 7.4 percent in the first nine months of 2003, compared with the same period last year. The industry points to illegal downloading, competition from other entertainment and the weak economy to explain the decline. Critics of the industry say high CD prices and mediocre music are also a reason.

Despite labels' new emphasis on value-adds, no one is predicting that the record industry will go the way of bubble-gum makers, who once offered trading cards as an added value to gum only to have the cards become their primary business.

"In this extraordinary week, when you really tear it apart and look at it, the music is what wins," said Jordan Katz, the senior vice president for sales at Bertelsmann's Arista Records label. Arista discounted OutKast's two-CD set "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," to $18.98 to compete with single albums. It sold 510,000 copies and landed at No. 1 on Billboard's chart.

The bevy of bonuses continues even as Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, put into effect plans to slash CD prices up to 30 percent on coming releases.

Labels will survive the downturn better by emphasizing value with add-ons rather than stressing price as consumers' main consideration, said Peter Fader, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

But some music industry executives say price cuts are necessary. "We would not be reducing the price of music if we were not fighting'' free music, that is, popular file- sharing services like Kazaa and Morpheus, said Jim Urie, the president of Universal Music and Video Distribution.

The onus for drawing customers into stores falls equally on retailers, said Jerry Goolsby, a marketing professor who studies the music industry at Loyola University in New Orleans. Music stores must reinvent themselves, just as bookstores have recast themselves as coffeehouses and meeting places, he said.

Beyond switching from selling vinyl albums to CD's and outfitting their stores with listening stations, national retail chains have done little to revamp the way listeners experience music in stores.

"The record merchant is caught in an absolutely horrible place," said Paco Underhill, the chief executive of Envirosell, a market research and consulting firm. "There are few other industries where the merchant has so little leverage over the form and content, much less the packaging, of what arrives at his place of business."

With little control over their wares, some music stores are attempting to change the nature of the record-buying experience.

Seattle's independent new and used music chain Sonic Boom Records has succeeded during the slump by appealing to locals with, among other things, a staff that loves to discuss music with customers, said Julie Butterfield, general manager of the store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Several times a year, the company is the host of Sonic Boom Band Night at a nearby tavern, showcasing employees who perform their own music.

"It's community and the spirit of community that I think brings people back in," Ms. Butterfield said.

In the past year, Sonic Boom has had some of its biggest sales months since opening in 1995, and last March it opened a third store.

Labels, meanwhile, are trying to put music in front of as many customers as possible. Warner Music Group has beefed up TV advertising for albums by baby-boomer favorites like Cher and the Eagles. At the same time, the company is selling products at unconventional markets. It has offered Josh Groban CD's in Hallmark stores and Frank Sinatra discs in Ritz-Carlton hotels.

Enticing customers is even more difficult when the music industry's main physical product, the CD, has become increasingly unimportant, particularly to young people who have grown up with music as digital computer files. "My 17-year-old daughter loses the jewel boxes as fast as she can," said John Esposito, president of WEA, AOL Time Warner's music distribution arm, referring to the plastic cases that hold CD's.

While value-added material is intended in part to lure people away from free file-sharing services, extra songs available through bonus CD's or password-protected Web sites are often made available through file-sharing programs nearly simultaneous to an album's release.

Nonetheless, the experimentation with add-ons will continue. "Our job is not to perpetuate history," Mr. Esposito said. "It's to find out what the new history is."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/06/bu...ne r=USERLAND


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New Pay Version of Napster Service Debuts
AP

Nearly a year after software maker Roxio Inc. scooped up the Napster brand from the ashes of the pioneer file-swapping service, a revamped online music store bearing the familiar brand name debuted Thursday in limited release.

The company shelved its former online music service, pressplay, and began moving subscribers to a beta, or test version, of Napster 2.0. The service will be available to all in the United States beginning Oct. 29, officials said Thursday.

Napster 2.0 users will have access to more than a half-million songs from all the major music labels. They can download individual songs for 99 cents and albums for $9.95. The service also offers access to unlimited downloads and streaming for $9.95 per month.

That's comparable with prices charged by other online music retailers like MusicMatch and Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, which is expected to be available for Windows-run PCs next week, sources familiar with the company's plans said.

Pressplay, which went offline Tuesday, only offered access to songs for a monthly fee.

The service allows users to burn or copy single songs onto CDs an unlimited number of times, but, like other services, users can't burn more than five CDs with the same playlist.

``Our company's passion for what we're doing will really be felt by consumers and I think it's also very consistent with the original vision for Napster,'' Chris Gorog, Roxio's chairman and chief executive, told The Associated Press.

The recording industry had successfully shuttered the original Napster, which established a peer-to-peer network for users to swap music with one another without paying copyright holders. The company went bankrupt and dissolved last year, and Roxio bought the company's name in November.

Napster 2.0 will allow song-sharing between users who hold subscription accounts and the ability to browse other users' music lists, among other features.

The company also hopes users will buy a new Samsung Electronics portable digital music player co-designed by Napster to work with its program and which can hold 20 gigabytes worth of songs. Any digital music device that plays Windows Media Audio files can also be used, however.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Roxio is betting the Napster brand will help set its service apart from a bevy of other digital music retailers that have launched since Apple introduced iTunes in April.

Last week, MusicMatch Inc. launched a Web site that sells song and album downloads and boasts record label licensing agreements that offered the fewest copying restrictions yet outside of iTunes.

Others, including Buy.com's BuyMusic.com, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet, are also vying for a piece of the market.

The new Napster will also have to contend with iTunes, which has sold more than 10 million songs and is expected to be available on the Windows platform by year's end.

``The space has become crowded because there's a recognition of this is going to be a very substantial business,'' Gorog said. ``It validates Roxio's strategy to enter this business.''

The music industry has seen CD sales plummet over the last three years as illegal music file-sharing exploded, beginning with the original Napster, which was forced to shut down in 2001 after a protracted legal battle with recording companies.

Meanwhile, file-sharing over the most popular peer-to-peer networks has declined in recent weeks, coinciding with a lawsuit campaign launched against downloaders by the recording industry.

Traffic on Kazaa's network, the most popular, dropped 41 percent between the last week of June and mid-September, according to Nielsen NetRatings, which monitors Internet usage.

At the same time, online music sales are expected to grow from 1 percent of the total music market to 12 percent in 2008, generating about $1.5 billion in sales, according to Jupiter Research.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...er-Reborn.html


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Oscar Voters May Get DVD's After All
Laura M. Holson

Jack Valenti, the chief lobbyist for the movie industry's trade group, is considering revising the recent edict that bans DVD's or videotapes from being sent to Academy Award voters, two people who have talked to him say.

Mr. Valenti, the chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, has been under considerable pressure this week from art-house distributors, actors and directors who say that the ban would hurt their chances of winning Oscars. As a result, Mr. Valenti is expected go back to the studio executives who agreed to the ban and propose a compromise.

That would include marking videotapes electronically before they are sent to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who vote for Oscar contenders, these people said. The videotapes, which could be traced easily, would be delivered by certified mail. But the compromise would not include the distribution of easily copied DVD's, and not every videotape would be marked.

Discussions with the heads of all the major studios are expected over the next few days, these people said, as a result of a meeting Mr. Valenti held with several art-house film and independent film distributors, including James Schamus, co-president of Focus Features, and Harvey Weinstein, a co-founder of Miramax Films.

Mr. Valenti, who was traveling Wednesday, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Valenti said he did not know of any proposed changes to the ban.

Mr. Valenti has said all the major studios agreed to the edict, fearing that the DVD's, called screeners, would either end up on the black market or be distributed online. But the ban has effectively pitted small distributors, which rely on Oscar nominations to promote their movies, against large studios, which have bigger marketing budgets. Most recently, the American Film Marketing Association, whose membership includes studio-affiliated independents, sent a letter to Mr. Valenti objecting to the recent action.

Scores of other groups have loudly criticized Mr. Valenti's stand, too. In an interview this week, Frank Pierson, president of the academy, said not sending out screeners "is distressing to our members." Several academy voters, many of them older, have said they will not be able to see all the films. Other members have said they may not vote for big studio pictures as a protest.

"The fact of the matter is I don't know anyone who doesn't want to see these movies on the big screen," Mr. Pierson said. "But it's difficult."

Mr. Valenti has said the decision was made as little as four weeks ago and he did not consult any of the art-house distributors.

Hollywood has been reacting. More film studios have sought and are renting movie theaters and screening rooms for showing Oscar contenders.

Further complicating matters is that the edict comes on the heels of the academy's stricter guidelines governing how studios vie for Oscars. For one thing, the academy has urged that social engagements be curtailed during Oscar season. But some studio executives say they may be forced to show Academy Award contenders in their private screening rooms if no theaters are available.

"Does this constitute a violation?" one executive asked. "Who knows. Somebody should have thought this through."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/bu...ia/09FILM.html


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Shift-Key Case Rouses DMCA Foes
Katie Dean

The recent flap about a Princeton University student who found a way to beat music CD copy protection reignited calls to change a controversial copyright law.

John "Alex" Halderman discovered that by simply pressing the Shift key when loading a copy-protected music CD into a computer's hard drive, he could disable SunnComm Technologies' MediaMax CD-3 software, which is supposed to prevent CDs from being ripped.

He published his finding on his website. On Wednesday, shortly after the disclosure, SunnComm's stock plummeted 25 percent. The company then threatened to sue the student, charging him with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

Under the law, it is illegal to bypass any technology measure in place that protects copyright material -- perhaps even by pressing the Shift key.

Critics say it's the absurdity of the unforeseen consequences of the DMCA, as in Halderman's case, that necessitates a change in the law. The DMCA goes too far and sends a chilling effect through the academic community, they say.

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, though intended to stop digital piracy, is being used to squelch legitimate research," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "If no one is allowed to examine and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies, then these technologies will not improve."

Halderman, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science, said he was interested in checking out SunnComm's product because it claimed to have strong copy protection. He tested a copy-protected album called Comin' From Where I'm From by Anthony Hamilton.

"I wanted to see how these CDs differed from the earlier technology, but I was surprised at how easily it could be bypassed," Halderman said. "You can tell someone in a sentence how to get around the copy protection: Press the Shift key every time you insert the CD, and that's it."

SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs charged that Halderman's report was inaccurate. He said the Shift key was not a workaround and called it a "design element" of the system. And the issue isn't the Shift key. Instead, he explained that the company was upset that Halderman disclosed the copy-management file names and directions on how to remove them.

"I don't think researchers have a right to publish a 'how-to' on how to perform illegal activities under the guise of research," Jacobs said. "I think the DMCA says pretty clearly that one shouldn't publish circumvention solutions that protect people's digital property."

Jacobs said SunnComm Technologies lost $10 million in market value this week after the research paper was published.

SunnComm said Thursday it would sue Halderman under the DMCA, inciting ridicule on forums like Politech. Gadflies suggested keyboard makers also should be sued for creating the offending circumvention device -- the Shift key.

On Friday, SunnComm decided not to take legal action.

"I don't want to represent a company that would do anything to cause any kind of chilling effect to research," Jacobs said. "Clearly the kind of emotional issues that surround this whole thing made it more prudent for us to take a step back and concentrate on making the next version better."

Von Lohmann said researchers have a right to publish what they learn and that the free exchange of ideas is critical.

"I think this really underscores the importance of DMCA reform," he said, adding that this type of situation is what Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) hopes to address with the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003 (HR107).

Boucher's bill would permit circumvention for fair-use purposes, including scientific research. He submitted the bill in January.

"First of all, the mere fact that the company would threaten to sue underscores more than ever the urgent need for the passage of my bill," Boucher said. "It would not be a violation of federal law to circumvent a technological protection measure if the purpose of the circumvention is itself lawful.

"This is a classic fair-use right protected under the copyright act, but it is a right that is extinguishable under the DMCA," he said. "I anticipate in the not-too-distant future we will be successful in changing the law."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60780,00.html


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Citizens Strike Back In Intelligence War
Celeste Biever

WITH the demise last week of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later this year will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary.

The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way.

Just like TIA, the new website, called Government Information Awareness (GIA), is designed to collect snippets of information to build a database that can later be searched to reveal patterns of suspicious behaviour. It is based on a site that Chris Csikszentmihályi and Ryan McKinley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory set up in July. That site (http://opengov.media.mit.edu) encourages members of the public to post information about organisations, officials and politicians, such as their business links and the source of their campaign donations. The original site was hosted on one of MIT's servers. But soon after the site was launched it had to be dramatically scaled back after being overwhelmed with traffic and because of legal worries. The researchers do not edit the content, and became worried that if any of the postings were malicious or untrue MIT could be held responsible.

They hope that following the Napster approach will get them round this problem. Instead of storing the data on a single server, so-called peer-to-peer networks hold data in a number of locations around the internet, from where it can be downloaded directly. This strategy thwarted the music industry's attempts to sue some of the groups that organise the swapping of digital music files.

For the relaunched site, MIT will simply provide the facilities to post data and search for it. "It will be a sort of citizens' intelligence agency," says Csikszentmihályi. "It's an interesting tactic in the battle for civil liberties," says Lee Tien, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. He believes the site has value, even if it appears to be stooping to the government's level. "A lot of people do know bits and pieces- we are handicapped in not being able to connect them."

But whether MIT will be immune from legal action remains unclear. Some lawyers say that as long as the organisers do not edit the content, they cannot be held responsible for any libellous material. Others are more cautious. "Whoever hosts something that is defamatory and untrue takes a risk," says Mike Godwin, technology adviser for the public interest group Public Knowledge in Washington DC. The researchers' strategy may minimise that risk, he says. "Peer-to-peer is probably the best way."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-csb100803.php
http://www.newscientist.com/











Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17666 October 4th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17605 September 29th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17552 September 20th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17495 September 13th





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

[TankGirl]

Things change... and in P2P they seem to change very swiftly nowadays...

The Crackdown on file sharing has unintended effects story was good. The copyright gestapo is indeed forcing p2p developers to provide business (if not military!) grade security and privacy protection features into their software, and have no doubt they will deliver them. Justin Frankel already did it for small groups with WASTE, and WASTE alone is enough to keep filesharing alive until safer wide network solutions become available.

Thanks for yet another great WIR, Jack.

- tg

[JackSpratts]

thanks tg!

adapt or die, it's as old as evolution. that the lesson is lost on the riaa is real irony since they're a major force in the development of these 3rd generation p2p's. suing thier customers into submission is not a viable option for rights claiments. the bad will created is driving down sales and now there are too many competing ways of distributing material online for any industry to put thier faith in a state granted monopoly. our experience with waste shows that the new private personal networks are up to the task.

- js.

[multi]

another good read there thx jack

'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy
Barry Fox

Software pirates who make illegal copies of a particular computer game are finding the games companies are coming up with a radical new anti-copying strategy.

Illegally copied games protected by the system work properly at first, but start to fall apart after the player has had just enough time to get hooked. As a result, the pirated discs actually encourage people to buy the genuine software, the developers say.

The new protection system, called Fade, is being introduced by Macrovision, a company in Santa Clara, California, that specialises in digital rights management, and the British games developer Codemasters, based in Leamington Spa. It makes unauthorised copies of games slowly degrade, so that cars no long steer, guns cannot be aimed and footballs fly away into space. But by that time the player has become addicted to the game.

Fade exploits the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched. Software protected by Fade contains fragments of "subversive" code designed to seem like scratches. The bogus scratches are arranged on the disc in a subtle pattern that the game's master program looks for. If it finds them, the game plays as usual.

When someone tries to copy the disc on a PC, however, the error-correcting routines built into the computer attempt to fix the bogus scratches. When the copied disc is played, the master program then cannot find the pattern it is looking for, so it knows the disc is a copy.

What happens next turns the usual rules of software protection on their head. Instead of switching off the game and preventing it from playing at all, the master program begins to disable it. In the game Operation Flashpoint, which has been the proving ground for Fade, players soon find that their guns shoot off target and run out of bullets.

"The beauty of this is that the degrading copy becomes a sales promotion tool. People go out and buy an original version," claims Bruce Everiss of Codemasters.

The idea intrigues Alistair Kelman, an independent lawyer who specialises in copyright: "Fade is entirely in keeping with the spirit and great traditions of copyright." He points out that books tend to deteriorate with use and this prevents the secondhand market from competing with the market for new books. Why not the same for software?

Following its success with Operation Flashpoint, Codemasters is also using Fade with a new snooker game. Copies play normally for a while, but after a predetermined number of potshots, gravity is progressively turned off so the balls start behaving oddly and end up floating over the table.

Fade was devised by Richard Darling, who founded Codemasters 16 years ago, and has now been included in Macrovision's SafeDisc anti-piracy system. Next year, Macrovision plans to release a DVD movie protection system called SafeDVD, which will use a similar technique to make copied discs stop playing at a key point in the movie's plot.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/pr...p?id=ns99994248

sif no1 will work a way round that..

[Fantom]

Student Faces Suit For Using His Computers Shift Key

[JackSpratts]

@ fantom!

loopy steering, balls floating over tables, multi it wouldn't surprise if some of those degraded games were more fun to play than the standard versions. bring it on!

- js.