P2PNews - The Week In Review - Ending Dec. 7th, ‘02

[JackSpratts]

Interesting week with a lot that’s come in. The copyright groups are taking no quarter and showing no mercy - they’re now sending bills to downloaders and busting students like young Naval academics - the ones who may soon defend U.S. overseas interests (including corporate interests) at great personal risk. Meanwhile the applications people aren’t sitting around either, not for a minute. To the contrary they’re hitting back just as hard. Sometimes life is like that. Enjoy, Jack.


When Knowledge Was Spread Around, So Was Prosperity
Virginia Postrel

The "knowledge economy" did not begin (or end) with the Internet boom. But technology, institutions and attitudes that lower the cost of information and encourage people to share knowledge have not always been around.

Indeed, a new book argues, to understand why the West not only grew rich after the Industrial Revolution but also kept growing richer, we have to understand the revolution in how people organize and exchange "useful knowledge."

Beginning in the late 18th century the Industrial Enlightenment "sought to reduce access costs by surveying and cataloging artisanal practices" so best practices could spread.

Through "search engines" ranging from Diderot's huge Encyclopédie to handbooks and periodicals, "useful knowledge" traveled from individual practitioners to anyone with an interest in improving techniques.

"The idea that knowledge is power did not translate into the idea that knowledge should be monopolized," Professor Mokyr said in an interview. Instead, the ideal of open science prevailed. Even patents required that inventors make ideas public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/business/05SCEN.html

N.Y.T.:
Nick - bobbob
Pass – bobbob

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On The Other Hand…
Comcast Cable Chief Covets Complete Control

President and CEO Brian Roberts is redefining what it means to be in the hot seat. He's in the cable business, after all -- an industry that, for whatever reason, is more loathed and feared than most communications industries.

Cable has its share of problems, including massive debt and the baggage of the scandals at Adelphia Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: ADLAC). And did we mention satellite competition? Someone should, as that's partly why Comcast lost more than 500,000 basic cable subscribers in the last 12 months.

"The cry for free cash flow from Wall Street right now is fine and appropriate at some level, but it should not impinge on the technological development that this industry has the opportunity to grasp," Roberts says.

Roberts aims to convince content providers that a personal video recorder in every home is the television world's equivalent to Napster, meaning that customers are becoming accustomed to recording and sharing TV programs free of charge and content makers are losing potential revenues. He says if there's a business model out there where cable companies can offer licensed content on demand, where they – and not the consumer -- can control the rates, the access, and the storage, then "we should get that model going as fast as possible."
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=25319

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P2P Killer
Press Release, http://www.ellacoya.com/

Ellacoya Networks, Inc., an innovative provider of service control systems for broadband networks, today announced new features for its IP Service Control System, including a reporting tool for granular measurement of network traffic. With the new functionality, the Ellacoya IP Service Control System provides comprehensive visibility into network usage, and management of cable network traffic based on a range of subscriber, network and application parameters. The reporting package, as well as the complete functionality of the Ellacoya IP Service Control System, is being demonstrated publicly for the first time at CableLabs’ CableNET exhibit at the BroadbandPlus show in Anaheim California this week.

Based on broadband network usage data collected on production cable networks by the Ellacoya reporting tool, P2P file sharing applications are consuming up to 60% of network capacity at peak times. Consequently, interactive users (web- surfers, e-mailers, etc) are experiencing poor service levels at peak usage times. Broadband operators are faced with customer dissatisfaction as well as unnecessary cost derived from over-engineering the network for peak loads.

“The peer-to-peer phenomenon has caught cable operators unprepared to provide expected service levels across their range of subscribers,” said Ron Sege, president and CEO of Ellacoya Networks. “Ellacoya advocates fair access to network resources by all broadband subscribers, as well as practices that enable broadband operators to deliver services at a reasonable profit to various types of users, be they ‘power users’ or ‘light users.’ Our technology platform allows broadband operators to quickly and easily monitor network traffic patterns and to manage network resources accordingly so that all users receive the level of service they are entitled to by their service plan.”
http://www.lightreading.com/document...g&doc_id=25298

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A Better Way? Maybe.
Jack Kapica

File-swappers and Internet service providers may soon be able to bury the hatchet.

Things began to change in September, when Sandvine Inc., a network-equipment maker based in Waterloo, Ont., published a paper that said peer-to-peer networks accounted for as much as 60 per cent of Internet traffic.

Most of it, Sandvine said, was caused by "chatter" — background communication among the millions of computers on peer-to-peer networks, including constant messages announcing the presence of individual computers (called "keep-alives") as well as the constant passing of search information.

"Popular file sharing programs like Kazaa and Morpheus ignore the logical topology of service provider networks," Sandvine said in a statement. "The result is ad-hoc connectivity with P2P clients on other networks. This propensity to push data traffic 'off Net' drives up Internet transit costs and erodes profitability."

Now, the company that defined the problem has announced the arrival of a product that promises to calm these troubled waters.

Sandvine's Peer-To-Peer Policy Management, a hardware and software bundle, allows service providers to create policies that direct file-sharing traffic down cheaper network paths.
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/

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Black Market for Software Runs Rings Around Export Controls
John Shwartz

Digital piracy, often thought of as the illicit trade in music, office software and games, has moved into more dangerous territory.

A black market has emerged for scientific and engineering software powerful enough to fall under United States export restrictions. Such software can be used in a wide range of tasks like designing rockets or nuclear reactors or predicting the path of a cloud of anthrax spores.

Intellectual property "isn't just Napster," and it "isn't just copying Madonna's songs," one Justice Department official said, adding, "It's the software that allows you to model the fuel flow in a fighter jet."

Much of the specialized software cannot be exported legally to "pariah" nations like Libya, North Korea or Iraq. Yet Steve M. Legensky, the founder and general manager of Intelligent Light, an engineering software company in Lyndhurst, N.J., has found bootleg copies of his company's software, which is bound by the export controls, being offered on the Internet alongside sophisticated engineering wares from 120 other companies.

The illicit copies of the software from Intelligent Light, which in licensed versions typically sells for $12,000, was being sold by Chinese entrepreneurs for $200. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/te...gy/02PIRA.html

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Yo Ho Ho – Uh Oh. Huge Pirate Ring Busted

Police in Luxembourg have made the largest-ever seizure of pirate CDs in Europe, uncovering what is thought to be a huge, international illegal bootlegging ring...

Luxembourg police, assisted by anti-piracy personnel from the international recording industry, raided two warehouses and report having seized around one million infringing CDs, with an estimated value of over ten million Euros at pirate prices.

The CDs are mainly bootlegs of international artists' live performances including The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Guns N' Roses, Pink Floyd, REM, Rolling Stones and U2.

Iain Grant, IFPI's Head of Enforcement said: "We believe the investigation has uncovered a major source of illegal bootlegs supplying not just Europe, but many other parts of the world. We are grateful to the police in Luxembourg for all their assistance in cracking this case."

Francois Ewen, Chief Superintendent of Luxembourg police said: "This is a most significant investigation, which is in its early stages. We will be looking at the international aspects of the enquiry."
http://cdr-info.com/Sections/News/De...RelatedID=3136

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UK Minister Joins Pirate Paraid
Justin Calvert

UK culture minister Kim Howells has attended a dawn raid on an address used to distribute pirated games software.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning Kim Howells, culture minister for the UK, joined a raid being led by Cardiff Trading Standards on an address in Cardiff, Wales. Further raids have also been conducted across the UK today at addresses in Barking, London, Oldham, and Blaenavon.

The raids, which followed suspicions that a company called Brian Green Software had been trading in pirated goods, resulted in the seizure of counterfeit video games, music CDs, and movie DVDs. The investigation that eventually resulted in today's raids was a joint initiative between the Entertainment and Leisure Software Association (ELSPA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

"Piracy is theft, plain and simple. It doesn't just affect large corporations, but also the small film, music and computer game companies that are integral to the future of the creative industries in this country," said Howells, who has responsibility for films and music within the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS). "Raids like the one I have been on today, are very effective. But if we are to truly tackle piracy, the government and industry must work together to get across to the consumer that each time they buy pirate copies of CDs, DVDs, computer games and videos they are putting a nail in the coffin of the industries they love."

According to John Hillier, manager of ELSPA's anti-piracy unit, operations similar to those carried out today take place almost daily. According to ELSPA, around 80 percent of these raids not only result in them finding evidence of piracy, but also of other criminal activity -- including drug trafficking, pornography, and even terrorism.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s2127032,00.html

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So Maybe It Isn’t The File Sharers. Pirate Arrests Illustrate a Growing Concern Over Bootlegged Recordings
Lynette Holloway

From all appearances, the store on Deer Park Avenue in North Babylon, N.Y., nestled between shops and restaurants, looked like any other music store along a strip mall. But if law enforcement authorities are right, the Long Island store, Spin Music, was one of the biggest bootlegging operations on the East Coast, taking in $2.5 million a year in profit.

Prosecutors say a family with ties to organized crime ran the operation, using its modest home in West Islip to produce 10,000 bootlegged CD's a week, by artists ranging from Jay-Z to Jennifer Lopez. The family sold rows of the CD's at the store and also delivered about $50,000 of pirated goods each month to various sites in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the prosecutors say.

Music executives, seeking to explain a decline in CD sales, have often cited free digital downloads and Internet file sharing. But they are coming to believe that old- fashioned bootlegging is a huge problem, too, costing the industry tens of millions of dollars. Total music sales are down about 13 percent so far this year compared with the similar period in 2001, according to Nielsen Sound-Scan, which tracks music sales.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/te...gy/02BOOT.html

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Fewer Media Owners, More Media Choices?
Jim Rutenberg

For decades, public interest advocates have successfully argued for stringent limits on the number of newspapers, radio stations and television outlets that a company can own.

They have summoned images of Citizen Kane, or worse, Big Brother, warning that without strict regulation a few powerful corporations could take control of political discourse while homogenizing entertainment and defanging news.

But the advocates are now facing an issue that is much more complicated because despite consolidation, media choices have expanded exponentially through technology. Now the typical American can watch Britain's BBC News, among others, on television and choose from tens of thousands of news Web sites, from Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, to The Times of India, based in New Delhi. As a result, federal regulators are questioning whether fears of corporate media domination have become obsolete.

The impact of the Internet and the expansion of cable and satellite TV will be discussed next month, as the Federal Communications Commission considers loosening ownership restrictions in what could be the largest overhaul of media regulations in a generation. The issue could also be raised if ABC News and CNN ever agree to merge, reducing the number of independently owned national television news outlets from five to four.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/bu...ia/02MEDI.html

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Price Is Limiting Demand for Broadband
Simon Romero

Remember all the talk about the broadband revolution? It is turning out to be a slow evolution, at best.

Only about 15 percent of American households currently subscribe to broadband service — or fast Internet access — despite the fact that 70 percent of households have the technical option of doing so. And analysts do not expect the majority of homes to have broadband access anytime for at least five years.

So far, a crucial limit on demand has been price.

To be sure, businesses and many affluent households have adopted broadband at a rapid pace, which is why the total number of subscribers has climbed about 50 percent this year, according to InStat/MDR. And yet, while the number of subscribers is expected to grow, the rate of growth is expected to drop rapidly — to 38 percent next year, 23 percent in 2004 and the teens in 2005.

And so, only about one-third of households are expected to have broadband by the end of 2006, with the great majority of those subscribing to the service through cable modems and digital subscriber lines.

"It's a little less stunning than what we've seen elsewhere," Mr. Schoolar said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/te...gy/05BROA.html

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Swap you that Cd for a pound of beans.

Who Needs Money? For Wary Argentines, The Crops Are Cash
Leslie Moore

Their hens are too old to lay eggs and they till their fields with a 33-year-old tractor, but Roberto Natale and his wife, Mabel Ciribe, are sitting on what has become this country's most precious currency. This season they bartered 44 tons of soybeans and a used car for a shiny four-door Toyota Hilux pickup. Next year, they hope to swap soybeans for a harvester.

"The only thing we have is soybeans," Ms. Ciribe said. "Without them we wouldn't have bought the pickup."

With the collapse of the peso nearly a year ago, corn, soybeans, sunflowers and wheat have become a preferred legal tender in Argentina, often more welcome than cash, because they are priced in dollars. Despite some concern from the government, the nation's farmers and agriculture businesses, which constitute one of the country's richest economic sectors, are bypassing the dysfunctional banking system where they can and are venturing into swap contracts known as trueques (pronounced tru-E-kays), to keep business going.

"It's like a return to the Phoenician era," said Sebastián Díaz Riganti, a grain broker based in Buenos Aires. His family-owned company, Díaz Riganti Cereales, has completed $168 million in deals among farmers, corporate customers and grain exporters this year, he said. Almost 60 percent of his business is based on bartering, up from 30 percent last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/bu...ey/01BART.html

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Bertelsmann To Zomba Execs: Oh Won’t You Stay, Just A Little Bit Longer?
Suzanne Kapner

Bertelsmann completed its acquisition of the Zomba Music Group this week, but now the hard part begins: convincing Zomba's executives not to rush for the door.

If Bertelsmann fails to retain key executives, its $2.7 billion acquisition of Zomba — a deal that many analysts already consider expensive given the deteriorating economics of the music industry — could seem even less attractive. The departure of key executives could open the door to a wave of defections by artists, industry executives said, creating the possibility that Bertelsmann could be left holding an empty shell.

Martin Dodd, the senior vice president of A & R, who is responsible for some of Zomba's biggest acts, including Britney Spears and 'N Sync, has not renewed his contract because he is uncertain about Zomba's future within Bertelsmann, people involved with Zomba said. Mr. Dodd would not comment.

And Clive Calder, Zomba's chairman and chief executive, resigned from those posts on Tuesday, the day the acquisition was announced, though he will remain in a part- time advisory role.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/29/bu...ia/29MUSI.html

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Dying Nerds Want Webcams In Their Coffins So Pals Can Watch Them Decompose
Matthew Mirapaul

The Internet has given the youths in "Necrocam," a 50-minute film made for Dutch television, a less conventional way to cope with death's mysteries. Christine, a teenager with cancer, tells her friends that upon her death she wants a digital camera with an Internet connection installed in her coffin. Images of her decaying remains will then be transmitted to a Web page for all to see, making her virtually immortal. The friends pledge to install a Webcam in the coffin of the first one to die, and they seal their pact with an oath to the computing world's highest power: "This we swear on Bill Gates's grave."

"Necrocam" was shown in September by VARA, a public-broadcasting network in the Netherlands. Now, the entertaining and — given its grotesque premise — unexpectedly moving film will have an opportunity to find its natural audience of online viewers. Last week the network put a version of the film with English subtitles on its Web site, at vara.nl/necrocam.

The notion of a Webcam in a coffin still sounds implausible, but nonetheless it almost came to pass. At the birth of the idea in 1998, Ine Poppe, an Amsterdam artist, was reading when Zoro, her tech-obsessed 15-year-old son, sat down next her and said, "Mom, when I die, I want a Webcam in my coffin, and I'm serious about it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/a...ion/25ARTS.html

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P2P Cookie Monsters
Tim Richardson

Last week, the MD of Telewest's broadband content confirmed that he is to leave the cableco. Telewest has no plans at the moment to replace David Docherty although he will carry on as a consultant.

Writing in today's Guardian Mr Docherty warns that the development of broadband will be stunted until people accept that if they want content, they will have to pay for it.

Describing those who want to keep the Internet "free" as "cookie monsters", Mr Docherty writes: "Cookie monsters (CMs) want everything for free. They think the net is an anarchistic space and that anything intended to commercialise it is to be fiercely resisted - even if that thing is creative, innovative and inventive."

Instead, he says that people will have to change their views about paying for content if the online medium is to deliver what it promises.

Describing those who download copyright material for free he writes: "Peer-to-peer cookie monsters are like Fagin in Oliver Twist - they just want to pick a packet or two. Whatever they say about breaking new bands and writers, the vast bulk of what p-to-p facilitates is simple theft from creative artists."

The Guardian piece is here:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediagua...852024,00.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/28385.html

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Confessions of a Media Pirate
Dawn C. Chmielewski

I admit it -- I am a pirate.

I have used online file-swapping services since Napster re-introduced me to the music of my youth. Nothing -- not the death of the pioneering peer-to-peer service nor the birth of ``legitimate'' pay services -- has broken me of the habit.

Some seek to justify their use of unauthorized file-swapping networks like Kazaa, Morpheus or Limewire. They'll argue that in the name of promotion, the recording industry already gives away its music for free on the radio. Why shouldn't the same songs be free over Internet?

Others say that peer-to-peer software, which enables users to copy songs directly from someone else's computer hard drive, is just an extension of what we've been doing since college -- making dubs of favorite songs and mixes to share with friends.

Sharman Networks, the company that distributes Kazaa, Morpheus' corporate owner, StreamCast, and Grokster dusted off the NRA argument: software doesn't kill the music industry, it's the way people use the software that's causing the industry to bleed.

These are just rationalizations.

So what's my excuse?

I plead guilty, your honor. Guilty of free media consumption.

The legitimate subscription music services, while dramatically improved, can't compete in selection with what I can get for nothing. And I'm not just talking about the absence of the collected works of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Madonna or half the Top 10 singles in the country, which remain frustratingly beyond the reach of the subscription services. Or the befuddling restrictions that allow me to burn a copy of Bruce Springsteen's ``The Rising'' to CD -- but not Christina Aguilera's aging pop track, ``What a Girl Wants.''

It's not about getting on-demand access to Sheryl Crow's latest video or single. It's all about choice.

Kazaa has become the first stop for all my digital entertainment needs. I can find and download Bill Cosby's time-tested ``Noah'' routine to share with my 10-year-old son, Alex. I can retrieve television bits. I am not ashamed to admit I enjoy the scatological stylings of Conan O'Brien's ``Triumph the Comic Insult Dog.''

I can't get those anywhere else at any price.

I don't need a TiVo or VCR to record such late-night fare. I merely fetch it on-demand, using Kazaa's search engine.

In short, Kazaa and the other file-sharing services make real the promise of ``convergence,'' that long- anticipated meeting of entertainment and technology. Suddenly, the ultimate convergence device isn't my television, the TV set-top box, or my video game console -- but the ever-versatile, ever-more-capable productivity tool, the PC.

Microsoft chief software architect Bill Gates predicted this day would come in a 1998 speech before the annual geekfest known as Comdex, when he described his vision of the American home with a server in every garage. I believe I was polite enough not to laugh out loud.

Guess the joke's on me.

The larger question is why an industry that has survived more media transitions than Ted Turner -- from piano rolls, vinyl long-playing records, 8-track tapes, cassettes and compact discs -- can't simply embrace something that works.

Why not legitimize a service that 13 million Americans are using right now?
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercuryne...gy/4671922.htm

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Sony's Power Grab

Sony Entertainment's Japanese division announced a new digital rights package called "Label Gate," which would restrict the ways that pre-recorded CDs could be copied. The music companies, scrambling to explain a multi-year slump in record sales, are pointing to an easy target -- piraters. But recording restrictors such as Label Gate are more likely to aggravate legitimate customers than help sales.

Joshua Brown

This just in: The music industry is running scared. Many record execs had hoped the multi-year slump in new album sales would be over after the courts dismembered file- sharing service Napster in 2000. However, the centralized -- and thus easily prosecutable -- file-sharing model Napster pioneered has been replaced with a decentralized, impossible-to-destroy, peer- to-peer model.

Yes, people continue to swap files, especially music and video, regardless of Napster's demise. The music industry is tearing out its collective hair looking for solutions to this problem, upon which they lay the blame for a multi-year slump in recorded music sales.

Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), a division of Sony (NYSE: SNE), answered the call last week, announcing the advent of its new "Label Gate" digital rights management (DRM) package. Beginning in 2003, all CDs released from Sony Japan will carry this protection.

Label Gate is a one-two punch: Every track on a protected CD will be encoded, and the customer must use Sony's proprietary software to play back the tracks on a computer. This prevents people from converting the music tracks ("ripping") into other formats, such as MP3 or WAV, and sharing them over the Internet. Sounds pretty good, right? Wrong. Not for consumers, and, ultimately, not for Sony
http://www.fool.com/News/Foth/2002/foth021202.htm

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Web Apps - Weakest Security Link
Dan Verton

The defensive perimeter of firewalls and intrusion-detection systems that most companies rely on for network security is being bypassed by hackers who have made Web applications their newest targets, security experts warned last week.

"Perimeter defense is becoming an irrelevant term," said Kevin Soo Hoo, senior security architect at Cambridge, Mass.-based security consultancy @Stake Inc. "The emphasis [in hacking] is now shifting to the application layer. The Web application is becoming the primary vehicle for attack."

The increased demand for Web functionality has pushed almost all traffic through Ports 80 and 443 on most Web servers -- typically the only two ports that are left open by most companies. And that's where hackers are turning to gain access to enterprise networks and data, said Soo Hoo. "As a result, the threat model is changing. It makes the firewall no longer the line of defense that it once was."

Soo Hoo made his comments last week in a live webcast sponsored by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Stratum8 Corp.
http://www.computerworld.com/securit...,76309,00.html

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Yale Students Create Campus P2P – IT Director Applauds
Claire Kenny

Yale students are accustomed to reading work from professors and teaching assistants. Most, however, are not used to reading student documents and using peer work for research purposes. But if James Tunick '03 and Derek Lomas '03 have their way, that may soon change.

Tunick and Lomas, along with faculty members and Information Technology Services, are in the process of creating the Digital Student Works Archive Project, or D-SWAP, an online collection of student work. Students will be able to upload documents and artwork, download peer files, and search for other students' work. Tunick said they should have a prototype of D-SWAP available by the end of the school year. According to the business plan, D-SWAP will be a "centralized file exchange and archive for the digital music, art, video, and writing of Yale University students."

Tunick said the initial idea for D-SWAP came from the success of music-sharing programs like Napster. He said he hopes to use student familiarity with file-sharing to promote what he sees as a new form of education.

"Not only does the archive encourage a new type of peer-oriented education, but it also promotes free speech, interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration," Tunick said. "It is my belief that these conditions are the true seeds of innovation." http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=21045

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CDs Dead?
Amanda York

From his music stores, Phil Breen has watched the record industry evolve from clunky eight-tracks into thin, shiny CDs.

"The record industry is over," he said from his Fort Thomas store. "It is taking a hit like it has never had."

Programs that let people swap music on the Web and burn CDs have etched a deep scratch into the profits of some local music stores and are igniting a fierce debate about copyright laws.

"The record industry is free falling," said Breen, who owns Phil's Records in Fort Thomas and Crescent Springs.

Others aren't so adamant.

At Spin Again Music, owner Sam Seiler said his store, which primarily sells used products, has coped with the new technology by diversifying its products. Spin Again now sells DVDs and some new CDs, an area where he's also seen a drop in profits but not as harsh as the dips experienced by Breen.

"It's not going to kill us," Seiler said.

Ken Katkin, an Internet law professor at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University, claims one reason the record industry will survive is because it hasn't been proved that file sharing is causing a drop in sales.
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/ci...02/story1.html

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A Peerless Technology
Matthew Briney

When we look back years from now at technologies that have changed and influenced our daily lives we will have to consider the impact of Shawn Fanning and Napster. The overnight sensation that swept college dorm rooms made millions of music enthusiasts happy and the recording industry livid (and the artists often somewhere in between) has revolutionized the way we get and listen to music making 'MP3' a household word.

Caught off guard, the recording industry has been frantically lobbying Congress to preserve intellectual property rights and defend an aging industry that has failed to keep ahead of the technological curve. Efforts have been made to ban and prevent future development of these technologies, in the form of legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a broad and non-specific measure that will take decades to sort out and clarify in the courts.

Thousands of articles have been written that discuss the implications of intellectual property. But buried within the Napster debate is a larger issue. Peer-to-Peer networking.

With a few more advances, P2P can become an even bigger transportation medium than the World Wide Web and at the very least will have a huge impact on the way we receive data and content in the future.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/10...D=1051-112102B

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Peer To Peer Nukes Spam
Ted Como

Thinking outside the box has led cloudmark.com to develop what may be the best anti-spam approach going. Its SpamNet program was just named a finalist at the Best of Comdex and is listed at ZDNet's Spam Blockers Hall of Fame.

What SpamNet is not is a top-heavy program that installs with some effort. Nor is it an adjunct mail server that knows your account password. SpamNet taps into the peer-to-peer approach used to share music across the Internet even as it uses spam's very nature against it. It has the potential to instantly eliminate spam - all spam. And it doesn't cost a cent. Unfortunately, it only works on Microsoft Outlook running on Windows 2000 or XP, although Cloudmark may port it for Outlook Express. But I liked this program sufficiently to migrate from Outlook Express to Outlook.

Users download software that installs quickly and easily to work with Outlook. When they download e-mail, SpamNet automatically checks the e-mail headers against a database of known spam messages reported by users. If a message has been identified by other users as being spam, it is automatically moved to a spam folder on the local machine. You simply delete the contents of your spam folder after assuring yourself that everything in there is, indeed, spam.
http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3145299

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Judge Delays KaZaA Ruling

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NEAX to Deploy Pure Peer to Peer Switching
Press Release, NEC America, Inc.

NEC America, Inc. a leading provider of innovative communications products, solutions and services, today announced the availability of the NEAX® Internet Protocol eXchange Distributed Model (IPX(DM)).

The newest member of NEC's complete end-to-end convergence solution, the NEAX IPX(DM) targets those enterprises that are predominately deploying IP pure peer-to-peer voice switching.

Peer-to-Peer switching allows the NEAX IPX(DM) to provide all of NEC's networking services and Dterm® Series E digital telephone features when deployed over an IP network. The voice signals travel through the IP network but do not "go through" the switch as they do in traditional telephony. The fact that the NEAX IPX(DM) can function in and support a "hybrid" network with traditional TDM switching and pure peer-to-peer IP switching means the users can continue to utilize their existing equipment while they implement IP telephony and lay the foundation for future networks.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/021203/32165_1.html

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Auspex Tunes in Audible.com
Press Release

Auspex Systems, Inc announced today that an Auspex NS3000 network server is being used to store the entire 34,000-hour audio library of Audible.com, the leading provider of downloadable spoken word editions of books, newspapers, magazines, radio programs and original shows for playback on personal computers, CDs and select mobile devices. The Auspex appliance is speeding content delivery to end users and simplifying storage administration by replacing several general-purpose servers with one machine optimized for file serving.

“Consolidating our audio assets on the Auspex system has eliminated the throughput problems we experienced with our old servers because application programming and files are no longer competing for the same processor resources,” said Michael Stevens, Director of Operations for New Jersey-based Audible, Inc., the parent company of Audible.com.

Audible personnel selected Auspex’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) server because it outstripped competing systems on key factors including performance, fault tolerance and scalability. The company purchased a 3.2-terabyte machine that can be at least tripled in capacity without negatively affecting network performance. This will enable the system to accommodate the addition of new audio content at the current rate of over 100 hours per week for the foreseeable future.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=25220

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Court Closes Madster
Roy Mark

The entertainment industry scored a victory Monday when a U.S. district court
judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the peer-to-peer (P2P) service Madster, the file swapping site founded by Johnny Deep. U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen of Chicago ordered Madster to immediately disconnect any computers or services used in connection with file swapping.

The TRO also requires Madster to immediately terminate Internet access to the site, although on Tuesday morning the site was still up and running.

Deep, who is currently without counsel since a disagreement with his lawyers over strategy, had no comment. The temporary restraining order will remain in effect until Dec. 22 or until further order from the court.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/1551721
http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-975927.html

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Adobe To DMCA Court: No “Illegal” eBook Copies Found On Internet
Lisa M. Bowman

An Adobe Systems employee on Wednesday during testimony in a federal copyright trial acknowledged his company hadn't tracked down any unauthorised eBooks created by ElcomSoft software.

ElcomSoft, a software company based in Russia, is charged with five counts of offering and marketing software designed to crack Adobe's eBooks, actions prosecutors say violate digital copyright laws.

In a federal courtroom in the US, ElcomSoft attorney Joseph Burton asked Thomas Diaz, a senior engineering manager at Adobe, whether his company tried to determine if there were illegal copies of eBooks, electronic versions of printed books, in circulation as a result of ElcomSoft's actions.

Diaz said Adobe had hired two companies to conduct surveillance and search for unauthorised eBooks on the Internet. Burton then asked whether Adobe "found any indication that Elcomsoft's product was used to make illicit copies of books?"

"Not to my knowledge," Diaz replied.

The case is the first major trial to deal with the criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. The law makes it illegal to circumvent copyright protections, even if code is being cracked for legal uses, such as reverse engineering.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s2127073,00.html

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Finnish Taxi Drivers to Pay Royalties for Backseat Music

Finland's Supreme Court has ruled taxi drivers must pay royalty fees if they play music in their car while a customer is in the backseat.

The order even applies to the radio.

A case, based on one driver's refusal to pay, is likely to set a precedent for the 9,500 cab drivers in the country.

Under the ruling, a cab driver in Finland must pay £14 annually for playing music while transporting a fare.

Lauri Luotonen, chairman of the Helsinki Taxi Drivers' Association, says the ruling is likely to force most drivers to keep their radios off.

Recently, two Finnish churches refused to pay royalties to the country's copyright society for the performance of Christmas hymns. The congregations won their case in a district court, but the society has appealed.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_721008.html

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P2P Maoists Wasting Time. Ouch.
Paul Boutin

Three and a half years after Napster’s launch, online song-swapping is dead in the water. A dogged legal campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America has shut down the best services, Napster and Audiogalaxy. The good ones – KaZaA and Morpheus – are on the run.

There are others, like Gnutella, built to withstand legal assault. By avoiding centralized servers and spreading the goods around the globe, the free- music hackers hope their networks will be impossible to shut down. Too bad they’re also impossible to use. Shawn Fanning had a hit because Napster provided quick and easy access to a huge trove of music. His deservedly nameless imitators require me to do far more work to find far fewer tunes, all in the name of playing keep-away from the Man.

Why bother? The P2P music Maoists are wasting their time fighting a battle that no longer matters. The real action in music sharing isn’t online. It’s on foot.

Look at the numbers: Industry estimates say 6 billion blank CDs will be sold worldwide this year – that’s one for every person alive today – along with 44 million drives on which to burn them. And 140 million people now own writeable drives – far more than the most optimistic membership claims made by Napster or any of its heirs. “You’ll find one on nearly every consumer PC,” says Gartner analyst Mary Craig, one of the more bearish forecasters in the business. “They’re not using them for backups.”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/view.html?pg=2

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Wal-Mart Backs Away from DMCA Claim
Declan McCullagh

Wal-Mart said on Thursday that it would not pursue copyright claims against a bargain-shopping site that posted details about "Black Friday" sales.

In a closely watched move, the mega-retailer invoked the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) last month to force FatWallet.com to delete a list of products and prices scheduled to appear in Black Friday advertisements. Wal-Mart then sent a special DMCA subpoena to FatWallet asking for the identity of the person who posted the details on the site. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving each year when retailers, legend has it, go "in the black" and start to make money.

But after a law clinic at the University of California at Berkeley stepped in and said it would represent FatWallet and fight the subpoena, Wal-Mart backed down.

"We're satisfied that our copyrights were protected in this case," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Wal-Mart. "Accordingly, we withdrew the subpoena."

Wal-Mart's subpoena invoked an obscure part of the DMCA that allows a copyright holder to ask for "identification of an alleged infringer" without filing a lawsuit first.

Deirdre Mulligan, the Berkeley clinic's director, said she was glad that Wal-Mart abandoned its legal demands, but said the case highlights how the DMCA can be misused.

"People are using the DMCA as an extremely flexible tool that gets ISPs (Internet service providers) to take down information," Mulligan said. "ISPs are not in a position to fight back. It requires resources--it puts them in a position where they could assume liability. The ability to silence speakers even where the underlying claim does not have any merit is worrying."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-976296.html
Reaction
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Online Music Services Ready for Prime-Time Showdown
Sue Zeidler

After a long struggle marked by false starts, frustration and fan indifference, commercial online music services see this year as the crucial second act of a hit show in the making.

Since launching a year ago, subscription music services headed by the major label-backed ventures Pressplay and MusicNet have taken heat from music fans who compared them unfavorably with free peer-to-peer networks like now-idled Napster.

But after expanded licensing deals and platform upgrades, these services and rivals Listen.com's Rhapsody and FullAudio, are better armed to take on free services like Kazaa and Morpheus, which emerged in the wake of Napster's legal demise.

"Everything until now has just been a prelude. The business really begins this year when we begin marketing and educating consumers," said Alan McGlade, chief executive of MusicNet, owned by Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group Plc, AOL Time Warner Inc. and RealNetworks Inc.

As the industry focuses on moving to a legitimate online market, the legal battle continues, with the labels now embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit against Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus like the one that shut down Napster.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=1859423

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GOP Victory: Good News Or Bad For ‘Net Consumers?
Brad King

Longtime Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), best known for campaign finance reform, will soon take center stage on technology legislation. It's a change that has everyone from consumer rights groups to media conglomerates scrambling to find new political allies.

McCain will chair the influential Senate Commerce Committee, which, along with the Judiciary Committee led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will dictate much of the copyright and intellectual property legislative agenda.

Consumer and technology groups that felt pushed around by the decidedly anti-technology former chairman, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), welcome McCain's ascension.

"I'm more optimistic than I was previously," said Joe Kraus, co-founder of DigitalConsumer.org, which lobbies to protect consumers' digital technology rights, including preserving the concept of fair use.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56538,00.html

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Austria Launches Bid for Mickey Mouse Copyright

Austria has launched a tongue-in-cheek attempt to claim the Mickey Mouse copyright after discovering a picture of the Disney character on a medieval fresco.

The 700-year-old Austrian Mickey Mouse was uncovered in a church in the village of Malta in the province of Carinthia.

Siggi Neuschitzer, manager of the local tourism office, confirmed that the legal process to claim the copyright had already started.

He said: "I visited Vienna and had a long meeting with our legal team. They have been instructed to demand Disney return the mouse to its rightful home here in Austria.

"Anyone who has seen our fresco can see it proves that Mickey Mouse is a true Austrian - and was not from Hollywood."

Malta mayor Hans Peter Schaar said villagers did not want to be greedy and were prepared to consider an out-of-court settlement.

He said: "We wouldn't want much, perhaps they would build something here as a tribute to Mickey that would encourage the tourists, nothing too big and tasteless of course, and with an Alpine theme."

Mickey Mouse was first sketched by Walt Disney in 1928. The 14th century version is shown kneeling at the feet of St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers.

Eduard Mahlknecht, the art historian and restorer who uncovered it, said that St Christopher was often portrayed surrounded by animals.

The Disney company has refused to comment.


http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...howbizquirkies

Until next week...

- js.





Current Week In Review

[SA_Dave]

Great issue Jack! A lot of interesting developments.

With a few more advances, P2P can become an even bigger transportation medium than the World Wide Web and at the very least will have a huge impact on the way we receive data and content in the future.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/10...D=1051-112102B

Portents of things to come...
Those online subscription services had better prepare themselves!

Austria Launches Bid for Mickey Mouse Copyright

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...howbizquirkies

That's just too funny!
Now if only Lessig & Co. could overturn the CTEA (the "Mickey Mouse" copyright extension act)...

[assorted]

very groovy issue mr. spratts.

GOP Victory: Good News Or Bad For ‘Net Consumers?
Brad King

Longtime Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), best known for campaign finance reform, will soon take center stage on technology legislation. It's a change that has everyone from consumer rights groups to media conglomerates scrambling to find new political allies. [/b][/quote]

it's sad that our rights are only going to (maybe) be protected because this party gets less money from this particlular special intrest (movie/music conglomerates).

[theknife]

But if we are to truly tackle piracy, the government and industry must work together to get across to the consumer that each time they buy pirate copies of CDs, DVDs, computer games and videos they are putting a nail in the coffin of the industries they love."

The industries we love?

[TankGirl]

Thanks Jack for another great digest.

Looking at p2p-related news and developments in weekly perspective shows how hot the field really is.... apart from the ongoing dramas around copyrights there is constantly something new and exciting popping up on the technical side. The wireless scene especially holds a lot of potential for the future of p2p.

- tg

[theknife]

Originally posted by TankGirl
Thanks Jack for another great digest.

Looking at p2p-related news and developments in weekly perspective shows how hot the field really is.... apart from the ongoing dramas around copyrights there is constantly something new and exciting popping up on the technical side. The wireless scene especially holds a lot of potential for the future of p2p.

- tg

We oughta see the decision on Laurence Lessig's Supreme Court case sometime early in 2003...I'm really looking forward to the outcome there.

WiFi seems to be really snowballing and attracting a lot of VC money. Wouldn't it be sweet to fire your ISP one fine day?