Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – May 10th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Apple Juice

Apple Computer’s in the news this week with their entry into the growing field of pay-per-download songs (PPD). The computer maker, which promised the Beatles’ they’d never start a label, has gotten into selling records in a big way. Apple’s music division iTunes announced they hit the platinum mark after less than a week in the distribution business, selling a million units for 99 cents apiece. While some of that total must be chalked up to impulse buying and curiosity, a lot more of it I think can be attributed to plain old pent up demand from Apple users tired of being shut out of the big Internet file trading networks because of technical incompatibilities with the giant Windows based systems. Even so the amount is fairly amazing considering how small Apple’s market share is, variously estimated at between three and four percent of the total personal computer universe. Kudos to Steve Jobs for pulling this one off. Interestingly half of that total came from album sales, which ought to give some cover to record executives depending on album filler to justify high prices and higher salaries.

The question remains whether Apple has the juice to sustain the intensive sales volume, or indeed grow it over the long haul. Reports of buyers’ remorse are coming in with complaints about the sound quality and usage rights being noticeably inferior to compact discs, yet the prices, at a dollar a song, are about the same as CD's. Compared to file sharing, when the download isn’t free it’s a whole different world and the regular consumer rules apply, like ownership and value for the money. The quality issues will be worked out, that’s a technological given, but only time will tell if Apple’s PPD model has legs. I’m betting prices have a way to fall before the PPD model becomes sustainable.

Survey Says!

P2P users are twice as likely to buy music as non users according to new research. In a survey of over 35,000 Peer-to-Peer users conducted by Nielsen, people who download songs for free from other fans on the Internet are up to 111% more likely to make a music purchase then those who don’t engage in file sharing. The stats hold true over several different listeners groups, like dance and rap. The survey echoes earlier ones done in the eighties and nineties that showed home tapers more apt to buy music than non-tapers. Back then the RIAA was trying to restrict personal recording, claiming it hurt sales. Some things never change.






Enjoy,

Jack.







Current Week In Review.






The RIAA: An Undemocratic, Unelected, Overpowerful Regime
It's time for an investigation into its powers and claims
€uromole

THE RECENT CLAIMS by the New York Times that record companies are preparing software that will lock a computer system for a period of minutes or perhaps hours make it high time to call "Enough!" on the tactics of the RIAA and its members and to call for a thorough investigation of its powers and activities in regard to anti-piracy.

The most serious misgiving that I have with the RIAA is that it is a body that functions on behalf of its member record companies.

It is not an independent and duly authorised legal body and yet has acquired for itself the power to hack into any computer to examine the contents of the hard disk and the power to deposit new software or modify exiting software. On top of this, its degree of liability for damages for these activities is so minor as to be meaningless.

As things currently stand, the RIAA appears to have the power to download music files onto any hard disk, then to claim that those files were put there by the users of that computer and take due action against them. Whether you believe that it would take such action is up to you -- I only report how the situation appears.

I don't believe that any other industry-based organisation has such sweeping powers, not even the software industry with its attempts to deal with its own problems of piracy. In most countries even the police must show due case before making a search - and they operate under judicial proper authority and without vested interests.

It would be disturbing enough if the RIAA had credibility in its statements and actions, but it doesn't. It chooses to ignore many plausible reasons for a drop on music sales in 2001 and 2002, preferring to blame downloading from the web as the entire cause of the ills of the music industry. Having decided that downloads are to blame, it has put its own spin on the matter and then taken draconian steps - out of all proportion to the situation - to stamp out downloads.

One major problem with the RIAA's statements is that there is no independent verification of its claims about the effects of downloading. It has quoted the results of surveys, but as I have shown in a previous article, one survey on which it heavily relied was subjected to the bias of the questioner when user responses were put into different categories. And, of course, the survey was commissioned by the RIAA so its independence was already compromised.

In the Napster court case it presented as a witness a music retailer who said that Napster had caused a significant drop in his revenue. Only after a detailed examination by the defendants was it revealed that the retailer had relocated his shop to a position where there was less passing trade and that he had switched from selling CDs to selling vinyl records. He was forced to concede that perhaps these had a significant impact on his revenue and that he was making some assumptions about Napster.

The RIAA's attempts to blame Napster and other file-sharing services ignore some basic realities, so much so that one must question its competence.

The first factor is the downturn in the economy, a downturn that started late in 2000 and really could only be expected to appear in 2001 sales. The last few years have seen this downturn continue with rising unemployment, tech stock collapse and the scandals of Enron, Worldcom and others. Revenues and profits of US companies have taken a battering.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=9380

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Grokster boss slams "Laurel and Hardy" music industry
Paul Allen

The music industry has launched a war of contempt against its own customers, according to Grokster president Wayne Rosso.

Mr Rosso accused the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of mounting a campaign of "inflamatory rhetoric and distortions to perpetrate a giant veil of fear over music lovers everywhere".

He said record companies were trying to protect profits when they should look to exploit the internet to give consumers a better deal by cutting out manufacturing and packaging costs.

"They view their customers with contempt... and just want to shove product down their throats." But he claimed that consumers would continue to download file sharing services because they were convenient and easy to use.

"[The RIAA] is like Laurel and Hardy, bumbling fools who don't realise that the more they come after file sharers and the more fear tactics they employ, the more users we will get."

Speaking at the Financial Times Media and Broadcasting Conference in London, Mr. Rosso refuted the music industry's claim that file sharing services such as Grokster, Kazaa and Madster infringed legitimate copyrights. The music industry believes that as suppliers of tools that can be used to download tracks illegally, file sharing companies are partly responsible for music theft.

"We are not pirates," said Mr Rosso. "We are legitimate businessmen who are in the software distribution and marketing industry." He compared his business with that of CD burner manufacturers.

Music publishers worldwide have vilified producers of file sharing software and mounted expensive legal battles to close them down. This is because they believe they have lost large amounts of revenue as users download tracks for free.

Computeractive contacted the British Phonographic Industry but no one was available for comment.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1139212

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Judge's file-swapping-software decision puts logic before politics
Dwayne Fatherree

Finally, it seems like someone gets it. After all of the outrage and disbelief I've poured into this column lately, a federal judge has proven that sometimes logic takes precedence over politics.

In a summary decision handed down last week in Los Angeles, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson said that software doesn't steal copyrighted material, people steal copyrighted material. And I for one agree with him.

The judgement was requested by Grokster and StreamCast, two of the latest corporate targets of the Recording Industry Association of America and its motion picture counterpart, the MPAA.

StreamCast is the company that distributes the Morpheus peer-to-peer networking client.

In the decision, Wilson cited the case against Sony's BetaMax video decks. Back in 1984, the court ruled that selling a VCR wasn't illegal.

In the same vein, owning or developing file swapping software isn't illegal either.

No matter what the entertainment industry and its attorneys may argue, the fact is that the world is changing. The centralized servers that allowed Napster to be found liable in its lawsuit do not exist on today's peer-to-peer networks. Instead, each computer running client software becomes its own Internet data destination.

So, as I said last week, the entertainment industry should start reevaluating its tactics. If the software developers are not liable for the use of their software, then the field of possible litigants in future court actions opens dramatically.

That, hopefully, will mean that the California cats will start assessing the state of their own houses instead of whining about piracy. Instead of using legal pumps to keep a dead barge afloat, re-engineer business practices and products to allow the entertainment ship of state to navigate the new seas of technology.

Of course, before that happens, this decision will be appealed. I hope that other judge will look closely at what the court has said here.

If the RIAA stand in this case is upheld, then nothing would prevent Dell from being sued the next time a hacker used one of its computers to take down an e-commerce server.

Basically, the technology would become subject to the whim of its end users.

Imagine what that would mean. Let's say that the manufacturer of a product is liable for the way you use it.

Does that mean my old roommate can file suit against the makers of Aqua Net because I accidentally melted some of his priceless vinyl albums using their product as a blowtorch at a tiki party? Or does it mean I now have legal standing to sue Toyota because my neighbor used one of their minivans to run over my bicycles?

All childishness aside, the battle is not over by a long shot, and much damage has already been done to consumers' rights already through the constant and aggressive actions of the recording and motion picture industry lobbies.

But at least some lines have been drawn demarcating the individual consumers and legitimate software developers from the common criminals.

Hopefully this is a high-water mark and the flood of legal wrangling will start to subside.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pb... 020371&Ref=AR

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MPAA Who? Part II
Donna Wentworth

Via FlaBlog: a St. Petersburg Times piece quoting Florida Super- DMCA legislation co-sponsor Representative Dennis K. Baxley (R- Ocala) as saying that "he never talked to anyone from the Motion Picture Association of America." At the same time, "he did not say how he came to sponsor language matching its goals."

"It was really viewed just as a good law enforcement bill" on cable piracy, he said. "I don't remember any opposition to the bill, and it certainly wasn't controversial."

Meanwhile, reports the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network, "HB0457 [PDF] has been 'recommended for passage if amended' and referred to the House Finance, Ways & Means Committee."

More details are available here; you might also want to keep an eye on Bill Hobbs.
http://www.copyfight.org/

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Looting The Music Industry
The File Sharing/Hussein Regime "Connection"
Corey Deitz

As part of the Radio industry, music has always been a central element in my work. I’ve done this long enough to have witnessed the transition of DJs from playing vinyl 45s-to tape cartridges-to CDs-to-.mp3 files on hard drives. It’s been a fascinating metamorphosis.

Until just a few years ago, there were only two distribution systems for recorded music: Radio and record companies. With one, consumers received it for free and with the other, they paid for it. Since Radio stations paid licensing fees for the right to distribute copyrighted music, it was free for listeners. Hell, listeners could even record it if they wanted but, everyone knew you could never quite get a perfect copy of a song without some Disc-Jockey talking over the beginning or the end of it. (A characteristic of Radio noted and applauded by the Music industry.) Alas, that was the trade-off for getting it free.

The other distribution source was the Record companies, themselves, who gladly sold the music directly to consumers - for a price. The status quo of this arrangement sat well with all for most of last century.

Then, all-of-a-sudden, beginning in the late 1990s, things began to change and anyone with a computer and a dial-up connection could circumvent BOTH distribution systems.

This change has thrown the Music Industry into an hysterical tailspin in search of copy- protection schemes, experimental Internet streaming partnerships, and a way to hold on to a fleeting reality.

Something occured to me the other day about the peer-to-peer music sharing phenomenon. I think it can be better understood by making an analogy in using the recent looting that occurred in Iraq. Saddam Hussein put the screws to his people for years, repressing them and taking advantage of them. But, when the opportunity presented itself, hundreds - if not thousands - thought nothing of looting his grand palaces, government buildings and any insitution associated with the former authority in Iraq.

Think of the music-buying public as the Iraqi people and the Music industry as the former Hussein Regime. For years, the Music “dictators” have been able to charge inflated prices for CDs because they owned the distribution system (creating and marketing the CDs). But, with the advent and convergence of .mp3 technology, the ability to burn CDs and the Internet, the distribution system was suddenly yanked away from the music moguls.

And what did people do? They traded .mp3 files by the millions. In effect, they LOOTED the formerly oppressive Music industry.

Though most of us didn’t condone the looting in Iraq, we certainly understood it. It’s the same with sharing music: ask most people if they feel badly about grabbing .mp3 music files and they’ll say, “Yeah, I know it’s stealing....technically” but, they UNDERSTAND it. They accept it and rationalize it as proper payback for the inflated profits the Music industry extorted from them for years.
http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa050103a.htm

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Apple's Music Service
Larry Magid

Apple Computer and its CEO Steve Jobs have a long history of turning other people's clumsy innovations into useful products. Apple was not the first company to build a personal computer, but the Apple II was the first one that was user-friendly enough for average people. Apple didn't invent the graphical user interface, but the Macintosh -- back in 1984 -- showed the rest of the industry how to do it right.

Apple certainly didn't invent music downloading, but its new service, the iTunes Music Store, is the best effort yet. The service, introduced on April 28, is the first to have the blessings of all five major record labels and it's the first commercial service to sell songs a la carte without the user having to pay a monthly subscription fee. Users pay 99 cents for each song they download.

That's the good news. The bad news is that most people won't be able to use this service right away. For now, it only works on the Macintosh, which represents about 3 percent of the PC market. A Windows version, however, will be out by the end of the year.

The iTunes Music Store stands taller than the two opposing types of existing services available today. One type of service -- represented by Kazaa, Morpheus, LimeWire and others -- is the peer-to-peer service that does not have the blessing of the music industry.

Aside from the moral and legal issues associated with the unauthorized posting and downloading of copyrighted material, there are also some other problems associated with using this service. For one thing, they tend to be slow, unreliable and somewhat buggy. Because most songs were not uploaded with the cooperation of the copyright holder, the quality will vary from excellent to scratchy or incomplete. There are even flawed songs that have been deliberately uploaded by artists and record companies in an attempt to dissuade people from using these services. Also, some of the software required to use these services comes along with companion programs -- dubbed "spyware" -- that can jeopardize your privacy and slow down your computer. The services can share media files on your computer so that others can download them. That subjects you to possible legal actions, could jeopardize your privacy and can slow down your Internet connection.

I don't let my kids use these services at home for several reasons, including the fact that it slows down Internet access to all the machines on our network.

Most of the other music-industry-sanctioned services have too many restrictions or limitations. Pressplay, for example, costs $9.95 a month, which gives you the right to listen to music from your PC while you're online but not to download songs, burn CDs or copy music to portable MP3 players. It is possible to do all those things on Pressplay, but there are extra fees and a rather complicated pricing structure depending on what you want to do with the music.

If you are going to pay a monthly fee, I recommend eMusic.com, which gives you completely unrestricted access to its library for $9.99 a month if you sign up for a year or $14.99 a month if you pay three months in advance. Once you download an MP3 file or an entire album from eMusic you can do anything you want with it, including burn unlimited CDs or copy it to any portable music player. EMusic doesn't have nearly as much popular music as iTunes or Pressplay but it does have a great many classics and some great jazz, folk and classical selections.

If you're looking for a good selection, then iTunes is your best bet -- assuming you have access to a Mac. It doesn't have everything -- there are hardly any Beatles songs, for example -- but there is a reasonable chance you'll find something you like.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in551951.shtml

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Trip Raises Ethics Questions
AP

The recording industry paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Asia to urge government officials to clamp down on pirating of music and movies. Watchdog groups say the trip may have violated House ethics rules.

The Recording Industry Association of America said it asked Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., to make the January trip to Taiwan and Thailand to reinforce the U.S. position on pirated products.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the State Department and U.S. trade representative have long pressured Taiwan and Thailand to enforce U.S. laws on intellectual property. Sensenbrenner was asked to go there, Lamy said, "so they understand that this is a unified message coming from all levels of the U.S. government, including Congress."

After meeting Sensenbrenner, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian issued a statement saying he'd crack down on piracy of intellectual property.

The head of the watchdog group Congressional Accountability Project, said the trip may have violated a House rule and is calling on the House Ethics Committee to investigate.

Sensenbrenner said he could have used committee funds to pay for the trip but, "I thought I would save the taxpayers some money on this."
http://www.nypost.com/cgi-bin/printfriendly.pl

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Songs in the Key of Steve
Steve Jobs may have just created the first great legal online music service. That's got the record biz singing his praises.
Devin Leonard

Steve Jobs loves music. But as with a lot of geeks in Silicon Valley, his musical tastes are a little retro. He worships Bob Dylan and is the kind of obsessive Beatles fan who can talk your ear off about why Ringo is an underappreciated drummer.

So Dr. Dre, the rap-music Midas whose proteges include Snoop Dogg and Eminem, is the last person you'd expect to see huddled with Jobs, for hours on end, at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. No, they weren't discussing whether John or Paul was the more talented Beatle. Rather, Steve had invited Dr. Dre up from Los Angeles for a private demonstration of Apple's latest product. After checking it out, Dre had this to say: "Man, somebody finally got it right."

The product that wowed him was the iTunes Music Store, a new digital service for Mac users offering songs from all five major music companies--Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony, and BMG. Though Apple had yet to sell a single song by the time FORTUNE went to press, Jobs is already causing a stir in the record business. Forget about rumors that Apple is bidding for Vivendi's Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. Jobs says he has absolutely no interest in buying a record company.

The real buzz in the music trade is that Steve has just created what is easily the most promising legal digital music service on the market. "I think it's going to be amazing," says Roger Ames, CEO of the Warner Music Group. Jobs, not surprisingly, is even more effusive. He claims his digital store will forever change not only how music is sold and distributed but also the way artists release and market songs and how they are bought and used by fans.

And anybody who tries to upload iTunes Music Store songs onto KaZaA will be shocked. Each song is encrypted with a digital key so that it can be played only on three authorized computers, and that prevents songs from being transferred online. Even if you burn the AAC songs onto a CD that a conventional CD player can read and then re-rip them back into standard MP3 files, the sound quality is awful.

For some artists, the idea of a singles-driven business is anathema. "There's a flow to a good album," says Nine Inch Nails' Reznor. "The songs support each other. That's the way I like to make music." But Sheryl Crow says it would be a relief to put out singles instead of producing an entire album every time she wants to reach fans. "It would be nice to have a mechanism to release a song or two or three or four on their own," she says.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print...447333,00.html

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Hacker, Heal Thyself
RIAA using hackers to kill musical piracy
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.

The record companies are exploring options on new countermeasures, which some experts say have varying degrees of legality, to deter online theft: from attacking personal Internet connections so as to slow or halt downloads of pirated music to overwhelming the distribution networks with potentially malicious programs that masquerade as music files.

A more malicious program, dubbed "freeze," locks up a computer system for a certain duration — minutes or possibly even hours — risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted. It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music. Another program under development, called "silence," scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them. One of the executives briefed on the silence program said that it did not work properly and was being reworked because it was deleting legitimate music files, too.

Other approaches that are being tested include launching an attack on personal Internet connections, often called "interdiction," to prevent a person from using a network while attempting to download pirated music or offer it to others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE

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Shareaza Needs You: Two New P2P Networks
From Shareaza Dot Com, the Homepage
“The era of file-sharing applications competing on the merits of their chosen network has passed.”

Since its release in July last year, Shareaza has come to be recognized as one of the most innovative P2P applications, positioned at the bleeding edge of new ideas and technologies. Until now, all of this energy has gone into making Shareaza the “best Gnutella client”. Along the way Gnutella had to be improved, so Shareaza developed and championed Gnutella2 – now the most feature-rich (but not the largest) file sharing- network in existence today.

But “Gnutella” is only one of many networks, and the era of file-sharing applications competing on the merits of their chosen network has passed. P2P programs must compete on their own merits, on how good the application itself is. Then users will be able to select the program they like best instead of having to put up with something just to access the network they prefer.

The next version of Shareaza represents a fundamental shift: Shareaza will no longer strive to be the ultimate Gnutella client – it will strive to be the “ultimate P2P client”.

Shareaza 1.9 will offer access to two additional P2P networks, both of which enjoy substantial popularity, as well as the premiere Gnutella2 network and support for the legacy Gnutella1 network. Following that, future versions will offer an even wider selection of networks.

These changes will redefine Shareaza as a true “P2P client”, rather than simply a “Gnutella client”. People will be free to choose Shareaza as their client of choice without being restricted to only one or two networks.

Shareaza 1.9 will be released soon, however before that happens there will be a public beta version to fine-tune the support for the two additional P2P networks, and ensure maximum compatibility and usability. This is where we need your help.

Anyone who is interested in helping to test and refine the new Shareaza will be most welcome to do so, particularly those who have prior experience using the new networks through other P2P programs.

The Shareaza public beta will be available by Tuesday (May 6th), and the Shareaza 1.9 final version will be released whenever the public beta testers deem it ready. Details of the specific networks which are supported will be posted prior to the public beta itself.
http://www.shareaza.com/

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To put it as simply as possible: If you have to be in total control of every experience, art is not for you. Life probably isn't, either. Hey, where's the alternate ending?

Everybody Gets a Cut
Terrence Rafferty

A kiss, all moviegoers know, is just a kiss, and a sigh, by the same inexorable logic, is just a sigh, but I'm starting to wonder whether in the age of the DVD a movie -- even one as indelibly stamped on the collective memory as ''Casablanca'' -- can ever again be just a movie. The DVD's that have been piling up in the vicinity of my TV seem to be telling me that a movie is not a movie unless it arrives swaddled in ''extras'': on-set documentaries, retrospective interviews with cast and crew, trailers, deleted scenes, storyboards, even alternate endings. These days, any film for which a studio's marketing department has sufficiently high commercial expectations is issued on DVD in a ''special'' or ''limited'' or ''collector's'' edition that makes an Arden Shakespeare look skimpy by comparison. The extras on the new double-disc Director's Edition of Brett Ratner's ''Red Dragon'' include such indispensable material as hair and wardrobe tests and one of the auteur's N.Y.U. student films, and take as long to watch as the movie itself. We all, in our 21st-century paradise of leisure, have too much time on our hands. But not that much.

Should some scholar of the future be insane enough to take an interest in ''Red Dragon,'' however, the annotated variorum edition of this deeply mediocre picture could be useful. And the as-yet unborn author of ''Unfaithful Cinema: The Art of Adrian Lyne'' (2040) will need to consult the Special Collector's Edition DVD of ''Fatal Attraction,'' which contains the film's original ending as well as the one moviegoers saw. It also includes the director's own helplessly revealing comment on the radical difference between the conclusion he chose and the one he discarded: ''You can make up your mind which you like better.''

I've always thought it was the artist's job to make that sort of decision, but as I watched Lyne smugly leaving it up to the viewer, I realized with a jolt that I had fallen behind the times. I still think of a film as a unified, self-sufficient artifact that, by its nature, is not interactive in the way that, say, a video game is. To my old- media mind, the viewer ''interacts'' with a movie just as he or she interacts with any other work of art -- by responding to it emotionally, thinking about it, analyzing it, arguing with it, but not by altering it fundamentally. When I open my collected Yeats to read ''Among School Children,'' I don't feel disappointed, or somehow disempowered, to find its great final line (''How can we tell the dancer from the dance?'') unchanged, unchanged utterly, and unencumbered with an ''alternate.'' For all I know, Yeats might have written ''How can we tell the tailor from the pants?'' and then thought better of it, but I'm not sure how having the power to replace the ''dance'' version with the ''pants'' version would enhance my experience of the poem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/magazine/04DVDS.html

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Big Music: Win Some, Lose a Lot More?
Jane Black

Suing music pirates may scare off a few file-sharers, but providing legal alternatives along the lines of Apple iTunes makes more sense
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of music fans. But it always believed it would be a winner in one place: The courts. Until now, that is. Over the last three years, the RIAA's legal juggernaut has crushed Napster, the original file-sharing service, plus imitators like Aimster and Audio Galaxy. But on Apr. 25, the industry group's string of victories came to an end when a California federal judge ruled that popular peer-to-peer services Grokster and StreamCast could not be held responsible for the illicit trading of copyrighted music and movies over their networks.

Unlike Napster, Grokster and StreamCast do not link music swappers through a centralized server. Instead, these second-generation services merely provide software that enables computer users to distribute files by connecting directly to one another's machines (see BW Online, 2/21/01, "Sons of Napster: Singing a Different Tune"). So, these services "do not have actual knowledge of infringement at a time when they can use that knowledge to stop" illicit music swapping, wrote Judge Stephen Wilson of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Just as Xerox (XRX ) cannot stop its customers from making hundreds or thousands of copies of newspaper and magazine articles or books, the same goes for these music-swapping sites. The RIAA and its sister organization, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), have vowed to appeal the ruling.

TARGETING CUSTOMERS. Judge Wilson's decision ushers in a new era in the music industry's battle against technology. One of the main legs supporting the RIAA's strategy -- suing faceless P2P services out of existence -- has suddenly become shaky. With CD sales falling 8.8% last year, that's prompting the industry to come down hard on its customers.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...8073_tc078.htm

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Can entertainment industry survive technological advances?
David Faber

As computers get more powerful and connections get faster, digital piracy gets bigger everyday. In fact, it’s so big it now threatens the music business and may soon threaten the entire entertainment industry. At issue is how the economic model of music and movies can survive the new technological advances.

JACK IS A typical college student: his room is a little messy, and like most kids on campus with a high speed Internet connection, Jack — who asked to be identified by his first name only — is stealing from the entertainment industry “I pirate,” he said. “I download music that I don’t pay for.” Jack has access to 33,000 songs on the system he uses. He’s one of thousands upon thousand of pirates who download 2.6 billion songs a month. “You’ve got everything from Mozart to the Beastie Boys — Michael Jackson,” he said. He says he does it because he was tired of paying for music he didn’t like.“I can listen to music that I know is good, instead of having to pay for music that isn’t really that good that’s marketed to me,” he said.

Sites such as Grokster and Kazaa give away software that enables you to trade music with anyone that has downloaded that software. So the copyrighted material — the files containing music — is never put on a Web site; it’s traded from one person’s computer to another. It’s known as “peer-to-peer” — or simply “p2p.” But people who produce the downloaded content don’t see a dime.

“It’s a giant problem,” said Howard Stringer, Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation of America. He says that while there are other problems facing the music industry, piracy is the biggest. “When you’re losing two and a half billion files to the pirates every month, then you have to ask yourself that this is bound to have an impact. And the fact that we’re down 10 percent in sales this year and 10 percent last year, seven percent the year before — there’s obviously a correlation. How big it is — it’s very hard to be precise. But there is no question that it’s eating away at the revenues of the industry.”

But Wayne Grosso, President of Grokster, one of the more popular file sharing sites, says music companies “are living in the 20th century.”

“They’re out of their minds, and they’re going to go down in flames if they don’t get with the program fast,” he said. “They are hanging on to an old business model that is completely outdated. And it’s not our fault or file sharers who are causing the big problem with the record industry. It’s clearly issues of pricing, competition for the entertainment dollar and quality.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/908363.asp?cp1=1

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Pro Tools Nation
Butch Vig shows you why a little software program is making studio owners nervous
Gavin Edwards and David Thigpen

I've long thought that only one thing stood between me and rock stardom: musical talent. But now that I'm sitting in Butch Vig's basement, recording my first single, that doesn't seem like such a great obstacle anymore.

What technological miracle has made it possible for me to record music that other people might want to listen to without stuffing jelly into their ears? It's software called Pro Tools, which has transformed the world of audio recording. It has freed artists from the confines of traditional studios; it has made professional sound available to people on a budget; and as new technology always does, it has changed the music itself.

Pro Tools is a software program that replaces the old infrastructure of recording - huge analog mixing boards, rolls of two-inch-wide magnetic tape - with a computer. Many musicians now cut tracks straight to a hard drive, which means that lots of expensive tape machines are now collecting dust. "We have analog at our studio in Minneapolis, yet we rarely turn those machines on anymore," says R&B producer Jimmy Jam. Some estimate that four out of five current pop albums employ Pro Tools or one of its competitors. While Digidesign, the maker of Pro Tools, took in $136 million last year, many older studios are feeling the financial pinch. New York's Greene Street Studios, where Public Enemy recorded many classic tracks, shut down in 2001. Other studios are finding that the only way to stay in business is to make sure they have Pro Tools workstations for their clients.

Since Pro Tools can run with just a moderately powerful laptop and a few accessories, musicians can get professional sound just about anywhere. "The traditional studio is a windowless place on a back alley somewhere," says Brandon Boyd, lead singer of Incubus. "You can get horrible cabin fever, like being in a dentist's office twelve hours a day." So to make last year's Morning View, Incubus used a Pro Tools setup in the living room of a Malibu house with an ocean view.

For established musicians, escaping the studio means better vibes; for acts that are just beginning, it means they can afford a professional-sounding demo or album without having to sell a kidney. It's already happening: Dirty Vegas' home recording of "Days Go By" became a club hit. The group could experiment with different sounds and vocal filters because the clock wasn't running in a thousand-dollar-a-day studio.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/new....asp?nid=17868

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O'Reilly Adopts 1790 Copyright Durations
Posted by Blake

John Hubbard writes "Tech book publisher O'Reilly & Associates have Announced they are adopting the Founders Copyright program, putting a maximum 28-year copyright term on their titles. This is significantly shorter than the current legal limit on copyright durations. Although thirty-year-old computer science manuals aren't in particularly high demand, this is a good move towards restoring the "growth" rate of the public domain."
http://www.lisnews.com./article.php3?sid=20030501211246

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Students get iPods as study aids
BBC

A US university has given iPod digital music players to its students to help them with their coursework.

The students at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia have found that, far from distracting them from their studies, the music players are an integral part of coursework.

Apple donated about 50 iPods as part of an experimental project to illustrate creative uses for the machine.

University professors say the gadgets have helped the students think more critically about their course.

Students enrolled on the Gothic Imagination course, which looks at 18th to 20th century art, architecture, literature and music, were given 5GB of music on their iPods.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2988325.stm

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Record Biz's Anti-Piracy Offensive Sounds Off-Key
Heather Newman

It's getting harder to be a music fan in the digital age.

The Recording Industry Association of America's feud with its core group of music listeners hit new highs this week, as the group sent individual, threatening messages to hundreds of thousands of people who use file-swapping services to share music.

The messages, which came after the RIAA lost a bid to shut down the Grokster and Morpheus services altogether, is the latest in the organization's attempts to stop the piracy of tunes distributed over the Internet.

The RIAA argues that fans are stealing from the labels, from the artists and from the stores that sell CDs and that, like any criminals, they must be stopped.

Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of song swappers got instant messages -- sent through the file-sharing services -- from the RIAA, warning them that they could be illegally trading in songs. In addition, the message warned, users could be "easily identified" and face legal penalties.

It's the first major indication that the RIAA plans to take its anti-piracy efforts to the next step: attacking the music audience in an attempt to keep business structured the way it's been for decades.

It's easy to dismiss those who use file-sharing services as college kids out for a free track, especially when the news is full of the recent RIAA lawsuits against students who were running services that cataloged songs available on their universities' computer servers.

But surveys suggest the masses have spoken.
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman1_20030501.htm

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Making It Harder for Prying Eyes By Julia Scheeres
Julia Scheeres

A bill in the California state legislature would protect the anonymity of Internet users by requiring Internet service providers to send customers copies of subpoenas seeking to learn their identities.

If passed, California's Internet Communications Protection Act would become the second state law requiring that consumers be alerted when an ISP is issued a subpoena to find out an anonymous Internet user's true identity. Virginia passed a similar statute last year.

The debate over anonymous online speech has heated to a boil in recent years, with companies and individuals increasingly seeking to have ISPs and Web publishers subpoenaed to learn the names of online critics and people suspected of copyright violations. Yahoo alone expects to receive 600 civil subpoenas this year -- a 50 percent jump from 2002.

Such requests seek a variety of personal information about Internet users, including full names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and pseudonyms they've used online.

The California legislation would require ISPs to send copies of civil subpoenas to their customers by registered mail within 14 days of receiving them. If the customer decides to fight the request, he or she would have 30 days to serve both the ISP and the issuing party with written copies of the objection.

ISPs that fail to comply with the act could be sued by their customers.

"This bill would mean more privacy for regular Internet users," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58720,00.html

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We’ve seen it all before
Lawrence Lessig

There’s a standard dance that the IP extremists do well: When they lose in Congress, they go overseas and negotiate a treaty that imposes on the US the same obligation they just lost in Congress; then they come back and say, “we must do this to live up to our international obligations.”

So here we go again: The US Trade Representative is negotiating trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. The agreements essentially require these two countries to adopt the DMCA, and make it a violation of “our international obligations” if we were to change the DMCA. Representatives Lofgren and Boucher — who both have bills introduced to amend the DMCA — have written a strongly worded letter to the USTR asking for clarification. For consistent with this policy making process, just what is being promised is never made clear — until it is too late. Here’s the letter.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...4.shtml#001123

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Madonna's borderline MP3 tactics
Mark Rasch

The material girl's foul-mouthed revenge on music traders could be interpreted as a deceptive trade practice, or even outright fraud, says Mark Rasch, SecurityFocus columnist.

Virginia's new anti-spam law makes it a criminal offense to send e- mail with inaccurate and deceptive source or header information. The new PROTECT Act signed by President Bush similarly makes it a federal offense for online pornographers to obtain or use misleading domain names to induce individuals to surf unwittingly to porn sites. At the same time, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a series of civil complaints against "porn-spammers" alleging that spoofed source information and misleading subject lines constitutes a deceptive trade practice.

Can this mean that Madonna goes to jail?

The recording industry won and lost in a series of cases in late April. In separate decisions, they won the ability to subpoena the names of p2p users from Verizon's online services, but they lost the ability (at least for now) to pursue direct or contributory infringement lawsuits against the distributors of p2p software.

One method of "self-help" employed by the record and motion picture companies is to attempt to flood the p2p networks with bogus material -- files that are labeled as, and appear to be, genuine copyrighted work (they are the correct format and file size), but contain either no data, or, in the case of Louise Veronica Ciccone (a/ k/a "Madonna"), contain a voice file asking, "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?"

One response of the p2p users has been to hack back -- defacing the RIAA website, or hacking Madonna's webpage and inserting copies of her own music for download. Another is to use IP filtering to block p2p downloads from known RIAA or MPAA sites.

Here's how it would work: The FTC's theory of liability in the "porn- spammer" cases is that the header information or subject line of a mass e-mail is deceptive or fraudulent, and is intended to induce the recipient to open the file, and thereby see the advertisement that they would not otherwise have seen. The FTC does not -- at least not in these complaints -- allege that the underlying advertisement itself is false or deceptive; just the descriptions.

Similarly, the PROTECT act makes it a federal crime to use a misleading domain name to trick people into viewing obscene materials or to trick children into viewing materials that are "harmful to minors."

The message from these laws (and various anti-spam laws across the country) appears to be that using fictitious headers, names, or descriptions in interstate or foreign commerce in order to induce someone to act is an offense -- either a crime or, at a minimum, a "deceptive trade practice."

This may be bad news for those who post fake files on Kazaa.

The FTC has general authority over false or misleading advertisements, derived from Title 15 USC Section 45(a)(1), which says that "... [u]nfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." This grant of jurisdiction is remarkably broad, and is limited only to a showing that the act or practice is "deceptive" and is either "in commerce" or "affects commerce" -- not that the act itself be commercial.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30559.html

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On the Net ... with UPI
Marie Horrigan

ITUNES LAUNCH BREAKS 1M SONGS SOLD

Apple's new iTunes online music service says it has sold more than 1 million songs in its first week on the Net -- more than half of which were bought as entire albums -- breaking expectations on the service's success. "In less than one week we've broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world," Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive officer, said in a company statement. According to Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris, "Our internal measure of success was having the iTunes Music Store sell 1 million songs in the first month. To do this in one week is an over-the-top success." More than 1 million copies of the music service's software were downloaded in the past week, the company said, and Apple has received orders for more than 110,000 of its new iPod music players. More than 3,200 new tracks will be added to iTunes Tuesday to boost the 200,000-song playlist offered at the service's launch.

-0-

FASTER INTERNET LEADING TO E-COMMERCE BOOM

The growing use of broadband technology is leading to a boom in e-commerce, despite the continued economic downturn, InformationWeek reports. According to an e-commerce study by market-research eMarketer, U.S. consumers will spend more than $133 billion online in 2005, up nearly 50 percent from a projected $90.1 billion in 2003. The report, titled North America E-Commerce, B2C & B2B, also projects the average annual amount spent online among U.S. Internet users over age 14 -- excluding travel purchases -- should rise to $928 in 2005, up 30 percent from this year's $717. The expected boom can be attributed to increased experience online, the narrowing digital divide, and the shake out among e-tailers since 2001, said eMarketer senior analyst Ross Rubin. "Yet a fourth factor now comes into play: the increasing availability and adoption of broadband. Add in refinement in marketing and transaction techniques, and it's little wonder that consumers are doing more of their shopping and buying online," Rubin said.

-0-

RECORD INDUSTRY 'IM'S P2P USERS

The music industry is reaching out directly to peer-to-peer file sharers, using instant message, or IM, technology to warn them file-swapping is illegal, the Recording Industry Association of America announced last week. "The music industry's instant message campaign is designed to inform people that distributing or downloading copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks is illegal; that they are not anonymous when they do it; and that they risk legal penalties if they engage in this illegal activity," said RIAA President Cary Sherman. The RIAA will send out the approximately 150 word message using the IM function of certain P2P networks such as KaZaA and Grokster. "Distributing or downloading copyrighted music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is ILLEGAL," the IM warns in part. "It hurts songwriters who create and musicians who perform the music you love, and all the other people who bring you music."

-0-

NEW PC-MONITORING SOFTWARE

Software development firm Computer B.O.S.S. Monday introduced the first parental personal computer- monitoring program, which it says gives parents increased protection over filters and blockers without restricting access to educational resources on the Internet. The Safety-Net program lets parents record and review what is on their PC screen at set intervals, the company said, often when kids are home alone. Images of the PC screen are recorded and date- and time-stamped and saved in a password-protected file to be accessed by the parents, while kids are unaware they are being monitored. According to Computer B.O.S.S. President Audrone Krinke, "Safety-Net helps parents spot potential problems at the outset and take necessary steps to correct problems before they become a threat to the family's safety."

-0-

ODD ONLINE SEARCHES

The folks at MSN.com have been snooping around, digging up the weirdest Internet search terms among Britons. The British Broadcasting Corp. says its list of the least popular search terms -- that only a handful of people and in some cases only one -- have looked for begins with "walking with woodlice." That is followed by sausage calories, monkey origami, queen's blue peter badges, black pudding throwing, hedgehog houses, ham sandwich digestion, rules of naked petanque, love of stones, U.K. places with "Z" in the name, how to be a Texas ranger, tropical fish euthanasia, virtual geese honking, zebra races, walking stick making and zoo heaven. "Not everyone is into hard news, hot celebrities and soap gossip," Robin Kellet, MSN search marketing manager, told the BBC. (Thanks to UPI's Ellen Beck)

-0-

Got a tip for UPI's On the Net? Send an e-mail to sciencedesk@upi.com.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...5-063930-6348r

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The Next Evolution of E-Commerce - Tango Trade
Press release

A small 'garage' based Southern California company has innovated upon existing Internet technologies to create the next evolution of e-commerce. Usage and proof of concept has received overwhelming response during its beta phase and is soon ready for the mass market. Tango Trade, a real-time peer-to-peer trading community was the brainchild of Robert Latko during 1996. "Ever since I saw Pointcast, a client/server desktop application that pushed news information to a user's desktop, I thought what a spectacular potential this would be for direct procurement in the B2B and B2C markets. Imagine having real-time trading opportunities sent to you on your desktop," says Robert Latko.

"As I began to code this application I was amazed at the overallpossibilities and opportunities this technology would have," says John Anderson III, the software developer of Tango Trade. "Imagine having a
transactional component, like eBay, a peer-to-peer component, like Napster, and a chat/IM component, like AIM or Yahoo Messenger, smashed into one application -- you then have Tango Trade."

"Now we trade technology assets in real-time," says Mr. Latko, "but we are currently looking for strong strategic partners to assist in the further development of this business, entry into other vertical markets, and overall business development."

About Tango Trade, Inc.

Tango Trade, Inc. is the first of its kind creator of a real time peer-to- peer marketplace in the B2B and B2C markets. The Tango Trade community application incorporates peer-to-peer, chat/Instant Message, and real-time negotiation technologies into one community of buyers and sellers. Tango Trade has innovated on the current Internet environment for the next evolution of E-commerce. For more information go to http://www.tangotrade.net or download the desktop application at http://www.tangotrade.net/tngcur.exe
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+08:16+AM

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The God Save Us All Dept: “The Commies Are Coming!” and Other P2P Hysteria
James D. Miller

By legalizing Internet file-trading tools, a California court handed a major victory to communism. The Internet allows the well-wired to take copyrighted material freely. Left unchecked, rampant copyright theft may soon destroy the for-profit production of movies, music and books and may usher in an age of digital communism.

Technology will soon increase the ease of copyright theft because as broadband access proliferates, more people will be able to download pirated movies and music quickly. Currently, authors are safe from Internet piracy because most book readers still prefer printed words to electronic text. We may soon, however, see electronic paper that is as easy to read as printed pulp. How much money would Tom Clancy be able to make when readers can download all his books freely in under a second? Can you imagine college students paying $75 for a textbook they could download for free?

The best hope to stop copyright piracy lies in stopping the distribution of peer-to-peer networks that facilitate such theft. By holding that these networks have no liability for inappropriate use of their tools the California court has reduced the value of digital property rights.

Some have claimed that Internet piracy simply represents another form of competition and all copyright holders need do to compete successfully is to lower prices. But a central tenant of economics holds that if multiple firms sell identical products, consumers will patronize the lowest price provider. If pirates give away their product for free, content providers can compete only by also charging nothing.

The ability to exclude is the essence of property rights. If I "own" land but anyone can trespass I don't really have any property rights. Similarly, if I own a movie, but anyone can freely watch it, my rights have disappeared.

Is it necessarily bad if piracy destroys intellectual property rights? After all, when everything is free we can live out Karl Marx's dream and have everyone take according to his needs.
http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...ller050603.asp

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Seosan Journal

Illegal file peddling all the rage
Digital information, media sell at rock-bottom prices
Kim Won-bae

Joongang Ilbo, Korea - Anything and everything in digital file format is being traded online at bargain-basement prices or even shared free of charge, representing a huge black market that has so far evaded authorities.

Enyou is a popular site among people trading in full-length new-release movies, sitcom episodes and music, all at a few cents apiece. The movie “Chicago,” now playing in theaters, is available on two CDs for 200 won (17 cents) each. Episodes of the U.S. sitcom “Friends” were listed at 50 won each. The so-called “Ms. H” sex video, which was alleged to be hidden camera footage of a popular actress, was listed on dozens of bulletin boards at the site, at prices ranging from 50 won to 250 won.

Surfers, who do not need to sign up to use the site’s services, can charge a block of cyber cash on their mobile telephone bills in order to go shopping online. A user who sells files through the site’s file sharing application gives the service provider a cut of the profits.

There are at least five such sites providing file trading services, and there are scores of other services that simply offer peer-to-peer file sharing.

Enyou has been up and running since last July, and approximately 1,300 registered file traders use the site’s bulletin boards to advertise their files. Another site, Onfile, also has about 1,000 users on the selling end, and “My Shoppy” has about 100 sellers.

Just about anything that is in digital file format is up for grabs: MP3 music files, music videos, films, educational lectures tapes, digital dictionaries and computer programs.

The user-friendliness of such sites for both buyer and seller has yielded a wide range of users. An operator of one of the file trading sites said there are teenage sellers making up to 1 million won a month.

The proliferation of file trading and exchange services and their increased use have become a major concern among online supervision officials. Unauthorized use of obviously pirated materials and the easy availability of materials inappropriate for younger Web users are at the top of their concerns.

One person who uses four sites to advertise his files said 99 percent of his products are illegal copies of original material. Of his 750 gigabytes of files, equivalent to the information stored in about 1,070 CDs, no more than 10 gigabytes were legally obtained, he said. Even so, much of this legal material becomes illegal as soon as it is made available to others online.

The head of online supervision at the Korean Society of Image Arts and Media, Bae Won-jik, said that the sales and sharing on these online sites is no different from the offline distribution of unauthorized copies of videotapes or CDs. “It is illegal commercial activity that violates copyright law,” he said.

The copyright law in Korea requires that the copyright holder first press charges before other charges can be brought against the purchaser or seller. Film and music industry officials say this is exactly what they plan to do.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/20030...090409041.html

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Surveillance Nation
Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann

"Give me Duquesne minus 7, for a nickel."

It was February 1965 on a lonely section of Los Angeles's Sunset Boulevard, and Charles Katz, one of life's little losers, was placing an illegal sports bet over a public telephone. Unbeknownst to Katz, however, the FBI had placed a microphone atop the telephone booth to record this small-time gambler's conversations.

Engineers often mock the law for lagging behind technology. In fact, the law is often far ahead of it. This time it was ahead by nearly 200 years, for after Katz's arrest his lawyers argued that although the framers of the Constitution could not possibly have encountered tape recorders and telephone booths, the Fourth Amendment's ban on "unreasonable" searches nonetheless covered them. Because the FBI had no search warrant, Katz's lawyers said, bugging the phone booth was illegal. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court agreed, affirming for the first time that electronic surveillance was-constitutionally speaking-a search. "No less than an individual in a business office, in a friend's apartment, or in a taxicab," the majority declared, "a person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment."

Equally important was Justice John Harlan's concurring opinion. The government, he argued, could not freely eavesdrop in any place where people have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"-a phrase that even now, four decades later, resonates in the laboratory of Wayne Wolf. An electrical engineer at Princeton University, Wolf leads a research team that is creating a tiny, inexpensive video camera one might glibly describe as a lens glued to a chip. In theory, the camera could be the size of a postage stamp and cost as little as $10, "small and cheap enough to scatter by the dozen," as Wolf puts it. The laws of optics dictate that tiny lenses make low-resolution images, so the researchers are developing software that melds video from multiple cameras located in a single area, producing sharp, real-time images of the entire space. "You could stick them up all over a building and know exactly what was going on inside," Wolf says. "A lot of people would find a use for that."

These networks of tiny cameras-and the host of other surveillance technologies that are now being unveiled-are both tributes to innovation and, as Wolf acknowledges, potential menaces to personal privacy. Indeed, the new marriage of ever smaller lenses and sensors, ever larger databases, and ever faster computers is making surveillance so cheap and commonplace that it is on the way to creating a state of nearly universal surveillance.
http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/05/173238

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Making cents off online music
Jefferson Graham

Are Americans finally ready to start paying for online music? The recording and technology worlds seem to think so, judging by recent developments: Apple unveiled its long-rumored music download service, which offers per-song downloads from all five major record companies at 99 cents a track, without requiring a monthly subscription fee. Real Networks paid $36 million for Listen.com, which has won raves for its Rhapsody subscription service, in contrast to Real's much-maligned, co-owned MusicNet. "It seems the market is turning," says Lee Black of market research firm Jupiter Media. "There's renewed energy." Black says existing pay-music services -- Pressplay, MusicNet, Rhapsody, MusicMatchMX, eMusic and assorted others -- total fewer than 300,000 subscribers. Peer-to-peer system KaZaA has 214 million registered users. "It's hard to beat free," says Black, who predicts that the KaZaAs will continue to dominate in the short term but projects that the pay services will reap $50 million this year, growing to $100 million in 2004. Skeptics might wonder how Apple, which has a 4 percent share of the computer market, can succeed selling digital music. "You have to really triple that number in terms of its impact" because its Powerbooks, iMacs and eMacs are popular among college students, graphic designers and music fans, says Phil Leigh with research firm Raymond James. Plus, Apple's iPod, which works with both Macs and Windows PCs, dominates the $500 million portable digital player market with 26 percent, extending the company's reach. Early testers of Apple's new service say it's as easy to use as buying a book on Amazon.com. The system seamlessly works with Apple's free iTunes jukebox software and with the iPod, the company's digital music player. Downloads of single tunes are available at sites such as Bestbuy. com ( www.bestbuy.com ) and Samgoody.com ( www.samgoody.com ), but the offerings aren't very deep and pricing is all over the map. The new Madonna single, "American Life," is available for $1.49 at Best Buy, while "Before You Love" by Kelly Clarkson is $2.49. Apple's service offers a much wider selection and consistent pricing, with songs that easily can be moved to portables or burned to CDs.
http://www.detnews.com/2003/technolo...h05-154806.htm

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Police Raid College Dorm To Bust Up Another File- Sharing Network
Direct Connect Bust At Ohio State

A college residence hall was raided by police and computers were seized as another illegal file-sharing network came crumbling down.

The Ohio State University Police Department served search warrants at four campus dormitories Monday and seized five computers authorities believe were used to freely offer copyrighted works to nearly 3,000 users, according to a police spokesperson. The files were shared over the university's residence hall network ResNet using the file- sharing application Direct Connect.

No charges have been filed against any students so far, and an investigation is ongoing.

The warrants and seizures are the culmination of a three-month investigation of the seven-month-old network by police and OSU's Office of Information Technology.

This incident comes just days after four college students believed to have established and maintained similar intranet networks on three other college campuses settled lawsuits with the Recording Industry Association of America. The students agreed to pay between $12,000 and $17,000 each (see "Sued College Students Settle With RIAA").

Ohio State University was among the several hundred schools that received letters from the Recording Industry Association of America warning presidents of the illegality of and bandwidth traffic caused by illegal file-sharing over the institution's network.

This bust wasn't promoted by the RIAA, however, a spokesperson said. And it's not yet known whether music files were among those being traded since the police report didn't specify. The recording industry is known to have alerted college and university officials to the suspected file-sharing that proliferated on their school networks. One school that claimed to have received an average of 30 such calls each week, New Jersey Institute of Technology, passed a resolution in the school senate to block access to all peer-to-peer networks, despite the fact that a federal judge determined networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus were perfectly legal (see "Morpheus, Grokster Are A- OK, Judge Says").

A recording industry spokesperson did not return calls by press time.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/147...headlines=true

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Band plays at support rally for busted file sharer
College Students Bond Over File-Swapping Suit
Stanley Miller and Dan Egan

Houghton, Mich. - Michigan Technological University is not known as a hotbed of student activism - the budding engineers on this campus carved from the frigid forests of the Upper Peninsula are typically squinting too hard at algorithms to be focused on changing the world.

Just ask an undergraduate about the last student demonstration on campus: "During Vietnam, there was a protest - for the war," says computer engineering major Andrew Barwis.

But that apathy changed to outrage last weekend, when 200 to 300 students rallied for a campus "golden child" whose reputation - and, potentially, financial future - was jeopardized in a highly publicized lawsuit filed last month by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The music industry is struggling to stop falling CD sales, which it blames on Internet music piracy. Suing people who are illegally distributing music online is one of several strategies the industry hopes will discourage people from stealing music. Although suing everyone who is distributing music on the Internet might be logistically impossible, anyone violating copyright laws could be singled out for legal action.

That's what happened to Michigan Tech undergraduate Joe Nievelt, who settled out of court Thursday, agreeing to pay $15,000 to the RIAA for his copyright infringements.

Nievelt, who declined to comment for this story, had been sued for providing free music over the university's computer network. The RIAA sought $150,000 for each file he indexed and made available through his site. Nievelt reportedly had 650,000 files listed. In theory, that could have been about $98 billion worth of trouble for a 21-year-old who didn't make a penny off the operation.

The RIAA also settled similar lawsuits last week involving a student at Princeton University in New Jersey and two from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Barwis thinks the RIAA lawsuits intentionally went after good students at top universities, noting that Nievelt is almost universally admired among the 6,500 students at Michigan Tech as a BMOC, as in "Big Mind on Campus." Through various competitions, Nievelt has already earned a reputation as one of America's top young computer programmers.

"Joe is kind of one of the golden children at MTU," Barwis said. "He's exceptionally looked up to as a really smart kid."

While this round of lawsuits might be over, the anger isn't, even at Michigan Tech. This is, after all, an issue that hits these students where it matters most - right in their hard drives.

"This is a cause that everybody can relate to. Everybody downloads music," said freshman Jon Woods, a computer science major and organizer of last weekend's rally. "I think a lot of people got involved because they realized, 'Hey, this could have been me.' "
http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/may03/138411.asp

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RIAA is 'Running Out of Time'
George Ziemann

On May 14, 2003, at the DMCA hearings at UCLA Law School in Los, Angeles, California, I am scheduled to speak on the current exemption enjoyed by libraries and educational institutions to bypass copy protection of malfunctioning machines.

One facet which must be addressed are the changes in the marketplace which have occurred during the past three years.

I will use this opportunity to offer to the United States Copyright Office the entire contents of the www.riaa.org and www.azoz.com websites as evidence that the RIAA and the five major labels have pooled their copyrights in a collusion to exempt the product of the tens of thousands of independent artists in the United States (not to mention the rest of the world) from the marketplace by casting dispersions on the very morality of the act of file sharing, manipulating the market to create a pay-per-play society in which they possess the only recognized "legal" product, and lying to the government in order to promote the false claim of "piracy" in the form of unauthorized downloads as the cause of the industry decline.

There is no empirical data to support this latter claim.

My argument will basically be the same counter-claim David Boies used in the Napster case, with the 9th District Court's analysis of why Boies' argument was not relevant to the Napster case. The difference is simple. Napster was infringing on copyrights. We (the independents) had an opportunity to negotiate separately. Therefore, even though the court recognized a monopoly did, in fact, exist, their collusion was justified in light of the infringing activity.

This time the collusion is designed to exempt the independents from the market place. Because for the first time in history, we don't need them.

I don't need a lawyer. Much as Don Henley did with the payola accusation, I will make my charges directly to the United States government. They cannot be ignored.

Under the antitrust laws, the burden of proof is on the accused.

At this time, Hayden's Wall would also like to take this opportunity to offer a song for authorized public consumption. We would like to dedicate this song to the Recording Industry Association of America as their new theme song.

Any independent artists who wish to become a co-plaintiff in this case are encouraged to let me know of this intent and lend their name to the cause. Please provide a name, address and phone number. Those who have submitted their names prior to 12:01 a.m. May 13 (MST) will be offered as part of the evidence submitted to the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office.
http://www.azoz.com/

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Cyber Age:: No longer the Sound of Music
ND Batra

THE young and the restless don’t want to pay for online music. They want to download it free and share it with their friends. That’s what they tell me every semester when I ask them the question about the ethical and legal aspects of Internet music sharing. And that makes the Recording Industry Association of America mad like hell. Through prolonged legal battles, the RIAA closed down Napster, the file sharing system developed by a college student, Shawn Fanning, which brought about a veritable revolution in our thinking about the endless possibilities of the Internet.

The judicial killing of Napster did not kill the idea of file sharing, one of the most innovative killer applications that has made the Internet so popular with the young and the rest. Napster’s wanton killing has sprouted myriad other file sharing systems, most beyond the reach of the law. Consider KaZaA, the most widely used file-sharing programme with more than 60 million users worldwide, which so far neither RIAA nor anyone else has been able to close down.

Napster was held responsible for contributory infringement of copyright because it used a central server to catalogue files to be shared. The court ordered it to shut down until it could screen out illegal sharing of copyrighted music. Napster could not do it and died, but programs like KaZaA, Grokster and Morpheus are technically decentralised and distribute systems; and while providing exchange platforms, they cannot trace who is sharing what, thus, leaving the legal responsibility to users. If a technology has legal uses but some people use it for illegal purposes, the technology cannot be banned, especially when the marketplace demands it. In the ultimate analysis, law follows the marketplace in a capitalist system. This does not mean that copyright has become irrelevant in the Internet age.

On 25 April, a Los Angels court ruled that Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which like KaZaA offer peer-to-peer file sharing programs, are not liable for contributory copyright infringement because the technology they use does not allow them to exercise any control over what is being shared. The companies’ online music swapping programmes are no different from video-cassette recorders, which people use for recording television programmes. In 1984 another court had ruled in a case involving Sony that VCRs were legal because they were used for time-shifting allowing people to watch programmes when they wanted. The manufacturers could not be held responsible if some people used VCRs illegally. KaZaA distributed by Sherman Network is based outside the USA and is not affected by the ruling. But that is an international jurisdictional issue for the future.

If the Los Angeles court ruling holds on appeal, music and movie companies would be forced to pursue individual violators rather than companies that provide sharing software. In this regard, in another case, a court ruled that the telecommunications company, Verizon, an Internet service provider, must disclose to music companies the names of two individual users who have been trading songs on the Internet. By pursuing some of the biggest violators, the industry wants to strike terror in the hearts of millions. Last month the RIAA sued four college students at Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Michigan Technological University, alleging that they were running file-sharing sites and asked for maximum damages allowable under the law, $150,000 per copyright violation.

Wired News reported that the recording industry is ironically using the instant messaging services of KaZaA and Grokster, two of the music industry’s worst nightmares, to reach out to illegal file music traders and warn them of the terrible legal consequences they face. “When you break the law, you risk legal penalties…When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous, and you can easily be identified. Disable the share feature or uninstall your file-sharing software.” Unfortunately threats and lawsuits don’t always work, when millions of people, especially the youth, believe that music sharing is their fundamental right. What might help the music and movie industry is a sensible business model that makes music and movies available inexpensively.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.new...ess=1&id=12491

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iTunes Music Store Sells Over One Million Songs in First Week
Press Release

Apple today announced that its revolutionary iTunes® Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, dispelling concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales. In addition, over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once, demonstrating the breadth of musical tastes served by Apple's groundbreaking online store. Apple also reported that over one million copies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and that it has received orders for over 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago, with music lovers snapping up more than 20,000 of them from stores in the U.S. this weekend.

“In less than one week we’ve broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age—you can purchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods.”

“Hitting one million songs in less than a week was totally unexpected,” said Roger Ames, Warner Music Group’s chairman and CEO. “Apple has shown music fans, artists and the music industry as a whole that there really is a successful and easy way of legally distributing music over the Internet.”

“Our internal measure of success was having the iTunes Music Store sell one million songs in the first month. To do this in one week is an over-the-top success,” said Doug Morris, Universal Music Group’s CEO. “Apple definitely got it right with the iTunes Music Store.”

Apple also announced that tomorrow, May 6, the iTunes Music Store will be adding over 3,200 new tracks, including major new album releases such as Jack Johnson’s “On and On,” Andrea Bocelli’s “Tosca” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Will,” as well as pre-release tracks from upcoming albums by artists David Sanborn, The RH Factor, John Scofield, Jesse Harris and Lizz Wright. Also to be added tomorrow are additional albums from the Eagles, Michelle Branch’s album “The Spirit Room,” and new Featured Artist pages for Coldplay, including an exclusive track and music video, and Alanis Morissette, with her catalog of music.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003...usicstore.html

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The sound, um, sucks
Apple downloads ring sour note
Sound quality doesn’t match up to excellent user experience
Gary Krakow

All hail Apple’s iTunes Music Store. It’s very well thought out, and beautifully executed. If only as much thought had gone into the sound quality, which is far from beautiful.

THE INTERNET is nearly the perfect medium for downloading music, video and more, as anyone who has ever played with Napster or other file-sharing services knows. But with the music industry up in arms about stolen royalties, something had to be done to give them and the musicians their share of the pie, and companies have been struggling to find ways to do it. You have to give Apple a lot of credit for figuring out a really neat way to tap into this huge market for downloads — and for getting lots of publicity for its launch.

Overall, Apple’s music store is a pleasure to use. It’s easy, fast and efficient. It’s so easy — and mindless — I can see users (assuming they have both a Mac and OS X) spending lots of money downloading music.

My biggest problem, however, is with the quality of the downloads.

Apple has chosen AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) compression for the music. (AAC is actually Dolby’s version of the MPEG-4 audio codec.) Apple says AAC is more efficient than older formats like MP3 and that “expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 kbps (stereo) to be virtually indistinguishable from the uncompressed audio source.”

I’d love to meet those experts.

Last night, I downloaded the latest album by The Wallflowers to hear what Apple’s downloads sound like compared to the “real” CD, which I own. After my one-click download, I burned a CD of the cuts. The CD played on the Apple computer, on my PC and in my two standalone DVD players. (Any device that can play a DVD can play burned copies of Apple’s AAC-compressed songs.)

The burned disk did NOT play in any of my CD players. Not in the ones hooked up to my stereo, my portable players, or even in an old laptop without DVD capabilities. Nor did they play on either of my older MP3 players.

It’s true: Apple’s AAC cuts sound great with the tiny little speakers that come with computers. And they sound pretty good on an original (but AAC upgraded) iPod through the stock headphones. But listen through good headphones and what you’ll hear is dull-sounding bass, slightly sibilant voice quality and a lack of three- dimensionality.

When I moved up to the DVD player connected to my stereo, the difference was huge. The AAC cuts had a complete lack of air around the singer and instruments in the band. The sound quality was somewhat dynamic, but dull sounding. When I compared the downloaded songs to the real CD it was no contest. The uncompressed CD .AIFF files sounded much, much, much better.

This might not matter to most people, but consider this: The Wallflowers CD cost me $11.99 when I bought it. I can make as many legal copies as I like for my personal use — and those copies all sound great and play on any device I can think of. I can also rip the songs onto my MP3 players and the iPod. The Wallflowers download from iTunes cost me $9.99, is limited in where I can play and store it — and the sound is inferior.

Even if you think AAC cuts are good enough for your listening needs, you’re paying way too much for this near-CD quality when a few cents more per cut can get you the real thing. Apple should consider slashing the price of their music to reflect the ultimate quality of its offerings. For now, I’ll stick with CDs.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/909907.asp?cp1=1

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Creative: 60GB NOMAD Zen Dwarfs iPod
Nate Mook

Looking to draw Windows users away from Apple's wildly popular iPod, Creative has released a mammoth update to its NOMAD Jukebox Zen portable audio player. The hard drive based Zen boasts an immense storage capacity of 60GB - twice that of largest iPod.

The NOMAD Jukebox Zen sports a sleek aluminum case and USB 2.0 connectivity for fast song transfers. Creative has priced the Zen at $400, $100 cheaper than Apple's new 30GB iPod.

"We've heard from our users that they would love to see a huge capacity NOMAD Jukebox Zen to take

their entire music library and their digital files wherever they go," said Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo. "And of course they demanded a great price. With the NOMAD Jukebox Zen with 60GB we've delivered a breakthrough capacity in a portable player."

Creative claims a battery life of 14 hours in the NOMAD Jukebox Zen, slightly higher than that of the iPod. The Zen offers the ability to edit playlists directly on the device, and a "Find" function to quality search thousands of songs. An optional FM Wired Remote is also available featuring an FM tuner and microphone.

But despite Creative's superior capacity and lower price, Apple has leapfrogged its competitors in terms of dollar market share. According to NPDTechworld, Apple held 27 percent of the market in the fourth quarter of last year, followed by S3's Rio unit with 10 percent.

Apple's third generation iPods debut May 2, while Creative expects to ship the 60GB NOMAD Jukebox Zen later this month.
http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1051847846

Creative Press Release
http://www.americas.creative.com/cor...ID=334&nav=200

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Interview With A Sued Swapper

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A story we talked about yesterday want to pick up again today. The recording industry opening up a new front in its fight against file sharing over the Internet. For the very first time, individuals are paying damages for the very first time over accusations of music downloading. Four college students have agreed to pay between $12,000 and $17,000 to settle a lawsuit. None has admitted to any wrongdoing. On Sunday, students at Rensaleer (ph) Polytech Institute in upstate New York showed their support for one of the students, Jesse Jordan. Jesse's an RPI freshman. He'll pay $12,000 in that settlement.
Jesse Jordan is live with us today from Albany, New York, along with his father, Andy Jordan, who's live in New York City.

Good morning to both of you.

Hey, Jesse, why do you think the government came after you?

JESSE JORDAN, SETTLED LAWSUIT WITH RECORDING INDUSTRY: Well, actually it was the recording industry association. I believe they came after me to make an example, because they are trying to fight piracy at college campuses.

HEMMER: You run a search engine at your campus, right?

JORDAN: Yes, my search engine is much like Google. You can pretty much use it to search for any type of file.

HEMMER: Jesse, could I access music on that search engine?

JORDAN: You could search for music, you could search for any other type of file as well.

HEMMER: So If I found music, could I download it to my computer?

JORDAN: Yes, you could download music. You can do that from any search engine as well. Actually, Alta Vista has their own MP3 search engine which you can use to download music.

HEMMER: So if that's the case then, what did the government -- or I'm sorry, I apologize again -- what did the RIAA, the recording industry, come after you and say that you were guilty of?

JORDAN: They said I'm guilty of contributory copyright infringement, which would mean that I assist people in downloading copyrighted material and direct infringement.

HEMMER: So you agreed to pay $12,000. You're not admitting any guilt here. Why pay the money, Jesse?

JORDAN: I don't really have the resources to defend this case in court, so I don't really have much of a choice. I also don't have the time, because I'm very busy in college.

HEMMER: Andy, do you think, with the case of your son right now, how do you categorize this? A case of intimidation?

ANDY JORDAN, JESSE'S FATHER: Well, it's -- I categorize it as an elaborate publicity stunt. Nothing more, nothing less.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/06/ltm.03.html

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The most recent raft of aggressive tactics engaged by the music industry in its battle against peer-to-peer music pirates is causing an outcry among ISPs, individuals and proponents of Internet privacy laws alike.

Is the Mp3 Honeymoon at an End?
Rikki Stancich

Music companies, including EMI, BMG, Sony, Vivendi and other major players have been quietly investing in the development of programs intended to thwart the process of file sharing. The solutions developed to date vary in their degree of aggressiveness – some act merely as a Trojan horse, redirecting users attempting to download free music files to a site where the files can be legally purchased. Others have been designed to search through the hard drive of users’ computers, deleting illegally downloaded music files. More aggressive programs range from freezing the user’s computer for a given time-period, to blocking network access to individuals attempting to download files illegally.

The latter have raised concerns over their potential infringement of online privacy laws. While the technology companies developing these solutions to combat copyright infringement claim to steer their clients away from invasive tactics, it would appear that the music industry is determined to be as proactive as is possible, within the law. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently engaged leading Internet Service Provider, Verizon, via the federal court, demanding the identities of users who have illegally downloaded music.

While on the one hand, ISPs are keen to deter downloading of illegal files due to the amount of bandwidth it takes up, they are also skeptical of anti-piracy programs, given the issues relating to connectivity and network accessibility for paying users.

The trend among record companies to develop programs intended to thwart online music piracy has been a response to the apparent impotency of legal avenues to curb the incidence of file sharing, which has caused a huge decline in revenues for the music industry and artists alike.

The recent landmark decision by a federal judge that has ruled that P2P (peer-to-peer) software companies Grokster and Streamcast are not liable for copyright infringements by users of their software will most likely serve to further antagonize the music industry. However, it is believed that many of the tactics being developed by the music industry will never see the light of day given their legal ambiguity.

"So it seems the music industry's answer to illegal file sharing is to adopt tactics that just as illegal as actions of the very pirates they aim to prevent", said online activist Simon Butt "I guess it takes a criminal to catch a thief in their view", Butt noted.
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=569

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Grokster: The Record Industry's Legal Strategy Suffers a Major Setback
If a product has both infringing and non-infringing uses, when can the manufacturer be held liable for the infringing uses?
Mark F. Radcliffe

Friday a week ago, a federal district court in Los Angeles found that Grokster and Streamcast did not violate the copyright law by distributing their software. These successors to Napster pose a significant threat to the content industries, because the users of these software programs exchange millions of unauthorized copies of copyrighted music and movies. Yet the problem is not a simple one: Grokster and Streamcast did not make the unauthorized copies themselves, instead their software permits direct transfer of files between individuals and, thus, it is the individuals who are violating copyright law.

The issue poses a difficult policy question: if a product has both infringing and non-infringing
uses, when can the manufacturer be held liable for the infringing uses? Although press attention has been focussed on peer to peer software, the issue is a much broader one: computers can be used to make unauthorized copies of music as well as run licensed software and copy machines can be used to make illegal copies as well as legal ones.

In this case, the court found that, unlike Napster, the Grokster and Streamcast software did not have a central registry and thus the companies did not have the level of knowledge and level of control required to make them liable for copyright infringement. The case will undoubtedly be appealed. Yet this loss (and an earlier loss against KaZaa in Belgium) demonstrates the fragility of the recording industy's legal campaign against these products: courts may be reluctant to agree with the record industry's attempt to expand the scope of copyright law to find StreamCast and Grokster liable because of the broader effect of the ruling. While lawsuits will continue to be an important element in the recording industry' s response to peer to peer software, this loss emphasizes the need for the recording industry to swiftly establish a practical, broad based distribution of authorized digital copies.

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...?id=P335_0_3_0

[JackSpratts]

Copy and Burn: 'a Pirate's Life for Me'
Ryan Hume

Aarrggghh, mateys! 'Tis a sad day for those pirates sailing the silicon seas in search of that latest Britney Spears download or the new cuts from the upcoming Radiohead album. Aye, the virtual sea can truly be a devastating mistress, and there are record companies out there that just don't respect the pirate's wish for free musical accompaniment to boisterous bouts of spiced rum and plank-walking parties.

No, today's modern pirate just isn't satisfied with a gut-wrenching chorus of Yo-ho, Yo-HO! any longer. They want to spin on their peg legs and get freaky to Pink's "Get This Party Started" or get rowdy during the extended solo on a bootlegged live version of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" while playing air guitar on a disgruntled parrot. And strangely enough, they have the audacity to want to do this all for FREE!

Yet there is an organization out there - as vile as the King of England - that wants to put a stop to music piracy at any cost. This organization is known as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has recently been developing technologies that will invade the privacy of millions of Americans' home computers, which could result in, if they are able to proceed, perhaps the largest destruction of virtual privacy since the most infamous of government organizations was created last year, the dread Total Information Awareness Network.

http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/d.../3eb881109ea85

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Gates Touts New Secure Computing System
Matthew Fordahl
AP

Consumers shouldn't be worried that Microsoft Corp.'s new security technology will wrest control of their PCs and give it to media companies, Bill Gates said Tuesday. They can always choose not to use it, he said.

The Microsoft co-founder expects consumers as well as governments and businesses to embrace the system, which hard-wires security into silicon chips rather than just software. It's designed to offer unprecedented levels of protection against hacking and eavesdropping.

"This is a mechanism that if people want to use, for example, to protect medical records, they can use it," Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's a lot of work to do this stuff, and we think consumers will want those privacy guarantees. If they don't want them, then fine, ask me about our other work."

The technology has raised eyebrows not only for the absolute control it would grant such creators of digital content as music and movie companies but also because it is being driven by Microsoft, which has a reputation for strong-arming the computer industry.

Gates spoke about the technology, known officially as the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base," at the 12th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, where developers were getting their first look at it.

The technology is a key element of the software giant's effort to create a more secure computing environment, which would be a tremendous boon, Gates said.

In the first demonstration of how the system would work, the company showed Tuesday how programs protected by the technology could not be altered or their communications intercepted by a malicious hacker, who happened to be played by a Microsoft worker dressed in a red T-shirt adorned with a skull.

But the demonstration was limited to attempts to rewrite simple programs and capture chatroom traffic. Many of the functions that will be built into hardware were emulated by software because the chips are not yet built.

The final version is expected to offer more control. Creators of top-secret government documents, financial records or other sensitive material could assign rights to sensitive files, allowing them to be viewed only on trusted computers running the system. Anyone else — hackers and malicious programs included — would be locked out.

The same platform could be employed by content creators — who include software makers like Microsoft. They could severely limit how materials are copied or even how long they last — a stark contrast from the freedoms of today's computers.

Gates said the format of digital content is up to their creators, and Microsoft is only providing a platform on which record labels and movie studios — as well as others — can build. He said it's in the content provider's interest to use simple copy protection schemes.

"What you are seeing now is recognition they need to provide their content in easily accessible forms or else it ends up encouraging piracy," Gates told the AP.

He said Microsoft is not working in a vacuum on the project. It requires broad industry support to ensure secure channels across the computer.

The technology, formerly code-named Palladium, will create what amounts to a secure computer within a computer. Certain areas of memory, the processor and even the channels to the display, keyboard and networks are locked down and accessible only by trusted software.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...cure_computing

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Satellite TV Company Reports a Profit
Bloomberg News

EchoStar Communications, the satellite television broadcaster, said yesterday that it had its third quarterly profit in eight years after attracting a surge of new subscribers.

EchoStar, owner of the Dish Network satellite TV service, had first-quarter net income of $58 million, or 12 cents a share, in contrast to a net loss of $35 million, or 20 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 23 percent, to $1.36 billion, after 350,000 new subscribers signed up, the company said.

EchoStar had 8.53 million subscribers at the end of March. Its larger rival, the DirecTV unit of Hughes Electronics, had 11.4 million customers last quarter.

EchoStar's subscriber growth exceeded some analysts' forecasts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/07/business/07BIRD.html

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DSL Price War to Threaten Cable's Crown?
Ben Charny

Lower DSL prices could pose a serious challenge to the cable industry's hammerlock on the U.S. market for high-speed Internet access, according to financial analysts.

Speculation about a broadband price war was sparked last week with reports that Verizon plans to slash its DSL (digital subscriber line) prices by 30 percent, to $34.95 a month. That would undercut current cable broadband prices by between $10 and $15 a month and turn DSL into an expensive money loser for Verizon.

But it could also help fill out anemic DSL subscriber rolls for the phone company, which has struggled to make inroads against cable companies in the broadband market.

Verizon's DSL competitors, BellSouth, Qwest Communications and SBC Communications, all declined comment. Verizon itself has yet to formally comment on the new prices. However, it's already advertising the new plans on its Web site.

"Verizon's agenda seems to be not only to increase its share versus cable, but (in general) appears to be to accelerate migration of dial-up customers to high- speed," Merrill Lynch analysts wrote in a research note to clients. And Prudential Financial analysts wrote that "pricing competition for broadband is clearly accelerating overall."

About 16 million U.S. households get some form of high-speed Web access. Most, about 10 million, get it from cable companies, which have until recently have been regarded as offering better service for about the same price as DSL providers such as Verizon.

Lower DSL pricing could also hurt dial-up services such as AOL Time Warner's America Online, which charges $23.90 a month for its flagship premium service. The world's largest Internet service provider has seen subscriber numbers fall off slightly in recent quarters from a high of 34 million, as customers migrate to discount services such as United Online or to high-speed providers, including AOL Time Warner's RoadRunner high-speed cable service.

AOL also offers its own high-speed service, costing $54.95 a month. In addition, it is hoping to lure customers from other high-speed providers by way of its $14.95 a month "bring your own access" product, which includes features such as exclusive content.

Verizon's price cuts would leave the phone company with a severe financial handicap if the expected explosion of new customers fails to materialize. Analysts say Verizon would be earning dramatically less per DSL customer than it used to, meaning it would need to sell services to many more people to make any discernible profits.

Financial analysts are already expecting a flood of new customers for Verizon, with Prudential Financial, Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg analysts all upping their estimates on the number of new customers Verizon will add this quarter. The analysts also expect other major telephone companies to answer with their own price cuts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1034-1000068.html

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Power-Line Group to Plug in Audio-Video
Richard Shim

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, an industry group promoting home networking over power lines, said Monday that it has begun taking proposals from companies interested in developing an audio-video streaming specification. The new specification, to be called HomePlug AV, will be for the distribution of data and multistream entertainment, including high-definition and standard-definition television.

The plan is for HomePlug AV to coexist with the power-line networking standard HomePlug 1.0. The deadline for proposals is Aug. 1. Details of the specification are expected to be released 12 months to 17 months after that, according to the group, which recently added Panasonic as a member.
http://news.com.com/2110-1035-999758.html

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More Than One Way to Skin a Media Player
Media Player flaw flays PC security
Robert Lemos

Microsoft warned Windows Media Player users on Wednesday that a flaw in the way the application handles the download of "skins," or interface colors and motifs, could allow an attacker to take over a victim's PC.

The vulnerability could let an intruder create a file that appears to be a Windows Media Player skin, but that in reality is a malicious program. The program can be copied to a location of the intruder's choice when downloaded. An online vandal could, for example, have a Trojan horse loaded onto a victim's start-up folder, so that it executes when the computer is restarted.

"Windows Media Player normally copies into the Internet cache and then into an unpredictable location," said Stephen Toulouse, security program manager for Microsoft. "If it has a skin extension, it can be copied into a predictable location," or one determined by an attacker.

The software giant released an advisory for Windows Media Player 7.1 and Windows Media Player for XP (version 8.0) and urged customers to patch their systems immediately. Windows Media Player 9.0 is not affected by the issue.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002-1000355.html

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Now Accepting Donations
The Uni Four

“All donations are greatly appreciated. I have gotten many requests that I put up a donation link on my site to help cover some of the $12,000. I want to thank everyone for their generosity.”

- Jesse Jordan

http://chewplastic.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey Kids!

Don’t do anything that might
upset the profits of the
gigantic media oligarchies!

They'll take away your Mommy
and Daddy's house and make
you live on the sidewalk!"

\


Scary Ferret Saves Software
http://www.playitcybersafe.com/

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Austrailain Broadband News
Free P2P data within your state on Netspace
Dan Warne

Netspace has improved its ADSL plans by offering free peer-to-peer data within users' local states.

"Netspace is pleased to announce that traffic to and from another Netspace HomeADSL customer in your state is now considered free usage. This only applies to traffic within the state in which you are located. This is also applicable only if your proxy settings are correct (as per all other free traffic sites)."

One industry insider said he thought the deal was likely to cause Netspace problems due to the way Telstra requires ISPs to route data.

"Telstra requires all peer to peer traffic to go into Telstra's network, back to the ISP and then back out to Telstra's network again. If users take advantage of this, the ISP will find its links to Telstra becoming saturated."

"The deal has probably been introduced because Netspace has been getting a lot of heat lately, since iiNet came onto the scene and started taking a lot of the 'word of mouth business'" he said. (The source was not from iiNet).
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/942

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''Only a Handful of Users Reported Problems'': Telstra
Dan Warne

Telstra claims it has finally fixed its problem with peer-to-peer connections on its 144.x.x.x IP range, but not without claiming that only a "handful of users" reported the problem each week.

Telstra said it had taken a long time to fix because it hadn't been "a significant worry for us to escalate beyond a low-fault impact."

However when confronted with the details of one user who had constant P2P problems, Telstra conceded the problem must have been "an extreme nuisance and frustration that he couldn't achieve what he set out to do with P2P connections."

The telco also admitted it had put one fix in place that it had to retract due to fears it could have had a "detrimental impact" on the rest of its network.

Currently Telstra is testing the fix in NSW, QLD and ACT and aims to have the fix rolled out to the network nationally next week.
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/659

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Song Swappers Twice As Likely To Buy Music Than Non Swappers – survey
Sue Zeidler, Reuters

Offering some insight to the recording industry as it struggles to boost sales online, a survey released on Wednesday found that Web surfers who download music from song-swap sites are more likely to buy music online, as well as offline at retailers.

The research put rap music as the No. 1 genre purchased by online fans, which may help record companies gain a better understanding of who their online customers are.

The survey was based on 36,000 Internet users and released by Web tracker Nielsen//NetRatings, a unit of NetRatings Inc NTRT.O .

It showed that nearly 31 million active Internet users aged 18 or older -- representing 22 percent of the active Internet universe -- downloaded music in the past 30 days, and 71 percent bought music in the past three months.

Nielsen//NetRatings said the research indicated that in the past three months, online music enthusiasts were 111 percent more likely to buy rap music than average Internet users.

Nielsen//NetRatings classified online music enthusiasts as users who had downloaded music in the past 30 days, whereas the average Internet users are people logging onto the Internet for surfing and other purposes.

Dance and club music ranked No. 2, with downloaders 106 percent more likely to have purchased dance and club music than the average Internet users during the last three months and 77 percent more likely to buy alternative rock.

R&B, soul music and rock rounded out the top five.

Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said that understanding the preferences of online music enthusiasts may help recording executives in their attempts to successfully woo fans from the free swap, or peer-to-peer services, which let people get songs without authorization.

The major record labels, including AOL Time Warner Inc. AOL.N , EMI Group Plc EMI.L , Bertelsmann AG BERT.UL , Vivendi Universal's EAUG.PA V.N Universal Music and Sony Corp. 6758.T , blame the popularity of such free services as Kazaa and Morpheus for sharp declines in CD sales.

But other industry watchers argue that declining sales are the result of fewer hit albums being released and a weak economy.

'The de facto standard may be a few years away, but understanding the genres of music that sell well online and offline will be crucial to generating revenue along the way,' Bloom said.
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=2701186

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'Napster Effect' Hits US TV Shows
Darren Waters

On Monday I watched the latest episode of ER just a few days after it was broadcast in the United States.

But I was not in the US - I sat in front of my computer at home to watch the programme, which I had downloaded from the internet in the interests of research in about five hours.

The growing online availability of TV programmes, and films, is the latest threat to the entertainment industry still reeling from the effect of peer-to-peer programs, such as Kazaa and the now-defunct Napster.

After ER, I watched the latest instalment of thriller 24, a new episode of Frasier and a new episode of Friends, again all in the interests of research.

Almost all the programmes had been broadcast less than a day earlier in the US, many months before viewers in the UK and Europe will see them.

One friend who downloads drama The West Wing is more than a year ahead of episodes in the UK.

I used a program called BitTorrent to download the shows, a piece of software which allows multiple people to download the same programme at the same time.

It is not the only piece of software one can use, but uniquely BitTorrent allows multiple users to exchange the same information.

As I download Friends, another user is taking it from me, who in turn is providing it to someone else, and so on.

The effect is that the more people who are trying to access the programme, the easier and quicker it is to obtain.

The TV industry is already aware of many BitTorrent sites, and is closing them down as fast as it can find them.

But with web space so readily available it only takes a short time to put up a web page and link to the latest programmes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...io/3006619.stm

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Altnet Lands Exclusive Distribution Deal With Artist/Author Lee Jaffe for Rare, Never- Seen-Before Home Video Footage of Bob Marley and the Wailers
Press Release

· Footage Available Today for Free, Secure Download to Kazaa Media Desktop Users
· Autographed Copies of "ONE LOVE: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers," a Touching Behind-the-Scenes Collectors Portrait of Marley and his Jamaican Life, Also Available

Altnet today announced that it has secured the exclusive distribution rights to artist and author Lee Jaffe's never-been-seen-before home video footage of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The exclusive video footage is offered today via Altnet gold icons for free, secure download to Kazaa Media Desktop users.

This exclusive footage was shot in black and white in 1973 by Jaffe and shows an intimate portrayal of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh at 56 Hope Road, Kingston, Jamaica. The intimate scenes show the greatest reggae legends of all times jamming and relaxing in the Kingston rehearsal studio behind the old colonial house which was The Wailers headquarters. Additional footage shows a journey to and at Cane River Falls, outside Kingston, with Bob, Bunny Wailer, Secco Patterson (The Wailers percussionist), and Ras Daniel Hartman (co-star of the movie "The Harder They Come") and his infant son.

Altnet is also facilitating the sale of autographed copies of Jaffe's new book "ONE LOVE: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers."
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...m&footer_file=

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PRODUCT REVIEW: Spyware Removers Help Kill Mystery Software from Machines
Anick Jesdanun

A few weeks ago, my computer got hijacked. Every time I booted up, I was greeted with free ''scratch and win'' game cards. I felt like a loser for letting it happen even worse for failing to figure out how to turn them off. ''Spyware'' removers came to the rescue.

The advertising and data-collecting programs I sought to exile are often called ''spyware,'' ''adware'' or ''malware.'' They sneak onto your computer in myriad ways.

Install a free file-sharing program like Kazaa, and you'll wind up with a few. Just browsing some Web sites, particularly using Internet Explorer with security settings set to low, will sometimes give you more.

Many of these programs can't be easily removed using the ''add-remove programs'' feature on Windows.

That's where the spyware removers come in. They scan your system for known advertising software and help remove any they find. Programmers keep tabs on the latest threats and continually make updates available for free download.

A word of caution, though: You may have to forgo free music if you want to get rid of all your advertising software. Removing ad programs can disable the file-sharing application on which it piggybacks or violate license terms.

Unfortunately, these spyware removers tell you little about which of the files they are excising are truly necessary for a specific program to work.

I tried a half-dozen spyware eradicators and found three worthy of further consideration: Ad-aware from Lavasoft; Spybot Search and Destroy from PepiMK Software; and Spyware Eliminator from Aluria Software.
http://boston.com/dailynews/127/econ...remover:.shtml

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Music Industry's Aggressive Tactics Tune Out Fans on Net

Users of popular Internet systems for music copying are getting a new and unwelcome surprise: ominous instant messages from the recording industry warning that "distributing or downloading copyrighted music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is ILLEGAL."

The messages are the latest tactic in record companies' reinvigorated war against Internet music copying. Always quick to verbally attack those who use file-sharing systems, the industry now is adopting more tangible tactics. Call it virtual warfare.

Except the industry's messages contain a real threat of legal action. They also warn those tempted to share Internet music that doing so opens their computers' hard drives to unsavory characters who may be looking for more than free music.

This is classic recording-industry recalcitrance: heavy on threats against breaking the law, light on incentives to obey it. And it's only the first volley. The industry is developing computer viruses that would attack the computers of people offering pirated music. On the legislative front, it is pushing for a national law that would make such hacking by copyright holders legal.

Talk about adopting enemy tactics. By proceeding with its plans, the recording industry would join the ranks of Internet spammers and hackers. It also would waste creative efforts alienating the very people it needs to lure back to legitimate music sites.

The strategy raises questions about the business rational behind destroying an audience to save it — especially an audience that has proved itself hungry for a reliable, convenient way to record music online.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...our-view_x.htm

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Interview With A Vaidhyanathan
Cyrus Shahmir

ReadMe: P2P file sharing has been singled out by record companies as a major threat to profits and a violation of copyright laws; is it truly a threat, or is the industry fear mongering, and if so, why?

Siva Viadhyanathan: It is a potential threat to the industry, but it's too early to quantify. There are conflicting numbers and confusing studies that show that downloading either encourages or retards CD purchasing, or both. So, no one knows. There are too many factors involved in an economy and ecology as complex as music. We do know that the actions of the music industry have alienated their best consumers and degraded faith and trust in copyright laws. So it's the music industry that is destroying copyright law, not the fans.
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/Re...cle.php?id=149

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Internet Access for the Cost of a Cup of Coffee
Kate Hafner

AS the Wi-Fi trend sweeps through the air, one question appears to be cropping up with increasing frequency: to charge or not to charge?

Wi-Fi, for "wireless fidelity," allows fast wireless connections with the Internet using a protocol called 802.11. Wi-Fi is finding its way into airports, hotels, universities, truck stops and cafes, especially Starbucks, which charges for connections through T-Mobile, a wireless carrier. Even McDonald's is experimenting with Wi-Fi in Manhattan. All that is needed is a laptop or mobile device equipped for Wi-Fi or retrofitted with a Wi-Fi card, and proximity to a Wi-Fi beacon known as a hot spot.

But it remains to be seen how many users will be willing to pay the $30 a month being charged for Wi-Fi access at places like Starbucks, given the monthly communications fees many people already shoulder.

In a growing number of places, an alternative is available - at no charge. And not surprisingly, several are in Austin, one of the most wired places in the nation and now one of the most wireless, boasting a profusion of hot spots.

One of them is Wild Wood, a small store that sells hand-carved animals from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Wild Wood, which bills itself as an "art cafe," serves not just coffee and desserts but full meals, all of them prepared in the store's small kitchen. The owner, Joan Griffith, said she offered free Wi-Fi access because it was far more important to her to increase the number of customers than to make a little bit of money from an access surcharge. Besides, she said, free access breeds good will, which in turn breeds loyalty.

Ms. Griffith's initial capital outlay for her wireless setup was $700, counting a refund of $425 from the Internet service provider she used. She pays another $120 a month for the Wi-Fi access. She pointed out that she would be paying $80 a month anyway for her own access; adding the capacity for more computers was not much more expensive.

"I'm going to make my money because people are going to buy coffee and soup, and because it's going to smell good in here," she said. "Anything that's going to get them parked in here for a while is worth the extra $40 I'm paying for an extra hookup."

Schlotzsky's Deli, an Austin fixture, is another mecca for free Wi-Fi. Schlotzsky's, a nationwide chain of sandwich stores that got its start in Austin, offers free Wi-Fi at 10 of its Austin restaurants, one in Houston and one in Atlanta.

John C. Wooley, the chief executive of Schlotzsky's, said he briefly considered charging customers for Wi-Fi access but quickly changed his mind.

Mr. Wooley said each restaurant spent about $2,000 to get its Wi-Fi up and running, and another $300 to $500 a month for the high-speed communications line that provides the wireless access network to the Internet. His reasoning is similar to Ms. Griffith's, but on a larger scale. Schlotzsky's surveys over the past few months have shown that 6 percent of customers go to Schlotzsky's for the free Wi-Fi. That translates to 15,000 customers per store per year. If each pays, on average, $7 for a sandwich and drink, that adds up to about $100,000 in sales per year.

"That's a really good return on investment," Mr. Wooley said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/te...ts/08wifi.html

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Swisscom Eurospot Offers Wi-Fi to SFR Subscribers
Leigh Phillips

Swisscom Eurospot has signed an agreement with SFR, allowing the subscribers of SFR to use the European hot-spot coverage provided by Swisscom Eurospot to access the internet via its wi-fi network.

For over a year Swisscom has been engaged in setting up its public wireless LAN hot-spot network in locations such as hotels, railway stations and airports across Switzerland (Swisscom Mobile) and the rest of Europe (Swisscom Eurospot).

From June, SFR customers will have access to Public Wireless LAN services at hotspots operated by Swisscom Eurospot. Each time the user logs onto the internet, Swisscom Eurospot's homepage will appear on the screen. After that she will simply click on the SFR icon and enter her access codes, and can then surf the internet.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16221

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Concert CD's Sold on the Spot by a Radio Giant
Matthew Mirapaul

Clear Channel Communications, the radio broadcasting and concert promotion giant, plans to introduce a venture today that will sell live recordings on compact disc within five minutes of a show's conclusion. The venture, Instant Live, will enable a band's still-sweating fans to leave with a musical souvenir instead of say, a pricey T-shirt or a glossy program.

Although initially modest, involving only small-audience clubs and theaters in the Boston area, the venture could eventually extend beyond radio and concerts into music distribution. And that could prove troubling to critics, who already complain that the company's rigidly formatted radio stations prevent diverse artists from reaching the airwaves and that its dominance of the concert business too often forces touring acts to accept unfavorable deals.

Josh Bernoff, a music industry analyst at Forrester Research in Boston, said Clear Channel's entry into the CD business could alter the music industry's tenuous balance of power. At the moment, no single record label dominates the market the way that Clear Channel dominates the radio and concert business.

"For the labels," Mr. Bernoff said, "that means that their most important goal is to get Clear Channel to broadcast their acts and promote their concerts." The task could become more challenging, he said, if the labels find themselves competing against Clear Channel's own CD's for air time.

But Clear Channel executives say Instant Live is not so much a foray into the CD business as it is a way to wring further revenue from live music events. And they note that it is simply a continuation of the trend among various bands and start-ups in recent years to sell authorized recordings that are available on CD or as Internet downloads soon after the event. This practice can generate additional revenue for musicians and also thwart illicit concert recordings, they said.

"We're not interested in signing artists to exclusive recording contracts," said Steve Simon, an executive vice president in Clear Channel's concert promotion unit in Cambridge, Mass.

The Instant Live venture adds an element of immediate gratification for music consumers, with towers of CD burners turning out multiple copies of the digital recordings.

"They would look at it as another trinket to sell to concertgoers when they're at their venue, whether it's a T-shirt or an instant bootleg or a hot dog," said James M. Marsh, a broadcasting analyst at the investment bank SG Cowen Securities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/bu...ia/05DISK.html

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Pilot Test of Pocket Internet TV
David Minto

The pilot test has concluded of a new mobile digital TV receiver in pocket TV format that works over the internet.

VTT, a Finnish research organisation, had been piloting its new technology around downtown Tampere, homes and cafes since October with users apparently appreciating the mobility of the system. The trial service offered programmes over the internet only a few minutes after they had been broadcast on TV, with programmes archived up to week after broadcast.

Researchers reported being particularly surprised by the interest the system attracted from children under 7, who could select programmes from a screen shot menu so did not need to be able to read. Adults predictably tuned into mainly news and current affairs programming, though some entertainment shows also proved popular.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16207

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Dutch CD Pirate Arrested
Joe Figueiredo

A Dutch citizen, arrested last week by Belgian police for mass copying and selling proprietary CDs illegally, has been extradited to the Netherlands.

According to FIOD-ECD, the intelligence and investigative service attached to the Dutch tax authority, the pirate was found in possession of more than 160 CD burners, a large quantity of computers, blank CDs and other materials used in professional CD duplication, as well as a substantial number of original and copied DVDs.

The pirate’s ‘sales catalogue’ apparently included such favourites as ‘Top of the Pops’ compilations.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16186

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Clampdown On Pirate Radio in the Netherlands
Joe Figueiredo

Agentschap Telecom, the Dutch government agency responsible for radio-frequency planning, management and enforcement, has closed down 68 illegal radio stations in the Netherlands to date.

Launched in March and expected to last a year, ‘Project Etherflits' is the agency’s attempt at fighting radio pirates, mostly located in the north and east of the country.

In the beginning, the agency only reacted to complaints of bad radio reception caused by interference from these stations. However, it has now started a concerted effort to track and close them down.

The pirates, who see a connection (which the agency denies) between the agency’s actions and the forthcoming (commercial) radio frequency allocation, are furious at the agency’s strict enforcement of the law and its severe fines.

First-time offenders are made to pay E1,100. Subsequent ones can expect a E2,250 fine and confiscation of their equipment.

Pirates are organising protests in cyberspace and the physical world. They have set up a website to give vent to their anger and plan counter actions. One such action, a demonstration, is planned for Saturday in The Hague, to which several prominent Dutch politicians have been invited.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16201

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America's Most Wanted Pirate Continues to be Hit Hard by Sanctions
David Minto

The US Trade Representative’s Office has issued a report that confirms Ukraine is still top of its hit list when it comes to taking economic action against piracy.

The E68m US sanctions affecting metals, footwear and other exported products were placed on Ukrainian goods in January 2002 and will continue to remain in effect. The US claims that the Ukrainian government has failed to deliver on promises to crack down on illegal copying of optical products, such as computer software, movie DVDs and music CDs. The International Intellectual Property Alliance estimates that global piracy costs US copyright industries more than E22bn annually.

"Open markets and rules that guarantee the protection of intellectual property are critical to the continued health of the creative sectors of our economy," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a statement.

Rampant piracy and lack of enforcement were problems in Russia, Taiwan, Poland, Brazil and elsewhere, the report claimed. Despite this, only Ukraine has been placed on the ‘Priority Foreign Country’ list, singled out for the harshest treatment.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16170

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Police Act Against Music File-Swapping In Germany

Police in Germany have launched the first action against music file- swapping, raiding the premises of a suspect in Fürth, southern Germany, who was allegedly operating a peer-to-peer (P2P) "OpenNap Napster-clone" server and distributing music files to thousands of users. It is alleged that more than one million music files - equivalent to tens of thousands of albums - were offered among some 3,000 individual users over a period of several weeks. The individual himself allegedly was distributing such files through the server. The action followed a report made to the prosecutor's office by IFPI Germany which represents around 400 record companies. During the raids, launched in April police seized six computers and other evidence. Jay Berman, chief executive and chairman of IFPI said: "This is an important step by Germany, coming at a time of intense activity by our industry to provide legitimate on-line music services. We are determined to hold to account those who knowingly distribute copyrighted works on the internet without authorization. Their actions are hurting everyone in the creative chain, and they are making it difficult for legitimate on-line services to compete" If prosecuted, this case could lead to imprisonment or fines for copyright infringement. Further civil proceedings could follow.
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=51508

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Why Grokster and Morpheus Won, Why Napster Lost, and What the Future of Peer-to- Peer File Sharing Looks Like Now
Chris Sprigman

On April 25, in M-G-M v. Grokster, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by
a group of movie studios and record companies against Grokster and Morpheus. (Grokster and Morpheus are peer-to-peer services that enable users to share copyrighted music, movies, and other content over the Internet without paying a dime to the copyright owners.)

Many observers were surprised. They had assumed that Grokster and Morpheus would - like Napster in A&M Records v. Napster - be shut down for facilitating individual file sharers' copyright infringement. But Judge Wilson, after carefully examining the underlying technology, found that though users' infringement was occurring, Grokster and Morpheus were not contributing to or authorizing it. Thus, they could not be held liable.

The decision is obviously bad news for Hollywood studios and record companies. If it is upheld on appeal, they will continue to face wide- scale infringement of their copyrights.

If the decision is indeed upheld on appeal, will that be good news for consumers? That is a more complicated question. The answer depends heavily on Hollywood's reaction. Will it continue its battle on other fronts - focusing perhaps not on the services, but on their users? Or will it, instead, launch new strategies to take advantage of the powerful business opportunities that peer-to-peer might provide?

To see what is likely to occur in the future, it's helpful first to take a closer look at the differences between Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/comment..._sprigman.html

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File-Sharing Hub Hums Away at OU, Despite Controversy
Brandon Worth

College campuses, including Ohio University, have become hotbeds for illegal piracy of copyrighted music files because of tech-savvy, music-loving students with little money and fast Internet connections.

Facing sliding music sales, the recording industry recently has taken steps to stem declines in recorded music sales by targeting the individuals they see as the biggest threat to their business -- Internet users who download music from the Web without paying for it. So far, such steps haven't been taken at OU, but it could just be a matter of time.

A numbers of music pay services have popped up on the Web since the technology needed to create compact discs from personal computers became available in the late 1990s. Students at OU and other college campuses have gotten around paying for music by using "file sharing" technology.

File-sharing systems first came into the spotlight in 2000 when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued the creator of Napster, a program that could be downloaded for free from the Internet and which allowed users to search one another's computers for music files and transfer them to their own systems.

Since Napster's demise, numerous similar services have been created, and students around the country have dodged record industry watchdogs by creating their own file-sharing hubs on university computer networks.

This year, students living in OU residence halls have been able to share their music collections with other students through a "mini-Napster" called OU Direct Connect.

OU Direct Connect, which is not affiliated with the university, allows students to swap more than just individual songs, according to the site's creator, OU freshman Nathan Frey. Students can search one another's computers for entire albums and full-length movies free of charge. Frey said OUDC also is a good educational tool because students can trade material such as academic research and computer programs. He stressed that students are sharing legal files that are not copyrighted, in addition to the other material.

Since the site was created in January, more than 300 OU dorm- dwellers have used OUDC to search their peers' computers for song and movie files and download them to their own computers, using the high-speed network connections provided by the university. An OUDC user can search through thousands of files and download a song in three to 10 seconds, according to Frey.

"It's really fast, much faster than Kazaa and other popular hubs," he said.

Frey said he advertised the OU Direct Connect hub, which he operates from a server in his dorm room, by putting up flyers and creating a Web site. He got the idea for OUDC from a friend at Case Western Reserve University, and pursued it because creating Napster-like services on college computer networks seems to be a trend that is spreading.
http://www.athensnews.com/issue/arti...story_id=12618

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Music Industry is Turning Against its Own Customers
Dwight Silverman

From the beginning, when the music world was rocked on its heels by the popularity of Napster's file-sharing service, the recording industry scrupulously avoided going after the very people who were trading digital music files -- the users.

It was a serious public relations dilemma. Prosecuting individuals who were offering sometimes thousands of songs on their hard drives would have been a case of Goliath squashing David like a bug.

Industry executives feared they'd come off as evil greedheads, alienating the public at large, including those people who actually pay for their music.

But recent events indicate that era may be over. Stung by the inability to kill off other file-sharing services, and those services' increasing popularity, the music business has begun to slap around its own customers.

There are several trends at play here:

· File-sharing services are not going away, and in fact there are more options today than ever before. There are far more users of Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus than Napster ever enjoyed. And late last month, a judge ruled that Grokster and Morpheus were not liable for copyright infringement, the first legal victory by file-sharing services against a litigious onslaught by the music industry.

· More and more home computer users are upgrading to broadband connections. While downloading music is a painful experience over pokey dial-up, it's a joy via DSL or cable modem. And those selling high-speed services aren't shy about mentioning the availability of online music and movies in their marketing materials.

· Personal computers are now seen as multimedia hubs by consumers. Nearly all new models come with CD burners. Many include programs such as MusicMatch Jukebox that can convert songs on CD to MP3 files, the file format of choice for music swappers. Even the media players built into both Windows and the Macintosh operating system can rip songs from a CD.

· Music sales continue to decline, though whether that's due to the proliferation of file-sharing services is debatable. Some studies indicate that music downloaders actually buy more CDs, and that they use file-sharing to sample new music before paying for it. Critics of the recording industry say popular music isn't selling because most of it is junk.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...siness/1894405

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Madonna's Web Stunt Prompts Rash of Remixes
Charles Arthurm

You'd think Madonna would have learnt by now: it never pays to annoy the fans, especially on the internet. An attempt by the singer and her record company to embarrass people downloading illegal free copies of her album – by replacing them with a brief message from Madonna, saying "What the f*** do you think you're doing?" – has instead sparked a remix bonanza, with online DJs creating dozens of brand new tracks using her words as a sample.

To complicate matters for the music giant Warner Bros, which hired a company to upload the "spoofed" tracks, it's not clear whether the star could claim copyright if anyone released a single including the file – because she would have no way to prove it is her speaking.

That would mean that if any of the remixes does become a hit, Warner Bros and Madonna would be unable to claim any royalties – unlike a number of other artists over the years, including Suzanne Vega and Gary Numan, who have seen unexpected paydays when underground remixes of their work have suddenly become popular.

The remixes are being collected at a site called the "Madonna Remix Project", owned by a pair of internet users. One, known only as "irixx", says: "When I heard the self- righteous attempts of our lady of pop to inspire repentance in the hearts of guilt- ridden file sharers, I could not help but laugh. the crystal clear sample was a gift horse that i could not look in the mouth."

The "spoofed" files were designed to appear as if they were compressed versions of the songs from Madonna's American Life album, released last month.

They were put on file-sharing networks in the US, where millions of people swap music online free over high-speed connections, despite record companies' anger and attempts to stop the practice.
http://news.independent.co.uk/digita...p?story=404186

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Microsoft and Hollywood Hit the Control Button
Julian Bajkowski

Viruses, worms and hackers no longer rate in the IT threat stakes, according to one of Australia's most respected information security and cryptography developers.

Professor Bill Caelli, AO, of Queensland University of Technology, warned a Sydney audience of CIOs this week that the biggest immediate threat to the future of information technology is a Microsoft-fronted attempt by the content and copyright owners' lobby to seize control of IT hardware through a project codenamed Nexus.

Speaking at the CIO Magazine Conference in Sydney, Caelli told Computerworld that a combined Microsoft/Intel initiative due to be announced in a matter of days seeks to configure future Intel-based hardware to enforce copyright.

"I believe they're going to announce a sub-operating system that will not be accessible to the end user. This will run on new add-on hardware associated with the Intel processor. While you can use Nexus for secure operation, it will also enforce digital rights management.

"Technically, we suspect that Intel will have to work with Microsoft to introduce a new protected state of operation inside the Intel processor or its subsidiary chips. This is codenamed Ring-0 (Ring minus zero)," Caelli said.

The legal implications should Nexus materialise would also appear onerous for both consumers and OEMs.

Caelli warns that legislation already exists, here and in the US, that makes it illegal to tamper with the access and/or encryption control mechanisms of certain devices – a situation that many PC OEMs are yet to confront. Indeed the very concept of ownership of the computer that you buy is in question:

"Imagine you bought a Holden and the bonnet was welded down to stop you looking at the motor – there'd be an outcry… but in the IT game they get away with it, and one more freedom is lost. What's really important is for the first time that content holders will be able to control your device – in the past there was no control over the device; you didn't see the manufacturers of LPs attempting to control record players. That whole philosophy is about to change. It's draconian because you are changing the rights of ownership," Caelli says.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/nind...96437&eid=-255

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The Long Arm of Longhorn
Michelle Delio

The Long Arm of Longhorn Microsoft sends a mixed message as it introduces the successor to Windows XP. The new OS is designed to make sharing multimedia files easy -- but its digital rights management features restrict how those same files can be used.

No one, not even Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, seems to know whether Microsoft's next operating system will be a blessing or a curse.

Content producers probably will love it -- digital rights management will be built right in. Hardware developers remain unsure: The OS boasts tons of spiffy new entertainment features that could encourage consumers to upgrade, but will users be spooked by all that rights management stuff?

The successor to Windows XP, currently known as Longhorn and on display this week at the 12th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, is intended to run on compatible hardware. The operating system and hardware will, in theory, work together to secure a computer and its contents from any tampering -- either by outsiders or, perhaps, even the owner of the computer.

Microsoft claims to have redesigned Longhorn's interface in accordance with a slew of studies on how people like to work, play and interact with their computers.

Longhorn, Microsoft promises, will be a cozy, comfy operating system, as familiar as a favorite pair of jeans.

But deep within Longhorn lurks the Nexus, part of Microsoft's new Next Generation Secure Computing Base system, which is intended to provide a tamper-resistant, private container for data users would rather not share with the world.

As of now, Microsoft expects that NGSCB will be part of Longhorn, according to Peter Biddle, product unit manager at Microsoft's security business unit.

NGSCB is essentially an encryption and permission management system. It can encrypt keyboard strokes or data being sent from a computer, as well as incoming streaming video or audio.

NGSCB also allows the owner or creator of a document, file or application to determine what can be done with it. Users won't be able to modify application code or alter the contents of documents if the owner has opted to block such activities. Users will be prevented from making copies of digital media if the owner so chooses. And users might not be able to forward or print e-mail or files without permission.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58748,00.html

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Support for Fingered File Traders
Katie Dean

Support for Fingered File Traders The four university students nabbed by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement owe thousands of dollars to the music group following a recent settlement. Pledges of support have lit up message boards, but how much help they will actually receive remains to be seen.

Though the recording industry has settled its copyright-infringement lawsuits against four university students, the defendants are left paying thousands of dollars out of their own pockets.

Aaron Sherman and Jesse Jordan of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Daniel Peng of Princeton University and Joseph Nievelt of Michigan Technological University agreed to pay the Recording Industry Association of America between $12,000 and $17,500 apiece after they were accused of running Napster- like sites on their school networks.

But the students might have some help.

Pledges of support have lit up several message boards in the past few days with promises to pony up some dough.

"Someone should set up a PayPal account for them," suggested one poster on a Gnutella News message board. "I'd pitch in a few $."

"I could sacrifice at least 10 bucks for this cause, and I am sure a few thousand other P2P users might as well. (Of course, I need to be sure that the money goes to them, not some scam monkey)," wrote another.

At least one of the students is happy to oblige the potential donors. On Tuesday, Jordan added a PayPal link to his website, ChewPlastic, so supporters can help pay the $12,000 he owes the RIAA.

"I have gotten many requests that I put up a donation link on my site to help cover some of the $12,000," the site reads. "I want to thank everyone for their generosity."

Jordan also complained about the terms of the agreement.

"If the RIAA thinks that this is only a minor setback for me, they are greatly mistaken," he wrote on his site. "I hope that they enjoy the new fax machine (or whatever they plan to spend it on), because the artists they supposedly represent will certainly never see a dime of it."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58770,00.html

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Dr. Dre Nailed For $1.5M In Sample Suit
Erik Gruenwedel

A Los Angeles jury yesterday (May 6) found that Dr. Dre (real name: Andre Young) illegally used segments of the 1980 tune "Backstrokin'" in his song "Let's Get High" (co-written by Eminem and others) from the Aftermath/Interscope album "Dr. Dre 2001," Billboard Bulletin reports. The album has sold 6.6 million units in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The jury awarded the plaintiff, London-based music publisher Minder Music Ltd., more than $1.5 million in damages -- less than half of the $3.5 million originally sought.

Last month in U.S. District Court, Minder filed an amended copyright infringement lawsuit of its July 20, 2000, complaint against Dre, Eminem (Marshall Mathers), Interscope Records, and Universal Music & Video Distribution (UMVD), among others, seeking a jury trial.

Spokespersons for Interscope and UMVD declined comment. Dre's lawyer, Howard King, says the infringement was not willful and plans to appeal. "We're not done," says King. "We're only in the 7th inning."
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1882500



Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne



To The Editor
Would Lower CD Prices Cut Internet Piracy?

Re "4 Pay Steep Price for Free Music," May 2: Busting the college savings of four students is just more of the same from big business in America. Instead of pontificating about music piracy, why doesn't the recording industry explain why the public should shell out 18 bucks for a new CD? If pricing were set by market forces instead of by some kind of industrial collusion, CD prices could be lower and individuals might be less inclined to pirate songs over the Internet.

I am no fan or defender of copyright infringers. But why should I feel any sympathy for fat record company executives who support their extravagant lifestyle by ripping off the public?

Dan Tauber

Palo Alto

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtechno logy

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How to Run a PC Without Microsoft Apps
Man manages seemingly impossible feat

A READER HAS written to tell us how he's managing his PC and his life without using Microsoft applications.

He said he's replaced Microsoft software he used to use with as much third party software as possible. However, he said, there was one additionalrequirement and that was the software had to be freeware.

Here's his list.

MEDIAPLAYER winamp 2.x for audio and bsplayer for video. Smaller memory footprint, more features and skinning support. www.winamp.com, www.bsplayer.com.

OFFICE Open Office, starts up slower and not completely compatible with all office documents tho. but a step in the right direction. www.openoffice.org.

IE+OUTLOOK Mozilla, that's a given (with built in email client, dunno how it would stack up to The Bat tho, probably a lot worse, but it's not microsoft. Smartftp for all ftp stuff. www.mozilla.com, www.smartfp.com.

MESSENGER trillian, neat little program that replaces all IM clients, support for Yahoo messenger, icq, aol, irc, msn and a lot faster with skinning support. www.trillian.cc

PHOTOEDITOR Part of office suite - used it before just for viewing images, since more advanced programs load so long Irfanview - loads instantly and has wider support/features. Photoeditor couldn't open a 11mb jpeg while this proggie can. www.irfanview.com.

NOTEPAD/WRITEPAD editpad. has a paid for variant that's pretty good too. http://www.just-great-software.com/]Here[/url].

SHELL Not wanting to rely on IE i replaced the shell with geoshell, now using windows98se + 95 shell for file handling and geoshell for desktop. Surprisingly stable with latest patches etc. www.litepc.com, www.geoshellx.com

He adds: "I still have a copy of IE6 on it for the DLLs that some other proggys use too. Strangely enough it doesn't crash on that line of html code. Zonealarm, adaware, cdex are also some indispensable freeware tools + the ones I got from your site (process viewer, antivirus, ...).

The end result looks a bit like this.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=9316

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Comcast Loss Widens, Subscribers Growing
Reuters

Comcast Corp., the No. 1 U.S. cable service provider, on Thursday reported a wider quarterly net loss but raised its full-year outlook for new cable and high-speed Internet subscribers.

Comcast, with 21.3 million subscribers, said its loss ballooned to $297 million, or 13 cents a share, in the first quarter, from $89 million, or 9 cents a share, a year earlier. Bottom-line results continued to be pressured by paying off its debt.

Analysts were reassured that the older systems bought from AT&T Corp. last year were being upgraded to the level of Comcast systems, which offer more channels and features to compete with satellite TV services.

'They are clear signs that Comcast continues to make significant and earlier than expected progress integrating AT&T's systems,' said Kaufman Brothers analyst Mark May.

Comcast shares fell 20 cents to $30.22 on Thursday on Nasdaq.

'The stock is priced for perfection,' said CIBC World Markets analyst Alan Bezoza. 'I'm not sure (the results) was enough flair to push valuations higher than they are.' Comcast is trading at more than 12 times 2003 cash flow, at the high end of the cable sector average of 11.5 times cash flow.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...mcast_earns_dc

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Security Group: ICQ is Flawed
Robert Lemos

Two serious flaws in America Online's ICQ software could allow an online attacker to take control of a person's PC, a Boston security firm warned in an advisory released Monday.

Core Security Technologies described the vulnerabilities in an advisory released to several public security lists. While the company found a total of six flaws, it said only two have serious implications because they could allow an attacker to run code on the victim's computer.

"However, the risk associated to each vulnerabilities is highly dependent on the environment in which ICQ is being used," said Ivan Arce, chief technology officer for Core. "Generally we don't make assumptions about risk in our advisories because we don't think the one-size-fits-all approach is valid."

The vulnerable ICQ Pro 2003a client is the latest version of America Online's ICQ instant messaging software, which has been downloaded from CNET Network's Download.com site more than 228 million times. Last year, the company offered a slimmed down version called ICQ Lite. That application doesn't have the flaws, according to the advisory.

No one from America Online's ICQ subsidiary was available Monday to comment on the alleged flaws. The security researchers also noted that they had problems reaching those responsible for security at ICQ.

"We also attempted to get specific security contact points from third parties that might have reported ICQ bugs before but had no success with this either, so after over a month of going back and forth with the advisory we finally decided to publish it unilaterally," he said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-999913.html

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Wireless broadband ISP in a box: All yours for £20k
Is this the answer to the UK's 'broadband divide'
Graeme Wearden

Wireless equipment vendor Alvarion believes it has the answer to closing Britain's broadband divide - a wireless ISP in a box.

Costing £20,000, the starter kit launched this week contains the equipment needed to set-up a fixed wireless network of up to 50 end users.

Alvarion believes the system will simplify the task of setting up a new internet service provider, and could also be used by existing ISPs to extend their network coverage in broadband black spots. Rob Mortimer, Alvarion's UK sales director, said he hoped it would "kick- start wireless broadband Britain".

"There is a clear business model for wireless broadband which has been successfully adopted by new and incumbent operators across the globe," said Mortimer. "ISPs in the UK who are looking to avoid dependence on BT's last mile should seriously examine our offering."

The "ISP in a box" system will run in the 2.4GHz band, and should give each customer a connection of up to 1.4Mbps.

Based on a monthly fee of £50 and a £100 installation fee, Alvarion believes that the £20,000 price tag could be recouped in six months.
http://www.silicon.com/news/500016-500001/1/3999.html

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Teens OK with File-Sharing
Paul Bond

Only 27% of American teenagers believe that those who download or share digital music files without artist or label permission are breaking the law, according to just-released polling data.

Legality aside, just 20% of teens think that such activity is 'wrong.'

Asked the same questions concerning movies, 38% thought it was illegal to watch or download a film without appropriate permission, while 40% deemed such activity wrong.

Curiously, while the majority of teenagers clearly believe there's little wrong morally or legally with sharing digital music, 58% of them think Web sites that facilitate the activity are breaking the law. With movies, it's even higher: 60.8%.

The better news, from the perspective of the music and film industries, is that older Internet users are a bit more sympathetic to copyright holders. Of online adults 35-54, for example, 55% thought it wrong to download or watch a movie without permission, and 48% felt similarly about music. That, of course, should come as no surprise because the study also determined that teenagers engage in illegal file-sharing more so than do adults.

The study, from the firm E-Poll, surveyed 1,075 Internet users 13 years of age or older during the week ending April 7.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2709340











Until next week,

- js.










~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16135 May 3rd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16080 April 26th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15980 April 19th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15843 April 5th



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

[Ðiego]

Sensenbrenner was asked to go there, Lamy said, "so they understand that this is a unified message coming from all levels of the U.S. government, including the RIAA. erm, I mean Congress."

Ð

[Ziggy]

ill save it and read it later. g2g2 work

[multi]

To put it as simply as possible: If you have to be in total control of every experience, art is not for you. Life probably isn't, either. Hey, where's the alternate ending?

HOTOEDITOR Part of office suite - used it before just for viewing images, since more advanced programs load so long Irfanview - loads instantly and has wider support/features. Photoeditor couldn't open a 11mb jpeg while this proggie can. www.irfanview.com.

yeah i agree with using ifran view ...
but how/why the hell would you need a 11Meg.jpg