Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – January 31st, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"What we will demand be covered is Johansen's economic losses, and court costs and what could be called compensation." - Attorney Halvor Manshaus after winning second acquittal for client "DVD Jon" Johansen.

"If the equivalent of cold fusion has been invented in the software context, it ought to be a matter of science and engineering to see if it works." - Adam Eisgrau, P2P United, responding to attacks that content filtering is technically practical.

"Join a bunch of hackers and geeks. Spread the word. Bring people, visuals, music. If you don't make the first train, we're also on the second, and the one after that and the one after that and the one after that." – Subway “Geek Party” invite, San Francisco.




Hacker Hero Seeks Compensation After Acquittals In DVD Cracking Case

OSLO, Norway (AP) - A Norwegian man who became a hacker hero for cracking security codes on Hollywood DVDs wants police to compensate him now that he's been acquitted twice of computer piracy, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Jon Lech Johansen, 20, also known as DVD Jon, was 15 when he developed a program to watch movies on a Linux-based computer without DVD-viewing software. He posted the codes on the Internet in 1999 and became a folk hero among computer hackers.

Norway's economic crime police charged him under data break-in laws, demanding a suspended jail sentence, confiscation of equipment and fines.

However, Norwegian courts twice ruled that Johansen could not be convicted of breaking into DVDs he bought legally, nor could he be punished for providing a tool -- such as a computer program -- that others might use for illegal acts.

The Oslo District Court acquitted Johansen just more than a year ago. Police appealed to the Borgarting appeals court in Oslo, and last month lost that case as well.

Johansen's lawyer, Halvor Manshaus, said his client will seek about $21,800 from the economic crime police because the case had been such a burden over the past four years.

``What we will demand be covered is Johansen's economic losses, and court costs and what could be called compensation,'' Manshaus said on state radio network NRK. He did not immediately return calls to his office.

Johansen had been charged after police received a complaint from the Motion Picture Association of America and the DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses the film industry's Content Scrambling System, or CSS.

This month, prosecutor Inge Marie Sunde unexpectedly declined to appeal to the supreme court. Many, including Johansen, had expected a high court appeal because the case was the first of its kind in Norway.

Johansen's program, called DeCSS, is one of many that can break the CSS.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/7808655.htm


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Study: P2P and Legal Downloads Will Kill CDs
James Maguire

The combined popularity of peer-to- peer file swapping services and legal downloading sites will cause the CD format to go the way of the vinyl album, according to a study by research firm Forrester.

"Piracy and its cure -- streaming and downloads -- will drive people to connect to entertainment, not own it," states the study.

In particular, younger consumers have made music downloading part of their lifestyle, Forrester noted, reporting that 49 percent of 12- to 22-year-olds have downloaded music in the last month.

Adding momentum to this trend is the proliferation of legal download services, Forrester said. A long list of large corporations -- from Coca Cola to Apple -- are now purveyors of music downloads for a fee.

The shift from CDs to download-only music sales will take "a long, long time," Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, the study's author, told NewsFactor, but is inevitable. "We're training a generation of young people that there's no connection between music and plastic."

Launched in the early 1980s, the compact disc caused a sea change in the music industry, turning vinyl albums into collector's items. In addition to offering superior sound quality, the CD was cheaper to manufacture, allowing the music industry to promote niche artists who otherwise might never have emerged.

The CD's higher profit margins meant record labels have been reluctant to part with this now venerable medium.

But consumer behavior is eroding support for the CD, Forrester noted, reporting that half of downloaders say they now buy fewer CDs. The popularity of unauthorized P2P services, such as Kazaa, have cost the music industry US$700 million in sales since 1999, the research firm said.

The downloading trend also is affecting the film industry. One in five young file- sharers have downloaded a film, according to Forrester, which reported that movie piracy is "three years behind music."

Record labels have attempted to come to terms with the seismic shift caused by P2P technology, launching legal downloading services. Seeing the trend, dozens of large companies -- from telecom firms like Cable & Wireless to retail mega-store Wal-Mart -- have launched or are planning download services.

The sound quality of these music downloads is not superior to that of CDs -- in some cases it is lower quality -- but the files can be shifted and transported among many digital devices, such as laptops and mobile phones.

"The download business is growing enormously," Bernoff said. "Getting it right or getting it wrong will make all the difference in the success" of this strategy for music labels and other entertainment companies.

The CD is not dead yet, "but the more energy a company puts into trying to preserve the CD business, the worse off they're going to be," he said, "and the more energy they put into trying to get the download business right, the better off they're going to be."

By 2008, music downloads will account for a third of music industry revenue overall, Yankee Group analyst Mike Goodman told NewsFactor, echoing a conclusion from the Forrester study.

The overall music market will grow, and download sales will lead this growth, he says. The shift away from the CD is not a threat to the record labels in Goodman's view.

Much of the record labels' recent revenue dips are not due to digital downloading but to the fact that labels have produced fewer CDs, he explained, focusing only on clearly profitable titles. "Any time the music industry cries poverty, you can take that with a grain of salt," he observed.

Whether legal download sites will survive in the face of unauthorized P2P services is a key question facing the industry as it gradually shifts away from the CD.

The essential task for the record labels is to "marginalize the P2P services where it's a 'youthful indiscretion,'" Bernoff said. He pointed to the recent decision by Pennsylvania State University to license the now legal Napster service to provide students with an alternative to unauthorized downloading. Many universities are considering a similar approach, he said.

The legal services eventually will overtake file-swapping services, but "it's going to be a slow process," Goodman says, not likely to occur before 2007.

But he added a caveat to his prediction: "If we see easy-to-use anonymous P2P sites out there," he said, referring to file-swapping sites in which neither the downloaders or file- sharers are traceable, "then all bets are off."
http://view.atdmt.com/TMI/iview/nwsf...0751686076306/


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Just Say 'No' to Record Labels
Associated Press

CANNES, France -- Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a provocative new musicians' alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels.

With the Internet transforming how people buy and listen to songs, musicians need to act now to claim digital music's future, Gabriel and Eno argued Monday as they handed out a slim red manifesto at a huge deal-making music conference known as Midem.

They call the plan the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" -- or MUDDA, which has a less lofty ring to it.

"Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written, and they'll get written without much input from artists," said Eno, who has a long history of experimenting with technology.

By removing record labels from the equation, artists can set their own prices and set their own agendas, said the two independent musicians, who hope to launch the online alliance within a month.

Their pamphlet lists ideas for artists to explore once they're freed from the confines of the CD format. One might decide to release a minute of music every day for a month. Another could post several recorded variations of the same song and ask fans what they like best.

Gabriel, who has his own label, Real World Records, said he isn't trying to shut down the record companies -- he just wants to give artists more options.

"There are some artists who already tried to do everything on their own," he said, adding that those musicians often found out they didn't like marketing or accounting. "We believe there will be all sorts of models for this."

A representative with the venture said other musicians had expressed interest in participating in the alliance, but did not provide names.

One band that has found its niche online is the jam band Phish, which sells downloads of its concerts on a popular website.

The band's relationship with its devoted fans is often compared to that of the Grateful Dead, and the site is another chance for close contact. But it also generates plenty of money: more than $2.25 million in sales since 2002.

What's driving the movement is the success of legitimate download sites such as Apple's Internet music store, iTunes, which sells songs for $1 a pop in the United States.

Both Gabriel and Eno started their careers in the 1960s and remain immensely influential.

As a means to help unsigned artists, their effort "is certainly going to be a valuable and interesting thing to do," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"But for anyone (already) signed it's almost certainly a violation of their contract," said Bernoff, who addressed the conference over the weekend. "It's not in a record company's best interest to have large pieces of music out there that they don't have control of."

Gabriel co-founded a European company, On Demand Distribution, which runs legal download sites in 11 European countries.

The company would provide the technology for MUDDA, though Gabriel and Eno are looking for online partners.

Europe's sites haven't yet caught up to the success of the U.S. portals. Apple's iTunes, for example, is planning a European launch this year, which is expected to build interest in legal downloading in a market where many people don't realize there's even such a thing.

Because both legal and illegal sites offer tunes a la carte, many in the industry believe they'll make albums less important by putting the focus on catchy singles.

Eno and Gabriel both suggested they'd welcome a chance to make songs that stand alone.

"I'm an artist who works incredibly slowly," Gabriel said. "If some of those (songs) could be made available, you don't have to be so trapped into this old way of being confined only by the album cycle."

The former Genesis singer and world music promoter is interested in putting multiple versions of the same song online. He's also looking forward to being able to hear unfinished music from other artists.

"We tend at the moment ... to try to find a moment when a song is right. You stick the pin in the butterfly and put it in the box and you sell the box," he said. "Music is actually a living thing that evolves."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62050,00.html


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CD Lock Loosened For Freer Copying
John Borland

Macrovision released a new generation of its antipiracy technology on Thursday that it hopes will make copy-protected music CDs more attractive to consumers and record labels.

The update attempts to simulate most of what people are doing with CDs on their computers. Content owners such as record labels would be able to set the "usage rules" on the Microsoft Windows Media files included on a Macrovision-protected CD, allowing a specified numbers of CD burns and transfers to portable devices, for example.

Macrovision hopes that its new technology, called CDS-300, will make CD copy protection more palatable to consumers who have grown used to the restrictions on music purchased from online song stores.

"Before, you had the 'second session' that was bolted to the disc," said Adam Sexton, Macrovision's vice president of marketing. "We're pleased we can now deliver the same functions and can go 'mano a mano' with the online services."

The copy-protection company's previous software blocked people from making copies of CDs by rendering the music files invisible to most computers. However, the protected CDs also held additional versions of the songs in the Microsoft Windows Media format, which could be played on PCs. This separate set of music files, called a "second session," could not be transferred off the CD or put on portable devices, however.

That restriction stood in poor contrast to songs purchased from Apple Computer's iTunes, Napster or other services, which can be burned to a CD, used on several computers, or transferred to a portable device. They also include some anticopying restrictions, however.

Loosening the restrictions on copy-protected CDs may represent a step forward for digital rights management, but the company's technology is likely to remain controversial with consumers.

Macrovision's software and rival products from companies, such as SunnComm Technologies, are intended to curb unregulated CD copying and the practice of "ripping" unprotected MP3s, which can be distributed through file-swapping services or by other digital means.

Record labels are eager to bring both activities under control. But they're also leery of a backlash from consumers, who are used to copying and ripping CDs and who might view the new CD protections as an unfair constraint. Several lawsuits have already been filed in the United States and the United Kingdom over CD copy-protection techniques.

To date, CD copy protection has not been widely distributed in the United States. Record labels there are looking for even greater protections, such as preventing burned CDs from being copied additional times, according to Sexton.

The new Macrovision technology is being tested in production plants in Europe, and it is not likely to find its way to a commercial release for at least another quarter. It will be available for record labels to use around the world.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5145961.html


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Hollywood Group Drops DVD-Copying Case
John Borland

A high-technology group associated with Hollywood has dropped a long-running lawsuit against a California programmer it accused of putting DVD-cracking code online, attorneys for both sides said Thursday.

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) has asked California state courts to dismiss its case against programmer Andrew Bunner. The group sued Bunner and a long list of other Web publishers four years ago, alleging that the act of posting code called DeCSS, which can help in the process of decoding and copying DVDs, violated its trade secret rights.

The trade group's decision marks the close of the last prominent legal battle over the DeCSS code. Despite the DVD CCA's move, one federal appeals court ruling in New York found it is illegal to distribute the code in the United States.

Nevertheless, Bunner's attorneys called the unexpected decision by the DVD CCA to drop its case a victory for free speech.

"I think that they are sick of losing," said Allonn Levy, one of several attorneys who had worked on the case on Bunner's behalf. "I think they have finally reached the conclusion that it is not a fight that they can win."

Attorneys for the DVD CCA could not immediately be reached. In a statement, they said the group is "evolving" its legal strategies based on other court decisions, and that the California state trade secrets case was no longer necessary.

"The trade secrets case, together with (other) litigation, set important precedents and sent important messages," Robert Sugarman, the DVD CCA's lead attorney and a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said in the statement. "The owners of trade secrets will not stand by and allow their property to be misappropriated without action, and the rulings of the courts have shown protection of intellectual property is an important priority for the legal system."

Although the unceremonious close to the case will have little impact on the online availability of the controversial DVD software, Bunner's fight has been a closely watched test of how much freedom individuals have to distribute software online that runs against corporate or other powerful interests--or even violates a law.

Bunner's attorneys had sought broad First Amendment free-speech protections for posting software code online, while the DVD CCA had argued that speech rights did not cover trade secrets.

An appeals court ruled in favor of Bunner, affording software the highest protection available. But that verdict concerned Silicon Valley companies, which worried that it would provide a shield in cases such as disgruntled employees posting a company's private source code online for competitors to read.

"The appeals court ruled that you couldn't have a preliminary injunction (blocking online posting of code) in a trade secrets case that involved software," said Jonathan Band, an intellectual-property attorney with Morrison & Foerster. "That was a very odd decision...and was extremely problematic for (the) software industry."

However, a state Supreme Court ruling overturned that lower-court ruling late last year, saying software should have some First Amendment protections but that trade secret rights might take precedence.

Hollywood's four-year fight

The DVD CCA decision follows a series of setbacks for Hollywood in attempting to control the spread of DeCSS code and other DVD-copying tools.

Written by Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen, the code was initially aimed at letting Linux-based computers play DVDs. However, the code became widely distributed as a means for breaking through, or decrypting, the Content Scrambling System, an anticopying technology the DVD CCA created that most DVDs use.

Norwegian courts ruled last month for a second time that Johansen did not break that country's laws in releasing the DeCSS code online.

Hollywood studios have fought a long-running battle against distributors of the code in the United States, however. Soon after the DeCSS software emerged, studios sued a number of Web publishers in federal court, arguing that Johansen's software violated provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Just one of those defendants, 2600 publisher Eric Corley, ultimately fought the lawsuits. He lost, after a federal judge ruled that he could not post the DeCSS code, or even link to it online.

At the same time, the DVD CCA took Bunner and other publishers to court in California, saying their publication of the DeCSS code violated the technology group's rights to keep the CSS code a trade secret. Most of those defendants also declined to fight the lawsuit.

The ruling in the Corley case ultimately made the California case redundant, since the code was already illegal to distribute, attorneys said. If it had pursued its case further, the DVD CCA would have also risked prompting a ruling against it, since the California Supreme Court had expressed skepticism in its last ruling that there were any trade secrets to protect.

In its statement Thursday, the DVD CCA said it will pursue other avenues in protecting its code, including possibly filing patent infringement suits. It also said several outstanding Hollywood cases against commercial publishers that offer DVD-copying software will help protect its rights.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5145809.html


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File-Sharing Sites Kazaa And Grokster To Offer Free Downloads Of Shatner/Nimoy Priceline.com TV Ad
Press Release

Haven't seen the new priceline.com TV ad with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy? Don't worry - help has arrived.

Priceline.com and Altnet, Inc. announced today that the new priceline.com TV spot is being made available for free downloading on the Altnet Network, which includes peer-to-peer affiliates Kazaa and Grokster. The spot is available today on Kazaa and will be added to Grokster next week. This is the first time Priceline.com has utilized peer-to-peer file-sharing networks to get its commercial message into the hands of consumers.

"The entertainment value of the spot is so high that we believe Shatner and Nimoy fans will want it, even if it is an advertisement," said Brian Harniman, priceline.com's Vice President, Online Marketing.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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Penn State File-Sharing Trial Grows In Popularity
Elizabeth Thomas

The file-sharing program at Penn State University has met with tremendous success in its first two weeks.

The agreement between Penn State and Napster, originally signed in October, offers students membership in the file- sharing program as a part of their tuition.

In the first few hours, over 2,000 students signed up for Napster 2.0, and the numbers continued to rise steadily. By the end of the week, approximately 8,000 students had registered, equaling nearly half of the on-campus population.

Thus far, the program is only available to the 17,000 students who reside on the State College, Pa., campus. By next fall, officials hope to extend Napster 2.0 to the off- campus students who compose the remainder of Penn State's population of 83,000.

"The success and reaction to the Napster program has everyone at the university ecstatic," Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig said.

"We were confident that it would be a successful addition to the student experience and set a trend in higher education over time, so in that sense, we were not surprised."

The program offers three ways to access music. The first two -- using streaming audio and downloading songs onto a hard drive -- are free.

Students who wish to download songs that they can then transfer off of a computer system and onto a CD or MP3 player must pay a small fee for each downloaded track.

"The songs can be paid for with a credit card or Napster gift cards," said Sam Haldeman, special assistant to the associate vice provost of Information Technologies.

"By the end of the semester, students will be able to bursar their music purchases."

Of the 100,000 songs that students downloaded or streamed within the first few hours of the launch, "it is safe to say that the majority of those would have been illegally obtained had we not made this decision," Haldeman said.

Despite some initial student concerns before the Jan. 12 program start, Kendig said he had "not heard of any negative reaction, and didn't expect to hear of any once we launched the service and students actually got to hear all that it has to offer."

"It's certainly been a top hit this semester, and we expect it to stay that way for a long time."

While the administration at Penn currently has no plans of offering a legal downloading service, it is "exploring options similar to Penn State's Napster service," said Dave Millar, University Information Security officer.

Millar said that people who continue to download music illegally are increasingly subject to lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America.

"Most importantly, people need to know that if they share copyrighted files without permission, they are personally liable and may face significant fines," Millar added.

"With all the commercial options available for legal file sharing, from iPod to Wal-Mart and everything in between, people are wise to only download files legally."
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vn.../4014b7b87ddef

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Pressure to use only Napster.

Penn State Puts Firewall In Dorms

Residents of Atherton, McKean, McElwain and Packer Halls were the first students to get this security.
Kristen M. Neufeld

Residents of Atherton Hall became some of the first Penn State students to experience the university's new firewall when it was activated in their building at 8 a.m. yesterday.

Intended to protect Penn State's network from malicious codes like worms, viruses and Trojan horses, the firewall will also block peer-to-peer file-sharing programs like Kazaa and prevent students from running servers out of residence hall computers, said Joel Weidner, associate director of information systems for Housing and Food Services.

However, the decision to block Kazaa and similar programs "was intentional," he said, because it will help fulfill Penn State President Graham Spanier's initiative to curb the illegal trading of copyrighted materials.

The firewall will not affect Penn State's Napster program, Weidner added.

Furthermore, according to the university's recently revised policy AD-20 on network security, students are no longer allowed to run servers in residence halls, he said.

"The firewall is intended to stop that from happening," he said.

Firewalls were also activated yesterday in McElwain, McKean and Packer Halls, he said.

The Office of Housing warned students of the firewall's activation via e-mail Wednesday afternoon, said Atherton resident Michael Young (senior-computer science).

Many students, particularly those studying computer- related fields, say the firewall will be an inconvenience to them.

In the past, Young, a Linux user, said he used a server called a Secure Shell Host to upload files to his Web space. This allowed him to work on large files for classes in a computer lab and then access them from his personal computer, and vice versa.

"Now I won't be able to do that" because of the firewall, he said.

Weidner said there are alternatives for running servers and sharing files. The U:/ drive, 100 megabytes of network space on which students can store data, is one possibility, but Young said it takes more time and effort.

"It is so cumbersome and inefficient," he said. "It's another hassle, another level of hindrance."

Other Secure Shell Host users say they will face the same problems.

"I see a big problem with getting my work done," Linux Users Group President William Enck (senior-computer engineering) said. "I'm going to have to walk all the way across campus to get files on my computer. Then if I need to work on them in the computer lab, I'll have to walk all the way back."

Many students in computer-related majors work in labs in the new Information Sciences and Technology Building, which will be especially inconvenient for residents of Atherton Hall who need to make that kind of round trip to work on projects, he added.

"I see more problems it's going to create than it will solve," he said.

Even more frustrating is the fact that firewalls can be programmed selectively to block potentially hazardous activities, like spam e-mail messages and viruses, while allowing safe ones, Young said.

"Instead of just stopping known issues, they are blocking every port," he said. "It's like using a sledgehammer instead of a flyswatter."

Weidner said the university could have decided to selectively block ports, but chose to block them all because of policy.

The new firewall will have a lot of implications, Linux Users Group member Tom Keiser (junior-computer science and electrical engineering) said.

"We will lose a lot of productivity and flexibility in how we use our computing resources," he said. "Then what's the point of having a residence hall server at all?"

Some students are already looking for ways to circumvent the firewall, such as using AOL Instant Messenger to transfer files, he said.

"There is already a backlash against it," he said.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive...04dnews-12.asp


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Napster's Fanning Has Snocap-ped Vision
John Borland and Stefanie Olsen

Far from his anarchic Napster days, file-swapping pioneer Shawn Fanning and several of his old colleagues are quietly working on a new venture called Snocap that is aimed at turning peer-to-peer networks into dollars for record companies.

Based in San Francisco and backed by angel investor Ron Conway--who also initially funded Napster--Snocap has for months been quietly writing code and building the bridges to the music world that Napster lacked, according to sources familiar with the company.

Fanning's role as the creator of the music industry's archenemy does not seem to be holding him back. Snocap's plan, which involves identifying music files being traded through file-swapping networks and then attaching a price tag to them, is resonating well with music industry executives.

"It's a pretty well thought-out idea, but the success of it hinges on everybody in the ecosystem getting involved," said one record label executive familiar with Snocap. "The key to its success is the peer-to-peer companies agreeing to participate. If they do participate, it could be phenomenal."

Requests for comment from Fanning and other Snocap employees were not returned.

Fanning's return to the peer-to-peer world is one of the most ambitious of several ongoing attempts to bring about a detente between file-swapping networks and record labels, which have been at war almost since the day Napster launched in 1999.

Today's unrivalled file-swapping leader, Sharman Networks' Kazaa, is closely affiliated with Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment that seeds file-swapping search results with authorized files such as games or music. Altnet has been trying unsuccessfully for more than a year to strike distribution deals with major record labels and movie studios. Sharman is now suing the entertainment companies on antitrust grounds, alleging that they are colluding against peer-to-peer companies.

Altnet and Sharman have also helped create a forum called the Distributed Computing Industry Association, which is trying to bring entertainment companies and file-trading companies to a negotiating table in order to work out their differences. That effort is still in the early stages, however.

After the flood
A filing with the California Secretary of State states that Snocap was incorporated in Delaware on Oct. 28, 2002, with Conway as president, listed as the sole officer. The filing also notes that the company changed its name to Snocap from Open Copyright Database on June 25, 2003.

The company, at least in its early stages, looks much like Fanning's old one.

According to sources familiar with the company, Ali Aydar, who worked with Fanning on pre-Napster projects and ultimately became a key engineer at the file-swapping company, is chief operating officer. Jordan Mendelson, who helped develop Napster's search technology in its early days, is also a co-founder. Mendelson registered the Snocap.com domain name.

Mendelson has chronicled a few moments in the company's development on his Web log, including a recent flood caused by an errant sprinkler that temporarily forced the start-up out of its San Francisco offices. A visit to Snocap's office in San Francisco's trendy "SoMa," or South of Market, district bears out the flood's damage. A Snocap banner and a few scribbles on a white board now overlook empty desks and exposed wallboards.

Nevertheless, the company is growing, with a total of nine employees as of early January, according to Mendelson's blog. A few job listings also are posted on the company's Web site.

The technology itself, according to sources familiar with the company, takes a page from Napster's last days as a file-swapping company. In late 2001, courts forced the company to block copyrighted songs before they were traded through the network. Napster, with partner Relatable, worked to develop a way to identify and filter material.

Ultimately, the company decided to shut the service down rather than try to develop the technology under the court's order. The Napster name is now being used by the Roxio-owned digital music download service, a rival to Apple Computer's iTunes store. The new Napster service does not have any of the file-swapping capabilities of the original, however.

Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network, including using a technique called "audio fingerprinting," which monitors the sonic characteristics of music files.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways, sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the software could check its "fingerprint" and then compare it against a database Snocap operates, for example.

Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store. Alternately, some mechanism could be established, under which the file-swapping network operator would pay for the downloads that are tracked by Snocap's system and would later be reimbursed by subscription fees or advertising revenue.

Fanning has been explaining his ideas to record label executives, who are interested but not entirely sold, sources said. His background with Napster may be helping him win meetings with the labels, rather than hurting him, they suggested.

"Shawn is a smart, articulate guy. That goes a long way," said one source familiar with Fanning's discussions with record labels. "He walks in a world that they desperately want access to."

Peer-to-peer companies, however, may also be a difficult sell. Executives from several major file-swapping companies said Fanning has yet to contact them; some said other companies with similar ideas based on audio fingerprinting were looking for support.


"We had a very similar idea run past us," said LimeWire Chief Technology Officer Greg Bildson. "We basically ended up not following up on it. It is interesting, but we're not interested in building filtering and any centralization into our client."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5146858.html


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Music Labels See Recovery In Downloads, Lawsuits
Reuters

A music industry trade organization said Thursday that new online download services are winning over customers and warned that a globe-spanning legal crackdown on file sharers is imminent.

On Thursday, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released a progress report on its year-old campaign to develop and promote online music stores and spread its message that online song swapping is illegal.

In a rare upbeat statement, the IFPI said its initiative is building a vibrant, albeit small, market for selling music downloads that appears to be stealing momentum from peer- to-peer networks such as Kazaa and WinMX, where all varieties of music are available for free.

"We believe that the music industry's Internet strategy is now turning the corner, and that in 2004 there will be, for the first time, a substantial migration of consumers from unauthorized free services to legitimate alternatives," said Jay Berman, IFPI's chief executive.

"The start of 2004 brings a new sense of optimism along with evidence of real change," Berman said in a statement.

The IFPI, which represents a host of independent and major music labels including EMI, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, Sony Music and Universal Music, also said it would get tough with prolific song swappers this year.

"It is likely that there will be lawsuits against major Internet distributors internationally in 2004, similar to those filed in the U.S.," the IFPI said in its report.

European music industry executives have been warning for weeks they will follow in the controversial footsteps of the United States, where a legal clampdown on file sharers has resulted in hundreds of lawsuits. On Wednesday, the Recording Industry Association of America launched its largest wave yet of file-swapping lawsuits against individuals.

The crackdown could intensify in Canada and Asia too, industry officials said.

The industry blames file-sharing networks for contributing mightily to a three-year decline in music sales. Citing a variety of independent and industry-backed studies, it says the lawsuits do serve as an effective deterrent to file sharing.

The IFPI said its own probe of file-sharing networks revealed the availability of unauthorized music files on the services dropped from 1 billion in April 2003 to 800 million this month.

Industry reports offer contradicting evidence that the file-sharing phenomenon is tailing off, however.

It is believed music executives will invest more money in the development of online music stores before they round up the lawyers. In Europe alone, some 50 new industry- backed download stores are expected to launch this year, bringing the continental total to over 80.

Berman said he expects that the most popular online music store, Apple Computer's iTunes, along with offerings from Roxio and RealNetworks

Industry officials told Reuters recently that in 2003 American music fans purchased 30 million downloads, while Europeans bought 3 million from industry-sanctioned sites.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5145267.html


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Governments Vote Against Microsoft
David Becker

Microsoft has had its share of bad courtroom experiences, but lately the software giant has been taking some of its hardest knocks in city council and legislative chambers.

While government customers account for less than 10 percent of Microsoft's revenue, according to analyst estimates, they've caused a disproportionate share of headaches for the company over the past year. Ambitious projects to migrate government computers to Linux and other competing software, official decrees favoring open-source products and hard- nosed licensing negotiations have put government customers well ahead of private business when it comes to testing Microsoft's mettle.

Some of Microsoft's most publicized business defeats recently have come from government plans to migrate official computers to open-source software. The German city of Munich became one of the most high-profile Microsoft defectors last year, voting to move 14,000 city-owned PCs to open-source software. The Texas city of Austin embarked on a similar Linux project late last year. A number of British government agencies are looking at open-source, as are official agencies in Korea, China and Germany. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts last year adopted an IT purchasing policy that favors open-source software, but it later modified the policy to emphasize "best value" products.

While some of announcements seem little more than negotiating tactics, the sheer volume of deals point to a greater willingness among governments to move out of Microsoft's fold. And it isn't just Linux on servers that's garnering interest: The open-source operating system finally seems to be making headway on the desktop.

"These kind of deals are symptomatic that Linux is really gaining credibility on the desktop," said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst for research firm Red Monk. "What we're seeing from government...is that certain constituencies are ready for that migration."

Follow my leader?
The fear for Microsoft is that business customers--the company's bread and butter--might soon follow suit. "Governments just get it faster in some areas, and I think open source is one of them," added Sam Hiser, the marketing guru for open-source software group OpenOffice.org. "Enterprises are very clubby; they need a sense of confidence that individually, they're not the odd one out. Governments will act more quickly--especially if there's a case for cost-cutting and doing the right thing with taxpayers' dollars."

Maggie Wilderotter, senior vice president of business strategy for Microsoft, argued the situation is one of perception more than reality. Governments aren't making radical IT moves with any more frequency than businesses, she said. They're just getting more attention when they do.

"I really believe it's more about publicity than government moving faster than anyone else," Wilderotter said. "In a lot of cases, government involvement is just more high- profile. These are more transparent contracts because of the bidding requirements. If a business decides on a new software package, it's not a press-release thing."

"There are also a lot of wins Microsoft has made with governments in the last year," she added, "but we don't spend a lot of time hyping those in the press."

Stuart Cohen, chief executive of Open Source Development Labs, said government motives for moving to open-source software vary. It is different around the world," he said. "I think in the U.S., they are very focused on the total cost of ownership and flexibility. I think in Europe, they seem more focused on the open-source concept of where Linux comes from. In Japan, I think they are focused more on the import-export ratios, and they would like to see more exporting of software versus importing of software. And I think in China they are interested in using what they build, and they are building Linux-based applications today."

Cost is often the first factor to motivate governments into considering open-source software. "These guys are really strapped for cash;
many of them are in a state of near financial crisis," said Mike Cherry, an analyst for research firm Directions on Microsoft. "They are really looking at any way to save money. If they have a Linux advocate in the IT organization who says, 'I can save you money,' that's going to get some attention."

The overall cost of buying and running Windows as opposed to Linux and open-source software has become one of the most contentious areas of the debate between open-source software advocates and proprietary software backers. Microsoft claims that while open-source products are cheap or free to acquire, increased administration and support costs make them more expensive in the long run. Several third-party studies, including an influential report by research firm IDC, have supported Microsoft's claims. But others argue that cost advantages from switching to Linux continue to accrue well after the initial installation.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5145332.html


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UK Music Industry Wins Web CD Pricing Dispute
Bernhard Warner

The British music industry has settled a legal dispute with CDWow.com over the sale of discounted compact discs after the online retailer agreed to raise its prices in the UK and Ireland, the parties said on Wednesday.

In reaching an agreement, trade body The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and Hong Kong-based CDWow.com avoided a February 2 court hearing to determine if the online retailer could continue to import products from outside the European Union and sell them on to Irish and British customers.

The profitable three-year-old firm has been able to undercut high street retailers by as much as three pounds by obtaining the music from record companies and wholesalers in cheaper markets around the world.

The BPI said the practice violated EU trade law, once again landing a virtual retailer in a legal quagmire over how to apply local laws to its global customer base.

Under the terms of the agreement, reached late on Tuesday night, CDWow.com said it agreed to ship products to customers in the UK and Ireland that are sourced from within the European Economic Area, in accordance with European trade laws, the parties said.

As a result, CDWow.com will raise CD prices by two pounds ($3.67) or three euros ($3.75) as of Sunday night for all deliveries to the UK and Ireland, respectively, said Philip Robinson, co-founder of CDWow.com.

"We will be expressing it as a surcharge," said Robinson. "A pop-up window will appear when the shipping information is submitted that says this charge is due to the BPI."

Prices for most CDs will rise to between 8.99 pounds and 10.99 pounds on CDWow.com. Pricing for DVDs and video games will not be affected, Robinson said.

Earlier this month, the BPI said it was investigating a number of Web retailers, including Amazon.com, to determine if the products they sold were properly sourced.

The probe is being conducted amid a prolonged slump in CD sales as the popularity of file sharing services such as Kazaa and eDonkey continues to build a black market for free music on the Internet.

The industry is in a tight spot, though, because it often acknowledges that Internet retailers have become an important source of revenue to counteract weak store sales.

"We are growing the market," said Robinson. "There was a strong appetite for product at 8.99 pounds. We met the consumer's value point, which is why the business grew so wildly."

Record companies have begun cutting the price of CDs in many countries over the past year. In the UK, album sales were up 7.6 percent as price discounts took hold.

Robinson said a similar complaint from the BPI's German counterparts has recently been lodged, setting the stage for a pricing change there.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4177141


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Silicon.com

Should The UK Music Industry Take The Legal High Ground?

In business you have to make unpopular decisions, that's a given, but nobody has actively courted negative press with the same kind of vigour that the record industry has displayed in hastily dragging its name through the mud.

In the US, the Recording Industry Association of America has made more enemies than it has records in the past 18 months and, worryingly, its UK equivalent, the British Phonographic Industry, seems to think that this is an approach it would be wise to follow.

Andrew Yeates, director general of the BPI, has warned that legal action may be the only option left for a beleaguered record industry.

But is this really worthwhile?

For starters, there is the age-old argument that the record industry is barking up the wrong tree.

Many believe file-sharing and music downloads have little to do with a dent in record sales that is more likely to be attributable to a drop in the standards of music being produced.

This is born out by the fact that independent labels, typically those producing more innovative sounds, have not seen any decline, while major labels, dependent upon tiresome cover versions, rehashed identikit pop acts and the nauseating Pop Idol format, have been found out and subsequently witnessed a drop in revenues.

The truth is that the record labels were too slow to embrace technology, leaving a chasm that was filled by the likes of Napster.

Originally the labels turned on Napster and Kazaa but successes, after the closure of Napster, were few and far between.

Now behind the times and in a strop, the labels are picking on 'the smallest bloke in the pub' by turning on individual consumers unlucky enough to be singled out from the millions using download services.

Such action will be costly, time consuming and will ultimately offer very little reward.

Some might call it spiteful; others might call it misguided.
http://www.silicon.com/networks/webwatch/ 0,39024667,39117791,00.htm


Web Wrongly Blamed For Child-Sex Offence Explosion

Children's charity NCH has today blamed the internet for a 1500 per cent increase in child-porn related offences.

Its figures reveal that 549 child-porn offenders were charged or cautioned in 2001, compared with only 35 in 1988.

And that's all the evidence the charity felt it needed to start whipping up a storm of anti-internet propaganda, which was doubtless music to the ears of the lazy hacks on the Daily Mail and other even-handed rags that are always willing to blame 'newfangled' technology for all society's ills.

There are also claims flying around that 3G mobile phones are likely to make matters even worse. There's no evidence to support that claim, but it makes for good copy.

Examining the figures further, however, it's worth pointing out that until 1988, the law on possessing child pornography was very different - hence the apparently arbitrary year chosen to compare to the present. Until this time, being in possession of child pornography was not illegal, and subsequent enforcement of new laws may not have been as rigorous as it is now. We are not comparing like with like.

Then consider the fact that these figures could actually be construed as good news. The fact that 549 child-porn offenders were charged or cautioned compared to 38 is a victory of sorts for law enforcement. The internet hasn't created paedophiles; these higher contemporary figures merely portray the number of offenders who previously may have been escaping detection. You can bet there were not only 38 offenders in 1988 and 549 in 2001 - these are merely percentages of a far more concerning figure.

To say the numbers of those caught have increased solely because of the internet also detracts from efforts by the UK police force to stamp out child pornography. More people are being caught because the police are working far harder and far more efficiently to catch them.

While the research from the NCH deals specifically with child-porn related offences, there is an implication that the rise of child porn on the internet has led to a rise in instances of what it calls "hands-on" abuse.

We can only hope NCH isn't claiming for one minute that the internet has actually created more paedophiles - but that would appear to be the suggestion.

While it is clear that the internet has provided a channel for procuring and sharing pornographic images, it is unlikely that it has had any impact on the actual numbers or proclivities of child-sex offenders.

The ignorance inherent in suggesting people have been encouraged to take up child abuse because of the ubiquity of the internet is alarming.

These offenders have always existed. The internet is merely a technological means to an end that like anything is open to abuse. The fact of the matter is that yes, the internet has become a stalking ground for sex offenders who will use chat rooms to 'groom' unsuspecting victims, but the internet is not to blame. It's merely a technology and, if anything, it's the users who are to blame.

Since the 1950s, generations of parents have been sitting children in front of the television set. As a 'third parent', it was there to act as babysitter, educator and entertainer. A child could be left in front of the TV and the parents could go about their business.

Too much of the same thinking now governs how people treat the internet within the home.

The fact of the matter is that lazy parenting is just as responsible for the exposure of children to sex offenders online. The internet doesn't have to be dangerous. Too many parents are unaware of who their children are talking to and what they are doing online. Too many will allow children to have an internet-enabled PC in their bedroom, when common sense says to put it in a communal room, and too few parents are installing monitoring and filtering software on the family PC or locking it with a password of which they are guardian.

Rather than standing back and blaming 'the internet', broadcasters, charities, MPs, parents, newspapers and schools would be of far more use collaborating on schemes to better educate the public about the dangers lurking online, rather than hiding behind headline-grabbing scaremongering.
http://www.silicon.com/hardware/storage/ 0,39024649,39117724,00.htm


Corporate America Divided Over File-Sharing

Today sneak previews of Pepsi's latest advertising campaign have been leaked onto the internet, ahead of its debut during Sunday's Superbowl.

The campaign promotes a joint venture between Apple and Pepsi which will see Pepsi drinkers win the opportunity to download free music from iTunes. But the messages it sends out may confuse many, as it makes heroes of convicted file-sharers.

Apple and Pepsi are giving away 100 million free songs - which equates to around one winner in every three Pepsis bought during the promotion - but the message is very much "we're still going to get out music for free off the internet".

The issues here are manifold. First there is the fact that this provides the hugely popular iTunes service with a massive competitive advantage. Of course there is a high likelihood that many winners won't be converted into regular users of iTunes but there is also a chance that it will sign-up many new converts through the promotion.

Then there is the small matter of Coca Cola's recent foray into online music services. Coke comes to the market with financial clout, advertising dollars and know-how as well as huge youth appeal.

So it must be doubly pleasing for Pepsi to be giving Apple such assistance in keeping the old enemy at bay.

And then there is the issue of file-sharing and the messages which Pepsi's campaign sends out. The advert features a group of teenagers who have all been charged and convicted by the Recording Industry Association of America accompanied, we assume, with no little irony by a Green Day cover version of I fought the law (and the law won).

We say irony, because the law and those who uphold it - such as the RIAA - are largely seen as the villains of the piece, while these teenagers are doubtless even now benefiting from Pepsi's mega-bucks. Who said crime doesn't pay?
http://www.silicon.com/networks/webwatch/ 0,39024667,39118092,00.htm


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Macworld

iTunes Superbowl Ad To Show Sued File-Swappers

Pepsi's forthcoming iTunes music promotional SuperBowl ad looks set to cause some controversy, as it features twenty teenagers sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The RIAA took the teenagers to the courts and accused them of stealing music. Pepsi's ad identifies the miscreants as "a few of the kids sued for downloading music free off the Internet."

One of these – 14-year old Annie Leith – then appears (to a Green Day version of "I Fought the Law") holding a Pepsi and says: "We are still going to download music for free off the Internet." The announcer then introduces the giant Pepsi iTunes Giveaway, in which Pepsi is offering 100 million free tracks from the iTunes Music Store.

RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol told USA Today: "This ad shows how everything has changed. Legal downloading is great because fans are supporting the future of creative work in America."

The music industry has little choice but to get behind digital music distribution, if claims by Forrester Research are true.

The analyst claims music downloads will make CDs obsolete in the next five years. Analyst Josh Bernoff said: "The industry is going through a complete change in the way people consume music."

He also warned that by the end of 2004 "half the businesses that started out" in the sector will fail, comparing the digital music explosion to the dot-com boom: "I haven't seen this level of irrational exuberance since the height of the bubble," he said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=7757


Apple 'Will Drive Consumer Music-Making'
Karen Haslam

Apple's recent audio related announcements are "very welcome" and are likely to encourage "increased growth at the consumer end of the market", according to Emagic UK distributor Sound Technology's managing director, David Marshall.

Last week's Logic announcements, and Apple's update to SoundTrack, joined the company's recently announced GarageBand application, repeating the segmented approach to market-capture that it revealed with its digital video products: Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, and iMovie.

Marshall told Macworld of his appreciation of Apple's audio strategy: "GarageBand is very welcome. With this new consumer-focused application Apple is making everyone aware that they can make their own music and is therefore opening up new markets for us. This news will help to grow the market for audio."

He added: "The audio market has been growing year on year for at least the last seven years at the professional end. Now we will see increased growth from the consumer end."

Apple acquired Emagic 18 months ago. At the time there was some concern over Apple's announcement that it would no longer support the Windows operating system in future product releases.

According to Marshall, these fears were unfounded: "Before Apple bought Emagic most of the market used Macs so we weren’t too concerned about the fact that Apple would not continue to develop for the PC. We didn't experience any loss of business even though we were now selling only a Mac product."

The effect of discontinuing development on platforms other than the Mac OS has had a positive effect for Apple, according to Marshall. He explained: "Many of the our customers who were Windows users have now switched to Mac."

Education breakthrough

And it isn’t just that the Mac platform is growing in popularity in the professional audio market. "We have seen an increase in interest in the Mac from our education customers," said Marshall.

"When Apple bought Emagic, 85 per cent of our education business was Windows based; we have since seen a huge increase in Apple's education market share." Marshall thinks this increase is partly due to universities switching to Macs and schools "following their example".

Marshall's findings reflect the analysis of analyst firm Gartner who announced recently that Apple's UK education market share is now 8.5 per cent – up from 6.4 per cent a year ago.

"Audio is definitely helping Apple to win back the education market," said Marshall.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=7747


Will Apple’s Music Plan Pay Off?

Apple is enjoying great success with the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, but is this enough to turn around the company’s fortunes? Three Business Week reports look into this question.

The first report looks at Apple's victory with regard to online music downloads.

Speaking to Business Week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicts that any new players entering the market now will have to work hard in order to be successful.

He says: "Whoever enters this market now is going to enter a market that's not in its infancy. And they'll enter a market against a competitor that has a 70 per cent market share – and surprisingly, that competitor's name will not be Microsoft. It will be Apple. Now, I understand that there's no guarantee we'll stay on top, but that's the situation."

And Jobs has no fear of Microsoft in this new market, despite the fact that the Seattle-based software giant has many partners in hardware and on the services side using Microsoft technologies. He told Business Week: "The people using their technologies have yet to be successful."

Jobs puts down the success of the iTunes Music Store to four factors: "Apple is the most creative technology company out there. Almost all recording artists use Macs and they have iPods. And there's a trust in the music community that Apple will do something right – that it won't cut corners – and that it cares about the creative process and about the music.

"Also, our solution encompasses operating-system software, server software, application software, and hardware. Apple is the only company in the world that has all of that under one roof. We can invent a complete a solution that works – and take responsibility for it."

The second Business Week report notes: "The iTunes Music Store managed to clock 30 million downloads in 2003 without the assistance of any marketing by a PC partner. Adding HP to the mix could push the total to over 100 million in 2004 and well above that in the future."

The report considers that even though Apple says it doesn't make money from selling digital downloads: "At those types of volumes, Apple will make money."

iPod gamble

The reports also examine the success of the iPod, suggesting that this also bodes well for the company. The digital music player was a big seller this Christmas – so popular in fact that many shops ran out.

Apple could have had even fewer iPods available. The company made 750,000 units for Christmas, despite predicting that it would only sell in the region of 500,000. Jobs told Business Week: "It was a big gamble on our part. We thought we could be way too high."

But Apple sold every one. "The thing that I love is that the best product is winning for a change," said Jobs.

Regarding the success of the iPod Jobs said: "It's very exciting to be able to apply Apple's innovation, engineering excellence, and marketing skill in a market where we don't have that 5 per cent market-share ceiling to see what we can do. And it feels good."

And this level of market share includes Windows users: "We sell more iPods to owners of Windows PCs than we do for the Mac, and it has been that way for a long while," Jobs told Business Week.

Business Week's third report goes on to suggest: "If Apple can maintain its success with the iPod, and follow up with other non-Mac products (the iPod works with the Mac as well as with Wintel PCs). Indeed, the iPod just might cast the Mac in an entirely new light."

The report notes that the iPod actually brought in more revenue ($256 million) than Apple's consumer flagship iMac line ($251 million), and suggests: "Why not focus on using the Mac to boost the bottom rather than the top line?"

Profits over market share

Apple had a positive reception to its first-quarter results, but shares fell 5.6 per cent the day after the earnings report. According to the Business Week report this was for two reasons: "The stock had run up in anticipation of solid numbers. And the Street had been hoping for bigger sales numbers on Power Mac G5 desktops."

According to the report, analysts are warning that the iPod sales growth could dim soon, so it is increasingly important that Apple keeps churning out Mac-related profits. "After all", notes Business Week, "that product still brings in nearly 70 per cent of sales, and that's not likely to change in the short term".

Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich adds: "If they're going to make Wall Street happy, it's going to be about PCs."

But in the Business Week interview Jobs suggests that analysts should start measuring the Mac by the profits it produces, rather than by its market share: "We've got 25 million customers that want the best computers in the world. If our market share grows, we're thrilled. But we've held our own, while our rivals were losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We're in pretty good shape."

Business Week suggests that Apple may experience stronger Mac sales as a result of the "return to strength in the ad and media biz" predicted for 2004.

The report also notes that Apple is developing a strong niche in the scientific computing market. Although this may only result in tens of thousands of machines per quarter, "this can make the difference between a good quarter and a ho-hum quarter for the Power Mac line," according to Needham & Co analyst Charles Wolf.

Apple is looking at other ways of increasing its profits. The Business Week report notes that by selling Mac OS X updates, the newly updated iLife suite, iChat software, and .Mac accounts to Mac users: "Jobs is clearly in the process of building a recurring revenue stream of hundreds of dollars per customer. Granted, not all Apple buyers will bite, but if even 10 per cent of the faithful buy in each year, that could mean hundreds of millions in new revenues."

And, according to the report, there is evidence that Apple is winning back the education market.

However, according to Gartner's preliminary market-share data, Apple held just 1.8 per cent of the worldwide PC market in the fourth quarter of 2003. And, Business Week suggests: "Some think Apple's share will fall further, if it can't keep pace with surging overall PC demand."
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=7759


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Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs
Wei-Meng Lee

I know many MacDevCenter readers use more than one platform in their daily lives. You may use a Windows PC in your workplace then use a Mac for all your other creative tasks at home. In any case, it is inevitable that sometimes you need to transfer files from one platform to the other. While there are many ways to do this (via USB flash drive, FireWire, Ethernet, shared folder, etc.), most of them still require you to either mess with lengthy cables, or need you to know how to mount a file share in Mac OS X. But there's an easier way through the use of an inexpensive application called "PC-Mac-Net FileShare."

Obtaining and Installing PC-Mac-Net FileShare

You can obtain the free Lite edition of PC-Mac-NET FileShare from Lava Software. The Lite edition allows you to transfer files of sizes smaller than 10MB and supports up to a maximum of three users in a workgroup. The Standard and Pro editions of PC-Mac-Net FileShare cost $24.95 and $39.95 (per user), respectively. The Standard edition does not have the restrictions of the Lite edition, and the Pro edition supports file encryption, which is especially useful over a wireless network. The licensing cost is for each computer, which means that if you have a Mac and a PC, you need two licenses. But at this moment, Lava software is selling it two-for-one, which makes it affordable.

PC-Mac-Net FileShare allows you to share files over TCP/IP. You can either use it in your local network (such as in the office or at home), or over the Internet. When used over the Internet, be sure to check that your firewall opens up port 3300, the default port used by PC-Mac-Net FileShare.

I downloaded the Lite edition and installed one copy on my PC and one on my Mac (note that you have to run the software on both machines in order for file sharing to work). The user interface for both platforms looks identical.

One note for Windows XP users: most people on Windows XP use the built-in firewall to protect against unauthorized entry, so you need to change those settings in order for PC-Mac-Net FileShare to work (even to use it on the local network). To configure your built-in firewall for PC-Mac-Net FileShare to work, right-click on My Network Places and select Properties. Right-click on your network connection and select Properties. Click on the Advanced tab (see Figure 1).
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/.../pc_share.html


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Looting The Music Industry
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.

There’s no doubt musicians and artists should be compensated for their work. In the old days, the only way to make a recording that could reach the public was through a record company. Not so, today. Artists can deal with their fans directly because of the Internet and all the associated technologies that allow them to get their music to the listeners.

The Music industry, like the former Iraqi Information Minister, is in denial. “Downloading? No. Not at all. No one is downloading files and we are selling CDs as never before.”

Yet, as they clamour to try and put the Genie back in the bottle, peer-to-peer file sharing is toppling the Music industry's statues, day-by-day.
http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa050103a.htm


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Music Royalties Rise, Even as CD Sales Fall
David Bernstein

Despite the travails of the music industry, with CD sales still slumping and record executives still suing suspected Internet pirates, one part of the business is thriving. Royalties paid to songwriters and music publishers from radio and television broadcasts of their songs, and from live performances, are at record highs.

"When it comes to the downloading issue, which is killing record labels and music publishers, we're only indirectly affected by it," said Bill Velez, the head of Sesac, one of the leading performing rights organizations in the United States. "We're able to weather economic storms better than other segments of the entertainment industry."

In 2003, America's three recognized performing rights organizations - Sesac, B.M.I. and Ascap - reported record revenues, which, in turn, have generated bigger royalties distributions to songwriters and music publishers.

Ascap - the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a nonprofit association - is the oldest and by most measures the largest of the performing rights organizations in the United States. Its preliminary data indicate that Ascap took in $668 million in 2003, 5.2 percent more than in the previous year. The association plans to release its official year-end results at its annual meeting in February.

B.M.I. - Broadcast Music Inc., also a nonprofit and the longtime chief competitor to Ascap - reported that revenue in its last fiscal year, which ended in October, increased 9.7 percent, to nearly $630 million, from $574 million in fiscal 2002.

Sesac - once known as the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, now based in Nashville - is the smallest of the three and the only for-profit organization of the group. Mr. Velez declined to disclose revenue, but said Sesac had gains in 2003 of about 30 percent, which he said continued the pace of the last decade.

Performing rights organizations track and collect royalty fees for public performances of copyrighted music and distribute the money to the copyright owners. Their role is to ensure that songwriters, composers and music publishers are paid for the use of their creations on broadcast radio and on network, cable and satellite television as well as in public places.

Senior executives of the three organizations credited their revenue growth mainly to royalties collected from two relatively robust media: radio and cable television. They also said there were more public performance outlets now than ever: live concerts, restaurants, nightclubs, taverns, amusement parks, shopping malls, health clubs, cruise ships, even telephone on-hold music.

The organizations have expanded their coverage in recent years to more businesses, some of which had once been considered inconsequential or not worth the expense of pursuing for license fees.

"If you had told me 20 years ago that we would get around to licensing funeral homes, I would never have believed it," Mr. Velez said.

One of the most rapidly expanding new sources of performance royalties, the executives say, is cellphone ring tones, digitized melodies that play on mobile phones. Last year, 9.9 million people purchased cellphone ring tones in the United States, paying a total of nearly $57 million, according to IDC, a technology research firm.

Downloadable ring tones, typically costing $1 to $2, are the most popular Internet content offered for download, said Dana Thorat, an analyst at IDC, who projected that sales of tones would exceed $1 billion by 2007. Even if performance royalties add up to only a small percentage of that total, the revenue to songwriters and publishers could be tens of millions of dollars.

New technologies, including "audio fingerprinting" and music identification software, have helped the organizations track music use around the world more easily and efficiently, trimming operating costs.

Each performing rights organization has a roster of affiliated songwriters and publishers from all genres; they license only the copyrighted works of their artists.

Ascap represents more than 170,000 songwriters, lyricists and music publishers and has a catalog of about eight million musical works. B.M.I. has close to double that number of creative artists and publishers, with 300,000 affiliates, although its song repertoire of 4.5 million compositions is only about half as large. Sesac represents 4,000 songwriters and 3,000 publishers, but counts some widely known artists on its roster, including Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond.

As royalties from album sales decrease, Frances W. Preston, the president of B.M.I., said, songwriters have become more dependent on performing rights organizations to maintain a steady income.

"The bottom hasn't dropped out of the performing rights business," Ms. Preston said. "They look to us for their royalties because the record company royalties, in some cases, are almost nonexistent."

Approximately 50 percent to 75 percent of songwriters' compensation now comes from performance royalties, according to B.M.I.

The increase in such royalties has been the music industry's "one saving grace," in the view of Carey Ramos, a lawyer for the National Music Publishers' Association, which represents music publishers and songwriters. Mr. Ramos said increased performance royalties had helped songwriters offset some lost income from mechanical royalties, as fees from record sales are known. But, he added, "I'm quite sure it doesn't make up for the mechanical losses, by any stretch of the imagination."

From 1996 to 1999 - the year the file sharing service Napster began - annual collections of mechanical royalties grew 18.5 percent, Mr. Ramos said, while performance royalties increased 19.8 percent. From 2000 to 2002, he said, mechanical royalties fell 22 percent, while performance royalties kept growing, by 13.6 percent.

"The continued rise in public performance royalties reflects a growing demand for music," he said. "That tends to confirm that the dramatic decline in mechanicals is attributed to Internet piracy, not because there is less demand for music."

Although the Internet has proved a challenge to the business practices of record labels and music creators, the performing rights organizations recognized almost immediately its potential as a major source of royalty revenues. Ascap, B.M.I. and Sesac have licensed several thousand Internet sites and online music subscription services that use streaming audio technologies.

"After tracking radio and television and cable for all of these years, suddenly you're tracking something much bigger than all of that put together," Ms. Preston said of the Internet.

"Where I think a lot of other people in the business were spending time with lawyers trying to find ways to sue everybody,'' she said, "it was pretty clear to us that the public had accepted all of this new technology. There was no way to kill it even if you wanted to. So, you might as well get out there and embrace it and find out how you can license it and how you can collect from it."

Still, the expansive and unruly Internet has not been an easy outlet to license, nor has it become the pot of gold that the performing rights organizations had expected.

"Because of piracy, the Internet has not been able to grow as other broadcast venues of entertainment have grown," John LoFrumento, chief executive of Ascap, said. Ascap, for example, took in just $10 million in royalties last year from about 2,000 Internet licensees, a pittance compared with the group's overall revenue. Mr. LoFrumento said Internet collections had doubled annually in the last few years, however, and he predicted that the Web, in time, would be a significant revenue source.

Radio and television, meanwhile, are likely to continue providing the bulk of performance royalties.

"It's a growth industry," Mr. Velez of Sesac said. "Unless there's a total catastrophe in terms of a recession, and radio stations and TV stations go out of business in leaps and bounds and can't pay their license fees, unless something like that happens we're going to have a good year every year."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/bu...ne r=USERLAND


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I’m Depressed
Frank Field

So, a couple of years into tracking this set of issues, and it feels like I’m just spinning my wheels. My accomplishments in this domain mostly have to do with the students that I’ve had the chance to teach about this, but that’s a really long term strategy – and, at the rate things are going, there might not be enough time to hope that strategy will come to fruition.

The notion that Congress is priming to overturn the principles in Feist is just horrifying. After all the critisim of the European legislation in this area, I can only believe that this is willful ignorance of the threat. The opportunities for abuse are going to be legion, and it’s clear that, in the current climate, those abuses will be undertaken and exploited as fully as the market and the technology will allow.

It’s actually a little perverse. Creating a database and locking it up behind a pay-wall certainly allows the creator to extract rents from his/her labors. But, putting it out on the WWW for free generates traffic only for as long as the database is well- maintained and the content updated regularly. With copyright extended to databases, it could easily be the case that publishing a database online will award the creator with a monopoly that might allow his/her to extract rents, but no longer requires the database owner to maintain the database itself. The barrier to entry that copyright awards will limit competition. I would argue that competition is, in this domain, the engine for creativity – and the monopoly that copyright awards in fact undermines the creativity that copyright is supposed to engender.

In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the real innovation that needs to be protected is the ability to innovate new ways of making money/conducting business. This is the kind of meta-innovation that emerges out of technological advance, and increasingly it appears that our construction of copyright is limiting that creativity in favor of other kinds of creativity. And, I fear that protecting the latter at the expense of the former will just ensure the decline of the marriage of technological advance and market innovation that has produced so much progress and wealth to date.

Oh, well. It’s late, I’m tired and it’s been a long week. I’m out of touch with what my online friends have to say. I need a little optimism and I hope that, as I catch up on things this weekend, there will be some of that to find. But, for the moment, I understand why Larry has such a hard time expecting that people will see the light. He’s worked a lot harder, and with a lot more apparent success, yet we’re still having weeks like these. Maybe it’s time for a change in tactics………..
http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/index.php?p=1218&more=1&c=1


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Coleman Criticizes RIAA's Renewed Efforts To Crackdown On P2P Users Through The Courts

Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) today criticized renewed efforts by the RIAA Wednesday to continue to use the courts to sue individuals that the industry group believes are illegally sharing files on the Internet.

"I don't believe lawsuits are the answer to the RIAA's problems," Senator Coleman said. "While the industry has every right to protect its intellectual property, lawsuits should not be the primary means by which they do so.

The recording industry sued 532 computer users Wednesday — the largest number sued at one time since the RIAA first launched its legal battle against illegal file sharing last summer. The defendants were identified only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses, since a federal appeals court last month ruled that the recording industry can't use the subpoenas to force Internet providers to identify music downloaders without filing a lawsuit. RIAA spokesmen said they will identify the defendants, who if convicted face civil penalties or costly settlements, through the legal process.

"The decision by the RIAA to rely primarily on the fear of the courts and litigation to pummel P2P users is unfortunate and misdirected," Senator Coleman said. "Although the John Doe lawsuits now utilized by the RIAA may afford the consumer some additional protection than the previous litigation governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), I still believe litigation alone is not the answer."

Coleman called upon industry officials to seek a more proactive, long-term solution, instead of using the fear of lawsuits to deter illegal file sharers.

"I urge them to participate in a dialogue with the broader digital community to find solutions that will not only address the economics of the entertainment industry, but the powerful potential of technology to open new doors of economic opportunity and growth," Coleman said.

As chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Coleman has held numerous hearings to address the problems facing the music and motion picture industries, which have found that technological innovations, rather than more legislation, can combat illegal downloading. Within several weeks Coleman will convene a roundtable of industry and technology leaders to address the crisis facing the industry and find a proactive solution.
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=61889


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France Joins U.S., Britain Against Song Swappers
Bernhard Warner

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Add the French to the war on Internet song swappers.

Facing their first annual sales decline in recent memory, officials from the world's fourth largest music market told Reuters Sunday they would fight back with lawsuits.

Monday, French music industry trade body SNEP will report that recorded music sales fell 14.6 percent in revenues in 2003 to just under 2.1 billion euros, said Herve Rony, SNEP general manager.

The culprit, according to Rony, is the growth in file-sharing services such as Kazaa and possibly CD-copying by home users.

"It happened very suddenly. Apparently, there is a link to the fall in the market and the increase in access to the Internet," Rony told Reuters on the sidelines of the Midem Music conference in the French seaside city.

"It is the first year we can say France has to face the Internet crisis."

The French music industry had defied the odds for much of the past decade, growing annually while CD sales in the rest of Western Europe and the United States dip as file-sharing and physical piracy proliferate.

Last year the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), took the controversial step of suing the largest Internet song swappers in the United States, hoping the legal crackdown would act as a deterrent.

The RIAA's sister organizations -- the BPI in the UK and the IFPI, representing music labels around the world -- said earlier this month lawsuits would be inevitable in other territories, perhaps this year.

Rony said that while lawsuits against French file-sharers, or "uploaders," was inevitable, he could not say when. He said there was some urgency though as a number of industry-backed services were set to launch this year, including Apple Computer's.

"If we want to convince consumers to go off the illegal offers you have to take out the stick," Rony said.

French law does not offer the same levels of protection to copyright holders as British and American laws afford. For this reason, Rony said a legal crusade could be hard to stir in France.

"It will be difficult convincing parliament," he said, adding that the French Ministry of Culture had already expressed its support.

SNEP represents roughly 50 independent and major music labels including Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and Bertelsmann's.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4202096


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Chatterbox

From News.com: Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network, including using a technique called "audio fingerprinting," which monitors the sonic characteristics of music files.

“yeah whats new allways trying to find new ways to monitor our online trading habbits- bastards, i want to trade like the old days with no one watching over me ....those days are gone perhaps....”

- esteeaz

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Music Labels See Recovery In Downloads, Lawsuits
Reuters

A music industry trade organization said Thursday that new online download services are winning over customers and warned that a globe-spanning legal crackdown on file sharers is imminent.

On Thursday, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released a progress report on its year-old campaign to develop and promote online music stores and spread its message that online song swapping is illegal.

In a rare upbeat statement, the IFPI said its initiative is building a vibrant, albeit small, market for selling music downloads that appears to be stealing momentum from peer- to-peer networks such as Kazaa and WinMX, where all varieties of music are available for free.

"We believe that the music industry's Internet strategy is now turning the corner, and that in 2004 there will be, for the first time, a substantial migration of consumers from unauthorized free services to legitimate alternatives," said Jay Berman, IFPI's chief executive.

"The start of 2004 brings a new sense of optimism along with evidence of real change," Berman said in a statement.

The IFPI, which represents a host of independent and major music labels including EMI, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, Sony Music and Universal Music, also said it would get tough with prolific song swappers this year.

"It is likely that there will be lawsuits against major Internet distributors internationally in 2004, similar to those filed in the U.S.," the IFPI said in its report.

European music industry executives have been warning for weeks they will follow in the controversial footsteps of the United States, where a legal clampdown on file sharers has resulted in hundreds of lawsuits. On Wednesday, the Recording Industry Association of America launched its largest wave yet of file-swapping lawsuits against individuals.

The crackdown could intensify in Canada and Asia too, industry officials said.

The industry blames file-sharing networks for contributing mightily to a three-year decline in music sales. Citing a variety of independent and industry-backed studies, it says the lawsuits do serve as an effective deterrent to file sharing.

The IFPI said its own probe of file-sharing networks revealed the availability of unauthorized music files on the services dropped from 1 billion in April 2003 to 800 million this month.

Industry reports offer contradicting evidence that the file-sharing phenomenon is tailing off, however.

It is believed music executives will invest more money in the development of online music stores before they round up the lawyers. In Europe alone, some 50 new industry- backed download stores are expected to launch this year, bringing the continental total to over 80.

Berman said he expects that the most popular online music store, Apple Computer's iTunes, along with offerings from Roxio and RealNetworks

Industry officials told Reuters recently that in 2003 American music fans purchased 30 million downloads, while Europeans bought 3 million from industry-sanctioned sites.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5145267.html


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To Save Copyright We Must Reform It

Prof. Lawrence Solum has written once again on copynorms, commenting on a couple of articles and providing some anecdotal evidence of his own (Lawsuits and Copynorms). Solum questions whether the RIAA's lawsuit-centered tactics are truly affecting norms. Their impact on copybehavior is disputed, but the issue of their impact on copynorms is hardly addressed. Based on the students in his law classes, Solum sums up one developing copynorm thus:

It is socially unacceptable to take the position that unlawful P2P filesharing is morally wrong.

Frankly, I think that the development of such norms is part and parcel of the RIAA's tactics. The RIAA has taken the strategically foolish position that all filesharing is wrong. To few most people outside of the ABA's IP bar, such an uncompromising approach to all filesharing is clearly incorrect. Most people believe that some sharing (particularly with friends or family) is legitimate, but other sharing is not. To the extent that the RIAA is not willing to compromise its position on filesharing, people will increasingly reject the idea that any filesharing is wrong. This is not a healthy development for those who believe that copyright is worth saving. The only way to save copyright is to reform it.
http://importance.typepad.com/the_im...e_copyrig.html


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The Tyranny of Copyright?
Robert s. Boynton

Last fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore College received a sobering lesson in the future of political protest. They had come into possession of some 15,000 e-mail messages and memos -- presumably leaked or stolen -- from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in the company's software and warnings that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing.

Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users -- an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online -- as the Swarthmore students would soon learn.

Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright infringement and demanding that the material be removed from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process.

After persistent challenges by the students -- and a considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold -- in November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, the story remains a chilling one.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and there have been a growing number of them over the past few years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the American legal system, intellectual property law can now be found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics. Recent cases have involved everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's book ''The Wind Done Gone'' (which tells the story of Mitchell's ''Gone With the Wind'' from a slave's perspective) to corporations like Celera Genomics filing for patents for human genes. The most publicized development came in September, when the Recording Industry Association of America began suing music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as 12. And in November, a group of independent film producers went to court to fight a ban, imposed this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, on sending DVD's to those who vote for annual film awards.

Not long ago, the Internet's ability to provide instant, inexpensive and perfect copies of text, sound and images was heralded with the phrase ''information wants to be free.'' Yet the implications of this freedom have frightened some creators -- particularly those in the recording, publishing and movie industries -- who argue that the greater ease of copying and distribution increases the need for more stringent intellectual property laws. The movie and music industries have succeeded in lobbying lawmakers to allow them to tighten their grips on their creations by lengthening copyright terms. The law has also extended the scope of copyright protection, creating what critics have called a ''paracopyright,'' which prohibits not only duplicating protected material but in some cases even gaining access to it in the first place. In addition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the most significant piece of new legislation is the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, which added 20 years of protection to past and present copyrighted works and was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. In less than a decade, the much-ballyhooed liberating potential of the Internet seems to have given way to something of an intellectual land grab, presided over by legislators and lawyers for the media industries.

In response to these developments, a protest movement is forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ''piracy'' will have disastrous consequences for society -- hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, calls the ''free culture movement,'' might also be thought of as the ''Copy Left'' (to borrow a term originally used by software programmers to signal that their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation's top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative. While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it. They see themselves as fighting for a traditional understanding of intellectual property in the face of a radical effort to turn copyright law into a tool for hoarding ideas. ''The notion that intellectual property rights should never expire, and works never enter the public domain -- this is the truly fanatical and unconstitutional position,'' says Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the intellectual hub of the Copy Left.

Thinkers like Lessig and Zittrain promote a vision of a world in which copyright law gives individual creators the exclusive right to profit from their intellectual property for a brief, limited period -- thus providing an incentive to create while still allowing successive generations of creators to draw freely on earlier ideas. They stress that borrowing and collaboration are essential components of all creation and caution against being seduced by the romantic myth of ''the author'': the lone garret-dwelling poet, creating masterpieces out of thin air. ''No one writes from nothing,'' says Yochai Benkler, a professor at Yale Law School. ''We all take the world as it is and use it, remix it.''

Where does the Copy Left believe a creation ought to go once its copyright has lapsed? Into the public domain, or the ''cultural commons'' -- a shared stockpile of ideas where the majority of America's music and literature would reside, from which anyone could partake without having to pay or ask permission. James Boyle, a professor at Duke Law School, notes that the public domain is a necessity for social and cultural progress, not some sort of socialist luxury. ''Our art, our culture, our science depend on this public domain,'' he has written, ''every bit as much as they depend on intellectual property.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/ma...COPYRIGHT.html


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Mydoom Labelled The Worst Virus Ever
ILN

Finnish security software and services company F-Secure has declared the MyDoom virus the fastest-spreading worm ever and "the worst e-mail worm incident in virus history". F-Secure estimated that the worm was accounting for 20 percent to 30 percent of worldwide e-mail traffic Wednesday, putting it well ahead of previous pests, such as the SoBig.F worm.
http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5149764.html


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Software Patents 'Threaten Linux'

Open source advocate Bruce Perens tells BBC technology correspondent Clark Boyd why the real threat to Linux and the open source movement is not from the SCO lawsuits, but from software patents.
Clark Boyd : Linux seems to be going more and more mainstream. Suddenly there are advertisements by IBM on television promoting Linux. What do you make of this mainstreaming of the whole open source idea?

Bruce Perens : I like the fact that the IBM ads emphasise the openness. I saw one the other day that compared Linux to a child that had been adopted by the world. And I think that's a great theme, and it's very different than what you usually hear from IBM.

CB : Are the major companies becoming involved in Linux, helping to channel that creativity in ways that didn't exist before?

BP : Certainly the entrance of IBM, Hewlett Packard and a number of other companies, is helping. The main way is that it's helping us get more appreciation from the rest of the world. We are no longer isolated geeks making a system only we know is good. And I think there's a lot of benefit.

I think maybe some of the more naive around the world may think that Linux comes from IBM, but there are a good many people who appreciate the role of Linus Torvalds who may also appreciate the role of Guido van Rossum, the writer of the Python language.

Patent problem

CB : What do you see as the main challenges to Linux in the next year to 18 months, especially regarding the lawsuits brought by SCO which are still pending in the courts?

BP : The good news is that SCO has pretty much exhausted any chance of being successful in court. Their legal discovery documents have not yielded sufficient evidence. But, let's go on to the future beyond SCO.

The biggest challenge that will face us after that is software patenting. Software patents that are being accepted are not necessarily inventions, their definitions are overbroad. And you can never finish a patent search. The definitions are so broad, you can't ever be sure a company would or would not assert their patent on what you are doing.

You have to consider engineers today spend their entire careers combining other people's intellectual property. And every small and medium sized enterprise is at risk regarding software patenting. That is a problem in Europe, because representatives to the European Parliament are pushing very hard for software patenting that would indeed shut out all small and medium businesses from the software development business, not just open source.

We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so. That's a very, very bad situation developing. We must do something so that there is reason for people to innovate, there is reason for people to invent, but that companies can execute without this constant fear that we will be sued into the ground regarding software patenting.

'Lots of friends'

CB : What about the positives for Linux coming up in next year to 18 months? I believe you've called 2004 the year of Linux on the desktop?

As Linux and open source become more important in business, we hope that those friends will be ones with political influence, who can make sure that the world remains a healthy place for open source software
Bruce Perens

BP : We have all of the Linux-based software we need for 80% of the people in the world. The other 20% may use specialised applications that are not yet available in open source. And when I say 80%, that's all free software. What we're doing in 2004 is some bug removal, and some integration, not additional features, because the features are all already there.

I think we will see some significantly-sized desktop deployments. IBM says they already have 15,000 Linux desktop deployments across the company. We'd like to see the rest of the company using the Linux desktop as well. I think we will see the same in other businesses.

The interesting thing here is that because of the sort of benevolent nature of open source, we have a lot of friends. As Linux and open source become more important in business, we hope that those friends will be ones with political influence, who can make sure that the world remains a healthy place for open source software.

CB : Looking at the increased commercialisation of Linux-based products, do you see any threat of Linux becoming, in its own way, just as monolithic as Microsoft? Or can Linux grow, and still stay true to its open source roots?

BP : We are facing a problem in that there are two dominant companies in Linux distribution - Red Hat and Novell, which just purchased SuSE. We do not intend to let it stay that way. I'm leading a project called User Linux. The project aims to make a zero-cost Linux distribution, where people, if they want service, will pay for service on a services rendered basis. And we're establishing a global support network made of small companies, more than large ones, to make that work.

And if we take the open source paradigm, which is a lot of little guys all around the world collaborating to make an organisation bigger than IBM or Microsoft, and we take that to the business sector, we may really invent something new here, taking open source into the economy to a degree it has never gone before.

Bruce Perens is the primary author of the Open Source Definition, the manifesto of the open source movement and has been a spokesperson for Linux and the open source movement for more than a decade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3422853.stm


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Lindows To Sell OS For Free Over P2P
James Pearce

Lindows has announced it plans to distribute its LindowsLive operating system for free via peer-to-peer networks.

LindowsLive allows people to run a Linux-based operating system from a CD, without installing it on their computer, and previously retailed for US$29.95. The product was also sold over the Internet in a form which could be burned to a CD.

"No, we haven't lost our minds," said Lindows CEO and founder Michael Robertson in a newsletter. "What we're doing is figuring out how we can take advantage of P2P to advance our own business." Robertson said Lindows.com would spend over US$100,000 in bandwidth charges to deliver software used to create installation CDs for LindowsOS.

"By allowing people to download LindowsLive from P2P networks instead from our servers, we hope to reduce those costs," said Robertson. "At the same time, we'll be exposing millions of users on file- sharing networks to LindowsOS all at a minimal cost. Hopefully, those users will purchase other products and services from Lindows.com, such as CNR (click and run), web-filtering, virus software or one of the many Click-N-Buy (CNB) games or programs."

Lindows has a running legal battle with Microsoft over the name of the company, which the litigation- happy behemoth claimed infringes a Microsoft trademark. There was also bad blood over MSFreePC.com, a Web site set up by Lindows to allow consumers due a refund from the US$1.1 billion settlement Microsoft made last year to lodge their forms online. Earlier this month a judge ruled against the Web site, forcing it to be removed.

The move by Lindows will also help the fledgling peer-to-peer industry, which is trying to legitimise the software as an effective and profitable way of distributing legal content to consumers.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9115890,00.htm


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Tech Firms Fail To Squelch Database Bill
Declan McCullagh

A congressional panel on Wednesday approved a proposal to curb database copying, ignoring the objections of technology companies that launched a last- minute lobbying campaign to kill the proposal.

By a 16-7 vote, the House Judiciary committee approved an intellectual property bill that had been opposed by Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, Google, Yahoo and some Internet service provider associations.

The proposal, backed by big database companies such as Reed Elsevier and Thomson, would extend to databases the same kind of protection that copyrighted works such as music, literature and movies currently enjoy. Its supporters say that such protection is necessary to stop rivals from extracting information from proprietary databases like Reed Elsevier's LexisNexis service instead of going through the far more expensive process of compiling it themselves.

The loosely organized technology coalition opposed to the proposal had stepped up its lobbying efforts in the days leading up to the committee vote, joined by library and civil liberties groups.

"Proponents of the bill have yet to offer a convincing case that existing federal and state laws, including federal copyright law, federal antihacking prohibitions, and a variety of state contract and tort laws, are insufficient to provide database producers with adequate protection," the coalition said in a letter last week. "They have certainly failed to demonstrate a problem that would justify the fundamental and constitutionally suspect changes to our nation's information policy called for in the legislation."

One of the most vocal opponents of the bill has been the venerable U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which argued that database owners already have the ability to protect their property through contracts and terms-of-service agreements. In its own letter to Congress, the Chamber predicted that a financial analyst with access to Dun & Bradstreet databases could violate the law by including that information in a report prepared for a client, as could a research chemist who wishes to reproduce information on the effectiveness of new pharmaceuticals.

The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003 does not include criminal penalties. Rather, it allows the database owner to sue in civil court "any person who makes available in commerce to others a quantitatively substantial part of the information in a database." There are limited exemptions for educational and research organizations and for journalists.

The bill, backed by Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., also is controversial because, critics say, it would sidestep a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said facts could not be copyrighted.

Wednesday's vote follows a 10-3 vote last October in a subcommittee. Now the measure likely will go to the House floor in preparation for a possible vote.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5145040.html


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San Francisco Journal

Last Car. Geek Party. Spread the Word.
Dean E. Murphy

The crowd gathered rather discreetly at the designated subway station, 16th and Mission, at the designated time, 5:30 on Friday afternoon, waiting for the designated train, the eastbound for Richmond.

Someone walked by with a piece of paper, an invitation: "The last car on the subway is the party car."

The subway train pulled up, and a man named Marc with a floppy blond Mohawk and a crimson sport coat let out a welcoming call from the platform. He carried an e-flat euphonium under his arm and had a habit of making noise, any noise. He was the nonleader of this nonevent: a "spontaneous, digitally organized" party on BART, as the Bay Area Rapid Transit is known.

BART's tape-recorded voice announced, "Ten-car train for Richmond," setting off a giggling dash toward car No. 10.

The party car was up and running — for dozens of Web freaks, hackers, geeks and others like them — a time and place to meet, mingle, act up, wind down, express themselves, dangle from poles, rage against the machine or do none of that, anonymously, anarchically, all in the cramped, swaying confines of a subway car hurtling underneath this stridently counterculture city, in the direction of Berkeley, where it would be abruptly unplugged.

A clown named Romance the Love Pirate brought a rubber chicken. Two men in trench coats smirked near the back. One heavyset man with pale skin and knit cap came dressed in white. He said he worked in a cubicle and did not get out much. What did he do for a living? "I sell drugs," he said.

They were joined by three skateboarders and a man wearing black leather pants and a Houston Police Department shirt. That man hung upside down from the handrails.

It was a mutinous commute, simultaneously pointed and pointless.

"This is our space," said Earl Stirling, an unemployed computer engineer, explaining the party's philosophical underpinnings. "We own public transportation."

The BART party was not original (subway parties in New York and London have been around awhile), but it had a compelling San Francisco twist: anonymous, virtual invitations to the entire world.

"Join a bunch of hackers and geeks," one of the Web invitations said. "Spread the word," another said. "Bring people, visuals, music. If you don't make the first train, we're also on the second, and the one after that and the one after that and the one after that."

As the car rumbled toward the San Francisco Bay, someone with an X-acto knife cut the Jet Blue advertisements into strips, struggling not to slice anyone's wrists with each lurch of the train. The dissected placards were mounted overhead, giving the car the vague feel of a cheap discothèque.

A man with long sideburns unraveled a tube of green cellophane, which he used to cover a row of lights with packing tape. Suddenly it was Christmastime.

A bag of something edible in the shape of mustaches was passed around. An assortment of small paper cups with Champagne drifted by. When asked, the man hanging from the ceiling volunteered a few thoughts about acts of "urban reclamation" and "space hijacking."

"People need to find more interesting ways to have fun," he said.

The man with the mustaches, who identified himself as a graduate student in computer science, seemed irritated when questioned. But his idea: The point of the party was that there was no point.

"There doesn't have to be a reason," he said. "We're reclaiming public space and showing people that they can make things happen. It is not evolved from corporations."

That was the first clue for the reporter on board, who would soon appreciate what it must feel like to be in the employ of Bechtel or Halliburton and wander into an anti- globalization demonstration. Because as much as this party car was about impulsive revelry in a place open to anyone, there was some anger, nastiness and anxiousness about this person from outside the virtual clique.

A round man named Michael with a shock of tomato-colored hair sneered and pointed his digital camera at the reporter. Later, he posted the photographs on the Internet, with commentary. "Fight the real enemy," it read above one photo of the reporter. "Damn the man," it said on another.

When the reporter approached Marc, the party's nonleader who was described by others on the car as both a chef and hacker, Marc asked to see proof of employment. He looked disdainfully when handed a New York Times business card, refusing to take it. Marc then declined to speak further.

After about half an hour, the party took a general turn for the worse when two transit police officers boarded the last car in Berkeley.

It was there, with everyone required to assemble on the platform, that Romance the clown joined the reporter on the party's island of misfits. The police were threatening her with a citation for boisterous behavior. More than a few commuters simply wanted to read a book after a long week at work, the officers explained, suggesting that she just shut up.

But Romance did not, for the longest of times. Most of the geeks scattered as she endeavored to remain in character, even when her rubber chicken slipped from her belt and an officer ordered, "Don't drop your chicken, ma'am."

Once back on the train, with the party crashed and the last car again as quiet as the first, Marc sought out the reporter. He let it be known that the reporter had been an unwelcome partygoer and the events of the evening did not belong in any newspaper, especially one interested in profits, he said.

"You are stealing our art," Marc said in what became a long lecture about corporate journalism. "You are commercializing our culture."

The spontaneous party car had become unfun for those who could not command its spontaneity. When the reporter got back to his desk that night, the phone rang. It was Hallie, the caller said. Remember? We met on the party car?

Hallie had called to pitch a story. The island of misfits was growing.

The next day on the Web, center stage for activist clowns and angry hackers alike, Romance wrote of her disappointment.

"If Shakespeare was correct in his belief that we are all players, then we are all outlaws, too," she said on tribe.net. "I refuse to be afraid. Let silliness prevail. Children are watching. We must set an example of ridiculousness and play."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/national/29BART.html