Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – September 27th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week:

"In artist development, file sharing — it's not really hurting you. You want people to discover your artists. You're building for the future." - Chris Blackwell, record exec.

“It was pretty f**king bad. I wouldn’t pay $8.50 for that. I wouldn’t even rent it.” – Beth, “Hulk” downloader.



Kettles On The Boil

Peer-to-peer is something we here deal with on a daily basis. It’s been a regular part of our online lives for some time. We no longer think of it as exotic or even particularly unusual but rather view it as a necessary and normal way of harnessing the power of the Internet, in a fashion first predicted by the original computer futurists. Early forecasts of “Celestial Jukeboxes and “Unlimited Information,” breezily dismissed by doubters as pie in the sky wishful thinking have come to pass with such a resounding success they’ve startled even the most imaginative boosters. But in spite of the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who come to the well and partake of the bounty there has always been an invisible divide between those who do - and understand - and who don’t, and remain unaware. While anyone using the power of these systems will quickly grasp their significance and their importance, the external debate, the actual process by which society decides how to regulate its own behavior, has been shaped in large part by those who linger steadfastly in that darkness, ignorant and resolutely so to the societal benefits of P2P and the worldwide importance of personal file sharing. Unsurprisingly the media reflects this attitude and amplifies it to the point where it seems the very people who know the very least about the subject and have the slightest amount of experience with it are the ones leading the debate. That this is so only underscores the reasons why file sharing developed and why it has exploded on the worldwide scene. We all need ways to talk to each other without the interventions of governments and oligarchies and institutions and P2P goes a long way in helping us find them. The media of course feels it has the most to lose if people no longer pay them for the distribution and the dissemination of ideas. Far from being objective we find them among the worst offenders when it comes to manipulating the facts to protect their own interests. In many cases their coverage of peer-to-peer and copyright developments has been so one sided and slanted in their favor as to be all but useless for informing the people they serve; the reporting is subjective and biased, with stories that are little more than polemics against file sharing masquerading as reasonable explorations of the issues and the various interests. I can think of few things more important than battling that and if for nothing else file sharing deserves its place in society.

When the overwhelming majority of its readers and viewers regularly engage in behavior the media disparages daily, the newspapers and news programs run the risk of becoming so thoroughly irrelevant as to be unnecessary or worse, despised. Then the thing they fear most occurs, the people turn their backs and move on to something else, something beyond their control and influence. While it’s true that the media pushes people around the distance they push cannot be infinite. Some in the media have recognized a limit has been reached, and we the people are resisting. Giving credit where it’s due the RIAA deserves its own perverse thanks for speeding up the process. By focusing the nations and the worlds attention on the dangers of allowing one greedy industry to call the tune for six billion people, even those uncomfortable with unfettered access to information have uneasy feelings about Big Medias power and its motives. As someone recently said, “If the RIAA had a switch that turned off the internet – they would use it”.

So it’s with some note that an interesting run of articles appeared this month at the nations newspaper of record. The New York Times, recently suffering it’s own crisis of confidence, has published a series of in depth looks at many of the issues surrounding file sharing, from the effects technology has had on the recording industry to the effect the morality debate is having on young children. Most of the articles have been written in a surprisingly objective fashion – for a media giant – which is to say more objective than most but certainly with the usual negative point of view still lurking in the background. It may only be that the papers own credibility problems have made it somewhat more sensitive to the importance of honesty and this string of articles doesn’t foretell a development with other media companies. On the other hand the Times is nothing if not aware of trends and it just may be that this time it’s Big Media itself that’s feeling the effects of being pushed around. And for once we’re the ones doing the pushing.

I’d like to think it’s the latter for we are the customers after all who support the whole shaky edifice. If Big Media won’t listen to us, their patrons, who’s left to write the checks? Perhaps it’s some combination of pressure from the people coinciding with a growing realization that file sharing isn’t just a business change but a profound and lasting societal one as well. We might be witnessing the slow boil of a long dormant conscience bubbling up from the usual TV greed and newspaper cynicism. Or maybe it’s just another slick marketing trick. I would hope it’s something authentic and enduring. Not necessarily for our sakes but for theirs. If history is written on the wind the tempests that brought us peer-to-peer have had their howl. Change isn’t coming. It’s come. It’s here. We’ve created and conquered a new era of cultural empowerment. I really wouldn’t mind if a few companies at least figured this out, and did something interesting with it.










Enjoy,

Jack.










U.S. Bill Would Restrict File Sharing
William Jackson

The House Government Reform Committee today approved a bill that would require agencies to develop policies protecting computer systems from threats posed by peer-to-peer networking.

“File sharing technology is not inherently bad, and it may turn out to have a variety of beneficial applications,” said co-sponsor Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.). But risks associated with file sharing need to be addressed, he said.

HR 3159, titled the Government Network Security Act of 2003, was introduced Wednesday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). It would require each agency to develop and implement a plan to protect its systems, incorporating technology, policy and training, within six months of the bill’s enactment. The comptroller general would report to the House and Senate on the results of the plans within 18 months of enactment.

Peer-to-peer networking is a technology that lets users with common software share files on their computers over proprietary networks or the Internet, in effect turning each computer into a server. It has gained its greatest notoriety in the distribution of copyrighted music, but it can be used to share any type of digital material stored on a computer.

According to a statement from the Government Reform Committee, the legislation was spurred by a demonstration earlier this year in which staff members were able to access tax and medical records, and other sensitive data on government computers. Both the House and Senate have implemented their own plans to combat the security risks from this technology, spokesman David Marin said.

“They include everything from better technology, such as firewalls, to education and training,” Marin said. “Each committee has forged its own rules, from outright prohibition to enlightened use.”

The bill would not outlaw peer-to-peer file sharing, but would restrict its use.
http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/23674-1.html


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Amnesty trouble
Peter K. Yu

This past week, the Record Industry Association of America filed 261 lawsuits against individuals who downloaded music illegally via peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, such as KaZaA, Grokster, iMesh and Gnutella. Unlike what the industry did a few months ago, it offered carrots in addition to sticks this time. Along with the lawsuits came a new amnesty program that allows individuals to avoid lawsuits from the RIAA if they remove all illegal music files from their computers and promise not to do so again. On its surface, the new program is quite attractive and creative. In reality, it represents another ineffective, costly and disturbing attempt to fight the copyright wars. The most egregious offenders would unlikely participate in the program. Many of them don't think what they are doing is illegal. Nor do they feel guilty about what they have done. The RIAA will end up with a list of only mild, and perhaps occasional, offenders. The list is far from what the industry wants. There are other problems as well. First, the music industry is not the only copyright holder out there that can go after illegal file swappers. There are other equally powerful industries, like the movie and software industries. The amnesty program also would not protect individuals from federal prosecutors, music publishers and independent labels not represented by the RIAA. A "clean slate" with the recording industry group is not very clean if many others can sue you the next day. Even worse from the perspectives of the file traders, by signing the affidavits, the traders will have admitted that they have traded copyrighted music illegally. If they commit any future infringement -- regardless of how serious and intentional that infringement is -- the affidavits will provide evidence for willful infringement. The affidavits also will create a blacklist of habitual offenders that the recording industry likely will monitor. It is not news that the industry has been tracking potential offenders using automated web-crawlers. In fact, the industry recently has created a widely publicized embarrassment when it sent a mistaken cease-and-desist letter to the astronomy and astrophysics department of Pennsylvania State University, because one of its retired professors has an acappella song about a gamma-ray satellite under his name in the departmental server. Finally, the promises made by amnesty participants are broad, arguably broader than what is prohibited under copyright law. The participants might have to give up rights that are available under current copyright law. To be fair, when the RIAA two years ago pursued MP3.com and Napster, critics asked the industry to leave technology alone and go after the offenders. The RIAA now has done so, but it is still being criticized. So far, the group has only targeted egregious offenders. Those named in the recent lawsuits have distributed on average more than 1,000 copyrighted songs via peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Given the amount of music swapped and downloaded, these individuals won't be the industry's customers anyway. So what's wrong with going after shoplifters? First, copyright law is not as clear as laws against theft and shoplifting. There are a lot of "muddy" rules, like the fair use privilege, the first sale doctrine and various statutory exemptions that allow people to have limited sharing of copyrighted works. In addition, there are better alternatives. In Europe, many countries impose taxes on blank recording media and equipment to compensate composers and authors whose works have been copied without authorization. And proposals are on the table that call for a compulsory licensing scheme and campus-wide licenses in universities. Lawsuits are not necessarily the best and most effective way to deal with online piracy. In the meantime, file swappers might want to consult their lawyers and "plead the fifth."
http://www.detnews.com/2003/editoria...a13-269781.htm


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Finger Pointing Takes Center Stage At Senate Hearing
ILN

Top executives from the telecommunications and recording industries debated at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday, each attacking the other's handling of the growing problem of illegal Internet file sharing. The RIAA accused ISPs of doing nothing to educate consumers about the dangers of file sharing. Verizon General Counsel William Barr shot back that the recording industry has failed to embrace the Internet as a distribution medium, opting instead to fight piracy by declaring a "jihad against 12-year-old girls."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Sep17.html


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Felten Warns Copyright Protection May Cost Consumers
ILN

Princeton University Professor Edward Felten told the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday that some 45 million home DVD players could become outmoded if regulators adopt a so-called "digital flag" standard to prevent piracy of movies broadcast to digital televisions. The MPAA strongly backs the FCC's effort to require that electronic gear be capable of reading coding placed on copyrighted movies broadcast on digital television so that they cannot be redistributed on the Internet.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...569100,00.html


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Music Industry Has A Lot Riding On Final-Stretch Sales
Edna Gundersen

Mired in the third year of a sales slump, the music industry is counting on a handful of chart titans to salvage 2003 in the final stretch.

The September-December season, which typically accounts for more than 40% of the year's retail action, is the most crucial period on the record business calendar. Like the film industry, the record business often saves its strongest offerings for the fourth quarter to entice holiday shoppers.

The stakes are high: With a good fall, the industry could reverse two years of decline.

But to inch ahead of 2002's year-end total of 681 million albums, consumers will have to buy an additional 299 million albums by late December. Based on recent sales patterns, a more likely figure is 254 million albums, or 40% of the year's estimated take. That would end the year 6.6% behind 2002 (currently the deficit is 8.6%).

Two much-touted industry initiatives — the RIAA's campaign to sue file sharers and Universal's unilateral price reductions — may have an effect on sales as the fall unfolds, but the key factor will be the appeal of new releases. This fall's lineup appears to be a mixed bag of likely winners, potential dark horses and big question marks, with no sure bets.

"If we look at last year as a template, I don't expect the gap to close significantly," says Billboard chart director Geoff Mayfield. "At the same time, I don't expect it to get a lot wider. The last two months will be when the record stores do a significant percentage of their business, but it's not fair to expect the big horses to sew up the gap."

The race intensifies with next Tuesday's bounty of new releases, including potential chart toppers by Outkast, Limp Bizkit, Nickelback and Dave Matthews. Britney Spears, Pink and American Idol champs Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard may be among hot sellers that provide a second wind during the last laps.

Fall sales as a percentage of each year's total have been falling slightly, from 42.6% in 1998 to 40.4% in 2002. The variations may be a result of such pre-fall whoppers as 'N Sync's Celebrity in August 2001 (1.9 million copies the first week) or The Eminem Show in June 2002 (2.4 million copies in three weeks).

This year has yielded very few blockbusters aside from 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin', the leader with 5.9 million copies sold since February. No album this year has sold more than 1 million copies in a single week. And none of the fourth-quarter releases seem poised to break that unhappy trend.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...17-music_x.htm


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Music File Sharers Keep Sharing
Amy Harmon with John Schwartz

Despite the lawsuits filed last week against 261 people accused of illicitly distributing music over the Internet, millions of others continue to copy and share songs without paying for them.

Last week, more than four million Americans used KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, only about 5 percent fewer than the week before the record industry's lawsuits became big news. One smaller service, iMesh, even experienced a slight uptick in users.

The sweeping legal campaign appears to be educating some file swappers who did not think they were breaking the law and scaring some of those who did. But the barrage of lawsuits has also highlighted a stark break between the legal status of file sharing in the United States and the apparent cultural consensus on its morality.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this week, only 36 percent of those responding said file swapping was never acceptable. That helps explain why the pop radio hit "Right Thurr," by Chingy, was available to download free from 3.5 million American personal computers last week, while two million file swappers in the United States shared songs from rock icons like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, according to the tracking company Big Champagne.

The persistent lack of guilt over online copying suggests that the record industry's antipiracy campaign, billed as a last-ditch effort to reverse a protracted sales slump, is only the beginning of the difficult process of persuading large numbers of people to buy music again.

Mitch Bainwol, the new chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, which brought the suits, said in an interview that the group had succeeded in communicating that file sharing is illegal and would have consequences. But he acknowledged that shifting attitudes would be the next battle in what he conceded was more an effort to contain file swapping than to wipe it out.

"It's a two-step process," he said. "I don't think anyone has an expectation that file-sharing becomes extinct. What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish."

The record industry argues that sharing songs online is just like stealing a CD from a record store. But to many Americans, file sharing seems more like taping a song off a radio. The truth, copyright experts say, may lie somewhere between.

And instead of significantly damping enthusiasm for file sharing, the record industry's lawsuits appear to be spurring increasingly sharp debates about how the balance between the rights of copyright holders and those of copyright users should be redefined for a digital age.

"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now," said Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who has called a hearing on the subject for later this month. "I presume these lawsuits are having some impact, but they're not solving the problem."

Soli Shin of Manhattan is not waiting for lawmakers to act. She gave some thought to the ethics of file sharing after hearing of the lawsuits and took her own library of 1,094 songs offline, because she knew they were aimed at people who "share" their music files with others. But she saw no reason to stop getting new music for herself.

"It's really a great convenience," Ms. Shin, 13, said. "If I like what I download maybe I'll buy it."

According to The Times/CBS News poll, adults under 30 are more inclined to consider music sharing over the Internet to be acceptable: 29 percent of them say the practice is acceptable at all times, compared with 9 percent of people older than that.

But the file-sharing trend, which includes many school-age people, has spread across nearly every demographic group, with 27 percent of Internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 involved, according to a survey released in July by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Even 12 percent of those over the age of 50 participate in file sharing, the survey found.

Pew also found that among the 35 million adults that its survey indicated download music, 23 million said they did not much care about the copyright on the files they copied onto their computers. Among the 26 million who made files available for others to copy, 17 million did not care much about whether they were copyrighted.

In interviews last week, many file swappers said they were more wary of copying music since the wave of lawsuits was announced. But there was a strong current of defiance, even among those who said they had stopped.

Dr. Steve Vaughan, 35, a Manhattan physician who said he had downloaded about 2,000 songs over the Internet in recent years, said he stopped only because of the "fear factor" after hearing about the lawsuits. He said he might try one of the new legal online music services, though he doubted it would enable him to sample as wide a range of jazz, blues and folk to help him decide what to buy on CD.

Those options may be expanding. In addition to Apple Computer's iTunes and a new legal service called BuyMusic that recently began selling songs online for 99 cents, several competing online music stores are set to open this fall.

"If they give me a full selection, and I could sample what I want and it was well organized, I would love that," Dr. Vaughan said. "I'm not doing this to save money. I'm doing this because the music industry doesn't give me what I want."

At the root of the resistance for many — besides a perhaps decisive fondness for getting things free — is a complaint that the record industry is trying to take away the ability to make copies of music to use personally and to share with friends — a practice that Americans have long enjoyed.

Added to that is a deep-seated resentment of the big record labels, which music fans variously accuse of pricing CD's too high and producing too much bad music.

But Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of communications studies at New York University, said he told his students that distaste for record company practices was not a justification for making unauthorized copies of their music.

"If everyone would cool down the rhetoric we might actually have some helpful discussions," Professor Vaidhyanathan said.

"It would be nice to stop demonizing people who think they're doing reasonable legitimate things in their homes and stop demonizing people who are trying to make a living and recoup an investment," he added.

Society, Mr. Vaidhyanathan added, has to reconcile the desire to make personal copies with the new ability to make millions of perfect copies with the click of a mouse. "Suddenly we have this powerful copying technology in our own homes, and we haven't confronted exactly what it means."

The largest number of respondents to The Times/CBS News poll, 44 percent, said sharing music files over the Internet was sometimes acceptable, if a person shared music from a purchased CD with a limited number of friends or acquaintances. Conducted by telephone on Monday and Tuesday this week among 675 adults, the margin of sampling error in the poll was plus or minus four percentage points.

Lorraine Sullivan, a student at Hunter College in New York, paid $2,500 to the record industry association earlier this week to settle the lawsuit it filed against her. But she said she still saw nothing wrong with her use of file-sharing software. She downloaded Madonna songs that she already had on CD, for instance, so that she could have them on her computer and not have to change CD's while she cleaned her apartment.

"I still feel that if you use downloading to sample a CD or a song and you go buy the CD, it's O.K.," said Ms. Sullivan, who has set up her own Web site asking for donations to help pay her fine.

Fear of being sued or fined can help shape a new moral sensibility — as happened with sexual harassment laws, seat belt requirements and no- smoking laws — despite considerable initial public skepticism. Some legal experts and ethicists say the music industry's enforcement of copyright law against Internet file sharers may eventually catalyze a similar change in attitudes.

But many experts argue that legal prohibition alone is rarely effective in getting people to behave differently if it runs counter to strong societal beliefs.

"When efforts to ban behavior fail, like with the Prohibition, they may need to be changed," said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington.

Several legislators, including Senator Coleman, have called for a re-examination of the notion of "personal copying." Some critics have have suggested that Congress could force the record companies to license their material and find a way to tax Internet users to pay them, essentially legalizing file sharing.

The number of Americans using KaZaA, the leading file-sharing software, from home has dropped about 15 percent since late June, when the record industry announced its plans to sue suspected copyright violators, Nielsen/NetRatings said.

"This slide down over a short period of time coincides with the record industry's effort to lower the boom on its users," said Greg Bloom, a senior analyst with Nielsen. "But there are still a lot of people using these services."

Software like KaZaA, Morpheus, Grokster and iMesh lets Internet users find and retrieve files on one another's computers, rather than from a central Web site. To "share" songs on peer-to-peer networks, users put them into a folder on their computer that they open to others. Others searching for those titles can then download copies onto their PC's.

"The record industry needs to win back the hearts and minds of record buyers, because they can't win a technology war," said Eric Garland, Big Champagne's chief executive.

Meanwhile, many recalcitrant file swappers are simply sizing up the odds: "How many people are they suing?" asked Carlo Lutz, 13, a Bronx High School of Science student, who was listening to rap music he had uploaded to his MP3 player on the subway last Thursday.

"There are millions of us," he added. "It's only a drop in the bucket."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/te...gy/19TUNE.html


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RISC OS P2P Client Now With Upload Support
Chris Williams

Share and share alike on Gnutellanet

Cocognut, the RISC OS Gnutellanet client developed by Marc "AudioGalaxy" Warne, has reached version 1.10 this week. Cocognut was launched in April this year and brought true P2P (short for 'peer to peer') filesharing to RISC OS. P2P networking allows a large number of users to form a network of computers across the internet in order to share files over that network.

"The Gnutella network is based on the peer-to-peer organisation. In a nutshell, this means that there are no central machines on the network and anyone who joins the network becomes part of it", Marc explains in his announcement. "No-one owns the Gnutella network, which means that it cannot be shut down by hackers or government organisations, unlike networks such as the original Audiogalaxy system, where clients such as the Satellite client for RISC OS are no longer usable".

In this latest release, Cocognut now supports uploading so RISC OS users can share files online and properly contribute to the Gnutellanet network. The upload support is quite important because it means RISC OS users on Gnutellanet can send files to other users and participate fairly rather than just downloading files from everyone else, which is commonly known as 'leeching'. Other new features include the preserving of searches and downloads across sessions and various stability updates and bug fixes.
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact818.html


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Estates' Rights In Canadian Copyright Re-Examined

MP seeks to strike controversial 'Lucy Maud Montgomery provision'
James Adams

Canadian Alliance MP Chuck Strahl is attempting to derail controversial clauses in a government bill that, if passed, would
extend copyright protection for unpublished works for possibly decades after the death of the writer.

The clauses, which Strahl filed a motion to delete late last week, are loosely referred to as "the Lucy Maud Montgomery provision." They were tucked into the middle of the 57 clauses of Bill C-36 by the Liberal government earlier this year. The primary purpose of the bill is to merge the National Library of Canada with the National Archives.

Under current copyright law, last amended in 1997, copyrights in published works by an author enter the public domain 50 years after the writer's death. For posthumous unpublished works, the Copyright Act limited protection to the author's estate for 50 years after the death of the writer, plus a six-year "window" for the estate to either publish or communicate its intention to publish the material. Before 1997 perpetual copyright was granted to an estate for posthumous unpublished writings.

The amendments proposed by the Liberals add anywhere from 14 years to 34 years of copyright to previously unpublished works of authors who died between Jan. 1, 1930 and Jan. 1, 1949.

It's called the "Lucy Maud Montgomery provision" because the creator of the popular (and lucrative) Anne of Green Gables novels died in 1942, and it is her heirs who wish to retain control over her unpublished writings. Marian Hebb, a lawyer for the Montgomery estate, said in June that "with respect to the Lucy Maud Montgomery diaries, there is material that would cause offence to living people, and that's why it hasn't been published."

However, opponents of the amendments say that, if passed, they would simply result in more money going to the Montgomery heirs in particular and writers' estates in general. Moreover, the amendments will restrict academic research, public accessibility and eliminate the possibility of widespread reproduction without permission. If there's a problem with defamation, they argue libel laws already exist to handle that.

An aide to Strahl, MP for Fraser Valley (B.C.) and the Alliance's member on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, said late last week that the amendments, which have Heritage Minister Sheila Copps's backing, "amounts to special treatment for a small group of people . . . [who] want a quick little fix before the end of the year."

The aide also noted that since the Liberals are already committed to a major, systematic overhaul of the 1997 Copyright Act, the amendments "represent a piecemeal type of change."

Under current legislation, the Montgomery estate will lose copyright to the author's unpublished writings as of Jan. 1, 2004. This is why it has been vigorously pressing for the amendments to Bill C-36, which, en route to third and final reading, is expected to be reported tomorrow to the House of Commons by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Earlier this year, Liberal members of the committee agreed the copyright clauses did not belong to the National Archives-National Library amalgamation bill and agreed to drop the amendments. However, shortly after Parliament recessed for summer break, the committee convened without its opposition members, who had left Ottawa, and the bill progressed with amendments intact.

Other Canadian public figures whose unpublished work would fall under the amendments if passed include Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden (died 1937) and authors Frederick Philip Grove (died 1948) and Stephen Leacock (died 1944).
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...030923/COPY23/


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Legislators Debate Digital Broadcast Content Protection Proposals

"The movie industry is suffering from a loss of some $3.5 billion annually from hard-goods piracy (DVD, VCD, videotape)," said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the problem of digital piracy is far more menacing. Valenti estimates that some 400,000 to 600,000 films are being pirated over the Internet each day. Speaking before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Valenti called on the FCC to develop technical mandates to create a "safe environment" for digital content. The MPAA is a pushing "Broadcast Flag" mandate to stop digital over-the-air broadcasts from being re-directed to the Internet.

The digital content protection scheme proposed by the MPAA won't work, would hurt consumers, and would impede innovation by consumer electronics makers, said Lawrence J. Blanford, president and CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics. Blanford said the MPAA proposal, which would require that all devices recognize a data bit in their digital TV signal and encrypt content using only industry authorized algorithms, would fail to stop the unauthorized redistribution of digital broadcast content over the Internet. The plan would also require consumers to replace (and the FCC to regulate) "virtually every single device in the home network." It would impinge on "fair use" provisions of copyright law, and, Blanford argued, it would give a small group companies the power to restrain competition in new digital consumer electronics. Philips is endorsing Digital Broadcast Content Protection legistlation introduced by Senator Brownback (R- KS), which would use "watermarks" rather than encryption to identify and protect digital content.
http://www.convergedigest.com/DSL/la...le.asp?ID=8746


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Entertainment Moguls Victimize Consumers
Bharath Parthasarathy

Robin Hood fought social inequality by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Evading attempts to stop his pilfering hands, he deftly evaded authorities until he achieved his goal of an equitable society.

In similar fashion, millions of individuals (the poor), angered by inflated media prices, stagnant musical choices and greedy executives, are constantly downloading music and movie files from giant media conglomerates (the rich) through peer-to-peer services like Kazaa and Morpheus.

To be clear, these individuals are stealing. In fact, the motion picture and recording industries state that these people are stealing 350,000 movies and more than a million songs a day.

While copyright laws should normally be upheld to protect these creative work products, in instances where an industry preys on its consumers for the sake of greed, customers should be allowed to opt out of their social compact with these companies and disobey laws until the industry once again respects them.

Consumers have such a case against the motion picture and recording industries.

First, these industries constantly victimize their consumers. The music companies just dropped 261 federal lawsuits on serious offenders of file-swapping. These include a 12-year-old girl, a 71-year-old grandfather and an unemployed worker. Any industry that muscles $12,000 to $15,000 settlement agreements out of preteens and grandparents as a form of deterrence deserves to be cut down to size.

Additionally, the companies' sappy ads proclaiming that piracy hurts regular non- artist industry workers are an affront to customers. While that argument holds some weight, it's hard to sympathize with the argument when artists are on MTV Cribs celebrating their gold-plated bidets and $100,000 "whips." If the industry is worried about its employees, it should reduce artists' royalty payments and give more to the employees.

Second, customers are often left paying the bills of the messes of the industry. If the companies stopped producing such nightmares as Mariah Carey's "Glitter" and Madonna's "Swept Away," then consumers wouldn't be left paying $18 for a CD and $20 for a DVD to help the companies recoup the millions they flushed down the toilet by green-lighting those projects.

Third, the industry remains hypocritical about file-sharing in general. As Mike McQuary noted at a Goizueta Business School panel discussion Sept. 8, the companies advocate the protection of artists' work products while also selling MP3 players and CD burners. Sure, these devices have legitimate uses, but every company is really just trying to have both hands in the profit cookie jar.

Not all is lost for these industries, however. If they honestly desire their consumers to purchase their wares once again, they must alter their business models and do so quickly.

First, the entertainment industry must immediately cease its disastrous strategy of assaulting teenagers and grandparents with federal lawsuits. Furthermore, it should immediately change the current public image of its most well-known stars, emphasizing their work products and not their astounding wealth.

Second, the industries must find ways to cut incidental costs in order to reduce the retail price of movies and music. Unnecessary marketing costs are driving up CD and DVD prices in an amazing way. Industries need to forgo the media blitz around new movies and albums and give the consumers a break in their wallets.

Third, the industry must enter the 21st century and embrace technology. Director of Film Studies David Cook told the Emory Report that the industries were once afraid of VCRs, much like they are of these file-sharing systems. Yet over time, they adapted their business model to take control of the medium and profit from it. It's time for the same sort of innovation to occur today.

Pay-for-play systems should be the future of the industry. Charge customers a small fee in order to get the same high quality, large selection and quick download times that attracted them to Napster over Tower Records.

The entertainment industry must regain the confidence of its consumers and shed its image as the Sheriff of Nottingham by adapting to changes in technology if it hopes to curtail the use of peer-to-peer systems across the bandwidth of America.

Without this adaptation, consumers should continue to stick it to the man and download away.
http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/disp.../3f6b2bf09413a


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Harvard Symposium Debates Future Of Online File-Sharing
Theo Emery

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Ilan Hornstein used to download his favorite tunes from the Internet to his hard drive, but he stopped several years ago, cowed by threats from the recording industry to prosecute high-tech music lovers who swap files.

He's still infuriated that he can't download music with impunity as he once did, and that the industry has the weight of the law behind it. An outcry by music listeners would take away the industry's clout, he said, and put music back in the public domain -- and onto his hard drive.

"Why should the law protect the record industry?" said Hornstein, who works for Raytheon Co. "It seems a lot like the Mafia."

Hornstein, 27, was among about 100 scholars, industry representatives, music lovers and privacy advocates who gathered Thursday for a daylong symposium at Harvard Law School to discuss the future of digital media and online file-sharing, the Internet bugaboo that has delighted music fans and infuriated the music industry.

"There was a time that to make a copy, you needed a monk, and a desk, and months," said Charles Nessen of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a sponsor of the gathering.

"And then Sean Fanning hit the scene," he said, referring to the college dropout who founded the wildly popular music-trading Web site Napster, which was shut down in 2001 after battling the music industry over copyright infringement.

The rocket speed of digital media technology, which can put a pirated movie onto the Internet in hours, pirated CDs and DVDs on street corners around the world in days, and allows home computer users to swap music using "peer-to-peer" file-sharing software, is fundamentally changing the music and movie industry.

"Clearly, we need a solution to the issue. Everyone would agree to that," said Richard Colon, vice president of BMI, an organization that collects license fees for 300,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers whose music is played in public. "We have a big problem, in terms of peer- to-peer."

With millions of people reporting that they use filesharing to download music from the Internet, and with few apparently worried about getting caught, it will be impossible to stop music downloading, said Stan Liebowitz, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of "Re-Thinking the Network Economy."

"The peer-to-peer downloaders who are normal kids and adults, while they're not hardened criminals, they're not fighting for some ideology or cause," he said. "They're just trying to get something for nothing."

The Recording Industry Association of America recently went on the offensive, last week filing 261 federal lawsuits against those whom the organization described as "major offenders" illegally distributing on average more than 1,000 copyrighted music files each.

At the Harvard meeting, some of those present said they doubted that lawsuits will prevent file- sharing, given the popularity of the now-defunct Napster and other music sites like Kazaa, and Morpheus, and movie download sites like the recently unplugged Movie88.

"I don't think the lawsuits will work. I don't think the RIAA will be able to put the genie back in the bottle," Liebowitz said.

The meeting focused on five scenarios put forward by a working group from Gartner/G2, a research firm, and the Berkman Center. They range from preserving the status quo with copyrighting to a compulsory licensing scheme that would require the government to pay for lost music industry revenues with taxes.

The debate occasionally sparked strong reactions and outbursts of dismay from some participants, particularly to one proposal that the government treat the music industry like a public utility, and regulate it as such.

"Are you seriously considering the regulation of artists?" asked John P. Barlow, a Grateful Dead lyricist and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That is so Orwellian. I'm astonished this is even on the screen."

Ivan Reidel, a student at Harvard Law School, said that he's studying ways to get rid of licensing organizations like BMI and ASCAP altogether, and instead create an organization of artists who would opt out of the licensing system and deal directly with consumers.

Asked what the odds are of sych a scenario coming to fruition, he said with a smile: "I'm working on that."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/mas..._file_sharing/


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Debating Digital Media's Future
Martin LaMonica

Digital media will force the entertainment industry to rethink current business models and perhaps usher in a special tax to compensate artists deprived of revenue from Internet media distribution, according to panelists at a conference Thursday.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and research firm Gartner assembled a group of legal, media and technology experts to discuss potential scenarios for overhauling the media and entertainment industries to accommodate rapid changes in technology.

Attendees at the conference, held at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., posed a number of scenarios to achieve the goal of extending consumer access to media through digital devices while respecting the copyrights of content creators and publishers. Talk focused primarily on the highly visible and controversial practice of downloading music over the Internet, but it touched on all types of electronic media.

Overall, attendees agreed that the entertainment industry has been slow to develop viable business models for the Internet. Meanwhile, unauthorized distribution of content on file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus has become commonplace.

"The legal and regulatory environment and the business models have not been able to keep up with this situation," said James Brancheau, a media analyst at Gartner. "This is a massive problem today."

The conference took place as the major record labels filed their first wave of lawsuits against alleged file swappers in a bid to stem peer-to-peer Internet piracy amid a global drop in music sales. The industry has painted the tactic as a last resort following an unprecedented period of unauthorized copying touched off by the advent of the Napster file-swapping service.

The suits offer the clearest indication yet that the industry is in crisis, a situation that some conference attendees said could open the door to unconventional solutions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5079007.html


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Senator Coleman Tackles Recording Industry

Well-coifed and dressed in suit and tie, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman is a long way from the long-haired kid in 1970 who shouted to his fellow college students: ``Power to the people!''

But Coleman, 54, may have found an outlet for his old counterculture side: investigating the music recording industry.

Coleman, a freshman from Minnesota, will hold hearings on the Recording Industry Association of America's anti-piracy crackdown, starting on Sept. 30. He said he's worried the RIAA campaign is heavy-handed and could ensnare ``the little guy.''

That thinking is what prompted Coleman, as an undergraduate, to lead anti-war rallies and serve as Student Senate president. He was suspended for leading a sit-in at a faculty restaurant, and helped to organize a short student strike in 1970 after four anti-war demonstrators were killed at Kent State University in Ohio.

John Moreno, a college friend of Coleman at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y., wonders if the young college protester is peeking through the middle-aged senator.

``The idea of liberating music from the Web would probably have appealed to the 20-year-old Norm Coleman,'' said Moreno. ``The idea of liberating property for the people would have appealed to him.''

Coleman, who was once a roadie for the rock group Ten Years After, chuckled as he pondered this analysis.

``You'd have to talk to my therapist -- if I had one,'' he said.

Steve Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., said that for a politician, ``The recording industry is as inviting a punching bag as tobacco companies. Politically, it's hard to see a downside for anyone who pummels the recording industry. You can easily be a white knight.''

The Washington-based RIAA, which represents the major record labels, has filed civil lawsuits against 261 people it accuses of illegally distributing music online. The trade group, which blames piracy for flagging music sales, promises thousands more lawsuits.

Coleman stressed that he is against the illegal downloading and sharing of copyrighted material. But he said he has several concerns about the recording industry crackdown.

He said innocent people who are sued might be cowed into settling with the RIAA, fearing they don't have the power to fight, and that the group's solution -- ``clubbing a few people over the head'' -- won't work.

Coleman also argued that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives the RIAA too broad a power to obtain subpoenas to track and sue people who download songs (no judge's signature is required). And he said the legal penalties -- $750 to $150,000 for each song pirated -- are excessive.

Coleman said he planned to examine some of these issues in the hearings as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, said the group is only going after ``proven, egregious offenders.'' He called the copyright law ``a painstaking, carefully crafted compromise.''

Another target of Coleman's hearing is the file-sharing industry, including businesses like Kazaa, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a trade group which represents the file-sharing industry (Kazaa is not a member), said he welcomed the hearing.

``We don't condone copyright infringement,'' Eisgrau said, adding that the technology can be used to share files other than music. ``This is a policy debate -- it doesn't belong in living rooms of 12-year-olds.''

The RIAA settled the first of its suits for $2,000 with the mother of a 12-year-old defendant, Brianna LaHara of New York, and P2P United agreed to pick up the tab. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs using Kazaa.

Coleman said he was worried about people getting caught in the middle.

``The RIAA has a problem, Kazaa has a problem, the technology folks have a problem,'' said Coleman, who has admitted he used to download music from the now-defunct Napster site. ``And yet right now, the focus is on the 12-year-old girl, or the grandfather or the mother. They're the ones being told to pay the price.''

With an estimated 60 million file sharers in the United States, the issue has generated a buzz for Coleman. He's been written about in both the entertainment press and general-interest newspapers.

``I've had more comments on the street on this issue than I've had on the war in Iraq in the last week,'' Coleman said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/6832795.htm


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We All Pay Hollywood's Price For DVD
Cory Doctorow

DVD as a technology is very tightly controlled. As 3-2-1 Studios, a vendor of DVD copying and backup software discovered, making any innovation in the DVD world without permission from the Hollywood companies (who thought that the VCR and ReplayTV were forms of insitutionalized theft) is an invitation to a punishing lawsuit. Well, who cares, right? After all, DVD is a "success" -- lots of people have DVD players.

But DVD players are frozen in amber. The features that the public demands have not been forthcoming -- rather, they've stayed pretty much at the level that they started out at in the mid-nineties. They got cheaper, but they didn't get cooler, or weirder, or more flexible.

Case in point: Kaleidescape, a company in Mountain View, has built a "legit" DVD jukebox with permission from Hollywood. This is pretty easy hardware: big-ass hard-drives, some user-interface, and a commodity optical drive. Should be cheap as hell.

It's not. By the time Kaleidescape pays its license fee to the Hollywood studios and calculates the price it can command without any competition in the field, it ends up fielding a box that holds thirty DVDs on its hard-drive and costs thirty-thousand dollars.

The idea that a 30-movie DVD-ripping jukebox -- which I can build "illegally" in my living room for a couple grand -- should retail for thirty thousand bucks is revolting. It's what we, as customers of the CE companies, pay for adopting a technology that is proprietary to the Hollywood companies that take the view that watching movies out of order, skipping commercials, time-shifting and home taping are theft. Shame on us, and what a shame. Link
http://boingboing.net/2003_09_01_arc...92851663897715


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In DMCA War, A Fight Over Privacy
Declan McCullagh

On May 16, 2002, top executives from the Recording Industry Association of America gathered to celebrate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial law that Congress enacted in hopes of curbing online piracy.

With glasses of champagne held high in the air, the RIAA, like-minded trade associations and friendly politicians--including at least one committee chairman--toasted the measure, one section of which permits copyright holders to unmask hundreds of suspected online pirates at a time.

Fifteen months later, the political terrain has noticeably shifted. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate convened a hearing that explored the privacy problems with the DMCA's subpoena process, and one senator introduced a bill this week to repeal that section of the law.

"I support strong protections of intellectual property, and I will stand on my record in support of property rights against any challenge," said Sen. Sam Brownback, whose staff drafted the proposal. "But I cannot in good conscience support any tool such as the DMCA information subpoena that can be used by pornographers, and potentially even more distasteful actors, to collect the identifying information of Americans, especially our children."

Brownback, the Kansas Republican who chaired the Commerce Committee hearing, was talking about the attempts by gay porn producer Titan Media to rid the Internet of its copyrighted works, which are typically swapped on peer-to-peer networks with file names such as "Gay-Titan-Pumped_Up-B-rip-Divx-Complete.avi." Under the DMCA, any person who claims to be a copyright holder worried about alleged piracy can unmask the accused infringer without filing a lawsuit.

While Wednesday's hearing didn't precisely equate America's major record labels with the pornography industry, the RIAA nevertheless was thrown on the defensive--a rare position for the well-connected trade association to find itself in. Besides winning passage of the DMCA, the RIAA successfully lobbied Congress to enact the No Electronic Theft Act--which makes peer-to-peer piracy a federal felony--and the Copyright Term Extension Act. Two years ago, the RIAA retained Bob Dole, former senator and presidential candidate, and in July picked Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to be its new chairman.

On Wednesday, RIAA President Cary Sherman was forced to argue that the DMCA's turbocharged subpoenas cannot be easily exploited by snoops and stalkers. Those are "baseless and desperate arguments," Sherman said. "The RIAA, the copyright community as a whole--and, more importantly, the members of Congress who crafted the DMCA-- would never defend or embrace a procedure that makes it easy for criminals to find victims."

Even though Brownback and two other senators--Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Norm Coleman, R-Minn.--criticized the RIAA's shotgun use of the subpoenas, analysts caution that Washington's view of the law has not radically shifted.

Mike Godwin, technology counsel for the nonprofit group Public Knowledge, said that while the political landscape may have changed in terms of the DMCA, the criticism is still aimed at tweaking rather than rewriting the law. Also, Godwin noted, other members of the Commerce Committee appeared to be skeptical of reopening the DMCA. And last week, Senate Judiciary committee members signaled they were not in a hurry to revisit the law.

"The landscape has not changed so much that if you had a vote taken today, even with all the horror stories of RIAA subpoenas sent to grandmothers and honor students, the vote would come out in favor of seriously altering or removing" that section of the law, Godwin said. "I think what you are getting is some impulse, somewhat more strongly from the Republican side of the aisle, toward some slightly higher level of judicial review and some safeguards and remedies for misuse of process."

The ongoing controversy over the DMCA subpoenas comes at a crucial time for the trade association. Earlier this month, it filed lawsuits against 261 alleged file swappers, and a federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday about whether the RIAA has abused the DMCA when gleaning subscriber names from Verizon Communications.

If the RIAA loses the suit and the decision is upheld on appeal--or if Brownback's legislation is enacted--the industry group could be forced to file thousands of "John Doe" lawsuits instead of sending bulk subpoenas. That would be a more expensive strategy that risks additional negative publicity, especially if a file-swapping defendant turns out to be a music industry executive or a relative of a member of Congress.

For its part, Verizon has been stressing the privacy implications of allowing the use of DMCA subpoenas to become more widespread. It's backing Brownback's bill, which requires that a lawsuit be filed before an Internet user be unmasked. (The exact language: "An Internet access service may not be compelled to make available to a manufacturer of a digital media product or its representative the identity or personal information of a subscriber or user of its service"--unless, that is, a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution is pending.)

A DMCA subpoena "grants copyright holders or their agents the right to discover the name, address and telephone number of any Internet user in this country without filing a lawsuit or making any substantive showing at all to a federal judge," said William Barr, Verizon's general counsel, who also testified on Wednesday. "This accords truly breathtaking powers to anyone who can claim to be or represent a copyright owner--powers that Congress has not even bestowed on law enforcement and national security personnel."

Unlike the mostly left-of-center groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumers Union that have been agitating for years to defang the DMCA, Brownback is an unabashed conservative who in 2000 won a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.

"Recently a federal court has held that copyright owners may use the subpoena to compel Internet service providers to disclose to them the names, addresses and phone numbers of their subscribers suspected of piracy," Brownback said. "This subpoena process includes no due process for the accused ISP subscribers."

Brownback's bill is not limited to amending the DMCA subpoena process. As previously reported by CNET News.com, it generally prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from imposing copy-protection requirements on electronic devices, requires prominent labeling of any "access-controlled digital media product," and preserves the right to resell digital media, provided the seller does not keep a copy.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5078609.html


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Dolby Buys Into Piracy-Fighting Tech
John Borland

Audio technology company Dolby Laboratories said Monday that it had purchased a small digital rights management company, hoping to cement its role in digital movie distribution.

San Francisco-based Dolby said it had purchased Cinea, a company formed by many of the same engineers behind the short-lived Divx copy-proof DVD technology backed by Circuit City.

Cinea made headlines late last year after winning a federal grant to help develop ways to block camcorder-toting movie pirates from recording film premieres and distributing them on the Internet. But they also offer more traditional encryption techniques to film studios that ultimately want to distribute films digitally to theaters instead of using film.

The company's camcorder-fighting technology is still under development. Its plan is to introduce distortions in the video that are captured by cameras, but are invisible to the human eye--a little like computer screens that display lines or bars when captured on video.

Dolby's entry into the content-protection market will bring it in competition with Microsoft, which is pushing hard to make its Windows Media and associated digital rights management technology standards in the nascent digital cinema business, as well as online. But Dolby says studios want to see more companies than Microsoft in the content protection business.

"The film industry has been very vociferous about the fact that they want content protection technology developed," Dolby Vice President Tim Partridge said. "But studios want multiple people providing it."

The digital cinema drive is providing a set of worries for studios already concerned about DVD copying and Internet file- swapping--as well as potential opportunities for new generations of technology companies like Cinea.

Hollywood studios want a fast move to all-digital distribution, which would relieve them of the burden of printing expensive film copies of every movie for distribution to theaters. But standards have been slow to emerge, and theaters themselves, which will have to bear the costs of installing new digital projectors, have not been quick to make the transition on their own.

Cinea's first technology would put digital locks on the files distributed to theaters, providing unique keys to unlock access to the content so that only intended recipients could unscramble them. The technology might also include usage rules based on contracts with studios, limiting theaters to showing the films for a certain number of screenings, or for a limited range of dates.

Cinea will operate independently as a Dolby subsidiary, remaining largely separate from its new parent company's business, Partridge said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5080381.html


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First File-Swap Bust Just A Blip, Four Years Later
Inara Verzemnieks

Before the tens of thousands of people snatching free music off the Internet, before the hundreds of lawsuits to make them stop, there was Jeff.

Jeff Levy, a 21-year-old planning and public-policy major at the University of Oregon, a follower of the Grateful Dead and Phish, a Massachusetts transplant with a sweet computer and an even sweeter university-supplied ethernet connection, who stepped out of the shower one day in 1999 to find FBI agents waiting at his front door.

Levy, it turned out, had been sharing music, as well as movies and computer software, over the Internet. Hundreds of files, said prosecutors, who slapped the college student with federal felony charges.

Ultimately, Levy pleaded guilty, reserving a place in history books and law reviews:

Jeffrey Gerard Levy, the first person in the nation convicted under the No Electronic Theft Act of illegally distributing copyright protected music over the Internet.

It was meant to be a cautionary tale.

"There is a cultural phenomenon here that this is not stealing, and it is particularly prevalent among young people," Roslyn Mazer, special counsel for intellectual property in the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, told a reporter for The Oregonian in 1999. "We hope this case will fire a shot across the bow."

But as 261 copyright lawsuits filed earlier this month by the Recording Industry Association of America indicate, swapping music over the Internet has become more entrenched in the years since Levy's case, with everyone from a 12-year-old girl to a Yale college professor ending up in the industry's dragnet.

"It was like my story had disappeared," said Levy, 26 now, working at a plant nursery and living in a one-bedroom Springfield cottage with posters of Ani DiFranco, Sarah McLachlan and a diagram of guitar chords tacked to the living room walls.

At the time of Levy's bust, swapping music over the Internet was in its nascent stages, nowhere as common as it is today; it took time and a certain amount of technological know-how to hunt down songs in the wilds of cyberspace.

But in the months after Levy's arrest, all that changed when a file-swapping program called Napster burst onto the scene, making it simple for even the most technologically challenged to find and trade digital music for free -- and to violate copyright law.

At the height of the Napster craze, 10,000 songs a second were traded, according to company estimates. Even his father, Levy said, turned to Napster to track down hard-to-find songs from his native France.

"It was like it wasn't as bad anymore, that the average Joe citizen was doing it," Levy said. "The attitude seemed to be: It was everyone now, so it was OK."

Looking back, Levy said, he never considered that what he was doing would land him in so much trouble, although he knew it was illegal. Maybe a letter or a phone call from the university computer folks reprimanding him. But never the FBI.

Even as agents were standing in his apartment, Levy was looking around, he recalled, racking his brain to figure out why they would be there. Then he saw his computer.

He thought what he was doing was like "collecting baseball cards," he said, snapping up as many copies of music, software, games and movies as he could, cataloging them, then arranging swaps with others he met through Internet Relay Chat. A lot of swaps. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Hoar, who prosecuted the case, placed the value of everything Levy gave away in the thousands of dollars.

So much traffic was streaming to and from Levy's site that it attracted UO system administrators' attention. And then the feds arrived at his door.

Levy pleaded guilty and received two years' probation. He couldn't have Internet access without a parole officer's permission; he couldn't have a CD burner. And a felony conviction would follow him forever.

For about two weeks, Levy said, the story of the first person convicted under the NET Act was everywhere: on the evening news and VH1. In Spin and Rolling Stone magazines. In every major newspaper. Chuck D talked about him on MTV.

"And then," he said, "it was over pretty quickly."

The story faded. Jeff Levy was forgotten. And file sharing, for everyone else, took off.

Quietly, Levy graduated from the UO, worked as a teacher at an outdoor school in California, then returned to Oregon and landed a job at a nursery. He has planted a lush garden -- foxgloves, dahlias, lavender, creeping Jennie -- outside the house he shares with his girlfriend.

A computer perches on a desk in a living room corner, but Levy said he doesn't use it often. He last checked his e-mail three weeks ago; he's just not much interested in computers anymore. "They lost their charm for me," he said.

So did downloading music. "It doesn't even occur to me now," he said. A 400-disc CD changer sits in the living room along with a turntable and a stack of vinyl. He hates the sound of MP3s, he said. "I can hear what's lost."

He got rid of his TV two years ago, but he has read about the RIAA lawsuits, how the recording industry is suing people of all ages all over the country.

"Smart," he said.

Because now, it's not just a story about one person. They've made people think, he said, that "they could be next."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/orego...5978221820.xml


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Music's Struggle With Technology
John Schwartz

LIFE, like television, is full of reruns. And long-time watchers of technology trends say the entertainment industry's attack on peer-to-peer software - the technology at the heart of the song-swapping mania - follows a familiar pattern.

Every technology can, of course, be used for evil or good purposes. Cars can be used in bank robberies, and radiation can cure cancer. But many new technologies go through a stage of demonization, and communications technologies come in for an especially tough hit from people who feel threatened by them.

Long before girding against the Internet, for example, the entertainment industry objected to cassettes and videotapes because they would allow people to copy music and programming without making additional payments. Even FM radio was opposed by the record companies at the outset because the high fidelity broadcasts were free. The early defenders of the industry did not understand the ways that the power of the new communications tool would help them market their goods to a broader audience.

The current fight over peer-to-peer technology closely resembles a grand battle in the 1990's over encryption technology, which secures the contents of communications from prying eyes. In that case, the opponent was not the entertainment industry, but the Clinton administration and its law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which tried to restrict the use and spread of strong encryption ("crypto," in geekspeak). The technology was an essential tool for businesses and consumers who wanted to protect privacy; because of their resistance to the government crackdown, many encryption restrictions have been lifted.

But, at the time, government officials argued that crypto, if unrestricted, would bring disaster upon disaster. The Clinton administration encouraged the adoption of encryption products with a "backdoor" that government could unlock. "Uncrackable encryption will allow drug lords, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate with impunity," Louis J. Freeh, then director of the F.B.I., testified before a Senate committee in 1997.

Similar accusations have been lodged against peer-to-peer - or P2P, as it is commonly known - which also has the potential to become a powerful tool for network communications and pooling computer resources. The entertainment industry has tried to portray the networks as hotbeds of crime and havens for child pornography. Yet many in the tech world say there are so many possible uses for P2P that "it's impossible to imagine them not being developed," said Lance Cottrell, the president and founder of a company that provides tools for enhancing privacy online. "Music was just the first killer app, but I think it will be the first of many."

Mr. Cottrell said that efforts to restrict access to P2P technology will not deter bad people but the efforts will hinder honest users. "People who really desire to steal will find ways of doing it," he said. But as with encryption, "restricting it means it is only available to the real bad guys."

The potential public benefits - like new computer networks that make worker collaboration easier, à la the entrepreneur Ray Ozzie's Groove Networks, or clusters of PC's linked to pool their power and resources - could be delayed in the P2P fight, just as the tug of war over cryptography hindered the ability of business to protect communications and databases from intruders, said Bruce Schneier, a security expert and author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." "In both cases, a large well-funded organization is fighting the little guy."

The similarities do not stop there, Mr. Schneier said, because in both cases legal remedies have been sought "to solve an inherently technological problem." Those seeking to restrict the new technology are using "legal intimidation" to fight their battles, he said. And, he predicted, the ultimate outcome will be similar: "Strong crypto would inevitably be used. Digital files are inevitably copyable." The real goal of the pushback in both cases, he said, is to delay change.

A former government official who fought on the opposite side of the crypto battle from Mr. Schneier says the similarities between that fight and the battle over file sharing are striking - but so are the differences. Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency, said, "The N.S.A. had a lot of clout, but it didn't have political action committees." The entertainment industry's political influence has already manifested itself in such laws as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which made it easier to go after digital pirates.

But file trading has things going for it that encryption never did, Mr. Schneier said: ease of use and products that millions of average consumers crave. That popularity, he said, could eventually tip the balance in favor of the file traders. Federal lawmakers are questioning the industry's tactics, and he predicted that politicians at the state level - "where intellectual property interests just haven't been active" in making political contributions - would begin rising to the file traders' defense. When that happens, he said, the tide is likely to turn, because "people who have to buy their friends don't have any when it matters,'' he said.

"Money is nice, but voters matter," he added.

If Hollywood cares to learn from the crypto wars, the lesson might be that it is more realistic to adapt to powerful technology, rather than quixotically try to block it. "It's unstoppable," said Elan Oren, the chief executive of iMesh, a peer-to-peer file sharing company based in Israel.

Technologies can be stubborn. Efforts to knock them down can send them rebounding back with a new twist. In the case of encryption, the technology continued to grow more powerful and researchers poked holes in the government's weaker alternatives. In the case of peer-to-peer applications, the makers have found increasingly clever ways to help traders act anonymously, and without a centralized service that can be shut down. "That's where the behavior of the industry up to now actually got us," Mr. Oren said.

If pushed further, he said, the P2P makers will eventually offer complete anonymity for users. If that happens, he predicted, "we'll see something nobody wants, including the industry": a cumbersome and expensive system of high-tech copyright protection required by law. Mr. Oren said he believed that the industry could reshape itself to woo file traders, converting them to file payers and saving their businesses. "If we convert 10 to 20 percent, it's a huge success," he said.

But for now, Mr. Oren says, he sees only counterproductive delays, and an underlying attitude from industry that seems almost Luddite. "From 1999 to 2001, if you enabled the R.I.A.A. to have the plug of the Internet," he said, referring to the Recording Industry Association of America, "they would unplug it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/te...rtne r=GOOGLE


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Music Industry Eyes ‘Smart’ CDs
AP

Recording companies are cautiously eyeing a new generation of smart CDs that promise to stifle music fans’ ability to use file-swapping networks while still allowing them some freedom to make copies and share music. Recent advancements in copy-protection technology have made such a strategy more palatable to music companies reluctant to make any drastic changes to the 20-year-old CD format, particularly in the United States.

NEXT WEEK, BMG Entertainment’s new album by hip-hop singer Anthony Hamilton will be the first commercial release to use a technology that restricts copying yet lets buyers play protected CDs on computers and burn copies onto blank CDs. Fans can even send copies to friends over the Internet.

The music industry blames a three-year decline in CD sales on burners and peer-to-peer, file-swapping networks like Kazaa. The new technology could complement the recording companies’ legal efforts against operators of file-swapping networks and their users.

So far, the top five recording companies, concerned about the technology’s effectiveness and a backlash from fans, have largely released copy-protected CDs commercially only outside the United States.
Early copy-proofing efforts prompted complaints that in some cases users could no longer play legally bought CDs on computers, a way of listening the companies now recognize many fans have come to prefer.

BMG is seizing on the new copy-protection advancements by embedding “Comin’ From Where I’m From” with MediaMax CD-3 technology from Phoenix- based SunnComm Technologies Inc.

With MediaMax CD-3, each song is written onto the CD twice — once in a format readable by standard CD players and the other as a Windows media file playable on a computer.
BMG has set up the CD so fans can burn each track three times per computer. Songs can also be e-mailed to a limited number of people, who can then listen to the song up to 10 times apiece.

SunnComm says that most people, unless they are hackers or truly determined, won’t be able to circumvent the limits, including one that keeps songs locked so they can’t be played even if they circulate over file-sharing networks.

Peter Jacobs, SunnComm’s chief executive, considered his technology a moderate alternative to suing fans, as the industry did this month with nearly 300 federal lawsuits against users of file-sharing networks.

BMG, which signed a one-year deal with SunnComm in June, was still evaluating future releases with copy protection.

“We are quite hopeful that the technology that they’ve developed is a step in the right direction and is a step which we will hopefully start using more extensively commercially,” said Thomas Heffe, chief strategy officer for BMG in New York.

SunnComm rival Macrovision Inc., based in Santa Clara, has developed technology that also allows CD burning and listening on computers. The CDS-300, however, blocks other attempts to make copies or share music online.

Several labels have collectively shipped in overseas markets more than 150 million CDs with an earlier version of Macrovision’s copy protection system, said Adam Sexton, a Macrovision spokesman.

Macrovision is talking with several major labels about using the new technology in the United States.

“We want to be comfortable with a technology that does allow for some personal use and does respect the work and the copyright,” EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer said.

Privately, some recording industry executives say they don’t believe the latest copy-protection technology is good enough yet and could be easily thwarted. One past effort faltered when someone defeated it simply by blotting out part of the CD with a marker.

Technology that respects fans’ desire to copy, share and hear songs in different ways is good in principle, but consumers’ legal rights could still be curbed by limits on copies permitted, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“There is a conceptual problem with that approach,” Cohn said. “It is inconsistent with how fair use has always been applied.”

For now, recording labels will watch for fans’ reaction.

“What if they put copy protection in the disc and it doesn’t ... reverse the decline of CD sales?” asked Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media. “If it doesn’t help it’s likely to hurt by just annoying people.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/969120.asp?cp1=1


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Upstart Labels See File Sharing as Ally, Not Foe
Chris Nelson

Four years ago, Rich Egan couldn't fathom the usefulness of Napster.

Mr. Egan, the co-owner and president of the independent music label Vagrant Records, had heard about the software — which let users trade songs over the Internet without paying artists or labels — and could not imagine how such a setup could benefit his business.

But as soon as Mr. Egan tried it, he was hooked. Today he says — seemingly counterintuitively — his label simply would not exist without file-sharing services like Napster and its successors KaZaA and Morpheus.

Even as the major labels of the music industry pursue file traders for copyright infringement through lawsuits and the court of public opinion, Vagrant and many other independent label owners cheer them on. File sharing, these owners say, helps their small companies compete against conglomerates with deeper pockets for advertising and greater access to radio programmers.

"Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends," Mr. Egan said. "Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it."

As the music industry suffers through its third consecutive year of falling sales, a decline the major labels say is primarily a result of file sharing, Vagrant is one of many independent labels having some success. Of the 100 top-selling albums of 2003 through Sept. 14, six come from independent labels and collectively have sold six million copies, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. During all of 2002, only four independent releases made the Top 100 and together they sold 5.5 million copies.

And in an industry where the five major companies — the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi Universal; BMG, a unit of Bertelsmann; AOL Time Warner Inc.; the Sony Corporation; and the EMI Group — have more than 80 percent of sales, the independents have actually increased their market share this year by nearly a full percentage point.

By no means have the independents escaped the music business's three-year sales slump. In 2002, album sales dropped 17.3 percent, to 650 million units, from the year-end total of 785 million units in 2000. They are down another 8.6 percent for the first eight months of this year, compared with the period last year. "The industry's in a disastrous situation," said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. File sharing, illegal CD burning, competition from other entertainment and the weak national economy are all cited as contributors to a downturn that has led to layoffs and budget cuts.

In January, one of the best-known independent labels, Artemis Records, laid off 15 people, 40 percent of its staff, said Danny Goldberg, its chief executive, who started the label in 1999 after running major labels like the Mercury Records Group, Warner Brothers Records and Atlantic Records. "It's a battle," added Alan Meltzer, chief executive of Wind-up Records. "We go to war every day fighting for our little piece of territory."

Nonetheless, the sense of worry that permeates the mainstream industry does not consume the independent labels to the same degree. Wind-up, which is distributed in the United States by BMG, is one of the more successful modern independents. "Fallen," by the rock band Evanescence, has been a staple of the Top 10 for the last six months and has sold more than two million copies. Creed's "Human Clay" (1999) has sold more than 11 million copies, making it the seventh-best-selling album since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

For some independent label executives, their confidence stems from subscribing to unconventional barometers of success. (For this article, an independent label is one that is majority-owned by a person or group outside of the five majors, although it may be distributed by a conglomerate. Because the independent companies surveyed are privately held, none would reveal annual earnings.) Success for Vagrant, Mr. Egan said, means bands can make a living from their music. Most Vagrant albums turn a profit after selling 25,000 copies. Some albums on the independent Minneapolis hip-hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment can be profitable after selling just 10,000 copies, according to Siddiq Ali, the label's co-owner and chief executive.

Financial success for a major label release often does not start until half a million copies are sold.

"None of us are buying Bentleys," Mr. Ali said, but the label's modest recording and promotion budgets are quickly recouped. The label's best-selling album, "God Loves Ugly" (2002) by Atmosphere, has sold 71,000 copies.

Jaime Meline, who co-owns the Definitive Jux hip-hop label and raps under the name El-P, counts his company fortunate because it has cash on hand to pay for six months' overhead and continues to split album earnings 50-50 with artists. (Major label artists often earn about 10 percent.) Definitive Jux's most popular disc, "Fantastic Damage" (2002) by El-P, has sold 48,000 copies.

In recent years, major labels, much like the movie industry, have depended increasingly on first-week sales to determine whether a release will be a hit. The cost of bringing a CD to the public, which often includes hiring a consultant to get a single on radio and a top director to shoot a video, not to mention the tab for recording, can run into millions of dollars.

If a CD does not show smash-hit potential immediately, a major label is likely to stop promoting it to concentrate on the next possible blockbuster, sometimes even dropping the band. Independent labels will often promote an album, single or tour a year after a CD's release. An informal survey of independent labels that vary in size from tiny (4 employees) to relatively large (50 employees), and in genre from rock to country to hip-hop, found executives crediting their successes to developing artists' careers over the long haul rather than the pursuit of immediate hits.

A prime example is Vagrant's rock band Dashboard Confessional. Their first album for Vagrant, "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" is also the label's most successful release, having sold 434,000 copies. But it took two and a half years to reach that total, Mr. Egan said.

That constant promotion continues to pay dividends. Dashboard Confessional's third album for Vagrant, "A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar," was No. 2 at its debut on Billboard magazine's album chart and has sold 256,000 copies in two months. The group is featured on the cover of the October Spin magazine and recently performed on "Late Night With David Letterman."

"An artist may make his or her best record three albums in, four albums in," Mr. Egan said. "We'd like to be there when they make that artistic statement."

Building an artist's career and building a fan base to support that career go hand in hand. As radio station playlists have shrunk in recent years, independent labels have turned to other avenues, including file-sharing software, to help listeners discover bands.

The unified response of the major labels has been an effort to shut the file-sharing programs, charging they foster piracy and, in turn, displace sales. On Sept. 8, the Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 file-sharers. The trade group represents the major labels and numerous independents.

Vagrant and Palm Pictures are among the independents that encourage file sharing. But even those who frown on it, like executives at Wind-up, Artemis and Definitive Jux, acknowledge that unauthorized downloading has been useful for exposing their artists to new audiences hungry for music.

"In artist development, file sharing — it's not really hurting you," said Chris Blackwell, the chief executive of Palm Pictures, an independent label manufactured and distributed by the Warner Music Group. Mr. Blackwell, who in 1959 founded the independent Island Records, the original home to Bob Marley and U2, likens file sharers not to shoplifters, as the major labels do, but to grass-roots promoters whose efforts eventually increase sales.

"You want people to discover your artists," Mr. Blackwell said. "You're building for the future."

That tack may prove dependable, but it is still a volatile time in the industry.

"That's the chess game," said Mr. Meline of Definitive Jux, "to be able to hold on to the company and to still continue to grow while the rest of the industry is just completely going down in flames."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/bu...rtne r=GOOGLE


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Uncovering the Napster Kitty Ads
Leander Kahney

On the eve of its relaunch, the infamous file-trading company Napster appears to be defacing other companies' billboards with stickers of its distinctive kitty logo.

The stickers -- showing a cat wearing headphones -- are appearing on street-level billboards, the kind that feature blocks of identical posters plastered to the sides of buildings or construction sites.

So many of the stickers have appeared it looks suspiciously like the company hired an army of guerrilla marketers to blanket billboards in the dead of night.

Hijacking billboards is a practice known as "sniping," and is more commonly associated with punk bands or culture jammers than with a software company like Roxio, which owns the Napster brand now.

Roxio plans to relaunch Napster before the end of the year as a legal music-downloading service.

"It's coming back," say the stickers -- meaning Napster, of course.

But the posters defaced by Napster's stickers aren't real. They are realistic, subtle parodies featuring companies like Gour-Mutt, a gourmet dog food company, or Drop 'n' Go, a child day-care center.

Contributing to the patina of realism, the stickers have been glued to the posters -- not printed on -- stuck over the heads of characters in the ad, as though they have kitty heads. Cleverly, only a few of the posters in any given matrix have a Napster sticker stuck to them.

So realistic is the illusion, the stickers are being ripped down as souvenirs. Napster's agency is dispatching people nightly to replace them, according to a source.

The faux street campaign in six U.S. cities, has drawn criticism from some, praise from others.

Lucian James, a San Francisco marketer who compiles the American Brandstand, a weekly list of product "shout- outs" in the Billboard Hot 100, said it reminds him of Nissan's Electric Moyo campaign earlier this year.

Like Napster, Nissan's sports car campaign used fake graffiti over billboard ads. Plastered all over cities like New York, the campaign drew the ire of groups like the Wooster Collective, a street art organization, for faking street culture.

"They (Nissan) were joining a club they had no right to join just to sell stuff," commented James. Likewise, Napster used to be cool but is now "just pretending" to be cool, James said.

"Telling people something is cool, or trying to appropriate cool things like graffiti, is usually the best way to kill something with cool potential," he said.

In a post to the Boing Boing weblog, artist Abe Burmeister said, "I'm getting great pleasure watching corporate America try its hardest to create 'street cred' for a brand that once was the hottest shit around without even a business plan."

Marc Schiller, co-founder of the Wooster Collective, said he really liked Napster's campaign.

"It's a matter of execution," said Schiller. "The problem with Nissan is they blanketed the town. You have to see (Napster's posters) two or three times before you connect the dots. When you realize what it is, it makes you smile."

Schiller, CEO of a marketing agency and a street art photographer, said he liked Napster's campaign because it is "camp." Instead of pretending to be a hip, billboard-defacement campaign, he feels it is campily making fun of hip, billboard-defacement campaigns.

Schiller compared it to Microsoft's plastering butterfly stickers all over New York last summer to promote MSN, or Radiohead stenciling the name of its latest album on the streets of London.

"In my personal opinion, Napster's is probably the best one (sniping campaign) even though it isn't the first," Schiller said. "If this is going to be the trend, then Napster's done a much better job than others who have tried this."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60525,00.html

[JackSpratts]

Dewey Decimal Sues New York Hotel

A global computer library service is seeking one heck of a fine against a New York City luxury hotel.

The Library Hotel, overlooking the New York Public Library, opened in August 2000 as an homage to the Dewey Decimal system of classifying books by topic.

Each floor is dedicated to one of 10 Dewey categories. The 60 rooms are named for specific topics, such as room 700.003 for performing arts, with appropriate books inside.

Trouble is, the classification system isn't in the public domain.

Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit organization based in this Columbus suburb, acquired the rights to Dewey Decimal in 1988 when it bought Forest Press.

The system is continually updated, with numbers assigned to more than 100,000 new works each year as soon as they are cataloged by the Library of Congress, according to the OCLC website.

Now the library group is suing the Library Hotel, accusing it of trademark infringement.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Wednesday seeks triple the hotel's profits since its opening or triple the organization's damages, whichever is greater, from hotel owner Henry Kallan.

"I would term it straight-out trademark infringement," said Joseph R. Dreitler, a trademark lawyer with the Columbus office of Jones Day, which represents the Online center.

"A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system."

Melvil Dewey created the most widely used library classification system in 1873. Each of 10 main categories, such as social sciences, mathematics or the arts, has thousands of subcategories, designated by decimal points.

The center charges libraries at least $500 a year for its use.

The center also provides computerized services such as cataloging materials, locating reference books and arranging interlibrary loans to more than 45,000 libraries in 84 countries.

Similar unauthorized uses of the Dewey system mostly have resulted in out-of-court settlements, Dreitler said.

The lawsuit said the center sent three letters to Kallan from October 2000 to October 2002, asking for acknowledgment of Online's ownership of the Dewey trademarks, but the hotel owner didn't respond.

Hotel general manager Craig Spitzer and OCLC spokeswoman Wendy McGinnis did not return phone messages Saturday requesting comment on the lawsuit.

Dreitler said the center is willing to settle with the hotel's owners.

"At a minimum, if they want to continue to use it, there certainly has to be some sort of a license to the Library Hotel," he said. "We're not interested in putting the hotel out of business."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wi...-regional-wire


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Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate
Chris Ulbrich

A fawning 1938 article by Homes & Gardens magazine about Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat remains widely available on the Web, even after the discoverer and original poster of the article took it off his site when the magazine demanded its removal.

The three-page article, "Hitler's Mountain Home, a Visit to 'Haus Wachenfeld,'" first appeared on Words of Waldman in early August. Mirrors of the page quickly sprang up across the Web, including one on the website of a well-known Holocaust revisionist.

The article depicts Hitler in glowing terms, such as the "Squire of Wachenfeld," and extols him as a talented architect, decorator and raconteur who "delights in the society of brilliant foreigners, especially painters, singers, and musicians."

Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for Guardian Newspapers, came upon the article while flipping at random through a back issue of Homes & Gardens. He was immediately intrigued.

"We hear a lot about how the British upper and upper-middle classes felt that 'That Hitler chap had some very good ideas' ... but it's only when you see it in this almost comically fawning form that you realise how someone who can seem utterly abhorrent with hindsight can appeal to people at the time," he later wrote on his personal blog.

Waldman scanned the article and posted the images to his blog. Within weeks, his traffic had spiked to 10,000 impressions a day, with the vast majority of visitors downloading the article.

Waldman e-mailed the magazine's editorial director, Isobel McKenzie-Price, to ask whether she had a copy of the article. McKenzie-Price replied in a politely worded e-mail: "While I personally do appreciate the spirit in which you sent it to me, as a representative of IPC Media I am concerned to prevent the unauthorised reproduction of IPC's material, whenever it was originally published.... In the circumstances I must request you to remove this article from your website."

IPC Media, which is owned by AOL Time Warner, publishes 76 magazines in addition to Homes & Gardens, including the U.K. editions of In Style, Marie Claire and Family Circle.

Last Monday, Waldman removed the scans and posted a reply: "I believe that as I'm not making any money out of this, I'm not depriving you of any money, no-one can make any money from the scans (too poor quality), and no-one has said or inferred anything damaging about Homes and Gardens ... you're being slightly over the top."

He continued: "These are interesting and important historical documents. As you are clearly aware. They should be widely available for as many people as possible to learn from them."

McKenzie-Price did not respond to a request for comment.

Waldman later said that he had "no real issue with IPC's decision to enforce their copyright," and conceded on technology expert Joi Ito's blog that the scans probably violated copyright. Nevertheless, he continued to link to mirrors of the article.

British revisionist historian David Irving, who maintains an index of Hitler-related content on his website and believes that the Holocaust never happened, suggested he would be more intransigent if challenged.

In a letter sent to Wired News, Irving wrote, "If I suspect that an attempt is being made to suppress an awkward item -- which I suspect may be behind the Homes and Gardens effort -- then I would dig my heels in rather more, and hold out as long as I could."

He said he would argue that posting the material was protected under the First Amendment and the public interest.

Laws of the United Kingdom do not, however, recognize the First Amendment.

Peter Jaszi, professor of law at American University, said Irving's other defenses likely wouldn't succeed. American law recognizes a "fair use" exception to copyright, which permits limited reproduction for critical, satirical or educational use, where copying would not affect the market for the original work. U.K. copyright, however, recognizes a related concept called "fair dealing," which Jaszi said tends to be interpreted much more narrowly than its American cousin. He added that the "public interest" exception is more of a theory than a reality in current U.K. law, and probably would not apply to this case.

Waldman said he thinks the article has a lot to teach the contemporary world.

"These days we often find ourselves confused by the moral rights and wrongs of foreign policy," he said. "All too often, it is never clear who is the good guy and who the bad. With the vanity of the present day, we assume this is something that is new to us. This document tells us it was ever thus."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60523,00.html


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EU Amends Software Patent Directive (Suggestions)
Hemos

jopet writes "The EU has amended its draft proposal for a directive on how to handle patents on "computer-implemented inventions'. Several harsh points have been dropped and clarifications on what is patentable at all have been added. Good to see that protests and petitions can make a difference." YHBT. These are the suggestions from June.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/09/22...&tid=98&tid=99


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Turn On. Tune In. Download.
Rob Walker

Pretty much from the moment that music ''file swapping'' made its way into the public consciousness by way of Napster, there has been a vaguely ''Reefer Madness'' quality to the discussion of what the practice has meant to its college-age-and-younger participants. We have heard again and again that this new generation is coming to believe that music is something you don't pay for but rather simply take. That idea is in the air again since the major recording labels recently started filing what they say will be thousands of lawsuits against people who have used file-sharing software like KaZaA to download songs they have not paid for.

And the implication of that argument is ominous and meant to alarm us: file sharing is like a gateway drug that will make users unlearn their willingness to pay for movies, video games, books. What the music industry is doing might be thought of as administering a dose of tough love, an intervention that will remind wayward youth not just that stealing is wrong but also that we have a system here wherein goods and services carry a cost. It's called capitalism, kid, and chances are very high that your favorite recording artist -- and every other cultural figure you admire -- loves it. Better to learn this now and kick the download habit before it leads to harder stuff, like a general unwillingness to pay for material goods of any kind, or a failure to grasp the magic of a great brand. If these consumer delinquents don't get scared straight back to the mall, the cost to us all will be much greater than lost revenue for the music business. The very morals of a generation are at stake.

For that to be the case, a couple of underlying assumptions must be true. One is that file sharing is at its heart a problem of reckless youth who simply do not understand that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous. Another is that the habits of college are the habits of a lifetime.

We can dismiss right away the notion that most file swappers would stop if only they understood that what they're doing is wrong. One of the most amusing research results from the various studies of music piracy is the finding that most file sharers apparently don't care if they're violating copyright laws. But this attitude doesn't mean disdain for the marketplace. Earlier this year Forrester Research surveyed 12-to-22-year-olds and adults 23 and older and found that while about half the kids had downloaded songs in the past month (compared with 12 percent of the grown-ups), nearly half of the young downloaders said that they were buying as many CD's as ever. (Members of what Forrester dubs Young Samplers on average bought 3.6 CD's in the past 90 days.) What's more, while 67 percent of the young cohort think ''people should be able to download music for free,'' the same percent claim they are very likely to buy a CD as a result of a recent download.

If there isn't much evidence that young people are not having their acceptance of the free market permanently unwired, then why do they seem to dominate the download phenomenon? No doubt a facility with technology really does set this generation apart. But other, probably more important factors are not new at all. Younger people with fewer responsibilities have much more time to devote to pleasure seeking of all sorts than they have disposable income to pay for it. And at college especially, they are part of a tight-budgeted community, and the culture of sharing is stronger at this age in their lives than it will ever be again.

But the biggest factor, as any baby-boomer politician will tell you -- in fact, as most baby-boomer politicians have already told you -- is that youth is a time of experimentation. If everyone carried their college-age behavior patterns into adulthood, then half our elected officials would be current recreational dope smokers. Which is probably not the case. Certainly we have all absorbed the lesson by now that it's possible to party, get crazy and shrug off responsibility all through college and still grow up to be president.

The lawsuits do make downloading riskier, but a major component of youthful experimentation is a liberal attitude toward risk that mellows over time. Just as important is run-of-the-mill rebellion. An unnamed 16-year-old female in Forrester's report summarizes her defense of downloading this way: ''RECORD COMPANIES ARE UNFAIR AND ARE PART OF THE SYSTEM, GO AGAINST THE SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!''

Well, sure. Who didn't feel that way at 16? On the other hand, how many people feel that way forever? And even now, it's worth pointing out, the radical anti-system ethos that supposedly underlies file sharing is not all it's cracked up to be. The fact is, most participants do a lot more taking than ''sharing''; one study found that nearly half the songs accessible through major peer-to-peer networks are contributed by just 1 percent of users, and nearly 70 percent of downloaders do not share a thing. One of the more revelatory aspects of the record industry's strategy is that it's picking targets based less on how much music they've downloaded than on how much they are offering up to the world. (Of course, this won't do much to counter the industry's reputation as the architect of an Evil System -- nor will the fact that the most prominent of the early targets was a 12-year-old honors student.)

The urge to cast downloading as a kind of black-and-white moral issue that simply needs to be made plain to the kids so that they will knock it off is understandable, but it's also wishful thinking. An estimated 60 million people have downloaded songs illicitly, which makes the phenomenon bigger than a youth fad. It's more like speeding or marijuana use -- activities that many people in a wide range of ages know are ''wrong'' in a technical sense but not in a behavioral sense. By now, even if the music industry is right on the legal argument, it can't win the moral one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/magazine/21WWLN.html


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Open Codex culture :: copyright-as-property-history

The History of Copyright as Property
Joseph Reagle

Elsewhere, in the 2nd of a 3 part essay on propaganda and the copyright, I discussed the myth and history of copyright as "property", and have since recommended that the most appropriate term is "intellectual monopoly right." However in looking at the new wordpirates site that attempts to "reclaim" various words in the contemporary discourse, I'd caution against claiming that the term "property" has only recently arrived to the discussion. Shortly after the issuance of the Statute of Ann (1710), often referenced as the first copyright law, we can see debates invoking the concept of property. In Donaldson v. Beckett, Proceedings in the Lords (1774), one can note:

"... he then dwelt much upon the sense of the word 'property,' defining it philosophically, and in the separate lights of being corporeal and spiritual; the term Literary Property, he in a manner laughed at, as signifying nothing but what was of too abstruse and chimerical a nature to be defined."

"... Was learning encouraged by depriving learned men of a property they had for a perpetuity, and vesting it in them for a term of years only? The supposition was absurd; and yet if the Act by some certain privileges not enjoyed before, did not encourage learning, a statute of the legislature was suffered to be published with a direct falshood for its imprimatur..."

"... what property can a man have in ideas? whilst he keeps them to himself they are his own, when he publishes them they are his no longer. If I take water from the ocean it is mine, if I pour it back it is mine no longer."

Discussions on the character of the limited monopolies of copyright and patent have historically relied upon "property" for comparison, but did not yield to equivelance. The balance has been that these monopoly rights, granted for the advancement of learning, is in some ways like property and in someways not. This understanding of difference and balance is what has been lost in contemporary discourse. Simply ignoring something is much more effective than the coercive pirating of it, as demonstrated when Eisner (of Disney) had to resort to an out of context quotation from Abe Lincoln, while ignoring the elegant sense of balance from another president, founding father, and head of the U.S. patent office, Thomas Jefferson:

"... That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation...."
http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/cultur...operty-history


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Reality Sets in on Elite “Warez” Server
Cory Higgins

German authorities moved in under the cloak of darkness and carried out raids at Global Access Telecommunications, and up to eight individuals residences. The target of the raid was a server know by the pirates who frequented it as “Unreality”. This massive sever had the ability to store nearly 11 terabytes of data. It was capable of pumping out bootlegs of the newest runaway Hollywood blockbusters, at speeds approaching nearly 1 gig a second.

Among the residences raided was that of a suspect identified as only Marco C., and employee of Global Access Telecommunications. German officials claim that the server had been operating as a major hub and distribution point for piracy on a global scale. The server had been operating for nearly 2 ½ years. Around 400 users had accounts to access the server.

"The offenders felt safe due to their secrecy. They never expected to be detected. This case proves our belief in our ability to operate successfully against these sources. We have information about several more servers." Said Bernd Kulbe, the lead investigator. Slyck has learned but been unable to confirm that these release groups where among those who used “Unreality” as a dump site. PANTHEON , DCN , FTV , Boozers , RORiSO
RiSE , GENESIS , TCF , FTV , FLT , and KALISTO.

These groups are among some of the most active releasers of “warez” onto the internet. TCF (the chosen few), is legendary for it release of first run movies. While FTV specializes in pre-broadcast feeds of television shows. What effect if any this has on the “scene” remains to be seen. It is likely that some groups may at the very least lay low for awhile.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=242


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Being Sued by the RIAA Turns Profitable
Thomas Mennecke

What started off as every P2P users nightmare has turned into a profitable enterprise for 12 year old Brianna LaHara. Like 60 million other American citizens, Brianna’s downloading day started off like many others; launch your Kazaa client and trade away.


Unfortunately for Brianna, she had approximately 1,000 copyrighted songs in her shared directory. Compounding her situation was the type of shared music; mostly top 40, such as Christina Aguilera. This unfortunate combination is exactly what the RIAA automatons are looking for.

Like many other victims of the RIAA's persecution of the American people, Brianna had no idea that she was targeted until reporters started contacting the household. The RIAA quickly brushed off the issue, accepting a minimal payment of $2,000.

While the marginal penalty may seem like a fortune to this low-income New York family, the immediate sympathy and outpouring was undeniable. Almost immediately, P2P United, a trade organization that promote the file-sharing world, sent the family $2,000 to cover the costs.

However, the support didn't stop there.

In addition to the 2 grand from P2P United, Brianna has literally been flooded with donations. The donations range anywhere from $3 dollars to nearly $1,000. Not only has Brianna been able to pay her fine; she's making a profit from her ordeal with the RIAA.

In addition, "Rochester, New York radio disc jockey Brother Wease also offered to pay Torres’ legal bill, and online music retailer MusicRebellion.com said it would allow Torres’ daughter, Brianna Lahara, to download $2,000 worth of free music from its industry-sanctioned site."

What started off as a financial nightmare for the LaHara family has turned into a dream come true. With the $2,000 dollar offer from Music Rebellion, and “floods” of donations where some have totaled near $1,000, we can only speculate that Brianna has managed to make over $4,000 for the LaHara household - and that's a very conservative estimate. Not bad for being sued for copyright infringement.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=238


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A.C.L.U. Goes to College, With Mixed Results
Tamar Lewin

The poster promised a free hip-hop concert and a performance by the comedian Dave Chappelle — but Mr. Chappelle canceled and not many students showed up Thursday night for the Hunter College stop on the American Civil Liberties Union College Freedom Tour.

The event, billed as a concert and a political forum, was an unabashed effort to recruit young members for the A.C.L.U., which received two-thirds of its donations last year from people older than 55.

But the comedy and music, not the politics, were the big draw. "I thought Dave Chappelle would be here, and that's why I'm here," said Nia Ferguson, a 19-year-old Hunter student. "The A.C.L.U.? I've never heard of it."

The A.C.L.U., a nonprofit activist organization founded in 1920, is staging an eight-campus tour, its first national effort to reach college-age students and convince them that the group's bedrock mission, the defense of individual liberties, is more crucial than ever in the post-9/11 political climate.

"We're trying to show that this is not your father or mother's A.C.L.U.," said Anthony Romero, the A.C.L.U.'s 37-year-old executive director, chosen two years ago with a mandate to bring younger members into the organization.

Attendance at the Hunter College event may have been affected by Hurricane Isabel, which had threatened to bring wind and rain to the area on Thursday. But hurricane or no, most of those who showed up had no idea what the A.C.L.U. was all about.

"We came for the music," said Aron Phaige, 23, arriving at the concert with Crystal Olmo for their first night out since their 7-week-old son, Jaden, was born. "I've never been introduced to the A.C.L.U. before."

In staging the campus tour, the A.C.L.U. is "trying to make sure students understand that these are today's issues," Mr. Romero said.

Sept. 11 "is to this generation what the assassination of Martin Luther King was to my parents' generation," he said. "There's an incredible opportunity to connect a political analysis of what's happening in this country, and the erosion of core civil liberties, to an event they lived personally."

The message apparently got through to some, even to those who had not been attracted by politics.

"It was interesting," Mr. Phaige said. "I didn't know how secret our government was being after 9/11, how they were going after Muslims so much."

Like some of the roughly 80 people in the audience, the three Guerrero sisters — Karina, 26, Dulce, 17 and Yrma, 16 — were initially disappointed by Mr. Chappelle's absence. But they said afterward that they were interested in the presentations by lawyers from the New York Civil Liberties Union on post-9/11 civil liberties, reproductive rights and the state's drug laws.

"This is the first time I heard of the A.C.L.U.," Karina Guerrero said. "But I'm very disappointed in how the government is handling things."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/nyregion/22ACLU.html


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Think Debate on Music Property Rights Began With Napster? Hardly
Lisa Napoli

Since Thomas A. Edison recorded the human voice in 1877, the music industry has grappled with the uncertainties wrought by new technologies.

"The form changes, but the issues - who owns the music, what rights pertain to artists, what rights pertain to the companies - these are issues that go way back into the 19th century,'' said Larry Starr, professor of music history at the University of Washington in Seattle and co-author of "American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV'' (Oxford University Press, 2002).

The initial race to create a low-cost way to record and play back sound resulted in a number of competing companies. Many wound up merging forces around the turn of the 20th century, forming a stronghold that for the most part has been the locus of industry power for a hundred years. The RCA Music Group, part of the BMG unit of Bertelsmann; the EMI Group; and the Columbia Records unit of Sony are among the current music companies that have long, historic roots in the business.

"There has always been a tendency for several large companies to dominate the actual production and distribution, just because of how difficult it is,'' said Steven E. Schoenherr, professor of American history at the University of San Diego. "It takes a huge capital investment.''

Recorded music shifted the balance of power from sheet music publishers, which dominated the early music business, to record producers. But the reaction to technical innovation - whether radio in the 1920's, cassette recorders in the 1960's or MP3 players in the 1990's - has been consistent. "It's nothing new to say the recording companies are scared,'' Professor Schoenherr said. "They've always been scared.''

Now that the threat emanates from the computer and the Internet, though, the fear has taken on a new proportion for the recording companies, whose capital resources and established production and distribution systems may give them no particular advantages in the future.

"The Web eliminates two-thirds of the cost factors,'' said Richard Kurin, director of folk life and cultural heritage at the Smithsonian Institution. "You don't have to produce a hard product and you don't have to pay a middleman. The prospect is for greater dissemination, but also for greater participation. The Net has tremendous implications. The big industry question is, How do you handle those implications?''

Though no one can predict precisely how the music industry will evolve, many experts agree that a change in industry structure seems inevitable.

"Whatever the industry is going to be, it has to take a different form,'' said Christopher Waterman, dean of the school of arts and architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Professor Starr's co-author. "This is raising basic questions about property. Music has been turned into information, and once it is physically pulled away, not embedded in any material object, you're in a whole new world.''

A glimpse of the industry's future might be seen in the early success of iTunes Music Store, the online service that Apple Computer introduced in April, Professor Schoenherr said. "If they continue to innovate,'' he said, "they could make stars on their own.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/te...gy/22tune.html


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Students Shall Not Download. Yeah, Sure.
Kate Zernike

In the rough and tumble of the student union here at Pennsylvania State University, the moral code is purely pragmatic.

Thou shalt not smoke — it will kill you.

Thou shalt not lift a term paper off the Internet — it will get you kicked out.

Thou shalt not use a fake ID — it will get you arrested.

And when it comes to downloading music or movies off the Internet, students here compare it with under-age drinking: illegal, but not immoral. Like alcohol and parties, the Internet is easily accessible. Why not download, or drink, when "everyone" does it?

This set of commandments has helped make people between the ages of 18 and 29, and college students in particular, the biggest downloaders of Internet music.

"It's not something you feel guilty about doing," said Dan Langlitz, 20, a junior here. "You don't get the feeling it's illegal because it's so easy." He held an MP3 player in his hand. "They sell these things, the sites are there. Why is it illegal?"

Students say they have had the Internet for as long as they can remember, and have grown up thinking of it as theirs for the taking.

The array of services available to them on campus has only encouraged that sense.

Penn State recently made the student center, known as the Hub, entirely wireless, so students do not even have to dial up to get on the Internet. In comfortable armchairs, they sit clicking on Google searches, their ears attached to iPods, cellphones a hand away. A swipe of a student ID gets them three free newspapers. They do not need cash — only a swipe card, the cost included in their student fees — to buy anything from a caramel caffè latte to tamale pie at an abundance of fast food counters. There is a bank branch and a travel agency, and a daily activities board lists a Nascar simulator as well as rumba lessons.

Many courses put all materials — textbook excerpts, articles, syllabuses — online. Residence halls offer fast broadband access — which studies say makes people more likely to download.

"It kind of spoils us, in a sense, because you get used to it," said Jill Wilson, 20, a sophomore.

The ease of going online has shaped not only attitudes about downloading, but cheating as well, blurring the lines between right and wrong so much that many colleges now require orientation courses that give students specific examples of what plagiarism looks like. Students generally know not to buy a paper off the Internet, but many think it is O.K. to pull a paragraph or two, as long as they change a few words.

"Before, when you had to go into the library and at least type it in to your paper, you were pretty conscious about what you were doing," said Janis Jacobs, vice-provost for undergraduate education here. "That means we do have to educate students about what is O.K. It's the same whether you're talking about plagiarizing a phrase from a book or article or downloading music — it all seems free to them."

Last year and again last week, the university sent out an e-mail message reminding students that downloading copyrighted music was illegal, and pleading with them to "resist the urge" to download. It also warned students that it had begun monitoring how much information students are downloading, and that they could lose their Internet access if their weekly use exceeded a limit administrators described as equivalent to tens of thousands of e-mail messages sent.

This year, all students had to take an online tutorial before receiving access to their e-mail accounts, acknowledging that they had read and agreed to university policy prohibiting the downloading of copyrighted material.

At the same time, realizing the difficulties of stopping downloading, Penn State's president, Graham B. Spanier, is hoping to try out a program this spring where the university would pay for the rights to music, and then allow students to download at will.

To students, the crackdown seemed like a sudden reversal.

"Up until recently, we were not told it was wrong," said Kristin Ebert, 19. "We think if it's available, you can use it. It's another resource."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/20/te...gy/20COLL.html


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Hitler at Home on the Internet
Tom Zeller

The predominant color scheme of Hitler's "bright, airy chalet" was "a light jade green." Chairs and tables of braided cane graced the sun parlor, and the Führer, "a droll raconteur," decorated his entrance hall with "cactus plants in majolica pots."

Such are the precious and chilling observations in an irony-free 1938 article in Homes & Gardens, a British magazine, on Hitler's mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps. A bit of arcana, to be sure, but one that has dropped squarely into the current debate over the Internet and intellectual property. This file, too, is being shared.

The resurrection of the article can be traced to Simon Waldman, the director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers in Britain, who says he was given a vintage issue of the magazine by his father-in-law. Noticing the Hitler spread, which doted on the compound's high-mountain beauty ("the fairest view in all Europe") at a time when the Nazis had already gobbled up Austria, Mr. Waldman scanned the three pages and posted them on his personal Web site last May. They sat largely unnoticed until about three weeks ago, when Mr. Waldman made them more prominent on his site and sent an e-mail message to the current editor of Homes & Gardens, Isobel McKenzie- Price, pointing up the article as a historical curiosity.

Ms. McKenzie-Price, citing copyright rules, politely requested that he remove the pages. Mr. Waldman did so, but not before other Web users had turned the pages into communal property, like so many songs and photographs and movies and words that have been illegally traded for more than a decade in the Internet's back alleys.

Still, there was a question of whether the magazine's position was a stance against property theft or a bit of red-faced persnicketiness.

Britain's Copyright, Design and Patents Act of 1988 considers use of "reasonable portions" of some copyrighted material to be "fair dealing," provided they are used in private study, criticism and review, or news reporting. Simply posting an article on the Web might not qualify.

Indeed, the Internet has ensured that copyright can never be just about one nation's laws. "All copyright issues are international copyright issues," said Edwin Komen, an intellectual property lawyer in Washington. On the Web, he added, "you become vulnerable to just about any jurisdiction in the world."

For all of that, though, IPC Media's unwillingness to discuss even the content of the Hitler article is puzzling to Mr. Waldman. This skeleton was abruptly yanked from the Homes & Gardens closet, yes, but the article reflects more about the mind of aristocratic Britain in 1938 — well known to have given Hitler the benefit of the doubt — than it does about the magazine itself. Even the American press noted the beauty of Hitler's compound, including The New York Times, which on Sept. 18, 1938, wrote that the chalet was "simple in its appointments" and that it commanded "a magnificent highland panorama."

Posting these pages online "doesn't damage Homes & Garden's reputation," Mr. Waldman said. "In fact, putting them up, along with a letter from the editor explaining a bit about them, could be a very positive thing for them to do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/we...ew/21ZELL.html


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When All Hope Seems Lost, the Disc Data Is Rescued
J.D. Biersdorfer

CD and DVD discs are handy for storing large amounts of backed-up files, but a disc that takes a scratch or nick to the surface can become unreadable, fouling up the best-laid plans. Although such a disc may be damaged beyond repair, CD/DVD Diagnostic from Arrowkey can help recover the data and copy it back to your hard drive.

The program can recover files on discs in the CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW formats, no matter what software was originally used to record the files. In addition to deciphering scratched discs, CD/DVD Diagnostic will try to recover data from CD's or DVD's that were corrupted during the initial recording process, and through a readability test can determine just how damaged a disc might be. The program scans all kinds of discs, including standard audio CD's, DVD video discs, and discs created on Macintosh or Linux systems.

The CD/DVD Diagnostic software works on all versions of Windows. It sells for $69.99 in stores and can be downloaded for $49.99 from www.arrowkey.com, where a free trial version is also available. Arrowkey offers a money-back guarantee on its software, making it possible that CD's full of freshly recovered data will be the only thing getting burned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/te...ts/18disc.html


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Digital-Music Sales Share To Shoot Up By 2008
Macworld staff

Digital-music sales will be worth $1.8 billion by 2008, reports analysts firm Informa Media. The market rises to $3.9 billion when online sales of CDs are included.

While predicting more music piracy ahead, the analysts are optimistic that the market share for legal digitally distributed music sales will rise from 4.5 per cent in 2003 to 11.9 per cent in 2008.

However, CD, DVD, vinyl and cassette recordings will continue to account for most sales until 2008, though combined digital-music revenues will reach $1.8 billion by 2008.

Apple recently announced that its pioneering online digital-music iTunes store sold its ten millionth track.

The firm believes file sharing will continue, as peer-to-peer software appears that places "greater emphasis on privacy and anonymity". The analysts "expect the music industry to have some success in limiting consumer's access to illegal networks", but this will be tempered by the arrival of new, secure peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=6943


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Net Music Piracy Growing, study says
Reuters

LONDON—The expanding market for pirated music will continue to haunt music executives for at least another five years, outstripping sales from the industry's own fledgling online businesses, a study by a British research firm said yesterday. The report by Informa Media said global Internet music sales, which include sales of CDs from retail Web sites such as Amazon.com and song downloads from services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, will reach about $5.2 billion by 2008, up from $1.5 billion in 2002. But the value of lost sales due to CD-burning and downloading free songs off peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and Kazaa will rise to $6.3 billion in the same period from $3.2 billion this year. "The reason we're so downbeat is we think the peer-to-peer problem is going to only get worse. In 2008, broadband will be prevalent around the world," said Simon Dyson, the report's author. The rollout of faster broadband connections has made it more convenient for Internet users to download free music on the Web. Millions of Internet users around the globe regularly log on to the peer-to-peer network to obtain all types of copyright-protected materials, from Eminem songs to films. The industry has responded with fee-based download services of its own, but consumer response has been slow. The major music labels blame Net piracy for triggering a sharp decline in global music sales in the past three years. Dyson said a host of Internet file-sharing services are now beginning to appear in languages such as Russian and Chinese, potentially dashing the industry's hopes of building a loyal customer base in these emerging markets. The music trade body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, reported in July the sale of pirated compact discs has more than doubled in the past three years as costs of CD-burning devices plummet.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=968350072197


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Piracy To Haunt Music Biz For Years

Group finds filing sharing will trim sales for at least another 5 years as broadband spreads.
Reuters

The ever-expanding market for pirated music will continue to haunt music executives for at least another five years, outstripping growth for the industry's own fledgling online businesses, a new study said Monday.

The report by Informa Media said global Internet music sales, which includes sales of CDs from retail Web sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN: down $1.31 to $46.27, Research, Estimates) and song downloads from services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL: down $0.51 to $22.07, Research, Estimates) iTunes, will reach $3.9 billion by 2008, up from $1.1 billion in 2002.

But the value of lost sales due to CD-burning and downloading free songs off so-called peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and Kazaa will rise to $4.7 billion in the same period from $2.4 billion this year, the British research firm said.

"The reason we're so downbeat is we think the peer-to-peer problem is going to only get worse. In 2008, broadband will be prevalent around the world," said Simon Dyson, the report's author.

The rollout of faster broadband connections has made it more convenient for Internet users to download free music off the Web. Millions of Internet users around the globe regularly log on to the peer-to-peer network to obtain all manners of copyright-protected materials from Eminem songs to films.

The industry has responded with fee-based download services of its own, but consumer uptake has been slow.

This one-step-forward-two-steps-back scenario is hardly comforting for the major music labels, which blame Net piracy for triggering a sharp decline in global music sales in the past three years.

Dyson said a host of Internet file-sharing services are now beginning to appear in languages such as Russian and Chinese, potentially dashing the industry's hopes of building a loyal customer base in these emerging markets.

"This is where the industry's growth is supposed to come from," Dyson said.

On a positive note, online sales will account for nearly 12 percent of the entire global music market by 2008, up from 4.5 percent this year. The larger share is due to the industry's recent push to make more products available for download.

It's a rare bit of promising news for an industry that's been ravaged by new technologies.

The music trade body, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), reported in July the sale of pirated compact discs -- a problem that has dogged the industry for the past decade -- has more than doubled in the past three years as costs of CD-burning devices plummet.

The IFPI represents scores of independent and major music labels including EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music, Universal Music, and Bertelsmann's BMG. Warner Music is a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner (AOL: down $0.28 to $16.00, Research, Estimates), the parent company of CNN/Money.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/22/tech....reut/?cnn=yes


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Soccer Flick Has Legs Online
Katie Dean

Among the top 10 movies downloaded on the Internet in August were the usual blockbusters: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Hulk, Matrix Reloaded ... and Shaolin Soccer.

Shaolin Soccer? Huh?

A comedy about a group of Shaolin monks who blend their kung fu skills with soccer is a smash hit with file sharers (watch the trailer). The movie has landed on file traders' top 10 list for the past four months, according to BayTSP, a company that sniffs around peer-to- peer sites for illegal copies of movies and music.

Studios use BayTSP's services to track those Internet users who are violating copyright by passing around unauthorized copies of films. But some say the underground success of Shaolin Soccer shows that BayTSP's data could also be useful to studios in determining what flicks the public wants.

Every other top movie listed is a blockbuster film backed by heavy advertising and marketing campaigns. Yet Shaolin Soccer, a film that debuted in Hong Kong in 2001, has not been released in the United States yet.

Starring Stephen Chow, Shaolin Soccer was a huge hit in Hong Kong. And judging from those who are seeking it online, the wacky flick has sustained its popularity.

"It does have a cult following," said Mark Pollard, founder and webmaster of Kung Fu Cinema, a site that posts news and reviews of martial arts films. "There's been a lot of frustration with these cult fans about Miramax limiting the ability for this film to be widely released in the U.S."

Fans of the Kung Fu genre have been waiting for Shaolin Soccer for months. Miramax has postponed its release
date at least three times. Originally released in Cantonese with English subtitles, the film was dubbed into English for U.S. audiences. Now, the studio intends to release the movie in the original form with English subtitles instead.

A Miramax spokesman said that the company is looking for the right time to release the film to give it the best chance of success in the market. There's no set release date at the moment.

"We were pleased to see that there is interest in the film (online)," the spokesman said. "At the same time, we work with the MPAA and our legal department to vigorously prosecute those who take our property and use (it) for their own purposes."

Since Miramax owns the rights to the film, the studio has restricted retailers from selling copies of the film in the United States. Pollard bought his copy of the movie from an online vendor overseas.

"Because this film is not readily available in the U.S., I think that's a contributing factor to why the file sharing is going on," said Pollard, adding that he opposes file sharing because it is harmful to the industry.

He's not surprised that people are looking for it. It's a hilarious action film, he said.

"It's the college-age kids who are going to enjoy this film the most," he said. "Those are the people who are going online and familiar with peer-to-peer programs.

Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP, said that the company works with three of the seven major movie studios and three of the five big music labels. It snags between 1.5 million and 2.5 million infringements per day, and the vast majority of violations are for songs.

"We search the Internet looking for people who are making available publicly the copyright material that belongs to our clients, then we identify where it's coming from," Ishikawa said. "We gather as much information as we can and then provide it to the client to process. The client then decides what enforcement to take."

He dismissed the idea that studios could use the data on popular downloaded movies in their marketing strategies.

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, disagreed.

"BayTSP needs to recognize the value that they add is not in antipiracy operations, but instead in gathering information about what's popular, when it's popular and where it's popular," von Lohmann said. "BayTSP is the Google or Nielsen ratings for peer to peer. The sooner they recognize that, the more money they'll make later."

He said that BigChampagne uses similar spidering technology to crawl peer-to-peer sites and locate the most popular songs downloaded. The company bills itself as a market research firm rather than an antipiracy company.

Jason Schultz, also with the EFF, agreed that peer-to-peer trends provide useful marketing data.

"People are voting via file-sharing software and expressing consumer desires much more directly than any other distribution mechanism," Schultz said. "You can't get closer to the pulse of the consumers than peer to peer."

But it's still an open question whether those who seek Shaolin Soccer online will have the opportunity -- or the interest -- to see the film on the big screen.

"If (Shaolin Soccer) is No. 10, there is obviously a serious missed opportunity that (Miramax) should be taking advantage of," Pollard said. "Maybe these studios should be paying attention."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60511,00.html


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Will that be one barrel or two?

Sharman Networks 'Lifts the Veil' on U.S. Entertainment Industry Collusion
Press Release

Sharman Networks, distributor of Kazaa Media Desktop, the world's most popular file sharing software, today announced it has filed an amended counterclaim in the US District Court of California, which 'lifts the veil' on anticompetitive behavior and unfair business practices employed by US entertainment industry players against Sharman Networks, its joint enterprise partner Altnet, and peer-to-peer technology.

The amended counterclaim significantly bolsters Sharman Networks' antitrust case against the US entertainment industry by detailing elements of the industry's concerted scheme to keep Sharman, Altnet and peer-to-peer technology out of the market for licensed digital content distribution. For example, the counterclaim filing details specific instances where Sharman and/or Altnet met with senior level individual industry executives at Universal, Warner Brothers Music and Interscope Music, among others, holding a number of positive and productive discussions, which were later stymied by industry body directives, despite the fact that these relationships were robust, and preliminary agreements had been reached.

In addition, the amended counterclaim details: * The nature of Sharman and Altnet's joint enterprise agreement (JEA) which demonstrates that both Sharman and Altnet are equally affected by the anticompetitive behavior of entertainment industry plaintiffs; * Collusion of the plaintiffs to apply pressure to advertisers, ISPs and business partners of Sharman and/or Altnet; * Public smear campaigns to undermine Sharman, Altnet and peer-to-peer technology; * Restrictive anti-P2P licensing practices by plaintiffs - "Dead End Licenses"- designed to exclude P2P distribution; * Unfair business practices on behalf of the plaintiffs including breach of Sharman Networks' copyright and privacy provisions to covertly gather information about users of Kazaa.

Nikki Hemming, CEO of Sharman Networks, said: "We take little pleasure in moving this next step to place the spotlight on the entertainment industry's behavior. However, the industry has lost its way, choosing a path of endless litigation , rather than accepting a solution to copyright infringement that is available now, and a technology that is inexorable.

"We've spoken to record company executives who recognize that P2Pprovides the most efficient means to profitably distribute licensed music and movie content for a fee over the Internet. It's time for these executives to take their business back from their lawyers and steer it into the future of digital distribution.

"We remain steadfast in our desire to work with the industry to distribute their content securely using our peer-to-peer technology. Thousands of content providers across the music, movie, games and software industries have already profited from working with us."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+04:51+PM


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Boob Toggle
Annalee Newitz

There is just so much one could say – and should say – about the 261 dangerous, file-sharing, copyright-infringing music junkies being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. One might begin with a sob story (or is that an SOB story?): The RIAA has already settled its first lawsuit, which was brought against Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old girl who lives with her single mom in public housing. It fined her mother $2,000 for honor student Brianna's naughty Kazaa usage. Even supporters of the RIAA have to admit this move doesn't make the record industry look very sympathetic.

Net activists (www.funkbunny.com/datatype/archives/000076.html) rushed to Brianna's aid, raising $2,000 through PayPal and presenting it to her mother within days of the settlement. Others, like Bill Evans, run Web sites like Boycott-RIAA.com, which keeps people updated on the latest RIAA crackdowns on file traders as well as urges them to buy used music and avoid patronizing labels affiliated with the RIAA.

If you want to see if you're in the music industry's sights, visit John Barry's RIAA's Hit List (www.riaashitlist.com), where you can search a list of people whose names the RIAA has subpoenaed from their Internet service providers. Barry, whose favorite file-sharing network is Kazaa, says he updates his list daily via a government service that provides online access to information about every subpoena filed in the United States. He's noticed a few patterns in the subpoenas, too. "People using Kazaa are targets. Ninety-nine percent of the subpoenas are for people using Kazaa," he says. "Also, nobody on AOL has been subpoenaed." Barry wonders if there is any political reason why users of the Time Warner – owned ISP aren't on the RIAA's list. Of course, it could just be that people using America Online don't have connections that are fast enough for file-sharing networks.

Like many people protesting the RIAA's actions, Barry thinks the music industry is taking a financial hit right now because when people can sample its wares before purchasing, they realize the CDs they thought they wanted actually suck. "I've stopped buying music because I'll download a song and it's drivel," Barry says. "The best music can't be purchased. So much of it is out of print." If he's right about most file swappers' motives, then what peer-to-peer (P2P) data-sharing networks offer isn't free music but a chance for consumers to avoid paying for works they wouldn't want anyway.

In what seems like an overt attempt to demonize file sharing, Rep. Joe Pitts introduced a bill in late July called the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act (known as the P4 Act). Pitts claims P2P networks aren't just for trading the latest tunes from Justin Timberlake – they're also responsible for circulating pornography (especially ultra-evil child porn) to underage people. Despite the fact that Internet pornography is much more easily accessed on Web sites and in chat rooms, Pitts seems determined to yoke P2P with child porn in the public mind. If passed, his bill would require P2P companies to "give notice of the threats posed by P2P software" and would force P2P vendors to get parents' permission before allowing users to sign up for their services.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16821


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MP3 Lawsuits Don’t Stop the Culture of Piracy On and Off Campus
Matt Wheeland

BERKELEY - To enter one of Berkeley's off-campus student co-ops is to enter the recording industry's nightmare.

Thanks to the House Nerd-- an actual job title-- the residents have access to hundreds, if not thousands, of gigabytes of pirated media.

This summer, they watched “The Matrix: Reloaded” on the house TV before it was released in theaters. They’ve compiled and categorized thousands of albums, and many times more individual mp3s.

Residents feel little need to visit the record store, much less to pay to download songs off the legitimate download sites like Listen.com’s Rhapsody 2.0 or Apple’s iTunes music store.

A culture of, well, piracy pervades the co-op. The walls are covered in murals featuring copyrighted characters from movies and comic books. Students’ rooms are decorated with stolen street signs, and VHS tapes of recorded Simpsons episodes are common but less and less necessary.

If the recent 261 lawsuits against file sharers by the Recording Industry Association of America was intended to intimidate or stop downloading of music, it clearly failed on this campus.

“F**k the record industry!” said Allen, whose name has been changed to protect the guilty. He illustrated his point by opening his network drive on his PC, clicking one of the many server icons, and pulled up the 14 mp3s that make up Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief,” the British band’s latest album.

This reality is without control. A study released in July by the Pew Internet Project found that 35 million U.S. adults regularly download music and other media from the Internet using peer-to-peer (P2P) software like KaZaA and Grokster. Even more alarming for the industry is that 67 percent of these users say they don’t care whether or not the media is copyrighted.

To spend a few hours at the bustling co-op just off campus in north Berkeley is to see the accuracy of that culture. The file-sharing co-op—much like any on campus, has its own style, values, and own music. Lots of it.

Again, thanks to the House Nerd, the co-op has a new central file server that holds 300 gigabytes of data. Here are the numbers that the record industry hates to hear: A four-minute song ripped to MP3 at a medium-quality rate takes about five megabytes of disk space. This means the co-op’s central server could hold about 140,000 pirated songs.

And add to that the roughly 100 computers connected to the network, each with anywhere from 10 to 80 gigabytes of disk space each, and you’ve got enough stolen media to land even Mick Jagger in the poorhouse.

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, said that while only a few students were caught up in last week’s dragnet, it’s far from over. “[Students] should not feel shielded, not if they’re downloading or sharing music. There’s a misconception that individuals can’t be identified [on P2P networks]. We can find out who you are. We can and will hold you accountable.”

Despite the tough talk and subpoenas, users at the Berkeley co-op said it’s likely to backfire, and as proof they point to the industry’s suit against Napster. It only brought
file sharing into the public consciousness.

“Every time they pull a boneheaded move like this, [file sharing] traffic seems to go up,” Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, recently told the Chronicle.

Beth, another co-op resident, is a perfect example. Beth never used the Internet to download music, and still doesn’t.. Instead, she relies on the co-op’s extensive selection of music to fill her hard drive. But she says the lawsuits might make her a KaZaA user after all.

“It makes me want to download more – just to stick it to them. And also in case they do shut it down, I want to get it while I can.”

And she and others at the co-op do.

Just last weekend, they watched “The Hulk,” a widely panned Hollywood blockbuster that still earned over $130 million in the box office. Copied from the network and burned to CD, Allen and Beth screened it in the co-op’s lounge.

“It was pretty f**king bad. I wouldn’t pay $8.50 for that. I wouldn’t even rent it.”
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/ngno/stories/001112.html


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Recording Industry Withdraws Suit

Mistaken identity raises questions on legal strategy
Chris Gaither

The recording industry has withdrawn a lawsuit against a Newbury woman because it falsely accused her of illegally sharing music -- possibly the first case of mistaken identity in the battle against Internet file-traders.

Privacy advocates said the suit against Sarah Seabury Ward, a sculptor who said she has never downloaded or digitally shared a song, revealed flaws in the Recording Industry Association of America's legal strategy. Ward was caught up in a flood of 261 lawsuits filed two weeks ago that targeted people who, through software programs like Kazaa, make copyrighted songs available for others to download over the Internet.

"When the RIAA announced they were going on this litigation crusade, we knew there was going to be someone like Sarah Ward," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy group in San Francisco that has advised Ward and others sued by the music industry. "And we think were will be more."

The lawsuit claimed that Ward had illegally shared more than 2,000 songs through Kazaa and threatened to hold her liable for up to $150,000 for each song. The plaintiffs were Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista.

Among the songs she was accused of sharing: "I'm a Thug," by the rapper Trick Daddy.

But Ward, 66, is a "computer neophyte" who never installed file-sharing software, let alone downloaded hard-core rap about baggy jeans and gold teeth, according to letters sent to the recording industry's agents by her lawyer, Jeffrey Beeler.

Other defendants have blamed their children for using file-sharing software, but Ward has no children living with her, Beeler said.

Moreover, Ward uses a Macintosh computer at home. Kazaa runs only on Windows-based personal computers.

Beeler complained to the RIAA, demanding an apology and "dismissal with prejudice" of the lawsuit, which would prohibit future lawsuits against her. Foley Hoag, the Boston firm representing the record labels, on Friday dropped the case, but without prejudice.

"Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant," Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote to Beeler.

The trade group released Zick's letter late yesterday and said it would have no other comment.

It is unclear where the apparent mistake originated.

According to the lawsuit, recording industry investigators tracked the file-sharing activities of a Kazaa user with the moniker Heath7 and found the unique numeric identifier, known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address, that was assigned to the user by the Internet service provider at the time.

The recording industry then issued a subpoena to Comcast, the user's Internet service provider, demanding the name, address, and e-mail address of the person behind the IP address.

Evan Cox, a partner with Covington & Burling in San Francisco who is not involved with the case, said the error most likely happened in one of two ways: Either Comcast matched the wrong customer with the IP address, or the recording industry requested information about the wrong IP address, which is usually more than nine digits.

"If any of those [IP address] numbers are wrong or transposed, you're going to get the wrong person," Cohn said.

Whatever the source of the apparent error, it illustrates how difficult it can be to definitively match a person to an online screen name.

A Comcast spokeswoman, Sarah Eder, would not comment, citing customer privacy concerns. Comcast always notifies its customers after a subpoena compels the company to release information about them, she said.

Mistakes are likely, given the number of cases the recording industry has filed, Cox said. The industry's reputation could hang on how many mistakes surface.

"If there turns out to be a lot of them, it will cast some doubt on [the industry's] evidence-gathering," he said. "They'll have to either strengthen their efforts or back off."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has counseled about 30 of the 261 people sued, Cohn said, adding that some have settled for fear of spending too much money fighting powerful corporations.

Jonathan Zittrain, an associate professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said the dismissal shows that the record companies may find it tough to prevail if their lawsuits go to court. Their legal strategy assumes that most defendants will settle rather than fight, and the lawsuits are so damaging to their public image that they cannot afford protracted legal battles with alleged file-swappers, he added.

"This is a very high-stakes strategy for the record companies," he said. "It's either going to work in the short term, or they're going to have to pull the plug on it."
http://www.boston.com/business/artic...ithdraws_suit/


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Makers of Kazaa Are Suing Record Labels
AP

Turning the tables on record labels, makers of the most popular Internet song-swapping network are suing entertainment companies for copyright infringement.

Sharman Networks Ltd., the company behind the Kazaa file-sharing software, filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing the entertainment companies of using unauthorized versions of its software in their efforts to root out users. Entertainment companies have offered bogus versions of copyright works and sent online warning messages to users.

Sharman said the companies used Kazaa Lite, an ad-less replica of its software, to get onto the network. The lawsuit also claims efforts to combat piracy on Kazaa violated terms for using the network.

Sharman's lawsuit also revives its previous allegation that the entertainment companies violated antitrust laws by stopping Sharman and its partner from distributing authorized copies of music and movies through Kazaa.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson rejected those claims in July but last week allowed Sharman to try again. Sharman is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu with main offices in Sydney, Australia.

The Recording Industry Association of America called Sharman's "newfound admiration for the importance of copyright law" ironic and "self-serving."

Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group declined to comment on Sharman's latest lawsuit.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/709/4115938.html


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SPANISH COURT ORDERS P2P SITE SHUT DOWN
ILN

A Spanish court has ordered donkeymania.com, a site engaged
in peer-to-peer file swapping activity, shut down for six
months. Criminal proceedings were launched by Spanish music
collectives against the site.

From the article:

Un Juez Decreta Por Primera Vez En España El Cierre De Una Web De Intercambio De Archivos P2P

Reconoce que este tipo de plataformas pueden lesionar los derechos de los autores y productores

El juzgado de instrucción número 3 de Madrid ha decretado el cierre cautelar de la plataforma web Donkeymanía (www.donkeymania.com) por entender que su actividad constituía un presunto delito contra la propiedad intelectual. La página ahora clausurada servía como una red de las denominadas P2P (punto por punto) para el intercambio de archivos entre particulares. Por primera vez en España, un auto judicial reconoce que este tipo de plataformas pueden lesionar los derechos de los autores y productores, al igual que ya se demostró en Estados Unidos con el caso Napster, informa la Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE). La resolución judicial, que tiene fecha del pasado 1 de agosto, es consecuencia de las denuncias formuladas contra Donkeymanía por parte de las entidades El Derecho, la SGAE, la Asociación Fonográfica y Videográfica Española (Afyve) y la Entidad de Gestión de Derechos de los Productores Audiovisuales (Egeda). El auto dictamina que la página debe permanecer sin actividad durante un periodo mínimo de seis meses. Los responsables de Donkeymanía, que operaban en Madrid capital, están imputados por la presunta comisión de delitos contra la propiedad intelectual. A través de "donkeymania.com", cualquier internauta podía acceder a miles de canciones, películas, programas informáticos y bases de datos, entre otros materiales de distinta naturaleza.
http://www.consumer.es/web/es/actual...gias/64972.jsp


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Study Shows Porn Pages Surge
ILN

The Web filtering company firm N2H2 reports that the number of pornography pages on the Internet has exploded to 260 million, or some 1,800 per cent more than five years ago. N2H2 said some the sites are deliberately registered to take advantage of spelling or typographical mistakes when Web users try to obtain a legitimate page.

[JackSpratts]

RIAA Pushes Ahead With Suits, Sues Imesh, Stirs Up Senate
Faultline

It's been a busy week for the US Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is pushing ahead with 261 lawsuits filed last week against people alleged to have illegally downloaded music, but it has also decided to file another copyright infringement legal action, this time against iMesh, an Israel- based provider of a peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

In the meantime the RIAA president promises to keep the law suits coming, while a US senate committee plans a debate on the entire affair, looking for another way out, in eight days time.

The 261 lawsuits are supposed to produce a steady stream of anti piracy messages, so it doesn't make any sense to hit a group of downloaders and then stop. And RIAA president Cary Sherman made it clear this week that another round of law suits will come next month and the month after as a constant deterrent.

The action against iMesh was also filed last week, which on the surface makes little sense, since it uses the same FastTrack P2P software which was used by Kazaa and Grokster. These two companies that have been vindicated by a US judge, who said that their software didn't encourage illegal activity and compared them to a photocopier, that could be used both legally and illegally. The RIAA is appealing that decision also.

But the RIAA reckons this time it's different and said, "Imesh's recent conduct and public statements make clear that its goal is to encourage illegal behavior."

The biggest worry though, is what happens to the RIAA's legal position if the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations decides, after its debate on September 30, that the RIAA must stop being heavy handed with private US individuals. One idea that has been mooted is that the subpoena process should be extended to require the consent of a judge, slowing proceedings down and putting the onus of proof of likely wrong doing back onto the RIAA, better protecting the privacy of individuals. If that becomes the recommendation of the Senate Committee, the RIAA will be back, virtually, to square one.

Elsewhere Verizon is still trying to appeal against the ruling that said that it had to reveal those customers that the RIAA requested via the new controversial subpoena process.

Verizon told a federal appeals court this week that the subpoenas, authorized under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are too easy to get without the need for a judge to be involved. It believes this puts privacy and free speech at risk. Verizon also asked the court if it would limit such identity revelations to web sites that are offering illegal pirated music, and go to a judge for private ISP customers.

No ruling has yet been made in the Verizon appeal.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32997.html


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Courting Trouble
Jonny Evans

The British Photographic Institute, meanwhile, has warned that it may use the courts to fight its corner. BPI executive chairman Peter Jamieson told a music-industry conference in Manchester last week that he "didn’t take this job in order to sue music fans" but that the BPI will "not rule it out", that "it is a matter of survival for the business I love".

Blaming "anarchists", Jamieson said illegal downloading has "already gone too far and is tipping the industry into crisis".

He added: "The fact is that people who steal music are not only ripping off artists and record companies, they are ripping off honest music fans. Somebody has to pick up the tab.

"The fact that a shoplifter occasionally or even mainly gets their wallet out and buys things legitimately does not make them immune from prosecution."

Apple's iTunes Music Store is widely regarded as setting the standard and the strategy for legitimate music-download services, and is currently selling 500,000 tracks a week.

With established links with the movie industry, Apple is well-poised to seize another emerging digital-distribution opportunity – the rise of music distribution services will also drive the market for online video-subscription and movie-on-demand services, claims analysts In-Stat/MDR.

MDR predicts the market for subscription video streaming services, including movie downloads, will grow from $991 million in 2003 to over $4.5 billion in 2007.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=6948


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

Kazaa's Designers Craft Peer-To-Peer Internet Telephony Services
Michael Tarm

TALLINN, Estonia – The software developers who wrote file-swapping legend Kazaa are taking the concept of peer-to-peer sharing to telecommunications, launching an Internet phone service they claim could put traditional phone companies out of business.

The service, called Skype, purports to offer free, unlimited phone service between users – with sound quality near to what its developers derisively dub "POTS" – a Plain Old Telephone Service. Unlike Kazaa, which drew the wrath of the music industry, Skype shouldn't stir up a legal hornet's nest.

"The goal here is that we want Skype to be the telephone company of the future," Niklas Zennstrom, the firm's chief executive told The Associated Press. "Traditional network technologies date back to the 1870s. They're inflexible and costly to maintain."

At least some users praised the sound quality, including disc jockeys who use it for on-air interviews at the KUKU radio station in Estonia, a tiny former Soviet republic that sits on the eastern edge of the Baltic Sea.

"I don't think this could replace regular phones, not now" said Viik. "But it could find a niche, say, in branch offices of the same company."

Although other programs, including instant messaging programs from Microsoft and Yahoo!, permit sound and voice transfers, Skype bundles those features and catalogues users in a directory so they can find each other.

The program directs peer-to-peer data through the quickest networks, ensuring that quality isn't degraded. Privacy is ensured through encryption, the Skype Web site said.

Skype claims to operate through firewalls, software used by corporations to monitor traffic in and out of its office computers.

Zennstrom, 37, and his main partner at Skype, Janus Friis, 27, first made a splash in 2001 when they released Kazaa, which went on to become the most downloaded software on the Internet.

Estonian programmers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn – who took the lead in writing Kazaa – also did the bulk of the work on Skype, said Zennstrom, who is Swedish and maintains offices in both Stockholm and in Tallinn, Estonia's capital.

Cyber-savvy Estonia is widely regarded as having the most advanced Internet infrastructure of any former Communist country. That, plus lower labor costs and its proximity to Sweden, made it a logical place to seek designers for the company's software, Zennstrom said.

Within a week of posting the program on its Web site on Aug. 29, Zennstrom said, more than 15,000 copies of Skype were downloaded. This week, its Web site was claiming 660,000 downloads. Kazaa has been downloaded some 300 million times since its launch two years ago.

"Obviously, you get more attention when you've done something before," he said. "With us, people have expectations."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/c...telephony.html


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

The Changing Face of Online Music
Cade Metz

On Monday, September 8, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued 261 ordinary
American computer users, accusing them of using peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Grokster, Kazaa, and Morpheus, to illegally distribute and download large amounts of copyrighted music over the Internet. One of the suits involved a 12-year old girl named Brianna LaHara, who had just started the seventh grade at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School on Manhattan's West Side.

Then, this past Tuesday, September 23, BMG Music, one of RIAA's member companies, released a music CD with copy protection, the first time it had done so here in the States. If you purchase "Comin' from Where I'm From," by singer-songwriter Anthony Hamilton, included software from SunnComm Technologies will prevent you from making more than three copies of each track, and you won't be able to swap those copies over a peer-to-peer file-sharing service.

Ever since the rise of Napster, the first large-scale file-sharing service, the RIAA has waged a massive campaign to eliminate the free exchange of copyrighted music online, vociferously claiming that such song swapping results in millions of dollars in lost revenue for its member companies, the major record labels. But wary of angering potential buyers, the organization had focused most of its efforts on battling the companies that run the file-sharing services, not the individuals that use them.

Individually, those same music labels have long dabbled with CD copy protection from companies like SunnComm and its primary competitor, Macrovision. But since SunnComm and Music City Records were sued over a copy-protected CD in September 2001, such protection has been limited to promotional and foreign releases.

September has brought not one but two important turning points in the fight over online music. These events will not put an end to file sharing, though. Just as the Internet community found a way to swap files without Napster, which was all but shut down by an RIAA lawsuit in 2000, it will find a way around CD protection and this new round of lawsuits against users. But recent developments could move a large number of people to RIAA-sanctioned online services, such as Apple's iTunes, Real Networks' Rhapsody, and MusicRebellion.com, where you can purchase songs for a fee.

According to Minnesota research firm Ipsos-Reid, over 60 million Americans swap songs over peer-to-peer file-sharing services. Moving 60 million people is no easy task.

Most legal experts expect the recent file-sharing lawsuits to settle in favor of the RIAA. "Ninety-eight percent of all cases settle before trial, and these suits will probably follow that pattern," says William Hebert, an intellectual property lawyer in the San Francisco offices of the international law firm Coudert Brothers LLP. Several defendants, including Brianna LaHara, have already reached settlements in the range of $2,000 to $3,000.

But the RIAA can't file 60 million suits, and in all likelihood it can't frighten 60 million file sharers into quitting on their own. It may even have trouble fulfilling a promise to file "thousands" of additional suits over the coming months.

To bring suit against individual file-sharers, the RIAA must first subpoena their names and addresses from Internet service providers, and though ISPs are legally obliged to surrender such information under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, this could be changing. Verizon is fighting RIAA subpoenas in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and in Congress, Senator Sam Brownback (R–KS) has introduced a bill that would reverse the DMCA.

Even if the law remains unchanged, most industry experts believe that people will soon be able to share files without revealing their IP addresses, so the RIAA would have no way of linking sharers to ISP accounts. "As fast as the RIAA can come up with a way to stop file-sharing, people will always find a way around it," says Mike McGuire, a market analyst who closely follows the file-sharing market for research firm Gartner. Either individual users will find ways of hiding their identities, or the file-sharing vendors will provide such protection of their own, says McGuire. "Companies will make it so that reaching the end user will be almost impossible," says Elan Oren, CEO of the file-sharing service iMesh.

Likewise, computer users will not lay down as SunnComm and Macrovision continue to build copy-protection into CDs and companies like Microsoft and ContentGuard work to protect copyrighted material by introducing Digital Rights Management (DRM) standards.

"Under the audio home recording act of 1992, it is clear that individuals have the right, when they purchase music lawfully, to make a copy of that music, onto any medium, for their own personal home use," says Cydney Tune, a copyright lawyer in the San Francisco offices of the internal firm Pillsbury Winthrop LLP. "People may use this to fight the introduction of CDs that can't be copied." And, of course, software developers could find technological means of circumventing copy protection.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1298685,00.asp


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

Israeli Music Industry To Get Tough On Downloaders
Reuters

Israel's music industry vowed on Wednesday to crack down on local online song swapping and said it would show zero tolerance.

"We have decided to do anything in our capability to protect the assets of the industry," said Ronnie Braun, head of Israel's branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global music industry's trade body.

"What was decided is there will be a policy of zero tolerance," he said. "It is the music that we are going to fight and protect."

The action is part of efforts to stamp out the copying of music over the Internet, which the music industry blames for a decline in sales of recorded music in the past two years.

Israel's decision to pursue legal action follows the example set by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is cracking down on "peer-to-peer users" suspected of widespread copyright violations.

The RIAA sued 261 music fans in the United States earlier this month for up to $150,000 per song.

Copyright infringement is also rampant in Israel, even off-line.

"Israel is a modern hell for anything that has to deal with Internet and copyright," said Braun, who is also the owner and managing director of Tel Aviv-based Helicon Records.

He said that, acting on RIAA instructions, he had collected names of Israeli users of the file-swapping networks and intends to seek out Internet service providers (ISPs) that sell broadband services by promoting file-sharing.

"On the one hand, you have people who think they deserve to get things for free and have a philosophy of not being a sucker, and on the other hand this is a haven for early adapters to technology, so the combination makes it a real nightmare," he said.

The RIAA filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in New York last Thursday against the Tel Aviv-based file-sharing network iMesh.

The suit against iMesh, the third-largest song-swapping network on the Web after KaZaa and Morpheus, sought damages and an injunction.

KaZaa, Morpheus and iMesh let Internet users trade software, music and video over the Internet.

iMesh, which is registered in Delaware and runs on a server based in Texas, denied infringing copyright and said the lawsuit was "ill informed". It said it would "respond appropriately" and win the case on merit.

Braun said he hoped to meet iMesh CEO Elan Oren to discuss ways to cooperate.

The recording industry's long-term goal is to move users of file- swapping services to industry-sanctioned services, which charge users a fee for downloading music.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/1...6,00030010.htm


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RIAA Tactics in Question After Dismissal of Suit
Jay Lyman

Despite public outcry over its strategy, the RIAA has indicated its intention to continue pursuing individual computer users it believes have traded copyrighted music online in an effort to send a message regarding music piracy.

One of the Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits, launched this month against 261 accused illegal file traders, has been dismissed by the industry group, calling its technical tracking of alleged song swappers into question.

The RIAA said it has dismissed a suit against 66-year-old Sarah Ward of Boston after the retired teacher denied ever using a peer-to-peer (P2P) application or even having a computer capable of doing what the RIAA alleged.

The recording industry group, on a campaign against the trading of copyrighted music on the Internet, has used more than 1,100 subpoenas and 261 copyright-infringement lawsuits to send a message to regular consumers who participate in illegal file trading.

The RIAA accused Ward, a Mac owner, of using the Kazaa P2P application to download hits by the likes of Snoop Dogg, but the senior citizen denied the existence of the software on her computer, which is not technically capable of running the Windows-only Kazaa application without using a Windows emulator.

"It was a case of mistaken identity," Electronic Frontier Foundation legal director Cindy Cohn told TechNewsWorld. "It was terrifying for her. She lost sleep, and she was confused because she's not a computer user."

The RIAA dismissed the lawsuit against Ward, who contacted the EFF for legal advice, but denied it had made a mistake in accusing her of using Kazaa to download rap music.

Claiming it was giving Ward the benefit of the doubt, the RIAA said the case is ongoing and that it is reserving the option to refile the suit "if and when circumstances warrant," according to a letter from an RIAA attorney.

The industry group also called the Ward case the only lawsuit of its kind out of the 261 filed against a wide range of consumers earlier this month and denied that its findings are flawed.

The RIAA has said it uses software that searches P2P public directories for copyrighted recordings and then downloads a sample of the infringing files with date and time of access and stores the user's Internet Protocol (IP) address. The RIAA then identifies the infringer's Internet service provider.

Cohn, who said the EFF is looking into similar cases that are more complicated, pointed out the difficulty of accurately identifying P2P users via the RIAA's method.

"If you are one number off, or the time is off, you're going to get the wrong person," she said. "How many numbers have to be exactly correct for them to get the right person?"

The RIAA has indicated plans to file more lawsuits, and its strategy of serving subpoenas also is continuing, with more than 100 additional subpoenas issued recently in the Midwest, according to Cohn.

Critical of the RIAA for not contacting consumers before proceeding with lawsuits against them, Cohn said the Ward case probably will be repeated as the industry group proceeds.

"I'm quite confident, especially if they're launching a couple hundred more, they're going to continue to make mistakes," she said.

Despite public outcry over its strategy, the RIAA has indicated its intention to continue pursuing individual computer users whom it believes have traded copyrighted music online in an effort to send a message regarding music piracy.

However, Cohn said the recording industry itself could be the target of legal action based on federal requirements for due diligence. Cohn said Ward's attorney is considering such action, but it likely would take more similar cases to pursue the RIAA successfully.

"You have to have a basic due diligence investigation before you just sue people," Cohn said. "Certainly, if there were a few more [similar cases], we would see that raised. I don't know if it would work with just one case, but I can tell you for sure it would work if there were 20."
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31675.html


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

On Staying Hidden

Article covers some of the basics of anonymous surfing and file sharing, and includes a decent primer for those new to the subject.
http://www.p2pnet.net/article/8156


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

Music Industry Stymies Record Companies: Kazaa Counterclaim

Sydney-based Sharman Networks, the owner of peer-to-peer software Kazaa, has filed an amended counterclaim in the U.S. District Court of California against the music industry, alleging agreements with media companies had been stymied by the industry body.

"We’ve spoken to record company executives who recognise that P2P provides the most efficient means to profitably distribute licensed music and movie content for a fee over the Internet," said Nikki Hemming, chief executive officer of Sharman Networks. "It’s time for these executives to take their business back from their lawyers and steer it into the future of digital distribution."

The amended counterclaim will detail specific information, including names and dates, of U.S. entertainment industry behaviour to boycott Sharman, Altnet (which is partnering with Sharman to provide paid music distribution via P2P) and P2P technology from the market of licensed digital content distribution. Sharman claims they and Altnet had met with senior level industry executives at record companies, including Universal, Warner Brothers Music and Interscope Music, and reached preliminary agreements which were then stymied by industry body directives.

"We remain steadfast in our desire to work with the industry to distribute their content securely using our peer-to-peer technology," said Hemming. "Thousands of content providers across the music, movie, games and software industries have already profited from working with us."

The amended counterclaim also details:

· The nature of Sharman and Altnet’s joint enterprise agreement (JEA) which demonstrates that both Sharman and Altnet are equally affected by the anticompetitive behaviour of entertainment industry plaintiffs;
· Collusion of the plaintiffs to apply pressure to advertisers, ISPs and business partners of Sharman and/or Altnet;
· Public smear campaigns to undermine Sharman, Altnet and peer-to-peer technology;
· Restrictive anti-P2P licensing practices by plaintiffs – “Dead End Licenses”— designed to exclude P2P distribution;
· Unfair business practices on behalf of the plaintiffs including breach of Sharman Networks’ copyright and privacy provisions to covertly gather information about users of Kazaa.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0278927,00.htm


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Crackdown Does Little To Stop Student File-Sharing
Ally Diljohn

Although no students at the university were named in a recent lawsuit regarding file-sharing services on the Internet, some have been penalized for illegally downloading music.

This month the Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 defendants accused of illegal Internet file-sharing. The lawsuit is only the most recent instance of a crackdown by the music industry.

According to Jay Dominick, assistant vice president of Information Systems, “file sharing is not an illegal or objectionable activity by itself.” Problems arise when people participate in sharing copyright-protected material.

The university receives at least one notification each week regarding students who violate copyright laws by sharing copyrighted files, Dominick said. This notice comes from copyright holders through a process outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Upon notification, university officials are required to investigate the claim.

“When we are properly notified, we disconnect the (offending student’s) computer and call the owner to have them bring the laptop to the Help Desk for file removal,” Dominick said.

Even if legal action is not taken, students are often referred to the judicial system. According to Ricardo Hall, assistant dean and judicial officer, students are given an administrative hearing for Rule 20 violations, as listed in the student handbook.

Copyright violations are addressed on a case-by-case basis according to the honor code.

“A typical sanction might be a fine and/or warning,” Hall said.

Repeat offenders may lose computing privileges.

“Our office is most concerned that students are educated on the proper and legal uses of file sharing software,” Hall said.

So far this year, administrators have not heard any cases regarding Rule 20 violations. During the 2002- 2003 school year, eight students had administrative hearings for Rule 20 violations; nine cases were heard during the previous year.

Despite the illegality of file-sharing, many students on campus and around the country continue to acquire music from file sharing services such as Kazaa and Blubster.

According to the “Courthouse Rock” article in the Sept. 22 issue of Newsweek, by turning off the sharing aspect of file-sharing services, users “probably” will not get caught.

Students around campus had different feelings about file-sharing.

“I used to download until more people starting getting caught,” sophomore Brandi Rhoads, a member of the student technology committee, said.

Some students provided explanations for why they download files.

“I never really think about it as stealing,” sophomore Nikki Soriano said. “It just seems different with online music files because it’s so easy.”

Sophomore Katie Chinlund gave a pragmatic rationale for file-sharing.

“I do it because not all of the songs on a CD are good or are what I want,” she said. “Downloading is the only way to get the songs you want without spending money for the entire CD.”

Copyright laws give the authors of material the right to control the reproduction and the distribution of their work, Dominick said.

By this definition file-sharing is illegal, though most students do not consider it immoral.

According to Newsweek , the recording industry has lost at least $700 million in revenue to file-sharing.

In light of the RIAA lawsuit and other efforts to stop file-sharing, software designers for file-sharing systems have begun creating new software to prevent users from getting caught.

According to “Crackdown May Send Music Traders into Software Underground” in the Sept. 15 New York Times, measures are being taken to make file-sharing more anonymous.
http://ogb.wfu.edu/news/news_more.php?id=660_0_9_0_C


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SBC Fights Record Industry Requests
Peter Shinkle

While Charter Communications Inc. said Wednesday that it will cooperate in the music industry's hunt for computer users who share copyrighted music, another major Internet provider here is fighting for the privacy of customers.

SBC filed a lawsuit in California in July to block 208 subpoenas that the Recording Industry Association of America issued seeking identities of computer users.

"We think the standards that they're using here are so incredibly low to obtain personal information on people that it's an invasion of privacy," said Selim Bingol, a spokesman for SBC at its headquarters in San Antonio.

"It's chipping away at personal privacy and using kind of a meat ax to get at it," he said.

There is no way for now to tell whether any of the subpoenas received by SBC involve St. Louis-area customers, nor for that matter to tell whether there are local targets among 109 subpoenas filed in federal court at St. Louis this week against Charter, which is based in Town and Country.

There have been no subpoenas filed here against SBC or other service providers.

A Charter spokesman, David Andersen, said Wednesday that he did not know whether the subpoenas had arrived yet, but he said the company's posture toward the music industry anti-piracy campaign is definite.

"While I can't confirm receipt of subpoenas, I can confirm we'll fully cooperate," he said in an e-mail to a reporter.

Armed with information that identifies an Internet user by a code called an Internet protocol number, the RIAA is demanding real names and addresses of people it says have shared music files improperly. Presumably, the information could be the basis of lawsuits.

A number of other Internet providers have complied with the subpoenas.

But a lawsuit filed by SBC subsidiary Pacific Bell Internet Services, in federal court in San Francisco, claims that federal law does not authorize issuance of such subpoenas.

Pacific Bell attorneys say the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the RIAA cites, does not authorize issuance of subpoenas to a company merely serving as a "conduit" for digital files used by others accused of copyright violations.

"The statute does not contain adequate procedural safeguards to protect the expressive and associational rights or the liberty interests of Internet subscribers," the company says in its suit.

The company also says the law does not give Internet users an opportunity to respond to the subpoenas, instead making Pacific Bell responsible for protecting its customers' free speech rights.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...try+requests++


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


EMI In Talks To Buy Warner Music
Reuters

Music company EMI Group, home to old-time rockers the Rolling Stones and jazz star Norah Jones, confirmed Monday that it is in negotiations with AOL Time Warner about buying the U.S. media giant's music business.

Sources familiar with the situation said London-based EMI is discussing a $1.5 billion plus takeover of Warner Music to create the world's second-biggest music company as it scrambles for a quick fix to sliding sales and Internet downloading.

"Discussions are at a very preliminary stage, and there is no assurance that they will result in an agreement acceptable to both parties," EMI said in a statement, confirming earlier Reuters reports that EMI had approached AOL Time Warner.

An EMI-Warner recorded music combination would bring together artists ranging from pop queen Madonna to rock band Radiohead in a venture with a global market share of around 24 percent, ranking just behind Universal Music.

EMI, the world's third-biggest music company, tried to merge with Warner Music three years ago but failed after stumbling at the regulatory gate. With sales sliding, EMI hopes antitrust regulators will be more accommodating this time around.

"This can only be encouraging for EMI investors as it offers the prospect of cost savings. But we'll have to wait and see how much they end up paying," said Investec analyst Kingsley Wilson.

AOL Time Warner, soon to return to its original Time Warner name, decided last week to open the field of contenders after struggling to wrap up a deal with Germany's Bertelsmann, people familiar with the situation said.

However, talks between AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann over a recorded music joint venture also are continuing.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5080366.html


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Vortex of Piracy
John C. Dvorak

The locals tell of the massive pirate ships sitting beyond the 12-mile limit, loaded to the bulkheads with millions of dollars of high-end disc stamping equipment. This is the source of the fabled DVD-9 brand of supposedly bootlegged DVD movie. You can get pristine first-run movies not yet released in the US. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kuala Lumpur.

Trying to comprehend what's going on when you step into a commercial mall and confront what one assumes are pirated movies and software out in the open selling for amazing prices is hard. That's what you find in Malaysia, considered by many to be the nexus, or vortex, of all international piracy. And we're not talking about kids selling bootlegged copies made at home—although, as you'll see, there must be a lot of that going on too.

This is no lightweight town, but an intense rough-and-tumble metropolis, with its incredible skyscrapers, typified by the monstrous Petronas twin towers (the world's tallest structure since 1998) and the nearby Menara Kuala Lumpur, with its revolving restaurant. The place is kind of a cross between Shanghai modern and New Orleans funky with an energy level that contrasts with both that of boring ultramodern neighbor Singapore and the nearby wild and disorganized Jakarta in Indonesia. The place is an eye-opener for Americans.

I first heard about the DVD-9 brand name last year in Hong Kong after returning from Beijing with some laughable but slick-looking bootlegs that were of the New York camcorder-in-the-theater type sold on the streets of Manhattan for $5 a pop. DVD-9 refers to the approximately 9 gigabytes of data that the two layers on one side of a DVD contain. No DVD burner can make these things. They have to be stamped out by machines. With DVD-9, the entire package is so slick, you cannot look at it without wondering who, or what, is behind it. You immediately think of the Asian Triads—organized crime. If that's the power behind DVD-9, then some dangerous genius is running the operation, since the brand, which is synonymous with quality, now rules all of Asia. In fact, there is nothing to indicate that these disks are anything other than Hollywood products fronted by Hollywood to eke whatever it can from Asian markets, where buyers are used to paying nothing for the stuff. You have to wonder who is really behind all this.

The disks sell for from $2 to $4, and there is obviously some money being made, with nobody paying royalties to the artists. These DVDs are mostly first-run films and not yet officially released. They have all the DVD outtakes and special features. Are the sources inside the studios? Seems to me that with some ploys, the sources could be traced. But except for the stories about the ships offshore, nobody knows anything. In Kuala Lumpur, the slickest shop sells these discs for $3.50 and lets you look at them through players to check the quality. Name a movie, and this place has it. The discs are formatted with no country codes, so they play universally. And there seems to be no use of Macrovision copy protection.

DVD-9 has become so desired that a lot of vendors of crummy discs are using DVD-9 stickers, trying to convince users that their discs are "genuine" DVD-9s. In fact, the brand name is clearly printed on real DVD-9 packages and on the diskette labels without using stickers. By the way, a friend of mine in Jakarta says that while the US talks a big game about copyright violations, the local American diplomats load up with DVD-9s when they head back to the States.

More interesting and less organized is the bootleg or pirated software scene. In much of Kuala Lumpur, everything you'd ever want is available for $1 a disc. Some elaborate discs cost around $3. The products you can get include Windows, Office XP, all the Adobe products, and more. The locals will tell you flat out that they cannot afford expensive software, and then they tend to go off on anti-Microsoft rants. I've thought about this and am totally convinced that the piracy is tolerated because it keeps users on the Microsoft teat even though the illegal copies generate no income for legitimate publishers. The approach is like fighting a forest fire with a backfire. In this case, the forest fire is Linux. As long as Southeast Asia and China can get Microsoft Office XP for $1, they are not about to switch to Linux anytime soon. Stop the bootlegging, and then economics alone will turn the whole area over to Linux in the blink of an eye.

To test this thesis, I asked three crowds of computer users about Linux during three different speeches in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta. How many people used Linux, I asked? One lone guy in three cities raised his hand. One!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1275902,00.asp


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The Empire Strikes Back

Amid declining CD sales, weak releases, and the continued rise of online file-sharing, the five major labels are fighting to regain market share
Ted Drozdowski

BY NOW, IT’S OBVIOUS that online music file-sharing hit the major labels like a sneak attack.

"The truth is, none of us were prepared for this, and we all got hurt," says one label VP who requested anonymity.

Coupled with other factors — including a sluggish economy and what industry watchers acknowledge as a period of artistically weak big-label releases — peer-to- peer file-sharing has contributed to an overall decline in CD shipments of 26 percent and a decrease in sales of 14 percent over the past three years. From 2001 to 2002 alone, 62.5 million fewer prerecorded compact discs were sold, according to SoundScan, which tracks retail sales. Altogether, labels’ CD business has fallen by $2 billion since 1999.


Until then, CD sales had risen nine to 10 percent annually for several years. Not coincidentally, 1999 is when Napster set the music-file-sharing world aflame. A new study by Cambridge-based Forrester Research indicates that file-sharing is responsible for almost $700 million of that $2 billion decline.

Music fans haven’t had much sympathy for labels. "The record business has got a bad reputation," Palm Pictures chief executive Chris Blackwell told me last year. Blackwell noted that the industry’s lack of competitive online alternatives at the time, as well as its campaign to get consumers to stop burning CDs — another practice at which the labels’ trade association, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has taken aim — was part of a recent pattern that riled its customers.

Further, 25-to-50-year-old listeners, who were raised on rock and roll, were alienated by the flood of teen-pop recordings. And the RIAA’s argument that file-sharing is copyright infringement took a hit when a diverse group of artists, including the Eagles, Sheryl Crow, Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, No Doubt, the Dixie Chicks, and Korn, came together in 2002 under the banner of the Recording Artists Coalition for a series of well-publicized LA-area concerts. Their goal: raising money to battle major labels over copyright ownership, intellectual-property rights, unfair accounting practices, and rules governing contracts.

Then there’s the pricing of music CDs, which has been debated almost since their inception. The issue sizzled again earlier this year, when consumer advocates noted that soundtrack CDs are often priced higher than DVDs of the films they accompany. In an attempt to stimulate sales, Universal Music Group announced that it will cut prices for new CDs by 30 percent beginning October 1, but at this point that may be the equivalent of applying a band-aid to a decapitation.

The result of all this has been significant shrinkage in what some file-sharers call "the Evil Empire," the five remaining major labels: Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI. Thousands of jobs have been slashed, labels have peeled back their artist rosters, and executive heads have rolled. Sony Music Entertainment boss Tommy Mottola was axed last year after the company lost more then $132 million. So was Jay Boberg, who led Universal’s MCA Records. But now, the Empire is striking back.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/...s/03187197.asp


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The Wireless Last Mile

Entangled in their copper wires, phone companies may miss out on the broader broadband revolution
Steven M. Cherry

OWENSBORO, A SMALL KENTUCKY CITY on the Ohio River, is famous for nothing, not even its International Bar-B-Q Festival, now in its 25th year. So it's not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to find technologies and business models that will either make or break some multibillion- dollar enterprises—namely, the U.S. regional Bell operating companies.

But find them you will. In October 2002, after a five-month pilot program, the local electricity and water provider, Owensboro Municipal Utilities (OMU), rolled out a high-speed broadband service to the city's 58 000 residents at US $25 a month, just $2 more than what many were paying for low- speed dial-up access.

Owensboro isn't the only obscure town conducting an experiment with huge implications for broadband. Two months earlier and 3000 km away, in Klamath Falls, Ore., a small start-up company, Always On Network Inc. (Chiloquin, Ore.), began serving up broadband to 30 test customers, converting them into paying customers a few months later.

What makes these enterprises novel isn't the data rates, which aren't exceptional for broadband, at 250-1000 Kb/s. It's the way that the bits are delivered—wirelessly—at least for the critical last mile to the home. Bypassing the copper wires that connect a phone company's central offices to its customers, these wireless Internet service providers can deliver broadband more cheaply than digital subscriber lines (DSLs) and can reach out to rural homes and others not currently served at all except by dial-up.

In truth, OMU will never go beyond western Kentucky, and Always On, critically underfunded, will be fortunate to become a major regional provider in Oregon. Even so, the two providers are destined to be midwives to the next generation of broadband: wireless metropolitan-area networks (MANs). Propelled in part by a new standard, IEEE 802.16, wireless MANs are expected to do for neighborhoods, villages, and cities what IEEE 802.11, the standard for wireless local-area networks, is doing for homes, coffee shops, airports, and offices.

How quickly wireless MANs reach your own city may well depend on what happens in Owensboro, Klamath Falls, and a few other testbeds. The reason is that OMU and Always On represent opposing approaches to wireless MANs from two of the technology's top system vendors, Alvarion Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel, and Carlsbad, Calif.) and Soma Networks Inc. (San Francisco). Alvarion has almost half of what's already a $250 million-a-year market for wireless MANs. Soma, a well-funded start-up, is now in trials with one of the largest phone companies in the world, NTT Communications Corp. (Tokyo). The two companies, and the market itself, are at a crossroads. Alvarion has embraced the 802.16 standard and is a founding member of the WiMax Forum (San Jose, Calif.), an industry consortium created to commercialize it and a corresponding standard from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute known as HIPERMAN. The institute is based in Sophia Antipolis, France.

Alvarion's existing wireless last-mile products, and those of the other WiMax members, are designed for wireless Internet service providers (WISPs), making the connection between homes and the Internet backbone that lets end users bypass their telephone companies. For its part, Soma, reluctant to abandon or change a five-year odyssey of its wireless MAN technology development, and believing it to be superior to anything its competitors have, is ready to stand apart from the standard and go it alone. Its system, while eminently usable by WISPs, is chock full of quality-of-service features that help it transport voice-over-Internet-protocol packets. That means it's especially well positioned to be adopted by the phone companies themselves.

In effect, the two initiatives represent the dilemma the wireless last mile presents to those phone companies: buy into wireless MAN systems or risk being made increasingly irrelevant by them.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...ep03/wire.html


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Despite Lawsuits, Music Sharing Soars
UPI

The barrage of lawsuits seemed to touch on a break between the legal status of file sharing and the apparent cultural consensus on its morality.
Apparently, it takes more than a rash of lawsuits to stop millions from copying and sharing internet music without paying, according to reports Friday.

Despite legal action against 261 people accused of illicitly distributing music over the Internet, more than four million Americans used KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, the New York Times said, quoting Nielsen/NetRatings.

That's just about 5 percent fewer than the week before the record industry's lawsuits became big news. One smaller service, iMesh, even had increased usage.

The barrage of lawsuits seemed to touch on a break between the legal status of file sharing and the apparent cultural consensus on its morality. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this week, only 36 percent of those responding said file swapping was never acceptable.

What appears to be a persistent lack of guilt suggests a long process for the record industry's campaign to get large numbers of people to buy music again.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22329.html


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Studios Moving to Block Piracy of Films Online
Laura M. Holson

If Hollywood executives have learned anything watching their peers in the music business grapple with online file sharing, it is how not to handle a technological revolution.

While the major labels in the music industry squabbled among themselves about how best to deal with Internet piracy and failed to develop consumer-friendly ways to buy music online, the movie industry has gone on a coordinated offensive to thwart the free downloading of films before it spins out of control.

This summer, night-vision goggles became a familiar fashion accessory for security guards at movie premieres as they searched for people in the audience carrying banned video recorders. The industry's trade association began a nationwide piracy awareness campaign in movie theaters and on television. Studios are aggressively putting electronic watermarks on movie prints so they can determine who is abetting the file sharing. And some movie executives are considering whether to send out early DVD's to Academy Award voters, fearing the films will be distributed online.

Also, as early as next month the industry will begin promoting a "stealing is bad" message in schools, teaming up with Junior Achievement on an hourlong class for fifth through ninth graders on the history of copyright law and the evils of online file sharing. The effort includes games like Starving Artist, in which students pretend to be musicians whose work is downloaded free from the Internet, and a crossword puzzle called Surfing for Trouble.

"There is no issue in my life I take as seriously as this," said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, which owns 20th Century Fox. "This is going to be with us for the rest of our careers. But if we remain focused on it, maybe it won't kill us and we won't have to panic."

This is not the first time the studios have battled technological advances they worried they could not control. Back in 1982, Jack Valenti, then as now the head of the movie industry's trade association, said the threat of videocassette recorders to the film industry was like that posed by the Boston Strangler to a woman alone. The studios hope they can find a way to co-opt online movie swapping as profitably as they did the VCR and now the DVD player. Still, many in Hollywood fear that online movie sharing could be the most serious menace to profits so far.

The concern is such that 20 of the film industry's top decision makers, including Jeffrey Bewkes, chairman of the entertainment group at AOL Time Warner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-founder of Dreamworks SKG, attended a focus group in June at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills. The participants, about 20 college- and high school-age students, quickly and easily downloaded several current hits at the executives' request. Next they confirmed what many already knew. "These kids said they weren't going to stop," Mr. Chernin said.

As a result, in late July the major studios through their lobbying group, the Motion Picture Association of America, began an advertising campaign, with the theme "Movies. They're Worth It." It profiles, among others, a set painter, stuntman and makeup artist.

The music industry, which began feeling the effects of online sharing four years ago because the relatively small size of music files makes for much quicker downloads, began running national antipiracy ads only last year. Executives lament the delay. "It could have had an impact," said Hilary Rosen, the former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry's trade group.

But music executives then were indecisive about how best to tackle online file sharing. "I think the music industry has always resembled feudal warring kingdoms with an underworld edge thrown in," said Martin Kaplan, a former executive at the Walt Disney Company who is now the director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which studies entertainment, business and society. "If you look at Jack Valenti's French cuffs, it is a different culture. Movie executives collaboratively deal with joint enemies at the gate."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/bu...ia/25STUD.html


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Dell to Launch Digital Music Player and Service
Reuters

Dell Inc. on Thursday said it will launch a music service and other consumer electronics products before the holidays, betting it can undercut rivals and steal market share, as it did with personal computers.

Chief Executive Michael Dell said the products, which include a digital music player and a flat-panel television, will allow the company to take on the home entertainment market. Dell already sells some consumer electronics under its own brand.

Analysts said that Dell's path is not an easy one.

``Dell has a long way to go before gaining market share in the consumer electronics market,'' said Bill Armstrong, a retail analyst at C.L. King & Associates.

But he said the company could affect competitors, which include companies like Sony Corp. (6758.T) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s (6752.T) Panasonic brand.

``There are a lot of players and its entry could put pressure on product prices,'' he said.

``It appears that Dell is re-branding one of the second-tier music services that will be announced soon, just like they are re-branding Creative's MP3 player,'' Apple said in a statement, referring to Creative Technology Ltd's (CREA.SI)multi-purpose digital device. ``There is little original here.''

Dell said that it would price its service competitively with other services. MusicMatch's Artist OnDemand offers ad-free Internet radio for under $3 a month, and RealNetworks Inc.'s (RNWK.O) Rhapsody sells downloads for 79 cents a song. Media software company Roxio Inc. (ROXI.O) is planning to soon unveil a legitimate version of song-swap pioneer Napster.

``Even while some purchases may be made online or by phone, the vast majority of our buyers do come into our stores to see these systems,'' said Bob Sherbin, Gateway spokesman.

Shares of Dell were up 30 cents $34.20 in active afternoon trade on the Nasdaq.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...tech-dell.html


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Burn That Genome
Ian Austen

JAMES LA CLAIR, a molecular biologist, once absentmindedly dribbled a bit of a biochemical sample onto a music CD that was lying on his lab bench. When he popped the punk-rock recording into a player later, he found that the chemical, which by that time had dried, had silenced it.

That small accident four years ago proved more inspirational than irritating.

"I was sitting beside the latest, most advanced machine for detecting molecules, that cost something like $300,000, and my CD player detected it as well - and it only cost about $20, secondhand," said Dr. La Clair, now a visiting researcher at the University of California at San Diego.

Along with Michael D. Burkart, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the university, Dr. La Clair has proposed a system for molecular screening that uses a conventional computer CD-R drive and an inkjet printer. The two men hope their system will enable individuals to do the kind of genetic testing that is now limited to well-equipped laboratories. "You can see kids squishing an ant and sequencing its genome at home with this," Dr. Burkart said.

Molecular screening machines like the one in the lab where Dr. La Clair had his mishap use various methods to accomplish tasks like determining the protein makeup of body fluids.

Some machines developed for DNA screening, for example, gather enormous numbers of samples for testing by using a variation of the technologies originally designed for fabricating electronic microchips. But ultimately most screening machines rely on dyes that that glow under certain conditions or cause changes in the wavelengths of infrared or ultraviolet light to indicate, for example, the presence of a specific protein.

That optical event is then converted by the machine, often using specialized digital cameras, into a digital signal for analysis.

Dr. Burkart said that current machines are accurate and able to process millions of samples relatively quickly. But to his mind, he said, they have one drawback.

"One of the biggest problems in this field is that the equipment is extraordinarily expensive," he said. The machines cost more than $100,000, making it difficult for physicians and researchers in developing countries to have access to molecular screening, Dr. Burkart said. Even in affluent countries, physicians must often refer patients to outside labs for tests rather than performing them in their offices.

The idea of using CD's or DVD's in screening machines is not new. Several researchers have proposed various ways to adapt current technologies to do that, and at least two companies are pursuing CD-R-based testing technologies. But the insight Dr. La Clair gained from his ruined CD reversed the prevailing way of doing things.

CD players work by bouncing laser light off the disc and reading the pattern of light, which is affected by reflective and less reflective areas on the disc. Dr. La Clair's music CD had become useless because the dye from the biomedical sample was preventing the laser from reading the digital code. He decided that for molecular screening he would embrace the errors: he wanted molecules to reveal themselves by having them interfere with an existing stream of data.

"If you manipulate something that is established, it's a lot easier to detect than something you create," Dr. Burkart said. "If I alter a picture you've seen before, you know what I've done."

The scientists start the process by recording a digital pattern onto a blank CD. The disc is then dropped into an inkjet printer. Instead of ink, however, the printer sprays transparent receptors for specific proteins onto the reflective side of the disc, directly over specific sections of its burned-in digital pattern.

The same side is then covered with a solution that needs testing and is dried. If the test solution contains the molecules the researchers are seeking, they will bind to the receptors printed on the CD. The bound molecules, in turn, will prevent a CD player from correctly reading all of the disc by blocking its laser light. To analyze the results, software maps the number and location of the errors on the disc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/te...ts/25next.html


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Thirsty Batteries Tell Rechargers How Fast to Pour
Ivan Berger

With some battery rechargers, restoring a couple of double-A's can take up to eight hours. But with Rayovac's new I-C3 system, batteries can be charged during a coffee break.

Charging a battery too fast builds up internal pressure, so Rayovac gives each nickel metal-hydride I-C3 cell a switch that senses pressure and interrupts the charging current when necessary.

With older rechargeable battery systems, controlled by the charger, "it's like pouring soda,'' said John Daggett, Rayovac's director of marketing services. "You control the flow by the angle of the can, pouring at a slow and constant pace so foam doesn't build up.'' But with the I-C3, "you can pour in a charge as fast as you want because the battery won't let you go too fast."

The system is now in stores. A pair of the AA or AAA batteries costs about $10. The I-C3 chargers, which have small, quiet cooling fans, cost about $25 for the two- battery model; a four-battery version costs about $10 more.

If you already have conventional rechargeable batteries, you don't have to keep their charger around. The I-C3 can handle older batteries, although charging them will still be an all-day affair.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/te...ts/25batt.html


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Korean Movie Exports Equal 1,420 Car Sales Abroad

Korea exported 18.1 billion won ($15.7 million) worth of movies during the first half, generating as much added value as the sale of 1,419 passenger cars abroad, a central bank report showed yesterday.

The nation's movie exports in the six-month period were nearly equivalent to last year's annual figure of 18.7 billion won and represented a gigantic leap from 1999, when domestic filmmakers earned only 7.1 billion won in overseas markets.

"The film industry is not only pollution free but also creates a chain of economic value by creating demand for related facilities and products such as theaters and DVD titles," the Bank of Korea extolled. "It is regarded as a sector Korea should strategically foster in the 21st century."

The central bank pointed out that Korean moviemakers continued to produce blockbusters, with 11 films generating more than 30 billion won each in value added since 1999.

For example, "Memories of Murder," the nation's biggest hit in the first half, racking up 5.1 million viewers, induced an estimated 30.3 billion won in value added so far, which is equivalent to that created by 2,798 EF-Sonata sedans.

The second largest box office hit, "My Tutor Friend," is estimated to have produced as much value added as 2,651 EF-Sonata units that sell for 14.9 million won each.

The automobile-converted value added reached 4,860 units for "Memory Island," Korea's biggest-ever hit that came out in 2001, and 3,119 cars for "Shiri," a 1999 blockbuster.

"As Korean films continued to hit it big, their domestic market share has jumped consequently. Excluding the United States, Korean movies boast the highest domestic market share in the world," the BOK explained.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0309260050.asp


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Web Searches Tap Databases
Kimberly Patch

Although the computer has made it possible to quickly search through documents and databases, sifting through a series of sources -- like a local database, a bunch of text documents, and the Web -- still means using different programs and different searches.

Researchers from Birkbeck University of London in England have written software designed to allow users to search for something without having to know where it might reside.

The search method makes it possible to search different types of sources at the same time, said Richard Wheeldon, a researcher at the Birkbeck University of London. "Think of how difficult it is to search a company's intranet, file system and databases at the same time," he said. "With a few alterations to our technology, it could be made incredibly simple."

The key to the method is software, dubbed DbSurfer, that permits free-text searches on the contents of relational databases. Data stored in relational databases is ordinarily accessed using queries structured to match the organization of the database.

DbSsurfer enables free text relational database searches through a modified version of the trails method used to organize the links contained in hypertext, said Wheeldon.

A trail is a sequence of connected pages. As far back as 1945, computer pioneer Vannevar Bush wrote about the concept of a web of trails. Hypertext and the World Wide Web take advantage of this concept, but databases do not, according to Wheeldon. "Trails have often been used in hypertext systems, but never in relational database systems," he said.

Relational databases organize information using tables subdivided by fields like columns and rows. Individual pieces of information, or records, reside in cells delineated by columns and rows. Relationships between records are determined by fields that the records have in common.

The researchers' software automatically constructs trails across tables in relational databases, according to Wheeldon. The software treats each database row as a virtual Web page, and builds links according to database settings, he said.

When presented with a free text database query, DbSurfer's navigation engine calculates scores for each database row, and the best scores are used to construct trails. The scheme uses a probabilistic best-first algorithm to select the most relevant trails. A probabilistic best-first algorithm assigns more promising alternatives higher probabilities. The researchers' Best Trail algorithm does this in two ways -- proportionally according to the score assigned to the trail, and decreasing exponentially according to rank.The program presents the results to the user as a navigation search interface.

The researchers have also used the same basic system to search the Web, a group of Java documents, program code, and Usenet newsgroups, said Wheeldon. "Theoretically, it could also be used in virtual environments or as a search application at the operating system level," he said.

The method uses standard keyword searches of data sources, and is easily customized, said Wheeldon. Data is represented in the Internet's extensible markup language (XML), and this means "the look of the pages can be changed in many different ways," Wilson said.

The technical challenge to building the software was being able to construct trails efficiently, said Wheeldon. "Trail construction is now typically performed in a few hundredths of a second," he said.

The current prototype won't scale to very large databases, but this is not a fundamental limitation, said Wheeldon. "Anything more than a few tens of millions of rows and the system will choke [but] this is easily fixed in theory," he said.

The software does have a downside -- it is not secure enough for highly sensitive data, Wheeldon said.

The next steps in developing the system are linking the DbSurfer indexer to a Web robot, optimizing the indexer for common databases, and adding software that will enable the entire index and trail structure to be accessed from within the database interface, according to Wheeldon.

The software could be ready for deployment in less than a year, said Wheeldon.

Wheeldon's research colleagues were Mark Levine and Kevin Keenoy. The research was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/0...es_092403.html


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Librarians to P2P Critics: Shhh!
Declan McCullagh

In a hotly contested lawsuit before a federal appeals court, two peer-to-peer companies are about to gain a vast army of allies: America's librarians.

The five major U.S. library associations are planning to file a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major record labels and Hollywood studios. The development could complicate the Recording Industry Association of America's efforts to portray file-swapping services as rife with spam and illegal pornography.

According to an attorney who has seen the document, the brief argues that Streamcast--distributor of the Morpheus software--and Grokster should not be shut down. It asks the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the April decision by a Los Angeles judge that dismissed much of the entertainment industry's suit against the two peer-to-peer companies.

Among the groups signing the brief are the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries Association. The American Civil Liberties Union, in one of the group's first forays into copyright law, has drafted the brief opposing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

A central argument of the brief is that the district court got it right when applying a 1984 Supreme Court decision to the Internet. That decision, Sony v. Universal City, said Sony could continue to manufacture its Betamax VCR because a company "cannot be a contributory (copyright) infringer if, as is true in this case, it has had no direct involvement with any infringing activity."

"The amicus brief will make the point that we are not supporting the wrongful sharing of copyrighted materials," ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels wrote in an internal e-mail seen by CNET News.com. An amicus brief is one filed by a third, uninvolved party that comments on a particular matter of law. "Instead, we believe the Supreme Court ruled correctly in the Sony/Betamax case. The court in that case created fair and practical rules which, if overturned, would as a practical matter give the entertainment industry a veto power over the development of innovative products and services."

The librarians' entry into the political fray over whether file-swapping networks should be shut down or not may complicate the RIAA's public relations strategy. The music industry group has been taking increasingly aggressive legal action against alleged infringers and has told Congress that "a significant percentage of the files available to these 13 million new users per month are pornography, including child pornography." The RIAA could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

The ACLU said Thursday that the brief argues that peer-to-peer networks are speech-promoting technologies that have many noninfringing uses. If the MPAA and the RIAA succeed in shutting down peer-to-peer networks or making them more centralized, the precedent could create undesirable choke points that could be used to monitor Internet users, the ACLU said.

The RIAA and MPAA jointly filed the lawsuit in October 2001, launching what has become the most widely watched Internet copyright case since Napster. Their original complaint accuses Streamcast and Grokster of earning "advertising revenue by attracting millions of users to their systems by offering them a treasure trove of pirated music, movies and other copyrighted media."
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5082684.html


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No Nullifying Nullsoft's WASTE
Ryan Naraine

Just months after America Online removed what it called an unauthorized copy of its Nullsoft division's WASTE file-sharing program, an updated version promising secure P2P communication has reappeared on open-source repository SourceForge.

Version 1.1 of the WASTE software, which was created by an employee of AOL's Nullsoft subsidiary, remained available for download on the site even though AOL demanded back in May that all copies be destroyed.

The new version of the program underscores the difficulty in removing unauthorized copies of programs after they are released on the Internet. Also, because WASTE was first released in May under the GNU General Public License, which allows anyone to download, modify and redistribute the software, stopping the redistribution is a major challenge.

WASTE is best described as a mesh-based workgroup tool that allows private, encrypted peer-to-peer communication on the Internet. The program was designed for small groups with support for instant messaging, chat and file-sharing. Because of its encryption capabilities, WASTE can be used to create "darknets" for music traders looking for ways around the recording industry's anti-piracy battle.

While AOL has not publicly commented on the reasons for yanking WASTE from the Nullsoft site, there has been widespread speculation that AOL's Warner Music corporate relationship helped fuel the move.

WASTE uses a distributed architecture to connect nodes in a partial mesh type network. Nodes on the network can broadcast and route traffic using link-level encryption and public keys for authentication. RSA is used for session key exchange and authentication, and the links are encrypted using Blowfish in PCBC mode (Propagating Cipher Block Chaining).

An AOL spokesperson said the ISP's position hasn't changed since the program first appeared.

In May, AOL posted this note on the Nullsoft site: "Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft.

"If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the Software, you acquired no lawful rights to the Software and must destroy any and all copies of the Software, including by deleting it from your computer. Any license that you may believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated."

AOL also said "any reproduction, distribution, display or other use of the Software by you is unauthorized and an infringement of Nullsoft's copyright in the Software as well as a potential violation of other laws."
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/3084161


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Long Live File Sharing, Death To Bland Culture
Russell Smith

It's not just because of their lead-footed public relations that I have little interest in mustering sympathy for the Recording Industry Association of America.

It's not just because they sued 12-year-old Brianna LaHara for downloading such songs as the theme from Friends and If You're Happy and You Know It.

The fact is, I feel a certain glee that the pop-music industry -- the source of so much painful irritation in waiting rooms and taxis and on telephones and on television, the sausage plant for aural spam -- is being told by young people that it is unnecessary. I hope it crashes and burns and we never have to listen to Nickelback again.

File-sharing is a rejection of the social power of bland culture. Why should we pay for crap?

It's not that I don't want artists to get paid for their work. This is not about artists: It's about crap. File- sharing of pop music reflects a refusal of price-gouging for crap, for what is largely a disposable product anyway.

Anyway, it's not the artists who are taking these supposed losses in the first place. Unless you count megastars such as Britney Spears as artists, which is a tough exercise in classification, since she doesn't write her own songs and the product manufactured and distributed by her industrial team is more precisely a form of advertising for a line of merchandise.

No, it's not artists who are opposed to music sharing: For them it's excellent publicity and fan-base building. It's the record companies who are upset. They make far more profit on CDs than artists do: Most of the artists' share of CD sales goes to "reimbursing" the record companies for elaborate videos and other promotions anyway. And record companies like to control what we listen to and who we drool over in magazines: They like to control what we know about and what we don't.

Most real musicians feel that they are excluded from the major channels of attention and remuneration. We live in an age of such constant exposure to music that we feel music -- or noise, as it becomes when inescapable -- is literally everywhere, and yet with our 500 channels and the radio in every taxi and stairwell, we still have very little choice of entertainment. If you listen to pop-music radio and watch the music-video channels, you are going to be exposed to an extremely narrow band of culture. You are going to see a few hits repeated everywhere, endlessly, and those hits are going to be of such a stupefying banality that you might guess that they are manufactured as ambience for a 7-Eleven store somewhere in suburban Des Moines.

This non-selection does not represent what is desired or created by anyone I know. I do not know anyone, of any age, who is not dissatisfied by the range of music that is offered by the mass media. (This is yet another example of how a supposedly free market can end up affording remarkably little freedom.) And if you're in a band doing something interesting, it is unlikely that you will find representation in the front window of that new HMV store that has just opened in your local strip mall (which is now the only place to shop, since the little downtown record store run by the long-haired nerd closed).

Without a radio station playing you, without a major record label wasting all your profits on videos directed by Steven Spielberg and Coca-Cola, you have to find a way to spread the word, get well known, allow your fans to communicate with each other. The Internet does exactly this: It publicizes your work by allowing millions of virgin ears to hear a sample of it. If they like it, they will eventually buy something of yours, whether it's your next CD (because they haven't figured out a way to hook up their I-Pod to their car stereo, and they want to hear it while they drive) or a $15 ticket to your live show. The more fans you reach, the more likely you are to profit in very concrete ways.

I say this as someone with something to lose if my own artistic products are not paid for. Interestingly, the publishing industry has not collapsed because of photocopying or even because of the possibility of uploading e-copies (even rewritten e-copies of novels, as have circulated). Nor have libraries -- where free copies of published works are available for sharing, exactly as they are on Kazaa -- lost any writers any money. I am delighted, as an author with several books for sale in bookshops, when I hear of someone borrowing one from a library. I do not regret the loss of a sale. I am pleased that someone is taking an interest -- someone who might, if she likes the book, tell someone else about it who might also borrow it and tell someone else. This is all good for me.

The only thing the publishing industry hasn't done -- yet -- is get itself hated the way the music industry has. Books, so far, aren't quite as saccharine and omnipresent as Celine Dion is. The rebellion against record companies is an aesthetic one: It reflects a dissatisfaction with what's on offer.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...gy/?mainhub=GT













Until next week,

- js.









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Current Week In Review.



Recent WiRs -

http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17552 September 20th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17495 September 13th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17325 September 6th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17374 August 30th





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

[multi]

[multi]

just little story i found from the 25th
sorry if its there and i missed it..

Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh!
In a hotly contested lawsuit before a federal appeals court, two peer-to-peer companies are about to gain a vast army of allies: America's librarians.

[TankGirl]

Thanks again for a grand job, Jack!

The librarians in Multi's link make a good point:

The ACLU said Thursday that the brief argues that peer-to-peer networks are speech-promoting technologies that have many noninfringing uses. If the MPAA and the RIAA succeed in shutting down peer-to-peer networks or making them more centralized, the precedent could create undesirable choke points that could be used to monitor Internet users, the ACLU said.

This is absolutely true, however dominating the music and movie swapping has been so far in bandwidth terms in the P2P scene. P2P as a generic technology holds a great promise in empowering people to organize themselves into different co-operation and communication groups and networks, and it is important to prevent the vested interests who happen to control the distribution with old technologies from crippling the new technology with unnecessary limitations or control measures.

- tg

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by multi
just little story i found from the 25th
sorry if its there and i missed it..

it didn't make the early edition, but it's there now now. thanks for the tip.

Originally posted by tankgirl
it is important to prevent the vested interests who happen to control the distribution with old technologies from crippling the new technology

absolutely tg.

- js.

[SA_Dave]

Great stuff Jack!

The Recording Industry Association of America called Sharman's "newfound admiration for the importance of copyright law" ironic and "self-serving."

Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group declined to comment on Sharman's latest lawsuit.

I may detest Sharman, but as they say: what's good for the goose is good for the gander. First price-fixing, then pirating Sharman's software and now stealing Gartner's reports. What next?

Evan Cox, a partner with Covington & Burling in San Francisco who is not involved with the case, said the error most likely happened in one of two ways: Either Comcast matched the wrong customer with the IP address, or the recording industry requested information about the wrong IP address, which is usually more than nine digits.

Those evil ISP's are obfuscating the logs I tell you! They're inadmisable, throw them away and be done with it.

In an attempt to stimulate sales, Universal Music Group announced that it will cut prices for new CDs by 30 percent beginning October 1, but at this point that may be the equivalent of applying a band-aid to a decapitation.

Quote of the week material that!

The closing op-ed is very good.