Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 16th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Escalation In P2P War
Barry Willis

The entertainment industry is going the last mile in its war against file sharing. On Friday, October 8, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) appealed to the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court's ruling earlier this year that peer-to-peer (P2P) file-trading networks can't be held liable for copyright infringement.

Hoping to have the case heard in the current session, the plaintiffs filed a 46-page petition seeking the reversal of a finding by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed a previous ruling by a lower court that peer-to-peer networks Grokster and StreamCast Networks, operator of the Morpheus service, could not be held responsible for copyright violations by users of their services. In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Company and its allies pursued Sony Corporation all the way to the Supreme Court in an attempt to suppress the burgeoning market for videocassette recorders. As in the fight against P2Ps, the plaintiffs charged that making and marketing the devices enabled copyright violations.

The Court ruled against Disney in 1984, after the defendants successfully argued that there were many valid uses for VCRs. The technology that the industry fought so hard to suppress became one of its dominant revenue streams. Video rentals and sales now account for 60% of Hollywood's revenue, according to industry analysts. In a similar vein, authors of the MGM v. Grokster appeals court ruling astutely noted, "New technologies are always disruptive to old markets."

At the core of the lower court's ruling in favor of P2Ps was the premise that there are many legitimate uses for file sharing, and simply because a technology can be used to circumvent the law doesn't mean it should be illegal. Telephone companies were long ago exonerated from responsibility for plans that criminals make using their services. The entertainment industry has consistently maintained that P2Ps are fundamentally different, created intentionally to help people violate copyrights. Businesses such as Grokster and StreamCast were created "to avoid all legal liability with the full knowledge that over 90% of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else," stated MPAA president and CEO Dan Glickman.

The entertainment industry's petition accuses the defendants of inflicting "catastrophic, multibillion-dollar harm" on their businesses. The Supreme Court has a month to decide if it will hear the case. Passing over it would let the appeals court ruling stand.

Elsewhere on the copyright front, the so-called "Induce Act" sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) died in committee after representatives of the tech sector and the entertainment industry failed to reach agreement on the proper response to digital copyright violations. Hatch's controversial bill would have increased the potential punishment for large-scale file sharing to three years in prison. At present, punishments for convicted violators are limited to fines.

To date, the RIAA has issued approximately 5000 subpoenas against suspected file-sharers in the US, and has wrung payments out of many who decided it was cheaper to settle than to proceed to court. In early October, the music industry expanded its legal campaign in Europe, where the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) launched lawsuits against 459 alleged copyright violators in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

The move brings the number of subpoenas that have been issued against European music fans to approximately 650, and is the first time that such suits have been brought in France and Britain. The UK cases are being pursued in civil courts, stated an announcement on the BPI website. Worldwide, pirated music was a $4.5 billion business last year, with 1.1 billion unauthorized discs sold, according to figures published by the IFPI.
http://www.stereophile.com/news/101104copyright/


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Slyck Questions BPI
Michael Ingram

Since March, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) have been running a media campaign to warn users that if they do not stop file sharing, they will have to face the consequences. File sharing has since continued unabated.

"We have resisted legal action as long as we could," says Jamieson, BPI chairman. "We have done everything we can to raise awareness of this problem. We have encouraged legal services and launched an Official Download Chart. We would be derelict in our duty to protect and promote British music were we not to take action to demonstrate that this activity is illegal and harmful to every aspect of the creative British music industry. We believe we have no alternative other than to enforce our rights through the courts."

Many knew the announcement was coming, but it was no easier to hear.

Slyck contacted Matt Philips, BPI spokesperson, to question the wisdom of the decision to sue file sharers.

Right from the onset, Phillips wanted to make it clear that whichever way it is looked at, stealing is wrong.

“Anyone looking at file sharing can see that it is illegal,” he argued. “The price of downloads is 79p. That is the price of a bottle of coke. Excuses are frankly running thin.”

The reasons for file sharing appeared a good as place as any to start the questions, but only a brief discussion was held. Phillips described the assertion that Data Rights Management (DRM) is only punishment to those using legitimate services as “utter rubbish.” Differing standpoints on the ability of DRM to reduce piracy will prove a sticking point. Philips believes DRM is an effective tool against file sharers, and so argues users should sympathize with the industry’s choice to use it.

A few other questions were asked and answered, but it was a distraction from discovering the value of lawsuits to the BPI and music lovers.

Slyck: Perceptions are that the RIAA has seen a collapse in their public relations, with large news corporations questioning the RIAA’s motives. This is very different to the luxury the BPI have of full media support in the UK.

Further to this, CD prices, and now MP3 prices, are one of the main focuses of people who believe in Rip-Off-Britain.

Are you concerned that lawsuits will lose media support and further damage public relations?

Phillips: The most important thing for us is to raise awareness here. We’re not anti p2p per-se, but we do have a problem with the hundreds of millions of files that are being illegally uploaded to the internet by p2p users for others to steal. We don’t expect everyone to understand what a record company does, but we need to protect the investment our members make in new music. That’s our priority.

As for the price of music, Phillips maintained that higher prices are the cost of living in the UK, not the fault of the BPI. He illustrated by pointing to higher transport costs, although he too is unhappy that the Paris Metro costs less than the London Underground. He did not comment specifically on consumer groups asking for an enquiry to discover if iTunes charging above the odds in the UK is against EU regulations.

Slyck: The BPI recently made a press release, which congratulated the music industry on putting out some high quality artists and making CDs better value for money. The net result was increased sales. BMG have also introduced cheaper CDs and all but admitted that lagging CD sales are a self inflicted problem

Mr. Steinkamp, head of BMG Germany said, “We must become customer friendly and offer music fans a broad choice. The music industry has sat motionless on its backside for far too long…. The cheap version [of the CDs] will be similar to a self- burned CD, with no cover and just the title printed directly on to the disk. That is our anti-pirate CD.”

Should the industry not continue to look inward, rather than lashing out at consumers who use file sharing networks?

Phillips: Don’t forget that the music industry is not a content delivery service. It is a business. Consumers are people who buy things, not people who steal things and then share them with millions of others. It is our role to continue creating music for people to buy; technology provides us with the opportunity to do that better than ever before, and the 30 legal sites show we are using it. What we seek to stop is people uploading files to the internet without permission. It’s illegal. We’ve put legal alternatives in place. We’ve warned repeatedly that we’ll sue if people don’t stop – but clearly that’s not been enough.

Slyck: Lawsuits have yet to see any success in America. IT Innovations and Concepts have reported a continuing rise in P2P traffic. File sharers have merely moved to other areas to share files, leaving only people who do not know any better to get sued.

Why would lawsuits in the UK be any more successful?

Phillips: You’re right that p2p traffic is up. But the number of infringing music files on p2p networks fell from 1 billion in June 2003 to 700 million in June 2004; while broadband penetration has been increasing. In other words, much of this increasing p2p traffic is porn, movies and god knows what else. What’s more, awareness of the illegality is a lot higher; 68% of UK consumers are now aware that unauthorized file-sharing is illegal. Given that the purpose of litigation was to a) raise awareness and b) reduce the number of files being uploaded, you’re wrong to say that lawsuits have not worked.

Philips denied that usage figures were taken directly from Kazaa Media Desktop, which are produced as an estimate, and only for the FastTrack network.

Slyck: Evidence from a complex and in depth study by California and Harvard Universities shows that file sharing does not affect CD sales. Although the BPI and CRIA have published counteracting evidence, few people would disagree the Harvard study was superior in quality. Would it not be prudent to wait and make sure that we are not running into a bloodier version of the UK Betamax equivalent, which saw the BPI attempt to ban the Amstrad tape-to-tape recorder, contending it would destroy the industry?

Phillips: Firstly the “Harvard Study”, as it’s become known, was so complex that the analysts misinterpreted what their own flawed analysis was telling them. Though widely reported, and held up by file-sharing apologists as “the truth”, this report was subsequently dismissed in its academic peer review, which concluded that the research “could at best be taken to be inconclusive”.

What is true, however, is that respected research outfits such as Forrester, TNS, Enders, Ipsos-Reid, Inform, Edison and Jupiter have all demonstrated that any promotional effects of illegal file-sharing are more than outweighed by the vast numbers of people that simply don’t buy music anymore.

The results of the peer review can be seen here

Despite the claims by Philips that suing is the right course of action, it is difficult to imagine a mass exodus from file sharing to paid services.

However, the BPI is unwilling to wait for online services to increase in popularity as they reap the rewards of the press coverage, and the content available improves in both quantity and quality.

RISK

If all files sharers were equally at risk, according to statistics from the BPI press release, the chance of getting caught is 0.0004%.

However, there also needs to be consideration that the only targets are Gnutella, Fasttrack and The WinMX Peer Network. If you are using any of these, you are running a fractionally higher risk.

However, not all file sharers on these networks are equal. Philips compares the chances of getting caught like those of getting fined for speeding. File sharing on any of the targeted networks is akin to traveling on the motorway, which has a 70mph speed limit. A commuter traveling at 80mph has a very low chance of being pulled over, if any. In comparison, the police would not hesitate to issue a fine to anyone caught traveling at 100mph.

Likewise, the BPI is targeting those who are offering a vast amount of copyright material for download. The less offered, the less chance of receiving a lawsuit, but there is no trigger point. When asked if 30 files could trigger a lawsuit, Philips compared the question to asking a policeman if driving at 80mph is acceptable, and so had to respond that it is not.

As a result of speed enforcement, speeding is minimized rather than eliminated. The BPI plans the same result. This is to stop users offering excessive amounts of material, rather than to stop file sharing completely.

To discover the number of infringing files being shared, it is highly likely that the industry will be using the built in search functions on the file sharing software, which can be used to browse through all the files a particular user is sharing.

However, the various Kazaa Lite clients do not allowing browsing of shared folders. Instead, users have to search for a specific term to find if a user has any files which match. To discover if a user is a “prolific sharer,” the industry would need to check the response of thousands of queries. This would be wasteful considering the ease of “find more” and catching those using Kazaa Media Desktop.

Those using WinMX do not have so much choice.

When questioned if this theory has any basis, Phillips simply replied, “You can’t hide.”

With an array of networks and tools, it is quite clear that educated file sharers can hide. It is likely that only a small level of protection is required, such as hiding the shared folder from general queries, or using IP blocking software. For more security, users can change networks. In the longer term, this may be to anonymising networks.

The large networks are cherry trees of uneducated users who are easy to target. Nothing more is required to attract media attention and scare file sharers.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=581


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Subpoenaing students is crazy

Uni Prof Says Lawsuits Won't Solve RIAA Problems
Justin Boulmay

A professor at Appalachian State University said upcoming lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are not the way for the music industry to solve its problems with online file sharing.

Dr. Donald L. Amoroso, department chair for information technology and operations management, said subpoenaing students is crazy, and the music industry needs to find a way to adjust to the idea of file sharing.

The RIAA announced last week it would issue subpoenas to the university for the names of three users that supposedly downloaded copyrighted material. More subpoenas could be forthcoming, according to an Oct. 1 letter from the RIAA to Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock.

Amoroso said the industry is already changing.

“This whole industry’s in flux. The music industry, they don’t know what they want to be,” Amoroso said.

One of the changes has been the consumers’ attitude.

“People don’t want to purchase a packaged CD anymore,” Amoroso said. “Young students are saying they don’t want to buy like that.”

Also changing is the way artists distribute themselves. Instead of going through a record label to reach their fan base, musicians and groups are distributing MP3’s of their music over the Internet.

This strategy has helped make bands such as Linkin Park so popular, Amoroso said. The band put their works online before their first album, “Hybrid Theory,” hit stores.

“Almost the whole thing went platinum immediately,” Amoroso said. “A lot of bands follow that now.”

The industry risks becoming irrelevant if it does not realize that file sharing won’t go away, Amoroso said.

“As long as the digitization of music is high quality, then this is here to stay,” he said.

Amoroso said the opportunity for people to share files emerged almost ten years ago.

“The Internet, as we know it today, is only 10 years old,” Amoroso said. “It only came into effect in 1995, 1996, when the infrastructure upgraded, when computer processing speed became faster, when wireless came in recently in the last five years or so.”

Before peer-to-peer (P2P) programs emerged, files could be shared using an operating system (OS) and a file transfer protocol (FTP). A user could get a file from another computer without becoming part of a server.

P2P programs such as Napster and Kazaa Media Desktop put users on a server where everyone could see what files everyone else had on their computers. Even if someone downloaded the program but did not use it, they could still be seen on the server and be liable for a lawsuit, Amoroso said.

The RIAA identifies certain users when they search the server for particular songs.

Associate Professor Dr. Scott Schneberger said there is no central registry now for P2P programs. Instead, when a user makes a request for a certain file, six connections are made with other users’ computers to see if that file is available.

If it’s not found, those six computers make connections with six other computers until the file is found, Schneberger said.

Amoroso said more of the same can be expected in the future, not only for music but also for concert and event planning, and possibly even DVDs.
http://www.theapp.appstate.edu/archi...0-12/news.html


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Local news

Coincidence Sets Off Storm Over Erotic Work
William Yardley

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., Oct. 11 - Some people saw it as outright censorship when the University of Hartford abruptly removed a painting by Damian Loeb from "The Charged Image," a sexually explicit exhibition of 39 works in a campus gallery.

The university's Hartford Art School quietly took down the work last month after an influential family took offense at the artist's appropriation of a photographic image of three smiling young boys in blazers. In the background, in his blatantly provocative hyperrealis style, Mr. Loeb depicts a young girl performing oral sex on a fourth boy; the 1999 work is titled in part "Three Little Boys" in parentheses, preceded by a description of a sexual act.

It seems that the three boys in blazers, photographed by the artist Tina Barney in 1990 but now grown, are the sons of Scott Harrison Smith, a wealthy local businessman and art collector with links to the school. Neither the show's curator nor the university would confirm that the Smith boys are depicted in the painting or say whether the family played a role in having the painting removed.

But staff and faculty members, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the boys' identity and their links with the university. And Douglas S. Cramer, the collector who lent the works for the show, said the university had informed him that the boys' family was distressed by the painting.

Mr. Smith and his wife, Jerilyn, the boys' parents, have declined to comment. A woman approached by a reporter at the family's secluded home in the wooded ridges of nearby Washington, Conn., demanded that the reporter leave.

Some critics have accused the school of bowing to pressure from a patron and parent. The Hartford Courant, which first reported the removal of the painting, ran a commentary last week by Steven Holmes, a curator at an art center in Hartford, criticizing the university for not explaining its actions more fully. But by every account, from the curator to Mr. Cramer to Mr. Loeb, the painting's removal was less a clear censorship case than it was one of copyright and surprising coincidence.

Several intellectual property lawyers said in interviews that Mr. Loeb's painting might have violated laws by appropriating Ms. Barney's image, and left the university vulnerable to charges of copyright infringement for displaying the image of the boys without permission.

"We were made aware that there was a possible copyright permission issue with this painting," said David Isgur, a spokesman for the university. "With that, it was deemed that the most appropriate action to take was to remove the painting from the exhibit while that issue hung over."

In response to questions, Mr. Isgur said that Mr. Smith once served on the art school's board of corporators, a largely ceremonial role. He has also served on the board of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. In addition to his links to the art school, at least two of the sons, Matthew and Hamilton, attended the University of Hartford last year, according to the 2003-4 directory; both were scheduled to graduate in 2006.

The school would not confirm whether the boys were still students there.

Signs promoting "The Charged Image," which initially included a cropped image of the painting, are found throughout campus. One art school staff member, Matt Weber, an adjunct professor in three-dimensional design, noted that, if any of the boys are on campus, "they probably would have seen themselves on the banner on the way to the library."

Mr. Loeb expressed regret that the family was offended by the image. "I am saddened by the effect it has had on the subjects used in the painting, and I am embarrassed by the inconvenience it has caused the people involved in curating the show," he said.

But he also defended his work. "I do not, however, regret the images I created, or the way in which they were made," he wrote in response to an e-mail query. "When we as a society lose the ability to comment on what we see and to have an opinion on what we are exposed to, then we have all lost what makes us unique on this planet."

Ms. Barney is weighing whether to take legal action against Mr. Loeb for using her work without seeking permission, said her New York dealer, Janet Borden.

"She's mortified," Ms. Borden said in an interview at her gallery in Manhattan. "She feels the trust between her and her sitter has been broken, and she didn't do it."

If the copyright argument wins out, it may well be the first and last public viewing of the painting, which was exhibited for nine days, from Sept. 7 to 16. "The Charged Image" closes on Sunday.

Although lawsuits in this domain are steadily accumulating, several lawyers said that the appropriation of copyrighted images and music for the sake of art or social and political commentary remains evolving legal territory. "We have to ask ourselves, What are we going to do with new forms of art?" said Steven Wilf, a professor of art law and intellectual property law at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

From rap sampling to realist painting, "we've had more and more of these cases," he said, adding: "We know that the line hasn't been properly drawn. How do you know when something's truly transformative?"

Mr. Loeb, who has settled a suit brought against him by a photographer in a similar case, borrowed this depiction from a 1997 book of photographs by Ms. Barney titled "Theater of Manners," in which the image was called "The Boys." Ms. Barney, who has made a career of photographing quasi-candid family scenes, often of what appear to be affluent New Englanders, took the photograph of the young Smiths - Hamilton, Patrick and Matthew - in a garden in Watch Hill, R.I., in 1990.

In 1999 Mr. Loeb, who was born in New Haven, was preparing to exhibit his paintings at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York. In his e-mail message, he described the period as emotionally tumultuous, a time when he was confronting feelings rooted in worries for his young daughter, with whom he had lost contact for several years.

"I felt that the images used for the painting were particularly appropriate as the boys looked like the kids I grew up with in Connecticut and they looked like I did when I was their age," Mr. Loeb wrote.

He would not identify his source for the image of oral sex. "That is probably not a question that would be wise for me to answer at this point," he wrote.The painting ultimately was not included in the show at the Mary Boone Gallery, he said. ."

At about the same time, Mr. Cramer, a television producer and avid collector of paintings by artists ranging from Roy Lichtenstein to Ellsworth Kelly to Jasper Johns, was becoming interested in the sexually confrontational figurative art of the 1980's and 1990's.

After losing the chance to buy a different painting by Mr. Loeb, he visited his studio and saw the painting that included the three boys.

"I thought it was very well painted," Mr. Cramer, who produced "The Love Boat" d several other shows, said in a phone interview. He said he was struck by the work's "social and sexual commentary."

"I knew Damian worked in appropriated images," he said. "I didn't ask, you know, what the image was. Would you ask Jasper Johns which flag he worked from?"

Mr. Cramer, 73, lives in Roxbury, Conn., less than five miles from the Smiths. He said he did not know the boys or their parents.

"I'd love to get to the kids," Mr. Cramer said of the controversy. "I'd love to somehow cut through the fodder and ask the kids how they really feel about it."

Mr. Cramer and Ms. Borden, the gallery owner who represents Ms. Barney, the photographer, said they did not think the Smiths knew the painting by Mr. Loeb existed before it was exhibited at the art school.

Zina Davis, director of the Joseloff Gallery at the art school, said she approached Mr. Cramer about creating an exhibition from his collection of roughly 600 works. The result, "The Charged Image," was intended to "create a dialogue for discussion" about how artists portray the body and sexual subjects, she said.

"It never occurred to me to push the limits of the public domain," Ms. Davis said.

She added that those who had cried censorship were missing the point and that the issue was strictly whether the painting violated copyright law. "For us," she said, "it's not a freedom-of-expression issue."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/ar...gn/12loeb.html


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Virgin to Unveil Portable Music Player
AP

The consumer electronics arm of the Virgin Group is introducing a new 5-gigabyte hard-disk portable music player, bringing a powerful brand name in music to the increasingly crowded product space.

Virgin Electronics hopes its slim Virgin Player, which debuts Tuesday and is smaller than a deck of cards, will rise as a lead competitor to Apple Computer Inc.'s wildly popular iPod players. Apple dominates the portable player market that is filled also with choices from Rio Audio, Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics, and Creative Labs Inc., among others.

But few of the rivals have introduced a direct challenge to the iPod Mini model, which has a 4-gigabyte capacity. And that's the segment San Jose-based Virgin Electronics is pursuing -- people who may want to tote about 1,000 songs in their pocketable devices but don't necessarily need the whopping 20-gigabyte-or-more capacity of audio players offered by Apple, Sony, Samsung and others.

``No one else has the same sort of brand energy that Apple or Virgin has. Plus, our heritage is music,'' said Greg Woock, chief executive of Virgin Electronics. ``Apple is dominating, yes, but the market share that it has today is not going to last.''

The Virgin Player has 20 percent more storage capacity than the iPod Mini. It is slightly larger but is a half-ounce lighter at 3.1 ounces. Virgin claims it has eight hours of continuous playback time on its rechargeable lithium ion battery -- the same as the iPod Mini.

The player will be available for $249 at the end of October.

Unlike the iPod, the Virgin Player includes an FM tuner. But it has another notable difference: while the Virgin Player is fully integrated with its sister online music store, Virgin Digital, it also plays tunes purchased from other online music services that use the Windows Media Audio or MP3 formats.

That's a more agnostic approach compared to Apple's iPod, which works with downloaded songs only from the Apple iTunes Music Store in the Advanced Audio Coding format or songs ripped from CDs in the MP3 format.

Virgin also sides with the set of music providers, such as Napster and RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody, which believe online subscription services will one day become more lucrative than the basic pay-per-download model that Apple helped pioneer.

The Virgin Player supports Microsoft Corp.'s new copy-protection technology that allows online music subscribers to listen to vast catalogs of songs on their portable players.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...ic-Player.html


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UCLA File Swappers in Quarantine
Katie Dean

UCLA has developed a new process of identifying and disciplining copyright infringers on peer-to-peer networks, providing schools with another tool to crack down on illegal file sharing.

Jim Davis, the university's associate vice chancellor of information technology, testified last week about the UCLA Quarantine project before the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. The subcommittee called the hearing to get an update on how universities are addressing the piracy problem.

Entertainment and higher-education officials have been working together toward two objectives: to bring low-cost music download services to campuses to give students an alternative to P2P networks, and to develop technological measures to stem the tide of copyright violations occurring over file-trading networks.

UCLA Quarantine focuses on the second issue: The school developed a system that automatically alerts students to copyright violations. Since it debuted in the spring, the system has been successful, according to Davis.

When a person is flagged for a copyright infringement violation by a copyright holder, like a music label or movie studio, their IP address is automatically cut off from all network access except university resources, ending the student's ability to swap files.

Students are able to get themselves out of quarantine quickly by visiting a web page, agreeing to the school's acceptable-use policy and removing the copyright material. After a student takes these steps, their computer is automatically taken out of quarantine, and full network services are restored within a day. The school stores data about the students, who are identified by IP address, in case of a future offense.

Kent Wada, UCLA's director of IT policy, said the school approached the problem as a student-life issue rather than a technology issue.

"We spent a lot of time thinking about what we can automate and what requires human judgment. That first notification for us is a teachable moment," Wada said. "The goal is to try and change behavior. We're not looking at it as a punishment."

Wada said students who receive the notices tend not to repeat the offense. Davis reported there have been no second offenders since Quarantine went into place. But if a student feels he has been mistakenly targeted, he can talk to the dean of students. In case of a repeat offender, the student is also referred to the dean.

The system is in place throughout UCLA's residence halls, which house 7,500 students, or 20 percent of the student population. Those living off-campus use their own internet service providers, so the Quarantine system does not apply.

In developing Quarantine, UCLA worked with Universal Studios, which built its own efficient tool for sending out copyright-infringement notices: the Automated Copyright Notice System, or ACNS. Universal's system sends notices in XML format, as well as a legal document, to make it easier to process the claim.

"That way, ISPs and universities have a standard way to read infringement notices," said Aaron Markham, director of internet anti-piracy for Universal.

Given the massive volume of notices -- Universal sends out 1,000 to 4,000 per day -- the ACNS makes the process smoother. The entertainment companies get a faster response to their complaints, and the universities and ISPs can more effectively enforce their policies, Markham said.

The Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and its member companies are all using ACNS. Markham said the tool is available for universities and ISPs to use for free.

UCLA isn't the only school with a system in place for curbing P2P. Some have attempted to block access to P2P networks altogether. Last year, the University of Florida unveiled its Icarus project, which automatically disables network access if a person is sharing files.

The University of California at Berkeley has already agreed to launch Quarantine on its campus, and other UC schools will be evaluating the tool as well, according to Abby Lunardini, a spokeswoman for the UC Office of the President. UC is also working to bring affordable online music and movie services to its campuses, and will send out a request for proposals next month.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,65227,00.html


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Fewer People Paying For Music Downloads

Apple Computer's iTunes remains the leader in paid digital music downloads, but the number of paying customers for this sector overall has decreased since April, research firm NPD said yesterday. The New York-based market information company said the number of consumers paying for downloads fell to nearly one million users per month in May, June and July from a peak of 1.3 million in April 2004. NPD said the downturn coincides with the end of promotions and trial price incentives offered by several services. From December 2003 to July 2004, iTunes remained the dominant destination, commanding nearly 70% of music files downloaded legally, while Napster's share for that period was 11%.MusicMatch, RealNetworks and Wal-Mart Stores each reached a 6% share. Napster is a unit of Roxio, while MusicMatch recently agreed to be acquired by Yahoo.

"Our research suggests that at this stage of the business it is not so much about building share as it is about creating demand for paid downloads universally," said Russ Crupnick, VP of the NPD Group. "We have seen that promotion works, but its had a short-term effect so far, which is typical for traditional consumer goods. The trick is in phasing promotions, so that there is a cumulative positive effect on the target market," he said.

Meanwhile, NPD cited no slowdown in the number of households with a member using peer-to-peer (P2P) sites to download music for free, with 6.4 million tallied in July 2004, compared with 5.1 million in August 2003. The numbers rise and fall incrementally month to month.
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/inte...p?A=HOME&O=FPW


Apple iTunes Remains Dominant in Paid Digital Music Downloads; NPD Also Notes Ancillary Increase in P2P Downloads over the Past Few Months

More and more companies are working to gain a foothold in the paid music download category; however, according to new data released today by The NPD Group, Inc., early entry Apple iTunes continues to dominate this market. Nearly 70 percent of music files downloaded legally between December 2003 and July 2004 were downloaded from iTunes. Napster's share for the same time period was 11 percent, while MusicMatch, RealNetworks and Wal-Mart each reached a six percent share.

The number of consumers paying for downloads reached a peak of 1.3 million in April 2004. Said Crupnick, "over the 18 months since iTunes launched, paid music download services have been hoping for huge increases in paying customers; however, the number actually doing so has declined to about one million users per month." According to NPD, this statistical downturn coincides with the end of promotional periods offered by several of these services, in which consumers were offered trial price incentives.

"Building demand for paid music download services requires even greater investment in consumer promotion, as well as broadening partnerships with traditional music retailers and consumer goods companies," said Crupnick. "We've seen that promotion works, but it's had a short-term effect so far, which is typical for traditional consumer goods. The trick is in phasing promotions, so that there is a cumulative positive effect on the target market."

Over the past twelve months, households with a member using a peer-to-peer (P2P) site to download music for free has ranged from 4.7 million to 6.4 million per month, although NPD has noted generally higher levels since March 2004. The recent rise in P2P usage mirrors an overall increase in various digital music activities.

Compared to the end of 2003, NPD has noted more digital music activity in a number of areas. For example, consumers are more likely to rip music to their computers (9 percent in July versus 7 percent in December) and to burn music to CDs (14 percent versus 10 percent).

"Consumers who have used paid music services tell NPD that they appreciate the ability to conveniently purchase individual songs," Crupnick said. "They also see benefits in quality and security compared to free peer-to-peer (P2P) alternatives."

Methodology Note: NPD MusicWatch Digital information is collected continuously from the PCs of 40,000 NPD online panelists, balanced to represent the online population of PC users. NPDMusicLab Surveys are conducted bi-monthly among a group of approximately 5,000 respondents aged 13 years and older; results are balanced to represent the U.S. population.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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STATE OF THE ART



Putting Your PC in a Pocket
David Pogue

In the last few years, the biggest breakthroughs in personal computing haven’t had much to do with personal computers. Instead, many of the most exciting and popular inventions have been designed to let you carry a copy of the data that’s on the PC you already have.

What’s an iPod, for example, but a $300 portable hard drive containing a copy of your PC’s music files? What’s a Palm or PocketPC but a $300 data bucket for carrying away a copy of the PC’s calendar and address book? And what’s a BlackBerry but a $400 mirror image of the PC’s e-mail?

Of course, the unstated assumption behind all of these developments is that your pocket isn’t big enough for the computer itself. But for a couple of former Apple laptop designers, that assumption is obsolete.

Thanks to some of the very advances in miniaturization that make hand-held gadgets possible (bright indoor-outdoor screens, two-inch hard drives), these guys have devised an entire Windows XP computer that’s only 4.9 by 3.4 inches and less than an inch thick. They pose an intriguing question: Why would you buy a bunch of gadgets designed to liberate the data from your PC if you could just shove the entire PC into your pocket?

What they’ve come up with is an amazing little 14-ounce computer. It’s called the OQO (pronounced OH-cue-oh), not to be confused with AT&T’s instant-messaging device (Ogo), a wind instrument (oboe) or John Lennon’s widow (Yoko Ono).

The best way to appreciate the OQO’s benefits and tradeoffs is to consider each of its components individually, just as you would when buying any new computer.

KEYBOARD With a gentle push, the screen and body slide halfway apart like the two slices of bread on a jelly sandwich. You’ve just exposed a thumb keyboard. It’s like the one on a BlackBerry, except that this one even has arrow keys, modifier keys (like Ctrl and Alt), and a separate number pad. (Weirdly, though, the number keypad is upside down. That is, the top row includes 1, 2 and 3, cellphone-style, instead of 7, 8 and 9, computer-style.) You can also attach a full-size U.S.B. keyboard when you’re not computing on the run.

MOUSE OQO has dreamed up a bizarre but perfectly workable mouse-replacement solution. Between the letter and number keys sits a pea-sized, immovable circle of stubbly black stuff. Your first instinct might be to scrape it away, assuming that it must be a bit of dried airline food.

Instead, you’re supposed to push against it in the direction you want the arrow cursor to move, much like the little red nubbin on I.B.M. laptop keyboards. To click, you press a button on the OQO keyboard’s left edge. Mousing is now a two-handed operation, but why not? Your non-mouse hand is usually left to twiddle its thumb during PC mousing anyway.

Of course, you can’t very well draw or sketch by pushing against that black textured blob, so the OQO is also equipped with a stylus and a touch screen. (Only a special stylus works on this screen, which prevents accidental clicks but also means you can’t use a retracted pen or a fingernail in a pinch.)

And because neither a mouse-click key nor a stylus is ideal for scrolling through documents, Web pages and lists, the OQO even has a thumbwheel on its bottom edge. With these three input devices, you won’t miss the mouse for an instant. If anything, you’ll wish that your bigger computer had them.

SCREEN The screen is readable both in sunshine and indoors; in fact, a sensor makes it brighten automatically in bright light. The resolution is 800 by 480 pixels, shrunk down to the size of an index card. The result, as you’d imagine, is crisper than crisp.

But the problem isn’t crispness; it’s legibility. Text that appears as 10-point italic on a real PC becomes one-point indecipherable on this screen.

Because pocket electron microscopes are not yet commercially available, you’ll have to rely on software to bail you out. For example, the OQO’s factory-installed Windows desktop theme enlarges the type size of window names and icon labels. You can enlarge any Web page using the View menu in Internet Explorer. And in Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook, pressing Ctrl while turning the thumb wheel neatly enlarges or shrinks the text of whatever document is on the screen.

But in dialog boxes, menu commands and error messages, the type is just tiny, and that’s that. It’s about the size of the fine print on a consumer-electronics rebate form.

GUTS There’s no room for the usual cooling system (fan, ventilation holes, chimney effect), which rules out processors like the lava-hot Pentium. What saves the day is a cool-running one-gigahertz Transmeta chip.

This processor isn’t what you’d call blazingly fast; dictation software, video editing and 3-D shoot-’em-up games are pretty much out of the question. But there’s plenty of speed for any kind of Internet activity (Web, e-mail, and so on), graphic design, music and video playback, Microsoft Office, databases, less action-intense games, and so on.

Memory-hungry programs like Photoshop aren’t very usable, either, because the OQO has only 256 non-expandable megabytes of memory. The hard drive isn’t what you’d call capacious, either: 20 gigabytes is all you get.

Of course, most real-world new PC’s have at least twice that amount of memory and disk space. Clearly, OQO hopes that you’ll think, “Wow, this little guy is a heck of a lot more powerful than any palmtop,” and not “Jeez Louise, the Dell I had in sixth grade had more horsepower than this puppy.”

EXPANSION The OQO’s edges offer a microphone, a headphone jack, a FireWire connector (for attaching hard drives and camcorders) and a U.S.B. port (version 1.1, alas, not the faster 2.0 type). Better yet, it’s a wireless powerhouse; it contains both a WiFi antenna (for connecting to wireless networks) and a Bluetooth transmitter (for dialing a Bluetooth cellphone, exchanging files with laptops and palmtops and so on). Both wireless features work superbly.

When you’re back at the office, you can slip the OQO into its accompanying dock, whose cable accommodates a full-size monitor (up to 1280 by 1024 resolution), another U.S.B. and FireWire jack, an Ethernet connector for high-speed networking, and an audio output. The idea, of course, is that you can leave your printer, scanner, keyboard, mouse, monitor and network cable permanently attached to the dock, so that when you’re not out and about, the OQO is a no-compromise (well, low-compromise) everyday PC.

You don’t even have to shut down the OQO or put it to sleep first — you just slip it into the dock and watch with satisfaction as your desktop monitor blinks to life. That bit of elegance saves you a lot of time and hassle (and reminds you of the creators’ Apple heritage).

THE DRIVE The OQO has no built-in CD or DVD drive. Barring an amendment to the laws of physics, there would be no way to fit one.

Here, at last, is the OQO’s Achilles’ heel. In fact, it’s probably Achilles’ entire leg up to just above the knee. How the heck are you supposed to install commercial software or watch DVD’s without a drive?

The company has no suggestions except to buy an external U.S.B. or FireWire drive, which will set you back about $75.

THE UPSHOT OQO the company has big plans for OQO the computer. It claims to have generated wide interest in industries like insurance, field sales, public safety, manufacturing and health care. For example, doctors and nurses could call up patient records at home, on the road or, over a wireless network, anywhere in the hospital.

But if you can get over the lack of a CD drive, there’s a lot to be said for the OQO even for individuals. When your digital camera’s memory card gets full, no worries; just offload the photos to the PC in your purse or pocket and keep shooting. You don’t have to transfer your videos from your PC to one of those $500 video players for your train ride, because you’ll have the PC itself with you. And forget about printing out your Mapquest driving directions or your Travelocity travel itinerary from your PC. Why bother, when you can open the original electronic document at any time?

OQO’s claim that you could use the OQO as your sole computer is a tad far-fetched; its limited memory, speed and storage would probably put a crimp in your computing style. It’s not cheap, either, although it’s in line with laptop prices: $1,900 with Windows XP Home Edition installed, $2,000 for XP Professional. And the battery life is disappointing: about 2.5 hours per charge. At least the battery is removable, so you can swap in a fully charged spare.

Otherwise, though, OQO is the most elegant, versatile, solidly build miniature PC possible with current technology. Its creators have blown the concept of the digital hub to smithereens, and given whole new meaning to the term pocket PC.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/te...CND-STATE.html


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Software Piracy Swoop Nets $2.2m
Alorie Gilbert

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) - a trade group supported by Apple, Intuit, Microsoft and about 20 others - has collected $2.2m in out-of-court settlements in its annual software piracy sweep.

The group targets companies that violate software licensing and copyright rules. The BSA claims that 22 per cent of all commercial software licences used in the US alone have not been paid for, costing the industry more than $6.5bn annually.

The group's latest piracy sweep led to settlements with 25 companies. The BSA plans to use the proceeds to fund educational initiatives, such as its campaign to discourage kids from using peer-to-peer networks to swap software, games, music and other copyrighted material.
http://software.silicon.com/applicat...9124938,00.htm


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Leader: File-Sharing Suits Out Of Tune With Music Market

File-sharing is illegal. Musicians know that, record labels know that and file-sharers are more than well aware of that. So the news today that industry body The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is suing 28 file-sharers comes as no surprise.

While the rights and wrongs are pretty clear-cut in the law's eyes – it's illegal; if you do it, you're likely to get into trouble – the BPI's policy seems a little confused.

Unlike its US equivalent, the RIAA, the BPI has gone for suing uploaders rather than downloaders to "cut the problem off at its source". It leaves a huge swathe of downloaders operating in safety and the thought of 28 out of the whole uploading community being sued isn't exactly going to give many people sleepless nights.

At least the RIAA tried to hit big – most recently, they filed suits against more than 700 file-sharers in one go.

Illegal music uploading is dropping and not in small measures either – according to a BPI spokesman, by hundreds of millions. Is the campaign to get litigious getting results? Possibly. But it's certainly no coincidence that the as the amount of legal downloads has boomed, the number of illegal downloads has fallen significantly.

The BPI, like others before it, makes a decent case for legal action – along the lines of 'if we don't keep the record labels ticking over now, there's no incentive to for them to keep putting money into new bands.'

But when those same record labels are reportedly creaming off a huge proportion of the profits from legal online music and leaving song-shops with a paltry four per cent, it does look a little like shooting yourself in the foot and a lot like 'one rule for us, one rule for them'.

For music fans, legal downloading is a real boon – most don't fancy being on the wrong side of the law and with tracks at 29p and upwards, pocket-money prices are helping to knock the financial incentive that encourages piracy on the head.

But while the mainstream is amply catered for, a lot of smaller record labels and more niche styles are still by and large neglected in the digital realm, giving some downloaders what they see as little alternative but to turn to the song-swappers.

Perhaps the BPI would have better spent its lawyers' fees on nurturing the legal market instead of cracking down on the illegal one.
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9124816,00.htm


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Music Industry Ditches Hardcore Copyright For 'Free Love' Tunes
Jo Best

Stranglehold copyright could be going the way of the dinosaur, it seems, with both the big names and independent organisations moving towards a more open copyright structure.

In a strategy volte-face, Sony has decided to bin its copy-protected CDs in Japan. The CDs only allowed their owners to burn music once to a PC for free – any more copies and there's a charge, paid over the internet.

From 17 November onwards, Sony's CDs will be a bit more liberal but any copy- protected CDs on the market won't be recalled.

The CDs, while theoretically meant to scupper the pirates, weren't popular with the average music fan, as the copy-prevention mechanism stopped the CDs playing in car stereos and other players.

Sony's Japanese copy-protected CDs have been dumped after two years on the market, according to the company, because piracy is no longer a huge worry in the country. Record companies in Europe, however, still seems to be worried about the prospect - Bertelsmann BMG, the world's fifth-largest record label, recently launched CDs in three formats including luxury and no-frills version to deter unauthorised copying.

While Sony is moving away from keeping such a tight rein on its copyright, others would like to see the music world move further.

silicon.com Agenda Setter Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons project is one such group hoping for music without the digital handcuffs.

The project has been up and running in the US and will be coming to the UK as of next month. The not-for-profit foundation has created a simple licence that tunesmiths can use to let others remix, sample or alter their music without having to contact the musician or their record label for approval first.

Creative Commons has been attracting some high-profile friends. The Beeb is in talks with the group over how to license its soon-to-be-released archives and a CD featuring bands including the Beastie Boys and David Byrne will be available with next month's Wired, with all the songs released under the Creative Commons licence.

Stelios Haji-Iannou's soon-to-be-unveiled easyMusic download service is also planning to include a section of "copyleft" music, where song-shoppers can download and distribute music for free, alongside a traditional pay-per-track model.
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9124759,00.htm


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Compliance Laws Helping To Combat Software Piracy
Andy McCue

New compliance and accounting regulations are helping to drive down the number of firms who use unlicensed and counterfeit software, according to Microsoft.

In an interview with silicon.com, Microsoft UK MD and European VP Alistair Baker said the tightening of company audits is forcing businesses to be more accurate and transparent about the software they use.

"Governance is changing the way companies think about software as an asset and how they account for it with auditors," he said. "If somebody has unlicensed software, that is a liability."

Baker said Microsoft has seen an increase in the number of companies asking it to conduct a software audit as a direct response to new accounting requirements.

However, while licensing compliance is getting better at the top, Baker said there is still are still problem at the small and medium-sized business end of the market and with dodgy resellers who do hard-disk loading and sell counterfeit products.

"With enterprise and middle market customers governance requirements are now very tight," he said. "In small business there are millions of customers so therefore there is a higher percentage of piracy."

But Baker argued that new protection measures have helped drive down piracy of Office 2003, particularly in the consumer and small business market.

Research from anti-piracy body the Business Software Alliance in July claimed software piracy is costing UK businesses £860m, with almost a third of software across all organisations being unlicensed.
http://www.silicon.com/research/spec...9124256,00.htm


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The P2P Dilemma - A Problem Without Solution?
AlecWest

Four years before the original Napster client was even born, the music-CD cartel began a policy called MAP (short for minimum advertised pricing). The Federal Trade Commission concluded that this policy should be known by another name ... illegal price-fixing. The FTC claimed this policy ripped off music consumers to the tune of $400,000,000. Unfortunately for the consumer, the Lanham Act only gives the FTC investigative powers ... and they could not mete out any form of punishment for this crime in the criminal court system. In theory, that should have been the job of the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft who, at the time, must have been busying himself on more important matters ... one would hope.

Still, there was the multi-state antitrust lawsuit in civil court, spearheaded by NY State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer. But again, unfortunately for the consumer, only about one-third of the stolen booty was recovered. This left $256,000,000 in the industry's coffers. In May, 2003, CPAN's Washington Journal program invited two guests to the show ... Gigi Sohn, co- founder of the Public Knowledge advocacy group, and Mitch Glazer, a representative of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). They invited callers to call in their own questions and I was fortunate enough to complete my call. Below is a link (or reference) to a 150k RealVideo file where I ask my question. View the video to see me ask Glazer, "Where's the $256,000,000?" and see Glazer sidestep the question.

A lot of water has passed under many bridges since MAP. Napster was born and quickly became the number-one target of the music industry, claiming that Napster and its users were ripping them off. My favorite analogy of this is that the cartel had been flipping an unfriendly hand gesture toward their consumers for years (MAP). All Napster did was put a tool in the hands of consumers allowing them to flip the same unfriendly hand gesture back in the cartel's direction. And, the file-sharing community has done this in spades. While I admit it's wrong under criminal justice to steal, stealing from a thief who has already stolen from you does invoke a certain poetic justice I can appreciate ... even though I may not agree with it as a proper solution to the problem. But the original Napster client's death was not a solution either.

The death of the original Napster client spawned a plethora of copycat utilities, all of which do not repeat the error they made in tying downloads to a centralized server. And though they're appealing the decision in U.S. District Court that holds peer-to-peer providers harmless, the industry has been forced to mount a series of John/Jane Doe lawsuits targeting people they assume are guilty of ripping them off. Unfortunately for the industry, all this has accomplished for them is to give them a group of "poster boys" or "poster girls" to hold up ... and say to a disbelieving public, "See, we're winning the war against piracy!" Meanwhile, file-sharers have simply gone underground - using encrypted utilities such as Filetopia and the enigmatic EarthStation5 to get what they're looking for. Some have gone even further underground to private networks or alt.binaries USENET newsgroups. And those are only the bigger full-time file-sharers. The "little guys" ... the people who only download a song here and there ... know they're off the radar screen for lawsuits and continue to use Kazaa, eMule, and LimeWire. And so far, with the exception of AllOfMP3.com and other offshore entities, no legal online music entity has offered a service that includes DRM-free lossless downloads at a price people are willing to pay.

So far, a final solution to the problem of file-sharing eludes us. And, I'm not a music-world insider who knows enough about the industry to propose one. But, I do know this. When confronted with a problem, fixing it is best done by going to its source and working from there. And, we all know what that source is. The Justice Department needs to bring the industry into criminal court. The $256,000,000 needs to be recovered as well as punitive damages assessed for the crime. And, the architects of the industry's MAP policy need to be cooling their heels behind bars in a Federal prison. Normally, the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right" should apply to those who download music illegally via P2P file-sharing networks. But that phrase assumes the existence of an authority that will provide redress for victims. And so far, that authority has been sitting on its ... laurels. In the absence of that authority, electronic vigilanteism may not be right ... but it is understandable.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...d=6426_0_5_0_C


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Grads Create File Sharing Program
Eduardo E. Santacana

Just one week after its deployment, nearly 127 million computer users have downloaded a new file-sharing program developed by three Harvard alumni while they were undergraduates.

Now available through Morpheus 4.5, NEOnet—created by Gitika Srivastava ’01, Ben B. Wilken ’01 and Francis H.R. Crick ’03—speeds up download time by drastically cutting back the number of computers an individual must search across to locate a particular file.

According to its creators, most file-sharing programs require users to jump across an average of 18 computers to find the file they are looking for. With NEOnet, however, there is a maximum of three jumps for any search.

“[Using NEOnet], any particular computer is actually responsible for keeping a piece of the database,” said Crick, whose grandfather and namesake won the Nobel Prize in 1962 with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins for discovering the double helix structure of DNA.

“There is an amount of redundancy between computers so if one computer is down, you still have a complete database,” Crick added.

NEOnet is the product of SKYRIS Networks, a company Wilken and Srivastava created during their senior year at Harvard. Crick joined them a year later.

SKYRIS eventually sold the technology to Streamcast Networks, the parent company of Morpheus, and Crick and Wilken began to work for Morpheus full-time. Srivastava stayed on as head of SKYRIS under Stirling Bridge, which owns Streamcast.

While the creators declined to comment on how much they sold the program for, Srivastava said Don King, the boxing promoter, offered to buy the company in 2002 for millions in order to distribute online boxing videos.

Srivastava said she believes that with their technology, Morpheus will be the most downloaded file-sharing program in the country within a few months.

“We were able to take this technology and send it out in the worst of economic times,” she said. “I was able to get companies offering cash because they believed in it so much.”

When it started, the SKYRIS team was influenced by the explosion of file-sharing programs after Napster’s rise to popularity and the failures of early peer-to-peer programs like Gnutella.

Wilken said that the searches on these file-sharing programs did not span the entire network and had limited downloading speed because they only had a few possible hosts.

“I envisioned a world where there wouldn’t be centralized servers and that was just a few years ago,” Crick said.

Within a few years, the three created their own technology and began marketing it to media distribution companies like Sony and Lycos.

Although SKYRIS was the first to fully develop a radically new approach to file-sharing, the idea for the technology was widespread by 2001.

“We were kicking around these ideas on how to organize a peer-to-peer network and these papers started coming out that were exploring similar ideas,” Wilken said. “It’s interesting that our work was going on parallel to other companies.”

Srivastava, now a tutor in Leverett House, said that she hopes future students will follow in the footsteps of SKYRIS.

“I’m extremely interested in encouraging other students in going into their own line of entrepreneurship and starting their own companies,” she said. “I work with a lot of MIT students doing this, but I haven’t seen a lot of Harvard students doing it.”
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503804


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CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK



Blackface Master Echoes in Hip-Hop
Margo Jefferson

We're still on the boundary between two centuries. Old ways cling to us. New ways entice and threaten. Future generations will watch our struggle: our first experiments with electronic music and video art; our furious efforts to keep up with how language and thinking change.

That's why the innovators at the start of the last century are so interesting. They struggled with all the things we take for granted. Movies still clung to fine art and stage pictures. Victorian language shadowed the terse rhythms and clear imagery of modern writers. Theater's fascination with the speech of blacks and immigrants kept veering from naturalism to caricature.

Vaudeville and musical theater were the popular entertainments. They weren't just talent variety shows, they were ethnic variety shows. There was the Irish comedy of Harrigan and Hart, the "Dutch" or Jewish comedy of Weber and Fields, the "Afro-American" comedy of Williams and Walker. (Afro-American was Walker's term, though he and Williams also used the word "darky." It's an unpalatable word now; black entertainers used it then as hip-hop musicians use "nigga.") Never has black speech been more influential in American or global culture than it is now. Hip-hop is the ruling form. But black rhythms, tones and slang have always been essential to American talk and performance.

The black vaudevillian Bert Williams was one of the early masters. He wasn't just ahead of his time; he's in the vanguard of ours. Theater historians have long acknowledged Williams as a great comic artist. Now we can hear his innovations firsthand, thanks to Archeophone, a company devoted to preserving early popular American music. Archeophone (www.archeophone.com) has issued a complete three-disc set of Williams recordings from the first two decades of the 20th century.

Like so many vaudeville artists, Williams made few film appearances. We might also know his work better if he hadn't spent most of his career performing in blackface. Blackface has become theater's equivalent of the mark of Cain. It's a hard tradition to live with: there's so much cruelty and shame there. But blackface comedy produced some superb artists. Art is always a struggle against limits, and those imposed by others are infuriating. But they can't stop us from enjoying the work itself and learning from it.

Williams entered show business in the 1890's, began recording in 1901 and died in 1922. He was an actor, mime, dancer, singer and songwriter. Born in the Bahamas, he grew up in California. His characters were based on careful study of the blacks, mostly Southern, whom he met as he toured. There was nothing natural about his work: it was a product of craft and respect for his subject. In a 1918 essay on humor for The American Magazine he wrote: "It was not until I was able to see myself as another person that my sense of humor developed. For I do not believe there is any such thing as innate humor. It has to be developed by hard work and study, just as every other human quality."

Onstage he subverted decades of the one-note "ain't Ah a dummy!" jokes that kept fans believing blacks were dummies in real life, too. Offstage he endured threats of violence, discrimination in hotels and restaurants, and professional snubs. (When he joined the Ziegfeld Follies, a number of white stars threatened to quit.) In the words of his friend W. C. Fields, "Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew."

That blend of comedy and grief fueled his performances. The comedy encompassed slapstick, parody and the goofy wordplay. The pathos was bitter, sweet and every note in between.

His version of "Woodman, Woodman Spare That Tree" (an early Irving Berlin song) turns that lachrymose poem into a domestic complaint from a husband who likes to hide from his wife in that sturdy old oak. Williams plays the husband's self-absorption against the poem's inflated emotion. His voice moves from vibrato grandeur to fussing and grumbling. The spoken song "Never Mo' " (which Williams wrote with his friend Alex Rogers) sends up "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Who can resist the rhyme and meter of that poem? They are both hypnotic and preposterous.

The classic Williams narrator always competes with somebody for top honors in the hard luck category. What better target than Mr. "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary"? So, he declares:

If that old crow with his "Never Mo' "
Had been through what I have,
I'm sure he would quote much more than, 'Never Mo.'
If Crow did know some things I know
That's all he'd say: "Never Mo,' "
And then some Mo'.

Putting anything that smacks of high culture in the mouth of a blackface "Negro" is the oldest trick in the minstrel book. Williams turns the trick around. The poem is the butt of the joke, not the Negro who reduces it to dialect. Williams shows us that Poe's verse is poetic dialect, and beats the master at the gloom and pity game.

Williams's signature song was a bad-luck ballad called "Nobody." He wrote it with Rogers and soon grew sick and tired of having to perform it night after night. But it is a masterpiece. The song begins with the dignified and melancholy, "When life seems full of clouds and rain/ And I am full of nothin' but pain/ Who soothes my thumpin', bumpin' brain?"

"Nobody," he chants mournfully.

Then it heads into absurdity: "When I was in that railroad wreck/ And thought I'd cashed in my last check,/ Who took that engine off my neck?"

"Not a soul," he snaps out crisply.

We call this speech-song, the Germans call it Sprechstimme: call it what you want, but nobody does it better than Williams. His voice moves across bar lines and around the beat. He can stretch a sentence or word out, then break it with percussive exclamations and syllables; imitate a trombone; move up and down octaves as he speaks. But never at the expense of the story he is telling. He never shows off when he takes on the voice of a new character in one of his monologues. The variety and subtlety amaze.

Williams knew all the dimensions of the human voice, how it reveals not only class and ethnicity but our fantasies about them, too. Nor did he ever sacrifice the small truthful details, the pauses and shifts of tone that say everything about an individual character.

If I were a hip-hop musician, I'd be listening very hard. (Hip-hop is the ethnic vaudeville of our day, and it doesn't hesitate to stage minstrel shows, either.) I'd be listening if I were doing solo performance, spoken-word poetry or stand-up comedy. So many voices so many identities and styles: Williams is a perfect artist for our times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/ar...aud.html?8hpib


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5 Arrested For Auctioning Pirated Anime Online

TOYAMA -- Five people have been arrested for selling pirated editions of popular animated movies on the Internet in two separate incidents, prefectural police said.

Arrested for violating the Copyright Law were Masao Takahashi, 50, his son, 28-year-old Miyabi, Okutaro Kojima, 38, his 36-year-old wife, Mie, and his 34-year- old brother, Chotaro.

Takahashi conspired with Miyabi to sell some 4,500 pirated DVDs of a popular animated film, "Doraemon," on an Internet auction site, netting approximately 6.2 million yen, according to investigators.

The elder Takahashi has admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I did it because my family business faced financial crisis," he was quoted as telling investigators.

Kojima conspired with his wife and brother to sell pirated DVD copies of an animated film, "Dragon Ball," on the Internet, netting about 20 million yen, prefectural police said.
http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn...anime-0-1.html


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ILN News Letter

South Africa Close To Enacting Tough New Child Porn Laws

South African President Thabo Mbeki this month will sign into law new child pornography measures that government says will have implications for computer technicians, ISPs, and cyber cafés. The amendments will be made to the Film and Publications Act, and will compel all citizens to report anyone involved in the production and selling, or in possession of child pornography. The minimum sentence for anyone found guilty will be increased from five to 10 years.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200410120781.html

Ontario Looks To ISPS In Fight Against Child Pornography

The Ontario Attorney-General has said that his government is prepared to force ISPs to blow the whistle on child pornography sites. The government says it will considering legislative changes, including amendments to privacy legislation, if needed.
http://ontarioisps.notlong.com/


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UKChildren's Hospital May Sue Disney
Graham Jones

An unlikely feud is seeing the film empire that built its name on cartoons for children -- the giant Disney corporation -- at odds with Britain's most famous hospital for sick children.

And it is all over another legendary children's favorite -- Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.

In what the New York Post billed this week as "Sick kids vs. Disney in Peter Pan dust up," Great Ormond Street hospital for children in London is consulting lawyers over a book published by a Disney subsidiary in the United States.

"Peter and the Starcatchers" by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson and published by Disney's Hyperion Books is billed as a prequel to the children's classic, "Peter Pan."

Great Ormond Street was left the royalties to Peter Pan in 1929 by the author, J.M. Barrie -- and million of pounds earned from copyright fees have gone towards treating sick children in Britain ever since.

This weekend sees the UK premiere of a film about Barrie's life, "Finding Neverland" -- starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman. The hospital will receive royalties from book excerpts portrayed in the film.

But the hospital charity says is getting nothing from "Peter and the Starcatchers" -- which has been on the New York Times best seller lists, has had an extensive author tour and has its own Web site. They say the book has been published without its permission.

A spokesman for the hospital told CNN that Great Ormond Street held the copyright to Peter Pan in the United States until 2023 -- although it runs out in EU countries in 2007 -- and said: "We are considering our options."

Disney, meanwhile, has insisted that Peter Pan is out of copyright in the United States.

"The copyright to the J.M. Barrie stories expired in the U.S. prior to 1998, the effective date of the U.S. Copyright Extension Act, and thus were ineligible for any extension of their term," Disney said in a statement to the Daily Telegraph.

Great Ormond Street argues that it could cost millions which would otherwise go towards helping sick children. It says it may not be able to afford a costly court case in the United States.

The spokesman says: "J.M. Barrie gave the copyright in Peter Pan to the hospital in 1929 and since then the royalties have been a significant but confidential source of income for the hospital. J.M. Barrie died in 1937 so copyright in the EU runs until 2007 and until 2023 in the U.S."

Copyright in the U.S. was extended from 2007 to 2023 because of the U.S. Copyright Extension Act, he said.

Lawyers

He added that the hospital had engaged leading London media lawyers, Simkins, to act on its behalf.

The Web site for "Peter and the Starcatchers" by Barry, a Pulitzer prize winning humorist, and Pearson, an American crime writer, tells of "a fast paced adventure on the high seas and a faraway island." It stars an orphan boy called Peter and the action involves a boat called "Never Land."

"Award-winning authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have turned back the clock and revealed a wonderful story that precedes J.M. Barrie's beloved Peter Pan."

The launch of the book came as the hospital themselves are hoping to cash in on "Peter Pan" authorship.

They are inviting authors to compete for the chance to write the "official" sequel to Peter Pan for publishing in the autumn of next year -- thereby extending the royalties.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/...an/index.html#


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Universal Tries To Expose Kazaa Backers
Abby Dinham

Recording titan Universal Music is pressing on with its legal battle in Australia to try to force Sharman Networks - Kazaa's parent company - to reveal details of its owners as part of a collusion claim

Lawyers for Universal Music put the hard word on Sharman Networks -- the company responsible for popular peer-to-peer application Kazaa -- in the Federal Court today, attempting to force the company to reveal its corporate structure and anonymous director. The Universal Music parties' senior counsel, John Nicholas, claimed the company has purposely been set up with no visible line of command to "resist a claim like this".

Sharman was accused of music copyright infringement over its peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa, in a move which saw Sharman and affiliated companies' premises raided last February.

The parties are still in the discovery process related to evidence taken in the raids, which is being held by an independent third party. However, Universal has claimed that it is essential to the case to reveal the respondents' ownership and corporate structure.

Nicholas contends that directions were made by presiding Justice Murray Wilcox on 27 July for discovery of Sharman's ownership. However he said "we havent been given the information on control, we have been given a list of nominee companies."

"They won't give us the one-line document that your honour requested," he said.

Wilcox described the issue as "absurd", but acting chief counsel for the Sharman parties, Tony Meagher, said the group had identified the directors and the shareholders, and beyond that it "is not relevant to any issue in the proceeding."

However, Nicholas argued that revealing Sharman's owners was important to establish the exact relationship between Sharman and subsequent respondent to the charges AltNet -- a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment as he said the two companies may have colluded to create an anonymous structure for purposeful deception.

"This dichotomy has been created for the purpose of resisting a claim like this. It's part of an arrangement made in 2002 when Mr Burmeister [BDE executive] decided that P2P could be commercially exploited," he said. "This dichotomy was brought about by careful planning and advice."

"The relationship between the Sharman and Alt entities is quite importanttwo tech companies brought together...one inference is that BDE together with Ms Hemming have incorporated in 2002 Sharman Networks in a way that seeks to conceal the ultimate relationship," said Nicholas. "They are intertwined at a relevant corporate level, they are one and the same."

"At all levels Ms Hemming is doing the beckoning of Mr Burmeister," he said.

A company called Worldwide Nominee has been named as the proprietor of the Sharman group, with Geoffrey R. Gee listed as its director. However, when questioned by Wilcox as to his identity, Meagher replied that "he is a lawyer who lives in the Republic of Vanuatu".

Wilcox concluded that "Mr Nicholas is entitled to get to the bottom of exactly who the client is" adding that he is "in principle" prepared to uphold the request.

AltNet senior counsel, Steven Finch, addressed the charges against the company, stating that it supplied a very different technology to the Sharman product and that "they are not related".

According to Finch, files are not made available on the AltNet file sharing database until an agreement is made with the rights holder of the works and the file is then "wrapped" with digital rights management (DRM) clauses so that down-loaders must agree to a terms of access condition before they are able to open the file.

"Material does not get onto AltNet without the permission of the artist," he said. "Our technology is not used by Kazaa. There is confusion because the database search brings up results from both Kazaa and AltNet."

The parties were directed to sort the issue out away from court.

Additionally Wilcox ordered that all affidavits to be used in the case must be submitted by 20 October in response to Sharman claims that Universal lawyers have been tardy with their submissions and that each party must provide the other with a list of objections intended to be made against the affidavits by 19 November.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041014/152/f4jx8.html


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Oz

New Groups Join Kazaa Battle
Chris Jenkins

THE battle between Kazaa owner Sharman Networks and the record industry has taken a new turn, with three consumer and privacy groups seeking to join the hearings.

A group including the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL), Electronic Frontiers Foundation and the Australian Consumer Association would seek leave to appear at the Sydney hearings on an amicus basis, as a "friend of the court", NSWCCL president Cameron Murphy said.

The three had formed a working group some time ago and had drafted affidavits to be submitted to the court, he said.

Sharman Networks has been involved in disputes with recording industry bodies in both Australia and the US over its Kazaa file sharing software, which the record companies allege is means of obtaining their intellectual property illegally.

In February, the Federal Court authorised raids which seized documents from Sharman's Sydney offices and the homes of some of its executives.

"We decided to come together because there are serious public interest issues at stake," Mr Murphy said. He said the group felt it could assist the court in evaluating public interest issues that may not have been represented otherwise. The case could have potentially been heard solely on technical arguments, without taking public interest issues into account, he said.

While conceding that peer to peer software such as Kazaa was used to illegally download music, "it is not the right response to be banning peer to peer software because there are many other public interest uses that negate that," Mr Murphy said.

Examples of legitimate uses of peer to peer file sharing included the distribution of information by community organisations he said. Amnesty International and the Free East Timor Association were examples of groups that had used peer to peer file sharing in such a manner, he said.

"The main purpose of this software isn’t music piracy. It is there to distribute legitimate information which serves the public interest," Mr Murphy said.

The argument that file sharing software should be banned in order to defeat piracy "is as ludicrous in my view as banning blank CDs or blank DVDs, or banning the computers themselves," Mr Murphy said.
http://www.news.com.au/common/printp...071500,00.html


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F.C.C. Clears Internet Access by Power Lines
Stephen LaBaton

Clearing the way for homes and businesses to receive high-speed Internet services through their electrical outlets, the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules on Thursday that would enable the utility companies to offer an alternative to the broadband communications services now provided by cable and phone companies.

As a further spur to the rollout of broadband Internet services, the F.C.C. also ruled that the regional Bell companies do not have to give competitors access to fiber optic lines that reach into consumers' home - a decision that prompted two of the Bells, SBC Communications and BellSouth, to announce that they would move quickly to build new fiber optic networks in residential neighborhoods. The ruling was criticized by rivals of the Bells and consumer groups, which called it anticompetitive and said it would lead to higher prices.

For the electric companies' part, broadband Internet service is more than a year away from becoming widely available. But the agency's ruling is expected to increase significantly the level of investment and interest by the utilities, which had been stymied in previous attempts to offer new services over power lines. They reach more American homes than either telephone lines or television cables.

So far, the technology has been limited mainly to experiments around the country, although a commercial version recently became available in some communities near Cincinnati.

"Today is a banner day, and I think years from now we will look back and see it as an historical day for us,'' said Michael K. Powell, the F.C.C. chairman. "This is groundbreaking stuff.''

Known as broadband over power lines, or B.P.L., the technology uses a special modem that plugs into electrical outlets. So far, it has been offered at speeds of 1 to 3 megabits a second, which is comparable to broadband service over cable modems or conventional phone lines - though not as fast as the 5 megabits a second achievable through the residential fiber optic lines just now being introduced by the Bell companies.

An obstacle to the use of power lines to carry communications traffic has been the electromagnetic interference the technology can cause to various types of radio signals. The commission ruled that it would tolerate a small amount of radio interference in certain areas by the new service in exchange for making the broadband market more competitive.

Amateur radio operators and public safety officials had asked the commission to move slowly in the area because of the interference created by the service. The agency responded by setting up a system to monitor interference and restricting the service in areas where it could jeopardize public safety, like areas around airports and near Coast Guard stations.

Officials noted that there have already been field tests in 18 states of the B.P.L. technology. One company, Current Communications, has recently begun to offer broadband service near Cincinnati in a joint venture with Cinergy, the Midwest power and energy company. The service is priced at $29.95 to $49.95 a month, depending on the speed.

While some regulatory and technical issues remain, the technology offers enormous promise because the power grid is ubiquitous. The costs to the industry to offer the new service would be comparatively small, and the possible returns on those investments could be high. If the utility companies do begin to offer the broadband service more widely, they would also be likely to enter the telephone business by offering phone services over the Internet, just as phone and cable companies have begun to do.

Mr. Powell, the F.C.C. chairman, said that the new technology would not only offer greater competition in the broadband market, but would also allow consumers to easily create networks in their home through electrical outlets. And adding communications abilities to power lines would permit electric companies to better manage the power grid, he said.

Mr. Powell and three other commissioners voted to approve the rules. The fifth commissioner, Michael J. Copps, dissented in part. He noted that the agency had pushed aside a number of vital issues for another day, including questions of whether utility companies would have to contribute to the telephone industry's universal service fund and provide access to people with disabilities, and whether measures would be put in place to ensure market competition.

He also said that regulators would need to determine whether it would be fair for electricity customers to pay higher bills "to subsidize an electric company's foray into broadband.''

"We just have to get to the big picture and confront the challenges I have mentioned if B.P.L. is going to have a shot at realizing its full potential,'' Mr. Copps said.

But industry executives praised the decision.

"This is one of the defining moments for the widespread adoption of broadband by Americans,'' said William Berkman, chairman of Current Communications, a private company in Germantown, Md., which hopes to have in place a B.P.L. Internet network passing by 50,000 homes by the end of the year. The future also grew brighter for the regional Bell companies with the F.C.C.'s decision to grant BellSouth's request to exempt the Bells from any requirement that they lease their new fiber lines to the home to rivals at low costs.

Mr. Powell said that the exemption would "restore the marketplace incentives of carriers to invest in new networks.''

Prompted by the decision, the Bells said they would move more rapidly to build fiber networks to homes. So far, the nation's biggest Bell, Verizon Communications, has been the most active in building residential fiber networks. But on Thursday, SBC said it now planned to provide 18 million households higher speed Internet services in two to three years, rather than five years as previously announced.

"The shovel is in the ground, and we are ready to go," said SBC's chairman and chief executive, Edward E. Whitacre Jr.

But rivals, consumer groups and Mr. Copps criticized the decision as anticompetitive.

The F.C.C. majority seems unable to restrain its preference for monopoly over America's consumers, business users, and investment, said Len Cali, a vice president for AT&T.

Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, said the decision would tighten the already powerful grip that the telephone and cable companies have on broadband services.

"This stranglehold will stifle innovation as these duopolies discriminate against unaffiliated applications and services that in the past have driven the growth of the Internet and the boom in information technology,'' Mr. Cooper said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/te...y/15power.html


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Milestones: Moore’s Law Over, Intel Ends Speed Race - 3.8 Gigahertz End Of Line For Now

Walking On The Sun

By Daniel Sorid

Intel Corp. on Thursday canceled plans to introduce its highest-speed desktop computer chip, ending for now a 25-year run that has seen the speeds of Intel's microprocessors increase by more than 750 times.

The unexpected move also adds to a string of product changes, cancellations and recalls that has roiled the world's largest chip maker this year. Intel shares fell 2.3 percent.

Both Intel and its arch-rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., have shifted their focus from increasing clock speed -- a measure of how fast a chip can crunch numbers -- to a less quantitative goal of performance encompassing multi-tasking, security, and multimedia.

Intel will shift engineers and other resources to its dual-core project, which envisions chips that have the power of two microprocessors in a single package, spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. Intel has plans to sell dual-core chips for mobile, desktop and server computers next year.

Intel President Paul Otellini, who is expected to take over the company next year, has spoken often about the advantages of multiple-core chips in an era when computers are tasked with handling more than one task at once, such as playing music and making a home video.

Since the introduction of the 5-megahertz 8088 processor in 1979, Intel has cranked up the clock speed of its PC chips with remarkable consistency, until now. Intel's 3.8 gigahertz Pentium 4 chip -- which is equivalent to 3,800 megahertz -- will be the fastest on the market for the foreseeable future.

It was the second time that Intel has announced problems with its plan to boost the Pentium 4 chip to a speed of 4 gigahertz. In July, the chip maker said it would miss its year-end deadline on the part.

Intel could not produce the chip in high enough volumes without additional engineering resources, which it determined would be better spent on a new line of chips to be introduced next year, Mulloy said.

"It's not an easy decision to walk away from four gigahertz because we had a public position, but in our view for Intel and for our customers it's the right decision," Mulloy said.

The product cancellation adds to an already bumpy year for Intel, which delayed a new line of notebook computer chips in January, recalled a desktop computer chip in June and pushed back another notebook chip in July.

Chief Executive Craig Barrett sent a stern memo to Intel's 80,000 employees in July after the setbacks -- weeks before another delay, of a chip for rear-projection televisions.

Cranking up the speed of its Pentium 4 chips to four gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second, has been an elusive goal for Intel. When the latest rendition of the Pentium 4 was introduced in February, Intel said it would reach the 4 gigahertz speed by the end of the year.

In July, citing concerns about having enough supply to meet customer demand, Intel delayed plans for four gigahertz until the end of March 2005. Thursday's announcement puts an end to the goal entirely, at least for the current generation of processors.

The chip industry's own technologists have long predicted engineers would face bigger and bigger hurdles as they cranked up chip speeds. Intel Chief Technology Officer Patrick Gelsinger has famously said that without a fundamental change in chip design, within a decade PC chips operating at much higher speeds would become as hot as the surface of the sun.

Shares of Intel fell 48 cents to $20.51 on Nasdaq.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6506690














Until next week,

- js.














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