Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 6th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week

"Both common sense and the 1st Amendment dictate that a trade secret that isn't secret anymore just isn't protectable." – Alan Levy, attorney.

"Once labels figure out how to deal with the new realities, I suspect there will be more gain than harm." Geoff Mayfield, Billboard Magazine.





Hold Everything

News of a little item with some seriously big potential came across my desk this week. It was one of those moments in information technology that’s both ho hum and holy smokes at the same time. I read a press release about a new hard drive. Nothing groundbreaking there at first glance. As we all know, drive capacities keep getting larger. It’s not uncommon now to see computers for sale with 120 gigabyte hard drives offered on routine systems. Retailers sell many drives with capacities of 250, even 300 gigabytes. Though these sizes would have been unheard of a few years ago, like everything else, we’ve grown accustomed to the achievements and for the most part take them for granted. We may think “wow that’s cool” for a second or two, but then move our attention elsewhere to something really important, like what’s for dinner. Well something happened recently that should give us all pause, consumers, producers, artists, listeners, legislators, actors and activists. It’s food for thought and should be for longer than it takes the food to cool. For the first time ever a company has released an outboard consumer hard drive capable of holding a Terabyte of data. That’s one thousand gigabytes. While the price is a bit on the high side, at $1199.00/list it’s competitive with lower capacity discs in a standard 5 ¼ inch package on a cost per gigabyte basis ($1.20). For those into person-to-person drive-sharing (P2P Live) it’s an inspiring development. For instance, this drive will hold 1000 movies ripped at an excellent 1 gig per film, or 500 ripped at a fat 2 gigs, which movie downloaders know means seriously high quality picture and sound. Or you can put one hundred and eighty thousand songs on it using excellent 192k OGG, MP3, ACC and WMA encodes. That’s about 15,000 CD quality albums by the way, in something smaller than a VHS videotape. Or - and you readers will love this - it can hold ONE MILLION BOOKS. The U.S. Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It contains one quarter of all the known books in the world. It’s been said that a person can’t read in a lifetime the books the Library receives in a single day and I don’t doubt it. Impossible or not, the Library has an awful lot of them, but even so it’s “only” 26 million volumes in all. We can now put every one of them on just 26 drives taking up space the size of a suitcase. We can do this today. Not in ten years. Not in a year. Today. Next year, we’ll do it in a space nearly half that size. The year after will see the space shrink even more.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a drive that would “hold it all”. I’m calling it the “UltraDrive.” My definition of the UltraDrive is simple: It holds everything you want. You can’t put anything else in it because there isn’t anything left, you’ve already transferred every possible bit of info there is to load. Every book, every movie, every sound recording, TV and radio show, magazine, newspaper, piece of software, journal article, photograph - anything in other words you could possibly want that you could think of that’s reducible to ones and zeros. Family pictures, home movies, all of your phone messages, Valentine’s day cards, the kids’ school lunch menus, scrap book items, medical texts, your social club’s minutes, emails, recordings, scanned letters, bills, receipts, proclamations, traffic citations, cereal box labels, Bazooka Joe comics, illuminated manuscripts - you name it - in other words the sum total of all the word’s desired knowledge and information - with all of your own fleeting minutiae tossed in for good measure. All of these things and more preserved forever, archived and instantly accessible regardless of bandwidth or circumstance.

Remember those unimaginably endless stacks of shelves fading foggily into the infinite in the last scenes of Raiders of The Lost Arc? That government warehouse couldn’t hold a tenth of what an UltraDrive will. Get ready, the infinite is fast approaching. We now have something very similar, but very real. A much more attainable and matter-of-fact example of how information technology is changing the balance of power again. The space required for an UltraDrive is probably on the order of one Petabyte. Perhaps less. Certainly not more. That’s one thousand terabytes, or 1000 of these new discs. If you just wanted all the movies, all the music and all the books plus all of your own personal stuff then 400 discs would do the job with room to spare. That’s it. Throw in a few more drives to accommodate future collecting for good measure and you’re covered all the way around. They’ll easily fit in your average sized room and for less than the cost of the average sized East Coast house. You can do this in April when the drive ships. In a year the price, and the size, could drop in half. By the end of the decade it would not surprise me to see the same capacity contained in as little as half a dozen such discs or less, with the holy grail of the UltraDrive tantalizingly close.

As I said a few weeks ago, when that day arrives we will break the ties that bind us to the world’s media monopolists.

All it will take is a walk around the block, UltraDrive in hand, sharing what we have with the neighbors. In a moment or two we will all of us be equal in possessions, rich in arts and information. The bonus? As we’re beginning to see, much of it will be made ourselves.












Enjoy,

Jack












Half of US Internet Users Post Content

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly half of U.S. Internet users have built Web pages, posted photos, written comments or otherwise added to the enormous variety of material available online, according to a report.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that about 44 percent of the country's Internet users have created content for others to enjoy online.

Posting photos and allowing others to download music or video files were the most popular activities, the nonprofit research group found. Other users said they posted written material on Web sites or newsgroups, created their own Web sites, or set up "Web cams" to allow others to see live pictures.

While only 2 percent of U.S. Internet users said they had created "blogs," or online diaries, 11 percent said they read the blogs of others.

Younger Internet users were most likely to set up blogs, the report said, while older users were more likely to have built their own Web sites. Most who maintained Web sites said they did not update them more than once every few weeks.

The group based its report on a survey of 2,515 adults conducted in March and April 2003.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040229/80/enaja.html

Report PDF


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

U.S. Takes Side Of Recording Industry In Charter Case
Peter Shinkle

The administration of President George W. Bush has entered the fray about music copying, siding with the recording industry in its efforts to force Internet service providers to release information about suspected copyright violators.

The Justice Department filed papers in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, arguing that federal law permits record companies to use subpoenas to obtain such information.

The department's "friend of the court" brief, filed last month, supports arguments made by the Recording Industry Association of America against Charter Communications Inc. of Town and Country, a cable operator and Internet service provider. Charter is asking the Court of Appeals to block the recording industry's subpoenas.

Meanwhile, 22 groups that oppose the industry's subpoenas - including privacy-rights groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union - have filed "friend of the court" pleadings that support Charter.

In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in a case brought by telecommunications giant Verizon that federal law doesn't permit RIAA to use such subpoenas.

While RIAA seeks a rehearing in that court, the focus of the legal dispute has shifted, at least temporarily, to the Charter case in the Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

In its campaign, the RIAA has relied on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to ask courts for subpoenas requiring Internet service providers such as Charter to surrender identifying information about suspected music downloaders, who then could be sued.

Last year, the RIAA used the law to subpoena information about hundreds of Charter customers without filing a lawsuit to make any formal claims against Charter.

Charter challenged the RIAA's actions, alleging the Digital Millennium Copyright Act unconstitutionally invades its customers' privacy. Charter also claims that the law allows RIAA to subpoena information only from companies that store digital information, not companies that, like Charter, primarily are conduits.

U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson dismissed Charter's objections in November, and Charter appealed to the 8th Circuit.

After Jackson ruled, Charter provided identifying information on about 200 of its customers. As part of its appeal, however, Charter wants that information returned.

The Justice Department, joined by the Copyright Office, contend in their friend-of-the-court brief that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies to conduits.

Giving Internet service providers immunity from subpoenas would undermine the law's purpose of protecting copyright holders, the government's lawyers contended.

In passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Congress freed Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations, but required in exchange that they provide information about suspected infringers, the lawyers said.

The groups backing Charter say the cable operator's customers have a right to anonymity that is protected by the First Amendment.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/bus...256E4B0021DA6E


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

Advocacy Groups Look To Protect File Swappers

Music industry seen as threat to privacy rights
The Canadian Press

Two online advocacy groups will put Canadian copyright and privacy laws to the test in a hearing later this month where the Canadian music industry will try to force Internet service providers to turn over customer information.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic and Electronic Frontier Canada have asked Judge Konrad von Finckenstein to include them in a case involving the Canadian Recording Industry Association and Canadian ISPs such as Rogers Cable, Telus Corp. and Shaw Cable.

The judge will allow the groups to make submissions on four points, including due process rights and Canadian copyright laws.

Howard Knopf, an Ottawa lawyer at Macera & Jarzyna, which is representing the CIPPIC, said the organization decided to become involved because it feared the privacy rights of Internet users could be violated.

"The focus of our submission is that it is now or never for the defendants," said Knopf. "I cannot conceive of how a person could defend themselves against multibillion-dollar recording companies. It would be unimaginatively costly to get to trial in order for someone to establish their innocence."

CRIA, which represents Canada's music industry, has gone to court in an attempt to gain access to the names of Internet users they allege have violated copyrights by uploading music files. CRIA claims the free transfer of music files has cost the industry about $400 million.

At a hearing last month, Canadian Internet companies said they needed time to notify their customers and address privacy issues. A further hearing is scheduled for March 12.

More than 500 lawsuits launched in the U.S. against file swappers over the past year typically resulted in settlements of between $1,000 US and $2,000 US.

Philippa Lawson, executive director of CIPPIC, said her organization will raise issues about the legality of file sharing and whether Canadian laws are being violated.
http://www.canada.com/technology/sto...1-E107F9D47F07


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

Napster Founder Pulls A Sno Job
CMJ

The music business and the internet have become just like pro wrestling where bad guys turn good and good guys turn bad. Sean Fanning, the upstart who record labels cursed last millennium for creating Napster, the once extremely un-legal now legal file-sharing service, is being praised for the focus of his new project. Fanning and partners have been stealthily tooling away at a service called Snocap, which is aimed at deterring piracy by allowing labels to see where, when and how their copyrighted files are being traded
http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_....php?id=545489


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

P2P In License Plea To Congress
Grant Gross

Peer-to-peer (P2P) software vendors have asked the US Congress to force the entertainment industry to license content to them, if music and movie companies won't do so voluntarily.

P2P industry representatives also asked the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to put copy protection on music CDs and to ask hardware vendors to include copy protection measures on their products instead of suing file traders and P2P vendors. But a RIAA vice president fired back during a P2P forum yesterday, saying vendors need to take responsibility for their software facilitating unauthorized file trading. The RIAA and P2P vendors debated the legitimacy of P2P services at a Council on Competitiveness forum in Washington.

"It's everybody's responsibility except you guys to do something," said David Sutphen, the RIAA's vice president for government relations, in response to the suggest that RIAA members copy-protect CDs.

"It's our responsibility to protect our stuff by putting a DRM (digital rights management) on it, it's IT's responsibly to put something in their software, it's (consumer electronics companies') responsibility to put something in devices, but you guys don't have any responsibility. I just think that's fundamentally wrong."

Sutphen was responding to a question from Philip Corwin, a lobbyist for Kazaa distributor Sharman Networks, who asked why the RIAA was suing P2P distributors and asking them to filter content traded by people using their software when the RIAA wasn't pressuring computer makers to include copy protection technologies and RIAA companies were still distributing CDs without copy protection installed.

While Sutphen called for P2P providers to filter out copyrighted content, Adam Eisgrau, executive director of the P2P United coalition of P2P vendors, and Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher at LURHQ Corp., questioned if content filtering would work on decentralized P2P networks. File traders could encrypt music files to defeat filtering technology, Stewart said, leading to a technological "arms race."

Instead of filtering, Eisgrau called for a collective licensing agreement between music companies and P2P vendors with an agreed price paid to musicians for each song traded. A licensing agreement would work in much the same way that artists get paid for music played on the radio, Eisgrau said, and Congress could step in if music companies don't agree on their own. Several examples of compulsory licensing of copyrighted content already exist, including royalties for webcasting music, Eisgrau said.

"The idea that voluntary or compulsory collected licensing is somehow an alien concept, that it's a politically dead-on-arrival issue, is not only unjustifiable, it's a dangerous idea," Eisgrau added.

Several problems exist with compulsory licenses, Sutphen replied. Compulsory licenses wouldn't guarantee P2P users would stop downloading free music, and a US-only compulsory license would force US residents to subsidize free downloading overseas, he said. "A much better solution is a technology solution to a technology problem," he said, while calling for P2P vendors to filter content.

If P2P vendors were serious about stopping the trading of copyrighted files, they would consider filtering technologies, Sutphen added. "If P2P United's members wanted to become legitimate music download services, they could tomorrow," he said. "They've all been running businesses for the last four years that have done nothing to get artists recompensed."

Eisgrau also objected to past attempts by some in Congress and the RIAA to paint P2P networks as full of pornography, including child pornography, when the Internet as a whole also has the same problems.

"When we talk about P2P policy and all the good things and the bad things it can be used for, what we're really talking about is what can the Internet do?" he said. "When we're talking about regulating peer-to-peer, what we're really talking about, if we want to be consistent and honest about it at all, is regulating the Internet much more broadly."

BSenator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican and co-chairman of Council on Competitiveness' Forum on Innovation and Technology, said legitimate concerns exist about spyware, viruses and pornography distributed over P2P services. Pornography is "rampant" on P2P services, but he agreed with Eisgrau that it's all over the Web as well.

"Let's not kid ourselves, pornography is the driving force of the Internet," Ensign said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=8026


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

P2P Makes its Business Case
Jim Wagner

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology is slowly finding its way back into corporate networks. But instead of being used to download the latest Britney Spears single or pirated DVD, it's zipping bulky data and rich-media files on the cheap.

In its purest sense, P2P is the transfer of data files from one Internet- or LAN-connected computer to another, bypassing the centralized server and treating each "peer" equally. This is atypical of the normal client-server setup of most business networks.

Software development firms are pitching businesses on the value of P2P. One is Onion Networks, a P2P content delivery software maker. Onion says its products provide 70 percent to 80 percent savings for video-on-demand (VOD) delivery over current multi-casting and caching server technology.

"There are obviously significant efficiency benefits," founder Justin Chapweske told internetnews.com. "If you look at Napster and the bandwidth costs when that first came out, some analysts said they were saving something like $7 million a month on the cost it would take to distribute that much content (traditionally)."

Unfortunately for Napster, it was doomed when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the courts restricted illegal file transfers. Not quite P2P, Napster's central database was the linchpin of the operation, where users conducted the actual search for music files at the firm's database.

Since then, scores of P2P applications have popped up -- Gnutella, KaZaa, BearShare and LimeWire, to name a few. This new generation doesn't rely on a central server, instead the software on a users PC acts as both client and server, broadcasting and collecting files.

Ironically, the business case is modeled on the Napster template, where there's some measure of centralized control. It's often confused with another shared resource technology -- grid, or utility, computing (define), which takes unused computing cycles and bandwidth and puts them in places that need the assets. Like Napster, however, a central server directs traffic.

Mike Gotta, a META Group analyst, said P2P goes beyond the mere collaboration that is found in many software products today, where co-workers send project updates via e-mail or through a corporate portal. The danger, however, is taking P2P too far within a company that has to adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley and other reporting requirements.

"The question is how much of that pure interaction needs to have some touch-point with centralized servers," Gotta said. "I just haven't seen any groundswell for pure P2P without some centralized touch-point."

It's hard to keep track of the money trail, from a network administrator's point of view, when people in the network aren't using a central server. But how can you have ad hoc computing if it still needs to go through a central server? It's a question that needs an answer before businesses will pick up the technology en masse.

Mike Ellsworth, an emerging technologies consultant with StratVantage, said there's middle ground to be found between decentralized and centralized networks.

"I think the real key is, it's a different way of approaching machine communications," he said. "Instead of having a gatekeeper that has to modulate all the classic stuff like a Web server, you can harness all this power and get a best-effort thing and have it be just as reliable."

Onion Networks' Chapweske thinks he's on the right track with P2P technology that gives customers the speed efficiencies of P2P combined with a comprehensive central command component.

While a pure P2P brings benefits, vendors must look at the needs of the customers. When pitching his product to potential customers, he doesn't mention the technology but his product, and invariably gets the response, "oh, that's P2P."

It's a response software vendors have to deal with, but Chapweske said focusing on the centralized server component of the technology reassures customers.

"In the sense of the administration and control aspects, our technology is very much centralized," he said. "We understand and leverage the benefits of P2P while avoiding the negative aspects of it. That's the most important thing for the business environment."
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news...le.php/3319021


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

That's the Weather, and Now, Let's Go to the Cellphone for the Traffic
John Markoff

The peer-to-peer world of the Internet is taking a step onto the nation's freeways in a cellphone application that aims to offer up-to- the-second traffic information.

Until now peer-to-peer networks have conjured up file-sharing systems like Napster and Kazaa or social networking organizations like Friendster, Orkut and Linked-in.

But Zipdash, a start-up in Palo Alto, Calif., hopes to take advantage of the growing number of mobile telephones with global positioning satellite receivers to gather the travel speeds of thousands or tens of thousands of drivers, displaying highway conditions as maps on cellphone screens.

The Zipdash application displays a map of traffic speeds as green, yellow and red arrows, graphically representing traffic jams and bottlenecks. The company plans to add features, including route planning and accident alerts. The service will be free to cellphone users and Zipdash is planning to create a business by selling accurate traffic information to Web sites and other publishers.

The system is available in the Bay Area and is expected to be extended nationally in the coming months.

"The demand for traffic data is very real," said Rich Miller, a wireless industry consultant at Breo Consulting in Palo Alto. "The guys who crack the code are going to make a lot of money eventually, but a lot of people will be working on this idea."

Currently in many states, highway departments offer some traffic information drawn from sensor networks embedded in freeways that report speeds and fixed cameras that monitor different choke points. By contrast, the Zipdash system uses both traffic data gathered from individual travelers as well as additional information from taxi and trucking and shuttle fleets. That allows a much finer picture of traffic patterns than what is available with sensor data.

The company said the new system did not raise privacy issues because no data about individuals was gathered from the wireless carriers, only location, direction and speed information.

The G.P.S. receivers are being added to cellphones in response to regulations issued by the Federal Communications Commission requiring wireless carriers to provide location information accurate to within 50 to 100 meters.

Nextel is the first major cellphone service provider to make commercial applications like Zipdash's available. Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carrier, plans to begin offering commercial location information capabilities later this year.

Zipdash is the brainchild of three entrepreneurs with backgrounds in a variety of Silicon Valley start-ups and technology firms.

Two, Mark Crady and Michael Chu, are electrical engineers who have worked at Intel and Palm and have consulted for wireless carriers. The third, Diprenda Nigram, has been a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton and worked at AOL in business development.

The initial Zipdash idea was sparked by the possibility of using the wireless Internet to make travel more efficient in terms of time and energy, said Mr. Crady, who is the nephew of Andrew S. Grove, Intel's chairman and co-founder.

Having precise information, Mr. Crady said, about traffic conditions on freeways changes the entire experience of driving in crowded urban areas.

"Maybe I have more traffic angst than the next guy," he said, "but I think this information is a real value.''

The system is one of the first examples of wireless location-specific information. Using cellphones to deliver information and advertising to users in specific locations has long been seen by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs as one of the areas ripe for commercial development. But it has been slow to develop because of concerns about privacy and the ownership of information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/technology/01zip.html


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

Americans Love File Sharing
p2pnet.net

More than 53 million American adults - 44% of Internet users - have gone online to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available, says a new report.

And 21% allow others to download files from their computer, including music and video files.

"Surprisingly, Content Creators are less likely to say they download music than other Internet users," say the results of a national phone survey conducted between March 12 and May 20 last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

"And ... two-thirds of these filesharers do not care about the copyright status of the files they share."

The most eager and productive content creators break into three distinct groups, says Pew.

Power creators - Internet users who are most enthusiastic about content-creating activities. They're young - average age 25 - and more likely than other kinds of creators do things like use instant messaging, play games, and download music. And they are the most likely group to be blogging.

Older creators - have an average age of 58 and are experienced Internet users. They're highly educated, like sharing pictures and are the most likely of the creator groups to have built their own Web sites. They're also the most likely to have used the Internet for genealogical research.

Content omnivores - are among the heaviest overall users of the Internet. Most are employed. Most log on frequently and spend considerable time online doing a variety of activities. They're likely to have broadband connections at home. The average age of this group is 40.

Breakdowns include:

· 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
· 20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers.
· 17% have posted written material on Web sites.
· 13% maintain their own Web sites.
· 10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them have posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
· 8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
· 7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they belong such as church or professional groups.
· 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
· 6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
· 5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
· 4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
· 3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
· 2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey.

In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog.

"Most of those who do contribute material are not constantly updating or freshening content," adds the survey.

"Rather, they occasionally add to the material they have posted, created, or shared. For instance, more than two thirds of those who have their own Web sites add new content only every few weeks or less often than that. There is a similar story related to the small proportion of Americans who have blogs."
http://p2pnet.net/story/872


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

File Sharing Vulnerability Discovered in Mac OS X
Daniel Drew Turner

A security issue that could result in stolen passwords and data on Friday was revealed for Apple Computer Inc.'s Apple Filing Protocol, a component of Mac OS X 10.3.2, a k a Panther. The file protocol allows Macintosh users to access files on remote systems.

An alert on the vulnerability was posted to the Security Focus BUGTRAQ Alert Service.

In Mac OS X 10.2, Apple updated Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) to permit secure connections over SSH (Secure Shell) protocol. However, Chris Adams, a system administrator in San Diego, Calif., noted that while users could request secure connections, the system will not issue any alert or indication if an SSH connection is unavailable and then defaults to a non-secure connection. He noted that the only indication was a negative one—users must be aware that an alert "Opening Secure Connection" did not appear.

According to Adams, this could result in users sending unencrypted passwords over an insecure connection.

"Login credentials may be sent in cleartext or protected with one of several different hashed exchanges or Kerberos. There does not appear to have been any serious third-party security review of Apple's client or server implementations," Adams wrote in his report on the vulnerability.

Speaking with eWEEK.com, Adams said that any such activity would only come as the result of an active attack. "OS X does warn you before using unencrypted passwords and AFP does prevent passive password collection by encrypting the log-in process to protect the password on its way to the server. This problem allows you to trick it into sending the unencrypted password to you instead of the intended server," he said.

Adams pointed out that this sort of problem was not unique to Mac OS X.

"As with Microsoft's Windows file sharing, AFP was designed for trusted LANs and some of the basic assumptions change when these systems are placed on the public Internet. Users on a secured LAN face relatively little risk; the most exposed are those using AFP over the Internet without a VPN," he said.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1540557,00.asp


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

On campus, fears grow about file-sharing.

Hoax Shuts Down Popular Program, Feeds Paranoia About Downloading
Justin Fenton

On the University of Maryland campus in College Park this month, senior Pavel Beresnev was a hunted man.

Threats and hate mail came his way. Fliers were posted in dining halls and traded online listing his address, phone number, e-mail address and Instant Messenger screen

name, along with a clear message: "Can't get on Direct Connect? Say thanks to Pavel Beresnev."

Students hoping to download a catchy song they heard on the way to campus were caught by surprise earlier this month when their link to Direct Connect, a popular online file-sharing program, was suddenly shut down. More alarming was the explanation they heard for why that had happened: Beresnev, one of their own, had turned them in for violating copyright laws.

Students were shocked - and angry. Why would Beresnev - who himself was trading a huge number of files daily on Direct Connect, a program that allows users to easily share everything from the latest music to class notes - alert authorities ready to prosecute students for downloading copyrighted material?

The truth is, he didn't.

Beresnev would not comment directly for this article. But he told friends that, as a prank, he'd sent out a fake e-mail indicating he'd tipped off authorities at the Recording Industry Association of America, which offers up to $10,000 for such information. Spooked by the e-mail, the student who had been operating the College Park Direct Connect site shut it down.

In the days since the mid-February incident, the phony tipster has recanted, and Direct Connect is up and running again on campus. But the reaction to the hoax reveals just how strongly students feel about their ability to download material off the Internet - and the fears they have about the increasingly tough stance being taken both by copyright holders and colleges and universities.

"It's just becoming too dangerous - people are getting scared," said Adam Kidwell, a junior meteorology major from Bethesda who was recently served with a warning from campus officials for obtaining copyrighted software online. "I thought everybody else was doing it, it's not that big of a deal. But when the [Direct Connect] network went down, that's when I got cautious. It made me think twice about what I'm going to be doing on my computer."

Protection is limited

Less than a week before the Direct Connect shutdown, university Provost William W. Destler and Chief Information Officer Mark Henderson had sent an e-mail to all Maryland students, staff and faculty warning of the increasing risks associated with file-sharing.

Back in December, administrators had installed software on university computer systems to restrict how many of the most commonly swapped file types could be accessed, something Destler says has shown "remarkable results" in a short period of time.

"What we want to do is communicate with students the risk they put themselves in with this sort of file downloading, and make it as difficult as possible to [do that]," he said.

The university does not prowl the Internet in search of file swappers; instead, an office it has set up called Project NEThics fields complaints from movie, music and software companies and passes along warnings to offenders. If those offenders don't delete illicit files by the next day, they risk having their access to the school's network cut off.

Once a copyright holder decides to pursue legal action, though, the university will not protect the student, Destler said.

"Once you begin to assume any responsibility like that, you're responsible for assuring [that] the behavior of all students is appropriate, and we simply can't do that," he said.

Project NEThics, which operates out of the university's Office of Information Technology, follows up every complaint, and no student has faced legal action yet. But the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the music industry, sent a message to college students nationwide last April when it sued four of them for operating private computer networks that are used to swap popular music files.

'Not anonymous'

The students - from Princeton, Rensselaer and Michigan Tech - were alleged to be offering users access to between 27,000 and 1 million copyrighted songs. The RIAA sought judgments of $150,000 per song, which could have equaled $150 billion in penalties for the worst offender. All the defendants settled their cases, however, paying between $12,000 and $17,000 in fines.

Over the past two months, the RIAA has filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against anonymous "John Doe" defendants - alleged violators identified only by their IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. A judge then orders those users' Internet service providers to turn over their names to the RIAA. Among those that the organization has prosecuted are a 12-year-old girl and a grandmother.

"No matter whether it's using an intra-school connection or a peer-to-peer network, file sharers should understand that they're not anonymous," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said from his office in Washington. "When you are sharing music files with thousands or millions of other people on a public network, you can be identified."

As a result, some schools are moving away from education and prevention and turning to legal alternatives - such as Napster II, a file-sharing site which provides free access to a database of 500,000 songs that can be downloaded for 99 cents each. Penn State was the first to sign on to the service last fall; the University of Rochester followed this month. Provost Destler said College Park has set up a task force to look into the benefits of joining such a program.

Junior Joe Barrett, though, maintains the legitimacy of Direct Connect, online software that that be downloaded to allow people with similar interests to group themselves into so-called "hubs," where they can search other users' files and transfer data at very fast speeds.

It was Barrett's Direct Connect hub that was serving the College Park community when Beresnev's hoax caused him to shut it down. On the hub, users traded songs and movies, but also class notes and digital pictures, and had access to a chat room.

"Sharing files is what makes the community so great. People come to the hub to catch up on an episode of their favorite show that they couldn't be home for," Barrett wrote in a posting on an online message board. "Interest groups such as the RIAA would have file-sharing stop altogether, but we urge people to learn which of their files are copywritten, and make their best effort to share those which are not."

New hubs launched

Despite all the clamor and angry threats - which caused Beresnev to file an assault complaint with university police - Direct Connect is now back up and running on campus. At least three have students launched new hubs; one had attracted nearly 650 users in just a few days. Beresnev himself appears to be among the new users.

Amy Ginther, a policy and development coordinator for Project NEThics, says the Direct Connect program itself is not in violation of any campus policies.

"That a technology or software mechanism is operating on campus isn't significant unless it is violating a policy," she said.

Oxen Wexler, a junior from Hyattsville, believes file-sharing will continue, but that students need to be more careful.

"I don't think it's going to affect more regular, avid users of file-sharing software as much, but I think it is more than just a blip on the radar screen," Wexler said.

The RIAA's Lamy acknowledges as much.

"It's not a transition that's going to occur overnight, but we're making real progress."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/technolo...logy-headlines


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

Who Owns the Sky?

Reviving the Commons
David Bollier

Former Interior Secretary Walter Hickel once explained: “If you steal $10 from a man’s wallet, you’re likely to get into a fight. But if you steal billions from the commons, co-owned by him and his descendants, he may not even notice.”

Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has so much public wealth been shoveled into private hands with such brazen efficiency. Timber companies, corporate ranchers and foreign mining companies with cheap access to public lands are plundering our national patrimony. Congress obligingly turns a blind eye to the accompanying pollution, soil depletion and habitat destruction. Companies are rushing to patent our genes, privatize agricultural seeds and stake private claims on plots of the ocean. Broadcasters— who for decades enjoyed free use of the public’s airwaves, a subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars—are attempting to exploit an equivalent amount of electromagnetic spectrum for digital TV. We the taxpayers pay billions of dollars to sponsor risky path- breaking federal drug research, research that too often is given away to pharmaceutical companies for a song. Then we pay a second time—as consumers, at exorbitant prices— for the same drugs.

And so on.

The privatization of public resources is not a new story, to be sure, but the current rapacity is truly stunning. Much of the immediate blame must go to the Bush administration, which has rewarded corporate contributors with one of the most sweeping waves of privatization and deregulation in our history. But while Republicans are the most aggressive cheerleaders for privatization, many Democrats equally enthuse about the “free market” as an engine of progress and deride strong government stewardship of resources.

This bipartisan support is why fighting privatization is so difficult. American political culture has a strong faith in the efficacy of markets and skepticism in the competence of government. Critics bravely cite individual episodes of privatization gone bad, but there is no compelling philosophical response or alternative grand narrative to the logic of privatization.

A new framework rises

An embryonic force to counter the push to privatize is gaining momentum, however: the concept of “the commons.” The language is still rudimentary and people who rely upon the country’s multiple commons have not yet built a shared philosophy, but even so a remarkably broad groundswell of activism is emerging.

The commons describes the many resources we collectively own that are being mismanaged by government or siphoned away by corporations. Some commons are physical assets, such as the global atmosphere, ecosystems, clean water, wildlife and the human genome. Some commons are public institutions such as libraries, museums, schools and government agencies. Still other commons are social communities, such as the “gift economies” of people who contribute their time and expertise to create valuable resources. Examples include scientific disciplines and Internet communities, both of which depend on the open exchange of information.

The point of talking about the commons is to reassert a basic truth: Power does not reside in government and markets alone. It also belongs to “we the people.” This is not just a rhetorical point. The commons has its own moral authority, social effectiveness and political power—which is why leaders of government and corporations routinely invoke the concept. Power in a democracy must constantly justify its moral and political legitimacy by associating itself with “the people.”
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=631_0_1_0_C


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

DSL Catches Global Attention
Jack Kapica

Competition between cable companies and digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet providers kicked up another notch Tuesday with the DSL side claiming a more than 78 per cent growth in global subscriptions in late 2003.

Some 63.8 million people around the world are now connected to the Internet via DSL, reports DSL Forum, based in Fremont, Calif., a consortium of companies promoting use of the standard. The figures show that DSL attracted 28 million new subscribers during that year.

The study was prepared Point Topic, an on-line analyst company specializing in broadband usage, for the DSL Forum.

DSL Forum president Tom Starr said that the 16.9-per-cent growth in the last three months of 2003 — nine million additional customers — "is a level of performance any other sector would have been glad to achieve in a full year. Our DSL market delivered that in just three months."

U.S. DSL growth in the last six months of 2003 resulted in 1.9 million homes and businesses signing up. Canada had more than 440,000 new DSL subscribers in the year, making it the eleventh-largest growth country in the world in DSL.

In terms of penetration, South Korea, with 27.7 DSL connections per 100 phone lines, led the world. Next was Taiwan, with 21.4 connections per 100 phone lines, Japan with 14.4, and Canada with 10.9. The United States has 4.8 DSL connections per 100 phone lines.

In total connections, China ranked first in the world in DSL connections, with more than 10.9 million subscribers, followed closely by Japan, with 10.2 million and the United States, with 9.1 million. Canada was in ninth place, with 2.1-million subscribers.

Tim Johnson, an analyst with Point Topic, said that his own prediction for 2003 was exceeded by almost two-million subscribers.

"China is storming ahead and now has the largest DSL population in the world at 10.95 million, even excluding Hong Kong," he said.

At a 10.9-per-cent penetration of phone lines, DSL services in Canada are halfway to the DSL Forum's mass-market target of 20 per cent by year- end 2005. The United States reached almost 5 per cent phone-line penetration at the end of 2003.

"We are confident that the industry is well on the way to achieving the DSL Forum's global target of 200-million DSL subscribers — 20 per cent of all phone lines — by the end of 2005," Mr. Starr said.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/


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

Cinergy to Use Power Lines for Web Access
AP

A division of utility Cinergy Corp. plans to offer high-speed Internet service over its power lines, letting customers connect by simply plugging a computer modem into existing electrical outlets.

The idea of broadband service over power lines, or BPL, has been around for some time, but this appears to be the first large-scale rollout of the technology by a major utility.

"There have been several utilities working on this quietly and doing pilot programs," said Alan Shark, president of the Power Line Communications Assn., an industry trade group.

"Everyone has been very cautious in deploying this technology, but I think the demand will be incredible."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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

Web Sites Focus On Managing Consumers' Photos
Jefferson Graham

With consumers expected to snap up nearly 60 million digital cameras this year, Web sites that help shutterbugs share their photos electronically are proliferating.

For the past few years, the dominant places to store and share pictures have been sites set up to sell reprints, such as Kodak's Ofoto and independents Webshots and Shutterfly. Webshots drew 32 million registered users in January — 10 million more than a year ago — making it the top visited photo site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Newer entrants such as Smugmug and PhotoSite charge for usage (from $29.99 to $99.99 yearly, depending on the plan). They don't carry advertising, and they offer more options for presenting images. Users get personalized Web addresses, like john.smugmug.com or mary.photosite.com. The companies say that adds a degree of privacy for users.

At Smugmug, users also can download pictures at full resolution to print at home. You can't do that now at Ofoto, although that will change later this year.

John Pettitt, staff photographer for former Vermont governor Howard Dean's failed presidential bid, was posting pictures daily on Ofoto, but switched to Smugmug because he could design the page the way he wanted it.

Smugmug, which started last year, has 7,000 subscribers paying an average $60 yearly. "We're growing slowly, but steadily," founder Chris MacAskill says.

New programs also are emerging to help consumers send photos to other PCs faster.

Most digital shutterbugs now share pictures by attaching them to e-mail. But photo files are huge and getting bigger all the time, as new cameras have greater resolution. Sending them can be time- consuming, and many recipients don't like getting photo e-mail because it clogs their in-box.

Some firms are copying the music-swap model, connecting PCs in a Napster-like way to zap pictures from computer to computer.

With the click of a button, software programs such as Adobe Photoshop Elements or Picasa can resize a photo to make receiving it less cumbersome.

Sharing sites like Ofoto say they have the answer to photo-sharing hassles in a Web-based site that sends simple links in e-mails to friends and family. Users can easily navigate to the images.

But transferring a large collection to the Web can take up to an hour or more. And that's with a high-speed connection.

With Picasa's software add-on Hello and a fast connection, 10 pictures a minute can be sent directly to another PC. "That would be impossible to do in an e-mail," says Lars Perkins, CEO of the Pasadena, Calif., firm.

Hello uses the same technology that made Napster a household word: peer-to-peer. Images are transmitted in an instant-message-like chat window, where users can also discuss what they're seeing. To participate, you need to download the program and get friends and family to do the same.

Once Hello is up and running, users can simulate the experience of looking at a photo album around a coffee table, instead of a static view on a Web page. "I send off pictures to my mom. I'd like to know what she thinks," Perkins says. "In the chat window, we can have a conversation and look at the same time."

Since it began operating last fall, Hello has attracted 175,000 users.

Technology like Hello "makes perfect sense for photography," says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, which measures peer-to-peer traffic for music companies. "It removes bottlenecks and distributes content in an elegant way."

Other new peer-to-peer photo programs are:

• MSN Premium, a $10 monthly subscription that Microsoft updated in January. It has a "Photo Swap" feature within the MSN Messenger IM program to send and discuss pictures.

• ShareALot, free for now. It transmits pictures from PC to PC, sending the images into specially selected folders.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguid...otoshare_x.htm


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

Netflix's DVD Rental Pioneer Has A Blockbuster Plan
Michael Liedtke



AP photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez


It would be easy to cast Netflix founder Reed Hastings as simply a dot-com rebel whose online DVD subscription service empowers consumers by letting them keep video rentals indefinitely without facing late fees.

But Hastings, a former Peace Corps volunteer who once taught math in Swaziland, says he is pursuing a far nobler cause.

Hastings sees himself as a DVD evangelist, with Netflix a bully pulpit for his mission to deepen the world's passion for movies and find an audience for every film.

"I would like Netflix to transform the movie business," Hastings says without the slightest trace of bombast. "We want to become a Top 10 media company."

It sounds like a like a far-fetched ambition for an industry upstart that started this year with a 3% share of the $9.9 billion video rental market, and stiffer competition from retail giants Blockbuster Entertainment and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. looming ahead.

Hastings, 43, isn't backing down, perhaps because he has already defied conventional thinking.

"He's the kind of guy you would back in a heartbeat because he is such a brilliant strategic thinker," said Jay Hoag, whose venture capital firm, Technology Crossover Ventures, was among Netflix's early backers.

Skepticism has been shadowing Hastings since his 1999 launch of Netflix, which charges an all-you-can-watch monthly fee of $19.95 to receive up to three DVDs at a time through the mail.

Critics quickly panned Hastings' smorgasbord approach as another dot-com blunder. The service instead struck a nerve with tech-savvy movie lovers fed up with video late fees — a cash cow that industry leader Blockbuster Entertainment milked for about 15% of its revenue before Netflix came along.

Now Los Gatos-based Netflix is thriving, its audience rapidly approaching 2 million subscribers as the service attracts about 125,000 new customers each month, helped by software that personalizes movie recommendations based on customers' viewing histories and their feedback on films they've seen.

The company's accelerating growth has helped its stock more than quadruple in less than two years despite persistent doubts about Netflix's ability to survive tougher competition and a long-anticipated shift to video-on-demand.

Meanwhile, consumers are renting fewer movies from Blockbuster, a trend that recently prompted majority owner Viacom Inc. to seek a buyer for its 81% stake in the 8,900-store video rental chain.

Even before Netflix, Hastings established himself as a shrewd entrepreneur.

In the early 1990s, he started a business software maker, Pure Atria, that he wound up selling to Rational Software for $752 million in stock. Hastings then came up with the idea for Netflix when he returned a rented copy of the movie "Apollo 13" more than a week late and got slapped with a $39 penalty.

It may turn out to be the best money Hastings ever spent, considering his personal stake in Netflix is worth nearly $150 million.

Hastings isn't driven entirely by money. In 2000, former California Gov. Gray Davis appointed Hastings as president of the state's Board of Education — a non-paid position that he is lobbying to keep under California's new governor. "We have all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies at Netflix," Hastings says, with a laugh.

Netflix's library of 18,000 DVD titles also includes many little-noticed movies — the kinds of films for which Hastings hopes to build larger audience. He aims to assemble the world's most diverse selection of DVDs and then draw upon Netflix's ability to analyze each customer's film tastes to "find the right movie for the right person."

It's a cause that Hastings hopes will help differentiate Netflix from mounting competition.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, launched a similar online rental service last year that undercuts Netflix by about a buck a month. Blockbuster already owns a Netflix copycat, FilmCaddy.com, and plans to introduce an online service that will deliver DVDs under its own brand name later this year.

"We should not only be able to compete in the online business, but have a substantial edge over the existing competition," Blockbuster CEO John Antioco recently assured analysts.

But Netflix already is gaining a reputation as the place to go for independent films, foreign movies and documentaries that are tough to find in Blockbuster and other traditional rental stores.

Leyl Master Black is among the legion of subscribers who love to pluck eclectic movies from Netflix's recommendation list. Because she's paying a flat fee, Black, 33, feels more comfortable checking out an obscure DVD from Netflix than gambling on an offbeat rental during her increasingly infrequent trips to a Blockbuster store.

"I have seen so many movies from Netflix that I would never be able to find at a video store," said Black, who splits her time between homes in San Francisco and Seattle. "Using something like Netflix takes a little more advanced planning, but it's definitely worth it."

Netflix doesn't impress all its customers. About 5% drop the service each month. The defections, known as customer "churn," have been declining as Netflix has set up 23 distribution centers around the country to get DVDs to customers more quickly.

Controlling churn is vital to Netflix's success because the company loses money on new customers during the first four months. Based on its current churn rate, Netflix estimates the average subscriber keeps the rental service for 21 months, up from 16 months at the end of 2002.

The formula has paid off so far.

Netflix's revenue nearly doubled last year, producing a $6.5 million profit on subscriptions totaling $270 million, enough to encourage Hastings to expand the service into Canada and the United Kingdom.

Hastings believes Netflix could earn more than $20 million for all of 2004, with revenue reaching as high as $475 million. Within five years, he predicts, the company will boast more than $1 billion in annual revenue and 100,000 film titles, widening its advantages over traditional rental chains.

"Reed has established a beachhead in something that looked like nothing more than a toehold just a couple years ago," said entertainment industry analyst Dennis McAlpine. "It's not going to be easy to get rid of him now."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinv...tm?POE=TECISVA


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

Computer Q&A: Gracefully, Gates Dances Around Downloading
David Radin

It had all the makings of another shoot-out at the OK Corral. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and
chief technology officer, standing in front of hundreds of college students at Carnegie Mellon University. Would he dare to speak about peer-to-peer file sharing and illegal downloads?

After an hour on stage, he hadn't brought up the legal issues, but he had touched on how technology would continue to make strides in multimedia and elsewhere -- and he even showed the crowd a prototype device that he called the Portable Media Center.

The device is a handheld appliance with a built-in LCD screen that could hook up to your PC to download your favorite movies and songs. He proudly announced that you'll be seeing such devices this fall in the $300 to $500 range. That's barely more than many MP3 recording devices that provide audio only.

I heard a couple of hushed "oohs" and "ahs" in the crowd. Perhaps a couple of people even pulled out their Personal Digital Assistants to check their bank accounts to make sure they would have enough money to plunk down on this new technology. It's still cool to be the first owner on your block.

But the real test came in the question-and-answer session after Gates' main presentation. Brian, an information systems major, stepped to the microphone to ask, "What plans do you have about peer-to-peer file sharing, and do you have any plans to hold that back?"

Some members of the crowd braced for a battle. The question was asked politely, but the undercurrent still seemed to be one of, "Please don't take my free downloads away.'' Peer-to-peer file sharing, which led to hundreds of lawsuits by the music industry against ordinary citizens who used file-sharing networks to download music illegally, has been criticized for letting individuals get something for free that should require payment.

One might have expected the Microsoft chairman to be somewhat uneasy about addressing the question. But he was not.

With barely a second thought, Gates talked about the great legitimate uses of peer-to-peer file sharing, and stated unequivocally that Microsoft will be working and contributing to those uses.

He didn't specify the extent to which his company is furthering the causes of electronic copyright protection known as digital rights management (DRM), but he said he believes the incentive structure that pays artists works well.

Nor did he mention that his company (and almost every software company) has a vested interest in developing digital rights management solutions -- because DRM can prevent copyright theft of software programs as well as movies and music.

"Our position is: How do we allow people to very easily license things and yet have the flexibility that digital networks should provide to them."

He did slap the hands of music executives by suggesting they should have been among the first to create simple licensing models, thereby pre-emptively creating habits in which listeners pay small amounts for music instead of bootlegging their favorite selections. Gates also told the crowd that the movie industry must move to make its titles available so people don't go to unlicensed sources first.

In short, Bill Gates made it clear that Microsoft would participate in the protection of copyrighted works as well as in the development of ways to get them into people's hands easily and inexpensively.

There was no uproar from the mostly student crowd. They understood. Perhaps they even agreed. After all, many of them would soon be making their livings in software development, and would have much to gain from copyright protection.

But just as much, this non-fight should be seen as a significant accomplishment of the university's administrators, who have been clear about their policies related to peer-to-peer downloads and copyright infringement. I hope the mood is similar on other college campuses.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04057/277596.stm


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

Report Raises Questions About Fighting Online Piracy
John Schwartz

The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world.

Record companies and movie and television studios have fought copyright infringement on many fronts, hoping to find ways to prevent their products from being distributed free on the Internet. But critics warn that many of the new restrictions that the entertainment industry proposes - like enforcing technological requirements for digital television programming that would prevent it from being transmitted online - would upset the balance between the rights of the content creators and the rights of the public.

"We are sympathetic to the problems confronting the content distribution industry," said the report, "Promoting Innovation and Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual Property." "But these problems - perfect copies of high-value digital works being transmitted instantly around the world at almost no cost - require clear, concentrated thinking, rather than quick legislative or regulatory action."

Until recently, those who opposed strong copyright protections have been characterized by the entertainment industry as a leftist fringe with no respect for the value of intellectual property.

"The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support," said Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School. "It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace."

Susan Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University and an author of the report said that a growing number of business leaders are worried that the trend toward "equating intellectual property with physical property" might be hampering innovation.

"Bits are not the same as atoms," she argued, contending that the distinction is being blurred by Hollywood. "We need to reframe the legal discussion to treat the differences of bits and atoms in a more thoughtful way."

The chief author of the report, Elliot Maxwell, a former adviser to the secretary of commerce on the digital economy during the Clinton administration, said that middle ground was hard to find in the many conflicts over intellectual property. The report, he said, was an attempt "to find a way through this thicket."

The entry of the Committee for Economic Development into the copyright wars, some say, is surprising given its long history as a policy-setter in the world of economics and business. The 60-year-old organization left its intellectual mark on initiatives like the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods agreement, which created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In more recent years, the committee's policy papers have had a measure of influence on issues like campaign finance reform and the movement to set standards for public schools through testing.

Ms. Spar, however, warned against reading too much social change into the committee's new stance. It shows that the ideas are "gaining legitimacy," she said. "It does not mean that we're about to throw out the copyright system any time soon."

The report was written by an offshoot of the committee, and in an introduction to the report, the members of the parent group said that for largely technical reasons, the report is "not an official C.E.D. policy statement." But they underscored the group's support, saying that it "welcomes this report and recommends it to readers as an excellent analysis of the issue of balancing intellectual property rights and the incentives for long-term growth in the digital age."

One of the most prominent critics of attempts to increase control over copyrighted material applauded the new report. "I think it's exciting," said the critic, Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. "The points they are making are obviously right," he said, "but the only way people will get it is if more credible, mainstream organizations begin to utter it."

Jane C. Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia University and a copyright expert, had a more mixed view of the report. The recommendations are "very thoughtful and sensible," she said, noting that she agreed with the report's conclusion that government mandates are a bad idea. But she said in an e-mail message responding to questions about the report that it "makes unsubstantiated, misleading, or misinformed statements about copyright law." In fact, she said, "A little less preaching to the technologist 'choir' might have made this a better 'sell' to copyright owners and, perhaps, to lawmakers."

Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that he had not yet seen the report but was strongly critical of the view that his industry was trying to place unfair burdens on consumers. "They say it will stifle innovation - that's malarkey," he said. "If all of this digital property is free, who is going to invest 50 to 60 million dollars to make a movie?" he asked.

The report addresses that point by calling on the entertainment industries to come up with new ways of doing business that can accommodate and even profit from digital distribution. It cited the success of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store as one online business that offered consumers an easy-to-use alternative to free music services.

"In the music business, 'cheap and great' is likely to be at least as attractive to consumers as 'free and crummy,' " the report said.

The report also endorsed the private use of so-called digital rights management systems to place some restrictions on copying, so long as they are not required by government and do not impose too great a burden on consumers. The group also recommended finding economic tools that could encourage copyright holders to allow their works to enter the public domain somewhat earlier than the law allows.

The group called for a two-year moratorium on changes to copyright laws and regulations to allow for more public debate. "Our first concern should be to 'do no harm,' " the report said.

Cary H. Sherman, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that "there isn't a lot here to disagree with" from his industry's perspective, since the recording industry signed an agreement with technology companies a year ago stating that it would not push for government-mandated technology solutions for its copyright problems.

"I certainly agree that there shouldn't be any rush to judgment where new technologies and intellectual property issues are in conflict," he said, "but one should also not assume that one could wait forever."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/te.../01rights.html


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

Got a Book in You? More Companies Than Ever Are Willing to Get It Out
Gayle Feldman

Since September, the nation's second-largest bookseller, Borders Group, has quietly been conducting an experiment in six Philadelphia-area stores, not as a bookseller, but as a publisher.

"It's easy to publish your own book!" the "Borders Personal Publishing" leaflets proclaim. Pay $4.99. Take home a kit. Send in your manuscript and $199. A month or so later, presto. Ten paperback copies of your novel, memoir or cookbook arrive.

Fork over $499, and you can get the upscale "Professional Publication" option. Your book gets an International Standard Book Number, publishing's equivalent of an ID number and is made available on Borders.com, and the Philadelphia store makes space on its shelves for five copies.

Borders is the latest traditional bookseller or publisher to branch into self-publishing using print-on-demand or P.O.D. technology. P.O.D., inheritor of the vanity press and survivor of the dot-com implosion, makes it feasible - technologically and economically - to produce one copy of a book.

Unlike e-books, which also appeared in the late 1990's, P.O.D. self-publishing has developed into a real business, attracting involvement from the likes of Random House, Barnes & Noble and now Borders.

"We wanted to learn about the market," said Phil Ollila, Borders's vice president for book marketing, in explaining the chain's experiment. The company approached Xlibris, based in Philadelphia, one of the big three of P.O.D. self-publishing, together with 1stBooks and iUniverse, all formed in the late 1990's. Xlibris is 49 percent owned by Random House Ventures; 1stBooks, based in Bloomington, Ind., is privately held. Barnes & Noble owns 25 percent of iUniverse, based in Lincoln, Neb., and Warburg Pincus holds the other 75 percent.

These more established publishing businesses decided to invest in P.O.D. to diversify and expand their role. "There was the farm team idea - could we find authors?" said Richard Sarnoff, the president of Random House Ventures. "As niches get smaller, is it a model for the future?"

Steve Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said, "Self-publishing, previously viewed as a means of last resort, is increasingly seen as a first step."

Thoughts of the future aside, there is the matter of the current market. The three companies combined have produced more than 45,000 titles so far, at a cost to authors of from $459 to $1,900. (Some Borders packages are more limited, and thus cheaper.)

The real challenge is not to produce books, it is to achieve all the goals of publishing - to get the books edited, distributed, noticed and, above all, bought. That is no easy feat: in the United States, 150,000-160,000 new titles were published last year, according to R.R. Bowker's Books in Print. On average, the P.O.D. titles sell just 150 to 175 copies, the companies say. Many authors are happy to pay for 50 or 100 copies of their magnum opus to give or sell to family, friends and business contacts. Others, though, confuse production with publication and end up disillusioned.

To address that problem, all three companies emphasize marketing, promotion and publicity options, either bundled into the packages or sold separately as add-ons.

The majority of sales of self-published books occurs online. According to Susan Driscoll, iUniverse chief executive, 40 percent are sold directly to authors and the other 60 percent move through retail channels. John Feldcamp, the chief executive of Xlibris, like his colleagues, maintains that book sales "are colossally important; they are more profitable than the services." But the add-ons generate cash and pull in authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/technology/01pod.html


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

Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
Steve Lohr

Bill Gates went on a campaign tour last week, trying to reinvigorate his base, as they say in politics.

The number of students majoring in computer science is falling, even at the elite universities. So Mr. Gates went stumping at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling students that they could still make a good living in America, even as the nation's industry is sending some jobs, like software programming, abroad.

"Will this create more competition? It will," he told students at M.I.T. on Thursday. "It means the U.S. will have to keep its edge in skills."

Later, noting fears of widespread job losses, he said in an interview, "But people are way overreacting."

Mr. Gates urged the students to stay in the game, no matter where they worked - for Microsoft, a rival, a start-up, a research lab.

Matthew Notowidigdo, who came to M.I.T. five years ago and will receive his master's degree in computer science in May, has chosen not to. The head of the department said Mr. Notowidigdo, a 22-year-old native of Columbus, Ohio, was one of his brightest students, who would be welcomed at any computer science Ph.D. program in the country.

But Mr. Notowidigdo has decided not to be a software engineer. Instead, he plans to head to Wall Street this spring to join the bond trading desk at Lehman Brothers, where he will work on research and analyzing fixed-income securities. While he may pursue a Ph.D. someday, he says it will be in economics rather than computer science.

Enrollments are down at the best computer science schools, where the potential stars of technology's future are groomed. Professors say there is less enthusiasm for the discipline among students, and they worry it may be more than a lingering disenchantment after the dot-com bubble burst.

In an effort to counter the trend, Mr. Gates, who personifies technological optimism and the potential payoff, sought to reassure students that their futures were no less bright in an era of outsourcing. The effect of computer technology, he told them, is just beginning and opportunity abounds. Computing, he added, is an ideal field for fine minds to make a difference in society.

"We need your excitement," he told students at Harvard. "Most of these jobs are very interesting and very social - you work with lots of smart people. I'm excited about the future of computing, and I'm excited to see how each of you can contribute to it."

But Mr. Notowidigdo's expertise in software design and programming are also valuable tools on Wall Street, as sophisticated computer programs and models are increasingly used to sniff out profit-making opportunities in the financial markets.

And he said his summer job last year, doing programming work for a New York investment bank, also influenced his plans for the future. The bank's technology department was outsourcing some software work to India, and as part of the project, programmers from Wipro, a large India outsourcing firm, were brought to New York. Mr. Notowidigdo was impressed at the level of their skills.

The outsourcing trend, Mr. Notowidigdo explained, "factors into my thinking about what I want to pursue as a career."

His current path as a technologically adept investment banker, he decided, gives him "a broader set of skills and is less risky than software engineering."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/te...gy/01bill.html


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

LaCie Bigger Disk

Unprecedented 1 terabyte capacity



Largest capacity available

The LaCie Bigger Disk, with the largest hard drive capacity available, is a unique innovation that packs an amazing 1 terabyte of storage space in a manageable 5.25" form factor. With this unsurpassed storage capacity, the LaCie Bigger Disk allows users to store nearly two years of continuous music and up to one month of non-stop MPEG-2 video1. Truly plug and play, this device requires no driver or software installation for Windows XP and Mac OS X users.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10118


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

Report: Feds Should Stay Out of DRM Issues
Roy Mark

The solution to digital piracy is new business models, not legal action and regulatory mandates, a new report by the Committee for Economic Development (CED) concludes.

The prestigious organization of business leaders and university presidents said "hastily enacted" laws and regulations could have unintended consequences and slow the pace of innovation and economic growth.

Congress is currently monitoring industry efforts to curb online copyright infringement, particularly over peer-to-peer networks. Lawmakers prefer private sector solutions to federal mandates for protecting digital intellectual property, tracking its usage and collecting payments and fees.

But a frustrated Congress hasn't seen much progress and bills have been introduced ranging from banning P2P software to allowing electronic interdiction for copyright owners. The music industry has primarily focused on filing lawsuits against the P2P networks and the individual users of the software.

"There can be no question that prosecuting those who break the law is both valid and important, but many anti-piracy proposals go much further that," the CED report states. "Many of the proposals would require consumers to add hardware or software to their computing devices that would add to cost and reduce interoperability regardless of the machine's use."

The CED report, Digital Economy: Promoting Competition, Innovation and Opportunity, recommends experimentation with digital rights management (DRM) systems while refraining from government mandates to include specific technologies.

"Logical and fair solutions to the intellectual property rights challenges presented by the digital world are needed to ensure that this issue does not severely hamper economic growth," CED President Charles Kolb said in a statement.

The CED, a Washington nonprofit, notes previous technological breakthroughs also caused consternation and upheaval between producers of content, distributors of that content and the content users.

"Introduction of the phonograph, radio, television and videocassettes recorders all led to fundamental changes in content markets," the report says.

In each transition, the report states, copyright law maintained "its basic bargain: Society should provide incentives to creators and prevent wholesale appropriation of their work, while at the same time ensuring both that subsequent creators can build upon a creator's work and that the public as a whole can have access to the creation."

Without that structure, the CED says "under-protection of works may inhibit initial creation, while over-protection may inhibit follow-on innovation by the millions who come after the initial creator."

The CED recommends dedicating the next two years to building consensus about the appropriate role in the digital age for traditional "legal safety valves" to balance the exclusive rights of creators with users' rights.

"We recognize the need for digital rights management systems that will allow creators to be rewarded for their efforts," the report states.

The CED adds, however, it is skeptical of government-mandated copy protection technologies.

"DRM systems provide a useful 'speed bump' for consumers by inhibiting unauthorized uses of materials," the report says. "Consumers should play a substantial role in evaluating and approving mandated technological protection systems."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3320001


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

Optisoft CEO Wayne Rosso on File-Sharing Frontiers
Jay Lyman

"The RIAA has been repeating the same lies over and over so much that the media begins to blindly repeat them," Optisoft CEO Wayne Rosso told TechNewsWorld. "The RIAA is constantly referring to P2P companies as 'illegitimate' or 'illegal.' They want to ignore the fact that every judge in the world has declared us legal."

Touting findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and other Internet use researchers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has credited its controversial strategy of suing individual file-sharers with cutting the number of illegal trades in half.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking providers, meanwhile, point to courtroom affirmations that their services -- Kazaa, BearShare, Blubster and others -- are not illegal and say file-sharing is alive, well and doing just fine. They also insist they are improving P2P technology to the point that it will be the basis for much more than swapping songs, at the same time making file-sharers themselves as anonymous as possible.

TechNewsWorld talked with Optisoft chief executive officer Wayne Rosso, whose P2P application, Blubster, is among those dreaded and sometimes persecuted by the recording industry. Rosso talked about the RIAA's aggressive strategy, the alternatives to litigation and the enduring potential of P2P networks.

TechNewsWorld: You've been critical of the RIAA campaign, but there is some agreement that it has effectively cut the use of P2P services and illegal trading of copyrighted material. Do you believe it has?

Wayne Rosso: I personally haven't seen much evidence to support those claims, although my evidence is strictly anecdotal. According to companies like Big Champagne, who somehow monitor P2P traffic, usage is actually up. I think what has happened is that the RIAA has succeeded in making people paranoid about admitting in telephone surveys that they do file share. It's now like admitting to a stranger that you like porn.

TNW: In your opinion, what could the RIAA and other intellectual-property owners do that would better serve their own interests?

Rosso: That's very simple. A blanket collective compulsory license is the only logical solution to the issue. And there are many well- conceived and thorough proposals in existence that can be implemented fairly quickly and reasonably. Most notable among these proposals is one authored by Neil Weinstock Netanel of the University of Texas, which was published last fall in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, and more recently a proposal put forth by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Most reasonable people believe that a collective licensing plan would actually grow the music business and expand their markets, something they apparently would rather avoid in favor of mass litigation. Ultimately, they have to have a little respect for their customers. The truth of the matter is that they treat their customers with contempt since they really don't know who buys their products. They think that their customers are Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) , Best Buy and Target.

And that lack of respect for the customer just blows my mind. Americans were raised with the adage "the customer's always right." These people are jaded and cynical and have forgotten who really pays their mortgages.

TNW: Do you believe that P2P use and growth is being hampered by the RIAA strategy?

Rosso: No. Actually, this strategy is serving as a catalyst for developers to become even more aggressive in their efforts to build file-sharing clients that are more anonymous, faster and more secure than the current generation. In reality, the RIAA strategy is spurring the growth of P2P.

And when you think about it, they've done a great job of marketing our products for us. By suing the P2P operators, they ended up making us bigger and bigger. For people who take themselves so seriously, I find them to be endlessly amusing and entertaining. Oh, and let's not forget brazen.

TNW: What about the image of companies such as Optisoft and Sharman Networks (maker of Kazaa)? Has the image of these companies been hurt by the RIAA efforts?

Rosso: I really don't think so. Firstly, Optisoft has not been sued, yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if that changes on a moment's notice, as the RIAA isn't too fond of my outspokenness. They tend to take things very personally, as does most of the record industry, which is rife with insecure, self-important people with very fragile egos.

The RIAA has been repeating the same lies over and over so much that the media begins to blindly repeat them. The RIAA is constantly referring to P2P companies as "illegitimate" or "illegal." They want to ignore the fact that every judge in the world has declared us legal. And out of sheer laziness the media keeps parroting these statements without regard to their true accuracy.

The RIAA has been conducting an out-and-out smear campaign, and they don't care who they lie to or what they misrepresent. They want everyone to believe that P2P equals piracy. It doesn't. No more than coaxial cable or Xerox machines do. In fact, P2P represents their best shot at survival and growth in the digital world. They're just too stubborn, stupid -- or both -- to admit it. In any case, they continue to perpetuate a big lie.

TNW: What is your response to the criticisms that even if an actual P2P service or network is not a violation of the law, it enables violations, such as the illegal trading of copyrighted music?

Rosso: Here again, what seems to have been forgotten is that the law clearly states -- and has been repeatedly affirmed -- that our technology is no different from a VCR, dual cassette machine, CD burner, scanner or photocopier. Those devices are clearly capable of infringing copyrights and commonly are. And let's not forget that e-mail and instant messaging software are also technologies that enable copyright infringement, yet no one is suing AOL or Yahoo or Microsoft for contributory infringement.

The fact is that anyone who produces a technology that is capable of noncopyright-infringing use is not liable for how people utilize that technology. That's the law. If any technologies are copyright-infringement enablers, it's CD burners and easy-to-use ripping software made by companies like Roxio.

Without those two tools, there wouldn't be the rampant physical piracy that exists -- which is far more problematic for the record industry than file sharing -- let alone files to be shared. They are the real culprits. And who's one of the biggest manufacturers of CD burners in the world? Sony.

TNW: What do you see as the biggest opportunity for file-sharing technology in the coming two to three years?

Rosso: I think that when major content owners wake up and realize that P2P technology can save their companies and shareholders billions of dollars, the new marketplace will finally arrive. What content owners don't understand is that the Internet does not know the difference between music files, video files or image files. It's all bits and bytes. Data.

They can't seem to wrap their brains around the concept that they are now in the business of delivering data as quickly and efficiently as possible. P2P technology can provide them with the best form of distribution that they ever imagined. For the first time, content owners will be able to have an ongoing direct relationship with the customer, something they have never had before.

Marketing costs will significantly decrease. Distribution costs will significantly decrease. And customers will have true choice. So, clearly, I feel that content delivery is a big opportunity. Another huge opportunity is in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business. Companies are already making real progress in this area as well. It could be an 800-pound gorilla.

TNW: What do you see as the different roles of P2P technology for enterprise users and consumers?

Rosso: When we move into the ultra broadband wireless world where the Internet is ubiquitous, content will have to be transferred efficiently and economically across networks and devices. I see P2P technology being the main distribution driver for content owners. The BBC just announced that they will be using P2P technology to distribute their archives online.

The technology can also benefit retailers. In a world where Apple iTunes is selling 99-cent singles, all of the profit is being eaten up by infrastructure and transaction fees. Clearly, large corporations could save billions on IT costs by migrating from costly LANs to P2P. The military even used P2P technology on the ground in Iraq. Colleges and universities also play a role in the evolution of P2P, as recently illustrated by the Berklee School of Music, which is using P2P technology to put their curriculum online.

Consumers have sent a loud and clear message that P2P is the way that they like to get their content. They are comfortable with it and know how to use it. You've got to realize that a whole generation of consumers has grown up with peer-to-peer. I know that it only has been about four years or so, but that's a lifetime in the marketplace. Certainly a lot longer than the career of your average rock band.

Consumers know the technology and think it's really cool. And it is. And it's only going to get better and provide an even richer user experience.

TNW: Which do you see as the most significant market for P2P technology, going forward?

Rosso: Some P2Ps think that they're in the content business. I don't. Let's face it, the only people who make money from content are the content owners. Personally, I think that we're in the pipe business. I'm providing the back-end technology for people who want to get their content out there.

TNW: What do you think about concerns that heavy P2P use is driving up ISP costs and will lead to different and more expensive rate schemes for users?

Rosso: Not really. ISPs can't have it both ways. They use P2P to help sell their broadband products and then complain that it sucks up their bandwidth. The bottom line is that people want broadband so that they can have fast downloads. Period. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper. And ISPs have to work hard to acquire and keep their customers. Churn rates are deadly. So I think that competition will help keep rates reasonable.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33004.html


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

Clickshare Joins Distributed Computing Industry Association, Demonstrates P2P Exchange Solution at Digital Music Forum
Press Release

Clickshare Service Corp. (www.Clickshare.com) today announced that it has joined the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), the non-profit trade association pursuing consensus in working toward the paid and legal distribution of music and other digital content.

Clickshare is a commerce platform for Internet payment aggregation, an ideal environment for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) exchange of digital content. It enables single-bill, multi-site payments for digital content and commerce, with relationship management and privacy-enhancing features.

DCIA is engaged in developing standards and practices to advance innovative consumer-based distribution system. Representing all sectors of the distributed computing industry, DCIA membership comprises platform companies, content providers, and peer-to-peer operators.

The announcement was made today at the Digital Music Forum, where Clickshare demonstrated its solution in collaboration with BlueMaze Entertainment, DCide, Digital Containers, and INTENT MediaWorks. Digital Media Forum, at The French Institute (59th Street and Park Avenue) included five panels and three keynote addresses focused on the role of digital technology in the future of music.

"Clearly P2P is a growing technology with massive potential benefits for creators and consumers alike," said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty. "Already progressive artists and labels are adopting P2P for distributing their music. Clickshare delivers content owners a safe, secure, and profitable affinity payment system for digital products, and we are delighted to have them as our newest member."
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...ewID=news_view


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

Publishers Steamed By US Ban

Scientists from embargoed nations can't be edited by US citizens, but changes may be afoot
John Dudley Miller

A Treasury Department ruling that a well known scientific society can't publish articles in its journals from authors in trade-embargoed countries if their manuscripts require any copy or style editing has other scientific associations and American publishers up in arms. The prohibition applies to authors in Iran, Cuba, Sudan, and Libya, but not to submissions from Iraq, North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Balkans, or Liberia, where embargoes are more limited.

Most scientific societies are defying or ignoring the rule, which applies to all US publications. Theoretically, their refusal exposes their editors and officers to fines of up to $50,000 and 10 years or more in jail, should the government decide to prosecute, which so far it has not done. A number of technical and general publishers are considering suing to overturn the long-overlooked federal regulation behind the ruling, and many scientific groups are considering donating substantially to that cause. But a Treasury Department official in the center of the fracas told The Scientist that he favors a new reinterpretation that would please all sides.

The controversy stems from a ruling last September in which the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) decided that the 360,000-member Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) could no longer publish scientific papers from Iranian authors in any of its 100+ journals if those articles need to be edited prior to publication.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who wrote the informational exemption to the 1988 embargo, called the ruling “totally absurd and ludicrous.” Berman told The Scientist that he plans to write OFAC's director today (March 2) demanding he reconsider the ruling. “We're going to come on quite strong about why this does not comply with the law and undermines a coherent foreign policy interest” as well as the free dissemination of ideas to and from people in closed, authoritarian societies, he said.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040302/04


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

A Second Bite Of The Apple
Paul Sexton

During Chris Gorog's visit to Britain this week, he will find no shortage of people familiar with his company's brand. Napster, after all, became one of the best-known names on the internet, deified in its previous pirate life by consumers hungry for unlicensed, illicit downloads and demonised by the record business.

But, having been killed off in its illicit form by US court actions, Napster, invented by Shawn Fanning, a teenager, has undergone a rebirth in the US as a legitimate downloading service. And part of Mr Gorog's purpose in coming to London to speak at the Financial Times' New Media and Broadcasting conference on Wednesday is to herald Napster's return to Europe, this time on the right side of the law.

"The UK will be our first entry point," says the Los Angeles-based Mr Gorog. And with his chief rival in the US, Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, straining to beat Napster to British shores, insiders suggest Napster aims to be in operation in the UK by the end of the summer.

"The sooner the better as far as we're concerned," says Mr Gorog. "The issue is, we're still working with labels and publishers to get all the rights sorted out. Unfortunately, it's just part of the gut-wrenching birthing process of the online music industry."

Mr Gorog says he expects Napster to develop its service in Europe "country by country". "It's our goal to have localised programming in each region. That really suggests that they will not all roll out on the same day."

The legitimate digital music business is, he believes, making vast strides. "Two years ago, online music was considered a science project, a novelty act," he says. Now, one forecast suggests it will be a global business worth $4.5bn by 2008.

Last week, Napster 2.0 became the first personal computer-only service to sell more than 5m downloads in the US. It reached the total less than six months after the relaunch last October of what was once the world's favourite way to steal music.

Napster's reappearance as a legitimate service is the lastest phase in an extraordinary history. Mr Fanning, its original figurehead, became notorious after the original Napster software was released on to the internet. It allowed those who downloaded it to swap music tracks stored on their computer hard disc with other members. Music was passed from "peer to peer" without the companies that owned it seeing a penny.

The music industry's leaders reacted with a barrage of litigation that shut the original service down in 2001. But as this legal campaign was under way, Thomas Middelhoff, one of their number, the former head of Bertelsmann, stunned his peers by agreeing in 2000 that BMG, the German media group's music business, would help fund Napster if it went legitimate. Mr Middelhoff's time at the top of Bertelsmann ended as the dotcom bubble deflated and efforts to harness the power of the Napster brand to a legitimate business had to begin again.

Enter Mr Gorog. The bankrupt Napster's assets were bought in late 2002 for $5.3m by Silicon Valley software company Roxio, which Mr Gorog had joined as chief executive in 2000.

Over the past nine months, Roxio has completed two PIPE offerings (Private Investment in Public Equity) for Napster in the US, raising about $45m "really quite easily", says Mr Gorog. "The electronic infrastructure created for Napster is an investment in the neighbourhood of $100m and a lot of that is electronic accounting.

"But that investment is now in the ground and is highly leverageable, so when we talk about going into the UK, France and Germany and Spain and Italy, it's all additional growth we can put on to that investment we've already made. It's a very scalable model and I think it will be highly profitable."

Five million downloads may seem small potatoes compared with the 60m users a day estimated to be clicking on Napster's familiar cat logo at its illegal peak. The iTunes Music Store, launched in the US last April, sold its 25-millionth download before Christmas. Napster 2.0 has attracted more than 1.5m basic and premium members and expects to generate at least $20m in music sales by the end of its first year.

"I think the industry right now is at a mature stage of early adoption. We clearly have not crossed the chasm into mass adoption yet," says Mr Gorog. One reason, he argues, is that the "value proposition of àla carte downloading" such as iTunes offers - where users pay individually for each track they buy - is not strong enough.

While Napster 2.0 has an àla carte service similar to iTunes, Mr Gorog stresses what he sees as the far greater virtues of Napster's subscription model. That includes prepaid download cards, access to a catalogue of 500,000 songs, pre-programmed radio stations and the ability to e-mail songs to fellow subscribers, recalling the peer- to-peer model of the original site.

"The àla carte model is a great catalyst for the online industry because it's simple to understand," says Mr Gorog. "But it's also limiting. Right now, for example, in the US, with iTunes if you spend $9.95 you can listen to 10 songs. With Napster, if you spend $9.95 a month you can listen to half a million.

"We think that's the model of the future, and we also think for us it's the model with greater financial reward, because of the margins."

The thorny subject of compatibility between competing formats is one on which he believes there will be compromise. But the balance of power will have to shift to the point where Apple feels the necessity to compromise.

With the iTunes model firmly designed to encourage sales of the iPod music player, the only current way to listen to an iTunes track on a rival device, or indeed to load a song from Napster or elsewhere on to the Apple iPod, is to burn the song from one system on to a compact disc, put it in the computer and load it back into the other system.

"We'd love to be able to have iPod users work with the Napster service," says Mr Gorog, "but Apple's made the decision not to be Windows Media Audio-compliant. The cloistered Apple experience is good right now in the early stages of development but I think quickly consumers will see the serious limitations."

As the spending habits of music consumers are summarily reshaped, Mr Gorog will not be drawn on when Napster will become profitable.

"It won't be next quarter, that's for sure. I think most of our investors recognise this is absolutely a long-term investment.

"We do definitely see a light at the end of the tunnel [but] we've not gone public yet about when we will hit cash flow break-even, primarily because it would be too easy to be wrong. Because of the ultimate size of this opportunity, there's plenty of room for a handful of strong players."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...=1077690829178


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

Free Your Music!
Release



Squeezebox is revolutionary. It streams your music from your computer to your digital stereo over your wireless or ethernet network —without any loss of sound quality. You now have lightning-fast access to any song in your digital music collection, anywhere in your home.

The Squeezebox player is incredibly easy to set up and use. It takes just a few minutes to install: simply load SlimServer, our powerful and free Open Source software, onto your computer and connect the player to your network. Squeezebox automatically configures itself and is ready to use.

Squeezebox is a complete and elegant solution that takes advantage of the power and capacity of your existing computer. As a result, Squeezebox places no limit to the size of your music library.

Squeezebox's user-friendly interface allows you to browse quickly through your whole music collection via remote control or web browser. Its large, built-in fluorescent display is bright and easy to read. Thanks to its small form factor, you can place Squeezebox in your stereo cabinet, on a shelf or on your bedside table.

Digital and analog RCA outputs connect Squeezebox to your home theater, stereo receiver, or amplified speakers. And when you install multiple players, they can play independently or in sync for whole-house audio.
http://www.slimdevices.com/


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

SCO To Sling a Lawsuit at a User
Erika Morphy

Public perception is not as significant an issue as the potential payday SCO could win if it prevails. Then there is the matter of principle. Despite the anger SCO's move has engendered, the company clearly thinks it is in the right. The courts, of course, will determine whether that is so.

No one can claim that the SCO Group does not follow through on its promises. The company is getting set to file a lawsuit against a Linux user Tuesday afternoon, according to spokesperson Blake Stowell. News of the impending suit became public on Monday during CEO Darryl McBride's speech at the Software 2004 conference in San Francisco.

The lawsuit -- which centers on alleged violations of the SCO Group's intellectual property -- was all but inevitable, given the hardened stances the two sides have taken in this saga. It began with SCO filing suit against IBM in March 2003, alleging that it misappropriated SCO's Unix source code and incorporated it into Linux. Later, SCO threatened to sue any Linux-using company that did not have a SCO license.

Venomous Threats

For the most part, the industry has been defiant against SCO's claims -- downright ugly, in many instances. (Anonymous death threats against McBride are the most notable example of out-of-control ire.)

Some companies, though, appear to be taking SCO seriously. On Monday, SCO announced that it had signed an intellectual-property licensing agreement with EV1Servers.Net, a dedicated hosting division of Houston-based Everyones Internet. It appears that Everyones Internet needed to assure its customers that there was not a SCO lawsuit hovering in the landscape, ready to disrupt operations.

"The SCO agreement eliminates uncertainty from our clients' hosting infrastructure," says Robert Marsh, head surfer and CEO of Everyones Internet. "Our current and future users now enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that their Web sites and data are hosted on a SCO IP- compliant platform."

Who Will Buy?

It is unclear how many other firms have purchased a SCO IP license, which initially was offered to Fortune 1000 companies in August and made available to all companies this January.

"We haven't publicly disclosed the specific number, but I can say that a handful of Fortune 1000 companies have taken out a SCO IP license," Stowell told NewsFactor. "Also, a handful of small and medium-sized businesses have purchased the license as well," he noted.

SCO is pleased, thus far, with the level of acceptance the license has received, Stowell said. Of course, not all companies SCO has contacted have chosen to take out a license, he added, "which is why we have decided to file a lawsuit."

While SCO is not revealing too much of its legal strategy, it is obvious that it is going to use all of the options available to it, including suing potential customers. "SCO is being very aggressive about protecting what it perceives as its legal rights to the copyright," Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor.

Following RIAA

It is a play borrowed directly from the RIAA, which has become notorious for the lawsuits filed against people who have been using peer-to-peer networks to download music illegally. Before filing the suits, the RIAA -- like SCO -- notified users and the public in general that it was going to file suit.

It is debatable whether that strategy is working for the RIAA. However, one thing is clear: Its legal tactics are not winning over any new friends. Not that being liked is SCO's main worry; indeed, the Utah-based firm probably stands as the most-hated organization in the tech industry these days, topping even Microsoft -- which is no small feat.

Unlike the RIAA, though, the public perception of SCO is not as significant an issue as the potential payday it could win if it prevails. Then there is the matter of principle. Despite the anger SCO's move has engendered, it is clear that the company thinks it is in the right. The courts, of course, will determine whether that is so.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtm...o ry_id=23277


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

Snell & Wilcox to Release Free MXF Software Developer Kit and Desktop Player at NAB 2004
Press Release

New offering designed to ease broadcast IT transition

Snell & Wilcox announced today that it will release at no charge at NAB 2004 (Booth #C6421) a comprehensive set of software developer tools -- called MXF Express -- designed to help broadcasters and equipment vendors ensure interoperability among file-sharing products and systems through the MXF file format. The company will also freely release MXF Desktop, a software-based MXF file player that will bring MXF compatibility to any Windows PC desktop.

MXF (Material eXchange Format) is a major new building block for IT-based broadcast and post-production environments offering a unique combination of several essential key features: Platform independence including compression, network protocol and operating systems Extensive support for metadata and improved workflows Packetized and streaming file-based capability An open industry format with broad-based support from industry vendors Interoperability tested between industry vendors Extensible for future source formats, metadata schemes etc.

Snell & Wilcox engineers played a critical role in the definition and standardization of MXF. As part of their standardization work, the company’s research engineers developed over several years -- through hundreds of man hours of R&D -- a package of software tools that enable users to create products that conform to the MXF specification. Those tools are included in the free releases of MXF Express and MXF Desktop.

Major global broadcasters such as CNN, CBS, BBC, and Channel 4 have announced support in their facilities for MXF. Top broadcast technology vendors including Sony, Avid, Thomson, JVC, Leitch, Da Vinci, Matrox, Cisco, SGI, Quantel, and Seachange have joined Snell & Wilcox in supporting the MXF format in their products. The broadcast industry has demanded total interoperability between all vendor implementations of the MXF standard and Snell & Wilcox’s MXF Express is designed to help ensure that all manufacturers meet that goal with all first generation products.
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2..._snell_mxf.htm

[JackSpratts]

Vulnerability in WinZip Could Compromise Security
Larry Seltzer

Security analysts on Friday reported that versions of the popular ZIP file management program WinZip have a serious security flaw.

According to security intelligence firm iDefense Inc., an error in the parameter parsing code in these versions "allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code."

The attacker would have to construct a specially designed MIME archive (with one of .mim, .uue, .uu, .b64, .bhx, .hqx and .xxe extensions) and distribute the file to users, the company explained.

Once opened, the attack would trick WinZip into executing code contained in the attacking file. iDefense said it had a functioning proof-of-concept attack demonstrating the problem.

The malicious file could be distributed by e-mail, on a Web page, or through peer- to-peer networks.

Files handled by WinZip are not normally executable, so many users are less- hesitant to launch them, even when they come from unknown sources. This problem makes those files much more inherently dangerous.

According to iDefense, versions 7 and 8, as well as the latest beta of WinZip 9 are vulnerable to this attack. However, the released Version 9 of WinZip is not vulnerable.

In addition to upgrading, users can prevent an attack by turning off automatic handling of these file types by WinZip in Windows Explorer. In Windows XP, choose Tools-Folder Options, select the File Types tab, scroll down to the appropriate file types, and either delete them or reassign file handling to another program.

Meanwhile, security experts advised users to be suspicious of these file types, as they are not widely used.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1540361,00.asp


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

MP3 Getting DRM Antipiracy Locks This Year
John Borland

The venerable MP3 music format, the technology most widely associated with unrestricted file swapping, is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying.

Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents behind the MP3 digital music technology, are in the midst of creating a new digital rights management add-on for the popular format, a Thomson executive said Tuesday.

The move is aimed at pushing more deeply into the world of authorized music distribution through services such as Apple Computer's iTunes or the new Napster. All those new services sell music wrapped in digital locks--most in incompatible proprietary technologies by companies such as Apple, Microsoft or RealNetworks--while MP3 songs today are typically distributed free of copy controls.

"Eventually, digital distribution will be a significant mass market," said Rocky Caldwell, Thomson's director of technology marketing. "We think it will be served well by (digital rights management) that is based on standards. No one else seems to be proposing that."

The move is recognition of a dawning new era in digital music, in which pay-per-song services are beginning to gain ground on the anarchic file-swapping networks and in which CDs themselves may ultimately be overtaken by digital downloads.

The first era in Internet audio belonged undeniably to MP3, an audio standard codified by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) a dozen years ago. Thomson and Fraunhofer, the German companies that hold patents in the MP3 technology, have long been collecting royalties from software and hardware companies that use the format.

But the same features that made MP3 attractive to tens of millions of ordinary computer users made the big record labels deeply suspicious of the format. For years, they've been looking for a digital song format that would include tools to prevent people from making unauthorized copies or swapping tunes on networks like Kazaa.

Microsoft, with its Windows Media and associated digital rights management technology, has been one big beneficiary of that, with its format used in Napster, Musicmatch and other song stores and bundled on physical CDs. Apple's own Fairplay copy protection tools have also won the big record labels' approval and form the heart of the company's iTunes Music Store.

Thomson and Fraunhofer's rights management technology will be based in large part on open standards the MPEG group and the Open Mobile Alliance are adopting, Caldwell said. The companies will provide free use of the copy protection technology to anyone who licenses the MP3 format, he said.

As with any other digital rights management format, the technology will have to be supported by software players and chipmakers before devices are able to play songs protected by it. The companies are in talks with chip manufacturers and music distribution services now, Caldwell said.

Caldwell said he expected to see devices and services supporting the protected MP3 format by the end of 2004. The plans were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5167841.html


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

HarddiskOgg

On-the-fly-line-in-to-Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3-encoding

What is it?

HarddiskOgg takes a wave input stream from any Windows 95/98/2000/XP compatible sampling device (including microphone input and line in) and converts it to an Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3 (optional) stream. This happens in realtime, so basically it is a harddisk recorder in Ogg Vorbis.



Features:

· Real-time encoding with bitrates from 32kbit/sec. up to 320kbit/sec.
· Stereo or mono recording from 8kHz to 48kHz
· Automatic numbering of output files
· Can be placed in the systray and activated by a single click
· Smart on-the-fly normalization for low-volume sources
· Uses the high quality, patent free Ogg Vorbis encoding engine. Ogg Vorbis easily outperforms MP3 in sound quality, especially at lower bit rates.
· LAME MP3 encoder compatible. However, due to patent issues HarddiskOgg ist not distributed with the LAME encoding DLL. If you want MP3 support, fetch LAME_ENC.DLL from the web, but make sure you have the appropriate rights for doing so.
· Command line mode for easy integration or scheduled recordings
· No fluff or stupid skinned interface, just works.
· HarddiskOgg is FREEWARE!

http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php


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

Court Says Net-Spread DVD Code Isn't Trade Secret
Bloomberg

A computer code that unlocked encrypted DVDs was so widely distributed on the Internet that it did not qualify as a trade secret, a California appeals court has ruled.

The DVD Copy Control Assn., which licenses encryption software for the movie, computer and consumer electronics industries, sought an injunction in 1999 to block programmer Andrew Bunner from republishing the code on the Internet.

The group dropped its case against Bunner last month.

The 6th District Court of Appeal in San Jose ruled that a trial judge improperly barred Bunner from publishing the DeCSS computer code. The code, originally published by a Norwegian teenager, incorporated encryption keys from the original CSS program licensed by the DVD Copy Control Assn.

"There is a great deal of evidence that by the time DVD CCA sought the preliminary injunction prohibiting disclosure of the DeCSS program, DeCSS had been so widely distributed that the CSS technology may have lost its trade-secrets status," the appeals court said.

Robert Sugarman, an attorney for the association, did not immediately return a call for comment.

In 2001, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said in another case that it was illegal to distribute DeCSS and upheld a ban on the publication.

Bunner's attorney, Allonn Levy, argued that the preliminary injunction violated his client's free-speech rights.

"Both common sense and the 1st Amendment dictate that a trade secret that isn't secret anymore just isn't protectable," Levy said in an e-mail.

The appeals court said Bunner was entitled to recoup the costs of his appeal.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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

HP, Philips Lock Up Broadcast Content
Clint Boulton

With the proliferation of file-sharing networks, protecting digital content has never been more challenging for copyright holders and regulators.

To stem the problem, the Federal Communications Commission recently drafted new "Broadcast Flag" rules to protect content from being intercepted between recording depots such as computers or TiVo to personal televisions.

Against this backdrop, Hewlett-Packard (Quote, Chart) on Tuesday teamed with longtime partner Philips (Quote, Chart) to announce a new digital rights management (DRM) (define) technology to enable direct recording of "copy-once" content from digital broadcasts.

New discs from the companies' are expected to be used in future products that meet the FCC's content protection requirements, as well as current DVD players and DVD+R/+RW recorders. The technology can also be applied to other recording formats, the companies said.

The FCC's Broadcast Flag ruling proposes that broadcasters may include code called a "Broadcast Flag" in their transmissions to protect the content from being snatched as it travels from one appliance to another and rebroadcast over the Internet.

For example, digital TV content broadcast over the air will include a data tag, or broadcast flag. Any digital TV tuner built after July 2005 must not allow broadcast-flagged programs to be recorded in such a way that they can be redistributed in their high-definition format, where they might be shared with other consumers. This is the idea behind copy-once recording.

The technology, which includes high-bandwidth DRM technology from chipmaking giant Intel (Quote, Chart), has been submitted in the first round of filings to the FCC in order to be among the first technologies approved for the recording of content marked with the Broadcast Flag.

Both HP and Philips, of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, are looking to be early movers in a space that is expected to be lucrative. For example, for all of the flack Microsoft takes over security affronts to its software, the company's DRM technology is very popular and ubiquitous in Windows Media software.

Analysts have said that millions of dollars can be made from licensing fees related to DRM.

In related news, HP has joined the Content Management Licensing Authority (CMLA) as a founding contributor to support adoption of mobile handsets and other devices that deploy Open Mobile Alliance's Digital Rights Management (DRM) version 2.0 specification.
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3320371


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

Announcer alleges major media company is biased.

The Passion Of Howard Stern
Eric Boehlert

From the moment last week when Clear Channel Communications suspended Howard Stern's syndicated morning show from the company's radio stations, denouncing it as "vulgar, offensive and insulting," speculation erupted that the move had more to do with Stern's politics than his raunchy shock-jock shtick.

Stern's loyal listeners, Clear Channel foes and many Bush administration critics immediately reached the same conclusion: The notorious jock was yanked off the air because he had recently begun trashing Bush, and Bush-friendly Clear Channel used the guise of "indecency" to shut him up. That the content of Stern's crude show hadn't suddenly changed, but his stance on Bush had, gave the theory more heft. That, plus his being pulled off the air in key electoral swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

This week, Stern himself went on the warpath, weaving in among his familiar monologues about breasts and porn actresses accusations that Texas-based Clear Channel -- whose Republican CEO, Lowry Mays, is extremely close to both George W. Bush and Bush's father -- canned him because he deviated from the company's pro-Bush line. "I gotta tell you something," Stern told his listeners. "There's a lot of people saying that the second that I started saying, 'I think we gotta get Bush out of the presidency,' that's when Clear Channel banged my ass outta here. Then I find out that Clear Channel is such a big contributor to President Bush, and in bed with the whole Bush administration, I'm going, 'Maybe that's why I was thrown off: because I don't like the way the country is leaning too much to the religious right.' And then, bam! Let's get rid of Stern. I used to think, 'Oh, I can't believe that.' But that's it! That's what's going on here! I know it! I know it!"

Stern's been relentless all week, detailing the close ties between Clear Channel executives and the Bush administration, and insisting that political speech, not indecency, got him in trouble with the San Antonio broadcasting giant. If he hadn't turned against Bush, Stern told his listeners, he'd still be heard on Clear Channel stations.

In a statement released to Salon, the media company insists that "Clear Channel Radio is not operated according to any political agenda or ideology."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...ern/index.html


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

Loudeye Snags Antipiracy Start-Up
Dinesh C. Sharma

Loudeye, a digital music services provider, said Tuesday that it has acquired privately held Overpeer for its antipiracy tools and services.

Under the deal, the company is taking over New York-based Overpeer for about 1.7 million shares of Loudeye common stock. That values the deal at just under $4 million, based on Loudeye's closing price Monday.

Loudeye said Overpeer's products such as antipiracy services and data-mining and promotional tools will be meshed with its products and services for media companies.

Overpeer's data-mining tools are designed to let online music companies keep an eye on real-time downloading across file- sharing networks and take action to curb copyright infringement, Loudeye said. Last month, Overpeer recorded 25 billion digital download hits, blocking illegal copying of material across 150 million unique user sessions, Loudeye added.

Loudeye teamed up with Microsoft last year to promote its service that helps other companies set up online music stores much like Apple Computer's iTunes. Loudeye asserts that there is room for an intermediary in the business despite the tiny profit margins, so it is looking for customers interested in digital music distribution as a promotional tool for another products or services, rather than as a standalone business.

"Overpeer's strong technology and products are a natural fit with our digital music and media solutions, and we share a common goal of driving legitimate digital media revenue and monetizing content across all digital distribution channels," Loudeye Chairman Anthony Bay said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5168110.html


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

Macrovision Corporation Reports Record Net Revenues And Earnings For Fourth Quarter 2003
Press Release

Macrovision Corporation (Nasdaq: MVSN) announced today that fourth quarter 2003 net revenues were a record $39.9 million, compared with $30.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2002, an increase of 32%. Pro forma earnings for the quarter (before amortization of intangibles from acquisitions, in-process research and development write-off, non-cash deferred compensation expense, and impairment losses on investments) were $11.9 million or 29% higher than the $9.3 million recorded in last year’s fourth quarter. Pro forma diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.24, or 26% higher than the comparable earnings per share of $0.19 in the fourth quarter a year ago.

Net revenues for the full year of 2003 also set a record high, increasing to $128.3 million from $102.3 million for 2002, an increase of 26%. Pro forma earnings for 2003 were $37.8 million, 8% higher than the $35.1 million recorded in 2002. Pro forma diluted earnings per share for 2003 were $0.76, 10% higher than the comparable earnings per share of $0.69 last year.

Net income for the fourth quarter of 2003 was $10.7 million, compared with $0.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2002. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.21, compared to $0.02 a year ago. Net income for the full year of 2003 was $29.7 million, or 146% higher than the $12.1 million recorded in 2002. Diluted earnings per share for 2003 were $0.60, 150% higher than 2002, which were $0.24.

Cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and long-term marketable securities were $269.6 million as of December 31, 2003.

“We are pleased with our fourth quarter results,” said Ian Halifax, CFO at Macrovision. “Our revenues benefited from a strong holiday season for our DVD copy protection solution, and increased sales in our enterprise software electronic licensing business. The fourth quarter was important to us for a number of reasons, notably the launch of Macrovision FLEXnet™, the Universal Software Licensing Platform™; passing the 2 billion protected track milestone with our CDS™ copy-protection technology for music CDs; and the U. S. Patent Office’s declaration of a DRM patent interference proceeding between Macrovision and InterTrust Technologies Corporation.”
http://technology.press-world.com/v/60558.html


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

Groups To Intervene In Canadian Song Swapping Case

Judge allows arguments on privacy, copyright
Recording industry wants swappers named
Tyler Hamilton

Two public-interest groups were given the right yesterday to intervene in a landmark music-piracy case that has the potential to weaken privacy rights in Canada. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) is asking for a federal court order that would force Internet service providers to disclose the identities of 29 alleged Internet music swappers. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein adjourned the proceeding until March 12 so technical and privacy issues associated with the order could be studied further.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), based at the University of Ottawa, and Electronic Frontier Canada were both granted leave yesterday to make legal arguments in the case related to privacy, due process and copyright law. The two groups, which asked for intervener status Thursday, must now file written arguments on each issue by Friday, said Philippa Lawson, executive director and legal counsel for public-interest clinic. "This needs to be probably debated and resolved," said Lawson. The decision to issue a court order, she added, could set a dangerous precedent for future cases related to copyright infringement, defamation and other civil wrongdoing. Lawson also said that although copyright law in Canada is unclear, she fears the accused will be forced to settle with the recording industry because they don't have or can't afford legal representation. "This is frightening for a defendant," she said. "It's important the court clarify what is legal under copyright law before CRIA can back people into corners and bully them into settlements."

The accused, if found guilty, face civil penalties of between $500 and $20,000 per pirated song. The industry association said the 29 music swappers it is pursuing are "egregious" uploaders — those with between 800 and several thousand songs stored on their computers. The association opposed the intervener request, but Justice von Finckenstein acknowledged the case was entering a "new area of law" and that the outcome could have wide ramifications. Richard Pfohl, general counsel for the association, said the fact the recording industry must apply for a court order to get Internet subscriber data is evidence privacy laws are working. Privacy is more at risk when people use a file-sharing network, he said. "Peer-to-peer services typically employ spyware or Trojan horses that can open up users' personal computers to thieves." The Internet service providers being asked to hand over information include Bell Canada, Rogers Cable, Telus Corp., Vidéotron Ltd. and Shaw Cable.

Shaw is the only company openly fighting the court order.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851


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

Pirate Copies Of Monster On Internet
DDC

JOHANNESBURG - Withinh hours of Charlize Theron winning the Oscar for her role in Monster, pirated copies of the movie were released for download from the Internet.

"Downloadable copies of the movie first appeared on the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network this morning, just hours after the Oscar ceremony," said lawyer Reinhardt Buys.

"The file is quite big (437 MB) and would take anything between five and 20 hours to download."

When JM Coetzee won the Nobel prize for literature some months ago, copies of his books also appeared on file-sharing networks hours after the announcement.

Monster joins movies such as The Lord of The Rings and Matrix that were available on the Internet even before they were released in the US.
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/03/02.../amonster.html


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

File-Swap 'Killer' Grabs Attention
John Borland

A new political battle is brewing over Net music swapping, focusing on a company that claims to be able to automatically identify copyrighted songs on networks like Kazaa and to block illegal downloads.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic has been making the rounds of Washington, D.C., legislative and regulatory offices for the last month, showing off technology it says can sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast.

The company's technology is still being tested and could yet prove unworkable. But limited demonstrations have already turned some heads in legislative offices.

"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," said one senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity. "We are open to all kinds of different solutions at this point. Having the technological ability to do this certainly opens up some opportunities."

Audible Magic has predictably become a protege of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has helped the company gain entree to official Washington circles. The group says Audible Magic's technology, or something like it, should be adopted by file-swapping companies if they are serious about not supporting widespread copyright infringement.

The RIAA's backing, and the month-long press tour, has given the technology new credibility in legislative, regulatory and university circles. After watching a demonstration at RIAA headquarters in late January, University of Rochester Provost Chuck Phelps said he instructed his technology staff to evaluate the technology for use on his campus.

The RIAA isn't pressing for legislation or enforced usage of Audible Magic's software, at least not yet. Indeed, in an election year, any serious congressional attention to the issue is unlikely. But peer-to- peer companies are keenly aware of the potential for political strong arming--and of the threat it poses to the world of file swapping.

Privacy advocates and file-swapping backers have been deeply critical of any technology that would enforce monitoring or blocking of file swapping or any other Internet service. They argue that filters could infringe on free speech and block technological innovation, all to serve the entertainment industry's relatively narrow interests.

Nevertheless, the vast popularity of file-swapping networks like Kazaa remains largely based on trades of copyrighted songs, videos and software, according to many Net analysts. Being forced to install song-stopping filters inside software such as Kazaa--much as a court required of Napster in its heyday–-could severely disrupt the ability of file swappers to freely trade songs.

In past months, peer-to-peer executives including Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming have repeatedly told legislators that it was technically impossible or infeasible to install adequate filtering systems on their networks. Now some are switching focus, saying that even if filtering is technically possible, mandating it would be a disastrous mistake.

Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific technology as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a file-sharing war," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a file-swapping company trade association. "It is time that (the entertainment industry) be politely told that theirs is not the only social and economic interest at stake."

P2P United members have not seen Audible Magic's technology, Eisgrau noted. His group sent letters to RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol and Audible Magic earlier in the week asking for a demonstration.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bainwol said he would be delighted to do so: "The peer-to-peer community has said they are serious about filtering. But they've said they can't filter. We're saying, well, the good news is that you can."

From Napster's death to Audible Magic
The idea of filtering file-swapping networks got its first test run in Napster's last days, when courts mandated that the company block trades of copyrighted songs with near-perfect accuracy. The company first tried to block key works, but that failed when users simply renamed their songs.

Later, it began blocking using audio "fingerprinting" technology supplied by partner Relatable, and the amount of material available through the service dropped from tens of millions of files to just a handful almost overnight. Napster closed its doors to the public not long afterwards.

Audible Magic's song-identifying technology is the product of a group of former Yamaha sound engineers, who originally created the software to help movie post-production studios search massive databases of sound effects such as footsteps or door slams. In the late 1990s, they joined forces with former Hewlett-Packard marketer Vance Ikezoye and his newly formed Audible Magic startup, and turned their attention to identifying digital media files such as songs.

The company's technology works by identifying "psycho-acoustical" properties--essentially the computer equivalent of listening to the song itself. That means that the identification procedure is flexible. A song might be compressed into a lower quality recording, or have a few seconds of silence taken out at the beginning or end, or be otherwise transformed, and the technology will still recognize it as the same song, the company says.

The identification technology has already won credibility, used by songwriters' and publishers' trade association SESAC to identify when songs are played on broadcast radio in order to collect royalties. Several CD pressing plants also use the technology to track what they're manufacturing and ensure that their customers aren't trying to create counterfeit discs.

But it has been the company's peer-to-peer-focused efforts that have now brought it squarely to the forefront of the copyright debates.

Audible Magic is offering two different versions of its technology, one focused on networks and one on file-swapping software itself.

For several years it has tested a network-based "appliance," which would sit inside an Internet service provider (ISP) or business network and monitor data traffic as it goes by. If it identifies a copyrighted song, the technology would stop the transfer in progress.

A test of that technology was held at the University of Wyoming last year, but was ended after students complained about privacy invasions. In response, Ikezoye offered a university-focused version that simply blocks the copyrighted songs, and does not link specific trades to specific computer users.

That's helped spur new interest in the technology, such as from the University of Rochester's Phelps, although announced customers are still few and far between.

Inside your software?
The company's main demonstration for the last several weeks has been a version built into a piece of open-source Gnutella software. Similarly, it could be built into any other popular file-swapping package, company CEO Ikezoye said.

In that software-based version, the technology watches what songs are being downloaded, and when it has enough data to make a match--usually about a third to half of the file--it uses the Net connection to call Audible Magic's database. If it finds a match with a copyrighted song, it stops the download midstream.

Similarly, when files are put into a shared folder, the demonstration software calls up the Audible Magic database. If it finds a match, it prevents the song from being shared with other people on the network.

That second version of the software has not been tested on a large scale. While it appeared to function well in a single-user demonstration, implementing it on a widespread basis, particularly in software such as Kazaa or Morpheus where tens of millions of search requests a day are made, could have unforeseen consequences.

Moreover, for the filtering to work on a large scale, Ikezoye said that pressure--probably through legislation--would have to be put on file-swapping companies, which would be unlikely to voluntarily adopt his technology universally.

"This implementation clearly requires the cooperation one way or another of the peer-to-peer vendors," Ikezoye said.

Audible Magic's technology is far from perfect, even if it works as demonstrated. It's most critical weakness is likely to be encrypted files and encrypted networks, which its audio recognition software can't break through. Nor is it difficult to imagine hackers creating "cracked" versions of file-swapping software that have the song-recognition technology broken or stripped out, if legislators were to mandate its use.

Audible Magic is not the only company seeking to build filters for file swapping. Napster creator Shawn Fanning's new company Snocap is working on similar technology, with an aim toward giving record companies and music studios a way to make money from peer-to-peer networks.

But the file-swapping controversies are today as much rhetoric and politics as they are technology, and the last few weeks may have quietly seen a change in the file-swapping debates.

"I've achieved my objective, which is to say our technology works," Ikezoye said. "It is interesting that the question has shifted from 'Is this possible?' to 'How should this be deployed?'"
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5168505.html


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

Analysis: The Future Of Digital Music
Jonny Evans

Apple's iTunes Music Store was under discussion at New York's Digital Music Forum yesterday, even though the company did not officially attend the event.

RealNetworks vice president of music services Sean Ryan offered the keynote at the show. He said: "2004 will be a great year for digital music", and said that successful services need to supply a: "mix of offerings, multiple services (a la carte and subscription), control of the media player, and the ability to efficiently acquire customers and to get music off the computer"

With the industry ready to reach critical mass, Ryan shared his belief that the industry is now closed to new start-ups. "The time is over for start-ups in this sector," he said.

Ryan observed that a roughly 50/50 split exists between subscription and a la carte services, and warned that format incompatibility "will be the bane" of the year, predicting this would "ease" in 2005.

Format wars 'may slow growth'

The latter remarks look at the emerging digital music format war. Real offers its own formats, which also support Apple's basic format of choice, AAC. Real's offering does not support the extended proprietary version of AAC (which integrates an Apple-developed digital rights management system called FairPlay). In the other corner sits software giant Microsoft, which parades a concept of "consumer choice" to promote its Windows Media Audio (WMA) standard that it would like to see emerge as the industry standard in the sector.

Apple's outgoing chief financial officer Fred Anderson touched on the format war on Monday, saying: "With the HP deal we are going to get tremendous momentum behind establishing our digital music standard AAC as the digital music standard."

Anderson also confirmed that Apple is "hard at work" on bringing iTunes Music Store to other geographies, and agreed the company expects that doing so will "impact more on iPod sales".

He added that iPods are "doing really well in Europe", adding: "I hear in the UK it has generated the same sort of cultural change as you see in New York."

The format war highlighted by Ryan may be a tough campaign. Apple will fight to keep its leading position in the new industry. Anderson said: "We are not going to let anyone else take our leadership position".

The world on a (digital) plate

A conference panel on selling music online alleged that: "consumers want everything, everywhere and they want it now". Speakers from Napster, MusicNet, AOL Music, MusicNow, the Orchard and Payment One made a several key points on the topic.

They agreed that consumers want a lot from their digital music stores and operators that deliver what they want will "define the space". They also stressed the need to "sort out" format incompatibilities, and agreed that individual track downloads are easier for consumers to understand, and will therefore remain "attractive" to them.

Steven Marks, senior vice president of legal and business affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), discussed the music industry's strategy to create a legitimate online music business.

He believes that educating consumers doesn't work without the litigation the RIAA is currently employing against 2,500 file sharers. He agreed that peer-to-peer services could emerge as part of the digital music industry mix, but existing groups would need to "legitimize" their services. He also said that "current laws" regarding copyright are "good enough". "We have no plans to overhaul copyright law," he added.

P2P levels the field

Peer-to-peer champions at the show observed that peer-to-peer services are seeing massive growth, and claimed independent labels and artists have seen sales increases through such services, as they gain access to consumers – this reflects the major labels dominance of existing ways to reach consumers, TV, radio and retail. "Peer-to-peer provides an entry point for smaller players" they said. Approximately 12 billion tracks are downloaded using such services, they said.

Jonathan Potter, who leads the Digital Music Association, warned that Apple may face unexpected resistance to its success: he described the "antiquated" rights system that exists in the US that hindered development of legitimate services, and limits the number of tracks services can offer today.

He warned that some music industry dinosaurs regard Apple's success as an indication that usage restrictions are too lax, and "should be tightened". He admitted to a sea-change in the industry's treatment of the new services, "labels care about our success", he said.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=8078


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

Music Sales Sing An Upbeat Tune Again
Edna Gundersen

After moping through three years of downhill album sales, the music business is gleefully toasting a turnaround. Experts point to improved legal download services, curbs on piracy, a brightening economy and a diversity of products and formats as reasons consumers are buying more music.

Album sales last week were up 8% over the corresponding week a year ago and so far this year are up 12% over 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Mid-February registered the biggest sales in any weekly cycle, excluding the Christmas season, since SoundScan began tracking in 1991.

That surge, attributed to Valentine's Day gift shopping, a post-Grammy spike and the new Norah Jones album — it sold 1 million copies its first week — goosed the momentum of a rebound that began in September and posted gains in year-to-year comparisons for 11 of the next 15 weeks.

Before September, gloom prevailed as 2003 sales fell short of 2002 in all but two of 36 cycles. By late August, year-to-date sales had dipped 8.6% behind 2002, but a fourth-quarter rally reduced the gap to 3.6% by the end of 2003.

Heading into its sixth month, the spurt may be cause for celebration, but there's a whiff of foreboding in the festive air, as many worry that ballooning sales could go flat faster than today's champagne bubbles.

"It's not surprising to see CD sales up, but I'd be surprised to see sales rise significantly over the next year," says Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. "The long-term trend continues to be downward and could stay that way for two decades as the business moves to digital distribution. During that period, we'll see random fluctuations."

Though physical CDs still account for 96% of music sales, a digital transition is inevitable, Leigh says. Store-bought singles in particular are losing ground to downloads. Last week, consumers bought 164,000 singles in stores vs. 2.1 million tracks online.

Escalating online sales suggest that lawsuits targeting pirates are reining in peer-to- peer activity at renegade sites. Conflicting results of recent studies both support and refute that notion, Leigh says.

"One thing is certain," he says. "Legitimate online sales are up sharply, but it's still a fraction of what's being traded peer-to-peer."

To overtake free-for-all networks, paid services need to provide easier access, fewer restrictions and deeper inventory.

"There's no Beatles catalog, for instance," Leigh says. "Some popular artists aren't there yet, and that's the No. 1 reason subscription services get cancellations."

Rob Sisco, president of Nielsen Music, believes lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America rekindled sales, not by striking fear in music pirates but by educating users.

Most illegal downloaders "would not be willing to walk into a retail store, take CDs that struck their fancy and walk out without paying," Sisco says. "That (piracy) is stealing had to be pointed out, and it was pointed out at a perfect time, when legal alternatives were available, and the business had some exciting product to offer."

SoundScan's upticks in both digital and CD sales coincided with the start of the RIAA campaign and persisted through 2003. "The facts are very encouraging," Sisco says. "It's an absolute bona fide trend: Everything's up."

Contending that a rise in quality is aiding the reversal, Sisco says the current market offers bountiful choices of "wonderful music" for all age groups, particularly boomers grabbing CDs by Jones, Josh Groban and Harry Connick Jr.

The surge also fits the theory that a rising tide lifts all boats.

"The momentum around home entertainment has been building over a long period," says Gary Arnold, Best Buy's senior vice president of entertainment. "The film industry has been delivering mega-hits to DVD, and that brings more traffic into our stores."

He foresees further boosts in sales as consumers adjust to different formats and delivery systems.

"The music industry has always existed on selling multiple configurations," Arnold says. "We have a mature configuration, the CD, dominating now, but we're seeing other formats catch on, and the technology will grow. Music DVDs have exploded; they've become the live album for this generation."

Last year, cassette sales fell 40% while music DVDs climbed 105%. Rather than delivering a death blow to content, format extinction historically ushers in a technology upgrade that enhances content.

Arnold also sees positive results from Universal's move last fall to a $12.98 suggested list price for most CDs. It allowed retailers to trim some new releases to $9.99.

"We think $10 is a magical price point more closely in line with what consumers think CDs should cost," Arnold says. "It's part of the positive news that's making the music business more exciting. We may have ups and downs, but right now, music is back."

At least for the moment.

"Admittedly, one thing helping comparisons is that after a couple years of decline, you have easier numbers to beat," says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard director of charts. "I suspect sales will continue this momentum until September, when we hit a real test."

Then weekly album counts will have to compete with the robust totals racked in late 2003.

Music's wobbly ride in the new millennium warrants concern, he says, but it's not the wild roller coaster that swept the dot-com universe from boom to bust. The rally justifies cautious optimism and deflates doomsday headlines.

Mayfield says, "It's been a temptation to look at the sales declines in 2001 and 2002 and the first eight months of last year and say, 'Gee, it's over for record companies and music stores.' Certainly, illegal downloading and CD burners have been an insidious threat. Digital distribution will impact the future.

"Yet during the same week that we reached 2 million transactions in digital track sales, more than 17 million albums were sold. Retail stores and physical CDs have a long life ahead."

The technology that allows piracy to cannibalize CD sales also may be spurring music's growth by introducing new means to discover artists. The Internet, satellite radio and proliferating video channels are expanding music's reach.

"Once labels figure out how to deal with the new realities, I suspect there will be more gain than harm," Mayfield says.

During the slump, experts pointed to a souring economy, rampant piracy, high CD prices and lousy music as causes. Mayfield takes issue with the last argument.

"I have to laugh when people say music sucks," he says. "There are as many as 30,000 titles introduced to the market every year. We're talking about an awful lot to choose from. Even in down years, there's always a great interest in music. People wouldn't be stealing if they didn't think it had value."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...ic-sales_x.htm


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

DVD XCopy — Now What?

Company Raises Rabble Over Court-Forced Changes to Software
Cade Metz

One week after a California court ruled that DVD XCopy violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 321 Studios removed the ripping engine from its popular DVD copying application.

Planning to appeal the court's decision, 321 had requested a stay in the case, but the stay has yet to be granted, and under the court's ruling, the company was required to stop selling a version of the product that could lift (rip) data from copy-protected DVDs. The company, which will continue to seek a stay although the major movie studios have opposed it, has started a protest campaign (www.protectfairuse.org) against the court's decision, encouraging people to contact the press, the major movie studios, and congress to voice support for DXD X Copy and fair use rights.

Ripper-free versions of the product, renamed DVD XCopy Xpress RF and DVD XCopy Platinum RF, are already available from the company's Web site (www.321studios.com). Although these versions can't rip data off copy-protected DVDs, they can still duplicate data from DVDs that lack copy protection, compress the data, and move it to blank disks.

So what does this mean for consumers? In some cases, they may still be able to purchase the old version of the product. DVD XCopy has long been available at popular retail stores, including CompUSA, Fry's, and Wal-Mart, and although the court ruling bars 321 Studios from selling ripper-equipped versions of the product to such stores, the stores themselves are not banned from selling versions already on their shelves.

Legal Woes for Consumers

Strictly speaking, if you do get your hands on the old version or already own it, you're legally prevented from using it with copyrighted disks. According to Evan R. Cox, an intellectual property attorney and a partner in the San Francisco office of law firm Covington & Burling, the DMCA does not allow individuals to make copies of copy- protected DVDs, even for personal use. The copyright office could make such an allowance, but hasn't.

Almost certainly, some will continue to use the old product — and it's likely that the only people prosecuted will be those who sell copies of DVDs or share them with large numbers of others. The recording and movie industries have, of late, been showing a far greater inclination to prosecute suspected content pirates.

On Sept. 8, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued 261 ordinary American computer users, accusing them of using peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Grokster, Kazaa, and Morpheus, to illegally distribute and download large amounts of copyrighted music over the Internet. And, in mid-February, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched new civil actions on behalf of its member companies against two Chinese factories, one in Zhanjiang and the other in Henan, accusing them of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted movies on DVD.

Jack the Rippers From the Net

DVD XCopy may have been neutered, but other engines for ripping copy-protected DVDs remain. Consumers can, for instance, still download separate DVD rippers such SmartRipper or DVD Decrypter or one of dozens of others available across the Web, most of which are free. Very often, however, sites will warn that you're not allowed to download such tools if you're from the United States. Once you use a ripper to move data from a copy-protected disc to a hard drive, DVD X Copy can then compress the data and move it to a second DVD.

While the court has succeeded in removing the easiest-to-use DVD duplication application from American markets, the action is unlikely to stop DVD ripping. The Web is full of other utilities and even tutorials on how to use the various engines and DVD burning applications together.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...ag_040303.html


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

Banned DVD Copiers Get Spam Treatment
John Borland

Missed your chance to get software--now deemed illegal--that will copy DVDs? Just check your in-box.

It's been just a few days since St. Louis start-up 321 Studios reluctantly complied with a court's order to remove the "ripping" feature, which allowed computer users to make copies of Hollywood studio films, from its popular line of software.

But already unsolicited bulk e-mail is showing up in in-boxes telling consumers that if they act fast, they can buy the last copies of the "banned" software.

"Your last chance to own this powerful software," read one ad CNET News.com received Monday from a Minnesota company that called itself ProDVDCopy.com. "Limited pieces available and then they're gone forever."

With such little fanfare, DVD copying software has left the realm of ordinary legal controversy and entered the exalted realm of herbal Viagra and Nigerian investment schemes.

But this e-mail advertising campaign carries a legal risk for its source. While it's not illegal under federal law to use DVD copying software, the same law that Hollywood used to stop 321 Studios from distributing its own software bars anyone from distributing software that breaks through digital copy-protection locks.

In her ruling late last month, federal Judge Susan Illston said that 321's software did run afoul of that law. Last Friday, 321 Studios said it was destroying "tens of thousands" of copies of its software as a result and releasing a new version that would not make backups of Hollywood films that were guarded against copying.

ProDVDCopy could not immediately be reached for comment. A call to a support line listed in the e-mail advertisement reached a company called "CrazyEight." The domain name was registered just two weeks ago, on the same day that Illston issued her ruling ordering 321 Studios to stop selling its software.

An attorney working with the Motion Picture Association of America said anybody unrelated to 321 Studios will not be covered by Illston's injunction against the software company, but that distributing the software remains illegal. Any distributor could be independently sued.

"Anybody who sells prohibited circumvention software is doing something unlawful," said Pat Benson, an attorney with Mitchell Silverberg & Knupp, the firm representing the MPAA.

A representative for 321 Studios could not immediately be reached for comment.

The last-minute sales tactics aren't likely to make much of a splash in the larger debate over DVD copying, however. An assortment of other DVD copying software packages remains on the market, although Hollywood studios have already sued several of these other distributors.

Other, noncommercial pieces of DVD copying software are widely available on the Internet. "Cracked" versions of 321 Studios software, or versions in which registration keys have been illicitly bypassed, have long been available on file-swapping networks such as Kazaa or eDonkey.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5167878.html


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

“We’re Number One!”

US Tops International Spammers' List
Matthew Broersma

A study pinpointing the origination points of junk email messages shows that North America leads by a mile - but this is only part of the story.

The United States is by far the leading originator of most of the spam received around the world, according to a study published on Thursday by UK antivirus company Sophos.

The US accounted for more than half of all spam received, at 56.74 percent, Sophos said, with Canada a distant second place at 6.8 percent. The top-ranked European country was the Netherlands at 2.13 percent, while the UK scored ninth with 1.31 percent. The top-ranked European spammers -- the Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK and Spain -- together accounted for 7.82 percent of all spam received.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040227/152/en657.html


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

Metallica To Sell MP3s of Each Live Show
Jerry Del Colliano

No band has taken (or perhaps deserved) more fan criticism for their stance on peer to peer file sharing than Metallica. In a move starting in April and clearly designed to restore some of the band’s lost good faith with its most hardcore fans, Metallica will now record and sell live versions of each of their concerts for $9.95 in MP3 formats and $12.95 for FLAC files.

The band’s outspoken drummer, Lars Ulrich, is quoted on LiveMetallica.com saying “This is the next logical step in a process that began back in 1991 when we first implemented the Taper Section at our shows, where our fans were encouraged to bring in their own gear to record the show, and then take home their very own bootleg of the concert they had just seen. This technology will enable our fans to get the best possible recording of the show, without having to hold a microphone in the air for the entire night!”

The most serious fans can pre-order 34 shows before they are happen which allows the band a creative new way to make significant new revenues from their most enthusiastic fans each and every night of a tour. At the same time the band continues to try to outfox illegal bootleggers by taking their products directly to their customers.

As a business, this move is likely to be a smash hit. Yet on another level, if the band wants to repair burnt bridges with more of their fans they might find a way to record a studio album that is also a hit. Their St. Anger album, featuring their producer playing bass for much of the record, is considered to be one of rock’s worst studio records ever – up there with Van Halen III.
http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/...metallica.html


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

Bach Archive To Digitize Scores
AP

The Johann Sebastian Bach Archive in Leipzig, Germany, will restore and digitize original scores by the composer, with the idea of giving people access to the works via the Internet, officials said Thursday.

The project will restore 44 original compositions from Bach's second Leipzig cantata cycle, as well as scores, manuscripts and books about Bach from the 17th to 19th centuries.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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

Apple Computer, Beatles Firm in Court Over Name
Reuters

Apple Computer Inc. and the Beatles' record company, Apple Corps, went to court in Britain on Wednesday over who gets to use the name now that the computer company has entered the music business on the Internet.

The two companies reached a deal in 1991 after a fight over the trademark, signing an agreement that set out who could use the name and logo, and when.

But the British record company says the American computer company broke the deal by using the Apple name to market its new iTunes Internet music service.

In a preliminary skirmish Wednesday, Apple Computer asked the court to rule that the full legal battle should be dealt with by California courts, not British courts.

The computer company's lawyer said the 1991 agreement allowed Apple Computer to use the name for data transmission services, even if the data included material such as music, which was within the record label's "field of use."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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

DMCA News

Court Doesn't Extend Database Protection
Declan McCullagh

In the first case of its kind, a federal court in New York has ruled that one company's snatching of a database from a rival's Web site does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald said in an opinion released this week that Berkshire Information Systems did not run afoul of the controversial 1998 copyright law by allegedly downloading up to 85 percent of a proprietary advertising-tracking database from the Web site of competitor Inquiry Management Systems (IMS).

Buchwald said, however, that she would allow the case to proceed to trial because Berkshire may have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law commonly used to convict computer intruders. The law, invoked in the recent Adrian Lamo case, permits both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits when an Internet-connected computer is accessed "without authorization."

IMS is a Canadian company that monitors 2,500 magazines and claims to be the largest ad-tracking service for the United States. Its customers are magazine sales representatives, who can browse through the IMS "e-Basket" database and learn where advertisers are spending their money and which ones might be receptive to an advertising pitch.

Lenox, Mass.-based Berkshire offers a competing service called MarketShareInfo.com that measures competitive advertising by product, share of market, share of book, editorial ratio and sales territory.

If IMS had won on its DMCA arguments and if the decision had been upheld on appeal, the case would have significantly expanded the scope of legal protection that database owners enjoy.

Currently that topic is a contentious one on Capitol Hill, where Congress is debating what new legal protections, if any, to award to databases. One proposal is backed by big database companies like Reed Elsevier and Thomson but opposed by Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, Google, Yahoo and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Because Berkshire may have somehow obtained a legitimate password to the Web site, the judge said, IMS' argument that the bulk downloading "circumvented" a security system was a stretch. "Whatever the impropriety of defendant's conduct, the DMCA and the anti-circumvention provision at issue do not target this sort of activity," Buchwald wrote. Section 1201 of the DMCA says "no person shall circumvent a technological measure" that protects copyrighted material.

IMS could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024-5165624.html


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

Universal And Shanghai Media Plan Music Venture
ILN

Universal Music Group and Shanghai Media Group are expected to announce today the formation of a company that will adopt a new business model designed to be less vulnerable to piracy. Sum Entertainment will develop and manage new artists for music-related entertainment events, such as television programming, sponsorships and distribution over new media such as mobile phones.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...940575,00.html


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

German Retailer Halts Controversial Radio-Chip Card

BERLIN (AP) - German retail giant Metro Group said Friday it will stop putting ``smart tag'' chips inside customer loyalty cards, a practice that sparked protests by privacy advocates who say the cards could allow stores to secretly track consumers as they shop.

Metro has given out about 10,000 of the cards with embedded Radio Frequency Identification chips since April as part of a broader effort to bring wireless technology into its stores and warehouses.

Cardholders will receive replacements with bar codes, Metro spokesman Albrecht von Truchsess said.

``There are concerns about having customer cards with RFID chips,'' he said. ``We have to take them seriously and discuss them. With such an emotional debate going on, we said it's just not worth it.''

Metro's plans to roll out a wireless inventory tracking system in November, involving about 100 of its top suppliers and 250 of its stores, are not affected, von Truchsess said.

Metro has been testing the technology since April at a so-called ``future store'' in the German town of Rheinberg, near its Duesseldorf headquarters.

The RFID chip in the customer cards has allowed cardholders at the store to preview films cleared for viewers who are at least 16 -- the age at which Metro customers can get a card. Approaching a playback device with the card rolls the movie clip.

Metro played down the suspicions by privacy advocates and consumer groups, saying the RFID-equipped cards were never used to store or process customer behavior. ``We never saw a privacy problem,'' von Truchsess said.

RFID chips broadcast a signal with information about a product and have been embraced for inventory control by major retailers including Wal-Mart.

In such schemes, receivers send information harvested from chips to central computers in order to precisely track goods in the supply chain.

The technology offers the prospect of more accurate inventory control than traditional bar codes, and also could help with concerns such as food safety by making the tracking of perishables easier.

A plan by clothing giant Benetton Group SpA to introduce smart tags in garments, allowing them to be tracked from factory to store, raised privacy concerns last year and Benetton subsequently said it was undecided on the project.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8059767.htm


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

1st Amendment Trumps Candidate's Claim On Web Site Name
Alex Quinones

WASHINGTON - A federal judge Thursday denied Republican congressional candidate Robin Ficker's claim on the domain name "robinficker.com," saying the Web site owner had a First Amendment right to use the candidate's name.

"By entering the public arena as a candidate for political office, (Ficker) has invited comments and critique, which operates in the spirit of healthy democracy of this country," U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. wrote in the four-page ruling.

The Web site, robinficker.com, includes disparaging stories about Ficker, who is running in the GOP primary for Maryland's 8th Congressional District. At one point, the site redirected Web surfers to the official campaign site of one of Ficker's opponents in the primary, Chuck Floyd.

Ficker sued John Tuohy, the owner of the domain name robinficker.com. Tuohy is also a paid political consultant to Floyd, who has paid Tuohy $13,500 for his services, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunhera...cs/8050576.htm


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

Judge Throws Out Evidence In Internet Sex Case

Ruling: Chat Room Conversations Subject To Wiretapping Laws
TheWMURChannel

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- A judge's ruling to throw out key evidence in a computer solicitation case could have a sweeping effect on how police catch pedophiles over the Internet.

Ruling Could Lead To Other Appeals

Judge Robert Morrill's ruling in Rockingham County Superior Court is drawing criticism from the law enforcement community because it challenges the way police conduct Internet investigations. Roland Macmillan, 30 of Exeter, N.H., is scheduled to go on trial March 15 on charges of using a computer at the Exeter Public Library to meet and eventually lure a 14-year-old girl for sex.

He never met the girl because he was actually chatting with an undercover Portsmouth police officer posing as the girl. The officer was using a special kind of software called Camtasia, so the online conversation could be recorded. Morrill compared the computer conversation to a phone conversation. He said the evidence against Macmillan was obtained illegally because the officer never received permission from the Attorney General's Office as required under the state's wiretapping law. "He was having a conversation with someone in a chat room," said Brad Russ, of the Office of Juvenile Justice. "It was not a private conversation." Russ is the former Portsmouth police chief and now works for the federal government. He said the ruling would make it next to impossible to go after Internet predators, and he said the recording software is necessary to prevent entrapment. "It allows us to make sure their procedures are appropriate, and it also allows officers to capture the evidence for a jury and judge to review," Russ said. Russ warned that the decision could encourage convicted sex offenders to challenge their convictions. Macmillan's defense attorney said that in these cases, police are violating a person's right to privacy. "Police could still intercept these calls," defense attorney Phil Desfosses said. "There is a warrant procedure in the wiretapping statute. They must go to the AG's office." The county attorney is considering appealing the judge's decision to the state Supreme Court. It's unclear if Macmillan's trial will go forward in two weeks or be delayed until after the ruling is appealed.
http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/2886945/detail.html


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

How I Lost the Big One

When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar.

By Lawrence Lessig

IT IS OVER A YEAR LATER AS I WRITE THESE WORDS. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by well- wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred.

But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this story to myself, I can't help believing that my own mistake lost it.

ERIC ELDRED, A RETIRED COMPUTER PROGRAMMER in New Hampshire, was frustrated that his daughters didn't seem to like Nathaniel Hawthorne. And in 1995, he decided to do something about it: put Hawthorne on the web. An electronic version with links to pictures and explanatory text, Eldred thought, would make this 19th-century work come alive.

It didn't work—at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause. Eldred went on to build a library of public-domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free.

Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public-domain works. Just as Disney turned the Grimms' fairy tales into films more accessible to a 20th-century audience, Eldred put the works of Hawthorne, and many others, in a form more accessible—technically accessible— today. Like Disney, Eldred was free to produce new versions of works whose copyright had lapsed. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter had passed into the public domain in 1907.

In 1998, Robert Frost's poetry collection New Hampshire was slated to pass into the public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library. But Congress got in the way. For the 11th time in four decades, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights—this time by 20 years. Eldred would not be free to add any works published since 1923 to his collection until 2019. Under the new law, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then, if Congress extended the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than one million patents will pass into the public domain.

This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, or CTEA, enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician. According to his widow, Mary Bono, Sonny Bono believed that "copyrights should be forever."

Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he would publish as planned, the CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law passed in 1998, the No Electronic Theft Act, his act of publishing would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a retired programmer to undertake.

It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I am a constitutional scholar whose first passion is constitutional interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the progress clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as different in an important way. Every other clause granting power to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something—for example, to regulate "commerce among the several states" or "declare War." But in the progress clause, the "something" is something quite specific—to "promote . . . Progress"—through means that are also specific—by "securing" "exclusive Rights" (i.e., copyrights) "for limited Times."

In my view, our constitutional system placed such a limit on copyright as a way to ensure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eldred discovered, copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again. And while it is the valuable copyrights— Mickey Mouse and "Rhapsody in Blue"—that are responsible for terms being extended, the real harm done to society is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that still have commercial value. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. Most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends. Copyrights in this context do no good.

More


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

China Clamps Down on Web News Discussion

It restricts Internet reporting and bans the airing of sensitive issues. Insiders say officials fear the Web's ability to fire up public opinion.
Mark Magnier

BEIJING — China this week launched a major crackdown on one of the most vibrant parts of the Internet, the news discussion groups that have pushed the boundary of free speech in the country and forced greater government accountability.

The new rules ban independent reporting that hasn't been approved by the government, discussion of sensitive issues such as economic failures, and Web postings that challenge the Communist Party.

Officials at the Information Office of the State Council, which regulates online media, were not immediately available for comment.

But according to documents made available to The Times, Information Office gatekeepers outlined the strict guidelines to senior managers from China's largest Internet portals in a meeting this week.

"The reason why they did this is very obvious," said Li Fang, chief editor of Netease Review. "The Communist Party thinks the Internet news comments are putting them under too much pressure from public opinion."

Although the government has gone after individual columns and news discussion sites in the past, insiders say this is the first time it has adopted such a systematic approach to the genre.

People who work in this area said they were afraid of getting fired, or persecuted politically, as a result of the new campaign.

The action comes as Beijing prepares to host the annual National People's Congress meeting next week. China tends to tighten control over the media in advance of major meetings, party congresses and leadership changes.

Internet employees say this year's meeting is not particularly important, however, and suspect that the real reason lies elsewhere. They believe that senior party officials have been rattled by the medium's ability to shape public opinion and air citizen outrage, citing the recent "BMW case."

In December, a court in remote Heilongjiang province handed down a suspended sentence to a woman for what many saw as murder. A farmer and his wife reportedly scratched the woman's BMW with their cart, at which point the woman got out, yelled at a group of peasants, then got back behind the wheel and plowed into the crowd, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people. There were reports that the driver was politically well-connected.

The light sentence — in a country where justice is often harsh — generated a furor so intense that some Internet news discussion sites reportedly received more than 50,000 postings in a single day. The provincial governor was prompted to publicly deny that he was related to the woman. Apologies from other officials and promises to investigate the case followed.

With the government in danger of losing face, insiders say, censors on Jan. 6 issued orders to news discussion group websites to remove all coverage of the issue from their home pages. That was followed on Jan. 15 by orders to delete all past postings or any mention of the case.

"The BMW case has created instability, disturbed people's thoughts and damaged the image of the Internet," officials reportedly said. "The Web must know its responsibility and avoid creating conflict between the people and the government."

The new guidelines go even further.

Online news editors were reportedly told that they could run only news already vetted in major state-controlled newspapers above the provincial level. Nor are postings by ordinary Internet users permitted without prior approval.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...,4778483.story


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

Lindows Offers Discount To P2P Buyers
Gillian Law

Lindows Thursday said it is offering a 50% discount to customers who download its commercial software using its new peer-to-peer system.

LindowsOS is now available for $25 over peer-to-peer, instead of the normal $49.95, Lindows said.

The company has established a peer-to-peer system, based on open source software called BitTorrent, that it says is ideal for transferring large applications with high- demand peaks. The data is broken down into chunks and then reassembled after it has been transferred, the company said in a statement. A typical 500M-byte LindowsOS file, for example, will be broken into about 1,000 pieces, each about 500K bytes in size.

All active downloaders on the network cooperate by exchanging numbered chunks until each user has the whole file, Lindows said. The system uses cryptographic hashing, or document numbering, developed by a group called SHA1 (or Secure Hash Algorithm 1) to automatically verify that each piece is what it should be.

New software upgrades will create spikes in demand, but the number of people on the network will grow proportionately as people join the "download cooperative," the company said.

Lindows expects the peer-to-peer system to become the main download system for its larger files. The current FTP system is capped at 200K bit/sec, and with up to 1,000 people downloading at the same time this can lead to delays of up to four hours, the company said. Peer-to-peer will allow immediate download at a faster speed, it said.

Costs are also reduced, as there is less need for hosting infrastructure such as servers, firewalls and routers, Lindows said.

The BitTorrent system requires users to install a small piece of free software, available for Linux, Macintosh and Windows users, Lindows said.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0304lindooffer.html


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

Losing Control of Your TV

The latest anti-piracy move will prevent you from making high-quality copies of broadcast TV programs. And the new "broadcast flag" technology enables all manner of other restrictions.
Simson Garfinkel

In the future, the Motion Picture Association of America will control your television set. Every TV sold in the United States will come equipped with an electronic circuit that will search incoming TV programs for a tiny electronic “flag.” The MPAA’s members will control this flag, putting it into broadcast movies and television shows as they see fit. If the flag is present, your TV will go into a special high-security mode and lock down its high-quality digital outputs. If you want to record a flagged program, you’ll have to do so on analog tape or on a special low-resolution DVD. Any recording will be limited to analog-quality sound. This security measure is not designed to protect the television from viruses or computer hackers— it’s designed to protect TV programs from you.

This future arrives on July 1, 2005.

Legally known as the Advanced Television Systems Committee Flag, but better known as the broadcast flag, this little bit of Machiavellian technology was folded into the Federal Communications Commission’s rulebooks last November. Reaction since then has been mixed. Most journalists writing about the flag have said that it won’t affect most consumers—unless they try to record high-quality digital video in their living room and play it back in their bedroom. The Center for Democracy and Technology called the FCC’s ruling a historic compromise that will preserve many consumer rights while preventing rampant video piracy as television goes digital, but CDT also notes that the FCC’s whole process for approving the broadcast flag sets a dangerous precedent that could easily turn against consumers. Indeed, many technologists that I’ve spoken with believe that the broadcast flag introduces dangerous Trojan Horse technology—a technology that could be rejiggered with even stronger anti-consumer provisions as time goes on. “Any broadcaster who uses it should lose their license because it is a misuse of the public’s trust,” says Andrew Lippman, a senior research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.

In fact, all of these things are true.

To understand why the MPAA lobbied so hard for the broadcast flag, you need look no further than the world of recorded music. Twenty years ago the music industry started putting pop tunes on optical compact discs. The music was completely unprotected—meaning that there was nothing to prevent it from being copied—but at the time nobody really cared. Each CD stored far more information than did many mainframe computers of the era. So even though the data was there for the taking, if you took it, there was no place that you could put it.

I bought both an Apple Macintosh computer and a Sony portable CD player in the spring of 1984. The digital music on my Dark Side of the Moon album took up nearly 600 megabytes of space; the Mac had on its floppy disk a mere 400 kilobytes of storage. There was no way that I could rip that music!

Three things changed this balance. The first was the relentless march of technology. By 1988, my desktop computer had a hard disk that stored 20 megabytes; in 1992 I bought a drive that could store a full gigabyte—big enough to hold the contents of a CD. The second factor was a real scientific breakthrough: the MP3 sound compression technique, which let me squeeze that Pink Floyd classic down to 50 megabytes. The third factor, of course, was the widespread deployment of broadband Internet connections, which made it possible for me to share those 50 megabytes with 10,000 of my closest friends.

Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.
That’s all history, and for much of the past five years the Recording Industry Association of America has been trying to put the technological genie back in the bottle. They shut down the original Napster, they recently raided the offices of Kazaa in Sydney, Australia and they’ve started filing lawsuits against small-time users of file-sharing software. It’s a messy and expensive business, but the RIAA doesn’t see any other choice.

The MPAA would like to avoid repeating the RIAA’s contentious experience with digital media. But the MPAA’s first attempt didn’t go so well. Realizing that DVDs were sure to be popular, the major studios got together and designed an encryption scheme for DVDs that was supposed to prevent movies copied onto a hard drive or burned onto a recordable DVD from ever being played. But just a few years after the technology hit the market, the DVD encryption scheme was cracked. Free software that you can download from the Internet lets you take a DVD, decrypt it, and then crunch it down so that it will fit on a single 700 megabyte CD. You can make copies for your friends or, if you want, take that brand new Cat In the Hat DVD and upload the files to the Internet so that everybody in Sri Lanka can mock its production values.

“And that is not all!” said the Cat. “Oh no, that is not all!”

Within a few years, all of the TV signals moving over the airwaves will be digital. And unprotected digital content moving unrestricted over the airwaves is the MPAA’s nightmare scenario. The industry’s great fear is that high-quality digital broadcasts would be scooped up by techno-geeks with digital television cards wedged in to the back of their PCs. These merry pranksters would presumably then leak Hollywood's precious bits onto one of those high-speed international broadband circuits—perhaps one that goes from California to Hong Kong.

And that, says Fritz Attaway, the MPAA's executive vice president for government relations and Washington general counsel, is the flag’s real purpose. Speaking to Wired News last month, Attaway explained that the purpose is to protect the industry’s lucrative overseas syndication market. Why would people in Malaysia, Singapore, or Hong Kong want to watch American television shows months or even years after they are aired in the United States—as they do now—when instead they could see the shows the following day?

Of course, the broadcast flag will do more than stop such international retransmission: it will keep you from sharing your high-quality digital recordings with anyone—like those annoying people who are always sending out e-mail messages asking if anybody in the office remembered to tape last week’s episode of Buffy, because they didn’t have their own VCR set up properly. As if! Once the broadcast flag is operational, we’ll all be spared from these requests.

Even though I don’t watch much broadcast TV, I am still strongly opposed to the broadcast flag. The first reason is “mission creep.” Having successfully lobbied a regulatory agency to put anti-consumer copy protection technology into the television set, what’s to stop a greedy content industry from asking for more? The broadcast flag could be expanded into a whole family of little flaglets, and together giving the system a much more expressive repertoire. One flag might say, “you may not time-shift this program.” Another flag might tell your TiVO “you may not fast-forward or skip this program’s commercials.” A very special flag might disable your TV’s channel changer and “off” buttons. There might even be a Mission Impossible flag that makes your digital video recorder self-destruct in five seconds (or at least erase every movie owned by Universal Studios.) Who knows what Hollywood will dream up next!

And yet, the broadcast flag is not some poor ghost created to walk the airwaves until the foul crimes done against the recording industry by the likes of Napster are burnt and purged away. No, it is instead just another step in Hollywood's ongoing project to remake both consumer electronics and desktop computers so that they are more to the industry's liking.

After all, the flag won’t achieve its goal of eliminating off-the-air piracy. For starters, it applies only to equipment that will be sold after July 2005; naturally, the hacker weblogs are advising people to stock up now on unencumbered digital TV cards for PCs—cards that don’t implement the broadcast flag. After July 2005, every new digital TV card will be encumbered with this spiffy new technology.

Another lurking problem with the broadcast flag proposal is that it only applies to material that’s broadcast—not material that’s sent through cable or beamed down from a satellite. Those systems have their own copyright protection technology. But the more standards that industry deploys, the greater the chance for something to go wrong. Not only will compatibility be difficult, but it’s likely that some pieces of equipment won’t properly honor the copyright control technologies and some of Hollywood’s valuable content will sneak out.

So what happens when the broadcast flag has obviously failed? The MPAA will be back, this time demanding that even stronger anti-consumer technology be bundled into consumer electronics and desktop computers. Ultimately, Hollywood will settle for nothing less than the elimination of any consumer technology that can make high-quality recordings.

After all, we’ve been down this road before—just a little more than 25 years ago, in fact.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...nkel030304.asp





Kazaa Loses Round One in Australia
John P. Mello Jr.

MIPI General Manager Michael Speck argued that Kazaa is costing the record industry and music creators "billions of dollars in lost royalties" each year. "The industry is committed to the growth of legal online music providers, and stopping Kazaa's illegal activities is a necessary step in that process," he said.

An attempt to exclude evidence from a music piracy case seized in sweeping raids by the Australian recording industry has been rejected by a federal court judge.

The evidence was gathered February 5th by Music Industry Privacy Investigations (MIPI), the enforcement agent of Australia's recording industry, in court-ordered raids at 12 locations throughout the country, including the Sydney headquarters of Sharman Networks, maker of Kazaa , one of the most popular file-sharing programs on the Internet.

The raids were sanctioned by Judge Murray Wilcox, who issued an Anton Pillar order for them. Such orders are an extreme measure and are used when there is an imminent threat that evidence will be destroyed.

Sharman challenged the order, contending the MIPI withheld facts from the judge that would have dissuaded him from issuing it.

In addition to rejecting Sharman's challenge of the Pillar order, Judge Wilcox also refused the company's request to delay the Australian proceedings until a similar case now being heard in the United States is completed.

Although Judge Wilcox rejected Sharman's application, he did not grant MIPI uncontrolled access to the evidence it gathered February 5th. Instead, he suggested that the recording industry group and Sharman work out a scheme for accessing the evidence.

Both parties are due back in court March 23rd.

Lawyers for Sharman told reporters after the proceeding that they will withhold comment until they review the 23-page opinion.

"It is now time for Kazaa to stop using delaying tactics and face the music," MIPI General Manager Michael Speck said in a statement released following the decision.

"Kazaa's application was to avoid evidence seeing the light of day," he added. "It is part of an obvious attempt to protect the largest copyright infringement business in the world."

Speck argued that Kazaa is costing the record industry and music creators "billions of dollars in lost royalties" each year. "The industry is committed to the growth of legal online music providers, and stopping Kazaa's illegal activities is a necessary step in that process," he said.

Another step in the process may involve pressuring file-sharing software makers to incorporate technologies into their applications that will thwart trading of copyrighted material on the Internet.

One such technology, developed by Audible Magic of Los Gatos, California, has been making the rounds of offices inside the Beltway over the last month under the auspices of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Audible Magic is hawking two products: an "appliance" that allows network administrators to block sharing of copyrighted material over their networks, and a client-based program that can be incorporated into a file-sharing client to prevent downloading or uploading of copyrighted materials by individuals.

The products can listen to a audio file, create an acoustic fingerprint for it and compare that fingerprint with those in its database of copyrighted material -- all on the fly and, according to Audible Magic, with a minimum of performance degradation, an assertion challenged by some in the file-sharing industry.

"In real-world terms, not only would Audible Magic bring networks to a crawl, thus putting us out of business, but how long do you think that it would take a 16-year-old kid in Estonia to write a program that would strip it from any P2P application?" Wayne Rosso, CEO of Optisoft in Madrid, Spain, told TechNewsWorld via e-mail.

"And of course everyone in the food chain would have to buy into this one technology, which isn't going to happen," he added. "It's a ridiculous exercise in futility."

Technology solutions that exclusively try to block sharing of copyrighted material are full of challenges, according to Pat Breslin, CEO of Relatable in Alexandria, Virginia, a maker of acoustic fingerprinting products. "Attempting to block the flow of content without offering an alternative is a battle against a guerrilla war," he told TechNewsWorld.

According to the RIAA, technologies like Audible Magic's prove that peer-to-peer software makers can control illicit file sharing on their networks if they have the will to do so.

"Their argument is artful, as it is utterly false and cynical," Adam Eisgrau, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based P2P United, which represents several major peer-to-peer providers, countered in an interview with TechNewsWorld.

"They're conveniently sliding over the fact that in order to work, they must compel the reengineering of a communications technology, of a software package -- in fact, of an industry," he added.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33036.html


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

P2P Ops Decry RIAA Filter Claims

p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA claims it's identified software that's the answer to unauthorised music sharing.

It can "sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast," as a CNET News story tells it here.

"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," a "senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity" told CNET.

The RIAA now wants to know why the commercial p2p companies aren't using it, or something close to it, to filter unauthorised material on peer-to-peer networks.

After all, "The RIAA uses it to help identify musical evidence," boasts sales blurb on the site of Audible Magic, the company that makes RepliCheck 'song-recognition software', as it's known.

Sadly, the 'filter' may not actually filter, contrary to claims made for it by the RIAA and Mitch Bainwol, its chief. And the music industry enforcement unit's contentions may once again be based on bluff and blunder, as is all too often the case.

Deciding whether or not Audible Magic's song-recognition software does much more than simply recognize songs calls for expert technical knowledge, not something either the RIAA or congress are famous for. But high on the list of experts able to analyse the software are the p2p operators themselves.

They're itching to get their hands on RepliCheck but so far, although it seems everyone on Capitol Hill has watched the software in action, the people it concerns the most - the commercial p2p community - haven't managed to see a copy, let alone test it in the wild.

Not that they haven't tried.

On January 24 their trade group P2P United hand-delivered a letter to RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) boss Bainwol demanding access to the Audible Magic 'song-recognition software' being touted under the aegis of the RIAA.

More than a week after the letter was delivered, P2P United members still haven't been able to conduct a hands-on trial. And yet somewhat disingenuously, Bainwol told CNET News he "would be delighted for them to do so".

Moreover, Audible Magic quotes Frank Creighton, RIAA svp of anti-piracy, as saying, "We have joined forces with trade associations and rights holders to combat the theft of intellectual property" and "Audible Magic's RepliCheck helps protect artists and our business from copyright infringement, and it takes a huge burden off our employees."

The 'rights holders' Creighton is talking about are, of course, the Big Five record labels, which own the RIAA in
the first place. And the 'trade associations' are other RIAA-like enforcement organs - also owned by Big Music.

What's it all about?

In 2000 Audible Magic Corporation, then a startup "that provides solutions for identifying audio content over the Internet", bought Muscle Fish, a Berkeley-based company founded by acoustic engineers formerly from Yamaha Music Technologies, Inc.

"Muscle Fish engineers pioneered the use of content-based analysis and classification of audio files with over six years of extensive research and development," it says, going on:

"Muscle Fish's invention ... measures a variety of psycho-perceptual characteristics of the audio file. These measurements can be used to analyze, compare, classify, and retrieve audio files. The technology has been demonstrated to be accurate at exact pattern matching for a range of file formats, including streaming audio on the Internet. In addition, it can be used to match and identify 'similar sounding' audio files, returning a list of closest matches to the user."

"Psycho-perceptual characteristics". Science-speak at its best and magic for Bainwol and congress.

"The value of the Muscle Fish acquisition will be seen not only in audio content identification, but with the digital

media access, control and monetization opportunities it enables," said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic ceo and co- founder in 2000. "We are already working with a number of customers on some very intriguing applications and have multiple patents pending, so stay tuned."

There's a Muscle Fish paper entitled CLASSIFICATION, SEARCH, AND RETRIEVAL OF AUDIO by the app's creators, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar and James Wheaton, which explains how it call comes together.

It all looks great but the bottom line is - although it seems this software can recognize all kinds of audio material, how does it 'filter' content, let alone block it?

But not to worry - we're sure Bainwol can explain it.

In the meanwhile, introducing filters into centralised apps such as the old Napster would be possible. But one of the main points about programs developed by P2P United members FreePeers (BearShare), Manolito P2P (Blubster), LimeWire (Limewire), Grokster Ltd (Grokster), MetaMachine (eDonkey2000) and Streamcast Networks (Morpheus) is: they're decentralized.

This means users looking for material to trade or simply access search a number of individual computers on individual p2p networks until they find what they want. This same decentralized search process make it impossible for 'filters' to track searches.

To write programs able to interdict porn or anything else would mean completely changing the characteristics of existing p2p software, which would in turn mean changing the nature of the existing commercial p2p business.

That's not only impractical, it's dangerous, says Adam Eisgrau, P2P United executive director.

Software of this kind would amount to "a warrantless wiretap capability with no public accountability," he told p2pnet. The music industry is demanding nothing less than, "the developers of neutral and legal software programs with great social utility redesign their products to the dictates of a single private industry.

"Anyone who values privacy ought to be outraged and alarmed."
http://p2pnet.net/story/896


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

Worm Writers Continue Verbal Warfare
Lisa Valentine

By communicating with each other, the worm writers become more vulnerable to being caught. "The more they interact with each other," argues Symantec senior director of engineering Alfred Huger, "the more they expose themselves to people who want to answer the question of who they are."

The MyDoom, Bagle, and Netsky worm writers are attacking each other in a game of one-upmanship, apparently releasing new worm variants just so they can make profane comments to each other.

New variants -- with accompanying remarks -- have been released in a flurry since the weekend, with most of the commentary directed toward the Netsky writer. The MyDoom and Bagle writers seem to have ganged up on Netsky because of its penchant to erase the other viruses from machines it infects.

F-Secure reports the following dialogue:

Bagle J to Netsky: "Hey, NetSky, f*ck off you b*tch, don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war ?"
MyDoom G writes "To netsky's creator(s): imho, skynet is a decentralized peer-to-peer neural network. we have seen P2P in Slapper in Sinit only. they may be called skynets, but not your sh*tty app."

Retaliation Against Netsky

"Of the three viruses, the Netsky virus doesn't really seem to have any purpose except to remove the other two viruses," Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering for global support and services, Symantec, told NewsFactor.

Instead, could the Netsky writer simply be a modern-day vigilante, protecting
computer users from MyDoom and Bagle? "It's really difficult to speculate, but the net effect is that the MyDoom and Bagle virus writers were obviously a little put out about this," said Huger.

This type of turf war involving roving gangs of virus writers has occurred in the past, "but not to the degree that it is right now," said Huger. For example, hackers commonly leave comments about each other embedded in their tools, and worms that break into commercial systems will sometimes include messages directed at a corporate target.

'State of War'

Virus writers also have been known to use embedded messages in code to further their political views. In 2003, the Indian Snakes virus-writing gang used the W32/Yaha-Q worm to respond to Pakistani hackers defacing an India-based Web site, Chris Belthoff, senior security analyst, Sophos, told NewsFactor.

Sophos has gone so far as to declare "a state of war" between the creators of the Netsky and Bagle worms, both of which have spread widely across the Internet in a number of different guises. "Many new versions of the two worms have appeared this week, clogging business e-mail systems as companies attempt to deal with the barrage of unwanted messages," said Belthoff.

Both authors may have access to an underground network consisting of thousands of compromised computers owned by innocent users, which are being exploited to launch every new version of their worms, Belthoff explained.

Impact on Enterprise

"This is the first time I've seen this for e-mail-based viruses, especially the volume of the back and forth. It seems the authors are releasing variants just so they can have their piece," said Huger.

By communicating with each other, the worm writers become more vulnerable to being caught. "The more they interact with each other," argues Huger, "the more they expose themselves to people who want to answer the question of who they are."

All this worm back-and-forth is having an impact on the enterprise. "For corporate users, the worms are having an impact on their e-mail gateways -- we're seeing a pretty large volume out there," noted Huger.
http://enterprise-linux-it.newsfacto...ry=netsecurity


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

Dictionary-Starved Bug Writers Hurl Abuse
Matthew Clark

The world's e-mail users appear to be caught in the crossfire of a three-way shootout between the authors of Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom.

In the last few days, a number of variants of the now infamous bugs have appeared, often within hours of one another, with each new version as destructive as the last. Bagle is now in its 11th incarnation, Bagle.K, while the most recent versions of Mydoom and Netsky seem to be "H" and "F" respectively, according to F-Secure.

All of the bugs are self-propagating e-mail worms that come delivered in e-mails that are disguised with an assortment of spoofing features, file names, file types and subject lines. Some versions of the bugs also have the capacity to spread via person to person (P2P) file- sharing networks like Kazaa.

But what is even more interesting about the recent versions of these worms -- most of which have been given "medium" threat ratings -- is some of the text buried in the bugs' files. These messages are presumably from the virus writers and they consist of taunts and insults, painting a picture of what appears to have ballooned into a full-scale cyber-underworld war.

In one message, Netsky's authors accuse MyDoom's creators of unfairly lifting Netsky concepts. "MyDoom.f is a thief of our idea!" a message in Netsky.C said. A line in Netsky.F, from a group that calls itself Skynet AntiVirus said, "Bagle - you are a looser!!!"

A poorly spelled retort to Netsky's architects from Bagle.J's authors included the line, "Hey, Netsky, f**k off you b***h, don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war ?"

Besides the name-calling, other references from Netsky's creators suggest that the cohort is unhappy with the Netsky name, preferring instead to be known as Skynet, the name for the computer system that destroys humanity in the Terminator films.

MyDoom.G's creators, meanwhile, entered the fray with a profane message to Netsky's creators, disparaging their claim to be authors of a skynet: "to Netsky's creator(s): imho, skynet is a decentralized peer-to-peer neural network. we have seen P2P in Slapper in Sinit only. they may be called skynets, but not your s****y app."

Though crude and unimaginative, the commentary does complement features in many of the newer variants of the bugs, including characteristics that can remove rival bugs from an infected system.

And while some have said that the fight between the three could add up to a battle for control of thousands of infected "zombie" computers, others have looked at the apparent war with less regard. "It's possibly an insight into the maturity and mentality of the people who create these things," said Dermot Williams, the managing director of Dublin-based e-security firm Systemhouse Technologies.

Williams noted that such activity isn't entirely new and pointed to the recent arrest in Belgium of a female virus writer known as "Gigabyte" who authored such bugs as Coconut-A, Sahay-A, and Sharp- A. In some of her malware, Gigabyte included text disparaging Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus giant Sophos, who often comments on the industry. Gigabyte called Cluley a sexist and claimed that he insulted female virus writers. "All of this points to the mentality going on here -- the childishness of it all," William noted.
http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9397181.html













Until next week,

- js.













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

Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

February 28th, February 21st, February 14th, February 7th, January 31st

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

[multi]

[TankGirl]

An excellent opening essay, Jack, and yet another huge WiR issue. Good work.

Your idea of Ultradrive is fascinating, and should the media companies do any long term planning (say 5-10 years) they should be pondering very seriously what they are going to do when gadgets like these become commonplace. "Get ready, the infinite is fast approaching." Yes... call it infinite, technological singularity or whatever... it is approaching real fast, and we will dive into it all together.

- tg