Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – June 5th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week

"Winny was not developed and distributed with the intent to incite copyright infringement." – Japanese defense lawyer

"The court order as far as resellers were concerned didn't concern us." – DVD-backup Technology One spokesperson

"As technology gets better and devices on which you can read books get more and more popular, people will look for ways to obtain books freely." – David Price

"Your movies are doing nothing for you on the shelf." – DVD trader Dan Robinson



















Labels To Dampen CD Burning?
John Borland

The recording industry is testing technology that would prevent consumers from making copies of CD "burns," a piracy defense that could put some significant new restrictions on legally purchased music.

Tools under review by the major labels would limit the number of backups that could be made from ordinary compact discs and prevent copied, or "burned," versions from being used to create further copies, according to Macrovision and SunnComm International, rivals that are developing competing versions of the digital rights management (DRM) software.

SunnComm said a version of its new "secure burning" technology is already being tested by BMG Music Group, the world's fifth-largest record label and the most aggressive to date in pushing CD copy protection schemes in the United States. Macrovision's version is expected to be ready in the next few months.

If implemented widely, the new technology would mark a substantial change in the way ordinary people can use purchased music, possibly alienating some customers, analysts said. Given the costs of piracy, however, the labels are moving ahead cautiously in the hope of striking on a formula that works.

"There is a fine (DRM) balance that nobody has struck, especially with physical CDs," said Mike McGuire, an analyst with the GartnerG2 research group. "If there's somebody who's making 25 copies for the world and finds they can't do that, then few people will probably complain. But if someone finds they can't make a copy for their kid so he can play it in the car, you're going to have a lot of people returning broken CDs."

The trials come as record labels seek to tighten copying restrictions on CDs, a market worth more than $11.2 billion in the United States in 2003. The labels have attributed recent, significant slides in retail CD sales in part to competition from home copying, as well as online file swapping.

Record labels are seeking a way to let consumers make a limited number of copies of their music--enough for a car, a vacation home and a friend, for example--without allowing for uncontrolled duplication. Under the current system, each copied CD can itself lead to an unlimited number of additional copies, cutting substantially into sales, they say.

Consumer advocates, meanwhile, have protested against abridgments of today's unlimited freedom to copy, remix or sample from music CDs.

Record labels in the United States have been sensitive to these consumer concerns, worrying particularly about earlier versions of copy-protection technology that had difficulty playing in nontraditional CD players such as game consoles or car stereos. They've released many protected CDs overseas, but only a small number in the United States and United Kingdom, where perceived opposition has been the highest.

The new plan to lock down burns could reignite a controversy that's smoldered in the United States since the independent release of country artist Charley Pride's album in 2002 incorporated SunnComm's early copyproofing technology, prompting at least one consumer lawsuit.

In addition to adding a new layer of copy protection on CDs, SunnComm and Macrovision each say their CD burning limitations could be applied to digital download businesses such as Napster or Apple Computer's iTunes, which do not put any restriction on burned CDs. That potentially could set off a new round of skirmishes between such digital download businesses and the record labels over how consumers can use the music they buy online.

"What labels have told us is that their agreements (with the download services) are relatively short term, a year or under, and so they believe that they have the capability to require (the burning tools to be added) next time around," Macrovision Chief Executive Officer Bill Krepick said.

Record label executives, although they take very different individual approaches to the market, say they ultimately want to see the rules for CDs and digital downloads converge.

"I would say that similar values should apply," said Jordan Katz, executive vice president and general manager of BMG's distribution arm.

Digital download services say they aren't yet feeling pressure to add the "secure burning" feature, however. Some said the labels had spent more time discussing the issue as much as six months ago but that it hadn't been a priority recently.

"I think the labels have been relaxing a little in terms of usage rules," said Liz Brooks, vice president of business development at Buy.com's music division.

To date, the history of CD copy protection in the United States has been spotty. Though Macrovision and SunnComm each say their technology is used widely overseas, only a few albums have been publicly released using their technology here.

BMG, which has taken a lead in this area, used SunnComm's anticopying tools on last year's Anthony Hamilton disc. The release gained some prominence after a Princeton student demonstrated that the protections could be easily evaded simply by pushing a computer's Shift key while loading the CD.

Executives at SunnComm and BMG said they were aware of the issue and that they had been satisfied with the technology as a deterrent to casual copiers, rather than trying to create an unhackable protection.

BMG announced last week that it would release three more albums using the technology over the next two months, including recordings by Velvet Revolver, Angie Stone and Yung Wun.

Other labels say they are still very interested, but not quite as far along as BMG.

"EMI does use Macrovision's technology in just about every country in the world," EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyers said. "We're testing other forms of technology from a lot of different companies before launching in the U.S. and the U.K."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5224090.html


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Two Movie Studios Sue Online Seller Of DVD-Copying Software

Two Hollywood movie studios have sued an online retailer, accusing Technology One of defiantly selling DVD- copying software previously barred by two federal courts.

The lawsuit, filed in New York by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Paramount Pictures Corp., marks the first time a movie company has sued a retailer of the forbidden software by 321 Studios Inc.

Other retailers voluntarily halted sales of the software after federal judges in New York and California -- at Hollywood's behest -- ordered 321 of suburban St. Louis to stop making and marketing it.

Hollywood studios long have insisted that DVD-copying products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars circumvention of anti-piracy measures used to protect DVDs and other technology.

Since the New York and California rulings, 321 has shipped retooled versions of its DVD-copying products, removing the software component required to descramble movies.

The latest lawsuit, announced Friday by the Motion Picture Association of America Inc., was filed in the U.S. District Court for New York's southern district, where a judge in March barred 321 from marketing the software.

``Technology One, by categorically refusing to comply with the studios' cease-and-desist notices, will learn from the courts that by continuing to sell the banned software it is breaking the law,'' said Jim Spertus, vice president and chief of the MPAA's domestic anti-piracy operations.

``With two federal injunctions prohibiting the further sale of 321's DVD circumvention products, it has no excuse to flout the law,'' Spertus said.

A worker at California-based Technology One, who refused to identify himself, said he was unaware of the lawsuit but that ``nobody ever told us to stop selling'' the questioned software.

That employee said Technology One no longer has the software in stock, though the company's Web site -- www.save365.com -- suggests otherwise.

``The court order as far as resellers were concerned didn't concern us,'' he said.

The latest lawsuit seeks a court order barring Technology One from continued sales of the software, as well as damages including profits from the previous sales.

``When faced with such flagrant violations, the MPAA member companies will aggressively defend copyright laws,'' said Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA.

In court and before Congress, 321 has argued that its products merely guarantee consumers fair use of the movies they've bought, including backing up expensive copies of children's movies in case the originals get scratched.

Robert Moore, 321's chief executive, testified May 12 before a House panel in support of a measure that would amend the DCMA to let film buffs make personal copies of DVD movies and other digital content for limited purposes.

Sponsors described the proposal as a consumers' rights bill for digital media that would allow consumers to bypass encryption locks built into DVD movies by Hollywood to prevent copying. Such encryption schemes are increasingly common in music and movies.

Hollywood studios and the music industry said that would lead to more piracy and lost sales.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8786701.htm


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'Winny' P2P Software Developer Indicted
Asahi Shimbun

KYOTO-In a case watched closely by legal experts and Web surfers, prosecutors on Monday indicted the developer of the file-swapping ''Winny'' software.

Isamu Kaneko, 33, a University of Tokyo teaching assistant, was charged with violating the Copyright Law by allowing his software program to assist other people in downloading and sharing copyrighted movies, music and game files.

Legal experts are worried that the meaning of ``assist'' has been stretched too far.

Kaneko, from Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, who was taken into custody by Kyoto prefectural police on May 10, has denied the charges.

''Winny was not developed and distributed with the intent to incite copyright infringement,'' a defense lawyer said.

But prosecutors have apparently concluded Kaneko is to blame for rampant copyright infringements that his peer-to-peer (P2P) program enables.

They said Kaneko has stated that he did not support the current copyright system, and that the suspect said he felt the only way to destroy the control wielded by big business over digital content was to spread ways to violate copyright laws.

Prosecutors said Winny is mainly used to swap illegal copies of copyrighted music and video files. They said Kaneko made his first version of Winny available for free via download in early May 2002.

The software allegedly enabled a 41-year-old employee of a sex parlor in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, to copy movies and games in September last year, which he later made available to others on the Web.

The man was arrested on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law last November.

Software engineers are rallying to Kaneko's support.

Many organizations say that P2P technology is used to link computers to share noncopyrighted data.
http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/...406010157.html


Winny Developer To Go On Trial Over Illegal Copying

KYOTO -- The Kyoto District Public Prosecutors' Office on Monday filed charges against the developer of the controversial file-sharing software Winny, accusing him of assisting illegal copying.

Prosecutors accuse the developer, Isamu Kaneko, of aiding violations of the Copyright Law. It is the first time a software developer has been held criminally responsible for deliberately assisting illegal copies.

Kaneko and his lawyers have maintained that he has no connection with the users of Winny and that his actions do not constitute supporting illegal copies made using the software.

However, prosecutors said that when Kaneko was first arrested, he questioned the situation regarding copyrights on digital software, and said spreading violations of copyright was needed to destroy the system. Because of this, they concluded that he was aware the software would be used illegally.

Investigators in the case said Kaneko announced the release of Winny on "Ni Channeru" (Channel 2), Japan's largest Internet message board, in April 2002. He then provided it free of charge on his own home page the following month.

While knowing that the software could be used illegally, he released updated versions of it, investigators said. He is specifically accused of allowing a minor in September last year to use Winny and provide movies and software to an unlimited number of people free of charge. The minor, aged 19 at the time, has already been convicted. (Compiled from Mainichi and wire reports, Japan, May 31, 2004)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040...dm008000c.html


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Neowin : Justin Frankel Interview, creator of Winamp and Nullsoft
Mr magoo

If you were to look for one person who has singularly had an influence on most peoples lives, you'd probably come up with Justin Frankel. Creator of Winamp and Nullsoft, he's very kindly taken the time to have a (quite funny!) chat with Neowin.

Q. First of all Justin, can you introduce to the people who have been living under a rock who you are, a brief history of Frankel, and what you did at Winamp/Nullsoft?

Perhaps my story would benefit from beginning at the beginning:

In the beginning, the universe somehow came to exist, which caused great speculation much much later as to how, why, and who. An immense amount of time passed, until one year a man was born who some years later, according to Douglas Adams, would "be nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change." Nearly two thousand years later, I was born. It was the 1970s. Disco was apparently fashionable, but I don't really remember, and my parents were borderline anti-social cultist hippies (mostly kidding).

When I was young, my older brothers started playing with and programming on an Atari 800XL, so that got me learning to program (and type) BASIC. Which was good. I'll just shorten this paragraph by saying that I went from BASIC on the Atari to Turbo Pascal on the PC, then to Turbo C++ (though initially C++ seemed dumb, as all I knew of it was cout << "lame"; and whatnot, so I just did C stuff), and so on.

In highschool and college I primarily worked in DOS and Linux (and Solaris when I got to college), doing random things like making a filesystem based mail program for Novell networks, a portable 3d engine, all the standard stuff people write when they learn to code. I was using the name 'Nullsoft' as sort of a joke company name.

So after college is where things get more, erm, above the rock? In 1997 I ported AMP (a free mp3 decoder at the time) and ported it to Windows, using a UI that Tom Pepper (who later developed Shoutcast, our mp3 streaming platform, with me) had been making (for the Mac version), and made Winamp. Winamp got popular about the same time as MP3s did on IRC and the web, so I spent a few years updating it and making it something I wanted to use. During this time my father and I incorporated Nullsoft, and made it into a business that went pretty well. AOL acquired Nullsoft in 1999...

This isn't terribly interesting I know, but hey, if you've been living under a (the?) proverbial rock (which according to my interviewer you may have), then this is probably better than staring all day at earthworms and the little bugs that ball up if you lift up the rock.

I worked for AOL for about four and a half years, and had my share of little indescretions-- it was somewhat like my replacement for going to college (since I only went for about 6 months), I got to experiment in a safer environment than the real world, trying things out. Two significant things to come of this were Gnutella and WASTE.

Q. Can you tell us exactly how bad it was (or wasn't) working under AOL? How did you guys differ? Did they buy Winamp because it was a really great music player, or for other reasons?

I had a very different way of doing things than AOL, so it was very frustrating being within that organization and trying to get things done. It was as much my fault as theirs-- if anything, the fact that they were the way they were (this sentence is turning into a mess) was due to being a big public corporation. Some things are inevitable, well until a company like Google comes along...

Q. So now you've left Winamp /AOL, what will be your relation, if any, to the development of Winamp? What's the situation regarding Nullsoft?

I've been taking some time working on a few new projects, and will likely be contracting for AOL / Winamp / Nullsoft / etc to do more development. Christophe and Francis have been doing a great job of updating Winamp, but I think they want me to do the particularly boring stuff.

Q. Do your future plans include setting up something similar to Nullsoft, or something more freelance?

It'll be what it is... or turns into. I don't know.

Q. Looking back at the programs you've made, such as Gnutella, WASTE, Shoutcast, and others, what has been the most important to you?

Well, to be honest, safesex is probably the one I use the most. Somewhere to put all those damned web passwords!

Q. So with this all behind you, tell us what you're up to at the moment.

I've been very interested in music the last couple of years, so I've been spending more time actually practicing various instruments and whatnot. What I'm working on now that I'm most excited about is something combining general purpose computers with music. I'll probably have more info in a month or two when the prototype is done. (ed - more info here)

Q. There was speculation that you were up to something regarding mobile text messaging. Would you care to elaborate on that project?

That was just an item from a list things that *might* be interesting. I haven't really spent too much time on that, but I'll mention another one of those ideas I was tossing around a couple years ago. It was basically to make a well funded ($400M or more) startup that would develop something like ReactOS-- specifically, a win2k compatible (driver, application, UI, filesystem, everything) OS. You could base it on a lot of open source code, but make a commercial product. Buy the companies you would need (i.e. Stardock, Transgaming, etc), hire the right people, have a big ass legal defense fund for fighting off Microsoft, get investors who are anti-MS (I'm sure some computer manufacturers would love to ship this OS), etc etc. And do it all in 2 or 3 years. If we had started this in 2002, look where would be today! Win2k is still relevant! But will it be in 2 or 3 more years? I hope so. Cause I hate XP, and it's all downhill from there..

Q. What are your thoughts on the direction that companies like Apple and Napster have taken in the area of digital downloads? What do you think they are doing right and what do you think they need to improve?

I think DRM is a huge waste, I won't touch it. Or, rather, I won't pay for it. It is just completely ridiculous what they want us to accept. Fuck no.

I'll be buying my CDs, and ripping them, thank you. Until they make everybody move to some DRM-protected CD format, then I'll just be buying indie label titles or whatever it takes. God knows what idiocities will happen.

Q. Do you own a Ipod or a similar device? What do you think that other companies need to do to make a product of similar quality to the Ipod, but at a more accessible price?

I have an iPod, and I must say I do love the iPod (btw, the iPod Winamp plugin rules, too -- I can't stand iTunes, either).

It really does amaze me that nobody else has produced an mp3 player whose UI is even in the same league of decent as the iPod's -- don't get me wrong, the iPod's UI is nowhere near perfect and pisses me off now and then too --but everything else I've seen is just an order of magnitude worse. What gives?
It's NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.

As far as price goes, I think once other people make mp3 players with at least decent user interfaces, prices will naturally go down. I'm sure Apple is making so much money on those at this point, because there's no decent alternative.

Q. What was the coolest piece of tech/gadgetry that you bought recently?

I just got the HD Directv Tivo. Haven't gotten DSS service for it yet (still gotta put the dish up), but over the air HDTV is pretty crazy, when it works.

Q.conversely - what was the lamest!

Actually, this doesn't really count, but the aforementioned HD Tivo would overheat after a couple hours and throw an error message. At the advice of a friend, I opened the case to find the cooling fan unplugged. Not partially plugged in, but completely and obviously unplugged. Made in the USA, woot!

Q. Finally, for all of the "l33t" coders out there, would you care to divulge your "weapons of choice" in the fields of code editors and late night snack food?!

I usually use MSVC6's IDE on windows for working on Windows apps, and vim everywhere else (console apps, linux/freebsd apps, php, email (in conjunction with mutt), whatever).

As far as food, I literally drink a crapload of water. Literally! I go measure my poo (which brings me to this idea I have, called "Professor Shatz", which would be a smart toilet that would measure your excretions and have a lovely voice activated interface, so you could say things like "Professor Shatz, how much did I shat today?"), and ok just kidding I won't drag that on..

Well thanks for a very interesting insight into the world of Frankel! Best of luck in the future Justin, and i hope you'll keep us an informed with your future developments.
http://www.neowin.net/articles.php?action=more&id=89


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Hollywood's Casting Problem: Who Will Run the M.P.A.A.?
Sharon Waxman

FOR two years Jack Valenti, the venerable, 82-year-old chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has been trying to retire.

After nearly four decades as Hollywood's leading lobbyist, the silver-haired former adman and White House adviser announced in March that he would be gone within a few months. But those months have passed, summer approaches and the association is nowhere close to finding Mr. Valenti's successor.

Doesn't anyone want to run the M.P.A.A.?

"This is one of the most fascinating, exciting jobs a person can have," Mr. Valenti said with some urgency in a recent interview. "This is a global job. You'll meet the premier of China, the cultural minister of France. You'll be involved with creative people. It pays well. If that's not something that engages people, I don't know what the hell would."

The job of running the association ought to have a long, juicy waiting list of Washington V.I.P.'s. Who wouldn't want a million dollars a year to plump for Tom Cruise instead of, say, biomedical tax credits?

Oddly, not too many folks. Representative Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, at first accepted, then — after being offered a lot more money by the pharmaceutical industry — rejected the job last fall. Since then Senator John Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, has also been wooed by the the association, to no avail. He let it be known that he wasn't eager to defend Janet Jackson's right to show a nipple ring.

The process of finding Mr. Valenti's replacement is nonetheless moving forward, if ever so slowly and under a cloak of heavy secrecy. According to several people familiar with details of the search, in the past three weeks, three new candidates have been interviewed by the seven studio chairmen who serve as the board members of the Motion Picture Association.

Those candidates are: Victoria Clarke, the former Pentagon spokeswoman under President Bush who is now a consultant for Comcast, the cable giant; Daniel J. Glickman, the former agriculture secretary under President Clinton who now heads the Institute of Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; and Pat Mitchell, a former television producer who is now president of the Public Broadcasting Service.

All are respected members of the Washington establishment who would need crash courses in show business. Traditionally, the role of the motion picture association chief has been to marshal the towering egos and competing interests of the seven major Hollywood studios to win favorable legislation or trade incentives for the movie industry. By all accounts, Mr. Valenti, who also created the industry's rating system, was spectacularly successful at wrangling the contentious moguls. He has unparalleled status in Congress, whose favor he has long courted with invitations to swanky screenings at the bunker-like M.P.A.A. building on I Street.

But the job is becoming even harder. The crisis of worldwide movie piracy, held at bay only by technological limits, threatens to sink the movie industry entirely, as it may the music business. Numerous Hollywood and Washington figures, including candidates for the job, point out that it's a double whammy: the new chairman will have to follow Mr. Valenti's 38-year act while coming up with a solution to the industry's new perils. Potential candidates may remember that even the polished Mr. Valenti received a very public black eye last fall when he attempted to end the longstanding practice of distributing videotapes and DVD's to people who vote on the Academy Awards. He introduced the change as a way to cut down on piracy, but it was met with a revolt by art-house distributors and a rebuke by the courts.

"I think it's a job people are interested in, but it's perceived — and rightly so — to be a hard job," said Hilary Rosen, the former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry lobby. "If there are easier jobs available, for more money, then why take a hard job?"

Indeed, even if the job is ultimately offered to one of these three candidates, he or she may not take it. The studio chiefs have asked to meet with at least three other candidates in the wake of the recent interviews — a sign they are not entirely confident with their short list. Some of the names frequently mentioned for the job are those of Representative David Dreier, Republican of California; the actor and former Republican senator Fred Thompson; the outgoing Universal lobbyist Matt Gerson and Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida.

Executives inside the studios say that they will have to offer well above Mr. Valenti's $1.2 million salary to attract the best person for the job, since other lobbying jobs now pay up to $2 million a year.

The current top three candidates have varying strengths and flaws, and it is unclear which of them, if any, is qualified to manage the studio moguls from Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony, Fox and MGM, who make up the association.

Ms. Clarke, a lively and intelligent public speaker, is a devoted Bush Republican, having learned her politics at the knee of the consultant Mary Matalin. Hollywood liberals tend to regard that as a mixed blessing; she will have close contacts among the right wing, but may put off some of the more left-leaning moguls.

Friends of Ms. Clarke say she is also being courted for another top job by a former employer, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and is more likely to take that position if it is offered, given her familiarity with the organization.

The interest in Pat Mitchell, a staid Southerner, has puzzled many Hollywood and Washington insiders. She does not have much experience in Hollywood, since she comes from a background of documentary filmmaking. Ms. Mitchell once headed CNN productions and Time Inc. Television, where she worked on series like the 24-part "Cold War." She also does not have the stature in Washington of a former member of government or Congress. If her reign at PBS since 2000 has been a turbulent one, she is also credited with revitalizing the public network's prime-time schedule.

A moderate Democrat with an engaging personality and sense of humor, Mr. Glickman made a positive impression on at least some of his interviewers, according to people close to them. He has a built-in Hollywood connection — a son, Jon, who works as a producer and lives in Los Angeles.

Perhaps another sign of his standing with the interviewers was that Mr. Glickman was back in Los Angeles last week. He, along with the other candidates, declined to comment for this article, but a close friend of Mr. Glickman's said he was "interested, but cautious. It's not an easy job."

That is a common refrain. Everyone in Washington seems to want to know what the association will become in the post-Valenti era. The diminutive lobbyist with a peculiarly florid vocabulary came to personify the organization over the decades, not just creating the movie ratings system in 1968, but traveling tirelessly around the world to promote the Hollywood agenda. Throughout the 1980's, Mr. Valenti successfully protected the so-called "fin-syn" regulations giving the Hollywood production community complete control over the rerun market for former hit network television shows. Under the rules, networks could share only minimally in profits from television's secondary markets, which created millions of dollars in additional profits for the association's member studios.

There is already a consensus that two people will probably be needed to replace Mr. Valenti, one to be the public face of the association and another to run its day-to-day operations. But that doesn't resolve the fundamental question of the association's identity. "The challenge is not just replacing Jack Valenti," acknowledged Leslie Hortum, the executive headhunter leading the search for a replacement. "You have to be saying: What is the M.P.A.A. today? What does it need going forward? That's been the focus."

Without careful definition, the association could easily fade into irrelevance. Each of the member studios is now a small part of a huge, multinational empire — from NewsCorp to Viacom to General Electric to Sony — and their interests diverge as often as they coincide. And the parent companies all have their own individual lobbying operations based in Washington.

This dynamic has changed the way the association operates; Mr. Valenti no longer meets en masse with the studio chairmen. Instead he plays the handmaiden, consulting with them as individuals as he cobbles together consensus on important issues.

Piracy, however, is the one issue that can be counted on to unite the seven studios — and the one reason they are focused so intently on finding Mr. Valenti's replacement.

But even here they cannot easily agree. One senior studio executive, who declined to be named because of the secrecy of the association's process, said that one of the first acts of the new chairman would be to bring lawsuits against individuals who download movies over the Internet — much as the music industry did against users of Napster and Kazaa.

This plan does not reflect consensus. Fox, Paramount and Universal are keen to prosecute downloaders, while Disney is more reluctant to do so.

One potential candidate, who spoke anonymously so as to not ruin a chance at the job, said the association had to more clearly define what it wants to be in this new era.

"What are we?" the candidate asked. "Are we an anti-piracy organization? A pro-copyright organization? It's all about the association, its functionality, or dysfunctionality."

The candidate observed that the job had "a high probability of failure," then amended that judgment to "possibility of failure."

The former M.P.A.A. spokeswoman and Hollywood-Washington veteran Barbara Dixon put it this way: "You really need a power broker who can sit these guys in a room and carve out a consensus. It takes real people skills, it takes respect. It's really hard."

Perhaps, as some suggest, the association doesn't need a charismatic replacement for Mr. Valenti. Maybe it just needs a Washington functionary.

In the ongoing Washington parlor game of Who-Will-Follow-Jack, another question frequently arises: why not wait until November to fill the job? To many, it seems like folly to choose the association's first new chief in decades with only months to spare until a new president is elected.

Many wonder aloud if the current delay isn't deliberate, a way to wait for the election results in Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, lobbyists perceive not-too-subtle pressure in Republican-heavy Washington to choose a Republican for the job. One senior M.P.A.A. executive put it bluntly: "There's probably a sense that we need not to look like we're stalling, because we're being watched" by powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Valenti said the election had no bearing on the succession. "This is not about politics," he said. "Power changes. Power passes. Who's in power today is not in power tomorrow. You have to find someone you believe has a wise and trusting relationship with Congress."

Meanwhile, Memorial Day will come and go with no successor in sight. Few acquainted with the process expect a decision in June, as Mr. Valenti had lately hoped.

"It's important to go through the process," said Ms. Hortum, the headhunter. "With each conversation we get closer to the right fit."

And in the meantime, Mr. Valenti still gets up to go to work every day, as he has for so many days and nights before.

"We were going to give a going-away party for Jack," sighed Ms. Dixon, a close friend. "But I don't know when that's going to be."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/movies/30WAXM.html


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Media princes exposed

The Portrait of a Family, as Painted at a Fraud Trial
Barry Meier

HILE testifying this month at the fraud trial of John J. Rigas and two of his sons, Timothy and Michael, in connection with the financial collapse of Adelphia Communications, a former executive of the company recalled an incident that revealed a lot about the relationship between the father and sons.

That executive, James R. Brown, said he had spoken to Timothy J. Rigas, the company's chief financial officer, shortly after John Rigas, Adelphia's founder and chief executive, told investment bankers in 2002 that none of the Rigases had ever taken big salaries from the company or sold any of their stock holdings in it.

Mr. Brown, Adelphia's former vice president for finance, said he "told Tim that he really had to tell his father to stop making that speech, which I'd heard in various forms before, because people will either think he is dumb or lying." Timothy Rigas's reply, according to Mr. Brown: "He said, 'I can't control my father.' "

Last week, after more than three months of testimony, the government's case against the Rigases and a fourth man, Michael C. Mulcahey, former assistant treasurer at Adelphia, began to draw to a close. In many ways, it has resembled other criminal cases against high-ranking corporate executives, with prosecutors and defense lawyers sparring over whether arcane accounting procedures were used to deceive investors and banks about the company's finances.

But what has set this trial apart from all the others is the Rigas family dynamic. The most memorable moments so far - like Timothy Rigas's reported comment - illuminated issues that can affect any family-controlled business, from nepotism to personal use of corporate assets to the inability of a company's founder to give up control.

There is plenty to suggest that family was everything in the insular world of the Rigases, for better and, if prosecutors are right, for worse. Both Michael, 50, and Timothy, 47, are unmarried and live in the same house as their father and mother in Coudersport, the small town in north-central Pennsylvania where Adelphia was based until it sought bankruptcy protection, when it moved its headquarters to Colorado.

Family members also operated privately held cable companies that they financed with loans obtained through the public company - a relationship that, in the differing views of defense lawyers and prosecutors, was either symbiotic or parasitic.

It was in Coudersport, starting in the 1950's, that Mr. Rigas began to build Adelphia from the ground up. Several experts said that it was not unusual for a founder of a company to perceive it as his own, even after he reached retirement age or after it went public, as Adelphia did in 1986.

"It is hard for them to make the distinction between the business and themselves," said James Lea, a professor of family medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who advises family businesses.

That certainly seemed to be the case for John Rigas. According to testimony, he often took cash advances - as much as $1 million a month - from the company to pay for personal interests like operating an area farm that produced products like maple syrup. And while Mr. Rigas was known as a very generous contributor to community causes, he was not above hitting employees up for cash, according to court testimony.

Christopher Thurner, Mr. Rigas's personal accountant, testified that his boss asked him in 1995 for a $20,000 loan, saying he was short of cash. Moreover, Mr. Thurner, who earned about $40,000 a year, said Mr. Rigas encouraged him to take out a bank loan to get the money and offered to repay it only recently, after learning that Mr. Thurner would testify for the government.

Timothy Rigas is also charged with tapping company funds to pay for extravagances like golf club memberships. According to testimony, he used the Adelphia jet to ferry around a friend, the Hollywood actress Peta Wilson; Adelphia funds also went to an interior design firm operated by John Rigas's wife, Doris, and helped pay for a film made by his daughter, Ellen Rigas-Venetis. (Mr. Rigas's wife, daughter and other son, James, have not been charged in the case.)

Such personal excess can often be cut short in companies with independent top executives or boards of directors. When Timothy Rigas took over as the de facto head of Adelphia after bladder cancer was diagnosed in his father in 1999, he tried to put his father on a shorter leash but failed, according to testimony.

Wayne Rivers, the president of the Family Business Institute, a consulting firm in Raleigh, N.C., says that it takes tremendous courage for a son to face down his father in a business setting because of potential ripple effects in the family. "It may not only affect the dad but also the relationship with his own mother," Mr. Rivers said.

Whether the Rigas family had any such confrontations is not known. And it was while Timothy Rigas was ostensibly running the company that activities at issue in the trial took place.

The Rigases and Mr. Mulcahey have all denied any wrongdoing. And Professor Lea, the family-business adviser, said it was possible that the Rigases did not perceive the use of Adelphia proceeds to finance their personal businesses or hobbies as crimes. "To them, this probably did not appear like embezzlement or malfeasance of any kind," he said. "It was more like you go to work in the store in the morning, you spend what you make and Adelphia was their family-owned store."

Throughout the trial, John Rigas and Timothy, his youngest son, have seemed upbeat. (The elder Mr. Rigas has often engaged reporters in light-hearted banter.) But on a day in early May, Michael J. Rigas, a slightly built, reticent man, failed to appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where the trial is taking place.

He had been hospitalized briefly over the preceding weekend and was still feeling disoriented on the next Monday, when the trial was set to resume, family associates said.

The nature of his health problem was never disclosed, and he returned after a day's absence. But just before the weekend break, Mr. Brown, the former Adelphia executive who has pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is the government's most crucial witness, had taken the stand to begin his testimony.

That day, Mr. Brown provided damaging testimony against all the Rigases, describing a variety of accounting gimmicks, sham transactions and phony financial reports that helped Adelphia mask the eroding financial performance that led to its filing for bankruptcy protection in June 2002.

Defense lawyers, who are likely to start their case this week, are expected to argue that the Rigases had planned all along to pay back the money they had borrowed from Adelphia. But even for a family as well off as the Rigases, that would not be easy. According to the last witness called by the government, the Rigases ran up a hefty tab at Adelphia: more than $2 billion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/bu...ey/30fami.html


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Sananda Maitreya chooses new legal file-sharing program "WEED" to spread the first songs of his project "ANGELS & VAMPIRES."
Press Release

Multi-platinum artist Sananda Maitreya chooses new innovating file- sharing program "WEED" to distribute his music.

Sananda Maitreya releases the first 3 songs of his project "Angels & Vampires", this first Chapter is called "The Jaguar and The Jungle Sound".

"WEED" has a different view on Internet file-sharing. Instead of trying to shut down file-sharing, they think people should be paid for it. Instead of punishing fans who don't respect artists' rights, they think it makes more sense to reward those who do.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/5/emw128505.htm


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Sony/Bertelsmann merger

A Trustbuster's Song Is Ending. But a Coda Is Possible
Andrew Ross Sorkin

DON'T call Mario Monti a lame duck.

Mr. Monti, the European Commission's chief antitrust enforcer and the world's de facto trustbuster, is planning to retire this fall. But the man who blocked General Electric's acquisition of Honeywell, helped kill WorldCom's planned purchase of Sprint and branded Microsoft a monopoly still seems to be going about his job as if it were just starting.

In what could be one of his last acts as mergers god, Mr. Monti, 61, still has to decide whether to bless - or veto - the combination of the music units of Sony and Bertelsmann, a deal that would create the second-largest record company in the world, behind Vivendi's Universal Music Group. If the concerns he raised last week in a 60-page statement of objections about the transaction are any indication, the prospect of another deal funeral on his watch is not remote.

Sony, which has a roster of artists that includes Bruce Springsteen and Céline Dion, and Bertelsmann, home to Britney Spears and OutKast, are betting that they can get approval for the deal. Privately, they seem genuinely confident about their chances.

But maybe they should recall the words of John F. Welch Jr., the former chairman of General Electric, who was similarly confident when he flew to Brussels in 2001 to negotiate concessions with Mr. Monti over his deal with Honeywell International. "The European regulators' demands exceeded anything I or our European advisers imagined,'' Mr. Welch said at the time, "and differed sharply from antitrust counterparts in the U.S. and Canada.''

Most experts expect the Sony-Bertelsmann merger to be approved in the United States and Canada. But they also anticipate that Europe - and Mr. Monti in particular - will be a problem. Mr. Monti has, after all, been tough on previous music deals. In the fall of 2000, under pressure from him, Time Warner and the EMI Group withdrew plans for a $20 billion joint venture in music. He also scuttled talks between EMI and BMG, the Bertelsmann music unit.

Why do Sony and Bertelsmann think that it will be any different this time? The companies contend that the merger is necessary, what with the music industry being pummeled by piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing.

That argument may have worked a year or so ago - before Apple's iMusic Store and other legitimate online services and the recent rebound in music sales - but may be less persuasive today, experts said. What's more, in his statement of objections, Mr. Monti revisited the subject of a 2001 investigation: possible price fixing and collusion among the world's top music companies, which charge different amounts for the same product in different countries and have long appeared to be in lock step. You have to believe that Mr. Monti will not approve any merger in an industry he sees as rife with abuse.

Still, Sony and Bertelsmann may have a chance to win approval. Indeed, they were so adamant about getting their deal past Mr. Monti that they rushed last year to sign a merger agreement without nailing down many of the most important details. The reason was that they wanted to get it on the regulator's docket ahead of another deal proposal that was anticipated at the time - Time Warner's sale of its music unit to EMI.

The clever maneuver had an extra beneficial effect. Time Warner ended up rejecting a deal with EMI out of fear Mr. Monti would kill it in light of Sony's and Bertelsmann's proposed merger. Instead, it sold Warner Music to a consortium of investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Thomas H. Lee Partners, who posed almost zero regulatory risk.

So Mr. Monti does not have to confront the prospect of two giant music deals that would have taken the industry from five big players down to three. But as his statement of objections indicated, he still seems to have grave concerns about any consolidation in the industry.

Executives briefed on Mr. Monti's list of objections said he was concerned mainly with the effect the deal would have on the diversity of music and artists to be offered and how the music would be priced. Warner Music, Apple and several groups of independent artists have objected to the deal, arguing that it would significantly dampen competition.

Coincidentally, Mr. Monti's statement came as General Electric and Honeywell made arguments this week in Luxembourg appealing Mr. Monti's decision to block their deal several years ago. The companies do not want to merge any more, but they hope that a successful appeal may diminish Mr. Monti's judge-and- jury powers.

He has been overruled before: a European court overturned his decision to block the merger of two British travel companies, Airtours (now MyTravel Group) and First Choice Holidays. The court also overruled his decision to stop a merger of the French electrical equipment maker Schneider Electric with a rival, Legrand, and reversed his ruling to block the acquisition of the French bottle maker Sidel by Tetra Laval, the Swiss packaging conglomerate.

That has not seemed to have any discernible effect on his aggressiveness. And a lame duck - if you insist on calling him that - has nothing to lose.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/bu...ey/30deal.html


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LimeWire Software Downloaded Most

The file-sharing software from Manhattan-based music service LimeWire was the most popular download on the Internet in the week ended May 23, according to Download.com.

Set up in June 2000 as a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, LimeWire is already profitable. The site welcomes 350,000 visitors a day and 2 million a month. It generates revenues from sales of the advanced version of its $19 downloading software, which just under 2% of its users purchase.

Music companies consider the downloading of songs to be illegal.
http://www.crainsny.com/news.cms?newsId=8090


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Sony Finger-Prints Music To Stymie P2P Pirates
John Borland

Audible Magic, a content-filtering company, announced in the US early Saturday a wide- ranging agreement with Sony Music, aimed in part at improving tools to combat peer-to-peer piracy.

The record label will provide digital "fingerprints" to Audible Magic, which creates technology that identifies and blocks songs as they are transferred online through file-swapping applications or other tools.

Sony will also license Audible Magic's song-identification software for use in its internal operations, and the two companies will work together on an anti-piracy program targeted at universities, they said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9149127,00.htm


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China Bans Computer Game Accused Of Distorting History
AFP

China has banned a Swedish-made computer game accused of "distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty," by showing Manchuria, Tibet and Xinjiang as independent nations, state press said.

The computer game, "Hearts of Iron", made by the Stockholm-based games developer Paradox Entertainment, also showed Taiwan as a part of Japan, Xinhua news agency said, citing a censorship committee under the Ministry of Culture. "All these severely distort historical facts and violate China's gaming and Internet service regulations," the ministry said. "The game should be immediately prohibited." All websites are banned from releasing the game and copies of the game on CD-ROM will be confiscated. Sellers will be punished, it said. Internet bars that provide downloads of the game or fail to stop surfers who download, install or play the game, will be fined or even ordered to stop business, it said. Earlier this year gaming regulators ordered all copies of a Norwegian-made computer game to be pulled off store shelves after alleging it "smeared" China's national image. "Project IGI2: Covert Strike" was accused of blackening Beijing and the Chinese army's image by featuring a freelance mercenary stealing intelligence and conducting sabotage in China. The mercenary fights in the game are across three linked campaigns in the former Soviet Union, Libya and China. With the popularity of the Internet, computer games have become a booming industry in China. In 2002, computer games pulled in earnings of 910 million yuan (110 million dollars), according to a report by state-run television station CCTV's website. Analysts predict growth in the industry will be enormous with rising demand and the improvement of the broadband network and domestic game developers. China's previous attempts to control burgeoning Internet use has been targeted at politically sensitive messages or essays in online discussions forums, websites and emails.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040529/323/eutem.html


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Copyright Lawsuit In China

The Music Copyright Society of China has filed a music copyright lawsuit against the local handset manufacturer, Capitel accusing the company of using copyrighted music for ringtones without permission of the copyright holder.

Last June, the MCSC says that it discovered three Capitel cell phones (C6088C6088AC6288) were using ringtones based on "Liang Zhu" or "Butterfly Lovers," two well-known pieces of Chinese music. According to the MCSC, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, the co-composers of "Butterfly Lovers," who are also members of the MCSC, never authorized Capitel to use the song. MCSC claims that Capitel violated the music copyright for the two songs, as well as infringing on the composers' intellectual property rights (IPR).

"The court has accepted the case, and MCSC is now negotiating with Capitel for a justified compensation," Ma Jichao, Director of the MCSC's Licensing Department, told Interfax in an interview.

The music copyright society of china (MCSC) was established on December 17,1992,and was initiated by Chinese musicians? association and the national copyright administration of china. The MCSC has become the only officially recognized, non-profitable social organization of collective administration of music copyright, in china.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/11184.shtml


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China Closes Down 16,000 Internet Cafes In Three Months
AFP

China has closed 16,000 Internet cafes in the past three months, as a campaign to protect its 367 million children and adolescents from corrosive influences picks up steam, state media said.

The number of cafes forced to cease operations was reported by the Xinhua news agency and suggests a much more comprehensive drive to control a once-thriving industry than previously believed. A month ago, Xinhua said a total of 8,600 unlicensed Internet cafes had been shut down since February. China has long seemed divided on how to deal with the Internet, since on the one hand it holds huge potential for the economy, while on the other it poses a risk to the communist regime by making information more freely available. In recent months, the Chinese leadership appears to have decided to err on the side of caution, partly as a result of a new push to raise the ethical standards of the young. This new drive, which makes daily front-page news in the state newspapers, has targeted not just the Internet, but also the mass media, as TV stations have been ordered to air "healthier" programs to their youthful audiences.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040602/323/ev1ci.html


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China Unveils National IPR Strategy As Latest Pirated Films Arrive
AFP

China has unveiled a national strategy aimed at beefing up intellectual property rights (IPR) protections even as pirated versions of latest Hollywood blockbusters like 'Troy' and 'Shrek 2' were available in Beijing stores.

It normally only takes days for Chinese pirates to get versions of the latest Hollywood releases into the shops despite the repeatedly stated determination of the government to crackdown on the practice. In an effort to beef up existing schemes to protect IPR, the government has put in place a new national strategy which will begin with an education campaign, Zhang Qin, deputy commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, told the China Daily. "The national IPR strategy will include an educational programme to deepen IPR knowledge among officials of ministerial and provincial levels," the newspaper said. Foreign companies and governments are becoming increasingly frustrated with the continuing problems of piracy and counterfeiting in China, which leads to billions of dollars of losses each year. In his annual report on the practices of its main trading partners, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in April criticized China for failing to protect IPR, saying enforcement of relevant laws was "seriously inadequate". Despite periodic campaigns, "counterfeiting and piracy remain rampant", the report said. The US estimates the value of counterfeit goods in China at 19-24 billion dollars, with losses to US companies exceeding 1.8 billion dollars a year. One of China's commitments to the World Trade Organization is that intellectual property rights have to be better protected. Yet despite the public destruction of DVDs and CDS, piracy and other IPR infringements remain rampant, with not just fake music and video discs readily available but all manner of brand- named goods.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040603/323/ev4er.html


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India

Mumbai Police Gag Hinduunity.Org
Priya Ganapati

Key Internet service providers, including Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, India's largest ISP with more than 800,000 subscribers, have blocked access to a web site, www.hinduunity.org

The web site is run by a Hindu activist from the US, Rohit Vyasmaan, and logs about 17,000 hits a day.

The site has been blocked on the basis of a request from the Mumbai police commissioner's office in a letter sent out to ISPs on April 28.

Sources at the Mumbai police commissioner's office said the directive was issued because the web site published inflammatory material against Islam. Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Dr Satyapal Singh, a decorated officer of the Indian Police Service, authorised the note.

"They will go to great lengths to obliterate Hinduism, Hindu pride and Hindu culture from India," Vyasmaan wrote in an e-mail. "Today HinduUnity.org stands as a major roadblock to anti-Hindu forces. Patriotic Hindu youth are coming together by the power of the Internet and finding the truth behind the dark clouds of misinformation, propaganda and media-controlled brainwashing. HinduUnity.org flourishes as one of the major web sites that promotes Hindu defence, pride and patriotism."

The police commissioner's office countered that the web site was blocked on the basis of a complaint registered against it in Latur, Maharashtra. Details of the complaint are currently unavailable.

VSNL, India's largest ISP, has been quick to implement the request. It has blocked the web site, rendering it inaccessible to subscribers. Despite repeated attempts, VSNL officials were unavailable for comment.

Apart from VSNL, a host of smaller ISPs like Hathway and HCL Infinet also complied with the police request.

But one ISP has stood its ground. Sify, which claims to have 700,000 Internet subscribers, says it has not blocked the web site because the order to do so has not come from the right authority.

"Only CERT has the right to issue such an order," said Sify spokesman David Appasamy. "In case they do, we have no option but to comply. When we got the request from the police commissioner's office, we spoke to them and explained that we could block the site only if the order came from CERT."

CERT, or the Computer Emergency Response Team, which comes under the department of information technology in New Delhi, is the authority for issuing orders to Indian ISPs to block web sites.

In September 2003, CERT issued an order to block a Yahoo! e-group for allegedly carrying anti-India messages.

Sify, meanwhile, has spoken to CERT about the Mumbai police commissioner's request. The ISP has been told that CERT is "processing" the request.

The HinduUnity.org site has faced problems in the past too. The site posts messages and content against Muslims in a significant way. Its pages also have interpretations of Indian history offensive to Muslims, verses from the Koran that try to present the religion as bloodthirsty, and other anti-Muslim statements, presented from a Hindutva point of view.

Vyasmaan says he started the web site in March 2000 with the aim of "moulding the minds of young Hindus to take the initiative and responsibility towards a better India by making them completely selfless in their duties towards their motherland."

In 2001, the site's then host in the US, Addr.com, received complaints about the site and shut it down.

The blocking of the web site in India has raised questions about the freedomof expression available online to Indians.

Earlier, the blocking of the Yahoo! e-group raised a furore online.

Last September, the e-group called kynhun was blocked for allegedly carrying anti- national messages.
http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/may/26hindu.htm


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Korea

Lawfirm Brings Charges Against Netizens for Copyright Infringement

According to a report by Munhwa Ilbo on Thursday, Dongnyuk Law firm plans to bring charges against 20 Korean Internet users for violating copyright laws.

Those netizens are accused of downloading and sharing singer Baek Ji-young’s music video “Concert for Adults” and several movies -including “Kill Bill 2”, “The Grudge 2”, and “Shin Yukiguni”- on the Internet without permission.

The law firm is entrusted in dealing with criminal lawsuits relating to copyright infringement by Digitalprizm, the copyright holder of Baek Ji-young’s music video; Taewon Entertainment, the company that imported “Kill Bill 2” and “The Grudge 2”; and Hanmaek Entertainment, the representative company for the Korean Film Producer Association.

The Munhwa Ilbo report cited the firm’s lawyer Jo Myun-sik saying, “We confirmed that as many as 3,500 Korean Internet users have violated the copyright law. We sent the certification of contents to a 100 of them, and we are initiating procedures to negotiate with them. But 20 refused to negotiate, so we made criminal complaints against them.”

The certification of contents states, “In return for not being sued, elementary, middle and high school students should pay W100,000, university students W300,000 and adults W500,000 in compensation.”

Jo also said, “Bringing charges against Internet users was a desperate countermeasure to raise awareness about copyright infringement throughout society. Without improving the institution, we cannot help but sue individual Internet users.”

The Korea Recording Industry Association plans to ask the Cyber Terror Response Center to investigate 10 Internet users who share MP3 files through online storage services and Internet portal sites.

The Association once filed copyright violation complaints against 50 Internet users for using Soribada, a service provider of P2P (person to person file sharing), with the Cyber Crime Investigation Department of Seoul Central Public Prosecutors' Office last December.

Meanwhile, since the Internet users are faced with lawsuits from the copyright holders, they established an Internet café called “The Group for Impeaching the Law Firm Dongnyuk,” on April 28 to discuss countermeasures for the criminal lawsuits and contents certification brought against them, reported Munhwa Ilbo.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...405270042.html


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Holland

Eminem Wins Case Against Dutch Online Retailer

A court in the Hague ruled in favour of Eminem in a case the popular 28-year-old American rap and hip- hop artist brought against Ramshorn BV, a Dutch online company.

Ramshorn, whose website offers cheap and ‘rare’ CDs by artists like Eminem, was charged with copyright and trademark violations.

Cases cited included the CDs Eminem is Back and All Stars Eminem - The Greatest Hits.

The first contains tracks that had been rejected for release. The other has a misleading title - considering that it only contains covers of Eminem’s songs. All of this was done without the artist’s approval, the court was told.

In addition to immediately ending the sale of the illegal Eminem CDs, Ramshorn was also ordered by the court to place a rectification notice on the company’s website.

Furthermore, the retailer was required to send, within seven days, a letter to all its clients who had purchased the CDs, stating the court’s decision and requesting that they return the CDs (for which clients would receive back the original price, plus postage).

Failure to comply could result in a daily fine of €25,000, and €7,500 for each breach of a series of restrictions stipulated by the court.

"We won on just about every point," said the Dutch lawyer for Eminem.

Ramshorn is reviewing its options. "The company sells CDs through the internet, just like other record shops. However, we first need to further study the verdict," said the lawyer for the defense.
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=1916


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Dutch Gov't Wants to Shutdown Pirate Radio Before It Can be Legalized
dsolomonoff

On May 23, The Dutch government auctioned off radio frequencies to the highest bidders as part of their new Zerobase Radio Frequency Policy. As a result only the biggest, most commercially and mainstream oriented stations are able to exploit Dutch radio frequencies for the eight year term of the licenses. The auction was preceded by "Project Etherflits" in March -- a crackdown on pirate radio stations which are technically illegal but were previously tolerated. Studio equipment was confiscated and large fines imposed on the operators. Most stations have now been forced off the air.

The ZeroBase Policy acknowledges only two kinds of radio: public and commercial. Any radio formats that don't fit within either of these categories have in effect become criminal organizations and can never be granted a legal broadcasting permit. And even the most successful pirate stations don't have the financial or legal resources required to apply for a legal permit if they were allowed to do so under the current policy.

Now the mayor of Amsterdam has granted permission to use police and riot- control forces to get rid of the country's last remaining Free Radio stations. Radio 100 Radio Patapoe and Radio de Vrije Keyser are all based in Amsterdam. On Monday February 9th the Telecom authorities tried to raid Radio Patapoe. Their attempt failed because they were unable to locate the transmitting equipment but they promised to return.

Some pirate FM broadcasters in the Netherlands have been known to use netcasting as a remote link to a transmitter at a different location. While I don't know that any of the Amsterdam stations use this method it raises interesting legal complications. The people in the studio aren't violating any laws because they're netcasting. If someone is rebroadcasting their internet feed, they could conceivably claim ignorance of that operation.

The justification for the crackdown has been the prevention of interference with licensed broadcasters. Ironically the Dutch government was so anxious for space to be found for additional commercial stations - meaning extra revenue - that interference between licensed radio stations has become a serious problem in many areas of the country. Due to poor planning on the part of the government access to existing transmitters for powerful commercial stations has been allocated very poorly. And there is a shortage of suitable sites in the Netherlands where broadcast transmitters can be installed without falling foul of planning and environmental regulations.

But since radio pirates transmit at unused frequencies and without interference (owing to their limited range) they do not interfere with commercial broadcasters -- except to compete for listeners -- as Telecom officials admit in the case of Radio Patapoe.

Until 1964 there were no legal commercial radio or television stations in the Netherlands and the government programming was extremely limited. Free Radio culture in the Netherlands has played an important role in filling that gap, as well as providing a base of operations for stations that have broadcasted to England and the rest of Europe. From the sixties (when they were the first to play the new underground rock and offer countercultural news) through the eighties and nineties when they gave extensive airplay to techno, electronic and world musics, they remain innovative, popular and highly valued as an important cultural and political resource.

There has already been a huge outcry, including pressure from The Dutch Christian Democrats (CDA), the party led by Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, who have introduced a a motion urging that space be found on the airwaves for Dutch pirate radio stations. It appears that a majority of members of the Dutch lower house agree with him. Several other political parties have expressed their support for the CDA position. Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst has reluctantly agreed to investigate easily accessible ways to give permits to local free frequencies.

Yet the phenomenon itself, with its importance to a healthy democracy, is about to disappear. It will be hard to get back once it's gone.

Radio Patapoe is requesting letters in support of their continued existence which can be used to make the case for legalization of pirate radio. Letters can be sent to patapoe@freeteam.nl
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/27/115517/137


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Ireland

Emergency Law To Prevent Copyright Threat To Joyce Show

The Government is bringing emergency legislation before the Seanad today to ensure that a major exhibition of James Joyce's work is not blocked by a copyright dispute.

The Government paid €12.6 million in 2001 for more than 500 sheets written by Joyce, including drafts of eight episodes of Ulysses as well as proofs of Finnegans Wake. The material will form the centrepiece of the National Library's James Joyce and Ulysses exhibition, due to open on June 14th. The biggest staged by the National Library, it will mark Bloomsday 1904, the day on which the events described in Ulysses take place.

However, Mr Stephen Joyce, the author's grandson, has warned the library that the exhibition could breach copyright legislation. His intervention created significant problems, the library's acting director, Mr Aongus Ó hAonghusa, acknowledged to The Irish Times last evening. "It is a shot across the bows. We have no option but to keep going until somebody tells us to stop. (But) it makes the holding of the exhibition problematic," he declared.

The threat to the exhibition has been caused by the 2000 Copyright Act which creates a doubt about its ability to display manuscripts bought by the State because the Joyce estate still holds copyright.

Discussions have taken place involving the library, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

The Government will today bring the Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2004 before the Seanad to deal with the library's difficulties. It "will remove any doubt as to the right of any person to place literary or artistic works protected by copyright or copies thereof on public exhibition without committing a breach of copyright", according to an explanatory memorandum of the legislation.

The author's grandson has frequently had difficult relationships with people seeking to publish extracts from Joycean works, threatening legal action on numerous occasions. Last year, he warned the organisers of the Bloomsday centenary festival, "Rejoyce Dublin 2004" and the Government that he would sue for any breach of the estate's copyright.

The warnings, which were delivered to RTÉ and others, ended plans for public readings of Ulysses and a proposal by the Abbey Theatre to stage Joyce's play, Exiles. Copyright on Joyce's works ran out on December 31st, 1991, 50 years after his death. However, EU regulations revived copyright from July 1995 when it extended the lifetime of copyright to 70 years.
http://home.eircom.net/content/irela...view=Eircomnet


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Web Users To Gain Creative Commons Access To The BBC
Graeme Wearden

The BBC's decision to let British surfers download TV footage and share it between friends could help to drive broadband and the take-up of new, faster PCs

The BBC has given a major boost to the Creative Commons movement this week by revealing how it plans to open up its archive of broadcasting material to UK Internet users.

The corporation has decided to allow surfers to download, distribute and modify digital clips of BBC television programmes through an initiative called the Creative Archive.

While users won't be allowed to resell the material, they will enjoy increased access to content that many potential users effectively paid the BBC to create through their licence fees.

A Creative Commons licence allows content creators to dictate whether or not anyone can copy their own work, creative derivative works from it, or use it for commercial purposes. It is an attempt to create a middle-ground rather than making content owners choose between putting something fully into the public domain or controlling it tightly through copyright.

This move has been warmly welcomed by Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project, who has played a major role in driving the Creative Commons agenda for several years.

Professor Lessig believes the Creative Archive could give a massive boost to Britain's digital content market, and could also encourage more people to take up a high-speed Internet connection and a faster PC.

"The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity," said Professor Lessig.

"If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets in broadband deployment and technology that digital creativity will support," he added.

The BBC plans to open up the Creative Archive this autumn. Initially, users will just get access to clips from factual programmes but Corporation expects to add more types of content in the future.

"Should we be successful with our approach," says Paula Le Dieu, Joint Director, BBC Creative Archive, "we may be able to release, over time, more programme genres sport, music, drama and possibly longer formats to the public.

"We can build on the initial factual clips offered at launch by the BBC Creative Archive and offer a new public asset drawn from broadcast content for the whole UK."

At this stage, though, the BBC hasn't revealed precise details of the Creative Commons licence that it will use. It's also not clear how, or even if, it will restrict access to UK licence-fee payers.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040527/152/eunor.html


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Belgian Court Denies Complaint Over CD TPMS
ILN News Letter

EDRI reports that the Belgian court of Brussels has rejected a complaint launched by the consumer organisation Test-Achats against four record companies in Belgium over their use of technical copy protection measures. Test-Achats demanded that the companies stop using technical measures on their CDs and remove all copy-controlled CDs on the market. The judge ruled that copyright legislation does allow for a private copy, but does not grant a "right" to do so. Test-Achats plans to appeal.


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Czechoslovakia

Movie Download Service Sparks Net Battle

Cesky Telecom's new product called unfair, illegal by competition
Lenka Ponikelska

If you want to avoid the legal ambiguities of using Kaaza, Limewire or Edonkey servers, there is now a way to download music and movies here and have them charged to you

Cesky Telecom (CT) launched a new service called Starzone May 13. It allows customers to download movies, songs and TV shows for fees ranging from 35 Kc to 60 Kc ($1.30 to $2.30) as part of a new product called Internet Express that offers Internet connections at a maximum speed of 1,024 kilobits per second. The company is also considering branching out into books, CDs and other retail areas.

"Apart from offering a fast Internet connection, we also wanted to offer content to go with it, and an entertainment portal was an obvious choice," said David Duron, CT's chief marketing officer.

But Starzone may face some problems. Competitors are already crying foul that the company violated fair-use laws by launching the service without offering it wholesale to other telecommunications companies, and a complaint has been filed with the European Commission. Computer experts also warn that customers could find that the service does not always live up to its promised speed.

Starzone so far offers a selection of 130 movies that can be downloaded and played either once or for a 24-hour period depending on price.

The company is also considering adding erotic movies to attract men between the ages of 40 and 45, a demographic group with a low number of Internet users.

The company says its payment system also makes the service attractive for customers.

"In contrast to payment through the Internet we introduced a much more convenient way to pay via the telephone bill," Duron says.

With 3.6 million customers, CT has a unique tool to provide for all kinds of online purchases.

Starzone and Internet Express are expected to bring in hundreds of millions of crowns in revenue, and the company is considering expanding. "We will keep widening the offer of movies and music," Duron said. "But we plan to soon introduce other goods that are often purchased through the Internet, like books and CDs, for example.

"Right now we are negotiating with a major company that runs shopping online, and we expect to sign the contract by the end of the week," Duron said without naming the company.

Despite the early success, however, CT may have to deal with a legal battle from competitors. The future of Starzone could rest with the courts and a number of government oversight agencies that have been asked to look into the product.

Telecommunications providers Nextra and Tiscali are already arguing that CT is violating the rules of fair competition by launching Internet Express.

Nextra claims it did not receive a wholesale offer that would allow it to set up a similar service.

Another service provider, Tiscali, has already filed a complaint to the European Commission and the Czech Telecommunications Office and has asked the Anti-Monopoly Office to postpone the launch of Internet Express until CT provides other operators with an equal wholesale offer.

"It is in Tiscali's interest to offer this product to its users, but we cannot do so under the conditions provided by Cesky Telecom," a Tiscali press release stated May 13.

Duron said the reactions only confirm the attractiveness and competitiveness of Internet Express. "Other telecommunication operators have all the means and the contracts to offer a competitive service," Duron said. "It looks as if they were trying to slow down the development of the Internet."

Both sides have been down this road before. In 2002 the Czech Anti-Monopoly Office fined CT 23 million Kc for launching IOL Platinum high-speed Internet service without offering it to other licensed operators. The decision is not yet final.

CT, however, is confident that will not be the case with Internet Express. "Internet Express was launched and prepared in accordance with the law and the rules of the Czech Telecommunications and Anti-Monopoly offices that we are obliged to follow," said Vladan Crha, spokesman for CT.

If CT fends off the assault by the competition, it could face customer criticism if Internet Express does not live up to the hype.

Stanislav Sochor, a technician with Pramacom, a radio communication service company, said CT promises the fastest speed but does not guarantee it. After a customer receives 1 gigabyte of data, the download speed varies.

CT acknowledges the slowdown as a part of the fair-use policy and said it would affect only 1 to 2 percent of customers.
http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/0527/busi5.php


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Australia

Region Mods Safe In FTA
Simon Hayes

THE Federal Government has moved to reassure users of DVD players they will not be restricted by a regional encoding system.

In the wake of the US-Australian free trade agreement, the Government has hinted it would introduce exceptions to a ban on circumvention devices.

Senior officials have confirmed that the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of circumvention devices would be illegal under Australia's FTA commitments, but they have suggested exceptions would be made for viewers' legitimate material.

Australian copyright law bans the distribution of circumvention devices, but not their use, and DVDs are encoded for regions in an attempt to restrict their sale around the world.

Officials told a Senate committee examining the FTA that the Government was looking at whether it could "introduce exceptions" to technological protection measures outlined in FTA negotiations.

"We have also been very careful to ensure that we maintain the ability to put in place exceptions where we regard those to be appropriate to the Australian circumstance," Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade lead negotiator Toni Harmer said.

"If the copyright owner were considered to be acting in some way that was considered anti-competitive they would still be subject to the provisions of the Trade Practices Act."

Ms Harmer said some lobbyists had suggested introducing US-style regulation in Australia, but "what may be appropriate in the US may not be appropriate in Australia".

Simon Cordina, acting general manager of the Department of Communications IT and the Arts intellectual property branch, said it was "unlikely" the FTA would outlaw multi- zone DVD players.

The new copyright restrictions will be phased in over two years, allowing the Government to craft exceptions. The regulations would need parliamentary approval.

The committee also discussed the potential for television broadcasters to use digital rights management information to restrict copying of programs.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...E15306,00.html