Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 21st, '03

[JackSpratts]

Booby Hatch

I was thinking about writing a broadside criticizing the spectacularly asinine comments of U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, who if you haven’t heard yet warned people sharing files their computers would be obliterated. “I'm all for destroying their machines” he said on Tuesday in an angry, apparently off the cuff remark.

It happened when Randy Saaf of MediaDefender, a company that makes software to harm filesharing networks said “No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer."

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted.

He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights." As if the Utah voters sent the Great Man to Washington to teach them that lesson; sell out to big media and use the federal government to wreck their property. It was foremost in their minds. If they’re like most people they consider sharing copyrighted files on par with jaywalking. As a matter of fact angry constituents flooded Hatch’s office with letters condemning him, and with good reason. His comment is at once so ignorant, arrogant and offensive that it’s simply not worth spending much time on. It’s one for the history books, that’s for sure, and one no doubt he’ll regret.

I will say that the government and the courts have their fair share of idiots whose brains (mis)function in ways similar to Hatch’s, of that I have no illusions. But it is our job as citizens to make sure that these institutions have less and less of them. So get involved. Register to vote if you haven’t already. Join a party so you can vote in your primaries. Then talk to these idiots, write them letters, send them faxes, call their offices (no emails – they don’t read them), and explain why they’re wrong. Try not to be as sarcastic as I am (I fired off a letter and it was all I could do to keep from calling him an **s***e). But make sure they do not get re-elected. Get rid of them. Support their opposition. The power in a democracy comes from its people. If you don’t want to go to jail for sharing a movie with your neighbor you won’t – as long as your representatives are doing what you elected them to do; and for that to happen they have to know that you’ll support them, and that your support is instrumental to their political well being and their continued presence in Washington.









Enjoy,

Jack.








Senator Hatch Violating Copyright Laws Himself article says

On Wednesday, Hatch came under attack for allegedly being a copyright pirate himself. His hatch.senate.gov Web site's menus use JavaScript code created by the U.K. company Milonic Solutions. Milonic Solutions charges between $35 and $900 for the right to obtain a license number for its JavaScript menu, but Hatch's site does not include a license number. Instead, this comment appears in the site's HTML code: "i am the license for the menu (duh)."

A Hatch representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hatch's proposal for legislation left public interest groups puzzled and alarmed. Mike Godwin, an attorney at Public Knowledge, said, "Much as I respect Sen. Hatch, he is virtually alone in believing that the destruction of computers could even be a last-ditch remedy for copyright infringement."

"I wish he hadn't said that," Godwin said. "And over time I suspect he'll wish he hadn't said that either."

Hatch is a conservative Mormon and former church bishop who was a presidential candidate in 2000 and is an amateur songwriter.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-1018845.html



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Radiohead Sales Stronger After New Album Leaked On P2P’s – Up 30%

Radiohead's latest effort for Capitol, "Hail to the Thief," enters at No. 3 with sales of 300,000 copies. This bests the first-week sales totals of 2000's "Kid A" and 2001's "Amnesiac," despite the fact that "Hail to the Thief" was illegally available online 10 weeks prior to hitting stores. "Kid A" entered at No. 1 with 207,000 copies, and "Amnesiac" arrived at No. 2 with 231,000 copies.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1916718



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File-Sharing Network Users Are Told to Stop
AP

The Recording Industry Assn. of America said it has sent cease-and-desist letters to five users of online file-sharing networks, demanding that they stop offering free music for others to download.

A U.S. appeals court ruling earlier this month compelled Verizon Communications Inc. to give the RIAA the names of four subscribers accused of violating copyrights by offering songs on file-sharing networks. The fifth name was supplied by EarthLink Inc., which had balked at complying with an RIAA subpoena until the appeals court rejected Verizon's request for a delay.

A spokesman for the RIAA declined to identify the subscribers or release copies of the letters.

Verizon and EarthLink resisted handing over the subscribers' names, citing privacy concerns. A federal judge in Washington sided with the RIAA, although the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was still reviewing the case.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...,2545425.story


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Americans Take Digital Piracy Lightly
Kevin Coughlin

Trading copyrighted songs and software over the Internet is wrong -- but not wrong enough to justify prosecuting anybody.

That's how a majority of Americans feel about digital piracy, according to a poll released yesterday by the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"People view it like ... jaywalking," said Jeff Plaut of the Global Strategy Group, which conducted the national survey of 600 adults this month.

"Americans are not losing sleep about peer-to-peer file-sharing networks -- and they don't want to treat it as an offense to cause them to lose sleep," Plaut said.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....1695301840.xml


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People Having An Effect
As reported in Michael Geist’s Internet Law News service:

CANADA TO SCRAP COPYRIGHT EXTENSIONS ON UNPUBLISHED WORKS

Decima’s Canadian New Media reports that the Canadian government plans to drop controversial provisions from a bill that would have extended the term of copyright for unpublished works by deceased authors.

Dubbed the Lucy Maud Montgomery Copyright Term Extension Act, members of a committee considering the bill noted that they had been flooded with calls and emails of people concerned with the copyright extension.

Help us flood more members with calls and emails!

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...6.shtml#001288


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iPod P2P - Still Working

iCommune site announcement

iCommune is a standalone open source application for Mac OS X that extends Apple's iTunes to share your music over a network. You can share the music in your iTunes library and access other iCommune music collections. iCommune music collections appear as playlists in your iTunes window. You can browse through them, and choose to stream or download the music they contain.

The new version of iCommune is finally available for download. It's definitely an alpha version, but it seems to work pretty well for me. Enjoy!

System Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2.3 or greater
iTunes 3.0.1 or higher
http://icommune.sourceforge.net/


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Judge: Millions of CD Buyers Owed Money
AP

PORTLAND, Maine A judge has approved a settlement agreement in a music antitrust lawsuit that will result in more than 3.5 million consumers receiving nearly $13 each.

Judge D. Brock Hornby issued a 51-page ruling Friday in the case that began in 1996 when attorneys general across the country began investigating whether distributors and retailers had conspired to inflate CD prices.

"This settlement will put cash in the hands of millions of consumers and music CDs in libraries and schools throughout the country, and will ensure that the challenged distributor/retailer practices will not resume," Hornby wrote.

The ruling, however, does not stipulate exactly how much consumers will receive or when the checks will be distributed. More than 3.5 million consumers filed claims, now estimated at $12.63 each.

Hornby asked lawyers to present him with a report by the end of the month on how much it will cost to distribute the checks and how much each check will be.

He also deferred ruling on a plan on how millions of CDs will be distributed to the schools and libraries.

The lawsuit, signed by the attorneys general of 43 states and territories and consolidated in Portland in October 2000, accused major record labels and large music retailers facing competition from discounters like Target and Wal-Mart of conspiring to set minimum music prices.

The defendants -- Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp., Universal Music Group and Bertelsmann Music Group, and retailers Tower Records, Musicland Stores and Transworld Entertainment -- deny any wrongdoing. Attorneys representing the companies declined to testify in court.

Of the total settlement, $75.7 million would be distributed in the form of 5.6 million music CDs sent to libraries and schools throughout the nation.

The proposed cash settlement in the case totals $67.3 million, with roughly $44 million to be distributed to the public. The remaining cash will go toward distribution costs and legal fees.

Hornby disapproved a settlement agreement regarding music club sales that would have been just over $1 million in cash and provided 50 percent discounts for club members on one to three new CDs.

Hornby wrote that virtually all the cash would go to attorney fees, leaving little value to club members. He added that music club defendants have not proven that they were part of any pricing conspiracy.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html


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Mary Bono Eyes Top Spot At RIAA
Bill Holland

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.) has tossed her hat in the ring as a potential successor to Hilary Rosen as chairman/CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Billboard Bulletin reports. According to her chief of staff, it "would be a dream job" for Bono, the 41-year-old widow of performer, songwriter, and Congressman Sonny Bono.

"She hasn't pro-actively gone after the job," says the spokesperson, "and RIAA has not yet approached her directly, although friends and colleagues have asked her about it. If [the] RIAA were to do so, it would be very hard for her to turn it down."

Bono fulfilled her husband's last term as representative of California's 44th Congressional District after his fatal skiing accident in January 1998. She has since been elected to three more terms. She has served on the Judiciary Committee, which oversees copyright issues, and is seen as a lawmaker who understands the agendas of both record companies and artists.

The RIAA would not comment on the search or the possibility of Bono taking over, beyond Rosen saying, "I love Mary Bono; she's great."
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1913691

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A 'Business Napster' Launches Here
Ben Rand

On appearance alone, you might identify Jason Curtis and Adam Grossman as charter members of the Napster generation. They just have the look: young, energetic and smart enough to know how to swap songs with other music fans online, a phenomenon known as “peer- to-peer” computing.

The high school buddies know plenty about Napster, the California company that rocked the music industry by making song-swapping an everyday activity. You could say their future depends on ideas pioneered by the now-defunct company.

Curtis and Grossman have launched a company here that wants to move “peer-to-peer” computing out of the home and into the office. Their PeerConnect Inc. was formed to market cutting-edge file-sharing software that provides a faster and more secure method for businesses to exchange documents and other critical information online.

Simply put, it’s Napster for business. PeerConnect licenses and sells software that moves pre-selected images and information between companies and their trading partners or between products in a network when needed.

There’s a big difference between Napster and PeerConnect, though: security. When Napster was in business, users could literally search for files on millions of hard drives across the world. PeerConnect’s software, known as Hypership, does not expose either the sender’s or the receiver’s computer networks to random searching. The networks open only long enough to send or receive a document or other data.

Hypership, owned by Hyperspace Communications Inc. of Easton, Md., will also deliver to each partner an official notarized receipt that carries an electronic U.S. postmark. The receipt is stamped with the date and time and represents legal proof of delivery.

PeerConnect is conducting an advanced test with the Social Security Administration, which wants to use Hypership to collect birth, death and other records on a regular basis from state and local governments. It has similar pilot projects under way with companies or agencies in the advertising and publishing medical and legal industries, Curtis said. All told, PeerConnect already does business with nine federal agencies and 12 state governments.

Information transfer between computers is not the only potential use.

Hypership could also be installed into products, which are increasingly computerized and formed into networks. Peer-to-peer technology, as a hypothetical example, could be used to move pictures from self-service digital imaging kiosks to photofinishing machines.

“We think the potential of peer-to-peer is amazing,” Curtis said.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/...business.shtml


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The MP3 Economy
How Labels And Artists Divvy Up Your MP3 Dollar
Nancy Einhart

The going rate for downloading songs from online music services like Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Music Store, MusicNet, Pressplay, and Rhapsody is about $1 a pop. Yet the economics of recorded music sales haven't changed much since the vinyl era -- despite the fact that digital files cost very little to produce and distribute. So how much of your buck makes its way back to the artists? Not much, though it's clearly a better deal than they get from piracy.

The Site's Cut
The biggest chunk of your dollar goes to the online music provider. This explains why sites like Rhapsody can offer promotional discounts: When you buy a song for 49 cents, the site sacrifices its profit but the label still gets paid.

The Publisher's Cut
This sliver goes to the music publisher in the form of "mechanical royalties," the amount paid to license the written music. While other fees can vary from artist to artist, mechanical royalties are always a flat-fee transaction.

The Label's Cut
The record company receives "performance royalties" that are paid to license an actual recording (not the written music). That explains why some performers, like alt- rocker Aimee Mann, run their own labels -- it allows them to keep a larger share of these royalties for themselves.

The Middlemen's Cut
A small portion is reserved for various other intermediaries. Sites like Liquid Audio, MusicNet, and Rhapsody often sell their services through secondary distributors like Amazon and AOL, so they, too, get a cut.

The Artist's Cut
Twelve percent is average, but successful bands often hammer out better contracts. In many major-label contracts, charges for "packaging" and promotional copies are subtracted from the artist's cut, leaving the talent with a measly 8 percent. BMG, Universal, and Warner have announced plans to do away with such deductions for digital downloads.
http://www.business2.com/articles/ma...,49472,00.html


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Driving In Cars With MP3s
PhatNoise can replace your vehicle's CD player with an MP3 player, but true integration with your car stereo is years away.
Rafe Needleman

When the new BMW 7-series was introduced in the United States in 2002, I talked to some of the company's engineers about all the gadgets this beast carries -- and doesn't. In particular I asked why, with all the storage capacity and computer power in the car, there was no way to play MP3 files. I was told that BMW engineers in Germany had rigged a new vehicle to play MP3s via the car's built-in sound system, but that the company's marketing and legal departments weren't comfortable with pushing this forward for release stateside. Even today, no new cars are sold in the United States with bona fide MP3 players (although some will play CDs that have MP3s recorded on them).

Are we drivers limited to the radios and CD players installed in our cars? Well, you can always hook up an iPod, or other portable MP3 player, via a small FM transmitter or a tape deck gizmo, but this solution has two problems. First, sound quality suffers. Second, it can be dangerous to fiddle with the portable device while you're driving.

Automotive electronics While we wait for carmakers to give us our digital tunes the right way, a company called PhatNoise is marketing a plug-in solution that solves a lot of the problems with the current work-arounds. The company has a deal with Volkswagen dealers whereby PhatNoise's Digital Car Audio System is sold alongside other VW-approved options -- which means you pay for it via your regular car payments and it's covered under the car's warranty.

The $795 system connects directly to your car's sound system and takes the place of the trunk-mounted CD changer. The car's stereo thinks it's a changer, which means the system responds to the normal CD buttons like "Next Track." It is, however, a hard-disc-based MP3 player. You load the hard drive with tunes from your PC using a desktop dock. (Future products might use wireless networking so users can beam tunes from computer to car.)

Since CD changers neither store as much music as hard discs nor know what tracks are in the changer, the PhatNoise solution does require some hacks to work with standard CD controls. For example, in the VW installation, a disc-selection button turns on the artist-selection mode, and the device, which can't actually display MP3 data tags on the CD player's readout, uses voice synthesis to tell you the artists' names (and other information) through the car's speakers. When you hear the artist you want, you select it with another button.

Chief technology officer Dan Benyamin explains that most of the PhatBox user interface is audio based, so operating it is safer than fiddling with tiny car-stereo buttons or a display screen. But I believe that's just an argument of convenience -- and Benyamin does admit that it'd be easier and safer still if the button to bring up the artists on your hard disc were labeled "Artists," not "Disc 4."

So, how long until a car's factory "head unit" can display the MP3 data on its own screen? "Seven years," Benyamin says. It takes that long, he claims, for the auto companies to fully adopt new technology. Benyamin's exaggerating -- it didn't take satellite radio companies XM Radio (XMSR) and Sirius (SIRI) seven years to get their technology built into car radios -- but he does have a point. And in the meantime, you can get a better-integrated PhatNoise system by buying a Kenwood Music Keg, which is based on the PhatNoise technology. Music Keg head units are fully integrated with the MP3 player.
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,50267,00.html


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iTunes Distribution Deals Are Nice, But They're Nothing Compared With Ipod Bundling Arrangements
Jimmy Guterman

The hottest thing in digital media right now is Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Music Store. Although iTunes lacks two of the key features that made/make Napster/Kazaa so appealing -- peer-to-peer sharing and a huge library of unreleased material -- it is easier to use and has more to offer than do the "legitimate," major-label-blessed digital-music- selling services, like MusicNet and Pressplay.

Although there are still some major holes in the iTunes catalog, it's no surprise that labels have licensed it more than 200,000 songs, including exclusive performances from acts you've actually heard of. Also, since more than 9 out of 10 computers can't connect to the iTunes store -- it works only for Macs -- iTunes is an easy way for the major labels to experiment without giving up their proprietary Net- music-selling plans.

That's all well and good, but it leaves out the most lucrative short- term opportunity for Apple in the music business. The portable music device of choice is Apple's iPod, which set the stage for the elaborate iTunes store.

Since record companies are desperate for new means of distribution, shouldn't they be looking for access to the iPod rather than just iTunes? It's a classic bundling arrangement. Consider how software makers have pursued big deals to get on the Windows desktop because they know that preinstalled material gets the user's attention. Take this idea to the iPod: What would a broadcast network pay a television manufacturer to ensure that the network was the first station anyone saw when turning on a TV? Apple has an opportunity, first of all, to release a series of customized, high-priced iPods. This would bring large fees into Apple's coffers. The record companies would get a premium, plus outstanding distribution. And for both companies, such a move would mark a first step toward even bigger deals.

Indeed, the company has missed out on an opportunity to do this already. Last year, Apple marketed a "limited-edition Beck version" of its iPod with no actual Beck music on it, just a little engraving of Beck's name on the back of the device. Imagine how much more successful and buzzworthy (a crucial concept for Apple) it would have been if that iPod came with everything the guy ever recorded (capturing casual fans) and a generous helping of unreleased material (pulling in hard-core fanatics) -- which still leaves room for hundreds of CDs' worth of music. But such customized iPods are just a necessary stepping-stone toward the biggest opportunity: premium placement on all iPods. If Apple's portable music players retain their hegemony in the market and the market keeps growing, there will be no better place for record companies to present new music to potential customers.

None of this will happen soon. I called Apple, and a spokesperson said the company was not in discussions on selling iPod real estate. Then I spoke to three executives at the five major labels (two never called back) and they confirmed that no such talks are going on. But before he got off the phone, one of them shouted into his speakerphone, "Damn, we should do that. You know who at Apple we should talk to about that?"
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...html?ref=hp102


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Blue Light Special

A novel way to squeeze more data onto CDs and DVDs.
Charles Q. Choi

Sony's high-capacity blue laser DVD recorder, set to debut in the United States this fall, crams five times more information on a disc than the standard red laser version does and heralds the arrival of next-generation technology. Enthusiasts eager to get their hands on that much data capacity, however, may think twice after learning that production snags boosted the DVD's price to about $3,500. But researchers at BlackLight Power in Cranbury, New Jersey, say they have made a discovery that may help overcome technical hurdles and get reliable blue lasers to market.

When the kinks are worked out, blue lasers will likely be the heart of next-generation DVDs, CDs, printers and scanners. Having shorter wavelengths than their red brethren, they can etch more data on a disc. It's the optical equivalent of taking a sharper pencil to paper.



But manufacturing flaws have plagued the emerging technology. The standard way to generate blue laser light is to run an electric current through a crystal or chemical. Excited electrons in the substrates then emit blue light rays. Trouble is, the substrates tend to crack under extreme heat, a glitch that ruins up to a third of all batches. And the solutions are pricey.

Liquids, however, don't crack. Enter the world's first water-based blue laser. Researchers at BlackLight Power heated water vapor with microwaves to generate energized hydrogen atoms which emit multispectrum light rays, including infrared, blue and violet. A prototype blue laser device is expected by the end of the year.

The team says such a multispectrum laser light could be miniaturized to micron dimensions for many microelectronic applications. "A hydrogen laser may prove to be the most useful of all," says Randell Mills, BlackLight Power's CEO.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/compute...456097,00.html


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DVD Piracy Poses A Dilemma
David Canton

Twentieth-century copyright law and 21st-century technology are clashing once again, this time in a courtroom in San Francisco. The court is being asked to consider the ramifications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on the distribution of DVD copying software. In essence, the DMCA makes it illegal to provide technology that defeats copy-protection measures contained in a product. DVDs contain such protection measures to make it difficult to copy them. That is why DVD players don't work if they are connected to a TV set through a VCR.

American-based software company 321 Studios recently introduced software to the consumer market that would allow users to circumvent copy protections on DVDs. Unleashing that ability to the public prompted the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to launch the action against 321 Studios on the basis that allowing consumers to copy DVDs in this matter violates the restrictions imposed by the DMCA.

Technologists argue that a narrow interpretation of the DMCA would create an extremely hostile environment for innovators, who wouldn't pursue new products for fear of legal reprisal. Entertainment industry supporters advocate a strict imposition of the DMCA to ensure their copyrights and corresponding profit margins are given full protection.

So far, the judge in the San Francisco case has indicated that she has been significantly persuaded by the entertainment industry's arguments, but has acknowledged that strict adherence to the DMCA would create the potential for the unjustified prosecution of "grey-area" copiers. These include those who would use the software to make personal backup copies of commercially produced DVDs or those who use copied DVDs for employment purposes such as writing movie reviews.
http://www.canoe.com/NewsStand/Londo...13/109915.html


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The Power Of Peering
While peer-to-peer computing seems intrinsically linked to piracy, it is actually a legitimate technology that can help disseminate data efficiently.
Louis Chua

Peer-to-peer software is going to be with us for a long time. However, truth be told, most peer-to-peer software seem to have been written for the sake of breaking the law. The United States' court rulings aside, tools like Kazaa and the now defunct Napster are mostly used by people sharing copyright materials illegally.

This unfortunate turn of fate puts a terrible spin on the concept of peer-to-peer computing. Conceptually, peer-to-peer is a powerful concept that has been hijacked and which has left a bad taste in the mouths of most copyright owners. This need not be so. A new angle is thrown into the peer-to-peer file-sharing concept with the introduction of BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is a remarkably small and neat piece of Python software engineering with Windows ports, created by a programmer called Bram Cohen, that addresses several problems that exist on almost all other file- sharing systems. It refers to both the program as well as the protocol designed for transferring files. It is peer-to-peer in nature, as users connect to each other directly to send and receive portions of the file.

Like Napster and Kazaa, there is a central server (called a tracker) which co-ordinates the action of all such peers. However, the tracker only manages connections and it does not have any knowledge of the content of the files being distributed. Therefore, a large number of users can be supported with relatively limited tracker bandwidth.

A key philosophy in the design of BitTorrent is that users, while downloading files, should also contribute to the uploading effort by uploading the same files at the same time. This allows network bandwidth to be utilised more efficiently. As more nodes interested in a certain file join the swarm, the better would be the transfer speed. This is an ideology improvement over other file transfer protocols.

Another feature of BitTorrent is that unlike Napster, Kazaa, eMule or eDonkey, which are all file indexing and searching services, the design of BitTorrent does away with the need of a centralised server that helps to index files to enable searching. For services like Napster and Kazaa, it is always possible to shut down the entire network by turning off, say, Kazaa's server farm entirely. For BitTorrent, should illegal material be set up as a torrent, copyright owners can target the more significant distribution networks, providing the trackers to shut them down.

A problem that BitTorrent has solved is the case of users who only take, take and take, without giving back anything as seen in some peer-to-peer networks. BitTorrent forces the user to upload as they download a file. The BitTorrent server, which can be supplied by anyone willing to offer a little space, will index your willingness to upload and the amount you have uploaded so far.

As there is usually more download capacity than upload capacity, for a popular file where there are many copies already existing on participant PCs, a small upload stream will get you several times that in download capacity.

BitTorrent could even be more secure than other file-sharing programs, as there is no risky "shared folder". Users only share that which they are currently downloading or have completely downloaded. A torrent file can describe a collection of files just as easily as a single file. So you could even download a whole directory from one torrent file. Files offered are published as links on regular web pages. This solves a major problem of reliability and efficient distribution of files among clients where there are users who sometimes "poison" the pool by providing files that are not what they purport to be. This does not happen for BitTorrent.

There is also less of a risk of data error as BitTorrent uses file fragment checksum to ensure no invalid data is offered to the network. When a download is cancelled, you can start again anytime. The BitTorrent client will figure out what part of a file you have got and what you are missing. The data may arrive in chunks, depending on what is available on the network. BitTorrent will create a blank file with the correct file size when users initiate the download, and will reassemble the file on the fly, filling in the holes until it gets the whole thing.

Companies can use BitTorrent to disseminate data, both for internal consumption as well as external. For unlike providers like Kazaa and eMule, the locator metafiles need not be released to the general public at large.

An example of external usage is a company that is offering free sample programs online.
http://www.computerworld.com.sg/pcws...A?OpenDocument


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Offload Those Music Files
Sebastian Rupley

File sharing of music and other kinds of digital content via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has grown explosively and so has the bandwidth drain on Internet service providers (ISPs) who are supporting the trading of these very large files. A UK company, CacheLogic, has a unique strategy for alleviating the problem—its Cachepliance line of caching routers.

The company's CacheLogic software, which runs on its Cachepliance routers, re-architects the protocols used by Gnutella and FastTrack—the underlying technology of most P2P file-sharing networks—and used by the Kazaa and Morpheus clients. By doing this, P2P file trading is encouraged on the ISP's own network, as opposed to the traditional approach of seeking out other peers across continents. The re-architecture of the protocols is complemented by file caching on CacheLogic's routers.

CacheLogic officials estimate that ISPs can expect network bandwidth savings of 95 percent related to network protocol "chatter" and 50 percent on file transfers by installing sufficient caching appliances to support broadband users. They describe file sharing as a double-edged sword, a view which Michael Hoch, research director for Internet infrastructure at the Aberdeen Group, agrees with in a report. "While ISPs are desperately seeking to reduce their spiraling bandwidth costs related to P2P file trading, they also recognize file sharing as a significant driver of new broadband subscribers to their networks," Hoch says. Adam Twiss, CEO of CacheLogic, characterizes the bandwidth cost of P2P file sharing as "the biggest problem facing ISPs today."

CacheLogic takes the position that caching file transfer activity can save some ISPs millions of dollars per year, and the company has routers aimed at fielding P2P traffic for both large and small ISPs. The Cachepliance 4000 is designed for big ISPs to place at the core of a network. Each unit can support 50,000 subscribers and the devices can be deployed in clusters to support large subscriber bases. The Cachepliance 2000 is for smaller ISPs and can support 30,000 subscribers. Both routers support large RAID subsystems, and the Cachepliance 4000 comes with 1.4 terabytes of RAID hard drive storage.

CacheLogic officials say that they've been operating "in stealth mode" by concentrating their business in England thus far, but they see a big opportunity in the US. Cachepliance routers are currently in trial with four of the five tier-one ISPs in England, and CacheLogic survey data shows that 60 to 70 percent of background traffic online in England consists of P2P file sharing.

The Cachepliance 4000 sells in England for 50,000 pounds with a service cost of 10,000 pounds per year for protocol updates. A pound was equivalent to $1.64 as of the end of May. The Cachepliance 2000 costs 30,000 pounds and carries the same service cost.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1126275,00.asp


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Japan Movie Copyright Extended From 50 To 70 Years

TOKYO — The Diet on Thursday passed a bill to revise the copyright law to extend the protection period for movies from the current 50 years to 70 years after their release.

The House of Representatives approved the bill unanimously at its plenary session, some three weeks after the House of Councillors endorsed the proposed revision. The revision takes effect Jan 1 next year.
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=262928


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Risks Of Downloading Movies Don't Deter People Who Want Free Entertainment
Hailey Heinz

Picture yourself on a Friday night, hanging out with friends, family or significant other and in search of diversion. You opt to take in a movie, perhaps "2 Fast 2 Furious," released last week.

So you head into the computer room, go to your preferred peer-to-peer network, peruse the selection and click the download button. Then you wait a few hours, perhaps get a bite to eat, and when you return, the movie is there, waiting for you to kick back and enjoy. All without spending a penny.

This scene is becoming increasingly common in homes and at college campuses across the nation, much to the chagrin of film studios nationwide.

Downloading digital media, a trend that has plagued the music industry for years, is becoming a major concern for the movie industry, cutting into profits from theaters, rentals and sales.

According to Rich Taylor, vice president of public affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America, it's difficult to track how much money the industry loses to this new form of digital piracy. Because it is digital, it leaves no paper trail.

Viant, an Internet consulting firm based in Boston, says that 400,000 to 600,000 movies are downloaded illegally everyday.

"We watched 'X-Men 2' the night before it came out, then watched it at the theater the next day," said Craig Lewis, who has just finished his first year as a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Lewis said this is a common practice on campus and that most students, even the less tech-savvy, know how to get movies for free.

"One tech-savvy person on a floor is enough," he explained.

So how exactly is it done? Movies can be easily downloaded using peer-to-peer networks similar to the infamous Napster, a sharing network shut down by courts in 2001 after a lengthy lawsuit brought on by the Recording Industry Association of America. The most well known of these new copycat networks is KaZaA, but it is certainly not alone among many others, such as Gnutella, Morpheus and iMesh.

These networks allow users to download music and movies from the computers of hundreds, even thousands of other users at once. Any media that has been uploaded from the computer of one user onto the network becomes available to everyone else. In this way, the media is "shared" and can be accessed by the downloader free.

Lewis said the moral implications of downloading copyrighted material bother him a little but not too much.

"They want $8.50 to go see a movie, and a lot of the movies are (not very good)," he said. "I like to think of it as previewing. If it's good enough, we're going to buy it because we love it so much, but we're poor college students."

Lewis shares this perspective with plenty of others. Brian Lyke, who will be a sophomore at Polaris K-12 School, acknowledges he uses peer-to-peer networks to download movies and other media.

"I like treating anything I download as a preview; try before you buy, you know? I'm a big fan of that ... Most of the movies I (also) see at the theater or pay for at least once."

Lyke concurred that not everyone has this same pay-at-least-once philosophy. "There's a lot of idiots out there who just download," he said, and that's wrong.

"People who do good work should get something for it," Lyke said. People who just download movies and never pay to see any of them are abusing the system and harming everyone else. "I'm not sure where that line is, but you know it when you see it," he said.

For the MPAA, that line is very clear. Any material downloaded free on the Internet is illegal.

"People need to stop acting like it's an innocent act," the MPAA's Taylor said. "Folks have tried to write it off as a harmless act, but people in Hollywood are all affected, from the rank-and-file workers to the people behind the camera, all the way down to the people selling popcorn. ... They're not all Steven Spielbergs."

Taylor said many people don't understand that only two of every 10 movies actually make back their production cost during their theatrical release. Most movies rely on sales, rentals and pay-per-view. "If that chain is severed, we've got a real problem," Taylor said.

The MPAA has taken numerous measures to minimize piracy, including encryption on DVDs to prevent copying, guards with night vision goggles in movie theaters to spot bootleggers and litigation against networks providing peer-to-peer media sharing.

"We're not about to sit idly by," Taylor said. "The music industry has been decimated by piracy; we're not going to let that happen to the movie industry."

Online piracy is subject to the same copyright laws that apply to nondigital intellectual property. This means it may not be used without compensating the copyright holder or getting direct permission.

Additionally, two fairly recent pieces of legislation apply exclusively to Internet piracy. The No Electronic Theft Act, which became federal law in 1997, increases the penalties for electronic piracy, including large fines and up to six years in prison, depending on the magnitude of the offense. The other act is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998. This act makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute hardware or other devices that circumvent piracy-resistant technology.

So why have peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA been able to stay open even though Napster was shut down by the courts?

It's certainly not for lack of trying on the part of the copyright holders. The MPAA and the RIAA recently took KaZaA, MusicCity (the company that runs Morpheus) and Grokster, another peer-to-peer server, to court. Much to the disappointment of the copyright holders and to the jubilation of recreational pirates, the courts ruled in favor of the servers in April. Unlike Napster, the ruling said, these peer-to-peer networks have no centralized server, which means there is no record of who is using it and what they're swapping. While Napster could verify that copyrighted material was, in fact, being shared through its network, this is not the case for these decentralized networks.

For this reason, the courts ruled the copyright infringement was not committed by KaZaA and other peer- to-peer networks but by those who use them for illegal purposes. Although the vast majority of the traffic on these networks is copyrighted material, the networks could also be used to send noncopyrighted movies, music or other media across the world. The networks were likened to copier machines and VCRs, which can be used for piracy but shouldn't be denied to people who wish to use them legitimately.

Taylor said the MPAA will appeal and he is "pretty sure we'll prevail." Although the courts have ruled that individual users are the ones guilty of copyright infringement, the MPAA continues to focus on the servers that give them the tools to do so.

College campuses around the country provide a hive for media-sharing activity, mainly because most college campuses have computer networks connecting all the computers on campus. The University of Alaska Network allows students to peruse the computers of fellow students from the comfort of their dorms and have access to any media stored in their shared folders.

This oncampus sharing is facilitated by individual students, who can download a small piece of software and host their own little peer-to-peer network for other students on campus. Although students could just use the larger networks like KaZaA, these little hubs make it a lot easier.

One student who hosted such a hub and requested to remain anonymous, says the ethical aspect of it doesn't bother him.

"We'd get on DirectConnect almost every day just to see if anyone had anything new," he said. For him, it was just part of campus culture.

When these peer-to-peer networks pop up on campuses, universities can be held liable for the copyright infringement. For this reason, college and universities are taking precautions to avoid getting hit with $30,000 fines for copyright infringement.

According to Chirk Chu, the chief security officer for the University of Alaska, the university responds when copyright holders complain that students on campus are violating copyright laws. These complaints are generally about students uploading content for others or hosting networks, he said.

"Technologically speaking, it's virtually impossible for copyright holders to enforce their claim on people who (only) download," Chu said.

Rich Whitney, the associate vice provost for information technology at UAA said that when complaints come in that a student at a particular computer address is generating a lot of traffic on a peer-to-peer network (usually Kazaa), that student is required to sign a letter stating that he or she understands the offense and won't do it again.

Penalties increase with repeat offenses, and by a third offense, the student's port is shut off. The campus can tell whether they have stopped their activities by monitoring that student's computer, or IP, address.

Chu says copyright complaints have risen steadily over the last few years. In 2001, he dealt with four cases. In 2002, it was up to 49, and this year, as of June 11, he's handled 86 cases.

Another problem that universities face is that the downloading and uploading of media takes up an extraordinary amount of bandwidth, much more than normal Internet use.

"When you search the Web, you go to an address, make a connection and terminate that connection when you're through," Chu explained.

"If I'm looking for a song title, I have to look in hundreds, even thousands, of computers." This is the same for movies and any other media found on a peer-to-peer network.

The university's solution is to "shape" the bandwidth of the university. This means that only a certain fraction of the total bandwidth is allotted for types of use.

"What it's aimed at doing is to create higher priorities for educational research purposes," Whitney said. "The leftover bandwidth is then allotted for peer-to-peer traffic."

Despite these measures taken by the university, use of KaZaA is still alive and well on campus. According to Whitney, 18 percent of the inbound bandwidth used at UAA during May was KaZaA-related traffic, while a 29 percent of outbound bandwidth traffic was related to KaZaA.

Gnutella, another well-known peer-to-peer network, accounts for just 2 percent of outbound bandwidth usage but is still among the top 10 categories of use.

Although the university staff is aware of how much KaZaA is used on campus, they only take disciplinary action against students in response to complaints.

"We don't see ourselves as traffic cops; we see ourselves as providing the most effective and efficient network for our users," Whitney said.

In some cases, however, downloading can make a user's system anything but efficient. Chu said media files sometimes contain viruses and "Trojan horses" that can get inside the computer and open a back door for a hacker to enter. A large amount of media downloading will make a computer much more susceptible to hacking, Chu said. Solutions are education and technological precautions like filters and firewalls, he said.

These ethical and technical risks don't seem to be stopping movie fans however, and the traffic on peer- to-peer networks is as heavy as ever. Until something changes, the Internet will continue to provide a haven for free entertainment.

"People are behaving in a way that they would never behave on firm earth," said the MPAA's Taylor. "Most of these people would never go into Blockbuster, grab a DVD and slip out of the store. Yet somehow, when they're sitting there with a mouse, they have no problem slipping a digital DVD under their digital jacket and slipping right out of the store without paying."

Hailey Heinz is senior at Polaris K-12 and an editor of Perfect World, the Daily News high school journalism section published every Friday in Life.
http://www.adn.com/perfectworld/stor...-3316103c.html



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Sony To Offer Music Downloads In U.K.
Reuters

Sony Music said Monday that it would begin selling music downloads in Britain for its top artists, making it the last among the major recording labels to join Europe's music download bandwagon.

But the long-awaited announcement comes with a hitch. Sony, home to such artists as Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, will not sell song downloads to European Internet users outside the United Kingdom.

"We're in negotiation with Sony for the other territories," said Charles Grimsdale, chief executive of OD2, the technology provider that brokered the deal. "Hopefully, we'll be able to bring Sony onboard across Europe fairly soon."

During the next six weeks, Sony will supply music to OD2 partners that include BT Group's Dotmusic.com, Ministry of Sound, the U.K. Web sites of MTV, Microsoft's MSN, retailer HMV Group, and Internet service providers Tiscali and Freeserve.

OD2 supplies roughly a dozen sites with the technology to run music download services. It is the only company in Europe to have secured licenses from the five major music labels and a bevy of independents.

With Sony onboard, OD2 has more than 200,000 tracks on offer.

As in the United States, the major labels have been backing subscription music download services in Europe to combat the proliferation of online song- swapping, a phenomenon eating into global CD sales.

But the nascent industry-sanctioned services have had little success in persuading Internet users to abandon file-sharing sites such as Kazaa and Grokster, which carry a larger selection of music and are free.

Grimsdale though said the recent media commotion around Apple Computer's two-month old iTunes music download service, which is available only in North America, has created a lift for the privately held OD2.

"Revenues are growing rapidly and there's been a huge amount of activity on our partner sites, (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs is my favorite person right now," Grimsdale said.

Industry sources told Reuters the labels are in active negotiations with Apple to bring the download service to Europe. iTunes may launch in at least one European country later this year or early next year, the sources said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-1017346.html


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Gas Mask Queen Removed From Gallery
BBC

An art gallery has taken down three images of the Queen wearing a gas mask after a row with the Royal Mail.

Artrepublic, in Brighton, had been showing the pictures, representing first, second and third class stamps, since May.

The artworks were created by former pop star James Cauty, who was in the group KLF, and were a reflection of his stance on the war with Iraq.

The Royal Mail had complained about the prints because it said they were a breach of its copyright.



The gallery, in the North Lanes, took the pictures down on Friday.

A spokesman for the gallery said: "It is true the images have been removed.

"We are still in legal discussions with the Royal Mail.

"We won't be able to issue any more information until that has been resolved."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...es/2994418.stm


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'Gen D' flexes its muscles
Youth are content to keep getting music from Net tell recording industry to adapt or disappear
Benny Evangelista

Fourteen-year-old Miriam Rosenau is a typical member of "Gen D,'' a generation of customers vital to the survival of the recording industry. That's "D" as in "digital" and "download," two words that also describe an inexorable shift in consumer behaviour that experts say will force the $32 billion (U.S.) worldwide recording industry to overhaul the way it does business.

Most of the time, Rosenau uses her computer rather than her stereo to play her favourite songs. And she hasn't bought a CD in a while because it's easier to use that computer to download music from the Internet.

"I think I have gotten used to having everything right when I want it," said Rosenau of Berkeley, Calif. "I have DSL, and it's extremely fast. I can get a song in under two minutes.''

And while the record industry has been trying to hone its message that downloading is a criminal act of copyright piracy, San Francisco's Ryan Kellett, 16, said he knows of only a few teens his age who don't download music. "The cat's out of the bag," Kellett said. The record industry, he added, needs to listen more to its teenage customers. "They need to keep up with the times," he said. "They need to use the Internet as a tool. They have to get into the mind of a teenager to figure that out. You can't be an executive on the top floor to get into what needs to be done to reach these people.'' The good news for the music industry is that Apple Computer's new 99-cent-per-song iTunes Music Store, which record companies believe is the best alternative to free downloading, does seem to be turning heads among members of Generation D. And because of the store's early success ? more than 3 million songs sold in the first month after it opened April 28 ? other technology giants like Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo and Amazon.com are considering similar ventures. Record executives believe they are finally on the right track. "It is a challenge that we have got to address," said Paul Vidich, an executive vice president with the Warner Music Group. "I don't see them as a lost generation. They've become lost music buyers, but not lost music consumers.'' Back in the day when rock and roll was king, teenagers considered it cool to hang out at the local record store listening to and buying new music. More importantly, teens used to be the record industry's single biggest group of customers, the group counted upon to grow up into lifelong record buyers.

Just 10 years ago, when U.S. music sales totalled $10 billion, 16.7 per cent of recorded music was purchased by teens ages 15 to 19, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The next largest group was 20- to 24-year-olds, with 15.1 per cent of the market, and third was 25- to 29-year-olds at 13.2 per cent.

By 2002, total record sales were $12.6 billion. But the percentage of sales declined to 13.3 per cent for teens ages 15 to 19 and to 11.5 per cent for the 20-to-24 age group. The 45-and-older Baby Boomers are now the biggest CD buyers, accounting for 25.5 per cent of sales last year. Interviews with San Francisco Bay Area teenagers and the results of several recent research reports indicate part of that shift stems from today's Generation D relying more on their computers for music.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851


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Unmasking the Internet - Illusion of Internet Anonymity Crumbling Under Rulings, New Laws
Shelley Emling

A court orders Verizon to give the music industry the names of four Internet subscribers accused of illegally swapping songs.

A Pennsylvania judge goes to court to seek the identity of an America Online member she says made defamatory comments about her in a chat room.

The American Library Association opposes the government's expanded capability under the Patriot Act to track a library user's Internet use.

Dell Computer Corp. goes to court, hoping to get Microsoft Corp. to reveal the identity of a Hotmail account user that it says received sensitive documents sent from inside the company.

The case was resolved when Dell independently discovered the e-mail address belonged to one of its employees, who was sending work to his home computer so he could work there. But last year, Dell twice sought the identities of e-mail account holders it believed sent threatening and harassing e-mails to the company.

These are just a few of the skirmishes in a growing battle over online privacy. Increasingly, businesses are going to court to unmask Internet users for various reasons, ranging from fraud to threats.

Continued anonymity, a hallmark of the Internet, is far from certain. It's likely the issue will be decided in individual cases such as these instead of by congressional mandate.

"People have always thought that what they're doing on the Internet will remain private, but that's not always the case," said Mike McGuire, research director for media with GartnerG2, a unit of Gartner Inc.

"Internet service providers might need to do a better job of informing their users that they may have to release their identities in certain circumstances," he said.

The truth is that Internet anonymity has been eroding for years. Law enforcement has long relied on Internet protocol, or IP, addresses to track down those who seek child pornography.

Companies, too, have snooped on their employees for years. A 2001 study estimated that one in three workers was under constant e-mail surveillance.

"It's done here at Dell like it's done at virtually every company I can think of . . . to make sure company resources are used appropriately," spokesman Mike Maher said.

Even the filing of "John Doe" suits by companies seeking to unmask those who criticize the companies on online message boards has grown commonplace.

But now online privacy is even more at risk. The Patriot Act, passed in response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, gives the FBI easier access to information, such as the ability to delve into library Web records without search warrants.

Another factor is the music industry, which views file sharing as a threat to its livelihood.
http://www.statesman.com/business/co...7e0890051.html


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“We will have a platinum-selling soundtrack of original game music within two years."

Music: Electronic Games Boost Licensing Revenue
Steve Traiman

Facing an industry-wide decline in mechanical royalties, music publishers and songwriters are increasingly turning to a new revenue source -- video games.

Original and licensed music from emerging and established acts "can command from $800 to $1,200 a minute, with a typical game using from 20 to 90 minutes," says Bob Rice, chief executive of Four Bars Intertainment.

Rice participated in the "Writing Music for Games" seminar sponsored by the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) during last month's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

"Once you're 'in' the medium, a composer can earn $250,000 or more a year from games," Rice says.

Richard Stumpf, VP for marketing and licensing at Cherry Lane Music Publishing, says most gaming companies traditionally look for a flat-fee buyout that can range from $1,500 for a song from a new artist to $20,000 for six songs from Elvis Presley (news).

"With some games selling up to 5 million or more copies, we've been pushing hard for royalties and advances, and we did work a royalty deal with Sony Computer Entertainment for its multi-artist PlayStation 2 (news - web sites) game Frequency," he says.

Cherry Lane's game placements are with such leading developers as Electronic Arts (EA), Activision, Konami, THQ, Midway, and Buena Vista Games (formerly Disney Interactive).

They involve contemporary artists and draw primarily on partnerships with DreamWorks Publishing and World Wrestling Entertainment.

Cherry Lane and DreamWorks have a license out for Logan 7 tracks for EA's NHL 2004, and quotes are out for Powerman 5000 tracks on EA's NASCAR (news - web sites) Thunder 2004 and NFL Gameday 2004. They are also seeking a Dr. Octagon track for Activision's Tony Hawk's Underground, among others.

But integrating music into games can be challenging, game music producer Eric Lundborg notes.

Lundborg worked on the Atari Enter the Matrix title that was released simultaneously with the Matrix Reloaded movie. "The game music had to merge seamlessly with the action movie footage," Lundborg says. "And we had to complete three hours of music in a very short time."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ideogames_dc_1


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Abstract.

The Dead Poets Society: The Copyright Term And The Public Domain
Matthew Rimmer

In a victory for corporate control of cultural heritage, the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected a constitutional challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 (U.S.) by a majority of seven to two. This paper evaluates the litigation in terms of policy debate in a number of discourses — history, intellectual property law, constitutional law and freedom of speech, cultural heritage, economics and competition policy, and international trade. It argues that the extension of the copyright term will inhibit the dissemination of cultural works through the use of new technologies — such as Eric Eldred's Eldritch Press and Project Gutenberg. It concludes that there is a need to resist the attempts of copyright owners to establish the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 (U.S.) as an international model for other jurisdictions — such as Australia.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8...mer/index.html


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In practice DRM stifles legal activity.

Info With a Ball and Chain
Stopping piracy and increasing privacy makes sense. But what will we lose by locking up our songs, movies, books, files and e-mails?
Steven Levy

When Steve Jobs introduced the iTunes music store a few weeks ago, the acclaim was nearly universal. Nonetheless, a small but vocal minority viewed the online emporium as a menace—because the iTunes program somewhat limits a consumer’s ability to copy and share songs.

EVEN THOUGH APPLE had broken ground by getting the record labels to accept fairly liberal terms of use—Apple- oids could listen to purchased songs on three computers and burn CDs—this bunch objected to any restrictions at all. They saw the iTunes store as a sugar-coated inducement for consumers to accept a new reality: some stuff on your computer isn’t really under your control. And as far as that goes, the critics are right. Say goodbye to the “Information Wants to Be Free” era. We’re entering the age of digital ankle bracelets.

The key to this shift is the technology that protects information from unauthorized or illegal use. It’s called digital- rights-management software, or DRM. Like it or not, rights management is increasingly going to be a fact of your life. Not only will music, books and movies be steeped in it, but soon such mundane artifacts as documents, spreadsheet files and e- mail will be joining the domain of restricted information. In fact, the next version of Microsoft Office will enable creators of certain documents to issue restrictions that dictate who, if anyone, can read them, copy them or forward them. In addition, you can specify that the files and mail you send may “sunset” after a specified period of time, evaporating like the little tapes dead-dropped to Peter Graves in “Mission: Impossible.”

On the one hand, it seems that digital-rights management is a no-brainer. What’s wrong with media companies’ building in antitheft devices to protect their property? And shouldn’t the creator of a document or e-mail be able to determine who can read or copy it? Surely, piracy is to be condemned and privacy to be cherished: DRM can go a long way toward implementing both those sentiments.

But certain critics consider the very concept anathema. “I don’t think that DRM is in and of itself evil,” says David Weinberger, who recently published an essay in Wired titled “Copy Protection Is a Crime Against Humanity.” “But in the real world, it is evil. There’s no user demand for it. It’s being forced upon us by people with vested interests.”

Edward Felton, a Princeton computer scientist, believes that DRM perverts the basic deal of the Internet: the free flow of information benefits all. “The basic problem is that DRM is trying to turn information into something other than information so you can’t pass it on,” he says. “People want to control their technology, and the more the technology is eroded, the harder it is to use.”

Even Congress, which has so far ignored consumers and coddled rights holders on copy protection, is waking up. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, is about to introduce a bill “to ensure that our nation’s media producers and distributors do not clamp down on the ways in which [consumers] traditionally and legally use media products.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/926304.asp?cp1=1


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Can Anyone Stop The Music Cops?

As Hollywood wins one court case after another, one Republican senator is suggesting that maybe it's time for some new laws -- that protect consumers instead of entertainment companies.
Farhad Manjoo

You wouldn't know it from looking on Kazaa or Limewire, where hit songs are flowing as freely as they always have, but trading music online recently became pretty dangerous business. On June 4, a federal appeals court ordered Verizon Communications to hand over to the recording industry the identities of four Verizon customers suspected of illegally sharing songs on peer-to-peer services. It was a significant victory for the record labels, perhaps the biggest yet in their long-running effort to stamp out the MP3 trade online. At least temporarily, the decision allows the industry to easily obtain personal information on virtually anyone who might be sharing copyrighted songs online -- yes, even you.

The Verizon decision was just the latest defeat for people wary of the expanding power of the entertainment industry in the digital world. Four and a half years have passed since Congress passed and the president signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- the main federal law governing the use of content online -- and in that time critics of media firms have been rebuffed in dozens of federal courtrooms around the nation.

Civil liberties groups intend to keep fighting copyright laws in the courts, and Verizon, too, says it's confident that it will ultimately prevail in its efforts to keep its customers' private data away from the music industry (a full trial on the merits of Verizon's claims is scheduled to begin in September). But it's telling that the company believes that, at least in the short term, the judicial process can offer Internet users no comfort.

Verizon is instead recommending that people across the nation seek help from the only body that can fix things now. "We think it's time Congress became involved," says Sarah Deutsch, Verizon's associate general counsel.

Verizon has thrown in its support for an eight-page document that, in civil-liberties circles, is referred to simply as the "Brownback bill." That phrase is, technically, incorrect. The Brownback bill is not yet an actual bill in Congress; instead, it's an idea devised by Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, to explicitly prohibit some of the entertainment industry's worst actions -- such as its effort, in the Verizon case, to get at private information of Internet users, or its attempt last year to mandate that all digital equipment come equipped with copy-protection technology.
Story requires paid registration or commercial viewing http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20.../index_np.html


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Orrin Hatch Thinks Voters Want Computers Destroyed
Ted Bridis

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.

The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in copyright debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."

Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and music executives to work faster toward ways to protect copyrights online than to signal forthcoming legislation.

"It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce," said Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department cybercrimes prosecutor and associate professor at George Washington University law school.

The entertainment industry has gradually escalated its fight against Internet file-traders, targeting the most egregious pirates with civil lawsuits. The Recording Industry Association of America recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track consumers - even those hiding behind aliases - using popular Internet file-sharing software.

Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve a hacking exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent users might be wrongly targeted.

"It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."

Last year, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ignited a firestorm across the Internet over a proposal to give the entertainment industry new powers to disrupt downloads of pirated music and movies. It would have lifted civil and criminal penalties against entertainment companies for disabling, diverting or blocking the trading of pirated songs and movies on the Internet.

But Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary panel on the Internet and intellectual property, always has maintained that his proposal wouldn't permit hacker-style attacks by the industry on Internet users.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jun17.html


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Group Supports Home-Viewer Editing of DVD Movies
Vince Horiuchi

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF), a technology and cyberspace civil liberties group, filed a federal court brief Wednesday in support of companies that make software to edit violent or sexual scenes from DVD films.

The friend of the court brief, filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado as part of a lawsuit pitting companies that censor videos against Hollywood studios and directors, argues that computer video players produced by such companies as Trilogy Studios in Sandy and ClearPlay in Salt Lake City do not infringe on the rights of the movie makers.

Hollywood and the editing companies are at odds over whether movie lovers can rent, buy or watch videos that have been edited for objectionable content. Last year, CleanFlicks of Colorado, once a franchise of CleanFlicks in Pleasant Grove, filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to rule that their business of renting and selling edited movies is legal.

Hollywood studios and some big-name movie directors filed a counterclaim, arguing the companies violate copyright as well as trademark laws. Moviemakers claim CleanFlicks and other similar companies sell and rent films that have been changed without filmmakers' consent. "Saving Private Ryan," for example, could be sold as a Steven Spielberg movie although he did not approve the edits.

But EFF argues that companies that create software to edit out "filth" in DVDs are different from CleanFlicks because the product doesn't actually alter the DVD. As the DVD plays in a home computer, the program skips violent or sexual scenes.

"Consumers are being empowered to use technology to customize the way they view something in the privacy of their own home, and this makes Hollywood nervous," said Jason Schultz, the EFF attorney who filed the brief.

Schultz argues that companies like ClearPlay and Trilogy do not infringe on movie copyright because those laws or restrictions only apply to public performances or involve "derivative works," in which the movies are drastically changed.

"All we're asking the court to do is just look at what Congress has actually given the movie studios -- what rights they actually have -- and not the rights they wish they have," Schultz said.

The Director's Guild of America, which represents the Hollywood filmmakers, has not seen the brief and declined to comment Wednesday.

Both parties are currently gathering more evidence in the case.
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jun/06192...ness/67422.asp


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Unwary Australian Subscribers Risk Broadband Burn
Garry Barker

Elsie (not her real name) is 90, an astonishing woman for her age. Not only has she embraced the internet as an efficient means of communicating with the far-flung generations of her big family but she has done the 21st century thing and opted for Telstra's BigPond broadband cable.

The connection is fast and Elsie uses it daily to keep in touch throughout Australia and the world.

But Elsie is now distraught. Though she signed up for a basic $54.95 plan, with 500MB of usage a month, the bill for April was more than $600 and for May more than $1200.

Yet Elsie did no more than send and receive her usual daily crop of emails, perhaps 500KB of data, up and down, in a month, well within the "free" limit allowed by her plan.

The culprits proved to be her grandchildren, their music pirate friends and KaZaA, the peer-to-peer file-swapping software. They had downloaded and installed KaZaA and used it to get pop songs they stored on the hard drive of Elsie's PC.

They had great fun finding the music and loved the way Elsie's PC with its cable connection sucked the songs down many times faster than their own dial-up
connections.

But because Elsie's computer is connected to a broadband service and is almost never switched off it is a gateway through which any of the world's 230 million KaZaA subscribers searching for pirated songs they want to upload.

What Elsie did not realise, and what has run up her bill of nearly $2000 in two months, is that the network charges for uploads from her computer as well as downloads to it.

On the basic plan she bought, Elsie pays nearly 16 cents per megabyte for traffic, either way, beyond her basic 500MB. At that price, and if all of the bill was made up of pirate uploads, Elsie's PC, acting as a hub, uploaded 3.8 gigabytes of data in April and double the figure in May. Such figures are, in fact, modest, given the millions of KaZaA pirates constantly cruising the cyberwaves of the internet looking for music and video treasure. An inviting, undefended treasure island such as Elsie's computer is a target.

For users in the US, where broadband services are more common and more competitive, and among "power users" in Australia on bigger plans, uploads of several gigabytes a month are common and not seen as expensive. US rates are considerably lower than Australia's.

Elsie's family reports that Telstra was accommodating about the first month's monster bill, but applied the "buyer beware" rule to the second.

A Telstra spokesman said it gave customers signing up for broadband service information packs about the pitfalls of leaving applications running on computers connected to always-on services.

Nor is music piracy the only source of woe for unsuspecting broadband users. Without adequate firewall protection computers are vulnerable to hackers who can "borrow" the IP address of the connection and steal gigabytes of network capacity, as well as anything that happens to be on the unprotected hard drive.

Finally, say those with the scars to prove it, everyone should check their telephone and internet bills.

Late last week the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman issued a warning to consumers of broadband internet services about the dangers of file-sharing software. Consumer complaints about unexpectedly high bills had increased by 45 per cent during the past 12 months, Ombudsman John Pinnock said.

"I am concerned that some consumers are unaware of all the conditions of use for these services and, as a result, end up with high bills," he said. People commonly failed to heed warnings from their providers about usage limits and failed to read information supplied to them.

Consumers should know their plan limits, how usage was calculated, what tools were available for monitoring usage and what charges would be levied if a plan limit was exceeded, he said. Users should also make sure they had secure passwords and up-to-date firewall and antivirus software.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...615717838.html


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Bang Bang, She’ll Shoot You Down

Mary Bono wants to run recording industry lobbying group.
Ted Bridis

Rep. Mary Bono, who is forming a new congressional caucus on piracy and copyright issues, also wants to run the music industry's lobbying organization in Washington, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Replacing the departing chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America would be her "ideal job," spokeswoman Cindy Hartley said. She added that Bono, R-Calif., isn't actively pursuing the job and plans to run for re-election.

Political watchdog groups in Washington questioned the idea of someone being a possible job candidate for the music industry's lobby and also a founding member of a caucus focused on some of the industry's most important policy concerns.

"It certainly raises eyebrows," said Steven Weiss of the Center for Responsive Politics. "Angering the RIAA is certainly not going to advance her job prospects, so one must wonder whether her views on this issue are motivated more by personal beliefs or her future career."

The RIAA represents major U.S. music labels and has aggressively battled the threat facing its artists from Internet pirates offering songs free for downloading using file-sharing software. Its current chief executive, Hilary Rosen, is leaving at month's end after serving as chief executive since 1998.

Bono, one of four founding members of a new caucus on intellectual property rights being announced Tuesday on Capitol Hill, "thinks it would be great, but she's extremely happy with her role in Congress," Hartley said. "She's not seeking out this role. It's nothing she honestly has even been approached about."

The RIAA declined to say whether Bono was a candidate for its top job, although Rosen has said, "I think she's great."

"We are not commenting on the search process except to say it's ongoing," spokeswoman Amy Weiss said.

Bono's financial disclosure forms, released Monday, show that she and her dependent children own copyrights on Sonny Bono's music collections worth between $580,000 and $1.3 million from the RIAA, Warner Music Group and the Bono Collection Trust. They earned royalties in 2002 worth between $210,000 and $1.225 million. Sonny Bono, the congresswoman's husband, died in a skiing accident in January 1998.

Her interest in the RIAA job was first reported during the weekend on Billboard.com, the Web site for Billboard magazine.

The director of Consumers Union, which has battled the RIAA over the rights of consumers to make digital copies of music they purchase, complained that Bono's remarks about wanting the industry job raised questions.

"We certainly hope the congresswoman is not putting her own personal interests ahead of the policy concerns of her constituents or the nation," Gene Kimmelman said. "It certainly creates an appearance question about what her true motivation is."

Bono, who easily won re-election in 2002 in a relatively safe congressional district for Republicans, is a member of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Campaign records indicate that Hollywood and the music industry were among her top contributors in the 2002 election, giving $22,100.
http://salon.com/tech/wire/2003/06/1...iaa/index.html


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The Answer to Securing Data? Self-Destructing Files
Bernhard Warner and Lucas van Grinsven

If technology firms like Sony 6758.T and Microsoft MSFT.O have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play -- unless you pay the copyright holder their due.

The technology that makes this possible -- known as digital rights management, or DRM -- will forever change the way we consume media and software, experts believe.

Software and media companies continue to push new content security initiatives, each plugging their own version of DRM that aims to protect content from unwelcomed eyes. In the near future, emails, spread sheet programs and Webpage content alike will be secured with digital locks.

Sun Microsystems SUNW.O said this week it plans to roll out new software to protect copyrighted content stored on mobile phones and smart cards. Meanwhile, Warner Music released the new Steely Dan album "Everything Must Go" on CD and DVD Audio, the latter being an encrypted, "rip-proof" format. The biggest market for content security is expected to be corporations, government agencies and hospitals who need to keep sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands. But so far, it's the media companies that have made most noise about DRM.

Ravaged by piracy, movie studios and recording labels have been fitting new CD and DVD releases with layers of computer code with the aim of preventing or limiting users' ability to copy, or "rip," them onto a blank disc and trade online.

Consumer electronics companies such as Sony and Nokia NOK1V.HE have stepped into the mix too, installing DRM systems into new hi-fi systems and hand-held devices to ensure copyrighted materials aren't reproduced and transferred from gadget to gadget without consumers paying for it.

The media barons insist that if consumers are going to listen to music and view movie clips and news headlines on any gadget with a screen, then the rights holders must be paid.

Media firms acknowledge they are treading a sensitive line between preserving copyrights and satisfying the consumer. A system that introduces too many limitations will most certainly end in bad PR and a consumer backlash.

"We have to find ways to mitigate piracy caused by open (technology) formats. But at the same time we have to meet consumer demand for these formats," said Barney Wragg, vice president of Universal Music's EAUG.PA V.N eLabs, a technology R&D unit for the world's largest record label.

Last year, record label Sony Music came under fire when new European CD releases by artists Celine Dion and Shakira wouldn't play on a PC or Apple's AAPL.O Macintosh computer.

A lot of the early bugs have been dealt with, and record companies say they will continue to roll out new copy-protected discs and offer online downloads that expire after a few listens based on the latest DRM systems.

But a large complication still looms -- the lack of unified standards.

DRM technologies come in a variety of flavors, pushed by device makers such as Philips PHG.AS or software firms like Microsoft, which will equip its Office 2003 software suite with user controls designating who can print, copy or forward data.

Last year, Sony and Philips acquired Intertrust, the pioneering American digital rights firm and holder of the most DRM patents, for $450 million. The duo's clout, it is hoped, will bring gadget makers and software firms onto the same page.

"It's very important to have collaboration and not confuse the consumer," said Mike Tsurumi, the European chief of Sony's electronics arm.
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=2935142