American movie rental company NetFlix announced on this week that it has now over one million subscribers.
Company had 857,000 subscribers at the end of 2002, so it has managed to gather 17 percent increase in less than two months.
NetFlix's idea is that subscribers pay a monthly fee and can rental unlimited amount of DVDs -- depending on their subscription level they can hold 1-3 DVDs at home. All rentals are delivered by mail and returned with pre-paid envelopes.
One of the biggest institution in so-called "warez scene", ISONews.com, has been busted by the FBI and in rather controversial move, the domain name now points to Department of Justice's servers.
According to DOJ, ISONews.com was charged because it sold modchips for XBox and PS2 through its site -- which is actually slightly bizarre claim, since as far as most people have pointed out, they actually just had advertisements of other companies' modchip sites running on their site.
Anyway, the site's owner, 22-year-old David Rocci, has pleaded guilty in December to charges against him under the controversial DMCA law. The discussion on the real ISONews.com site continues, but the access to the site can be achieved only by using the direct IP address of the site. The site was popular because it listed all the latest piracy releases available in the newsgroups -- although nothing could be downloaded from the site itself. You can visit their site here.
Listen.com told press today that streaming media giant RealNetworks has made a strategic minority investment in Listen.com.
The move might tell something about Real's faith in its existing investment in music subscription service MusicNet that competes directly with Listen.com's Rhapsody service.
This speculation is underlined by the fact that new version of MusicNet was launched today at AOL's web properties, but Real hasn't hinted will it even bother to update its own MusicNet service to the new version.
321 Studios law firm (Keker & Van Nest) is looking for an actual user of the DVDXCopy software to file a motion on behalf of that user to intervene in 321 Studios' landmark fair use lawsuit.
The motion will ensure, that 321 Studios will be able to assert the First Amendment, fair use etc. rights of their customers and fellow DVD owners around the States.
The person chosen will have ZERO legal liability in the process, and will most likely be interviewed by the media -- perhaps world-wide -- as he or she will be acting as a poster "boy" or a "girl" for 321 Studios' fair use and First Amendment assertions.
The two companies were said to be cooperating on developing DVD-Dual chipsets, scheduled for launch in the second quarter. These highly integrated chipsets combine support for the DVD+RW and DVD-RW standards and could help DVD-Dual optical drives/players become mainstream products.
While Lite-On has established itself a strong position in the late CD-R market, it may well be that it is looking for DVD recordable technology from this alliance. Sony pretty much failed to produce a killer product for the CD-R market, even though they have been on the market for years. On the blooming DVD recordable market Sony has so far seemed to maintain a higher profile.
Perhaps we will see a Sony drive carrying a Lite-On badge?
Roxio has announced that it will relaunch the legendary Napster during this year as a legit service. According to various sources, company is currently negotiating with record labels to get their content into the new upcoming legal service.
What's more interesting is that the man behind the original Napster and the whole P2P craze, Shawn Fanning, is now working for Roxio as a consultant.
Roxio bought the bankrupt Napster's main assets, including the domain name and the trademarks, after the company went finally bust in last year.
In very unsuprising move, Microsoft, has finally joined officially to the DVD+RW Alliance which develops so-called "plus formats" in DVD recordable wars. Microsoft had already strong relationship with the DVD+RW format, since it developed integrated support for the format in Windows XP to use the format as a big floppy (Mt. Rainier technology).
The announcement might help DVD+RW Alliance to change the situation in the market place, where the rival format, DVD-R, is gaining momentum with cheaper disc prices and roster of big Japanese manufacturers supporting the format.
There are some wild rumours circulating on the Net about an upcoming P2P application from the behemoth itself, Microsoft. According to various reports -- and it's not 1st of April yet -- the tool would integrate into MSN Messenger and would be called 3°r;(three degrees).
There are some -- we can only speculate are they real or not -- screenshots available in here as well as some, very little though, more information about the tool. Based on the screenshots, they've pretty much ripped the design of the default skin from the original Sonique MP3 player :-)
Update: Okidok, it's official now. You can test the software -- in case you have Windows XP, XP Service Pack 1 and MSN Messenger. The software homepage is here:
American TV network ABC and British BBC have both licensed video compression technology from On2 Technologies to use it to transmit TV-quality video footage from reporters in remote locations.
On2 Technologies became a familiar name to masses in last year when it donated its older video compression technology, VP3 to Xiph.org(same organization which oversees various Ogg projects) and open-sourced it.
Now, two major TV players have adopted On2's newer, propietary format, VP5 to use in "real life", to transmit video footage over the Internet from journalists to their home TV studios. BBC plans to use the system in Middle East for its reporters to provide newsfeeds from places where setting up a satellite link and to transmit the data over analog signals would be less practical solution.
On2 seem to have crawled into the video world from the backdoor, when MPEG-4 advocates (such as Real and Apple) are fighting against Microsoft's WMV technology on all areas of video delivery.
Group of music publishers in the U.S. have sued the German media giant Bertelsmann over its investment to now-defunct Napster.
Publishers and songwriters named in the suit as plaintiffs argue that by investing over $80M to Napster, Bertelsmann gave Napster a lifeline that allowed it to continue violating authors' copyrights in massive scale.
The plaintiffs seek damages of over $17 billion. Bertelsmann declined to comment the lawsuit today.
A company called Audible Magic has launched a product to fight against illegal file-swapping in similiar manner that now-defunct Napster tried to implement in its final days.
Company develops a product that will sit in ISP's, school's or company's network and actually analyzes the P2P traffic that flows through the network, comparing the file details -- not just filenames, but the actual content of the files -- against a database that contains lists of illegal files and blocks the transfer if such file is found in the traffic flow.
Problems with this type of products are obvious: so-called "false positives" that mean that totally legal file has the same characteristics as the illegal file and can't therefor be transferred at all. Other problem is that if such mechanism will find its way to ISPs, it is 100% certain that P2P developers will start encrypting the files transferred in the P2P networks, making the product useless immediately.
Swedish wireless network manufacturer Ericsson, announced today that it will include RealNetworks' Helix Universal Server into its own Ericsson Content Delivery Solution package.
The bundle will allow mobile phone operators, such as Vodafone, to deliver "third generation content" to mobile phone users, including streaming audio and video over near-broadband networks that will emerge in near future around the world (provided that operators get the cash to build the networks :-). The platform will support Real's own formats such as RealAudio and RealVideo as well as industry-standard formats such as MPEG-4 and 3GPP(wireless implementation of the MPEG-4 format).
Real has a strong position in mobile world -- by far the world's largest mobile manufacturer, Finnish Nokia, already bundles its high-end phones with Real's RealPlayer software and also uses Helix platform components in its network solutions aimed for mobile phone operators. Ericsson is currently the biggest network equipment provider for mobile phone operators (Ericsson spun off its mobile phone manufacturing a while ago to a separate company owned jointly with Japan's Sony).
Hollywood has stepped up its efforts to fight against the ever-growing DVD piracy in Asia by offering rewards for informers within the area through its international arm, MPA(not to confuse with American equivalent MPAA).
According to the Asia-Pacific area's representative, organization has set aside $150,000 for informers who can provide information leading to a closure of DVD piracy rings or illegal DVD factories in the area.
The problem is seriously worrying in some of the countries in Asia -- it is estimated that 90% of Indonesia's DVDs are pirated copies and 80% in Philippines. MPA estimates that because of piracy, Hollywood loses over $600M annually in Asia.
Ahead Software has launched the Software Developement Kit for Nero Burning ROM and also documentation for the Nero plug-in structure.
Documentation of the plugin structure should allow 3rd party developers to add audio format support to Nero. This means that there might finally be OGG Vorbis or Musepack support available -- at least in theory. The funny thing about this is that OGG Vorbis is direct competitor of the Nero AAC Encoder. It was speculated that because of the competitive situation there would be no plug-in interface available ever, but these theories have now been proven wrong.
Nero SDK (Software Development Kit)
Record CDs and DVDs directly from your own application with Nero's Embedded API!
If you're a programmer or a software developer, you can now use Nero 5.5's Embedded API (Application Programming Interface) to add our powerful CD/DVD-writing functions to your own applications. For example, you can record graphics files right from your graphics application.
Add new audio formats to Nero, Nero Express and NeroMIX
With our Nero Audio Plug-in Manager you will be able to add new audio formats to Nero, Nero Express and NeroMIX.
Ahead Software people are busy staying ahead. Just recently they released a network enabled version of their Nero product family. Now they are targeting corporate customers.
Ahead seems to be increasing the angle of their market sector. In the OEM sector they are possibly the biggest software vendor at the moment, perhaps along with Roxio (just speculating, no figures). In the retail sales it must be pretty much number one. Now the new NET version clearly targets offices and small businesses and the Enterprise Edition to a totally new market sector and platform.
Nero Enterprise Edition is a powerful CD/DVD recording application offering native 64-bit support as well as 32-bit support in emulation mode. The Windows and Linux versions support all current CD and DVD recording devices, offering up to 4.7GB of storage capacity on a single DVD disc. In addition, using the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), users can now share data between pre-boot, as well as exchange data between Linux and Windows platforms.
Nero Enterprise Edition Key Product Features:
·Create FAT boot images on-the-fly
·Make EFI bootable CD/DVDs
·Generate CD/DVDs to exchange data between Windows, Linux and EFI (pre-boot)
·Full Nero CD/DVD data recording capabilities
·Windows version and Linux version available
·Supports full ranges of optical recording devices:
CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM
·64-bit native and 32-bit emulation mode support
Looks like that various parties that develop client software for the Gnutella network are having a little fight of their own. Gnutella is a decentralized Peer-To-Peer file sharing network, in the same fashion as WinMX or Kazaa. Personally I wonder who uses Gnutella network and why as there are a lot better and more efficient solutions available (read: Direct Connect).
Anyway, the BearShare developer Vinnie Falco is seriously bugged by Shareaza client.
Our goal is not to block Shareaza from the network, but rather to give their users the worst possible experience so they will stop using the application. I'll leave it up to your imagination as for the methods we will employ.
..and that’s about the nicest thing he said in his statement. Check the source out – it's actually quite fun reading.
Acaia Media Technologies, the company that has claimed to own patents to various technologies used in delivering content over the Internet, on Friday said it is going to court to test its case for the first time.
The company has been seeking licensing revenue from several adult entertainment companies for months. It has now filed a total of 39 patent infringement suits against those companies in federal court.
Acacia's patents cover such basic features of the Web as frames, hyperlinks and e-commerce shopping baskets. It is now seeking to obtain license fees from major sites using these features. They have also obtained patents that, according to their lawyers, cover all on-demand transmissions of compressed video and audio over the Internet, cable TV lines, satellite-links and wireless services.
Wouldn't it be fun using AfterDawn without the hyperlinks? We could just provide you with the URLs you can copy & paste to the address-line of your browser? Like this:
Ahead Software has published a Release Candidate version of their upcoming NeroNET software. NeroNET is a client / servers software that gives IP network users access to recordable drives. So it efficiently shares a drive for a number of workstations and makes physically centralized burning possible.
We have previously seen similar approach by Padus with their DiscJuggler.NET
NeroNET is a network-capable extension of the Nero burner program, which can be used in an IP-capable Intranet. The aim is to give all Intranet users easy access to all available recorders.
DownloadIf you want to be a participant in the free NeroNET Customer Preview Program you are entitled to use a copy of the NeroNET Server Release Candidate 1 (RC1).
NeroNET Server and NeroNET Client
In this system NeroNET consists of two components: NeroNET Server and NeroNET Client. As NeroNET Server, it will run on all computers with burner capability. ('Burn servers'). NeroNET Client runs on one users computer. If the burn server is also equipped with a printer, the newly burned CD can also be matched with the appropriate label, made possible by the accompanying Nero Cover Designer.
The Nero version that you are already familiar with represents the Client and is extended by the NeroNET (Server) version
The group of companies who have developed one of the competing future blue-laser DVD replacement technologies, called as Blu-Ray Disc Founders, have announced that they will begin licensing the technology to other companies on 17th of February.
Licenses for the format and logo cost between $20,000 and $60,000, depending on the use. The copy-protection licensing costs between $4,000 and $12,000 annually. One Blu-Ray disc will hold approximately 27 gigabytes of data per side, compared to the recordable DVD disc that can hold "only" 4.36GB of data (or dual-layer pressed DVD-9 which can hold appx. 8.5GB of data per side).
Companies behind the Blu-Ray include Pioneer, Matsushita(owns brands such as Panasonic), Sony, Philips and Samsung. But unfortunately their efforts weren't appreciated by the DVD formats' governing body, the DVD Forum, which chose to use a competing technology in its official "Next Generation DVD" discs, developed by NEC and Toshiba.
According to the source the music industry copyright organizations are now targeting corporations about the online piracy performed by their staff.
We were surprised to see that peer-to-peer services are being accessed by a lot of companies' computer networks," Allen Dixon, general counsel at IFPI in London told Reuters on Thursday.
But how is this possibly a surprise? The thing that Napster did was that it made P2P music sharing mainstream. It wasn’t just Internet geeks sharing and downloading, but also office workers, like secretaries etc. And the office people didn’t even actually know what they were doing - they just enjoyed the availability of fresh music at their jobs.
And if someone didn’t know what "MP3", "Napster" or "file sharing" was, they sure as heck were to find out when the Napster lawsuit made it to prime time news and was covered on just about every newspaper.
On the music industry’s side this still makes sense though. This way they can target a number of people at once and as they themselves put it "increase the awareness".
Listen.com has launched a promotion that allows users of its subscription service, Rhapsody, to download and burn audio tracks to CDR legally for $0.49 each, half the normal Listen.com cost.
Only nag with the service is really the fact that users need to be subscribers to the service itself which costs $9.99 a month and allows streaming audio via their service.
Listen.com has the licensing contracts from all five major record labels and was the first company to launch a music subscription service back in December, 2001. The offer is available until 31st of March, 2003.
321Studios, the developer of the DVDXCopy DVD copying software, has announced a reward for busting and convicting a pirate that uses their products for making illegal movie copies.
321Studios has stated several times that their product is meant for personal backups and allows making perfect backups of any DVD-Video disc available, but has restrictions in place for further copying the discs made with DVDXCopy.
321Studios has been sued by several major movie studios who claim that 321Studios' product violates the American DMCA law. 321Studios has gathered evidence to argue that their product is meant only for personal use -- they recently had a campaign of collecting movie titles not in production anymore to validate their claims that DVDs need to be backed up as there are cases when user simply can't buy a replacement disc when the original is broken.
"While we believe consumers should have the right to make perfect, personal-use backup copies of DVDs they already own, we are against the illegal use of our products," said Mike Wozniak, chief information officer of 321 Studios, in a statement.
TDK and Pioneer announced that they will develop faster burning capabilities into their DVD recorders range that use DVD-R and DVD-RW formats.
Companies' threat is really not the "plus camp" which only shares an insignificant portion of the world's stand-alone DVD recorder markets, but the DVD-RAM format, most widely used by Panasonic. DVD-RAM controls the stand-alone recorders' market, specially in Japan -- Japan itself is the world's largest market for DVD recorders, beating hands down Europe and U.S.
TDK and Pioneer have plans to announce 4x or 5x stand-alone DVD recorders within this year to fight against the DVD-RAM in Japanese markets and DVD+RW camp in emerging European and American markets.
Our buddies at CDRINFO have tested some Plextor goodies. First SCSI writer in ages and a neat portable drive.
Today we post two new hardware reviews, both from Plextor. We tested the latest SCSI recorder & the external portable slim-line Plextor models. Both are offering many features and here is a snip from each review:
- Plextor PX-W4012TS: At 2003 Plextor is developing a new fast SCSI recorder, despite the high competition of cheap IDE CD-RW drives. What are the expectations from the new PX-W4012TS and how the drive performs against its IDE brother (PX-W4012A)?
- Plextor PX-S2410T: A couple of months ago Plextor shipped a new portable CD-RW recorder. The PlexWriter S2410TU is a stylish portable slim supporting 24X CD-R writing, 10X HS-RW writing and 24X reading. With a light weight and easy to use USB interface, the drive is a very attractive solution for Notebook and desktop PC use.
Arista Records has announced that it will launch several DVD-Video singles (don't confuse these with DVD-Audio discs) in near future. Artists, whose music will be available in DVD-Video format, include Avril Lavigne and Pink.
The discs will include two music videos, a photo gallery and an electronic press kit. One DVD-Video single will cost $7.98. Goodies for the generation that has been brought up by the MTV and DVDs :-)
Contrary to our earlier news story, the Finnish subtitle page FinSubs, which offered Finnish subtitles for movies, was not forced to close down by the Finnish copyright organization. The Finnish Translators Association (SKTL) contacted the page administrators, after they discovered that the page was offering subtitles ripped directly from DVDs. They never asked the subtitles translated by the users themselves to be removed.
However the administrator at FinSubs decided to contact the Finnish Copyright Council, and ask for guidelines for running the site. They discovered that not only direct rips, but also home-made translations from either the soundtrack or the original text, are forbidden by the Finnish copyright law. That discovery lead to the decision to remove all the subtitles from the page.
IFPI(International Federation of Phonographic Industry, the global umbrella group representing national recording industry associations, such as RIAA) announced today a new technology called GRid(Global Release identifier) that allows record labels and artists to track more accurately their online digital music sales.
Each participating online reseller -- whether they sell music downloads or streaming audio -- will implement a GRid tag into all of its digital music that contain then an information of the artist, publisher, songwriter, etc. This information will then help record labels and individual artists to track how well their music sales perform in digital world.
"If this is done properly, the artists and authors of music will be paid adequately for the sale of their works online," said Paul Jessop, chief technology officer of the IFPI.
Basically the idea is to harmonize the sales tracking systems used in various online stores that sell digital music. At first, the system would be run on voluntary-basis, where resellers will pay for the technology -- but the licensing fees are only $245 a year with no limits on how many songs can be tagged with the technology.
Two IRC networks (IRC == Internet Relay Chat, a protocol which was developed before the WWW was born) have announced restrictions on file trading in their networks. One of the biggest IRC networks, DALnet, announced on last week that they wont allow IRC channels that are meant only for file trading purposes and will kick such channels out of the network.
Apparently the MPAA has contacted several network admins in various IRC networks and asked them to take more proactive approach in fight against piracy. One minor IRC network called IRC-Chat.net has announced that it will close down channels if it receives official DMCA complaints from the copyright owners, such as the MPAA and RIAA.
On Friday RIAA filed a brief in federal district court in Washington, in which they called the appeal made by Verizon earlier a brazen attempt by the telecommunications firm to "evade its responsibilities under the law."
According to Matthew Oppenheim, a senior vice president at the RIAA, Verizon is exaggerating the privacy risks caused by DMCA turbocharged subpoena process.
"In private conversations with the RIAA, Verizon has made it very clear that this is not a privacy issue," Oppenheim said. "They said they would be happy to turn over the names of some of their customers, as long as they don't have to turn over the names of a lot of their customers."
At issue in the RIAA's request is section 512 of the DMCA, which permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering a "service provider" to turn over information about a subscriber. The service provider must promptly comply with that order, and no judge's approval is required first.
The fact that there's no legal process involved in the request, is what worries Verizon. And frankly it worries me too.
Clear Channel Concerts, biggest American live concert promoter, has plans to launch a new service that would offer instant live CDs of concerts to fans who attended the concert.
CCC would bring multiple CD recorders in and would produce CDs of the concert fans just attended and fans could then buy the CDs when they leave the venue, just like they buy concert T-shirts, photos, etc nowadays.
We've just added a DVD2One guide to our articles section. Even though the software is very easy to use, the process might not be obvious to all users. No need to worry about that anymore!
DVD2One lets you backup a DVD-movie on a single 4.36GB DVD-R disc by reducing the size of the movie in numerous ways, in addition to which it is extremely fast!
A relatively small company called Acacia has launched an attack against companies who operate either audio or video streaming services, claiming that it owns various patents that cover basic streaming technology.
Company, best known of its patents in American censorship chip found inside TVs, the V-Chip, launched its patent claims in last year, first targetting various adult sites. Virtually all adult sites have refused to license Acacia's claimed patents, but some have accepted the licensing fees. Biggest victory (at least of those known publicly) so far for Acacia has been Radio Free Virgin, part of the enormous Virgin Group, owned by British Richard Branson.
According to Radio Free Virgin, it examined the patent claims carefully and thought that they were tight enough to sign the licensing contract. Company also says that it considers that paying a 0.75% of its revenue as licensing fees for Acacia is a cheaper alternative in long run than a costly legal process. And this might be the case for various smaller companies -- do you risk paying millions in legal costs or do you pay between 0.75 and 2 per cent of your revenue in licensing fees.
All good things do not last. For years Yamaha has been one of the most respected CD-R drive manufacturers, providing consumers with good quality products, but unfortunately not anymore.
Perhaps it's a good idea to keep an eye on for possible Yamaha F1 clearance sales?
Yamaha Elektronik Europa GmgH
Citing uncharacteristically rapid price erosions, continuing market difficulties, and highly volatile competitive environment, YAMAHA ELEKTRONIK EUROPA stated today that the company is discontinuing its sales and marketing of computer based CD RW recorders.
YAMAHA ELEKTRONIK EUROPA will continue to market its Multimedia offerings, including computer speakers and CD-Recorders for Hi-Fi-products and music application.
Besides nothing is changed for sales, marketing and after sales service for all other YAMAHA products.
Technical support and warranty service for all YAMAHA CD-Recorders will continue uninterrupted for full warranty perioid.
Further information for product and sales is available at:
YAMAHA ELEKTRONIK EUROPA GmbH
IT Sales Division
Siemesstr. 22-34, D-25462 Rellingen (sub. Hanmburg)
www.yamaha-it.de
telephone +49-(0)4101-3090
MPEG LA, the organization that offers a "one-stop shop" for various MPEG licenses, including the MPEG-2 licenses used in the DVD-Video discs, has finally released a last remaining piece of MPEG-4 standard, the MPEG-4 systems license.
In January, RealNetworks was forced to release its open source media delivery platform, Helix DNA Server, without a MPEG-4 support because the MPEG-4 systems license wasn't available at that time.
MPEG-4 systems license makes it possible for software developers to develop fully-equipped MPEG-4 delivery platforms, including the use of MP4 media wrapper. MPEG-4 systems license includes patents from various companies, such as France Telecom and Apple.
The biggest site that has distributed Finnish language subtitles for movies, FinSubs, has been shut down. The Finnish copyright organization, Kopiosto, contacted the site's owners and asked them to shut down the site, because it violates its members' copyrights.
Site has been extremely popular in Finland, where dubbing is something that's never heard of (except in kids' cartoon movies). Most interesting part of the whole story is the fact that very big portion of the subtitles found from the site were actually made by the site members -- i.e. the subtitles weren't ripped from the DVD-Video discs, but actually translated from the movie itself. But apparently even activity this violates copyrights -- the movie studios own the rights to the script and don't allow unauthorized translations at all.
European Commission presented a draft of a legislation that would, in addition to the existing EUCD legislation, harmonize the European Union copyright legislation across the member states. The new proposal has already infuriated the record labels.
EC suggests tough legislation against use and download of pirated material for intentional business use or benefitting financially from copyright infringements. But the proposal would also make it perfectly legal for home users to download pirated music, videos and other intellectual property from P2P networks -- exactly how the legislation already states in various EU member countries, including Finland (the home of AfterDawn.com).
Recording industry had hoped that the proposed legislation would have made it illegal also for home users to download illegal material from the Net. In any case, sharing of the copyrighted material, even for home users, via P2P networks, web, etc would remain illegal.
Recording Industry Association of Japan(RIAJ) was granted a victory in a legal battle against Japanese P2P network called FileRogue and its owner Japan MMO.
Court decided that Japan MMO and its principal Michio Matsuda were responsible for copyright infringements and must pay damages to RIAJ's member companies (19 major Japanese record labels) and to JASRAC(Japanese authors' society).
Listen.com told press today that streaming media giant RealNetworks has made a strategic minority investment in Listen.com.
