MPA's (MPA is the movie studios' international association, in which, the American MPAA is also member of) Icelandic arm, called SMAIS, has raided 12 major P2P users in the small Nordic country. According to SMAIS's press release, some of the raided users had over 2.5 terabytes (1T == 1,024 gigabytes) of pirated material in their possession when busted.
Iceland, a country with population of just over 290,000, has the highest percentage of Net-connected households in the world -- 79% of homes are connected to the Internet. But as isolated as the country is, the P2P raids seem to have sent immediate shockwaves across the country: according to SMAIS's announcement, country's total Internet traffic dropped by a whopping 40 percent after the raids.
In its raids, movie industry targeted only users using extremely popular DC++/Direct Connect file sharing network. Users' computers and various DVD-R/CD-R media were confiscated in the raids.
The first ever artist or band to sell empty discs? The punky pop band Green Day has taken a different approach in dealing with music downloading - legal or illegal. The Green Day CD-R 5-pack contains five discs with original album cover art printed on the top sides.
A 5-pack of custom printed blank recordable CD-Rs featuring the color artwork of Green Day. A coordinated color slimline case is included with each CD-R. The five CD-Rs feature classic artwork from Green Day albums Dookie, Nimrod, Warning and the new album American idiot, as well as a rare photo of the band.
Burn responsibly. Download music legally and burn your own Green Day compilations.
The idea to sell artist branded CD-Rs is great, but the discs are a bit expensive at the price of $7.99 for a 5-pack.
Last night our servers served the 25,000,000th software download ever made from our site, marking yet another milestone in our site's history. The last major software download milestone, of 20 million downloads, was achieved back in April this year, so it took just over five months to serve yet another five million downloads to our users.
We are especially proud of the achievement considering that our software selection is strictly focused on audio and video tools. Obviously this couldn't have happened without our large, loyal userbase who get their software updates via our site and obviously the developers of these tools who have allowed distribution of their products via third party sites.
Future DVDs could hold about one hundred times the capacity that current discs can hold. That would mean about 472 hours of film on one disc the size of a current DVD disc. You could fit every single Simpsons episode ever made onto one disc using this technology. Lecturer Dr Peter Torok revealed the technique called Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (Mods) at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan. Current DVDs have up to two layers and can hold up to 8.5GB. Work is already advancing on the next generation of storage.
Technologies including HD-DVD which can hold 30GB of data and Blu-Ray discs that offer about 50GB of data are currently battling to become the next standard. The technique developed by the Imperial College team could offer much more on a disc. Researchers believe they can create a disc that has four layers, each holding a massive 250GB of data (equivalent of 118 hours of video). The Mods technique is laser-based like existing DVD and CD technology. A disc is made up of tiny grooves filled with pits that reflect the laser as a series of ones and zeroes.
Current discs carry one bit of data per pit. But the researchers say that by using angled ridges in the pits, they can alter the way light behaves. The end result is a way of encoding and detecting up to 10 times more information from one pit.
More than forty technology companies today warned sponsors of a controversial copyright bill in the Senate that it would engender "an unmanageable flood of litigation that would tie up innovators and chill investment." They said that even the latest version remains unacceptable. The long list of groups includes CNET Networks, BellSouth, Earthlink, Google, MCI, MySQL, RadioShack, Panasonic, Red Hat, SBC Communications, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Uniden, Verizon Communications and Yahoo.
Needless to say the Induce Act has received very strong support from the entertainment industry. The Induce Act says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks and could also imperil some consumer electronics devices. This for example could target such devices as Apples iPod.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to boost penalties for online piracy. The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA) will make it easier for federal investigators to convict file-swappers. It also criminalizes unauthorized recordings made in movie theaters and encourages the Department of Justice to target Internet copyright infringements more. "Millions of pirated movies, music, software, game and other copyrighted files are now available for free download from suspect peer-to-peer networks," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who heads a copyright subcommittee. "This piracy harms everyone, from those looking for legitimate sources of content to those who create it." Both the MPAA and RIAA are strong supporters of the bill.
Earlier in the day opponents to the bill had mounted an unsuccessful attempt to urge House leaders to remove the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act from the floor schedule. Letters signed by groups including four library associations, the American Conservative Union, the National Taxpayers Union, and Public Knowledge argued that the measure would "radically expand the scope" of copyright liability and divert $15 million in federal funds from the war on terror to "protecting Hollywood's and Big Music's parochial interests."
Well, CD is a digital media as well, but the research company is referring to the online music sales industry that has experienced a sudden boom after Apple entered the market. Jupiter forecasts that the music e-sales will represent a modest 8% of the total sales by 2009. Interesting about this report is that higher fidelity formats, such as DVD Audio, are not even mentioned -- it is not clear if the report used "CD" as a synonym for all optically recorded disc formats, since one would expect a slowly rising market share for the next generation media, as DVD player have become so popular and in many cases are replacing CD players.
"European Digital Music: Identifying Opportunity" published today by JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM) reveals that while the launch of new online music stores and services has jump started Europe's digital music market, the CD will remain the bedrock of music sales. By 2009, JupiterResearch forecasts that digital music revenues will grow to Û836 million from €10.6 million at the end of 2003, representing 8% of the total music market, and will be a significant alternate distribution channel.
Virgin Records will launch VirginDigital.com on Monday, a new online music download service that will not sell tracks at a specified price (like 99c a track at iTunes) but will offer a subscription based service instead. A premium service will be offered soon for people who wish to download songs to their portable audio devices the company has said. This move will put Virgin in flood of competition that hit the digital music download market over the past year, including companies like Apple, Microsoft and Sony.
Virgin will be the first major music retailer to enter the market so far. Apple Computers currently is dominating the market having sold about 125 million tracks, and recent launches, including one by eBay make way for a serious battle which will decide what services will survive. This does not scare Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital however. "Two or three years out, subscriptions will overtake a la carte because it is a much more interesting proposition, it has just been difficult to articulate to consumers what it is." Zalon said.
The difficulty in explaining subscription plans to consumers is exactly why Apple decided not to make iTunes a subscription based service. "Consumers have been buying music for 50 years," said Eddy Cue, the vice president of Apple in charge of its iTunes online music store. "They want to replicate that experience online." Apple may consider a subscription service in the future however.
A group of investors including Sony Corp have agreed on a deal to buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc for US$12 a share (about US$2.9 billion). The deal would give the investors control of one of the world's largest film libraries. US$1.6 billion in equity financing was committed by the group to buy the Los Angeles based company and will assume about US$2 billion in debt. Providence Equity Partners invested US$525 million, Texas Pacific Group contributed US$350 million, Sony and Comcast each invested US$300 million, while Credit Suisse Group's DLJ Merchant Banking put in US$125 million.
Sony bought Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures about 15 years ago and this deal to buy MGM would expand their film library to 8,000 titles. Sony is currently seeking to capture more home based video business. "With all these parties involved, I don't see how Sony could not turn this into a profitable project," said John Yang, an equity analyst at Standard and Poor's. The purchase will not be complete until the middle of 2005. MGM will continue to operate under the same name but as a Los Angeles based private company.
According to Fiji Performing Rights Association Limited, sales of pirated music and movies are booming in Fiji. The group believes that protective legislation is dormant. Chairman Eremasi Tamanisau commented on the pirates saying that owners of these illegal operations displayed an "arrogant and contemptuous attitude" towards the country's copyright laws. He believes that the country's Copyright Act (1999) is viewed by these pirates as a "mere sterile piece of legislation with no teeth" so they treat it with blatant disregard for its worth and respect.
He went on to say that some businesses in Suva proudly state that they can reproduce multiple copies of originals that are given to them. "Talk about thieves openly advertising their profession and ability to steal on demand" he said. Tamanisau also criticized the Fiji Police Force saying that they were virtually useless at ensuring that the copyright laws of the state are respected and enforced. "Given this backdrop, the Fiji Performing Right Association (FPRA) and our members throughout Fiji (and copyright owners world-wide whose rights FPRA administers in Fiji), are greatly encouraged by the Prime Minister's warning that "the Government will tighten up on the protection of intellectual property rights in the country" he said.
It has been revealed that Sony's upcoming Playstation Portable (PSP) will support the MP3 format in its audio player. It will also support ATRAC3, which is Sony's proprietary music format and is used in the Sony Connect music store, minidisks and Sony hard-drive music players. Sony revealed last week that it was reconsidering supporting the MP3 format in its music playback devices, a move that has come with much criticism, since competing devices such as Apple's iPod support the more popular MP3 format.
The PSP will support video playback of the H.264/AVC format which is an advanced video codec with a wide range of settings and is set to be used in the next generation of DVD systems. It's not clear, however, whether this indicates that the system will be able to play H.264 video off Memory Stick storage devices, or if it just means that Sony has chosen the standard as the compression format for movies on its UMD discs.
TiVo have apparently doubled their number of subscribers to 2 million over the past year. Most of their income now comes from subscriptions and not from PVR sales as they are selling less to general public as they once did. TiVo's long term viability with their apparent business model has been questioned by many now that it seems they may lose their exclusive deal to supply DirecTV with PVR's. The company has set aside $50 million to reach their target of 3 million subscribers by January 2005.
It has been speculated that TiVo may be involved in a joint deal with Netflix to offer legal movie downloads. Netflix have announced plans to launch a legal movie download service and TiVo have revealed technology that would support it. Netflix are now apparently testing the service using content provided by Warner Bros. but have not yet reached any major deals with them.
The American Conservative Union (ACU) is running a newspaper and magazine advertisement campaign against the anti-P2P law known as the Induce Act. Companies worry that bill could target products such as Apple Computer's iPod. The ACU holds Republican activists and former senators on its board of directors. "This is the Hollywood liberals trying to crush innovation. What's sad is that they've got Republicans on their side." said ACU deputy director Stacie Rumenap. A vote on the bill is scheduled for Thursday.
The original version of the Induce Act said that anyone who induces any violation of copyright law could be legally responsible. A version circulated by the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch clarifies that a company must engage in "conscious and deliberate affirmative acts" of inducement to be found liable. Technology companies however remain skeptical. "The problem is that it doesn't look like they're willing to preserve the Sony Betamax standard for the cause of action of inducement," said Markham Erickson, associate general counsel for NetCoalition.
A Supreme Court decision in 1984 known as the Betamax ruling said VCRs were legal to sell because they were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses." Technology companies are worried that the targeting of P2P networks could mean that the Induce Act could remove the legal protections that shield other hardware and software makers from legal liability.
Judge Harold Baer Jr ignored a law which makes it illegal to sell unauthorized copies of live performances. A Manhattan record dealer had been brought under the law but the judge dismissed the charges saying that the law could not stand because it placed no time limit on the ban unlike the limits placed on books or recorded music releases. Prosecutors say they are reviewing the decision that the judge made. Jean Martignon was indicted by a federal jury in 2003 for selling unauthorized recordings of live performances by certain artists.
Under U.S. laws, bootlegs are defined as being recordings of the original performances. Copying of performances that have already been released is dealt with under piracy legislation. The Recording Industry Association of America was quick to criticize the judges ruling saying that it went against existing laws. "It stands in marked contrast to existing law and prior decisions that have determined that Congress was well within its constitutional authority to adopt legislation that prevented trafficking in copies of unauthorized performances of live music," spokesman Jonathan Lamy said.
DVD Forum has confirmed the audio track specifications for the HD DVD video discs. In their 27th Steering Committee Meeting held this week they approved the following audio formats: DD+ Lossy (mandatory), DTS++ Lossy (mandatory), MLP 2-Channel Lossless (mandatory), DTS++ Lossless (optional).
Dolby Digital Plus offers efficient coding at lower or limited bitrates. The lossless 2-channel MLP provides a 24-bit, 192kHz track. The specifications for the lossy and lossless DTS++ are currently not publicly available.
In addition to deciding on the HD DVD audio track formats, the committee approved the version 2.9 specifications of Dual Layer DVD-R, as well as specifications for recordable and rewritable High Density DVD discs.
The Business Software Alliance has over 700 active investigations into software piracy in the United States, according to Robert M. Kruger, chief enforcement officer for the Washington, D.C. based nonprofit organization. He said that the BSA rarely raids enterprise customers with federal marshals and court orders but said that BSA piracy cops aren't easing up on their investigations. The incidence of software piracy worldwide has actually dropped in recent years, being about 33% of software now compared to 50% just ten years ago.
According to Kruger, pirated software by corporate and government employees accounts for the most of the massive $29 billion that the software industry is losing to piracy each year. Software piracy is continuing to be a significant problem in the United States and Kruger estimates that about 95% of all spam emails that offer free software are coming from a location in Russia. Also the amount of pirated software on auction websites and P2P networks boosts the problem dramatically. "People go to a cuddly Web site like BearShare [which features an image of an animated bear], and they figure, 'I must not be doing anything wrong if I'm downloading a $695 photo-copying program for free.'" he said.
South American nation Brazil, has promised the United States that it will act tougher on piracy after the U.S. threatened to cut duty-free access on products worth billions of dollars. The U.S. also has made Brazil’s futures access to U.S. markets condition on strong anti-piracy efforts. Brazil's top negotiator in the piracy dispute, Clodoaldo Hugueney Filho said that "the important thing is that the two sides recognize that the necessary measures are being taken,". Trade in pirated CDs and DVDs of mostly Hollywood works in Brazil has exploded in recent years.
Pirated material is often piled in public and then crushed in an effort by the Justice Ministry to crack down on piracy but just some miles from the countries capital, the piracy trade flourishes and in all other major cities, pirated material is sold on almost every street corner. In a report to the United States, Brazil promised set up a nationwide body to attack the problem. "We look forward to the effects of these efforts and we intend to intensify our cooperation," said Peter Allgeier, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative.
A lot of pirated goods reach Brazil from Paraguay and other neighboring countries. Brazil has promised to push for stronger policing on the borders to these countries. In 2003 alone, American companies lost $700 million to piracy in Brazil according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance.
It now appears that online music download services are not as profitable as they would sound. The figures of sales remain massive, for example, Apple has sold a whopping 125 million downloads since the launch of its iTunes store, yet the share that Apple will receive from the sale is far less than you would think. Apple have already made indications that iTunes is not particularly very profitable, but has shown that it can use iTunes as a way of making money in other areas, mainly the sale of its hugely successful iPod music player.
If you take a 99c download and check who gets what share of it, you will find that Apple would get just 4c. The artist(publishers) would get about 8c and the copyright holders, who would be the record labels in most cases take 62c or even more in some cases and anything left over would probably be put down to tax. This is more money than the labels would get for the sales of single CDs in stores. The labels have often thrown the excuses that its costs a lot to produce the CDs and all the artwork that goes with it, then the marketing costs etc. to justify the huge chunk they take from CD sales. My question is, what is your excuse now? It seems the labels have very little respect for the booming market for online music sales and are probably shooting themselves in the foot as experts expect many of the emerging download services to disappear in just a couple of years.
FreeiPods.com is a service that offers users free iPod music players if they sign up for promotions and refer users to the services. However, Wired has reported complaints about spam, mishandled accounts and shipping delays. Some users of the site are complaining about being spammed by the company and also complaining about the amount of time it takes to receive an iPod. One such example is Jim Youll, a 39-year-old CTO from Cambridge, Massachusetts who signed up and within hours received spam in his email account. "This is not an encouraging trend," he said, "and these are not targeted ads. They are garden-variety junk spams."
Aaron Shier, a 19-year-old student from Hamilton, New York waited over 40 days to receive his iPod, but when he got it, it was a Hewlett-Packard make and not the Apple Computers model he chose. "I am still getting spammed and so are the people who signed up for me," he said. "They stay true to their word that they will get you out a product, but their customer service is miserable."Richard Strauss investigated the site before signing up and quoted their terms and conditions as "absolutely incredible". Strauss said the contract allows Gratis to substitute products, ignore complaints and change the number of required referrals. "In other words, they can pretty much do, or not do, anything they feel like doing," he said. "Pretty amazing."
eBay is set to enter the online music download market with a service that will offer content from major record labels. The service is powered by start-up PassAlong Networks and was debuted on Thursday. PassAlong also launched on Thursday and will be the first company to peddle songs from major labels on eBay's nascent music storefront. The company will be offering music downloads on both its own website and eBay's new section. It will offer music from all the top labels including Universal, BMG, Sony, EMI and Warner Music Group. On Thursday, PassAlong offered a promotional auction offering a phone conversation with Avril Lavigne.
Chief executive, Dave Jaworski, said that the company will offer 200,000 tracks on both sites by the end of the week, but the number is expected to rise to over 500,000 over time. "The eBay community has come to expect a reliable, safe environment for doing business, and we're hoping to offer the same kind of quality for music downloads," Jaworski said. "This effort with eBay will offer consumers an opposite of unprotected and illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing networks." Of course this is a strange quote because I can’t remember P2P networks being declared illegal.
Universal Music Group boss John Kennedy can’t wait to sue British file-sharers. He revealed this at the In The City music conference in Manchester. John Kennedy is set to replace Jay Berman as head of the IFPI, which is like a worldwide version of the RIAA. He defended lawsuits against file-sharing and certainly did like to throw the word "stealing" around. He also praised the "poisoning" of files on P2P networks. Kennedy also vowed to fight to extend European Copyright past 50 years, using the excuse that he wished to bring it into line with the rest of the world.
Kennedy went on to say that he had very little sympathy for the 12 year old victim of RIAA lawsuits who lived in a New York housing project. He called her a "serious file-sharer". Her family ended up paying thousands of dollars in a settlement to the RIAA. He even has less sympathy for songwriters, who receive a very small fraction of the royalties that recordings owners receive saying that it was fair as hits were down to investment in marketing. He said he would be more sympathetic to songwriters the day that labels had 50 per cent margins.
He also went ahead to claim that record labels were still needed stating that no unsigned bands had been broken by the Internet. This leads to only one conclusion, that he's not very familiar with the technology used in file-sharing on the Internet. As file-sharing progresses it seems likely that sites will spring up to aid in the distribution over P2P of music from unsigned artists, that is until of course the IFPI and RIAA try to convince Governments that these services are evil.
I was surfing around and found an interesting forum post over at RespectP2P.org about new software that could threaten some P2P networks such as the eD2K network. LogP2P is a tool that could be used with a P2P client to basically form a type of network sniffer, gathering information on users who are sharing files. The method used would basically be running LogP2P and a client such as eMule together, and then clicking some eD2K links to gather traffic. As soon as uploading and actual traffic begins, LogP2P will put its results in the GUI of the Program.
It will give information such as the IP Address and Port Number of a user sharing a file, the amount of the file the user currently has, the transfer speed etc. Of course this raises the question about privacy. LogP2P is not available for the general public but may become available to anti-p2p organizations who are looking to track illegally pirated files on the network or other illegal files such as child porn. If this software comes into wide use, then it seems some P2P networks are doomed unless they change now in an attempt to block out the software or somehow stop it from gathering information on users.
A Scottish man was jailed for 9 months after being accused of pirating £750,000 worth of Software. Brendan Timoney, 40, of the village of Coatbridge, in north Lanarkshire pleaded guilty to eight charges brought against him at Airdrie Sheriff Court. He had been selling Microsoft and Adobe software illegally. He carried out his actions at his brothers and mothers homes as well as his own. Both his brother Paul, and his Mother Rose Margaret were also charged but found innocent as there was no evidence against them.
This is the kind of piracy that police should be making their "highest" piracy-related priority. No matter where you live these days, you will often see people selling pirated movies and music mostly on the street while some form of major event is taking place. Where I live in Ireland, I have myself had an encounter with men who called to my door with a black bag full of pirated DVDs, most of which were not even in theatres yet. Most of the people I've asked have also had the same experience. While I have no doubt that many of these movies may have been sourced on the Internet, encoded to DVD and then burned several hundreds or thousands of times, police forces and lawmakers should target the people who sell it mainly. Most file-sharers on the Internet disagree with the selling of pirated goods which is something that you don’t hear from either the movie or music industries but is a very true fact. To prove this, simply look up a P2P forum somewhere and have a look and you won’t be long finding people complaining about sellers.
Governor or California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has dealt a serious blow to file sharers in California by signing an Internet piracy bill that would require all P2P users disseminating movies or music on the Internet to disclose their e-mail address. This is also a serious blow to the anonymity that the privacy rights of most P2P users should guarantee. It would seem that Schwarzenegger is just helping his buddies at the MPAA who have helped him to get to where he is today. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union say the measure infringes on privacy rights of computer users and would turn casual file-sharers into criminals.
P2P users who share movies and music online without providing a valid email address would be guilty of a misdemeanor, under the first-in-the-nation measure that could make it easier for law enforcement to track down people who illegally download copyrighted material. This bill is the latest attempt by the movies and music industries to battle P2P networks, which have proven already to be hard to police. The MPAA has hailed the signing commenting that Schwarzenegger has "a unique understanding of the powerful impact of piracy".
According to news.com, Warner Bros have agreed to license some of their movies to Netflix for purposes of testing its upcoming video-on-demand service. Neither Netflix nor Warner Bros have yet confirmed the deal between the two. Netflix has been planning to launch a movie download service next year for some time now and according to speculation, the VOD service would also be provided jointly by TiVo. TiVo have already announced features that would support such a download service. Netflix currently provides DVD movie rentals and TiVo is a Digital Video Recorder maker. The plan it seems would allow people to download movies from Netflix that could then be played on a TV using TiVo hardware.
While the plan seems good, it relies on the support of Hollywood movie studios as they hold the key to the licenses for mass movie distribution. TiVo have been drawn into battle before with Hollywood over their recording hardware. TiVo however announced plans to use new content protection technology from Macrovision that would limit the recordings that could be made of pay-per-view movies and also would block recording to analog devices, which is a method known as the "analog hole".
Sony has confirmed that it plans to add MP3 support to its music players, a move that will allow the company to be more competitive with rivals such as Apple, who already sell products that support MP3 playback. Until now, Sony has players have been relying on the company's proprietary format, ATRAC. The move from depending on the Atrac music file format to allowing MP3 playback will begin with flash memory based players the company has said. They have not confirmed how and when products will add the MP3 support.
Sony has been losing ground in the digital music business lately, as all major companies seem to want to take as much profit as they can from it. Apple Computers iPod product already has support for the MP3 format as well as its own proprietary DRM based format, FairPlay. Adding the support to its products may boost the company’s sales as Sony is already a household name worldwide and would probably be the first choice make for someone not familiar with the products being sold in the digital music market. MP3 is also by far the most used digital audio format, and so far seems to be the preferred format of the general public.
At the Interactive In The City conference being held in Manchester, technology journalist and author Andrew Orlowski told the music industry that music piracy should be decriminalized and that methods being used to stop it are doomed. Orlowski believes that the recording industry should embrace file-sharing instead of fighting it. He believes the recording industry should look for novel ways to generate cash for new artists. One proposal put forward is a small fee on top of an Internet subscription that could be shared equally amongst artists whose music is shared online by music lovers.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry claim to be pro-technology but against music stealing. A spokesperson said, "We think it is clear that the music industry's strategies on the internet are working, and there is a great deal more good news about the legitimate online music business than there was even a year ago, we believe that what he is proposing is a prescription for less music not more". This is hardly surprising as such a proposal may lead to less revenues for major record labels who still like to claim they are the entire music industry and without them music would not exist. According to Orlowski, technological advances will make it close to impossible to police downloading in the future, making the current tactics of the recording industry futile.
Next month, Sony is expected to announce the development of an 8 layer blu-ray disc that is capable of holding up to 200GB. The company will make the announcement at the International Symposium on Optical Memory 2004. Sony also plans to commercialize a 4-layer 100GB version in 2007. "The advantage of Blu-ray over DVD is definitely capacity and we are extending our multilayer performance. The 8-layer is a technology demonstration. We haven't decided when we are going to commercialize it yet," said Sony spokesman Taro Takamine.
Blu-ray technology is currently battling with HD-DVD technology to replace conventional DVDs. Sony and Matsushita sell blu-ray players but they are still very expensive. A market will not develop for either technology until Hollywood studios can be sure that they can protect their content against piracy. Blu-ray Disc backers announced that they added the MPEG4 and VC1 video codecs at the beginning of September. This will allow much better quality video under heavy compression. Sony also announced earlier this year that blu ray discs will be used with its upcoming Playstation 3, which is expected to reach the market in 2006.
eMusic, one of the grand old farts of the online music business announced that it will relaunch its online music subscription service on Wednesday.
eMusic is different from the other commonplace services, such as iTunes and Napster, since the songs offered are in unprotected MP3 format. MP3 is still the only truly universal format around.
The music is licensed from independent labels, and subscription services are available at three different rates -- $10 for 40 songs per month, $15 for 65 songs or $20 for 90 songs per month. Some of the artists available include Ray Charles, Big Star, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Moby and Beck.
Dimensional Associates, which acquired eMusic last year, has also acquired other independent music sites such as The Orchard and Digital Club Network, which records live shows at 21 clubs around the United States. The recordings are then made available on eMusic.
Web based giant Yahoo is to launch its own online music service later this year, despite buying MusicMatch for $160 million. Yahoo has been developing its own music player software since late last year and is still planning to launch it even after buying MusicMatch just days ago. The company will probably run both services side by side for some time before ultimately drawing on MusicMatch's technology and bringing its subscribers into the Yahoo fold. After staying out of the online digital music business for a year now, it seems that this approach could bring Yahoo to the top in a business that has already got some serious competition such as Microsoft and Apple.
"We're making a big investment," said David Goldberg, who runs Yahoo's Launch digital music subsidiary, "We want to be the major player in digital music." Yahoo is already very far behind its rivals. Apples iTunes music store has already sold well over 100 million tracks. Real and Napster seem to be only developing interest from online consumers now though with use of special promotions and reduced prices. Microsoft and Sony however are new to the business and only starting to find their way now. The buying of MusicMatch has brought Yahoo a very popular jukebox, a download store similar to the iTunes store, a net radio service that currently has about 160,000 subscribers and a recently launched subscription service.
German police have arrested a 46 year old Lawyer and two brothers, whom are accused of offering a paid download service at the address Ftpwelt.com for over a year. The site offered pirated games, movies and software through a high speed connection to paying customers. According to the German society for the pursuit of copyright infringements e.V., police dealt a serious blow to the "warez" community. Police have also managed to make a list of 45,000 subscribed customers who paid for the service, and may face legal consequences for knowingly paying for pirated goods.
According to German newspapers, the main suspect, Bernhard S, was in charge of bookkeeping and finances. The three of them offered fileservers in the Netherlands, Russia and the U.S.A. Customers could pay with credit cards or directly through their banks. For $15, customers could download three movies or for $135 they could download all they wanted in a month. Among the movies were Telesync and CAM copies, which are basically movies recorded with digital cameras in theatres; telesyncs would have either direct audio or audio from a DTS theatre disc. The men made over $1 million, most of which went through an offshore company on the Virgin Islands.
EasyGroup is partnering with UK music download service, Wippit, to launch Easymusic.com, a legal downloading service that will offer tracks for as little as 25p. The launch of the service is intended to happen any time over the next few weeks. The service will sell tracks, divided into two sections, which are "Copyleft" and "Copyright". The Copyleft section will feature music from unsigned artists, some of which will be free. The Copyright service will offer current tracks and back catalogue from as little as 25p, from such labels as Sony-BGM and EMI and of course independent labels.
Due to licensing restrictions not all songs can be sold in all territories. Last year Haji-Ioannou, founder of EasyGroup, lost a case against the British Phonographic Industry over copyright infringement. The EasyInternetCafe chain was allowing users to download free music from the Internet and burn to CDs for £5. The Internet cafe chain agreed to pay the BPI £210,000 in the settlement. "EasyMusic will offer free or best value music downloads to consumers in all Countries. EasyMusic's agreement with Wippit means that easyMusic.com will cater to an even greater range of consumers' musical tastes." Haji-Ioannou said.
Microsoft and a group of recording labels are in discussion about how the next generation of the Windows Operating System, codenamed Longhorn, will support Copy Protected CDs. Labels, led mainly by EMI are creating a "wish list" of features they would like to see in the next Operating Systems and Microsoft have set their own guidelines for the labels, but have not made any major promises yet. Neither side would like to implement features and rules that would provoke a consumer backlash.
If you look closely at modern copy protection technologies, you will quickly notice the problems. For example, some CDs have purposely damaged sectors that can prevent ripping tracks and also cause CD copying to fail. Some technologies prevent the CD from being read in CD and DVD drives altogether, but this type of protection has met the most opposition from consumers. The latest protections include CDs that come with software that automatically runs, preventing users from copying the CD. Since this technology doesn't really interact with the Operating System itself, it can easily be bypassed. Some have been bypassed as easy as holding down the shift key after inserting the CD.
Microsoft has begun a program that will ask its users to participate in a license check on its main download site. Users, who do choose to participate, will have to wait briefly while the license is checked before going on to download their desired updates. Even if a license comes up invalid, the user will still be able to download the updates, but will be encouraged to bring their Software/PC back to the manufacturer and also given information on where to buy legitimate software. The program is not compulsory; it is completely up to the user whether or not to participate.
Microsoft are hoping that 20,000 people will participate in the program, which could take anywhere from six weeks to three months estimated. After that period of time, Microsoft will decide how they could improve the program and whether or not they will make it mandatory to all web site visitors. At the moment, the users being targeted are those who might have bought new PC's or new Operating Systems that could turn out to be pirated. Microsoft is not limiting access to any of it's downloads, including Windows XP Service Pack 2, which it encourages all users to upgrade to. However, some known pirated registration codes have been blocked out completely by the SP2 download.
11 people from across the United States were indicted on Wednesday for piracy offenses, following massive piracy busts. It was the largest seizure of counterfeit Microsoft products so far with the estimated value of the Microsoft products reaching $80 million. The series of raids came from a two year investigation into a US-wide piracy ring. Another $7 million worth of pirated Symnatec and Adobe software was also uncovered. ‘Operation Digital Marauder' involved the use of three search warrants and eleven arrests in Washington, Texas and California.
The suspects were allegedly involved in illegal media replication, printing of counterfeit documentation and distribution of counterfeit software. Some Microsoft products found included Microsoft Office, Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server. Tobias Grace and Sanh Thai, two of the suspects, allegedly ran a counterfeit site in Los Angeles where they illegally copied Abode and Symnatec products. The FBI raided the site and seized the equipment in April this year. They contacted a San Francisco printer, Thanh Tuong, who copied the software documents from Microsoft and other products. These documents were delivered to a number of customers, including Arnica Grace, Tobias Grace's sister, for distribution in Texas.
Today, Microsoft has admitted that they copied Apple's iTunes music store. Microsoft has released a beta of their online music store. They told the New York Times that "Apple set the bar very high. We told our developers: 'Look at how Apple does it'. The Microsoft music store couldn't look more like Apple's iTunes music store if you ran it through a copying machine." The prices are the exact same as the iTunes music store, which is 99c a song and $10 an album. Users can copy to five computers and burn up to seven copies of the same playlist aswell as downloading to unlimited amounts of pocket players.
So it comes down to the question, since everything is the same, which company will come out on top? Apple has already had great success with iTunes having sold over 100 million tracks. They also account for about 70% of all music downloads currently. Microsoft sells albums by Radiohead, AC/DC, Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers but unfortunately and very unfairly, you cannot buy individual tracks from the albums, you have to buy the entire album. The iTunes music store does not sell anything from these bands for that reason.
Nokia have developed a mobile filesharing network which may soon allow people to share music files, pictures, games etc. just like the Internet's main P2P networks. Lorant Farkas and colleagues, at the Nokia Research Center in Budapest, Hungary have tested P2P network on a model of their 6600 mobile phones. Computers on a P2P network act as clients and servers, relaying data between connections, removing the need for any centralized server. P2P networks online allow users to search each others shared directories for files and then download them straight from that user.
The network developed by Farkas can currently be used to share pictures and text, "We were primarily thinking of this kind of content", he said. Future versions should go further; sharing content like digital music is a priority. The system works on phones that connect to GPRS networks, which were designed to make it cheap to stay online. The team faced several challenges in the development, as mobile phones have to rely for now on limited battery power and haven't got as much processing power as a computer. The researchers tried several schemes for communicating between users and clusters to see which would work the best for the network. They found a complex structure known as "deterministic ring" to be ideal, blending fast searching with network resilience.
British consumer group Consumers' Association has raised its voice over the iTunes' pricing in the United Kingdom. Most notably, its anger is aimed towards the different pricing model Apple uses for its online music store in European countries. In other European countries where iTunes operates (France, Germany), a downloaded song from iTunes costs €0.99 -- equivalent of appx. £0.67 -- while Brits pay £0.79 per song.
Consumers' Association says that iTunes pricing model could be against European Union rules and asks Apple to stop "ripping off" British consumers. But Apple defended its UK pricing by stating that "underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads. ... We believe the real comparison to be made is with the price of other track downloads in the UK."
Then again, CD and DVD prices vary wildly between countries -- just like average salaries, rental prices, car prices, etc do.
Internet giant Yahoo! extended its reach in Net's growing multimedia market today when it announced the deal to acquire media player software house MusicMatch. The deal also puts Yahoo competing directly with likes of Apple and Microsoft in rapidly-growing legal online music business, as MusicMatch is one of the few large media player developers who have integrated their own online music store into a successful media player software, in similar fashion to the Apple's iTunes.
MusicMatch's main product is the MusicMatch Jukebox media player and the player works also as the frontend to MusicMatch's online music store that boasts a selection of 700,000 songs for $0.99 a piece. It also provides subscription service, similar to that offered by a rival online music store, Napster, for $8 a month and has already 225,000 subscribers.
Yahoo agreed to pay $160 million for the privately held MusicMatch and pays the full amount in cash. Several analysts welcomed the Yahoo's move and company's stock price in Nasdaq surged more than 5 percent after the announcement.
Last night, Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computers was close to reaching a settlement with the lawyers of George Harrison, widows of John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr over Apple's iTunes music store. In 1968, Apple Corps was formed to publish the Beatles music and sign other musicians. In 1980, Steve Jobs was advertising his new computer invention, the Apple. Harrison found this advertisement in a computer magazine, and it appeared to infringe the bands trademark.
Apple Corps told Apple to change its name to something else if it wished to continue producing music making machines. In 1991 a settlement of $26.5 million was reached but this time around it has been hinted that the figure may be much higher. "People are expecting this to be the biggest settlement anywhere in legal history, outside of a class action suit," said a lawyer. "The numbers could be mindboggling."
When the iTunes music store opened for business in the United States, a new lawsuit started with Mr Justice Mann, the High Court judge. Strangely enough, the judge remarked that he owns an iPod. Apple Corps are claiming that the hardware manufacturer is in breach of an agreement, which would forbid them from using the trademark for any application whose principal content is music, e.g. iTunes.
New P2P software currently under development may change the way many of us use P2P. On existing P2P networks, if you share files, you are sharing them with the entire world so to speak, but with Grouper, users can setup mini P2P networks and share amongst themselves. Also Grouper does not allow you to download music from other users, but it does allow music to be streamed from other users PC's. This would be just the same as going to friend’s house and putting on a CD. Other files however can be shared directly between users.
Private P2P networks do exist, but this software makes setting up a mini P2P network as painless as possible. At the moment, only Windows 2000 and Windows XP support the software. Users can join the mini P2P networks you create through an email confirmation system. Since you would probably setup a network of friends, you would all have comparable tastes, which makes this software more appealing. Record labels have been long complaining about the mass distribution on P2P networks, we will have to wait and see what sort of response they give to Grouper's new friend to friend based sharing system.
Grouper is still only being tested but I for one, certainly am looking forward to trying it out.
According to a Japanese source, the well known optical media manufacturer Taiyo Yuden has released an extra high quality CD-R media for audio recording. The That's Special Edition Gold Disc comes with gold (or goldish) reflective layer, cyanine II dye and Hyper Injection Mold for more accurate molding. Pictures and more information in Japanese at the source.
Microsoft has been doing its very best to attract mobile phone makers in an attempt to dominate an emerging market for mobile phone based music downloads. Microsoft's latest Windows Media DRM technology, 'Janus', incorporates code that would allow a device other than a PC with Windows installed to purchase music downloads from Windows stores. The technology could be used to transfer DRM protected files from a PC to a mobile device, and it is likely this will be the only way to get music on your mobile phone until 3G networks become more common, as GPRS is both very expensive and slow.
Earlier this month, Samsung revealed a mobile phone that had its own 1.5GB HDD, which is nothing compared to the capacity on an iPod, but is definitely a first step. Apple announced a deal with Motorola earlier this summer which means that some Motorola handsets may come with a built in iTunes music store. This means support for the AAC format and Apples FairPlay. MP3 handsets have become very popular but pressure from the Recording Industry is turning manufacturers to more secure formats.
The AAC format has become very popular amongst the manufacturers, most whom are set to rally around the format next year.
NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson announced on Friday that they will begin implementing new anti-piracy technology to weed out video piracy.
The technology, known as the secure video processor (SVP) platform, will allow media companies to protect their content using their own DRM specifications. The protected content could only be viewed on SVP-capable devices.
Thomson will start embedding SVP-chips to its video players and set-top boxes next year.
Clearly the consumer is the entertainment industry's worst enemy. The new anti-piracy technologies do little more than make the lives of the consumers more difficult. Professional pirates have not been stopped by DRM before, and they will most certainly not be slowed down by SVP.
Microsoft hasn't buried its old TV ambitions, but has instead revamped the whole concept into something that it calls as IPTV. Company's idea is to provide a service for telecom companies where they could offer their DSL (and other types of broadband services, naturally, even though cable companies aren't probably too interested of the concept..) subscribers a set-top box that would connect to their TVs and broadband Net connection instead of traditional cable network, and stream TV content over the IP networks.
Microsoft just announced a deal with Telecom Italy to run trials of the IPTV in Italy to selected group of Telecom Italy's customers. Thomson has developed the set-top boxes used in the service and will start distributing the units under two of its brand names -- Thomson and RCA. Boxes support variety of video codecs, including the traditional MPEG-2 alongside with Microsoft's own WMV9 and MPEG-4(advanced profile and H-264).
Several technology companies, led by group of mobile phone manufacturers, including Nokia and Motorola, have teamed up to develop standards for upcoming mobile TV. Several companies have already announced their phones that support European DVB-T's mobile extension, DVB-H, but now companies try to find standards for other problems surrounding the inevitable adoption of TV-on-cell-phone concept.
Several phone manufacturers and operators hope that once so-called third generation mobile phone networks develop, the video and simulcasted TV content will become one of the driving forces behind the consumers' acceptance for the new technology. First commercial, large-scale mobile phone TV services are about to start in Japan this year and after years of testing, they are aimed to launch in Europe in 2005 as well.
The Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen, a.k.a. FhG, became famous for developing the MPEG-1 Layer III audio compression format widely known as the MP3. Now they are offering a free trial version of their MPEG-4 compression solution. The package includes an encoder, streaming server and a player.
To introduce recent developments within the open multimedia standard MPEG-4 to the public, Fraunhofer IIS offers a public download of an MPEG-4 AV evaluation software suite today. The download will prove the efficiency of the Fraunhofer implementation comprising encoder, streaming server and player. The software uses Advanced Video Coding AVC and High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding HE-AAC, the two most efficient multimedia codecs within MPEG-4. This combination enables digital video in high quality at data rates far below those used for example on video DVDs. It complies with the upcoming specification ISMA 2.0 of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance.
Available until January 1st, 2005, the use of the evaluation MPEG-4 encoder and streaming server is limited to 30 days after installation. The MPEG-4 player will keep all its functions. The Fraunhofer IIS MPEG-4 software suite is only intended for personal, non-commercial purposes. Both Fraunhofer MPEG-4 player as well as MPEG-4 encoder and streaming server are software-only solutions that do not need special hardware. Thus a standard PC with at least an 1.3 GHz processor is able to create, stream and play back “.mp4” files using the Fraunhofer MPEG-4 software.
Real Networks are expected to announce on Thursday that they will be closing their half price music sale. Real have been selling songs for $0.49 for the past three weeks as part of a promotion of the new "Harmony" technology. However, Real still plan on selling a low number of songs for $0.49 a week. The "Harmony" technology allows songs that are purchased from the Real music download store to be played on Apple's iPod. Apple however, opposes this technology and accused Real of "cracking" Apple technology. The promotion has been called a success, having sold over three million songs in just three weeks.
"It was very successful for us in terms of signing up thousand and thousands of new customers," Real Networks Chief Strategy Officer Richard Wolpert said. The promotion could not have come at a better time. At this moment, the media are focusing on the rivalry between Microsoft and Apple as Microsoft have just opened their own music download store. Real are aiming to keep their store in the public eye during this battle.
Apple's iTunes store appears to be the dominant force in online sales so far, accounting for more than 70% of all music download sales. However, Microsoft now have joined the list of the many companies that are selling music downloads, and most other companies lack the deep pockets that Microsoft have.
Altnet is a company that sells digital goods thought P2P filesharing networks. On Wednesday, Altnet sued the Recording Industry Association of America over alleged Patent Infringement. The company is accusing the RIAA of infringing one of its patents while attempting to enforce copyright laws inside P2P networks. More companies including Overpeer, owned by Loudeye and MediaDefender were named in the suit. "We've exhausted every means of trying to work with these defendants and those they represent to patiently encourage and positively develop the P2P distribution channel," said Altnet Chief Executive Officer Kevin Bermeister in a statement. "We cannot stand by and allow them to erode our business opportunity by the wholesale infringement of our rights."
Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment are joint venture partners with Sharman Networks, the company that owns the P2P network KaZaa. For several years, Altnet have been trying to convince record labels and studios to allow them to sell their works through the KaZaa network. Of course the labels have unanimously said no to this request. In 2003, Altnet announced they have purchased patent rights to the process of identifying files on a peer-to-peer network using a "hash" code. Lat November, Altnet sent nine cease and desist letters to companies engaged in businesses related to peer-to-peer networks.
If you use any of the online digital music stores to buy music downloads, you might be pretty unhappy with the limited amount of things you can do with it. This new software called Tunebite doesn’t copy the file, or crack the protection; it simply records the file again to a separate file while you play it back. Tunebite records in OGG format but can also record mp3 files. Because of the method it uses to provide you with unrestricted files, its use will be completely legal in most countries.
For those who are unfamiliar with legal downloads, the files you get aren’t copy protection free. Some examples of the protected formats you can get are Apple FairPlay and Microsoft Digital Rights Management (DRM). You might be limited to play a song using only the products by the company that sold it to you. Tunebite was written for people who believe they got a bad deal by getting these files, and it gives you a chance to legally copy the music to unrestricted files, so you can do with it as you wish.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, approved legislation that would criminalize some acts of copyright infringement over P2P networks. The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004, is targeting the electronic distribution of copyrighted material. A person who distributes over 1000 copyrighted works in a period of 180 days could face a three year prison sentence. The bill also provides $15 million to the U.S. Department of Justice to establish and Internet use and education program. This authorizes the DoJ to send letters to ISP's notifying then about the alleged Copyright Infringement of their customers.
Whether or not the ISP decides to forward the letter to the "Infringer" is up to the ISP, it is completely voluntary and the ISP does not have to disclose any information on the subscriber. "We commend the Committee for making voluntary the program under which Internet service providers would pass on to consumers notices from the Justice Department alleging copyright infringement,"Gigi B. Sohn, president of the digital rights group Public Knowledge, said in a statement. "We are still concerned that taxpayer dollars could be better spent on priorities other than notifications of possible copyright infringement."
Today, Panasonic revealed the new models of DIGA DVD recorders. These recorders have HDD capacities of 160GB to 400GB. This is massive storage space for DVD Recorder; it also has high-speed dubbing, and superb home and mobile networking capabilities. The new products, DMR-E500H, DMR-E330H, DMR-E220H, DMR-250V and DMR-E87H are set to be introduced to the Japanese market on the 21st of this month. The DMR-E500H model has a built in 400GB HDD which will allow 709 hours recording in EP mode. It will write from hard disc to DVD-RAM at 40x and from hard disc to DVD-R at speeds of up to 64x at EP mode. This means that one a one hour recording could be made in approximately 56 minutes.
It features an Ethernet port and a broadband receiver offering convenience for home and mobile networking. With the Ethernet connection MPEG4 video and JPEG photos can be viewed by a PC*1 in another room. Also using two DMR-E500Hs, MPEG-2 recordings on one could be accessed by the other over the LAN. The broadband receiver will allow owners to program recordings using cell phones while they are away from home and can also transfer pictures between the recorder and the cell phone.
Sony is trying yet another approach in audio CD content protection. The Key2AudioXS features a new feature branded as Controlled Burning. The idea is to allow the consumer to make a limited number of copies, which is determined by the copyright owner. The press release doesn't reveal how this actually works, but it's most likely just a burning software placed on the data session with limitations built in. For some reason they call this approach 'user friendly'.>
key2audioXS provides more consumer-friendliness with Controlled Burning feature
This Fall Sony DADC will introduce Controlled Burning to its audio customers. This Digital Rights Management solution gives content-owners the freedom of allowing their end-consumers a limited amount of private copies. Controlled Burning offers a profitable compromise by granting consumers private copies whilst protecting the rights of content-owners. Controlled Burning is a sophisticated technology which allows content-owners to pre-determine how many copies off of every original may be made. Only the original disc can function as a master. The copies themselves are equipped with key2audioXS copy control, rendering copy attempts unsuccessful. Controlled burning is a secure way for record labels to allow consumers make a limited number of copies of their music while preventing uncontrolled duplication. Today a unprotected CD can be copied unlimited times and so can its copies, significantly threatening revenues of the music industry. A protected disc on the other hand stops any kind of copying and may limit a consumer's options. With Sony DADC's Controlled Burning solution content-owners and their customers are given new opportunities in using the purchased music. Music labels still ensure the protection of their content whilst customers needn't surrender their back-up copies.
Apple are planning to open a Japanese version of its iTunes Music Store, but are struggling to find the support they need from Japanese record labels. The labels claim that Apple's FairPlay is "inadequate" and are refusing to license their songs to the service. They also fear that the price of a song may seriously affect their CD sales. Existing Japanese digital music services charge from ¥200 ($1.83) a song, which is considerably higher than $0.99 (¥108) in the U.S.
Current Japanese digital music services also don't support CD burning. Apple insists that consumers should be able to burn CDs from the digital music files that they download. Apple supports CD burning on the US, UK, German and French iTunes stores. However, the prices remain the biggest problem with labels demanding prices do not go below ¥200 ($1.83) a song. "If we go lower than [¥200], CD sales will suffer," a major record label official has commented. He also admitted that the industry needs a price that will compete with low-cost CD rental companies.
Yoshiaki Sakito, Apple Japan's marketing chief, told the Asahi Shimbun the clout of iPod will be sufficient to bring such waverers into line also stating, "The record companies won't be able to swim against the tide forever".
TiVo and Netflix are to team up to offer legal movie downloads over broadband connections according to NewsWeek. No details have been released about the costs of the services, or when it will officially go ahead but the partnership is expected to go public later this month. The two companies have always been close, TiVo's CEO just happens to be a Netflix board member. TiVo purchased Strangeberry in January, a startup founded by Arthur van Hoff, who is a developer of the Java Language.
Not many people have seen the Strangeberry in action but it has been described as a TV-centric router for managing all kinds of video and audio content around a home network. Netflix and TiVo are expected to face a tough fight from telecommunications giants and media pigopolists. TiVo pioneered the concert of the PVR but has not had luck making any profit yet. It has forecasted an operating loss of $41 million on revenues of $28 million in the current quarter. Netflix is an online DVD retailer and in its most recent quarter Netflix turned in a gross profit of $3.3 million on subscription revenues of $63 million.
A ground-breaking ruling against an Australian man accused of pirating software, games and music worth over $50 million should have all pirates in the world scared. Hew Raymond Griffiths who went by the online name BanDiDo, has never been to the United States but will be tried in a U.S. court after the U.S. won the battle to extradite him. First time around, an Australian magistrate denied the extradition request but after an appeal the U.S. won the right to try Griffiths. Senior associate at Auckland's Simpson Grierson, Mark Kelly, said that this decision will go down in history, as it means that people accused of piracy in one country could be brought to justice in another under extradition law.
Griffiths is accused of being the ring leader of an Internet Release Group called DrinkOrDie. The group allegedly worked from a computer network at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, there are no allegations that Griffiths made any money from his activities. Eleven members of DrinkOrDie have already been convicted in the United States. Griffith’s infringements all took place on his home computer in Australia, if the extradition and trial go ahead; he is facing up to 10 years in an American prison and a possible fine of $500,000.
The portable audio player Apple iPod is been selling such a big numbers that Apple has signed more hardware vendors in order to keep the supply up to the demand. According to the source, the Taiwan based Asustek will be manufacturing iPods at their plant in China. So far the supplier of iPods has been Inventec and it is presumed that it will continue to supply iPods as well as the re-branded Hewlett-Packard version of the same device.
Asustek Computer has received OEM orders for the iPod mini digital music player from Apple Computer, according to market sources.
..
The iPod orders will help Asustek in working toward its goal of becoming a key provider of consumer electronics products, the sources noted.Source: DigiTimes.com
A new version of the popular Koepi's XviD codec has been released. Version 1.0.2 fixes some minor bugs, and is source and binary compatible with the previous version.
Check out our discussion forums for discussion on digital video and much more!
UPDATE 5th Sept, 2004! The version we had online since 1st of September was the source code of xvidcore, but now this version is finally the right Koepi's XviD v1.0.2 binary!
A gaming conference in London has been told that they need to start making more games for "casual gamers". The makers up until now have been focusing mainly on big gamers but have forgotten those who only like to play a few hours out of every week. The gaming markets are growing fast with people in the UK spending about £20 million a week on games. These people are considered hardcore or dedicated gamers as the UK has a very low number of what are described as casual gamers. In the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain there are approximately 24 million gamers.
If you look at the average most popular games these days, you will notice they are very long and very complicated for people who aren’t used to gaming. Other features like online play that seem to attract the hardcore gamers would be even harder for the casual gamer to enjoy, as they would be playing against the "professionals". Sean Dromgoole of research firm GameVision Europe says it’s very important that the industry try to find ways to entice these casual gamers to buy more games. These casual gamers account for 11% of the $30bn spent annually worldwide on games.
One of the largest music companies in the world, BMI, has posted record profits for the 2004 fiscal year despite piracy and fair use. BMI reported revenues of $673 million, an increase of $43 million (6.7%) over the prior year. Out of this figure, BMI generated royalties of more than $573 million for its songwriters, composers and music publishers, an increase of $40 million (7.5%) over the prior year. CEO Frances W. Preston said both the revenue and royalty distributions are the biggest in the company’s history.
This is strange, when groups like the RIAA are claiming that because of piracy, artists are losing out. Of course, we all know the mass piracy results in a loss of revenue but are the figures we hear greatly exaggerated? Could it be that people would prefer the artist get all the money they pay for their music, than a label taking most of it? We are told on a regular basis that piracy is destroying the industry, but BMI have seen a steady increase of about 9% every year over the last 10 years.
Now that fair use is also under attack, you really have to question on what grounds it's under attack. Why do BMI have no problems despite P2P piracy and fair use? It would seem that the new proposed penalties for P2P piracy are getting more unfair by the day.
It has been reported that Apple Computers CEO, Steve Jobs, offered chairman and group CEO of Sony Corp, Nobuyuki Idei, the chance for Sony and Apple to run the iTunes service together. Jobs made the offer to Idei during Sony Open golf tournament in Hawaii this January. He is reported to have wanted to bring Sony to iTunes to maintain a competitive advantage over software giant Microsoft which launched its MSN music service earlier this week.
Apple launched iTunes in June 2003 and after just one week had sold one million music downloads. In October 2003, iTunes opened its stores to Windows users and selling 600,000 songs a week. By July 2004, iTunes had managed to sell over 100 million downloads. The service now accounts for over 70% of all online legal music downloads. Sony launched its music download service, Sony Connect, in August of this year. In the same month they also launched the NW-HD1, a hard-disk drive based digital music player. Music sold from Sony Connect will only play on Sony music players or with Sony software.
A House of Representatives committee has scheduled a vote on bills related to Piracy and Spyware next week. The bills, which are the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA) and the Internet Spyware Prevention Act (ISPA) are controversial. The Internet Spyware Prevention Act is backed by many politicians but the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act has come under fire from consumer groups. The Act would boost penalties for P2P piracy and increase federal police powers against Internet copyright infringement.
The Act would require the Federal Bureau of Investigation to develop a program to deter the public from committing acts of copyright infringement through the Internet and facilitate the sharing among law enforcement agencies, Internet service providers, and copyright owners of information concerning copyright infringement activities. It also directs the Attorney General to ensure that any unit in the Department of Justice responsible for investigating computer hacking or intellectual property crimes is assigned at least one support agent who has received training in the investigation and enforcement of such crimes.
This week, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) busted a major counterfeiting operation. The bust started with traffic cops being given wrong information. Officers had pulled over a vehicle because it had expired registration plates. The driver also did not have a license with him and claimed to have left it at home. He then went on to provide a false date of birth so the officers decided to impound the car.
On further inspection, Officers found significant evidence of the possibility DVD Piracy and decided to investigate further. A 3am raid on the driver's home uncovered over 12,000 pirated DVD's, 20 VCR's and 42 DVD writers. Three men were charged later. The MPAA have referred to the raid as a "significant haul".
Napster announced yesterday that it is testing a new subscription service model that would add portable devices to the list of its subscription service's supported devices. The idea is basically to rent unlimited number of tracks for users with a monthly fee.
Napster's current subscription model allows users to download unlimited number of music tracks to their desktop PC and those tracks are playable as long as the user pays his/her monthly subscription fee of $9.95. The nag is that those tracks can't be burned to a CD or transferred to any other device -- for that privilege each song has to be purchased separately as a permanent download. But the new Napster To Go service allows users to transfer those subscription-tied files to their portable audio players as well, as long as the device supports Microsoft's new DRM scheme, dubbed as Janus -- and only two devices support it so far.
The service is planned to go live later this year and will costs $14.95 a month.
In April of this year, a piracy crackdown operation, codenamed ”Operation Fastlink”, was launched in several countries including United States, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Hungary, Denmark and France. The entire crackdown produced over 120 searches, over 100 individuals had been identified and over 200 computers had been seized. The raids targeted major piracy groups, one of which was the 17 year old group Fairlight.
Fairlight is one of the oldest and most respected release groups on the "scene". After the raids, Fairlight admitted that their ISO section has been "lethally wounded" but said the group was still very much alive. Some days after the raids fairlight released a "council statement". Here's what it said...
Legends never die!
You all read the news - Operation Fastlink struck hard to the heart of the
scene and hit the FairLight ISO section, but mind that the demo activities
on the PC and C64 are still naturally untouched, as there is nothing to
complain about from a legal point of view on what they are doing.
So, let me underline it for you again: FairLight's ISO section is lethally
wounded, but the group as such is still alive and kicking!
FairLight is built stronger to last longer.
United States' Copyright Office has finished a new draft version of so-called Induce Act legislation proposal, which tries to address some of the problems with the original proposal, but according to various parties, seems to fail as miserabely as its predecessor.
Induce Act is basically a proposal for a new law in United States that would make P2P networks illegal by making it illegal to "induce" a person to violate copyright legislation. The new version, which is not the version ultimately going to be proposed as a new legislation, but rather a mid-way-through draft version, adds a definition for "inducing": "affirmative, overt acts that are reasonably expected to cause or persuade another person or persons". By adding this wording, Copyright Office tries to shrug off the criticism that the original version would have outlawed iPod and other digital players that support non-DRM file formats, such as MP3, and thus "induce" people to break the copyright laws.
But according to ISPs, such as Verizon, the draft of the proposal still has major flaws -- in one section, the text states that companies who "actively interfere" with a copyright owner's efforts to identify pirates could be sued. This could mean that if RIAA asks an ISP to hand over all of the personal details of all of its users, without giving further reason for doing so, the ISP could be sued for "interfering" RIAA's P2P jihad.
Nokia's entrance to the gaming market has been highly visible due to the heavy marketing budget, but not especially successful. The N-Gage has been taunted ever since it was launched, and the QD-model combined with dramatic price reductions were aimed to improve demand. It's actually kinda funny that the original N-Gage is a very good phone, with all the Symbian S60 features and you can get it for less than €100. This is a ridiculous price when compared to other S60's with similar features, with the addition of the camera of course.
Finally, Nokia can say that 1 million units has been sold and some brand recognition for the N-Gage has been gained. Looking back in time, the pioneering role in the gaming industry has always been a very challenging one. But Nokia has one advantage in the game it is playing -- it is an extremely healthy and wealthy company, and it can afford to wait for the potential long term returns on investments. The approach could be quite similar to Microsoft's Xbox, which has so far produced nothing but losses.
With a growing portfolio of exciting games, the N-Gage offers consumers the possibility to play exclusive N-Gage only games as well as some of their favorite brands from publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts, Gameloft and THQ. The 2004 holiday season will see the N-Gage portfolio expand even further, with eagerly anticipated games such as Pathway to Glory, Pocket Kingdom: Own the World, FIFA 2005 and others.
Today, Apple launched an affiliate program which would allow partners to earn money by linking to downloadable songs and albums provided by iTunes. Apple are currently at the very top of the music download business and wish to keep it that way. One major advantage to Apple is they also sell hardware, so they can afford losses in download sales for some time. Companies like Napster however don't have it so easy. Napster began their business by targeting schools and universities, offering cheap student subscriptions. However Napster has admitted this approach has failed to make any major profits.
Out of download sales, the labels would get the most money leaving companies like Apple, Napster and now Microsoft fight over the left overs. Apple's new affiliate program may boost even more sales. A partner can earn 5% commission for clicks that turn into sales, so it will be fun to sit back and watch hundreds of sites try to earn some money from Apple.
BBC Radio 1 announced the top legally downloaded tracks today in the first official legal download charts. Surprisingly westlife topped the chart with Flying without wings, which was actually released years ago. This is of course good news to the major labels who now know that old tracks may become gold tracks all over again. Below is the Top 10, visit the source to find more.
1. Westlife - Flying Without Wings (BMG)
2. Blazin Squad - Blazin Day (Warner Bros.)
3. Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved (BMG)
4. Shapeshifters - Lola's Theme (EMI)
5. Green Day - American Idiot (Warner Bros.)
6. Maroon 5 - This Love (BMG)
7. Streets - Dry Your Eyes (Warner Bros.)
8. Keane - Bedshaped (Universal)
9. Scissor Sisters - Laura (Universal)
10. Muse - Apocalypse Please (Warner Bros.)
The numbers are coming from legal music downloading services such as iTunes and Napster.
We have added a couple of new guides and tutorials to our guide archive. The guides explain the use of DvdReMake, and instruct on how to create a DVD-R from SVCDs.
DvdReMake, or DRM, is a piece of software that allows you to edit a DVD. There are two different versions, DvdReMake and DvdReMake Pro, both of which can be used for basic editing like removing entire titles or menus, hiding menu buttons, and stripping angles from titles. Additionally, the Pro version allows you to remove ILVU (aka interleaving or seamless branching), perform extensive menu editing (removing, adding, or editing the commands for buttons), and advanced title or menu editing (adding, removing, or replacing chapters or cells).
The guide goes through the basics of using DvdReMake and explains how to remove unwanted features from a DVD to fit it on a single DVD±R. The next part of the guide will explain some of the more advanced features that are only available in DvdReMake Pro. The Part II will be available later.
Once again it's copy protections and protectors vs. the hackers. We have seen this so many times before during the last couple of decades. And always the crackers seem to render the protection schemes useless.
Now meet the iFree software, which tackles the DRM (Digital Rights Management) used by Apple in the iTunes service.
What's iFree?
iFree allows you to free your music, that means the DRM protection will be removed from music files purchased at iTunes Music Store with no sound quality loss.
Why use iFree?
Songs you purchase from iTunes Music Store are protected using your authorization information. Apple is using AAC files that include digital rights management (DRM) technology and any copy of iTunes (or any other appropriately QuickTime 6.2.2-savvy software) must know your authorization information to play the song. This DRM information enables Apple to implement many restrictions on how you can use songs you download.
Check out iFreesoft for further details and download.
The UK's first download chart is to be launched on Wednesday. The most downloaded tracks on legal services such as iTunes, Napster, OD2 and mycokemusic.com will be counted down on BBC Radio 1. The first weekly download top 20 will be presented by Scott Mills during his drivetime show at 1800 BST. Industry figures are hoping the chart will reflect the changes in how we listen to music. The chart will be overseen by the same body that does the singles chart. Last Sunday, Napster launched a rival download chart on Virgin Radio.
There has been more than two million legal downloads sold in the U.K since January this year. Artists are rushing to release singles in hopes of getting the number one spot for the first time in history. They include Westlife, Sugababes, Muse, Goldie Lookin' Chain, Faithless, Jet and Snow Patrol. DJ Scott Mills speaking on Radio Five Live said, "What we have found - especially with Radio 1 listeners who are aged primarily 15 to 24 - is that young fans of bands like Snow Patrol and Starsailor live with computers every day of their lives. Downloading music is not alien to them. It is just another way of buying music."
MPA's (MPA is the movie studios' international association, in which, the American MPAA is also member of) Icelandic arm, called SMAIS, has raided 12 major P2P users in the small Nordic country. According to SMAIS's press release, some of the raided users had over 2.5 terabytes (1T == 1,024 gigabytes) of pirated material in their possession when busted.
Last night our servers served the 25,000,000th software download ever made from our site, marking yet another milestone in our site's history. The last major software download milestone, of 20 million downloads, was achieved 
