News written by James Delahunty (May, 2005)

Robert Chapin, owner of Chapin Information Services, Inc. has been trying to get Yahoo to fix a security flaw he found in Y! Music Unlimited that could allow a user to download songs for free. The Music Unlimited service is seen as a sort of music rental service, like Napster To Go and Real's new subscription service. For $4.99 customers can download songs and store them on compatible portable devices, but as soon as they stop paying for the service the music would simple disappear.

In order to burn a song to a CD, users would have to pay 79c for the track. Once it is burned to the CD, it is free of any DRM protection and could easily be ripped into MP3 format using any of various tools on the Internet. Tools like PyMusique and Musik allow users to purchase songs from iTunes without having any DRM protection attached, but these tools don’t make it possible to obtain downloads for free.

"This afternoon we checked to confirm the problem is still live. We downloaded a copy of The Moody Blues - Never Blame The Rainbows For The Rain.wma. It isn't going to be one of my personal favourites, but it does illustrate the point. The music on Yahoo can be obtained quickly, easily, and freely." Chapin told AfterDawn.com in an email. Understandably however, he has not reveal just yet how to get the music for free and most likely wont until Yahoo fixes the problem.

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Benjamin Cohen, who lost his iTunes.co.uk domain name to Apple earlier this year is arguing that Nominet is not officially recognised by the Government and therefore has no rights to make decisions over what should be done with domains that it sells. Nominet awarded the iTunes.co.uk domain to Apple, who had accused Cohen of cyber-squatting, despite the fact that Cohen registered the itunes.co.uk domain name on 7th November 2000, whereas Apple were only had the trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6 December 2000.

Cohen had been using the domain just to forward users to a music search at his CyberBritain site. Since Nominet's decisions, Cohen has made many legal threats but discovered that he was not able to take the decision made against him to the High Court for Judicial Review because of Nominet's peculiar status. The Government has stated that there is "no formal relationship or written agreement" between the UK government and Nominet which means it's not a public body and is subject to usual laws covering UK companies.

Cohen argues however that this status is misleading since representatives from government bodies have permanent seats on Nominet's Policy Advisory Board (PAB), a situation which the Government has admitted does not exist for any other company. However, it's not clear how this will help Cohens case. If he were to accept an appeal heard by three Nominet-appointed experts, it would show him recognising Nominet's authority in the matter. Also when you buy a domain from Nominet you sign a contract that means you accept its domain dispute process in this situation.

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Sony BMG is testing CDs featuring technology from UK anti-piracy specialist First4Internet, that allows customers to only make a limit number of copies of the CD and doesn't allow copied CDs to be copied again. This concept is known as "sterile burning" and according to Sony BMG, it is vital for their battle against casual CD burning. "The casual piracy, the school-yard piracy, is a huge issue for us," Thomas Hesse said, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance."

Titles of upcoming CDs that will carry this technology were not disclosed but since March, Sony BMG has released about 10 titles (which would easily be about 1 million CDs) featuring the new anti-burning technology. First4Internet is not the only partner that will be involved in this effort; other partners are expected to begin trials of sterile burning too. To date, DRM protected music downloads and copy protected CDs have not included any sort of secure burning.

Music purchased from stores like Apple's iTunes can be burned to CDs as unprotected streams, which means it can easily be ripped again after it is burned, and the resulting files will contain absolutely no DRM protection. Under the new solution, tracks would be ripped from a disc Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. If a CD is burned with protected audio, the DRM on the disc prevents it from being burned again. "The secure burning solution is the sensible way forward," First4Internet chief executive officer Mathew Gilliat-Smith said. "Most consumers accept that making a copy for personal use is really what they want it for."

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During an interview with TheStreet.com, Corporate Vice President J Allard, who heads Microsoft's video-game efforts, said that the Xbox 360 console will retail for around the same price that the first Xbox console did, about $300. This is an extract from the full interview...

Q: How much is the Xbox 360 going to cost?

Not sure. It's probably about two months away before we make the decision on that.

Q: The last Xbox went out at about $300 initially. Will the 360 be priced higher, lower?

It's going to be in the neighbourhood.

There has been much speculation recently as to the price of the next generation consoles. At least now we have an indication of the possible price of the Xbox 360.

Source:
TeamXbox
TheSteet.com (Interview)

On 1st July it will no longer be legal to download copyrighted material from the Internet in Sweden. It has always been illegal to distribute copyrighted material on the Internet without permission however. The new law also aims to deter people from making copies of CDs and DVDs by charging a blank media levy. The price of a five gigabyte DVD is expected to rise from 10 kronor to 30 kronor. Members of the parliament argued that musicians and film-makers for example, have the right to receive proper payment for their work.

The law also makes it illegal to copy an entire book. "Every worker should be entitled to a reasonable salary," Left Party member of parliament Tasso Stafilidis said. One huge Swedish torrent site, The Pirate Bay, has already a message on the main page of the site saying "By the way, we will NOT shut down the 1st of July." It is still legal to make backup copies of your CDs and DVDs however for your own personal use.

Source:
ABC News

EliteTorrents, a well known and one of the most used BitTorrent sites has been shut down today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Here is the entire press release...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI's Cyber Division today announced the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks using cutting EDGE file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent.

This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles-including movies and software-which were downloaded 2.1 million times. Read more...

Bram Cohen first created BitTorrent years ago and since then, its popularity has grown much faster than anyone would have ever expected. It has caused headaches in Hollywood because it makes distributing very large files to multiple computers all over the world much faster so it is one of the most popular ways for people to download and share the latest movies. However, even with all this attention surrounding BitTorrent, Bram Cohen is not a very rich man.

His new company, named BitTorrent, has already one thing in store for BT users; a BitTorrent search engine. It will scour the net looking for torrent files and will not filter out the copyrighted material that you would expect to show up in some searches. It will be supported financially by advertising. "We're trying to make it a less haphazard revenue stream," said Cohen

Unlike P2P networks, BitTorrent really has no search function, mainly because it is not P2P network at all. Instead it relies on torrent sites/trackers which can easily be setup by BT users which an assist in sharing files. However, some search engines do already exist, such as Bitoogle but Cohen has said that the new BitTorrent search engine will be better than Bitoogle.

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It's no secret that the entertainment industry has been fighting a huge battle against online file-sharing of copyrighted music and movies over P2P networks. The entertainment industry is hoping to deter people from sharing copyrighted works by suing those who are caught distributing on P2P networks. It is also relying on support from courts to help them to win their battle but in France, they are being met by some opposition.

The president of the French Magistrates Union has openly begun advocating decriminalising file-sharing of copyrighted works for personal use. "We are in the process of creating a cultural rupture between a younger generation that uses the technologies that companies and societies have made available, such as the iPod, file download software, peer-to-peer networks, etc.," Judge Dominique Barella told Wired. "It's like condemning people for driving too fast after selling them cars that go 250 kmh."

He began his campaign after writing an article in Libération, a French publication, where he explained that lenient rulings by French judges (such as suspended jail time and fines) for individuals who have been caught downloading copyrighted works for personal use was a result of confusion over the definition of the intellectual property protection law. He believes there should be a more appropriate policy adopted in France and in Europe.

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Retail giant Wal-Mart has quit offering an online DVD rental service and instead will promote Netflix. 500 million surfers visit Wal-Mart's website annually, so it will be a major boost for Netflix which has been struggling lately. Netflix was hit by competition from Blockbuster and both have been waging a price war for months. "This is big," Fulcrum Global Partners analyst Stacey Widlitz said. "That's pretty significant for (Netflix). I would say they are gaining back some traction in the fight with Blockbuster."

In return, Netflix will promote Wal-Mart DVD sales to its three million customers. Wal-Mart will offer users the chance to subscribe to Netflix at their current monthly subscription price of $12.97. Blockbuster didn't sit and watch this happen without doing anything though, it has offered current Netflix and Wal-Mart customers switching to Blockbuster's online rental service two free months of rentals plus a free retail DVD of their choice.

Netflix charges $17.99 per month for customers to rent three DVDs at a time. So now with Wal-Mart out of the way, it is up to just Blockbuster and Netflix to rival. Shares of Netflix jumped as much as 24% and touched their highest level since August, before rival Blockbuster launched its own rental service.

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This week, one of the biggest and most anticipated movies of the year opened in theatres all over the world. Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith showed millions of fans finally how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader and is packed with tonnes of special effects and action scenes. News coverage on TV stations, in newspapers and on the Internet covered the opening of the movie very well but suddenly the focus has gone off the movie and on to an occurrence that happens much more regularly.

On Wednesday night, a copy of the new star wars movie appeared on the Internet and spread like wild fire (as one would expect). It is a full Workprint copy of the movie featuring two massive timers on the top of the video. The fact that this is a workprint means that this originally must have come from "inside". This was not made by someone with a concealed camcorder in a movie theatre. My question is simply; why would the media make such a fuss about this?

I think it is safe to say that most major movies appear on the Internet within days of its release in movie theatres. Cam and Telesync copies of movies are not rare and I'm sure you've seen the ad's at your local cinema warning you not to copy the movie from the screen with a camcorder, or face the consequences. The MPAA has condemned the individuals responsible for these copies but they need to look a lot closer to home to find the ones responsible for the Star Wars copy.

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A Spanish Lecturer, Jorge Cortell, ended up having to resign after doing nothing more than defending P2P networks. His story has been well covered in Spain, but is only really emerging elsewhere now and he has posted an article explaining what really happened to him. Here is the article pasted below.

This what happened to me when trying to defend the legal use of P2P networks in Spain.

I have been teaching "Intellectual Property" (although I dislike the term) among other subjects at a Masters Degree in the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV (Spain) for over 5 years. Two weeks ago I was scheduled (invited by the ETSIA Student Union and Linux Users' Group for the celebration of "Culture Week") to give a conference in one of the university's buildings. During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings). I was even going to use the network to "prove" that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society "SGAE" had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that "P2P networks are ilegal" (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it. Read more...

A "trackerless" version of BitTorrent has been included in the latest release of the software. The BitTorrent site says that it is part of their "ongoing efforts to make publishing files on the Web painless and disruptively cheap". Here's some information directly from the BitTorrent website.

Suppose you bought a television station, you could broadcast your programming to everyone in a 50 mile radius. Now suppose the population of your town tripled. How much more does it cost you to broadcast to 3 times as many people? Nothing. The same is not true of the Web. If you own a website and you publish your latest video on it, as popularity increases, so does your bandwidth bill! Sometimes by a lot! However, thanks to BitTorrent the website owner gets almost near-broadcast economics on the web by harnessing the unused upstream bandwidth of his/her users.

In prior versions of BitTorrent, publishing was a 3 step process. You would:

1. Create a ".torrent" file -- a summary of your file which you can put on your blog or website
2. Create a "tracker" for that file on your webserver so that your downloaders can find each other
3. Create a "seed" copy of your download so that your first downloader has a place to download from Read more...

The President of Matsushita, Kunio Nakamura said that it is now up to Toshiba to yield its position in talks on a unified next gen DVD format making it clear neither Matsushita nor their partner Sony will budge. This is just the latest of many signs that talks between the two have hit some problems. Both sides decided to engage in talks earlier this year to attempt to avoid a format war that would cost each side millions of dollars and would discourage consumers from choosing to move to next generation discs.

One key problem is that both sides would prefer a unified standard based on their own disc structure, which is quite understandable since each side has spent enormous sums of money and time to develop it. "The talks continue, they have not collapsed," Nakamura said. "But Matsushita and Sony have not changed their stance. We are waiting for Toshiba's decision." For several months both sides have bee competing with each other to gain support for their formats.

Blu-ray has one major advantage over HD-DVD; it can hold 50GB which is about 20GB more than HD-DVD. However, firms backing HD-DVD claim that it would cost a lot less to the industry to adopt it because it is very close to the structure of current available discs. Both formats utilize the use of blue lasers, which have much shorter wavelengths than red lasers allowing discs to store data at the higher densities.

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Sony has defended the decision to delay the launch of the Playstation Portable (PSP) console in Europe until 1st September. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Phil Harrison says the delay is necessary to ensure there will be enough PSP devices available for the European market. The September release date is six months after the handheld console's release in the U.S. and nine months after it was introduced to the Japanese market.

There will be a total of 19 games available for the PSP console when it launches in Europe with a lot more expected by the end of the year. One of the biggest names will be Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. 19 movies will also be available in the UMD format for the PSP and Sony plans to make movies available at the same time they are released on DVD.

It will cost 249 euro (£179 in the UK). The PSP is the first handheld gaming console from Sony, challenging the dominance of Nintendo which has several including the DS console and GameBoy Advance. According to Sony, U.S. gamers are now buying more than 100,000 new PSP consoles a week. The sales of handheld devices and games will drive a growth in the video games industry in 2005, analysts believe.

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One question that has been asked by most Xbox gamers about the upcoming Xbox 360 console, is whether or not it will be "backward compatible" to allow the gamers to play their Xbox 1 games on the new console. At their press conference at E3, all that Microsoft said about backward compatibility is that the console will be "backward compatible with top-selling Xbox games." When you first hear it, you would immediately think that Microsoft are planning to pick exactly what Xbox games will work with the Xbox 360.

However it is also likely that Microsoft is just being safe with that comment, just in case it turns out that some games for the Xbox console don't work with the Xbox 360 (as was the case with PS1 games on PS2). Microsoft also announced at the conference that Square Enix will be bringing Final Fantasy XI to the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live; marking the Square Enix for a Microsoft console. About 25-40 Xbox 360 games are expected to be available for the consoles launch.

Along with the first games, over 160 games are also in development for the console. Electronic Arts plans to release a lot of games for Xbox 360 console aswell, including Madden NFL 06, Need for Speed Most Wanted and The Godfather.

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Microsoft and Intervideo have announced a deal that will make Intervideo the provider of DVD playback software for the Xbox 360 console. The deal marks a significant step in PC/CE convergence, combining both video game consoles and home entertainment centre together. Microsoft unveiled its Xbox360 console at E3 last week and it is scheduled to be released in late 2005. It will provide consumers with a high-definition gaming experience, multi-channel audio fidelity, and high-quality DVD playback.

"The Xbox 360 combines video gaming and home entertainment capabilities all in one product. We found that Intervideo's DVD engine is the ideal solution for providing movie playback for Xbox 360. Intervideo has leveraged its success in the consumer DVD market to provide consumers a superior level of DVD playback experience," said Ray DiCasparro, director, Home & Entertainment Partner Relations, Microsoft Corporation.

"Xbox 360 sets a new standard of complete home entertainment experience and makes it possible for both gamers and movie enthusiasts to enjoy the best of both worlds," said Steve Ro, Intervideo CEO and President. "Intervideo will continue its tradition of excellence in providing consumers with the latest revolutionary technology in DVD playback. Intervideo is pleased to be working with Microsoft in delivering to consumers a video game console as a home entertainment medium."

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Sony has unveiled a new high definition camcorder that is much smaller and lighter than its previous model. The HDR-HC1 is Sony's attempt to expand the market for high definition video cameras. Currently HD camcorders are used mostly by professionals because they are quite big and are costly. High Definition camcorders produce much sharper quality than standard camcorders. The new HD camcorder can fit comfortably in a consumers hand and is not as expensive.

The HDR-FXI is Sony's previous model and was selling for about 400,000 yen. The new HDR-HC1 will cost 180,000 yen ($1,684) and will go on sale initially in July. "We wanted to further develop the market for HD camcorders and knew that significantly decreasing the size of the product would be key," Keikichi Chiba, general manager of Sony's Personal Video Divsion said.



High definition (HD) is a standard for digital video that Sony defines as 1,440 Pixels by 1,080 scanning lines of Resolution. Since it captures many more pixels it produces a far more detailed picture overall. Sony decided to use one complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor instead of the 3 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) (which was used in the HDR-FXI) to help reduce the size of the device.

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The Higher Regional Court in Hamburg ruled today that ISPs in the state of Hamburg cannot be forced by record companies to hand over subscriber identities even if copyright infringement is suspected. The court ruled that there is no legal basis for demanding the subscriber data from the ISPs as they aren't involved in the criminal activity; they only provide their customers with access to the Internet. The decision over-ruled an earlier decision by the Hamburg District Court which granted record labels access to consumer data.

The labels had discovered an FTP server running that illegally made songs by German rock band Rammstein available to be downloaded. The district court had based its ruling on the German Copyright Act. The difference in this case however, is that the labels weren’t looking for the identity of a P2P user who was illegally uploading music to other users. You would think that the labels would have a better chance at getting the info of a subscriber running an FTP server than a P2P user sharing music.

However, according to experts, this setback for the record companies is only temporary. Legislators in Germany are drafting a new Telemedia Act which will grant the recording industry more freedom in obtaining personal data on subscribers from ISPs.

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Talks between Sony and Toshiba over a unified next generation standard format have been stalled because Toshiba's top negotiator, Yoshihide Fujii, believes further talks will be useless unless Sony makes an effort to examine Toshiba's proposal for a unified technology. Toshiba Corp. is backing the HD-DVD format while Sony is backing its Blu-ray disc format. However, neither side would like to enter into a format war that could cost them millions of dollars and be a major inconvenience to consumers.

Fujii believes that Sony "failed to provide enough evidence that its format has a clear advantage over ours in terms of cost and range of applications." Both formats have their good and bad points and both have gotten huge support from other tech companies. Up until now, talks have been aimed mainly at what disc structure a possible unified standard would use and reports were that the talks were leaning towards a disc with Blu-Ray disc structure and Toshiba's software for copy protection and data transfer.

Hollywood studios have yet to have their say on their view of a possible unified standard. Several studios have already backed a format. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD groups are really fighting over potentially billions of dollars over the coming years for the use of their technology.

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At the Blu-ray Disc Association's member seminar and information meeting in Tokyo, Japan, CyberLink Corp. demonstrated the burning and playback of video content on Blu-ray Rewritable (BD-RE) discs. Cyberlink is a world leader and pioneer in providing integrated solutions for the Digital Home, and a contributing member of the Blu-Ray Disc Association. The demonstrated the burning using CyberLink Power2Go, then played it back using PowerDVD with a Blu-ray drive featuring MediaTek's chipset technology.

"For years CyberLink has been the world's leading company in the field of digital video playback on the PC, and we are pleased to see their expansion into the field of Blu-ray Disc (BD) products," said Mr. Alex Chen, Director of Sales and Marketing Division, MediaTek Inc. "CyberLink's successful demonstration of BD video Authoring and playback via a MediaTek solution illustrates the extent to which both companies are taking the lead in delivering High-Definition video solutions."

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Bill Gates believes that the dominance of Apple's iPod music player over the MP3 market will not last for much longer. He is not the only one sceptical about the device; Dell chief executive Kevin Rollins also believes the iPod is a passing fad. Gates' comments come just days after Microsoft rolled out their new Operating Systems for mobile devices, Windows Mobile 5.0. Gates believes that it looks increasingly likely that hardware MP3 players will be replaced soon by mobile phones that are capable of storing large amounts of music.

Bill told a German publication that the iPod dominance will reflect what happened to the Mac in its fight with Windows. "You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface - like the iPod today, and then lost its position," Gates is quoted as telling leading German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

According to Gates, 40 handset manufacturers are shipping 68 types of device running Windows. There is certainly a lot to fight for in this market. JupiterReasearch estimates that expects six per cent of adults will purchase an iPod during the next year while other manufactures like Dell and Creative Labs are close behind in people's purchasing choices.

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More Xbox 360 details have surfaced on gaming websites today, just a few hours ahead of the MTV unveiling of the console. Scans of the Danish magazine "Game Reactor" appeared online confirming earlier leaked pictures of the console, controllers and logos that leaked a few weeks ago. Details leaked a couple of days ago including those of a removable 20GB drive were also confirmed by the scans.

The console will also feature a 12x DVD9 (double-layer) player and the default memory card size will be 64MB. According to the article the console will be released in the United States within the next six months and in Europe just over a week later. It will then be launched in Japan in December. The console will be launched with about 10-16 games ready and a further 40 games will be available in the first quarter.

The article also gives another interesting detail. The console will not run on full power while playing a DVD to keep the noise down. The console will be unveiled on MTV over the next couple of days with the first showing in North America at 9:30pm tonight.

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Reuters is reporting that talks between Toshiba Corp. and Sony over developing a unified next generation DVD format are leaning towards a disc structure supported by Sony. In case you have been living in a cave for the last few years, you should know that both companies have been promoting their technology as the best for consumer needs for a next generation DVD format standard. However, both sides would like to avoid a format war that would resemble the VHS-Beta videocassette war.

Several major companies back Sony's technology including Dell, Samsung and Philips. A source told Reuters that it was unclear whether both sides would ultimately reach an agreement on a common format but talks right now lean towards a unified format based on Blu-ray's disc structure. The Nihon Keizai newspaper reported earlier this week that both sides were in final talks over a possible format that would merge Blu-Ray's disc structure and Toshiba's software for copy protection and data transfer.

At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at the higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

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Apple's iTunes music store has now sold over 400M songs the company has announced. It also announced that the company is opening iTunes in four more countries including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. According to Apple the store is now available in 19 nations and covers 70 percent of the music buying population in the world. ITMS chief Eddy Cue said the company is now selling over half a billion songs a year.

iTunes remains the biggest online music download service; accounting for about 70 percent of all legal music downloads on the Internet. The company also has the success of the iPod to be happy about. The rising sales figures does show that a lot of people are willing to buy their music downloads even though the number of illegitimate downloads are much higher than legal ones.

Despite the growing number of legit downloads and the growing demand for them, the recording industry still continues to sue music file sharers under the same claims they made at the beginning of their campaign, and have no plans to stop. Meanwhile, other music download services are attempting to eat into Apple's share of the market with new services, like Napster and Real's "music rental" services.

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A U.S. appeals court has dealt a blow to the Entertainment Industry by ruling that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has overstepped its authority by attempting to force manufacturers to make devices capable of reading a "broadcast flag" after 1st July 2005. This broadcast flag would give content providers a chance to place restrictions that they hoped would seriously limit re-distribution of recordings made. The court's argument was that the FCC tried put restrictions on content after the actual transmission.

"In other words, the Flag Order imposes regulations on devices that receive communications after those communications have occurred; it does not regulate the communications themselves," the court stated. "Because the demodulator products are not engaged in 'communication by wire or radio' when they are subject to regulation under the Flag Order, the Commission plainly exceeded the scope of its general jurisdictional grant." Public-interest groups were delighted with the decision.

"It clearly was a slam dunk," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. "This case is about much more than the broadcast flag," she said. "This case is about ... the power of the FCC over the internet and associated technologies." According to the FCC's requirements, consumers could make personal copies of content but couldn't re-distribute it on P2P networks for example.

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Three members of former Internet release group DrinkOrDie have been jailed for terms between 18 months and two and a half years in the UK. They were accused of breaking copy protection on commercial software and then distributing it around the world where it became available to potentially millions of people. While their actions apparently caused massive financial damage to the software industry, they did not make any money at all themselves from it.

You could view them as Robin Hoods of a digital world but prosecutor Bruce Houlder isn’t convinced. "It is the first prosecution for software piracy on this scale conducted in this country. They may see themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but in reality it is a cover for fraud." he said. Judge Paul Focke told the defendants it was "impossible to quantify" the loss to others caused by their scam.

"The loss of software to owners through piracy is staggering. Also, the effect on related businesses and the lives of employees can be rendered catastrophic." the Judge added. Alex Bell, 32, was jailed for two and a half years and Steven Dowd, 42, was jailed for two years. Accomplice Mark Vent, 31, was jailed for 18 months. A former school IT teacher Andrew Eardley, 35, escaped jail as he was given an 8 month sentence suspended for two years.

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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. George 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 and Apple Computers agreed to stay out of the music business.

However I think we are all familiar with Apple's iTunes music store and it's iPod devices. So once again Apple Computers is in hot water and now a date has been set for a UK court hearing; 27th March 2006. In the past Apple Computers has dealt with this issue by simply settling out of court but now with it's iPod and iTunes music store, the stakes have gotten higher and Apple Corp. is suing for damages.

Apple's iPod is fuelling rising revenue for the company and it's iTunes music store remains the dominant store in the online music download market.

Source:
The Register

It is being reported that crackers have managed to compromise copy protection on Sony PSP games. A few days ago, several PSP games appeared on the Internet in the form of ISO images. However, there is no way for somebody to play these copies of the games on their PSP device just yet because you cannot burn UMD discs. The PSP has only been on the market in the U.S. for a couple of months but already several hacks and tweaks have appeared for it.

Sony is trying to get more deals with content providers to offer their content in UMD format for consumers to view on the PSP console. While some content providers may be less likely to sign a deal with Sony if they think UMD discs are unsafe, existing partners have nothing really to worry about as Sony has touted UMD's DVD-like region coding, unique per-disc ID number and AES-based content encryption system as suitable protection for UMD-stored content.

UMD discs can hold about 1.8GB of data. But even though you couldn't burn a UMD disc, one major possibility is that one day games might be loaded directly from a MemoryStick. You can get pretty high capacity MemorySticks now that you can use with the PSP and some of the PSP games floating around the net now are quite small in size for games; one of them being just 133MB. So a MemoryStick is a complicated but maybe possible method; more possible than actually making direct copies to UMD discs for now.

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If you can recall, the Motion Picture Association of America has been filing lawsuits against file sharers all over the United States and pushing for BitTorrent sites to be shut down because they claimed they were losing potentially billions of dollars in revenue. However, Hollywood had an amazing year in 2004. Worldwide revenues from cinema tickets, videos and DVD sales, as well as television rights, reached a whopping $44.8bn (£24bn) last year, up 9 percent from 2003.

Record DVD sales were the cause of the massive profits, with a 46 percent rise in sales worldwide (14 percent in United States). The only fall was ticket sales outside the United States, which fell by a tiny 1 percent. These figures have come from the Motion Picture Association. The MPAA's legal action Internet piracy began at the end of 2004.

Several BitTorrent sites have been shut down ever since then and many file sharers have been sued in the United States. If any damage is to be done to the movie industry's revenue in 2005, perhaps they have only themselves to blame for bringing movie downloads right to the media and alerting more and more people about it.

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Shawn Fanning’s Snocap has once again gotten a major boost by striking a deal with EMI, the world's third-largest music company. Snocap identifies songs on networks by their fingerprints and then determines how the copyright holder wants this file to be played/protected. For example it could set a limit to three times the music could be played before a payment was required to play it as much as you want. UMG and Sony BMG also have already signed deals with Snocap.

"This sends a signal to music industry critics who claim we are technophobic. If anything, we are embracing technologies like Snocap, which allow the P2P (peer-to-peer) community to share music legally," said David Munns, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music North America. The music industry was taken by surprise by Shawn Fanning's Napster which allowed its users to share millions of copyrighted music with each other for free.

Legal music download services are increasing in popularity which fuels hope that the record labels have of creating a viable online business model. However they also tackle illegal filesharing by suing people who upload music to other users. That tactic however is proving to be unsuccessful as P2P has never been so popular.

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Using four search warrants at the Pacific Mall on Steeles Avenue in Markham, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized about $800,000 worth of counterfeit goods. The number of seized products was staggering, approximately 30,000 music/movie DVDs, 3000 optical discs (games), 1600 multi-game cartridges and approximately $36,000 in Canadian currency. The RCMP tried to explain to the management and staff of several stores that some of the goods they were selling were in fact counterfeit.

"The theft of intellectual property is a serious crime which negatively impacts legitimate businesses by unfair competition," said Constable Judy Laurence of the FES. "The reason the RCMP undertook this initiative is two-fold. It sends a message to counterfeiters that their actions will not be tolerated and it also gives business owners who may not have known that they were breaking the law by selling counterfeit products, the chance to discontinue their criminal activity."

Experts from the Entertainment Software Association, Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association and the Canadian Recording Industry Association assisted the RCMP in the searches, helping to determine exactly what was legitimate and what was counterfeit. "On behalf of our member company motion picture studios, the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association would like to thank the RCMP for their enforcement efforts of last week at the Pacific Mall," said Serge Corriveau, Vice President, Anti-Piracy Operations.

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Online music retailer CD Wow! is teaming up with distributor Loudeye to offer legal music downloads. The main difference between this announcement and the announcement of the numerous other stores around is that CD Wow! has a reputation for selling cheap music CDs. Therefore CD Wow! may have to lower their download prices quite a bit to make them look attractive to consumers because their customers would feel a price any higher would be more expensive.

Obviously cheaper downloads would be an inconvenience at least for Apple but they have not a lot to worry about. CD Wow!'s downloads will not be compatible with an iPod. However it might create a problem for other stores who sell music in the Windows Media Audio format. CD Wow! has always had a large consumer base due to their low cost CDs, DVDs and Games. Now we will just have to wait and see if they can create the same stir in the download market.

Source:
The Register

The United States Supreme Court has denied to hear the InternetMovies.com vs. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) case. This now sets the stage for continued subjective interpretation of the good faith belief provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It now gives copyright holders the power to attack websites and force them shut down without reasonable investigation. This case first appeared in 2002 when the MPAA had InternetMovies.com wrongfully shut down.

The MPAA sent a cease and desist letter to site's host claiming that InternetMovies.com was illegally making movies available for download including The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. This was 2001 and the third instalment of the LOTR trilogy which was apparently available for download wasn’t even released in theatres or finished until 2003. "All I was doing was reporting news about movies online. This now proves there are no freedom of speech or due process rights on the Internet for the common person." site owner, Michael Jay Rossi said.

"The MPAA did not dispute it had made an error in judging the site's content, the District Court, Ninth Circuit Court and Supreme Court have all sided with the subjective interpretation of the DMCA and ruled in favor of MPAA," says Rossi. "Believing material from the future is downloadable is now a valid and reasonable belief that protects copyright holders to continue to abuse the 'shoot now, ask later' good faith belief in the DMCA. A Pandora's box of troubles for web site owners and individuals is open." he added.

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Apple has tightened its grip on digital music as its iPod Shuffle device reportedly gained more consumer interest according to a report by the NPD group. Apple's share of the flash-based players market grew to 58 percent in March, while the company's HDD-based players remained at about 90 percent of that market. Apple's iTunes music store also still accounts for more than 70 percent of the digital music download market.

Steven Milunovich of Merrill Lynch called the numbers stunning and also stated that there is still more room for the company to grow internationally like in Japan where 60 percent of music players are non-Apple based. Apple and Motorola are also waiting to roll out an iTunes phone soon, but that was delayed for many different reasons. The company's CFO Peter Oppenheimer says that Apple sees music-capable phones as more of a compliment to the iPod than a replacement.

While Apple tightens its grip on digital music, record label executives get more upset, saying that the company has too much power over the digital music download market and is basically setting its own base rules. For example, some label owners believe that Apple's 99c price policy would be better replaced with a system that made older songs cheaper and made newer and more popular songs more expensive.

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Another guide has been added to our guide section today, this one shows you how to convert multiple video formats to DVD using WinAVI. WinAVI can do more than just convert to DVD; it can also convert multiple video formats to RM, WMV and AVI. Of course you can also create VCD and SVCD for you too. The files that can be opened by WinAVI include avi, ASF, MOV, rm, wmv, swf and rmvb.

In the guide I encoded an AVI file (DivX) to DVD files (VOB, IFO, bup etc.). WinAVI also can convert your audio to AC3 for better DVD player compatibility. If you have guides that you would like to add to AfterDawn then please use the Guide Submission page. If you need assistance to add the guide, feel free to PM me and I will be happy to help.

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According to Bill Gates, the new Xbox 360 gives Microsoft the opportunity to beat Sony. He called the upcoming console an entertainment hub and said it was capable of taking the top position, even when put against the upcoming Playstation 3 console. He also said the software menu for the console will be similar to Windows Media Centre. "If you're used to that menu, when you use this Xenon you'll see a menu a lot like that that lets you get photos, TV, music and all those different things," he said.

Now Gates believes that Microsoft has moved from a number 2 choice in a gamers mind to an equal choice to Sony. He said people involved with the development of the new console say they believe that it can beat Sony. Later this month, more details on both consoles are expected to be revealed at the E3 conference. Xbox 360 is expected to be first advertised several days beforehand on MTV.

Until then, gaming sites will continue to buzz with the small details that have been leaked here and there, many of which remain unconfirmed. Gates refused to give anymore details on the console at this stage but of course did take the time out to take a dig at Apple's forthcoming new operating system, Tiger.

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According to the former head of games firm Capcom US, Greg Ballard, mobile games are about to take-off at a pace that will resemble console gaming's growth. Ballard is now boss of mobile games firm Sorrent/Macrospace. "We're seeing results that are reminiscent to me of the early console days in the 1990s," Mr Ballard told the BBC. "There are titles now in mobile that will do between $6-10m, that's half as big as the console business was in early 1990s yet it's only in the second or third year of business".

He stressed that the guarantee that some games will do well is vital to mobile gaming companies. "If we can say we believe that this title will do $10m it allows us to spend more money developing and marketing that game," he said. "This is the first year I can look the marketing people in the eyes and say they may have a budget." A major advantage for the mobile games industry also is that pretty much everyone has a mobile phone in many places in the world.

"What's exciting about this is that lately everybody has a cellphone - even 10-13 year olds have them." he said. Research by Sorrent/Macrospace shows that younger mobile phone owners are the biggest users of ringtones, games and other mobile content. Also it is important to point out that some games that would be unsuccessful on consoles seem to do much better with mobile phone users. Card games like poker are very popular for mobile phones.

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