News written by Jari Ketola (April, 2002)

Independent Webcasters plan to cut their music streams on Wednesday to protest a proposed royalty fee. The fee, proposed by Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), would effectively force all Webcasters to shut down their services for good. The proposed rates are 0.14 cents per listener per song, and 0.07 cents per song for streaming a regular over-the-air broadcast on the Net. That is, however, much more than what the revenues for online music services currently are.

"Webcasters are angry that CARP would charge them on a per-stream basis, rather than as a percentage of revenues," said Susan Kevorkian, a research analyst at IDC, a Framingham, Mass.-based research firm. "The latter is generally thought to be more of a fair approach."

Currently the expenses for running a radio on the Net are easily greater than the advertising and/or subscription income, so there might be no revenues at all for some services.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association wants the California Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by which an Indiana resident could be tried in California, even though the only contact the resident has had with California has been via the Internet. Matthew Pavlovich was sued by the DVD Copy Control Association for distributing the DeCSS code. According to DVD CCA the postings of Matheww Pavlovich, and dozens of other people also sued, violated the California's trade secret law.

"If allowed to stand, this decision would create universal jurisdiction in California for any person or company that publishes a Web site on the Internet," CCIA Chief Executive Ed Black said in a statement. CCIA has filed a brief supporting Pavlovich's cause. Pavlovich himself has also appealed earlier, arguing a violation of the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The world-wide nature of the Internet has put the current legislation into quite a test. We'll see what happens.

In a response to last week's announcement from Microsoft to cut Xbox prices, Nintendo today announced they would alsobe be cutting the price of their rival console GameCube in Europe - even before it has hit the shelves!

The pre-launch cut was about twenty-five percent, which means a drop from 250€ to 199€. That makes the GameCube retail 100€ less than Xbox and Playstation 2.

Nintendo said the cut was made because of improved production economics, and a will to let the consumers take advantage of the reduced production costs. Its rather evident that Sony would be capable of a similar cut, since PS2 has been in production for quite a long time now, and has gone through several improvements in both chip design, and production efficiency.

Maybe we'll see PS2 at 250€ next week? Whatever happens, it's definitely nice to see that we, the consumers, get the best of both worlds in this duel - high-quality consoles at reasonable prices.

Source:
News.com

After an extremely slow start to the sales of the Xbox in Europe, Microsoft has decided to cut the price of the console dramatically.

"At 6.00am today, we'll be reducing the price of the Xbox to 299€, £199, effective from April 26," said Chris Lewis, UK divisional director for Xbox retail. "There are no announcements, or any plans to make price changes elsewhere. It is a European-only announcement at this stage."

The reduction is almost 50% from the current price of the Xbox. Already at the original price the consoles cost more for Microsoft to manufacture than what they get per unit sold. That only goes to show how eager Microsoft is in it's effort conquer the console markets before the third big name, Nintendo, introduces its Gamecube in Europe.

Those who have already bought the console at the higher price will, luckily, be compensated. Anyone who already has an Xbox, or buys one before April 25th, will receive two free games and a free controller. A very nice gesture from Microsoft which should keep the early supporters of Xbox happy.

Source:
Computer and Video Games

Philips and BenQ today announced they will be working together on developing next-generation optical storage products. At first the co-operation will focus on DVD+RW technology.

The development process is broke down quite nicely between Philips and BenQ: while Philips focuses on developing new innovations and concepts, BenQ takes existing technologies and makes them better, faster, and cheaper to manufacture. You could say that Philips is the artist in the process, while BenQ is the code-slave doing all the dirty, but vital work.

For us, the consumers, there's much to cheer about in this deal. Who wouldn't mind seeing drives get faster sooner, and the prices dropping? Not me! Great things happen when companies can focus on doing what they are best at.

In an interview published in Die Welt on Friday Bertelsmann's chief executive officer Thomas Middelhoff commented about buying out Napster completely. "We are looking into completely taking over Napster," Middelhoff said. "We want to buy out the original shareholders, and have made them an offer, because we believe that our strategy is the right one for the future of the company."

What exactly that strategy is, remains to be seen. Whatever it is, it's something Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, as well as the other original shareholders, are against.

Source:
Die Welt