News written by Ben Reid (March, 2007)

Consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. has announced a new feature to be added to its iTunes Store which will allow music fans to buy a complete album at a cheaper price if they've already purchased one or more of the tracks.

The first feature of its kind from any music download service, 'Complete My Album' will allow consumers a full album with discount of 99 cents per each previously downloaded Track from that album.

Albums eligible for the promotion will be listed on a special page within the iTunes Store. Users who decide they would like to purchase the rest of an album will have a deadline of 180 days from the day they purchase the track.

iTunes' vice president, Eddy Cue, noted, "Music fans can now round out their music collections by upgrading their singles into complete albums with just one click, and get full credit for those songs they have previously purchased from iTunes."

Source:
Betanews

The University of Maine System has rejected a request made by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to disclose the personal info of students alleged to have engaged in the illegal p2p sharing of copyrighted works on its campuses.

The RIAA has been dishing out letters recently to Universities notifying them that alleged pirate students face litigation, requesting that they inform students assigned to I.P. addresses said to have engaged in illegal filesharing - allowing them a chance to settle with the trade group out-of-court.

The University of Maine notified students with pending RIAA lawsuits on Friday, however the institution refuses to pass over the details of the students to the RIAA. "It's not the university's role to, in effect, serve papers on our students for another party," said John Diamond, spokesman for the university system. "We want our students to be aware of it (the suit), but we do not feel that it is our obligation to be the arm of the RIAA beyond simply sharing the information."

Diamond believes that fulfilling the RIAA's request and handing over personal info of students would see the UMS breach the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which bars the UMS from sharing private information. "The only way the RIAA can get that information is if the RIAA takes us to court to get those names," Diamond added.

Major media corporations EMI Group PLC and Bertelsmann AG have finally laid their ongoing dispute concerning Napster to rest by agreeing an out-of-court settlement.

EMI, along with a string of high-profile record labels, filed a lawsuit against Bertelsmann back in 2003, following the German company's decision in 2000 to invest in the original Napster after it was crippled by lawsuits seeking to shut down the network. Rival music companies, including EMI, alleged that Bertelsmann's $85 million investment in Napster was the equivalent to copyright infringement.

Bertelsmann pumped $85 million into Napster, but an outright takeover never materialized.

Details of the agreement were not revealed, however, Bertelsmann admits no liability. "We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Bertelsmann," said Eric Nicoli, chief executive of EMI Group. "We can now put this matter behind us and continue to pursue the development of new legitimate digital music business models."

Sources:
Paid Content
Yahoo! News

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims that its tactic of threatening students suspected of piracy with lawsuits is a success. However, as part of the trade group's recent clampdown on p2p filesharing on university campuses, only just over quarter of 400 students threatened with litigation for illegally sharing music online have agreed to settle with the group.

The RIAA has been warning students that if they refuse to settle out of court, (which usually amounts to a settlement package of approximately $3,000), then they could end up liable to pay $750 per every song illegally distributed.

The RIAA's first batch of letters aimed at university students across North America began in February, requesting 13 different institutions to notify students that they were being sued for sharing music illegally. A second wave of letters were sent out last week to 23 universities.

Source:
Betanews

Today's European launch of Sony's eagerly-awaited Playstation 3 console has not only seen flocks of ardent gamers queue into the small hours awaiting its release, but also several publicity stunts by rivals Microsoft in an attempt to upstage the event.

At the Virgin Megastore in London's Oxford Street, the software maker handed out chairs to those queuing which had a web address to an Xbox 360 branded-site printed on them. The site "welcomes" Sony to the next generation, and ribs the Japanese entertainment company for being "late" in comparison to the 360's 2005 launch.

The launch was met with mixed feelings throughout Europe. Despite the fact several stores were kept open late especially, few French gamers took the opportunity to get their hands on one. Sony had moored a boat by the Eiffel Tower to act as a temporary base to make sales but gamers were crowded out by the media. Meanwhile, Microsoft drove its own boat covered in Xbox 360 logos in and around the area in an attempt to distract people's attentions away from the launch.

At an electronics store in Berlin, Germany, gamers who smashed their 360's off of a wall were rewarded with a free PS3.

Buena Vista Television, a unit of media and entertainment company Walt Disney has been dealt a lawsuit by Starz Entertainment cable network for allegedly selling films via its movie download service which were exclusively licensed to Starz.

According to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, a licensing agreement was made between the two firms back in 2005 which prohibited Disney from selling some of its films for transmission online before or during a certain period of exclusivity for Starz.

Since 1993, the Liberty Media owned firm has forked out in excess of $1 billion for the exclusive rights to Disney films, says the lawsuit, and Starz also has the right to offer the movies on its Vongo subscription download service.

"Our issue is that the contract has a clear prohibition from them doing this and we gave them notice, had a number of exchanges and had meetings and they denied our request for relief," said Starz Entertainment Chairman and Chief Exec Robert Clasen, speaking with Reuters. "We are absolutely adamant in protecting our contractual rights and licenses."

Disney has enjoyed huge sucess on the Internet video paid downloads front. Last year it became the first major Hollywood studio to offer its TV shows and movies via Apple's iTunes Store and now Disney's Chief Financial Officer is predicting the company's profits to reach $25 million in the first year from the service. And only last month, Disney -- along with the other major studios -- made deals to sell movies online via WalMart's newly-launched online download service.

Media giant CBS has announced that it has sealed a deal with Google Inc.-owned YouTube. The pairing will create a brand new web channel which will feature clips and highlights from the annual "March Madness" NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) basketball tournament.

The deal comes as somewhat of a surprise, in light of CBS' former sister company Viacom's recent copyright infringement litigation against Google and Youtube, and considering original talks between YouTube and CBS appeared to break down last month.

The line-up will include clips of the tournament as well as other aspects such as press conferences, interviews and highlights. The service will be free, however it will be ad-supported and include links to other CBS and NCAA Web pages.

According to YouTube, the new service will allow game clips to be uploaded to the site in near-real-time so users can view, comment, rate, recommend & post their own video responses.

CBS' main goal, said Quincy Smith, the company's President, is to try and reach out to -- rather than try to discourage -- YouTube's audience. "Above all the other good news, what's most exciting here is the extent to which CBS is learning about its audience as never before," he said. "Professional content seeds YouTube and allows an open dialog between established media players and a new set of viewers."

SafeMedia Corp., a company dedicated to helping safeguard consumers' networks from "every risks associated with illegal file sharing of copyrighted files," has invented 'Clouseau', which it claims is the first system of its kind designed solely to eradicate P2P piracy.

Clouseau is a network appliance deployed on subnets that will look to stamp out all unauthorized P2P activity.

"Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are lost to P2P piracy. Current technology is clearly ineffective at stopping it," claimed Safwat Fahmy, chief exec and founder of SafeMedia.

"Clouseau is the best-of-breed internet piracy prevention solution designed from the ground up specifically to stop all P2P internet piracy no matter where it originates worldwide," Fahmy continued. "It is safe and invisible, causes little or no latency in the network, self-healing and user-friendly, and completely shields user anonymity."

The device, claim SafeMedia, uses fingerprinting and DNA markers which monitor incoming and outgoing packets so that illegal P2P is snuffed out while allowing legal P2P to pass through to its destination without any noticeable delay.

"We have made Clouseau dynamically proactive, safe and hardened. Pirates are smart and innovative, and so is Clouseau," added Fahmy. "Our technology is dynamic, sees through all multi-layered encryptions, adaptively analyses network patterns and constantly updates itself. Packet examinations are non-invasive and infallible. There are no false positives."

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represents and protects the copyrights of many of the major software companies, has halted five alleged software pirates who it claims were distributing counterfeit versions of its members' software on internet auction sites. The move was said to be the start of an international crackdown on unlicensed software sales online.

"To all offenders out there, large or small, our message remains the same: software piracy is illegal and we will be bringing legal actions against internet pirates to tackle this serious problem" said John Wolfe, director of internet enforcement for the BSA. "The international litigation announced today is just the beginning of our expanded efforts to fight global software piracy."

One of the sellers is based in the US, one is from Austria, with two coming from Germany. The fifth person, who is UK-based, is suspected to have played a role in the running of a website selling illegal copies of expensive design and architecture software product Autodesk. Microsoft, Adobe, McAfee and Symantec are other companies said to have had their software pirated by the alleged offenders.

Todd Hollenshead, head of Doom 3 creator Id software believes that rife copyright infringement of PC games poses a huge threat to the future of the industry. He suggested that the PC games industry isn't taking the threat of piracy seriously and that if something isn't done to curb it, companies could soon demote the PC to a second tier platform.

"I find myself when I have a discussion about piracy trying to convince people it's a serious problem," he said.

It is estimated that global piracy cost the US gaming industry in excess of $4bn in 2004 -- excluding losses from Internet piracy.

"In Eastern Europe, Asia and South America the losses are estimated to be 90% plus," said Mr Hollenshead, speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week.

One of his primary concerns at the moment is the circulation of cracked copies of PC games. "The statistics of the amount of net traffic devoted to piracy of PC titles is startling," he said.

Many of the newest & most popular titles are freely available throughout the filesharing community. Games such as Battlefield 2142, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, Fahrenheit and Need for Speed Carbon can all be downloaded with relative ease.

Never shy of making the headlines, Bittorrent indexing site ThePirateBay.org announced in a blog that it has awarded a diploma to the King of Sweden. The site state that it is a "congratulatory diploma" regarding its "joint efforts in making Sweden famous globally when it comes to technology and culture".

The blog continues, "In these progressive days we've spread more files than ever. We've made history. We now have the honour to report that The Pirate Bay now archives 200 000, by the citizens donated, documents of culture and we're tracking more then 500 000 cultural treasures globally. This is a new world record." Has TPB decided to go cultural?

The Pirate Bay is notorious throughout the tech world for poking fun at major corporations and catching the attention of the masses. The fact that the site was raided by U.S.-backed Swedish Police raid in May of last year only appeared to boost the site's popularity. In fact, within a few days, it had bounced back with a larger following and a cheeky new logo (pictured).

Even more recently, The Pirate Bay came up with the idea of possibly creating its own country -- free from any governing body -- a place where digital content could be freely shared in peace. Whether or not the idea will materialize remains to be seen, however keen followers have already coughed up over USD 20,000 towards the idea.