News written by Petteri Pyyny (January, 2003)

The Finnish parliament returned the controversial new copyright law proposal back to the ministry which originally drafted the proposal. The proposal was based on EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) that wa supposed to be implemented in national legislation in all EU member states by 22nd of December, 2002.

Only two countries have so far implemented the EUCD requirements into their legislations -- Denmark and Greece. The Finnish proposal for national copyright law was criticized mostly because of vague wording in various important sections. After the parliamentary hearing today, the proposal was returned back to the ministry, after heavy criticism from PMs.

Vice chairman of Finnish Conservative Party, Mr. Jyrki Katainen, confirmed that the very rare dismissal was caused by the extreme unclearness of the law proposal. Unclear legislation with sentences upto 2 years in prison would have posed a serious risk to unitended citizens.

According to Finnish digital rights group, EFFi, there's a small risk that the next proposal could damage the small victories consumer right groups managed to get in to the now-dismissed proposal -- Finnish version of the EUCD implementation clearly stated for example that DVD region coding can't be considered as an effective copy protection mechanism and would therefor be legal to circumvent. But according to EFFi's vice chairman, Mr. Ville Oksanen, it seems that Finnish parliament is pretty much against multinational corporations' wishes to tighten the control of "fair use rights" that consumers currently have.

A company called ClearPlay offers currently a service that allows (paranoid...) American consumers to "sanitize" their DVD movies when they play their DVDs on their PCs. Now their plan to enter the stand-alone player market is threatened by the movie industry.

The service, which costs $7.95 a month, allows users to download filters to over 300 popular DVD titles and when applied, filters will filter out the American equivalent of Devil himself -- the magic F word (let's say it all together.. FUCK) -- as well as nudity, violence, "profane references to a deity" or anything else that could disturb a clean, good citizens.

Now the company plans to launch their stand-alone DVD player, aimed for masses that aren't interested of using PCs for movie watching purposes. But Hollywood is against the idea. According to the MPAA and the Directors Guild of America, the movie should be watched as intended, not censored by a company who has its own views of what is acceptable or not. Eight major studios have sued the company in last month, trying to block the player from entering the markets.

The whole debate raises interesting questions: consumer should have the right to decide how s/he wants to watch the movie s/he has bought. But then again, by filtering the fuck words from the movie doesn't really change the underlying structure of the movie at all -- so, if the movie is about horrors of Holochaust or something similiar, removing nudity and "fuck"s from the movie don't make the movie suitable for six-year-olds in any way. And also, there should be something like artist's rights that allows the director to decide how his movie should be screened. And don't the movies carry the age recommendation labels already -- if the movie is R, is there really any point try to make it PG by removing big, maybe even critical, amount of content from it and therefor essentially altering the movie itself.

Development team of FLAC (or Free Lossless Audio Codec) has decided to join forces with Xiph, the development organization behind Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, IceCast and various other free-of-charge open source multimedia platforms.

FLAC is a fine addition to the existing Xiph family of multimedia platforms as it doesn't compete with lossy compression codecs such as Ogg Vorbis. The "Lossless" in its name means that the encoded music doesn't lose any information whatsoever and can be brought back to the original quality by simply decoding the file. This is not the case with lossy formats, such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis in audio world or in video world, DivX and MPEG-2. In lossy formats, part of the original audio (or video) is actually removed, the material will be twisted and changed to "sound like" the original, but not exactly like the original. And lossy formats can't be decoded back to match the original files. The difference is somewhat like making a 500-page novel into smaller size by using smaller characters -- that would be lossless, since it is in smaller physical size, but all the information is still there -- compared to an Reader's Digest abbrevation of a novel -- the story is pretty much the same, but you can't start guessing all the details that are missing and therefor can't be an identical version to the original.

Software maker Lindows, founded by the MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, has launched its attack against Microsoft's Media Center XP by releasing a low-cost PC with iDot that comes bundled with LindowsOS v3.0 and various multimedia applications.

Computer's prices start from $399 without a monitor and it includes software tools for DVD and MP3 playback as well as other multimedia formats. According to the Lindows, the computer boots in 10secs and can be used with on-screen menus by using mouse or keyboard. Computer can be attached to a regular TV and uses low-cost PC parts from Via and other manufacturers. The computer is about the size of a thick phonebook.

According to various surveys, so-called "Home Theater PCs" are gaining momentum and while most of the users still prefer to build their own HTPC systems, brand name manufacturers are jumping into the bandwagon with Media Center XP PCs.

More information: Lindows.com

MPEG-4, a "new" audio and video standard, developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group, is getting its final pieces together and standardized. ISMA (Internet Streaming Media Alliance) is planning to standardize MPEG-4 DRM specifications as soon as possible.

Lack of standardized DRM has been sought as the final obstacle in wide-spread use of MPEG-4 in commercial applications such as video-on-demand over TCP/IP networks.

According to ISMA, alliance has had extensive talks with Hollywood studios over the proposed DRM specifications and has hear lots of praises for its open DRM architecture ("open" being in different meaning as in "open source", rather meaning "anyone can license it by coughing up enough money") and overall MPEG-4 standards.

More info: News.com

Recording Industry Association of America announced today that its chief executive, Hilary Rosen, will step down from her post by end of this year. According to the statement, she's leaving to spend more time with her family.

Rosen became CEO of the organization in 1998 and during her reign, the RIAA has transformed itself from the previous anonymity to become an acronym that is recognized worldwide and very often associated with various lawsuits the organization has fought during the last couple of years.

Rosen became a CEO when the Internet was rapidly growing and MP3s were approaching Joe Average's living room, although the Joe Average didn't know that yet in 1998. In 1999, a small start-up called Napster changed everything -- RIAA's world, people's thinking of what's legal and what's not and much, much more. Since then, the world of P2P has shadowed Rosen's organization while its members, the record labels, have failed miserabely to make any good out of the new technology and opportunities it offers.

More information: RIAA.org

RealNetworks has released the last piece in its open source multimedia streaming jigsaw by releasing the much-awaited Helix DNA Server as an open source product. Real made big headlines in last summer when it announced that it will release all of its media delivery products as open source.

Company released its client software, dubbed as Helix DNA Client and its encoding product, Helix DNA Producer, in last year and claims now that over 10,000 developers are already working with the products and developing their own customized versions of the tools.

Real has been locked in a long and expensive fight with Microsoft in order to dominate the rapidly growing multimedia market. Both companies have extended their reach to new areas, such as mobile phones, stand-alone multimedia players, etc. Both companies have also tried to lure the Hollywood and record labels to choose their platforms as the next industry standard for multimedia distribution in digital age.

More information: HelixCommunity.org

A federal judge decided today that American ISP, Verizon Communications has to disclose the name of the alleged P2P user in its network to RIAA.

Judge John Bates decided that according to the controversial DMCA law, Verizon has to disclose the identity of the user who RIAA suspects of using P2P networks for distributing illegal MP3s.

Verizon had suggested an alternative route, where copyright owners, such as RIAA, would sue anonymous "John Doe" and if found guilty of charges, the ISP would then disclose the user's identity, not earlier.

Verizon will most likely appeal the decision.

Source: News.com

In a very unsurprising move, Norway's "white-collar crime" unit, Økokrim has decided to appeal the court decision earlier this month where the Norwegian court found that Jon Johansen didn't break the law when he allegedly "created" the controversial DeCSS tool.

According to Johansen's counsel, this wasn't a suprprise move. "There were signals from Økokrim quite early, that they would appeal and that they see this case as dealign with an important principle. We believe that the first verdict was extremely thorough, but that doesn't prevent them from appealing," he told to the press.

Source: Aftenposten

Hilary Rosen, the chairman and CEO of the RIAA, told press in Cannes, France that ISPs (Internet service providers) should pay RIAA and other copyright organizations "taxes" because their users use P2P networks -- and therefor distribute and download illegal music, movies, etc.


"We will hold ISPs more accountable. [..] Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said. Rosen suggested that a fee or "royalty payments" have to be imposed on ISPs and they can then pass the fees to their customers.

Because it is virtually impossible for ISP's to monitor who uses P2P networks and who don't -- and who use P2P networks for legal purposes and who don't --, it would basically mean that all users would have to be charged for the "RIAA tax", whether they do anything illegal or not.

Source: News.com

It seems that Finnish equivalents of American RIAA, Teosto, which represents songwriters and publishers, and Gramex, which represents music producers and artists, want to force Finnish day nurseries to pay royalties every time nursery staff sings along with kids.

Currently most of the Finnish cities have an existing deal with Gramex to use pre-recorded music in government-owned day nurseries. But now it seems that also Teosto wants to have its slice. According to Teosto's rep, every "musical performance" that uses copyrighted songs -- including sing-along by staff with the kids -- should be liable of paying royalties to Teosto. Also Gramex wants to force the private (those not owned by government) day nurseries to pay for the records they use in nurseries.

In last year both organizations demanded Finnish government to abolish the system that allows churches to use religious hymns without royalties, even if the songs would normally require royalties to be paid (the copyrights cease 70 years after the original composer's death).

Source: Iltalehti (requires registration, Finnish only)

Ok, the news that shocked the world yesterday, are now clearer. RIAA really made a deal with large tech companies and dropped its support for so-called "Hollings' bill" and similiar legislation modifications that would require tech companies to implement hardware and software-based copy protection mechanisms to all consumer products.

But the deal has its price. Technology companies agreed to support legislations that would allow copyright owners, such as RIAA, to hack P2P users' computers and spoof P2P networks. Tech giants also agreed to object any possible Congress proposals for broadening consumer "fair use rights" to copyrighted material.

Source: The Globe And Mail

In Taiwan, where the government has declared a war against pirates, namely VideoCD pirates, the stakes are getting higher. In latest bootleg releases, such as 007: Die another day, the end credits have been replaced with text Catch me if you can, Chen Ding-nan!" Chen Ding-nan is Taiwan's justice minister.

"Their behavior is really rampant. But let me take advantage of this free propaganda via the media to again remind them that prosecutors never stop cracking down on piracy," said Chen when he was approached by reporters yesterday.

Source: Taipei Times

According to Wall Street Journal, the music industry association RIAA is about to join almighty technology companies, led by Intel, HP and Microsoft, to oppose so-called Hollings' bill which is strongly supported by the movie industry association MPAA.

The reasoning behind RIAA's possible decision to do so is not clear, since the Hollings bill basically would make it absolutely, totally illegal to copy or backup copyrighted material in the United States and would require hardware and software manufacturers to implement blocks to make it reality.

The addition of the other major immaterial industry against the proposed bill might be fatal to bill's future, since MPAA and RIAA are pretty much equal in size in terms of lobbying power and revenue.

Source: The Inquirer

Los Angeles federal judge ruled on last week's Friday in a landmark decision that the owner of Kazaa, Sharman Networks, can be sued in the United States.

The ruling is a landmark that many, many countries and companies have been watching carefully, since with this decision United States basically applies its own law to foreign companies and possibly also to foreign individuals if the ruling is going to be used also against Sharman Networks' executives.

Sharman Networks claimed that it can't be sued in the U.S., because company is headquartered in Australia, registered in small island of Tuvalu and runs all of its servers outside U.S. However, the judge decided that since many of the Kazaa's users are Americans and that most of the movie studios and record labels who are sueing it are American, it can be sued in the U.S.

Now, because of this decision, Sharman Networks' case will be bundled with the other FastTrack companies' cases. In so-called "FastTrack case", the movie and music industries (MPAA and RIAA) have sued three software companies who distribute P2P clients that connect with FastTrack P2P network; Sharman Networks, Streamcast (which owns Morpheus that used to use FastTrack network, but doesn't use it anymore) and Grokster.