News written by Petteri Pyyny (December, 2004)

Few hours ago we reached the milestone of 250,000 registered members on our site. This gives us a striking reminder of the popularity of our site and also highlights our growth during the year 2004, as we announced in April, 2004 that we had just reached the milestone of 100,000 registered member. So, in just over 8 months, we've grown our userbase by 150,000 -- it took originally almost five years to reach the first 100,000. Amazing, simply amazing.

We would like to thank all of our users for making this site one of the most popular multimedia sites in the world and hope that we can "deliver" to your needs also in year 2005. We have several new ideas and developments coming up for year 2005 and we wish that we can continue to meet -- or exceed -- the needs of our loyal users, in terms of news reporting, guides, software selection and discussion forums.

I would personally also wish to thank all of our discussion forum moderators who have done excellent job by creating one of the most popular tech discussion forums in the world. Without moderators' work and determination, the forums would have collapsed into an anarchy years ago, but because of their hard work, our forums have built a reputation for the whole site as a place to be and a place to get your questions answered with ease.

German court has decided in favor of Germany's recording industry's lobby group, the VG Wort, in a dispute that has been going on between it and the country's largest PC maker, Fujitsu Siemens. The decision means that Germany will become the first country in Europe to apply a copyright levy of €12 (appx. $16.33) on all new PCs sold.

Copyright levy as a concept is a rather widespread and widely accepted system across the western countries. Many countries allow home users slightly more copyrights, such as a permission to make limited number of copies of CDs or DVDs they've rented or loaned from their friends for their personal use. The copyright levy is then applied to the recordable storage medium -- originally on analog C cassettes, later to blank video tapes, then to blank CDRs and DVDRs -- and that paid levy is then paid to organizations representing artists, composers, etc compensating them for lost revenue. And now, German court has decided that all PCs are theoretically just multimedia storages and should be treated the same way as blank VHS tapes.

Fujitsu Siemens is considering to appeal the case. The decision, if it stays unchanged in higher courts as well, will apply to all new PCs sold in Germany. CEO of Fujitsu Siemens, Bernd Bischoff, called the copyright levy "a de facto tax on PCs".

The war between the Blu-Ray camp and the companies supporting the HD-DVD doesn't seem to take holidays. Just recently, the HD-DVD camp introduced a hybrid DVD/HD-DVD disc that could store both, standard "old-fashioned" DVD material (upto 4.38GB) and also 15GB of HD-DVD material on a separate HD-DVD layer and thus could be used also with current generation of DVD players.

Now, JVC has released a similar solution for Blu-Ray discs -- the new hybrid Blu-Ray/DVD disc takes a further step and provides a Blu-Ray layer that can be read with Blu-Ray players, but also two layers (equivalent of 8.5GB) for DVD storage, thus making it possible to store regular dual layer DVD to the DVD layers and a 25GB high-defition version of the movie to the Blu-Ray layer.

So, the fight for the crown of "the next generation DVD" is still heating up -- even when the most of the world doesn't even have HDTV -capable TV sets and only Blu-Ray camp has actual products already on store shelves (and only in Japan). Now, which camp will bring out a quad-layer discs that could store two layers of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD data and two layers of DVD data? And when we will see recordable versions of such discs? As both groups plan to bring out their products to consumers by end of 2005, next year will be very, very interesting in terms of digital video..

The AfterDawn.com team would like to wish all our users merry Christmas and a happy new year! The year 2004 has been absolutely amazing in terms of site growth, user growth and the positive feedback we've received throughout the year. Thank you!

Now it's time to take a little break, we'll be back after the holidays. We'd also like to remind our users to participate on our holiday competition before it closes on 31st of December.

On behalf of AfterDawn.com Team,

-Petteri Pyyny

Online movie rental war in the United States is heating up between the world's largest movie rental chain Blockbuster and the number one online movie rental service, Netflix. The race has been in the works for years now, but the last few months have been interesting, as both companies have discounted heavily their subscription prices.

Latest move was made by Blockbuster, who announced today that it will cut its cheapest monthly subscription price by $2.50 to $14.99 a month (€11.20) and guarantees the price until January, 2006. However, this time Netflix is not going to follow the suit; it announced quickly after Blockbuster's price cut that it will maintain its current pricing for all of its subscription services.

But Netflix's chief executive pointed out how desperate Blockbuster must feel right now and how committed they are to online rentals, as they seem to be prepared to sacrifice their traditional video store business in order to fight off the competition from Netflix, Wal-Mart and others. "In my view, Blockbuster just killed the video store by offering $15 pricing for online, but maintaining $25 a month for store-based subscriptions," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said. "They are telling their customers to go online."

Vital: Pias, a European dance music distribution company has signed a deal with Apple to provide the music catalogs of all of its dance record labels to iTunes Europe.

The deal is similar to the one that company had already in place with iTunes in the U.S., but now also provides its small labels an access to their core audience in Europe via iTunes as well. Some of the labels that Vital: Pias represents already had a deal in place with iTunes in Europe.

The labels that Vital: Pias represent include Domino, B-Unique and Global Undergound.

Source: DanceFrontDoor

Finnish authorities have today seized the computers of the administrators of Finnish site Finreactor which was one of the largest sites in Finland listing links to copyrighted materials in BitTorrent network.

According to sources, National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi) raided the admins' homes today and seized all the computer equipment and storage media for further investigation, but released the suspects shortly after the raid. The site itself has been down since early hours of today. Site had over 37,000 registered members and had links to more than 6,000 pirated releases on BitTorrent network. Additionally, the forums of the site boasted a large number of links to releases in other P2P networks, most notably in eDonkey network.

Apparently the NBI acted after it received a request from Finnish copyright associations, including the BSA and Teosto (the Finnish equivalent of RIAA).

Source: National Bureau of Investigation (link in Finnish)

According to USA Today, several American colleges are signing up with legal online music services and expect to launch the services for their students by January, 2005 rather than by next semester (September) due increased demand from students.

Previously the adoption of school-wide licensing deals with likes of Napster have been driven by campus administrators willing to cut down their bandwidth requirements as use of centralized, legal online music service is bound to reduce the enormous P2P traffic many dorms and campuses face. But since RIAA's jihad against P2P users in the United States seems to continue forever, many students have become to realize that having an option to download legal tracks with heavily subsidized prices doesn't sound too bad. Specially after many of the recent P2P lawsuits have been brought against students themselves.

One of the winners in this new mass-licensing game seems to be a company called Cdigix which, unlike its competitors, also provides educational material and movies via its service. One of the universities to sign up with Cdigiz is University of Michigan which will ask its students to cough up $2.50 a month in order to use the service.

UK Film Council, an association that represents British film industry and is backed by the British government, is urging the government to change the legislation in order to tackle an increasing movie piracy in the United Kingdom.

Organization's main targets are counterfeit DVDs that represent a direct threat to legal DVD sales and specifically wants to have new powers to crack down the so-called "car boot sale culture" for counterfeit DVD movies. According to the organization, UK has now the highest level of movie piracy in the western Europe, annual losses adding up to £500M (€723M, $963M).

Organization's proposals include banning camcorders from movie theatres, handing out rewards for people who help to crack down pirates and putting pressure on countries that have "too relaxed" copyright legislation (most notably selected Asian countries). Interestingly though, one of the organization's suggestions was to provide a legal ways to buy movies over the Net -- a market that is still lacking its own "iTunes for movies" service that would make purchasing movies online easy and with as little restrictions as possible.

Source: BBC

Sony's answer to Nintendo's GameBoy line and to Nokia's NGage, a handheld PSP console went on sale in Japan today. Sony expects three million units to be sold by March 2005 and aims to take on the GameBoy DS, the latest handheld by Nintendo, which was released in November.

The console has already drawn a huge interest in Japan and thousands of shoppers were queueing to be the first ones to get the new console this morning, when an initial shipment of 200,000 units were released. PSP costs 19,800 yen in Japan ($188, €142) which is slightly more than its main rival's, GameBoy DS's price, which sells for appx. $150. Nintendo expects to ship more than 5 million units of its DS console by March 2005.

Source: BBC

United States Supreme Court has agreed to review the decision by the Appeals Court of 9th Circuit which found P2P operators Grokster and Streamcast were not liable for the copyright infringements that take place in their P2P networks.

Movie and music industry associations complained about the decision to Supreme Court and now the court has granted a new trial for the case. Whatever the Supreme Court's decision is, it will be final, as in the U.S., Supreme Court's decisions can't be overturned and they act as ultimate guidelines for lower courts on how to implement the existing legislation.

The new case is expected to open in spring 2005 and the ruling is expected by July, 2005.

Source: Associated Press via TBO.com

The online retail giant Amazon has launched an online DVD rental service in the UK, trying to tap into country's growing shift towards online rentals and also aiming to steal a decent market size before the de facto online rental service Netflix launches its own British service.

However, Amazon's service has few nags compared to other similar services already in place in the UK -- its service has a monthly rental ceiling -- its cheapest service that costs £7.99 a month allows users to have two movies at home at any given time, but allows only four DVDs to be rented each month. To spice up its offer, Amazon also offers 10 percent off for DVD purchases made via its UK website for rental service customers.

More information:

MSNBC
ThisIsLondon

Disney announced yesterday that it will support Blu-Ray as its choice for the next generation optical format, instead of the HD-DVD. Disney's announcement means basically that it is more and more unclear which "next generation" format will take over once DVD runs out of steam, as all the major Hollywood studios are almost equally split over the two competing blue-laser technologies.

After Disney's announcement, Blu-Ray camp includes virtually all the major consumer electronic companies, such as Sony, Pioneer and Philips and also some heavy-weight studios like Disney, Sony and MGM. Meanwhile, HD-DVD camp hasn't been resting either -- Toshiba just recently announced a hybrid DVD/HD-DVD disc format and its supporters include studios like Universal and Warner Bros.

As the confusion over the winning next generation optical disc format continues, it is obvious that the transition from DVDs to high-resolution blue-laser formats will begin next year, as HDTV-capable sets get more and more popular, specially in the United States and in Japan, and people will begin to look for content that supports the resolution the TV sets are capable of.

Recording industry brought in several witnesses today in closely watched trial that is taking place in Australia where the worldwide record labels have sued Sharman Networks, the parent company of the P2P network Kazaa. Witnesses were brought in to show that Sharman can, despite its claims, monitor its network and what material is shared through it.

The issue, whether Sharman is able to effectively control its network, is crucial for the outcome of the trial, as if judge finds that Sharman in deed can control its network, but has failed to do so, it might be considered that Sharman has infringed record labels' copyrights.

However, the witnesses brought in by the recording industry were focusing on the fact that various types of "sniffers" -- basically modified Kazaa clients that condone searches across the network for specified word, phrases and names -- can be used to find out whether users are sharing illegal material or not. The claim is obviously true, as anyone can go to the network and do searches, download the files found by the search and check whether the files are what they claimed to be in the filename. But does that mean that the network can be controlled by the Sharman or not? As such monitoring would rely purely on filename recognition and continuous external monitoring, it is hard to see whether this is the case.

Apple and the Band Aid charity have reached an agreement to sell the charity's single via iTunes UK for the same price as normal tracks are sold via the service. But to back the charity's cause, Apple has agreed to donate a further £0.70 to the charity for each song sold via iTunes.

Additionally, the original 1984 song is now also available via iTunes UK and all of its proceeds will go to the charity as well.

The new single contains a remake of the 1984 classic "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and is expected to become the fastest selling single in the UK for the year 2004.

Source: BBC