News written by Petteri Pyyny (February, 2004)

Microsoft cheered today when an industry body DVD Forum made a decision to support Microsoft's Windows Media 9 format in upcoming HD-DVD standard.

Based on the decision, all HD-DVD players will have to support three different types of video encoding -- MPEG-2 (the one that current DVD-Video discs and digital TV use), H.264 (latest standardized video encoding layer of MPEG-4) and VC-9 (the video technology behind the Windows Media 9 format).

Decision is obviously a huge boost to Microsoft's efforts to get into big boys' movie business. DVD Forum also approved a near-ready specs for rewritable HD-DVD discs -- it has previously already approved specs for read-only discs.

HD-DVD is based on blue-laser technology and competes directly against the other blue-laser optical technology, Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is supported by virtually all the consumer electronics companies and there are already Blu-Ray discs and devices available in Japanese markets, so the fight over the next generation of optical storage format is only beginning..

Despite the fact that DVD-CCA dropped its case earlier this year against a California resident Andrew Bunner, he and EFF wanted to continue the case in appeals court to get court's opinion to the DeCSS case that was launched in 1999.

Now, California Court of Appeals Sixth Appellate District overturned the original injunction handed out in 1999 against Andrew Bunner and several other individuals. Back then, DVD-CCA argued that distributing the DeCSS code in California violated against state's trade secrets legislation. Court overturned the decision because DVD-CCA failed to provide evidence that the CSS, a copy protection mechanism found on many DVD-Video discs, is still a trade secret.

"We are thrilled that the Court of Appeal has recognized that the injunction restricting Mr. Bunner's freedom of speech is not justified," said Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze. "Today's Court ruling that there is no evidence that CSS was still a trade secret when Mr. Bunner posted DeCSS vindicates what we have long said; DeCSS has been available on thousands of websites around the world for many years."

After months of programming and investigating, we've finally managed to isolate the login problems that caused headache to our users, specially those with AOL. The old authentication method has been scrapped now and replaced with a new one that, according to user reports received today, solves the problems that related to non-standard proxy servers. So, from now on, AOL users should also be able to login to our site and post news comments and forum posts.

Also, we've improved our news page rather dramatically. The layout has been improved and the old archive-style has been moved to a separate archive page. Also, the new layout includes a direct form for news search that should be significantly better for searching specific news headlines than our regular, more generic search.

We have various other stuff coming up in upcoming months, but the biggest problem at the moment is not really related to the site's functionality itself, but to the stability -- or lack of it -- of our current web server setup that has caused our traffic to plummet by as much as 10% during the last 5-6 weeks. We're in process of switching our application server to a more stable one within next week or so and we hope -- we truly, truly hope -- that this will solve the stability problem for good.

Our little sidekick project, MP3Lizard.com, achieved one of its significant milestones last night when the 5,000th MP3 was uploaded to the service.

MP3Lizard.com, which is operated by AfterDawn, is a free service for independent artists who wish to distribute their songs on the Net for free. Service was originally part of the AfterDawn.com, but was moved to its own domain in January, 2001.

We've never really promoted the service heavily, but it has its die-hard fans, as we've tried to keep the layout and the structure of the site as clean and simple as possible.

So, if you wish to fill your iPod with legal, free music, simply visit the site and download as much as you want -- and don't forget to vote for tracks as well!

MP3Lizard.com

Napster 2.0, owned by Roxio, announced that since its launch in October, 2003, it has sold over five million songs through its legal online music service.

Napster has managed to secure several rather lucrative deals with various institutions, most notably with universities, such as Penn State and University of Rochester. Company didn't disclose whether these part-of-the-tuition-fee packages were counted into the five million figure or not.

Despite being a pretty impressive number, Napster still lacks well behind the Apple's iTunes, which already reported that it had hit 30 million sales in last month since its launch in April, 2003.

Source: BBC

P2P United, an alliance that represents several commercial P2P operators, has delivered a letter to the RIAA, demanding that the recording industry lobby group proves its claims that the filtering technology RIAA demonstrated to the U.S. Congress actually works in live P2P environment.

The technology, developed by a company called Audible Magic, was used when RIAA demonstrated to the Congress that filtering of illegal material in P2P networks can be done. P2P companies have claimed that such technology is impossible to develop that would 100 percent accurately manage to filter out unwanted -- in this case, illegal -- material without removing legitimate content from the network.

P2P United's claim is rather valid, as the only P2P operator so far that has tried to filter out illegal material from its network -- Napster -- failed, at least according to the recording industry back in 2001.

P2P United also asks RIAA to stop characterizing the Audible Magic technology as a "filter", as it would ultimately change the whole idea of modern decentralized P2P networks, as the material transferred between users -- or "peers" -- would have to pass through a separate server that would inspect the materials legitimity.

After eight months of waiting, San Fransisco federal judge Susan Illston delivered her ruling on high-profile case where Hollywood studios have sued an American company, 321 Studios, that develops tools that allow breaking the copy protection mechanisms found on DVD movie discs.

Judge ruled against 321 Studios' arguments that DVD rippers, as the copy-protection cracking tools are called, help people to use their legal right to backup movies that they own. She said that the copyright law, namely the DMCA legislation, makes it clearly illegal to sell or distribute tools in the United States that allow breaking technical copy protection mechanisms.

"It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put," she wrote. "Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions (of copyright law)."

The ruled that 321 Studios has to stop selling the software, DVD X Copy, within seven days in the United States. Company has the choice of replacing the product with a similar tool that doesn't include the ripper, the part that allows breaking the copy protection mechanism called CSS.

First steps in court have been taken in Canadian high-profile P2P lawsuit, where Canadian Recording Industry Association is asking country's five biggest ISPs to hand over their subscriber details when CRIA asks them to do so.

But ISPs, especially a company called Shaw, are reluctant to do so without a court order, as they fear that such action would violate their subscribers privacy and would obviously be bad business as well. Also, CRIA is learning the hard way that identifying the correct users by IP numbers and P2P nicknames is bit tricky -- according to one of the accused ISPs, one of the three names they have been asked to hand over to CRIA didn't even have an account with the company during the alleged uploading infringement.

CRIA seeks in court a permission to force ISPs to hand over subscriber details without having to sue the alleged file sharers as "John Does" first. "Our message is for all Canadians. You've got to go off the illegal sites and stop uploading music. Everyone recognises this sort of distribution is illegal under Canadian law," CRIA's lawyer said to the press outside the courtroom today.

Trade groups representing movie, game and music publishers announced today that all new CDs, DVDs and games sold in the United States will shortly feature an FBI warning label warning about serious consequences that unauthorized copying might cause to the person violating copyright laws.

The label will replace the old variety of labels already shown in most of the media products and will also be significantly more visible on the product cover. The new warning says "The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000."

Trade groups behind the initiative were MPAA, RIAA and ESA (Entertainment Software Association that represent video game publishers).

Source: Reuters

A woman from New Jersey, Michele Scimeca, has decided to fight against a lawsuit filed against her by the RIAA and has countersued the organization. Scimeca accuses RIAA of violating United States' anti-racketeering legislation and claims that RIAA uses extortion as one of its main weapons against individual users.

The basis of the claims is the fact that RIAA's tactics include a settlement process that it offers to virtually every single P2P user it has sued or accused of illegal activity. And now Michele Scimeca claims that most of the people who have been sued, are simply overwhelmed by the idea of fighting a multi-billion dollar organization in court rooms, that they rather decide to settle the case, however weak the case is against them. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion," Scimeca's attorney wrote in the documents filed to the New Jersey federal court.

Source: News.com

Some clever guy has set up a website with pictures and detailed instructions on how to check whether the Pepsi bottle you're about to buy has a iTunes winning number in its cap or not.

Trick is rather simple, one needs to twist the bottle in certain angle and then take a look underneath the cap. The winning code can't be seen, but in bottles that don't have the winning code, parts of the "apology", namely the text "again" (as in something like "you didn't win, please try again") can be seen.

Now, we're just waiting whether this guy can be sued under DMCA legislation or trade secrets laws...

More info and instructions:

MacMerc.com

Apple announced today that it has so far received over 100,000 pre-orders for its upcoming new portable digital audio player, iPod Mini. iPod Mini will go on sale on Friday in States and costs $249 in the U.S. and €249 in Europe (appx. $320).

The device is Apple's response to cheaper flash-based devices that provide less storage space than original iPods, but cost significantly less. Even that the product isn't exactly cheapest possible on the market, it still seems to fit a niche that wants to have iPod's style but not the price tag that goes up to $499. Obviously the other factor that boosts iPod Mini's sales is the size of the device -- it should offer the identical award-winning user interface that "big iPods" have, but the size of the iPod Mini is only 3.6 x 2 x 0.5 inches (9.1x5.1x1.2cm) and it weights 3.6 ounces (102g).

iPod Mini has a storage capacity of 4GB and comes in variety of colors (unlike the original iPods that come only is "Apple white").

Source: Reuters

RIAA continued its manhunt that it launched last summer against individual P2P users by suing 531 more P2P users in States.

RIAA was forced to change its DMCA-based subpoena tactics in January, when the federal appeals court ruled that ISPs don't need to hand out subscriber details to RIAA without a lawsuit. That decision meant that RIAA had to make sure that the users they're targeting were indeed violating copyright laws and then RIAA has to sue the users using their IP addresses, P2P usernames and online time details to file a "John Doe" lawsuit against the users.

RIAA used the new method first time in January 2004 when it sued 532 P2P users. The latest lawsuits were filed in federal courts of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando and Trenton.

Source: Reuters

Australian IT retailer Conexus has been forced by the country's anti-piracy organization, Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT, an ally of American MPAA), to pull off the shelves a DVD backup product DVD X Copy.

"The letter advised Conexus that, according to AFACT’s interpretation, the product was infringing Australian copyright law," a spokesperson for the company said. "They were told that legal action would follow if they continued to distribute it."

Product, which is developed by American 321 Studios, has sparked already six lawsuits against its developers -- four in States and two in the UK.

After the note from AFACT, Conexus pulled the product and contacted 321 Studios, who replaced the software with a version that ships without an internal DVD ripper. Buyers of the ripper-free version can make the software work exactly like the original that came with the ripper by installing some of the freeware DVD ripping tools that integrate with the Windows, such as DVD43.

Source: ARNnet

DVD Copy Control Association has sued 321 Studios, the company behind DVD X Copy products that allow backing up DVD movies, over alleged patent infringements.

The lawsuit is fourth one that has been filed against 321 Studios in the United States -- company has been sued in New York and in California by group of movie studios and just recently, by Macrovision.

DVD CCA is the organization that owns the patents for copy protection mechanism called CSS, which is used on virtually all commercial DVD-Video discs.

"In taking this legal action, DVD CCA is turning its focus toward those who produce and broadly distribute products in the marketplace that facilitate the widespread infringement of the copyrights on motion pictures that CSS was designed to protect," DVD CCA's attorney Steven Reiss said in a statement. "DVD CCA believes that halting the mass marketing of these illegal products is the most important and effective step toward protecting its property from theft and misuse in a changing marketplace."

321 Studios recently expanded their product line to include game backup software, Games X Copy. Company hasn't responded to the latest lawsuit yet, but issued a separate press release today, responding to Macrovision's lawsuit and claiming it to be completely baseless.

RIAA's Canadian counterpart, Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), has started an American-style legal war against alleged P2P file swappers.

CRIA has sent letters to five Canadian ISPs -- Shaw Communications, Sympatico, Videotron, Rogers Cable and Telus Corp -- demanding the names and other personal details of 29 Canadian customers that it claims have distributed illegal copies of music online via P2P networks. Only one of the ISPs, Shaw Communications, has decided to challenge the demands in court.

"Our customers' right to privacy is very dear to us," said Shaw Communications president Peter Bissonnette.

Shaw's opinion is in clear contrast to the opinion of Videotron, that's owned by a company called Quebecor that also sells music. Videotron stated that they consider file sharing to be "theft" and stated that they will comply with all the court orders and will co-operate eagerly with copyright owners to resolve all issues regarding to P2P use in their network.

Shaw Communications' case will go to court next Monday in Toronto.

Source: CTV

A decision that is supposed to end a long legal fight over the webcasting (for average consumers that's Net radio) royalty rates was agreed by the major webcasters and the recording industry.

According to the agreement reached by the SoundExchange, a former RIAA subsdiary that was spun off to a separate organization last year, and DiMA that represents large webcasters such as AOL and Yahoo!, the new royalty rates for free, advertisement supported webcasts are $0.00076 per performance or $0.0117 per aggregate hour.

U.S. Copyright Office, who rubber-stamped the rates also nominated SoundExchange to be the sole designated agent to collect and distribute the royalties from webcasts.

Source: Reuters via News.com

British company called AudioBooksForFree has developed an interesting concept of something that they call an AK-MP3. It is a 20GB HDD-based portable MP3 player that is built into an ammunition clip of world's (most likely) best known assault rifle, AK-47.

Kalashnikov AK-47 is favoured by various guerilla organizations, Iraqi soldiers and pretty much by everybody (including kids, women, etc in various occassions :-) outside western countries. Anyway, the AK-MP3 can be actually attached to an AK-47 in place of its original ammo clip. The player costs $350 and weights around 450g with lithium-ion battery.

"This is our bit for World Peace," jokes one of the partners behind ABFF, Russian ex-rock-star Andrey Koltakov, "Hopefully, from now on many Militants and Terrorists will use their AK47s to listen to music and audio books... They need to chill out and take it easy."

We apologize for posting such old article as we didn't realize that this product made the headlines already last year, but apparently as the product launch date approaches, various news agencies have picked up the story again.

More information: ABFF

Disney and Microsoft announced today that Disney has agreed to license Microsoft's DRM technology in order to distribute its huge content selection to cell phones, PDAs and upcoming breed of personal media players.

Disney already uses Microsoft's DRM technology via third party; the movie service Movielink delivers the online movie "rentals" using Microsoft's DRM and Windows Media format.

Disney, which has struggled financially during the last couple of years, signed the multi-year non-exclusive deal with Microsoft in order to wider its audience base and to monetize from growing trend of portable media. Portable video has become an ever-increasing selling point for devices such as PDAs that are powered with 400MHz+ XScale CPUs and can boast storage capability of sevaral gigabytes by using compact flash or SD memory cards.

Source: The Mercury News

The anti-piracy subsdiary of Australian Recording Industry Association, called Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), has raided several companies and universities in Australia, trying to find documents that would prove that they have violated Australia's copyright laws.

Raid were launched after Australian court granted MIPI a search warrant, so-called Anton Pillar order, that allows copyright owners to search premises to find evidence of alleged copyright violations. Raid targeted Sharman Networks (the owner of Kazaa), Telstra (Australia's largest ISP) and several major universities.

MIPI plans to use any documents seized in raids in its court proceedings against the companies it has found violating Australian copyright laws. Regarding to the raid to Sharman's offices MIPI's chief, Michael Speck said "Kazaa has built a large international business through encouraging and authorising the illegal copying of music users of its network. It authorises this copying without seeking the licence or permission of the owners and creators of the music, nor does it pay any royalties to either the owners or creators of the music."

University of Rochester in U.S. has followed the footsteps of Penn State university by signing a deal with Napster to allow its dorm residents to use the legal online music service for free ("free" is bit exaggeration as the cost will be added to tuition fees or dorm rents anyway).

Terms of the contract allow dorm residents to stream and download unlimited number of tracks from Napster's (owned by Roxio) music catalog that includes over 500,000 tracks. Catch? Downloaded music can't be burned to a CD or transferred to other devices (such as portable digital audio players) for free, but such right costs $0.99 per track or $9.95 per album for students.

University also plans to extend the deal to cover all of its students later this year and plans to introduce discounted pricing for its staff to the service as well.

Source: University of Rochester press release

According to News.com, portal giant Yahoo! is following the footsteps of pretty much AOL, Apple and Microsoft (and everybody else as well :-) and has plans to launch its own mediaplayer software which would include a frontend to a legal music store.

Yahoo! bought a small start-up called Mediacode in December, 2003 that includes two founding members of Nullsoft (the company that developed WinAMP) in its team and now Mediacode is apparently developing a mediaplayer for Yahoo! that would allow it to compete against iTunes and other iTunes clones.

Yahoo is also rumoured to have had talks with various existing players in the legal music downloads sector, including Roxio (the owner of the p2p-turned-into-legal-music-store Napster) and MusicMatch. Company declines to comment on any of the rumours.

Source: News.com

According to movie industry publication Screen Daily, Italy manages to top the chart for the highest level of movie piracy in a Western country. According to the magazine, the commercial black market for pirated videos and DVDs is worth approximately 30 percent of country's movie market.

Italy's legal DVD and video sales were worth €417M in 2003, but the pirate film market was worth €250M, according to Italy's anti-piracy watchdog FAPAV. Last year alone, over 300,000 illegal DVDs were seized in police raids across the country, but it is estimated that there are over 4 million pirated (commercial piracy alone, not including the home-burned movies) movies still in circulation.

Source: BBC

The P2P-turned-legal-musicstore service Napster, which is owned by Roxio, announced last week that it has increased the number of portable digital audio players that its service supports from just one to 60 devices.

All of the devices are capable of playing Microsoft's DRM-equipped WMA audio format, the format of choice that is used by Napster. With the portable device support, the Napster 2.0 application that acts as the front-end to the online music store, can recognize the authorized device when it is connected to PC's USB port and based on the unique identifier that the portable device sends to the PC, can allow transferring the purchased tracks to the device. System works pretty much like Apple's iTunes that allows transferring tracks to Apple's own iPod audio player. Of course, the problem that Napster faces is the fact that iPod has managed to achieve a status of a culture icon -- specially in the States -- rather than a nice piece of consumer electronics, and Napster doesn't support iPod (as iPod doesn't support WMA files).

Napster also added a possibility to get discounted download prices for users who are willing to buy in bulk. Napster users can now buy packs of 15, 25 or 50 tracks, priced at $13.95, $21.95 or $39.95. All downloaded tracks can be burned to an audio CD or transferred to a portable device.