News written by Petteri Pyyny (March, 2004)

Sony has unveiled its first dual layer DVD recorders, the 700 series. The new drives will feature a 2.4x dual layer DVD+R DL recording in addition to the more common single layer 8x DVD-R and DVD+R recording and 4x DVD-RW/DVD+RW recording.

The internal drive, called Sony DRU-700A is expected to cost $230 and should be available, according to Sony, in second quarter of this year. Meanwhile various major media manufacturers have also announced the availability of dual layer DVD+R DL discs.

Dual layer recording makes the process of backing up DVD movies much easier as the most common DVD disc format nowadays, the DVD-9, will fit on one disc directly without any re-encoding or removing extra features from the disc. So far the only option has been to re-encode DVD-9 discs to fit onto single layer DVD-5 -sized recordable discs.

Sony also announced that once DVD Forum finalizes the dual layer DVD-R specs that Pioneer submitted to the Forum back in October 2003, company will add support for that one as well (assuming that such support doesn't require any hardware modifications but can be done by upgrading the firmware instead).

According to a study conducted by Nielsen NRG on behalf of the MPAA, 40 percent of American parents whose kids use the Net don't know that swapping of copyrighted material is illegal (although its still unknown whether downloading -- not uploading -- such material in States is illegal as AFAIK there are no court cases about that yet).

Study also found that 55 percent of the parents knew that their kids didn't pay for the content they got from the Net and 15 percent didn't know whether their kids paid for the content or not.

Probably the most interesting finding in the study was the fact that one third of the parents who themselves downloaded copyrighted material from the Net learned how to do so from their own kids.

So, MPAA's solution? "Once parents take the time to get the facts and have the increasingly important 'download discussion', they are taking yet one more step in keeping their family safe and raising good 'digital citizens'", MPAA's vice president of public affairs said in the statement.

Source: VNUNet

Romanian programmer Fabian Toader has sued Sharman Networks, the owner of popular file-sharing software Kazaa, over alleged copyright violations. The case doesn't relate to P2P network and files that are shared in it, but relates to the period back in year 2000 when Toader wrote parts of the Kazaa software for Kazaa BV (the original Dutch owner of the Kazaa software that later sold the software to Sharman).

Mr. Toader claims that he worked as a freelancer for Kazaa BV and helped to write the Kazaa Media Desktop software, but didn't sign any contract that would have automatically transferred the copyrights to Kazaa BV.

The fight between Toader and Sharman has been going on for quite a while now, even though it hasn't managed to get into headlines. Back in summer of 2003, Sharman sued Toader alleging him to blackmail the company. The recent lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by Mr. Toader, is a second one filed by him against Sharman. Mr. Toader currently lives in the States and works for Microsoft. He wants Sharman to pay for his work that has been downloaded, including only the latest version, for over 335 million times according to Sharman Networks.

Well-known P2P site ShareReactor has been apparently shut down by the Swiss authorities. According to news sources, Swiss Judical Inquiry Department of Thurgau has shut down the site due copyright infringements. The site was probably the world's largest site that listed direct links to pirated material in P2P networks, using so-called ed2k links that work with eDonkey2000-compatible clients (such as eMule).

The press release by the Swiss Judical Inquiry Department of Thurgau, translated by an individual third party:

Internet-Site taken offline

FRAUENFELD (kapo) Due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws the cantonal judicial Inquiry department of Thurgau has taken down an Internet-Site that served as a link platform for filesharing offerings. A process concerning these matters against the 25 year old owner from Frauenfeld is underway.

The Internet-Site located in Frauenfeld was online for about 30 months and last had over 220.000 hits per day bevor it was taken offline by the Thurgau officials. The in search engines toprated site worked as a anchorpoint for links to downloads of copyright and trademark protectet games and movies that were offered on the filesharing network.

Read more...

Despite pretty massive consumer criticism, Disney has announced that it will expand its disposable DVD trials to several new locations in the United States.

The discs, that aim to replace regular rental DVDs, are called EZ-D and made by a company called Flexplay. They come packed in a airtight packaging and once the wrap is opened, the disc's surface will slowly change, making the disc totally unreadable after 48 hours.

The new trials will begin in Florida and other major markets in U.S. Southwest, followed by trials due to start in September in various other major metropolitan areas, including Kansas City and Austin. Disney also plans to drop the price of the discs from the current $6.99 to $5.99 a disc.

"We are extremely happy with the test, which proved that there is a consumer desire to have an alternative to traditional video rental," said Buena Vista marketing manager Lori MacPherson. "That's why we are more than doubling our retail test markets and adding additional titles."

Source: GuideToHomeTheater.com

Apple originally had set a goal to sell more than 100 million songs via its online music store, iTunes, by April this year, but it today announced that it has so far managed to sell just above 50 million songs. Still a whopping success, but well behind the goals.

The figure, however, excludes the Pepsi promotion sales that itself account -- at least theoretically -- to 100M songs. Apple set the target of 100 million songs back in October, 2003 when it launched its Windows version of iTunes. However, Apple stated that it is now selling more than 2.5 million songs per week, which accounts to total of 130M songs per year if the pace stays at the current level.

Source: ZDNet UK

Coffee giant Starbucks is planning to enter the music business very soon. Apparently the company has teamed up with HP to offer its customers a change to make their own customized CDs while drinking their latte.

Company will offer a music catalog of 250,000 songs that customers can choose tracks from using HP's tablet PCs and when they've made their selection, the CD burning process will be done behind the service desk and the ready-made CD with custom covers will be given to the customer. Tracks will cost $6.99 for five songs and $12.95 for full album.

The first "music-enhanced" Starbucks will be launched in Santa Monica, California and the company plans to roll out the service to its 2,500 stores across the world within next two years.

Source: BusinessWeek.com

Sharman Networks, the company who owns the file-sharing network Kazaa, has appealed the ruling given last week by Australian court that the raids made by the music industry to Sharman's offices in February were legal.

In other words, Sharman still considers that the original raid permission granted by an Australian court was done on illegal basis and therefor all the evidence found in the raids should be considered invalid in Sharman's upcoming legal fight against the music industry in Australia.

The search order granted to music industry watchdog MIPI was based on so-called Anton Pillar legislation that allows such raids by copyright owners if there's a risk that the other party is about to destroy evidence related to copyright infringements. Now, Sharman has stated that as it is already under legal proceedings in the United States, the American legislation makes it already illegal to destroy any evidence and therefor the MIPI shouldn't have been granted the Anton Pillar order at all.

In the previous ruling, the judge stated that it was also necessary to gain "snapshots" of what is happening on Sharman Networks network at any one time. Sharman argues that such activity can be considered as an improper use of an Anton Pillar order.

According to an article in Rolling Stone magazine, the P2P-turned-to-legal-music-store, Napster, might be in serious trouble in various fronts. At least four of its executives have left the company since its launch four months ago and the parent company Roxio has lost 60 percent of its stock market value during that period as well.

However, company denies alleged problems and is quickly to point out that they've managed to sell over 5 million songs since the launch and have received an additional $22.5M from investors to fund the operations. But company has suffered couple of major defeats, most notably the HP's decision to abandon the already-agreed deal to bundle Napster into its new computers and instead opted to utilize Apple's iTunes service.

Source: RollingStone.com

Apple has been sued in France by the French record industry association Sacem for not paying the French blank media levy to the organization. In France, just like in Canada and various other countries, the personal copying of copyrighted material is apparently legal, but music publishers and artists are compensated for this right by having a levy -- or "tax" if you like -- on blank media products. In France these products that carry levy include blank optical media (CDR discs, DVDR disc), tapes, HDDs are other devices that can be used to store copyrighted music by an individual consumer.

Apple has refused to pay the levy for its iPod, which for 20GB model would add up to 20 euros ($24.63) on top of the retail price of the device. Sacem estimates that Apple sold more than 20,000 iPods in France last year with the HDDs between 10 and 40 gigabytes.

Now, the organization says that it "will have no other option than to go immediately to court to make sure that the rights of artists, composers and producers are respected."


Source: AP via Yahoo!

The district court in New York issued a temporary stay of the premilimany injunction on Friday for 321 Studios in their legal case against movie studios Paramount and Fox.

321 Studios asked for immediate temporary stay after the district court ruling in New York in last week's Wednesday and the Judge Richard Owen granted that to them on Friday. Stay means that the New York court order to stop selling "ripper-equipped" versions of 321 Studios' DVD X Copy products is postponed and from New York court's point of view 321 Studios can continue to sell their products equipped with the part that allows circumventing the copy protection found on DVD-Video discs.

Unfortunately the decision doesn't really change anything, since the other district court decision in San Fransisco still restricts 321 Studios from selling their products equipped with the ripper. San Fransisco court also rejected 321 Studios' earlier request for temporary stay of the preliminary injunction.

Despite the San Fransisco's status, 321 Studios has stated that they will apply for a permanent stay in New York on March 15th.

Source: 321 Studios press release

European Parliament today voted to approve the proposed Directive on Intellectual Property Enforcement that gives copyright holders wide powers to attack against people who violate intellectual property rights of copyright holders. Some of the directive's wording was amended after huge pressure from consumer groups, but the main point that consumer groups demanded -- the clear distinction between large scale commercial piracy and copying/sharing for personal use -- wasn't made very clear in the approved directive.

"Under this Directive [that now has been approved], a person who unwittingly infringes copyright - even if it has no effect on the market - could potentially have her assets seized, bank accounts frozen, and home invaded," said EFF staff attorney Gwen Hinze.

Some late amendments were done and now the directive states that action shouldn't be taken against individuals who download music "in good faith" for their own use. But it is left solely on multi-million dollar lawyers of record labels and movie studios to decide what can be considered as "good faith" in music downloading.

Now the EU ministers will most likely approve the directive by the end of this week and eventually it will become a law within European Union. The directive was originally introduced by a MEP (member of European Parliament) Janelly Fourtou, who is the wife of Jean-Rene Fourtou, boss of media giant Vivendi Universal (that owns world's largest record label Universal Music and also various movie studios).

Multi-industry household brand Virgin and its owner Richard Branson have plans to enter into the legal online music market later this year. A new subsdiary of Virgin Group, called Virgin Digital, plans to launch its digital "jukebox" application and online music store in August, utilizing the music catalog and delivery mechanism of MusicNet.

Virgin's plans include, apart from the now-already-traditional online music downloading ability bundled with CD-burning rights, more features aimed at consumer electronics. Virgin's plans are that the service would seamlessly integrate into mobile phones, handheld devices, etc. Obviously this makes sense in many ways, not least because of Virgin Mobile arm of the group.

Company also hinted that it might start a new price war in the market that has now settled to $0.99 per song pricing model. "We're not releasing the (pricing) information but it'll be hyper competitive," Virgin Digital's president, Zack Zalon, said in an interview.

Source: Reuters via CNet

One of the most popular new (well, new-ish..) P2P applications, BitTorrent, has been updated to a version 3.4. The changelog is rather limited, but here it is:

• Client no longer complains of connection to tracker problems when transfers are still working
• Lots of bandwidth savings
• Lots of bug fixes

321 Studios lost its second court ruling within 13 days today. Company previously lost the first round of its Californian lawsuit on 20th of February when court ordered company to stop selling products that contained a code that allowed circumventing the copy protection found on DVD-Video discs, called CSS.

Today, the New York federal judge Richard Owen decided that 321 Studios' products violate the DMCA legislation by allowing circumvention of CSS copy protection mechanism. The decision was basically identical to the one that San Fransisco court ordered on 20th -- company has pulled out all the ripper-equipped versions of its DVD X Copy software and replaced them with similar tools that only lack the "ripper" part.

321 Studios has already announced that it disagrees with the New York ruling (as well as the previous San Fransisco ruling) and will appeal both cases. 321 Studios bases their court process on the fact that American copyright legislation allows consumers to back up material that they own -- but by copy protecting that material and making it illegal to distribute tools that allow circumventing the copy protection, that right has been effectively removed even that it is still stated in copyright legislation as the "fair use" right.

Sharman Networks' (the parent company of Kazaa) attempt to invalidate the evidence found in recent raids to its headquarters in Australia failed today when the Australian federal court rejected Sharman's claims that the raids were made without valid reasons.

Raids were allowed originally by federal Judge Murray Wilcox, who issued so-called Anton Pillar order that allows copyright holders to raid companies if they suspect that the company is violating their copyrights and there's a threat that evidence related to these actions will be destroyed shortly.

Sharman Networks claimed in the court that MIPI, the recording industry organization who made the raid, withheld facts from the judge when they applied for Anton Pillar order. Despite ruling that the evidence is legal, court did state that MIPI and Sharman should work out a mutually agreeable way for MIPI to access the evidence found in raids.

In addition to the ruling about raid's legality, court also ruled against Sharman's request to postpone its court case in Australia until the similar case has finished in the United States against it. Court case in Australia continues on 23rd of March.

Napster, the P2P-turned-into-legal-musicstore, announced today that it is preparing to launch its online music service in the United Kingdom by the end of this summer.

The schedule would likely fall behind Apple's schedule for its iTunes service, as Apple has officially announced already that it plans to roll out its music service in Europe in second quarter of this year.

Also, Napster might have hard time conquering further markets in Europe if iTunes is launched, as planned, in most of the Western European countries while Napster -- already couple of months late even with this one -- is launching its service only in the UK.

Source: Web-User

Thomson, the French company who sells MP3 technology licenses on behalf of German Fraunhofer (who developed the format in 1993), is planning to use the format's widely-recognized name in order to create a copy protected audio format that would carry the same name as the original format, MP3.

The DRM-equipped MP3 format is Thomson's try to gather a chunk of the rapidly-growing legal music download business. But as great as the idea of "legal MP3 store" might sound, the reality is rather different. The new format, despite the same name, wouldn't work with existing MP3 players -- whether they are car stereos, portable audio players or software players.

Its not even clear whether the format actually uses the same compression method as the original MP3 does -- it is actually highly unlikely, as the competing formats, such as AAC (that Apple uses in its iTunes and iPod) and WMA (Microsoft's audio format that virtually all -- apart from iTunes -- legal music stores use), achieve better compression rates than MP3 does (after all, the format is over 10 years old).

European Union is about to vote for a bill entitled "European Union Directive for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights", which would ultimately create a intellectual property legislation that makes American DMCA look like a schoolboy.

The legislation would allow copyright owners, such as record labels, to raid P2P users' homes if they suspect the user for sharing copyrighted material via P2P networks. It would also allow copyright owners to seize users' assets and get their bank accounts frozen whether they had any financial -- or any other -- gain from file sharing or not.

EFF and various European liberty organizations have launched campaigns against the proposed directive. We urge all of our users, specially European users, to submit your thoughts to your MEPs immediately, before the 8th of March when the directive goes to European Parliament's review.

Use this page to contact EU Parliament members with a pre-written message from EFF

More information:

EFF.org
ABCNews.com