News written by Petteri Pyyny (August, 2004)

Confirming the announcement made in January, world's second largest computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard told today that it will start selling its branded version of Apple's iPod digital audio player in next month.

HP's versions of iPod will include 20GB and 40GB models that will cost exactly the same as Apple's own models do -- in the U.S. that means $299 and $399, respectively. The players will be called "the Apple iPod from HP".

In addition to iPod deal, HP also announced that it will follow the footsteps of Gateway by entering to the consumer electronics market by launching a line of flat-panel TVs, media PCs, digital projectors and stand-alone photo printers.

Source: International Herald Tribune

American cell phone operator Sprint has delivered first major victory for Apple in software companies' fight for mobile platform dominance by launching a video service in the U.S. that uses Apple's QuickTime video format to deliver video clips for mobile phones.

Previously, RealNetworks has dominated the mobile video market as its mobile video player comes bundled with all Nokia's Series 60 smart phones. However, the new service from Sprint is now limited to only one handset, Samsung MM-A700.

Source: The Register

Security site Secunia has issued a warning about a security exploit using WinAMP skins. The problem is within WinAMP's skin zip files' (.wsz files) insufficient restrictions to control what can be launched from skin file's XML "browser" tag.

With this exploit, a skin file can launch executable programs when used with WinAMP, thus allowing malicious WinAMP skins to be created that can do virtually anything with user's computer. At the moment the solution to the problem is to use some other media player instead of WinAMP. The vulnerability has already been found in the wild.

Source: Secunia

British radio station Virgin Radio (which is not part of Virgin Group anymore) has teamed up with Napster UK to launch an online music chart called (very creative..) The Napster Online Music Chart.

The timing is rather interesting, as the new chart will go live on 29th of August, just days before the official UK download chart will launch on BBC Radio 1. The official UK chart includes Napster's sales figures, but also sales figures from Apple's iTunes and from all OD2's partners.

The deal between Virgin Radio and Napster is also slightly confusing to general public, as the Virgin Group, who used to own the Virgin Radio, is about to launch its own digital music service called Virgin Digital that will rival Napster in the UK and in the United States.

More information:

BBC
The Register

Music Managers Forum, an organization that represents 650 British music industry managers, have publicly announced that they oppose the rapidly growing trend of bundling free music CDs with (especially British) newspapers and tabloids.

Apparently their reasoning behind the statement is that by giving the music "free" with a newspaper issue, consumers get the idea of music itself being free or extremely cheap -- undermining the recording industry's mantra about music being extremely valuable intellectual property that should be compensated well. Also, MMF is worried that by giving out the most popular tracks of the album in a "free" CD ("free" being slightly misleading, as the newspaper pays for that music and charges it in higher retail prices from buyers anyway), the habit discourages people from buying artists' albums. Then again, we could argue that ever since legal online music stores that offer single-track purchases arrived, the value of a full album has plummeted anyway, as most consumers really just want to have the tracks that they hear on radio and TV and not the rest.

Anyway, now some labels have already stopped from allowing their tracks to be used in newspaper promotions, but some still consider it to be an easy, additional way to monetize from artist's music.

World's largest movie rental chain, Blockbuster, has finally bowed to pressure from online DVD rental services like Netflix and launched its own online DVD rental service in the United States this week.

Blockbuster's service cuts the Netflix's monthly fees by $2, offering a model where users of the service can hold three movies at home at any given time and pay $19.99 per month for the service. In addition to that, Blockbuster also offers two free "offline" rentals a month from its rental stores.

Blockbuster also announced that it will try to cut the logicstic costs of the online service by integrating its online and brick-and-mortar services by end of 2005, sending the movies and handling the returns at local Blockbuster stores rather than in nationwide warehouses. Concept sounds familiar -- that is exactly the way how Tesco built the world's only hugely profitable online grocery store service in the UK. But selling bread online and fighting against established online players like Netflix are two different things, even when you have a brand name like Blockbuster has.

Source: Washington Post

Virgin (probably one of the world's most diverse companies..) has filed an official complaint against Apple in France. Virgin has submitted a complaint to French Competition Council complaining about the fact that Apple refuses to license its FairPlay DRM system to third parties in order to make their online music stores compatible with Apple's hugely successful iPod digital audio player.

The complaint made its way to the media today in Apple's latest Securities and Exchange filing and represents yet another legal action against it since it launched the iTunes Music Store last year.

Source: Macworld

E-Data announced today that Apple has settled a patent lawsuit E-Data had filed against Apple's iTunes Music Store service. E-Data's patent can be considered one of "those whacky ones", as it covers such "limited" process as "downloading and recording of information, such as music, onto a tangible object, such as CDs, DVDs and MP3 players."

E-Data's patent expired in the United States already in January, 2003 -- three months before Apple launched its online music service, but the patent is still valid in Europe and iTunes launched its service in Europe in June, 2004. Earlier this year, Microsoft settled with E-Data to avoid court case against its European music download services.

E-Data also announced that it has sued yet another 14 companies for violating its patent. Companies include The New York Times Company, Hallmark Cards and Ticketmaster.

The details of the settlement were not announced.

Source: MacObserver

As part of the free-trade agreement (that was signed today) between the United States and Australia, Australian government and the leading opposition party of the country have both accepted the fact that Australia now has to implement all the key proportions of the American DMCA legislation into its own national legislation.

This means that after Australia implements the required changes, selling, developing or distributing of tools that allow copy protection circumvention will become illegal. Open source DVD players for Linux? Illegal. DVD backup tools that circumvent CSS copy protection found on virtually all DVD movies? Illegal. Copying tracks to your iPod from a copy-protected CD that you legally own? Illegal.

The agreement also requires Australia to allow software patents -- patenting code has been so far impossible in Australia -- and requires Australia to extend the time that copyrights are valid.

More information:

News.com
Herald Sun