News written by Petteri Pyyny (January, 2005)

Norway's Supreme Court has upheld the lower court's earlier ruling and decided that linking from a website to MP3 files is illegal even when the actual MP3 files aren't hosted by or in any way associated to the website linking to them.

Case is about a Norwegian teenager named Frank Allan Bruvik who set up a website called napster.no back in 2001 and allowed his users to submit direct links to MP3 files that would then become a huge browsable list of links to MP3 files across the Web.

Now, the case sounds like a really simple -- providing links to illegal material, guilty. Not quite. Can Google be sued, closed down and its owners thrown to jail because they provide links to millions and millions of sites that distribute cracks, illegal audio copies, etc. Should the person linking to an external site take a full responsibility of the material also behind that link? And where is the limit? Is it that linking directly to .mp3 files is illegal? Is it legal if I'd link to a otherwise blank page (instead of directly to the MP3 file itself) that has only a link that says "Download" and that would then open up the MP3 file?

Well, Norwegian court has decided that its technical knowledge is broad enough to answer to all of these questions and apparently direct linking to illegal material, even if it is not put there or hosted by you, is illegal. Period.

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Group of consumer electronics companies, dubbed as Marlin Joint Development Association, have decided to unite in order to develop a universal DRM scheme for consumer electronic devices, such as future video and audio players. Companies are worried that a possible situation where each and every hardware and software vendor and every single content publisher has their own set of DRM schemes available.

DRM, or digital rights management as it is called, is a way to limit consumer's use of purchased digital content. A typical -- and one of the best implementations of relatively user-friendly DRM scheme -- example is the Apple's FairPlay that is used for tracks purchased from iTunes -- each track is digitally signed so it can be only played in specified number of computers (and, as to prove the problems with DRM schemes, can be played only with specific application, in this case with Apple's iTunes software), specific devices (iPods) and burned to an audio CD. Ultimately, content owners would love to see a scheme where you can watch a TV show, but you must pay few cents for recording it. And most likely you could only watch the recorded show only a specified number of times. And transferring to other devices would cost few cents more, etc.

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Group of Chinese DVD player manufacturers have filed a class action against the western consortium, 3C DVD Patent Group, who own most of the patents related to the DVD technology. The Chinese manufacturers behind the case include Wuxi Multimedia and Orient Power (Wuxi) Digital Technology.

Patent issues have been a hot topic during the last couple of years; the big fight was launched by Philips back in 2002 when it took the matters to courts in the U.S. and in the European Union, threatening to ban imports of unlicensed DVD players from China. Chinese manufacturers, such as Apex, had already managed to take lion's share of global DVD player markets, but refused to pay licensing fees for western patent owners that include Philips, Sony and Pioneer.

Eventually, most Chinese manufacturers and the 3C alliance forked a deal under which manufacturers pay a fixed fee of $20 (appx. €15.4) for each sold DVD player. But as DVD players' prices have plummeted, the fixed fee is now almost half of the average wholesale price for basic DVD players.

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Apple and Pepsi have agreed to launch a new iTunes promo in the United States, following the similar deal the companies made back in 2003. The previous promotion was launched at the beginning of year 2004, but its results weren't exactly impressive.

Now it seems that Pepsi has decided to give the iTunes a one more shot, specially now since iPod has truly made its way to become the best-selling digital audio player in the world. The deal also doubles the number of promotional tracks Pepsi will hand out from the last year's 100 million to this year's 200 million. Every third Pepsi bottle will have a winning lid that contains a code for one free iTunes track.

The promotion will run from 31st of January until 30th of April and will be available only in the U.S.

Source: TechNewsWorld

Red Cross has officially denied to have anything to do with a trust based in Vanuatu that owns the Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa P2P application. Red Cross was caught in the crossfire back in December last year when MIPI, the recording industry's watchdog in Australia, claimed that Red Cross might be involved with the Kazaa's ownership structure.

MIPI has been in courts against the Sharman Networks in Australia for quite some time now and the legal proceedings against the Sharman are still very much on-going matter. However, it is clear that nobody really knows who ultimately owns Sharman and Kazaa, as the trust that controls Sharman's all shares, is registered in Vanuatu, a small country that has very strict privacy rules about shareholder information.

Source: Port Vila Presse

Legal online music store Napster has decided to drop its per-song and per-album prices in the United Kingdom to match the current prices of Apple's iTunes service.

Napster's new price for one track is £0.79 (€1.12, $1.49) and for one album £7.95 (€11.32 , $14.96) -- exactly the same as iTunes. However, iTunes has been under heavy criticism in the UK due the fact that its pricing in the UK is far more expensive than in the United States (where one track costs $0.99) and in the mainland Europe (where one track costs €0.99), so Napster's price cut isn't exactly a dramatic one.

Source: Silicon.com

Apple continues its domination in digital music arena. Company announced yesterday that it has now sold more than 10 million iPod portable digital audio players since its launch in October, 2001.

Despite the fact that iPod's concept is over three years old, it has really hit the mass market only last year -- according to Apple, it sold 4.5M iPods during the last three months alone. And as it goes, it is highly likely that the recently announced iPod Shuffle will boost the figures even further, as it caters to a new market with its less-than-$100 price tag.

Source: PC Pro

South Korean appeals court has decided that the two Korean brothers who ran the most popular South Korean P2P service, Soribada, didn't violate copyright legislation.

The court found that while Soribada's users clearly broke the law, Yang Jeong-hwan and Yang Il-hwan, didn't themselves break the Korean copyright legislation by running the Soribada network.

However, in a separate lawsuit against the Soribada system itself, not its founders, South Korean high court decided that Soribada, as a service, contributed to the copyright infringements made by its users and has to be shut down immediately, upholding the earlier lower court's decision.

Chosun

As western consumer electronic companies, most notably Philips continue their efforts to crack down on Chinese DVD player manufacturers who try to escape from paying royalties for DVD technology, several Chinese and Taiwanese DVD player manufacturers might drop their support for DVD in favor of their own homegrown video format, FVD (Forward Versatile Disc).

The format, which was developed by Taiwanese electronic companies, supported by Taiwan's government, was launched in last year's April and provides slightly higher storage space than the current DVD-Video format, but still uses red laser rather than blue laser (what the "next generation" optical formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, use).

If FVD's support grows in China, it might provide interesting shockwaves throughout the western world as well, as most cheap DVD players are built by Chinese manufacturers and even if their players aimed for western markets would include support for DVD-Video, it seems likely that they'd include a support for FVD as well. First FVD-capable players will launch in Taiwan and China at the end of this month, followed by India, Australia and other Asia-Pacific. Europe and U.S. will get their first FVD players in second half of 2005. The format, obviously, doesn't use DVD discs, DVD structure or anything that has been patented by the DVD Forum member companies.

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Apple introduced their first-ever flash-based portable digital audio player, iPod Shuffle, at Macworld 2005 expo in San Fransisco. The new player lacks display, but works with iTunes and costs only $99 for 512MB version.

Steve Jobs said about the player that "iPod shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100. With most flash-memory music players users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod shuffle you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen."

The device plugs straight to the USB port which also works as a charger for the device. iPod Shuffle is compatible with both, Mac and PC and comes with two varieties: the 512MB version that costs $99 and 1GB version that costs $149.

GeekZone

Philips introduced their upcoming PC DVD recorders at CES expo held at Las Vegas. Their latest drives can record DVD+R DL discs at 8x speed, which means that a full 8.5GB disc gets finished within appx. 15 minutes.

The 8x DL specs are widely accepted by the DVD+RW Alliance and first 8x DL drives should be available by second quarter of 2005. However, we must remember that while dual layer discs have widely existed now for about a year, they still do cost appx. 10 times more than single layer discs, thus making them very, very rare in "real life use". If the prices wont drop dramatically during the year 2005, it might as well be that "next generation" optical storage formats Blu-Ray and HD-DVD make the whole dual layer format a "format-that-never-made-it".

Source: The Inquirer

Napster completed its transformation from Roxio to Napster officially yesterday when the company began trading in NASDAQ under the name of Napster, using the ticker symbol of NAPS.

The change comes after the completion of the sale of former Roxio's software division to Sonic Solutions who now owns the Roxio's product line, including the Easy CD/DVD Creator. Roxio was originally part of Adaptec who spun off the CD software division as Roxio.

Napster will now focus on its core business, online digital music retailing and competes against the Apple's iTunes service and a large selection of smaller players in the market.

Source: The Register

Alright, it is time to announce the winners of our first-ever competition. Without further babble, here are the winners and their prizes:

1. taydar
   • Piodata 16X DVD±RW Double Layer Retail (OEM of Pioneer)
   • Alcohol 120% DVD/CD Emulation and burning software
   • DVDXPlatinum by X Software
   • Video Vault by X Software
   • Poets of the Fall: Signs of Life
   • AfterDawn.com T-shirt
2. tater9104
   • Alcohol 120% DVD/CD Emulation and burning software
   • DVDXPlatinum by X Software
   • Video Vault by X Software
   • Poets of the Fall: Signs of Life
   • AfterDawn.com T-shirt
3. millicuri
   • External 2.5" HDD case (USB 2.0)
   • DVDXPlatinum by X Software
   • Video Vault by X Software
   • Poets of the Fall: Signs of Life
   • AfterDawn.com T-shirt
4. thommo02
   • DVDXPlatinum by X Software
   • Video Vault by X Software
   • Poets of the Fall: Signs of Life
   • AfterDawn.com T-shirt
5. freeway43
   • DVDXPlatinum by X Software
   • Video Vault by X Software
   • Poets of the Fall: Signs of Life
   • AfterDawn.com T-shirt

Congratulations to all winners!!

Most popular DVR system in the United States, TiVo, is expanding its reach to desktop PCs and later -- according to the company -- to DVDRs. The new service dubbed as TiVoToGo is available via the latest firmware update on Series 2 TiVo boxes and allows users to transfer the recorded TV programs to desktop PCs.

Exact technical specs are non-existent in press releases, but it seems tha in order to watch the TiVo recordings on PCs, users need to install a separate application called TiVo Desktop and an appropriate codec for viewing the material.

However, company announced that the DirecTV versions of TiVo wont be able to use the new service and neither could third party DVD recorders by Humax, Pioneer, etc that have TiVo technology embedded within them. But company said in its press release that most DVD recorders with an embedded TiVo service should be upgradeable to use the TiVoToGo.

Anyway, the service sounds tempting for American consumers and the new service is already included within the TiVo's monthly subscription fee, so its simply a matter of owning a correct version of the TiVo device (Series 2) in order to use it.

Company will also soon offer a version of Sonic's MyDVD that will enable TiVoToGo users to burn their recording to DVDR discs.

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The year 2004 is coming to its end and its time to take a quick look at the major events in the digital multimedia world and also to our own site as well. Before I began writing this article, I took a quick look at our last year's summary and noticed that the topics were pretty much the same year ago as well. So, the year 2004 didn't provide anything revolutionary in terms of digital multimedia, but rather allowed existing developments to evolve further.

Recording industry's jihad goes global

In the United States, RIAA continued its efforts to clamp down the P2P traffic by sueing thousands of individual P2P users in the U.S. But the most interesting development in this area was the recording industry's decision to take the war against P2P users global by launching a major attack against European P2P users in October. Also, the movie industry joined forces with the RIAA and MPAA also launched its first-ever attack against individual P2P users in the U.S.

BitTorrent phenomenom

BitTorrent made its way to the headlines in 2004, making itself the hottest P2P technology available and causing even more serious headaches to music industry -- but also, finally something to seriously think for movie industry, as BitTorrent proved itself to be the most efficient method of transferring full DVDR copies of DVD movies over the Net.

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