News written by Rich Fiscus (November, 2009)

UK lawmakers officially announced the Digital Economy Bill intended to address issues identified by the Digital Britain Report. As expected it makes communications regulators at Ofcom responsible for curbing unauthorized P2P file sharing.

Initially it doesn't go quite as far as entertainment industry representatives would like, and only requires that ISPs forward warning letters about alleged illegal file sharing activity from content owners to their customers.

However, if Ofcom doesn't find that unauthorized downloads have dropped by 70% at some so far unspecified point in the future the Secretary of State would be authorized to ask Parliament for the authority to force ISPs to punish accused file sharers.

This action could include bandwidth caps, daily download limits, and of course the most controversial measure of all - kicking customers off the internet based on nothing but allegations.

ISPs have publicly criticized the idea of putting them in the middle of the fight against P2P-based copyright infringement for a number of reasons ranging from the cost of enforcement to the apparent lack of concern for consumer rights.

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Last year Hollywood introduced a new feature called the Digital Copy. It's supposed to be a solution for watching your movies on your portable media player, and has been promoted as the legal alternative to ripping and encoding movies at home.

To date, here at Afterdawn we have been generally dismissive of the entire idea of Digital Copy. It has always seemed like a solution to the wrong problem. Instead of eliminating the ridiculous DRM restrictions on DVD-Video it adds a different type in the hope this will convince people not to rip DVDs.

In the nearly two years since the first Digital Copy enabled DVD went on sale it has become a common feature on new DVDs, and even spread to Blu-ray discs. So instead of just poking fun we're going to take a serious look at the Digital Copy included with the Watchmen Director's Cut DVD to give you a more accurate assessment.

The DRM

Before we get to the video file itself let's take a close look at Digital Copy's limitations, and there sure are plenty to look at. But basically they all boil down to Digital Rights Management.

A DVD with Digital Copy includes two different types of video file, corresponding to the two major types of DRM. You can choose between an iTunes copy, which as the name suggests uses Apple's FairPlay DRM, or Windows Media, which is protected by Microsoft's DRM of the same name.

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The emergence of the DVD as a primary source of home entertainment coupled with the introduction of analog video capture and digital TV has made it common for consumers to own hundreds (or even more than a thousand) movies.

That, in turn, has created a market for software to catalog those collections with. Many people want a convenient way to keep track of what they own. Some are also interested in putting that data into a more useful form, such as a printed report or a personal website.

There are a number of programs designed for those purposes, and it can be hard to figure out which one is right for you. I tested five such programs to find the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Along with each review I've included some basic ratings. Although I think such ratings presents an accurate picture of the software in question, they aren't a substitute for the accompanying text, which goes into detail about my experiences.

And of course there's no substitute for trying software out for yourself. Ant Movie Catalog is free so you can test it as long as you wish. The free version of DVD Profiler allows you access to most of the commercial verson's features as long as you have no more than 50 discs in your collection. The others are offered in trial versions.

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The results of a new study conducted by Demos, a London-based public policy think tank, once again affirm that the people who download the most music spend more than average buying music legally.

Demos talked to 1,008 UK residents between the ages of 16 and 50. Each respondent was asked about their use of both legal and illegal means to obtain music. Their conclusions match those of other studies conducted in the past.

Of those who said they download from P2P or other unauthorized sources, the number who buy "a lot more" music is almost exactly the same as those who buy "a lot less," at 10% and 11% respectively. Nearly half of illegal downloaders (47%) said it doesn't affect how much music they buy.

That should be the most important fact for record labels, because compared to the population as a whole those unauthorized downloaders buy a lot.

Although the percentage who also buy CDs was almost identical among illegal downloaders and the entire group surveyed, the average amount of money spent was considerably higher - £77 for unauthorized downloaders compared to £51 for all respondents.

In other words most people aren't downloading illegally because they don't want to pay. They do it because they love music.

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Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) are taking advantage of manufacturing on demand (MOD) technology to offer a selection of movies on DVD which hadn't previously been available. Some have never been released in any home video format.

Movies in the TCM Vault Collection Presented by Universal can be purchased in sets or individually.

An inititial offering, the Universal Cult Horror Collection, is priced at $44.99, with individual titles in the five movie set selling for $19.99 each.

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Last week at Cable-Tec, the cable television industry's technical tradeshow, Panasonic showed off TVs and set-top boxes featuring tru2way support. Introduced last year, tru2way is an add-on to CableCard, a technology which enables the decryption of digital (QAM) signals from US cable television operators.

Unlike basic CableCard technology, which doesn't work with interactive services like Video On Demand (VOD), tru2way is designed to be a complete replacement for traditional cable company provided digital cable receivers.

There's been quite a bit of interest from consumer electronics manufacturers, most notably Panasonic. Earlier this year an official from the National Cable Trade Association told the FCC "cooperation and open communication between cable and CE has never been better."

Unfortunately the date by which most US cable customers were supposed to have access to tru2way compatible service (July 9,2009) has come and gone.

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Last Qtrax announced a schedule for rolling out their ad-supported music download service in the Asia Pacific Region.

Qtrax is probably most famous for a PR stunt in which the service was launched without any actual music to download. However, since that time they have been able to get the necessary licensing deals in place to offer a selection of music similar to the now defunct SpiralFrog service.

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On2 Technologies, the video compression company Google is acquiring for $106.5 million, announced a net loss of $1.6 million for the third quarter of 2009. It's an improvement over the same quarter last year when they lost nearly $30 million.

"While we are pleased with our third quarter performance, we recognize that our revenue is still subject to quarter-to-quarter variability," said Matt Frost, On2's COO and interim Chief Executive Officer.

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