News archive (11 / 2000)
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 30 Nov 2000 2:07
EMusic has demanded Napster to block 600 users who have supposedly been trading EMusic songs through Napster's file-swapping service. Requests for thousands of more blockades are coming.
Napster is yet to respond to EMusics demands, but these kinds of demands are no news to Napster. Earlier this year Napster blocked thousands of users from accessing their service after the heavy-metal group Metallica demanded users distributing their music to be banned from the service.
EMusic has gathered the list of names they want banned using the software they introduced last week. The program has so far identified 35,000 files suspected to offend EMusic's copyrights. Each offending person received an instant message through Napster suggesting to remove the offending files -- about a third of the persons complied to the demand.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 29 Nov 2000 12:52
While the court battles of Napster and MP3.com make the headlines just about every week, there are some legal battles on the digital-music front you don't hear about that often. A series of digital-music companies are asking for new revisions to the U.S. copyright laws. The revisions would tie up loose ends in the law, and spur the development of on-line digital music deployment.
"Two years ago, Congress wasn't prepared to deal with these issues," says Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents 70 companies that develop and utilize digital technologies to enable Webcasting and the sale of music and video over the Internet. "Online media and the digital-music industries were just getting under way."
The requests of companies such as RealNetworks, Launch, Myplay and MusicMatch were heard at a hearing coverned by U.S. Copyright Office and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The agencies expect to report back to Congress by February.
Source:
Yahoo! Finance
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 28 Nov 2000 2:05
The Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, announced a new online royalty payment organization that will collect performance fees for music webcasts.
The organization, called SoundExchange, will allow copyright holders, record companies and artists, to receive royalty payments from "noninteractive" webcasts such as Internet radio play, but not from MP3 downloads or customized streaming services, for which labels and Internet companies must reach their own licensing deals.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 27 Nov 2000 2:32
MP3.com has reached a licensing deal with David Bowie for streaming his music catalog over the My.MP3.com -service. David Bowie is one of the handful of artists who own copyrights to some of their recordings, even though they are represented by a major record label.
MP3.com still faces ligitation from some independent labels and artists, such as Tom Petty and the Eagles, but the settlements in these cases will be minimal compared to what MP3.com has paid earlier.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 27 Nov 2000 2:16
Once again it's the time to take a look at last week's hot picks. On the software front everything is pretty much the same as last week with one major difference - the eDonkey2000 media-sharing client was replaced by the DVD-tweaking software DVD Genie.
Holochaust still dominates the list, but the new artist of the month, Hugo Flores makes his first appearance on the list with a sample of his song Atlantis.
Hot programs
1.
aMPEG2Avi GUI v1.45
2.
DVD2MPG Squeezer v1.16
3.
DVD Decrypter v1.7
4.
DVD Genie v3.81
5.
AC3Dec v0.8.19
6.
FlasK MPEG v0.594
7.
aMPEG2Avi GUI v1.45a Update
8.
AVI-Plugin v0.15 beta 3
9.
PowerDVD v2.55 trial
10.
WinDVD 2000 v2.3 Trial Version (English)
Hot MP3s
1. HOLOCHAUST : "
Valley of Misery"
2. HOLOCHAUST : "
Beyond the Violence"
3. HOLOCHAUST : "
My Lovely Babe"
4. EMS-Project : "
502 - a Tribute to the Paradroid"
5. HOLOCHAUST : "
Holocaust"
6. HOLOCHAUST : "
Calm Before Thunder"
7. HOLOCHAUST : "
Greed"
8. Dj Rocco : "
Mag's Fashion"
9. Hugo Flores : "
Atlantis (sample)"
10. HOLOCHAUST : "
Nemesis"
Hot skins
1.
062-AZD v1.0
2.
Black Dawn v1.0
3.
Red Dawn v1.0
4.
[^Century-Amp^]
5.
a309 v1.10
6.
kenwood rack
7.
1960 v1.0
8.
Bio Hazard
9.
3210 Amp
10.
Spaceman's FusionAmp v2.01
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 26 Nov 2000 9:28
A new version of the eDonkey2000 media-sharing tool has been released. The new version again features a newly written protocol, so you must update to the latest version in order to continue using the software!
Direct links to the software:
Download eDonkey2000 GUI client for Window
Download eDonkey2000 server for Windows
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 24 Nov 2000 12:42
Hewlett-Packard has been fined $1.60 for each computer it has sold in Germany since February 1998. The fine was set by the German courts for HP's shipping of hardware capable of recording music CDs.
German law imposes a levy on equipment capable of recording music at home. The levy is a small compensation for the losses caused by music piracy, and it is shared among the artists.
In future, HP will have to pay $5.40 for every machine it ships equiped with a device capable of recording music.
Source:
The Register
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 23 Nov 2000 1:49
We're proud to present our new featured artist of the month: Hugo Flores.
Hugo Flores is a 23-year-old Portuguese musician. He's been composing and recording his own material since he was 13, and has already produced and recorded three albums himself - in his own studio. His music, highly appreciated fellow musicians, covers styles from progressive rock to electronica.
Visit Hugo's artist page to download & listen to his tracks!
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 22 Nov 2000 1:02
As suspected, Napster has warned EMusic from breaking their privacy rules.
Yesterday EMusic announced it will be scanning the music offered Napster network for their digital watermarks to determine whether songs bought from their service are offered for free download via Napster. Today, however, Napster stated that they don't concider EMusics 'acoustic fingerprint' technology feasible. Furthermore they are reviewing EMusic's interaction with the Napster system to determine whether or not it compiles with Napster's own privacy policy.
Unlike reported yesterday, the EMusic software doesn't contact the Napster administrators, but instead sends private instant messages directly to the Napster users sharing the offending files.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 21 Nov 2000 3:06
Pop singer Alanis Morissette intends to sell 70,000 shares of the Internet music-service MP3.com. The artist filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission giving notice of her plan to sell common stock valued at $433,090.
According to the SEC document she acquired the shares in April 1999, and during the last three months has sold nearly 200,000 shares valued at over $1.5 million.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 21 Nov 2000 2:58
Internet music company EMusic Inc. announced it will be taking into use a newly designed technology designed to make distribution of EMusics intellectual property on the music-sharing service Napster.
EMusic has designed a software that scans and analyzes the digital music files available on the Napster service. If a song downloaded from EMusic is found on Napster, it automatically sends message to Napster administration requesting rapid removal of the songs in question.
Although EMusic has every right to protect their property and artists, it will be interesting to see how Napster will react to this. The software is essentially a robot scanning the Napster servers. Napster's terms of use strictly prohibit use of any kinds of bots on the service. Will Napster ban EMusics robots from the network? That remains to be seen.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 20 Nov 2000 12:41
Dimension Music has posted a nice report from this years COMDEX exhibition. The exhibition was a heaven for everyone who get their kicks from gadgets (don't we all!?). Luckily for those of us who couldn't be at the exhibition Dimension Music also has tons of pictures of the gadgets on display!
Check out the following pages for details:
The COMDEX report
The photo galleries
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 19 Nov 2000 2:58
Here are the most popular software titles from last week. Mostly the same software we're used to seeing there with one exception. The new-commer to the Internet media sharing field, eDonkey2000, made an impressive entry at number three this week. Way to go Donkey!
Our band of the month, Holochaust, keeps dominating the MP3 charts. Will we see a change in that when the new band of the month is introduced next week? We'll have to wait and see.
062-AZD keeps it's number one spot on the skins chart with the Century Amp grabbing the second seat before the Dawn-skins.
Hot programs
1.
DVD2MPG Squeezer v1.16
2.
aMPEG2Avi GUI v1.45
3.
eDonkey2000 GUI Client (Windows) v16.7.22
4.
DVD Decrypter v1.7
5.
AC3Dec v0.8.19
6.
AVI-Plugin v0.15 beta 3
7.
WinDVD 2000 v2.3 Trial Version (English)
8.
PowerDVD v2.55 trial
9.
MPEG2AVI / AC3DEC / vStrip GUI v0.20b
10.
FlasK MPEG v0.594
Hot MP3s
1. HOLOCHAUST : "
Beyond the Violence"
2. HOLOCHAUST : "
Valley of Misery"
3. HOLOCHAUST : "
My Lovely Babe"
4. EMS-Project : "
502 - a Tribute to the Paradroid"
5. HOLOCHAUST : "
Calm Before Thunder"
6. HOLOCHAUST : "
Holocaust"
7. HOLOCHAUST : "
I Wanna Lie"
8. HOLOCHAUST : "
Greed"
9. HOLOCHAUST : "
Town of Silence"
10. Dj Rocco : "
Mag's Fashion"
Hot skins
1.
062-AZD v1.0
2.
[^Century-Amp^]
3.
Black Dawn v1.0
4.
Red Dawn v1.0
5.
1960 v1.0
6.
a309 v1.10
7.
kenwood rack
8.
Bio Hazard
9.
KenWood XD-751 v1.0
10.
TopazAmp
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 17 Nov 2000 3:58
MP3.com's legal troubles are far from being over - now company may face yet another legal action from four major record labels it already settled with earlier this fall.
Reason for this is the award Universal received from MP3.com - it's twice as much as other labels received from the company. So, now other labels are told to be pushing a legal actions against MP3.com to force it to raise the settlement prices.
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 16 Nov 2000 2:22
The MP3.com Inc. shares rose 37 percent Thursday as investors highly appreciate the licensing deal between MP3.com Inc. and Universal Music.
Analysts are cautiously enthusiastic about the prospects for the company, cheered by the resolution of a 10-month old copyright infringement lawsuit, but anxious for the company to execute its business plan.
Shares closed at $8-1/2 on Thursday, up $2-5/16, or 37 percent, the day's largest percentage gainer on Nasdaq. They reached as high as $9-1/4, the highest level since August. Since the licensing deal was announced, the company has seen its market capitalization jump to $582 million from $273.9 million.
On Tuesday, the company agreed to pay Seagram Co's Universal Music $53.4 million in damages after a U.S. district court held that a database of 80,000 albums copied by MP3.com for their My.MP3.com service violated copyright law. After the agreement was reached MP3.com re-opened the My.MP3.com service.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 16 Nov 2000 5:49
Scour has closed their Scour Exchange file-sharing service for good. The service was closed after months of ligitation with the music and movie industries, a bankruptcy and a series of layoffs the company was forced to shut down the service.
Scour asked for and received the bankruptcy court's permission to shut down Scour Exchange to facilitate a resolution of the massive copyright infringement lawsuit pending against Scour, and to help ease the sale of Scour's technology and assets to a company that is willing to help them continue change the world with their media search technology.
Luckily there are clients similar to Scour available - such as the eDonkey2000.
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 15 Nov 2000 4:39
The eDonkey2000 media sharing application seems to deliver what users of Gnutella, Scour Exchange, Napster, and likes have been asking for ages - a fast distributed, non centralized network of servers sharing every media-type imaginable from ASF through DivX and MP3 to WMF. So far the eDonkey network is very small indeed, but will surely grow rapidly as more and more people discover this wonderful piece of software in the making.
Download eDonkey2000 now from AfterDawn.com and start sharing - and enjoying the files other people share!
Please see the software description for more details.
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 15 Nov 2000 2:01
MP3.com plans to restart it's My.MP3.com service by the end of November. However this time around MP3.com offers two different kinds of My.MP3.com services.
``One will be a free service that uses advertising to generate revenue, but it will have restrictions on the amount of music you can load in the service,'' MP3.com CEO Miachel Robertson said. ``And there will be a subscription version as well, without the intrusive advertising.''
Prices for the subscription service have not yet been set.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 14 Nov 2000 5:05
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Tuesday awarded $50 million in statutory damages and $3.4 million in legal fees to Universal in lawsuit involving MP3.com's My.MP3.com music service.
Universal made a statement after the case was closed that it will award approximately half of the sum directly to their artists.
UMG and MP3.com also agreed to licence that Universal will licence their music catalog to My.MP3.com service. Universal also will have a possibility to buy 5 percent of MP3.com's stocks.
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 13 Nov 2000 4:11
Tomorrow MP3.com and UMG go back to court to start a process to determine the damages MP3.com should pay for UMG for copyright infrigiment.
In September Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that MP3.com's service My.MP3.com and the music archive company had built to support the service, violated UMG's copyrights.
Legal process was originally between RIAA and MP3.com, but MP3.com settled with other four major record labels in the summer. Only UMG continued the process.
MP3.com can face penalties up to $225 million, depending on the fact what court decides on the major issue -- how many of the CDs stored in MP3.com's archive, were actually copyrighted material of UMG.
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 12 Nov 2000 12:12
Time to take a look at the charts. Some new DVD tools, bunch of video tools and DVD rippers continue dominating our software charts.
Skin section has little bit more activity on it and there are some new runner-ups in those charts, check it out. Also, some new additions have gained quite a nice popularity, but unfortunately they didn't make it to the top ten.
MP3 charts represent our monthly pick, I see...
Hot programs
1.
DVD2MPG Squeezer v1.16
2.
aMPEG2Avi GUI v1.40 final
3.
AVI-Plugin v0.15 beta 3
4.
PowerDVD v2.55 trial
5.
Elecard MPEG2 Player v1.15
6.
The AngelPotion video codec v1.0 build 702
7.
WinDVD 2000 v2.2 Trial Version (English)
8.
AC3Dec v0.8.19
9.
VirtualDub v1.4c
10.
DVD Decrypter v1.6
Hot MP3s
1. HOLOCHAUST : "
Beyond the Violence"
2. EMS-Project : "
502 - a Tribute to the Paradroid"
3. HOLOCHAUST : "
Valley of Misery"
4. Grinister : "
Sick of Silence (Demo)"
5. Sulky Fella´s : "
Blue Sheep"
6. Ektinen : "
Ei mikään feikki MC:sii"
7. Clay Vanessa : "
Gospel"
8. HOLOCHAUST : "
Holocaust"
9. Robert Schilling : "
I Ask Why"
10. HOLOCHAUST : "
I Wanna Lie"
Hot skins
1.
062-AZD v1.0
2.
Red Dawn v1.0
3.
Black Dawn v1.0
4.
a309 v1.10
5.
abortioncrib v2.01
6.
Dangerous Curves v1.00
7.
kenwood rack
8.
10 Minute Amp
9.
Bio Hazard
10.
222ManOwar
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 10 Nov 2000 7:19
In Friday, Bertelsmann Music Group and EMI announced that they're in talks of possible merger. This comes after EMI has called off its postponed merger with giant AOL-TimeWarner after the plan faced possible antitrust issues from European Union.
"BMG and EMI would be an odd combination," said Joe Smith, a former record executive who has worked with both EMI and Warner. "They're mirror images of each other. They both have strong international divisions and their own distribution. It's hard to see how they complement one another, other than to just make BMG bigger."
Both companies are members of so-called "big five" team, a bunch of record companies who basically share world's music markets and are the leading power behind organizations such as RIAA.
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 09 Nov 2000 5:52
CMGI, major internet venture player, who owns AltaVista, etc. is rumoured to pull their investment off from the iCast, a webcasting company that CMGI owns a major stake.
"I've heard that iCast was going to be sold by CMGI or closed," one industry source said.
Many entertainment based web companies have suffered in past couple of months, even more than the average Internet industry which has also taken huge hits since last spring when Nasdaq index started to fall, specially on Net stocks.
For regular Joe Customer, the loss of iCast doesn't mean that much, but somehow it also does. I mean, iCast is one of the major sponsor's of OGG Vorbis project - a project that's been developing totally free alternative for MP3s with better quality and smaller filesizes.
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 08 Nov 2000 4:51
SDMI has finished analyzing the hacking competition results. They claim that three out of total six technologies were protected against attacks and one of the remaining three technologies was pulled out of the contest before its end.
So, this leaves two technologies that have been successfully hacked. And SDMI claims that even the other of these two that were successfully cracked - the technology used to crack this other protection scheme, didn't work on any other music files than for the sample file provided for the competition.
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 07 Nov 2000 4:06
The multimedia sharing application CuteMX is back with a new beta! The initial beta phase is limited to 20,000 users, so if you feel like giving it a go, download and install it immediately!
Download CuteMX Beta v2.5 from AfterDawn.com
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 07 Nov 2000 2:24
You can now get a discount of 15% (up to $15 with no minimum purchase) on all DVDs from our DVD store at http://afterdawn.vstoredvds.com.
When checking out use the coupon code
NOV1
to receive the discount.
The coupon expires November 12th, so act fast! This is a great opportunity for doing the holiday shopping - if you want the products shipped before Christmas, you can't wait much longer!
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 07 Nov 2000 1:38
Lately there has been alot of discussion in Usenet newsgroups as well as DVD-discussion forums about a phenomenon called DVD Rot. The effect is similar to what was known with Laserdiscs as Laser rot. Movies that play flawlessly when bought turn unplayable all of a sudden. The deterioration is probably caused a production flaw which in turn causes oxidation on the disc.
All the problem discs found so far have been so called RSDL (Reverse Spiral Dual Layer) discs and manufactured by WAMO (Warner Advanced Media Organization). Problems have occured atleast with region 1 and region 4 movies.
Some of the affected discs are:
-Casablanca
-Contact
-Deep Blue Sea
-From the Earth to the Moon
-The Maltese Falcon
-Message in a Bottle
-The Music Man
-My Fair Lady
-Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
-What Dreams May Come
-... and many others
The DVD rot effect appears as heavy MPEG pixellation and blockiness after the layer change, which is usually located about half-way through the movie.
Although there's no reason for panic, DVD rot is definitely something to worry about, because it's both consistent to WAMO-produced discs and affects discs fairly quickly (after only 4 or 5 viewings). Of course there has not been any official word from WAMO about the issue (and there probably never will be), and there's no guarantee that defective discs will be replaced. It's still probably a good idea checking your discs for signs of rot using the following two links as a guide.
Read more...
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 06 Nov 2000 8:48
Only a week after Sprint launched their mobile MP3 service MP3.com announced their wireless service. The service developed with FusionOne makes songs downloaded on a personal computer automatically visible on that person's mobile phone and other PDAs.
Like Sprint, MP3.com is looking to attract the young technology-frenzy customers who just can't keep their hands off of anything wireless.
Source:
Yahoo! News
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 04 Nov 2000 2:30
Guided by Silicon Valley venture investor Ron Conway, the University of California at Los Angeles made a $25,000 investment in Napster in May.
The investment might turn very profitable indeed, since after striking a deal with BMG earlier this week, Napster is very likely to go public. Napster's huge existing user base should attract quite a lot of attention to the IPO.
Other known holders of Napster stock are the band Limp Bizkit, who acquired rights to 447,000 shares of Napster stock when the company sponsored their tour last summer.
Source:
Upside.com
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 02 Nov 2000 4:51
EMusic launched in the summer their subscription service that allows users to download freely as many MP3s as they can from 130,000 title catalog as long as they pay their monthly fees.
Now EMusic is offering this same service for free for 30-day trial period. EMusic's subscription catalog contains music from independent labels and names such as Elvis Costello.
More information:
EMusic.com
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 01 Nov 2000 8:07
Listen.com has agreed to buy assets of Scour Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Deal would give Listen.com control to Scour's assets, but doesn't held Listen.com responsible of Scour's legal issues which were the main reason why company laid their staff off and filed a bankruptcy in October.
This is any ways doesn't mean that Listen.com has actually acquired Scour - deal is not on that level, yet(?).
But interesting to see, Listen.com would probably lead Scour Exchange to legal purposes -- Napster is going to the same direction with its deal with BMG. Two legal rivals? Maybe..
Written by Petteri Pyyny
@ 01 Nov 2000 7:55
MP3.com has appointed former California Court of Appeals judge to their board of directors. Justice Howard Wiener, who has retired from his justicy duties, joins to MP3.com's board just in the middle of MP3.com's long fight against Universal Music Group over MP3.com's My.MP3.com service.
Written by Jari Ketola
@ 01 Nov 2000 1:18
Sprint PCS launched it's wireless MP3 service today on Wednesday. The company is trying to establish a foothold on the developing MP3 storage market with a new, although expected, kind of a service.
The MP3 storage locker service Sprint has developed in conjunction with the Web company Hit Hive allows the users to store their CDs in MP3 format on the server. The songs can then be transferred from the storage to the user's portable wireless MP3 player.
Srpint will start selling a new hybrid MP3 player / mobile phone using which the users can take advantage of the service. Current mobile data transfer rates are way too low for obtaining acceptable transfer times between the storage server and the wireless MP3-player.
What Sprint PCS are doing is pioneering the market and trying to establish a strong foothold and experience with wireless content delivery. When the technology catches up with the demands of the market, Sprint will be ready with their already running service.