Entrez PubMed

Health Manag Technol. 2001 Aug;22(8):28-9. Related Articles, Links
Connection tops collection. Peer-to-peer technology lets caregivers access necessary data, upon request, without using a repository.
Brailer DJ.
SNIU?

Mandriva 2006 to be 1st Linux Desktop to Offer Built-in Online Music Service Feature Through Mindawn @ SYS-CON BRASIL

Mindawn, on the other hand, works with all three major platforms including Linux. With Mindawn's cross-platform client software, users can hear a full preview of the entire song, unlike competing services which only offer brief excerpts.
Too bad there aren't more bands signed up.

Slashdot | Cringely on P2P vs Streaming Data Centers

Cringely choruses that secure P2P is the solution to delivering not only high quality video but also to audiences that scale in the millions.

In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax - New York Times

The PlayStation is more than a game system to them; it's one of their attempts to own the digital living room.
The Blu-ray group's board also approved an encryption technology called BD+, which Mr. Majidimehr, Microsoft's vice president for Windows digital media, deemed superfluous.
Hewlett-Packard worried that the software included in the Blu-ray format would cost so much in royalties that H-P would be unable to add affordable DVD drives to its computers.
"DVD's are about movies and people watch them in their living rooms," he said. "How many people actually use their computer drives to sit and watch movies?"

Open Access News

HIV Medicine 2005, a medical textbook freely available over the Internet, will be downloaded more than 50,000 times in a year. At a cost of 52 € per copy, global savings (for those who otherwise would have bought the book) or added value (for those who would not have bought it) will exceed 2,500,000 €.
This economics is just as bad is the recording industry multiplying out the number of copies pirated by the market value of the items to come up with total damages.  You can't value consumption decisions at market value if people chose not to participate in the market.  It makes a nice rhetorical device, but it's lousy in the truth department.

--Ari

Today's Blog Music / The Hype Machine - latest from the finest mp3 music blogs!

THE HYPE MACHINE audio blog aggregator

"Textcasting," Anyone? - Check out Slate's latest podcasting experiment. By Andy Bowers

For the last several weeks, Slate editor June Thomas and I have been inserting the full text of "The Explainer" into each day's "Explainer" audio podcast.
Brilliant.

MPAA turns attention to USENET, takes on Torrentspy, Isohunt, others

The targets are various high-traffic web sites that facilitate piracy using services like BitTorrent, eDonkey, and USENET. The MPAA hopes that shutting down these web sites will make it more difficult for the "pirate networks" to accumulate and distribute copyrighted material.
Unlikely that this will help, but from a Societal Goodness(tm) perspective, this is is a better strategy than allowing the networks to be sued for enabling it.  These sites are much more like Napster 1.0 than Grokster.

Forcing the analog sunset: the ugly side of the HD revolution

Although AACS includes, among other things, the ability to allow content owners to determine what kinds of outputs HD video is directed towards, the license also includes a forced sunset for most of those outputs. Put simply, AACS licensees must eliminate analog outputs on consumer electronics devices by 2013 to remain in compliance with the license. Forced obsolescence it is.

Yahoo Music exec suggests we'd all be better off without DRM

The head of Yahoo Music thinks it would be all good. Speaking at Music 2.0 (it's like Web 2.0, but with a beat), Dave Goldberg suggested that the RIAA and member labels give sales of non-DRMed music a try.

National Archive movies available on Google Video

In a joint press release today, Google and the United States National Archives announced the immediate availability of 104 films (well, they announced 103, but forgot about one WWII clip) from the Archives on Google Video.

Slashdot | iPod Takes Japan by Storm

Despite an array of well-entrenched Japanese rivals, such as Sony and Matsushita, the iPod had cornered 51.3% of the digital-music player market as of the end of 2005, up from about 32% in 2004, according to research firm BCN.
Could losing in their home town spur Japanese MP3 like Sony to design products that people lust over?

Slashdot | Interactive Commercial Utilizes Tivo Features

arketing officers at Kentucky Fried Chicken's Yum! Brands Inc. have developed a commercial containing a hidden message for the viewers to find using their DVR systems. The aim is to combat the use of DVR devices, like Tivo, to skip advertising by introducing interactivity.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » How Watermarks Fail

All of this helps us to understand where watermarks are likely to be effective and where they’re not. The best case for watermarking is where each file is published in a single version, with a watermark in a location that is not disclosed to the public and is not implemented in a device available to the public.

--Ari

Technology, Technology news, Times Online

"I can't believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to. Is this really the case?" she asked.

"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."

I felt somewhat unnerved at being held responsible for the disintegration of the UK anti-piracy system. Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?

Slashdot | MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites

Slyck news reports on a new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bit Torrent search sites including: Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub

Net video explosion triggers traffic jam worries | Tech News on ZDNet

The amount of video online is skyrocketing, whether it's "Lost" episodes or movie trailer mash-ups. The phenomenon is putting new stress on ISP networks, which are seeing the demands on their bandwidth burgeon.

Coming to a video game near you: more ads

None of this is surprising, but what does come as a shock is just how much advertisers are willing to pay to get their name in the game. For American Wasteland, Chrysler, Nokia, and Motorola together ponied up US$2 million to ensure product placement—nearly 10 percent of the game's total development cost.

Democracy player brings power to the people

What sets Democracy apart from the traditional media player is its system of finding and subscribing to content feeds (called channels) that anyone can create.

E-Commerce News: Legal : Razorback2 Bust Fails to Dent eDonkey Traffic

"We have seen no effect on the eDonkey traffic levels," Andrew Parker, chief technical officer at CacheLogic, a UK-based watcher of Internet Get Linux or Windows Managed Hosting Services with Industry Leading Fanatical Support. traffic patterns, told the E-Commerce Times.
As best I can tell right now, prosecuting the network itself does almost nothing.  Napster's shutdown merely spawned dozens of others.  Prosecuting end-users--to the extent that it has any effect at all--merely drives people to darker nets, where they can't  be monitored or useful information can't be maintained.  I am worried, however, that as these darknets are built they will enable other, more dangerous kinds of traffic.

Slyck News - MUTE Security Vulnerability Discovered

If a malicious attacker wished to compromise the anonymity of the MUTE client, he or she could manipulate the webcache to only reflect the attacker’s IP address. When an individual connects to the network, he or she would in actuality be connecting to the attacker’s IP addresses, thereby exposing the client’s anonymity.
The usual weakest link security story.  This one seems pretty far-fetched, though, and easily correctible with something like authentication using trusted public/private keys.

Google, Porn Images, Copyright Violations?. Copyfight: the politics of IP

Matz is clearly trying to tread a line that both allows Google's indexing business and respects Perfect 10's copyrights. The problem is that I don't think there is any such line to be walked.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Google Nudes II

I was a bit surprised at the felicity with which the court dismissed Google's policy of prohibiting a website from registering as an AdSense partner if the site's webpages contain images that appear in Google Image Search results.

Michael Gartenberg - SONOS is the best system for moving digital audio around the home

Finally. forget DRM content for now. No iTunes or Plays for Sure support so if you're heavy into those types of servcies, this isn't the system for you.
More DRM complications.

--Ari

break it down like this | MetaFilter

An installation featuring an acetate pressing of a well worded spoken piece about copyright law, creative commons, culture and even advertising from the perspective of the history of the now ubiquitous Amen Break featuring audio samples of songs and artists from the well known to the unusual.

Touble ahead for You Tube? | MetaFilter

It seems the words copyright violation have scared them into a stupor, as now several bloggers are complaining, and even calling for a little civil disobedience.

Monkey Bites

Podbop asks you to input the name of your city, then it returns a list of bands playing in your city this week, along with links to download samples of their music as MP3. They pull the live music listings from the open database at Eventful using their API. The MP3s that show up in Podbop's results are gathered from the bands' websites or the websites of their record labels, so they are freely available already. No funny stuff here.

Broadcast Treaty has potential to grant unwarranted "protections"

A video featuring comments on the WIPO treaty by US Copyright Office head Marybeth Peters has recently surfaced. In it, she sheds some light on the fact that, although US broadcasters would love to see the additional control granted to them, at least some people in the government are not necessarily in agreement on the issue, and the topic is not yet decided.

Slashdot | Razorback2 Servers Seized

While it does not host any actual files or multimedia material, it does index the location of such files on the eDonkey2000 network. The legality of such indexing remains questionable, however this has not deterred copyright enforcement actions.

Slashdot | Japan to Discourage Sale of Old Electronics

Engadget is reporting that after April 1st (no this is not an April fools joke) the sale of old electronics in Japan could become much harder.
Couple this with the news of a crackdown on hackable DVD players, and you have a perfect storm of transition to DRM.

Bill Graham Archive Online. Copyfight: the politics of IP

The archive will begin featuring video later this year, much of it never-before-seen footage.

Open Access News - More on Marybeth Peters

I think it is too long. I think that was probably a big mistake.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Google Nudes

It runs this way: those who place content on the Internet do so with the knowledge and expectation that it will be found; that's the only reason for placing it in cyberspace. The only way to find content is through search engines. If one wants to limit access, that can be done through password or other protections, and robots.tx tags. As to end-users, one can have a contractual arrangement, click-through or otherwise that places conditions on use.

--Ari

Lost a bunch of links due to a software glitch.  Upgraded Performancing for the second time in as many weeks, so hopefully it won't happen again.

Official Google Blog: One for the books

It's the early 1800s, and the "Abraham" in question is Abraham Lincoln, whose superior hog-handling skills are described at length in J.B. McClure's Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's Stories, one of the many public domain books you can browse using Google Book Search.

Official Google Blog: Global searches go to local libraries

If for example you're a student in Sweden searching Google Scholar for [chemistry], you can click the “Library Search (Sweden)” link underneath the book titled "Principles of polymer chemistry" to see the list of Swedish libraries that hold the book.

The IP uprising

The rising threat of third party IP infringement is promising to give a new turn to the entire debate, till now primarily focused on the ownership and security concerns.
As you might guess, I think third party IP liability is the worst idea ever.  Imagine suing all the Blackberry users if RIM loses.

Slashdot | Film Studios Sue Samsung Over DVD players

The Korea Times reports that five U.S. film studios have taken Samsung to court for selling DVD players which allow users to bypass DRM features.
In other news, future sales of Chinese DVD players projected to skyrocket.

Slashdot | Partial Victory for Perfect 10?

Perfect 10 is likely to succeed in proving that Google directly infringes its copyright by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs.
I thought this battle was won a long time ago?

Biting the Hand that Feeds the TV Show. Copyfight: the politics of IP

I'm sure NBC lawyers need no reminding that unlike trademarks, copyrights do not need to be policed to retain their validity. Instead, NBC seems to be shutting down its own best advertising.

Furdlog » BusWeek Columnist Sees An MP3.Com-Redux Strategy

But even if Amazon didn’t actually try to assert this right without the labels’ blessing, could it use that potential as a club to get price concessions on digital songs from the labels? Lower prices might help Amazon’s digital music business actually make money.

--Ari

Wired News: Can Surround Sound Save MP3?

The format adds minimal overhead, consuming just 15 additional bits per second. And it is backward compatible, so MP3 Surround files will play on any device that supports plain-vanilla MP3, sans surround.

Can't Remember Who Whacked Whom? Just Check the Map on the Web Site - New York Times

And in one of the first marketing efforts to use Google's map technology, HBO would like to show you exactly where those are.
The first ad remix of Google Maps...

A Video Clip Goes Viral, and a TV Network Wants to Control It - New York Times

Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said she contacted NBC Universal about working out a deal to feature NBC clips, including "Lazy Sunday," on the site. NBC Universal responded early this month with a notice asking YouTube to remove about 500 clips of NBC material from its site or face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Free publicity? Sue them.

Nielsen Will Start to Measure TV Habits of College Students - New York Times

Nielsen Media Research announced last week that it would include college students living away from home in its television ratings beginning in early 2007, a move that could bolster ratings on networks like Fox, MTV and the WB, which cater to younger viewers.

By Sacrificing Its Catalog, Will Disney Spoil Its Internet Business? - New York Times

"I think it's time to focus just on e-commerce, and see how great we can be," Mr. Gainer said.

Slashdot | Source Code & Copyright

The argument that source code is uncopyrightable, with some extensions could be applied to almost all, say, fiction stories since no one's written a truly new story in like five thousand years.

Slashdot | Microsoft To Offer Free Wireless VoIP

MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.

Slashdot | PTO Requests Working Model of Warp Drive

At least one examiner is paying attention

FYI: Delete All Songs From Your iPod Before Selling It :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

Selling an iPod preloaded with music is no different than selling a DVD onto which you have burned your entire music collection… Either act is a clear violation of U.S. copyright law. The RIAA is monitoring this means of infringement… Unlawful reproduction or distribution is infringement. There is no fair use when someone is getting a complete copy of a work, especially a creative work and especially when it could have an adverse impact on the marketplace for selling or licensing that work… In short: seller beware.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

They're preparing to spend millions more of artists' money on an appeal against the very judgement they were, until recently, calling a victory.

--Ari

TechCrunch » Get Concert Info + Music at Podbop

Podbop launched today, and for music lovers it may be the most interesting mashup we’ve seen yet. They’ve combined concert events from eventful and mashed the data up with band sites that include downloadable music.

Monkey Bites

the site encourages users to build social networks using video cameras — mostly of the web cam variety, but also through video blogs that users can post.

EFF: DeepLinks

It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the MGM v. Grokster argument last year?

Apparently not.

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

TechCrunch » AllPeers is Coming; Exclusive Screenshots

Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files - If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends.
SNIU

Furdlog » The “Lion Sleeps” (Finally?)

A protracted legal dispute over the copyright to the internationally popular tune “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” has been settled with a payment to the family of Solomon Linda, the Zulu migrant worker who composed it under the title “Mbube.”

--Ari

Monkey Bites

NBC owns the copyright for the video, so NBC's action is understandable from a legal standpoint, as noted in YouTube's blog. The thing that's odd is that the viral marketing buzz surrounding the video has easily served as the biggest boost to SNL's popularity in years.

Amazon Will Take On iPod With Its Own Music Player - New York Times

Unlike Apple, which sells songs for 99 cents each, Amazon will offer a service that charges a monthly or annual fee to customers, who will have the right to fill up their music players with as many songs as they like, the executives said. When they stop paying the fee, the music on the player will be disabled.

Disney Media Downloads for the Youngest of Computer Users - New York Times

Disney Online, best known for Toontown, a massively multiplayer Internet game for children, has begun a $50-a-year subscription service for the most discriminating of audiences: preschoolers.

Apple shuts down OSx86 Project forums

Apple doesn't want Mac OS X running on anything other than Apple hardware, and as a result, has slapped the OSx86 Project with a DMCA violation notice.

Prepaid cell phone provider tries DMCA smackdown

This is where the alleged DMCA violation comes in. TracFone alleges that Sol Wireless' practice of unlocking the phones circumvents "the technological measures that effectively control access to TracFone's proprietary software." If you are thinking this sounds familiar, you're correct. TracFone is making essentially the same claim that Lexmark did in its lawsuit in late 2002 against Static Control Components.

AACS reaches interim agreement; HD DVD trying to stay on schedule

the AACS-LA has reached an interim agreement that will allow device manufacturers on either side of the divide to push ahead with producing products.

As UMD movies fail to impress, studios slow down releases

According to Variety Magazine, Studios aren't seeing the interest that they had hoped for, and now Paramount, Warner Home Entertainment, and even Sony itself are cutting back on releases. With the average release selling only 50,000 units, sales are beyond sluggish.

California tying education tech grants to copyright education

Legislation is being considered in California that would see the state's educational technology grant program tethered to requirements for teaching copyright law to students.

Slashdot | Creating a Backboneless Internet?

Is it possible to create an internet that relies instead on peer-to-peer connectivity?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Copyright sings to a different tune

Keeping time limits on copyright could open the way for a new wave of creativity, argues Kay Withers of the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank.
It always amazes me how important one word can be. "Limited" in the U.S. Constitution is the operative word here. This President's Day, a big hearty thank you to some prescient folk.

Slashdot | RIAA: Ripping CDs to iPod not 'Fair Use'

RIAA saying that ripping CDs and backing them up does not come under Fair use.

AHT P2POD HDTV Media Player - Gizmodo

AHT International introduced the P2POD HDTV media player, a device that uses peer-to-peer technology to download and stream HDTV programs from the Internet.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

This technology is owned by someone other other than the copyright holder. It isn't copyright holders putting a fence around their "property": rather, i's the third parties putting a fence around *MY* property. Just like there was a need for laws mandating seatbelts be installed in cars to protect us from this "second collision", there's increasing awareness for the need for laws which protect citizens from this "second digital fence".

Paying for Radio Play. Copyfight: the politics of IP

ABC News Primetime are set to air a segment on the radio payola business titled as above.

Academic Copyright ~ Elizabeth Townsend Gard: Life + 70 = unpublished works in the public domain of those who died during 1935 and before

Here a a few of the most noteable: Jane Addams, Alfred Dreyfus, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., T. E. Lawrence, Huey Long, Will Rogers, and Henri Barbusse.
It's good to know the public domain is growing again.

Open Access News

The proposed business model relies on peer-to-peer digital payment for which technical solutions already exist.

Furdlog » David Berlind Pushes Some Buttons

To wake people up, I’ve come up with a new acronym for DRM: CRAP. It stands for Content Restriction Annulment and Protection. With CRAP technology (aka DRM), your ability to view or listen to the the content you acquire, record, or play in real-broadcast time (ie: a Cable TV or radio program) is easily resticted by its distributors.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Standing on Someone Taller

The word goes ahead because each of us builds on the works of our predecessors. 'A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant can see farther than the giant himself.'

--Ari

The Grammy Paradox - They're awful. But they're good for pop music. By Jody Rosen

Ray Charles has won 17 Grammys, Aretha Franklin 16, Frank Sinatra 10. But they also refused to acknowledge the existence of hip-hop until 1989 and didn't get around to giving the Rolling Stones a Grammy until 1994. In 1991, Milli Vanilli took the Grammy for Best New Artist. In 1980, the year of the Clash's London Calling, Prince's Dirty Mind, and Talking Heads' Remain in Light, soft-rock wimp Christopher Cross won a clean sweep of the top four prizes.

Matchmaker Pairs Computer and Stereo - New York Times

Slim Devices predicts that Pandora will become a wildly popular feature, and that's probably true (although after a 90-day trial, it costs $36 a year). It offers all the new-music serendipity of Internet radio, with the personal touch of your own CD collection.

Furdlog » Silk Purse, Sow’s Ear?

A sign that subscriptions are still a tough sell? Or that Apple doesn’t want to play? Napster Posts Loss Despite Surge in Sales

Wired News: Bubble Fails to Rock Tinseltown

Two weeks after its release, it's clear Bubble wreaked about as much havoc on Hollywood as Y2K did on computer systems.

Wired News:

Technically, Electroplankton is a toy -- yet it's modeled after the music-editing software professional sound engineers use to produce songs. And the results, in the right hands, can be remarkably similar.
More democratization of music generation.  Distribution has already been democratized, particularly as iTMS accepts non-label artists (indirectly in some cases).  So the role for labels is as a middleman, particularly in marketing.  That's a dangerous place to be, but not necessarily an unprofitable one.

Warner Music's Digital Sales Up, but It Still Fails to Meet Forecasts - New York Times

The company also said it had received another subpoena in February from the New York State attorney general's office in connection with an antitrust investigation into the pricing of digital music.

MovieBeam to offer HD movies with online delivery

MovieBeam Inc. is hoping that you'll adopt a TiVo-like service model to tap into HD movies delivered right to your TV. But TiVo isn't under threat from MovieBeam. Netflix, get off the couch and come in here and meet your new competition!

HD DVD and Blu-ray delayed again, as AACS is pushed back

The hold up must infuriate HD DVD backers, because the last sticking point apparently only applies to the Blu-ray specific BD+ anti-piracy measure. BD+ is part of Blu-ray's "we have more protection than you" approach to appeasing the studios.
I find this amazing.  Technological problems?  Nope, just trouble agreeing upon the right level of DRM is holding back the next generation of video as DVD sales begin to flag.

Ad-supported books arrive at last

For all the hype, e-books have yet to take hold in any major way. That could slowly be changing, however, with HarperCollins' recent test of a freely available, ad-supported title.
The book is hosted on Judson's own site.
If the book can be hosted on his site, it can likely be distributed by traditional (e.g. non-DRMed) P2P networks as well, without any loss of revenue for the publisher.  Interesting....

"Trusted" storage specs nearly ready for your hard drive

TC is also a haven for Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and content providers may find the combination irresistible. Already, next generation high-definition video content is requiring a trusted HDCP-compliant monitor and a trusted video card.

The truth behind HDCP and video card support

We're in the midst of a a top-down, all-points-covered attempt to lock down every part of the HD viewing experience. In a nutshell, the content industry wants to see video encrypted end-to-end and passed only among approved devices that obey content access rules defined by the industry. This is not limited to the PC. Our in-depth primer on CableCARD revealed that the lock-down will also come to include the video streams from cable providers, too. In both cases, we see a disturbing trend: not only is the technology all about locking down the content, but the implementation is becoming locked down as well. For example, while CableCARD has been heralded as the great breakthrough that will allow for Home Theatre PC nirvana, the fact that CableLabs has to certify entire machine designs means that the do-it-yourself market is likely out of luck.
While the article takes a consumer rebellion tack (I don't think it's likely...consumers are used to upgrading, and if they don't understand that there's nothing wrong about their current set....), I think the obsolescence is a bigger factor.  Certifying the whole implementation would have locked out a whole generation of innovative small computer manufacturers (AlienWare comes to mind) and individual builders who drove the platform forward and led to changes at major players, like Dell's gaming line.  The costs of such a policy will be high, but not for the people who implement it.  Negative externalities are everywhere, I'm afraid.

How to Value Ratings With DVR Delay? - New York Times

WOULD the opening greeting on "Saturday Night Live" sound as compelling if it began "Live plus 24 hours from New York" or "Live plus seven days from New York?"

Slashdot | OSx86 Cracked Again

once again eluded Apple's security methods and cracked the latest release of Mac OS X for Intel, or 'OSx86', to run on standard x86 PCs. It seems Apple just can't win this eternal struggle with the hackers, as 10.4.4 included beefed up security designed to prevent similar hacking methods used on beta releases of the operating system.
DRM fails again.  Observers of the game market in particular should not be surprised.  They've been trying for decades now.

Slashdot | Intel and Skype Exclude AMD

CNET is reporting that Intel and Skype have signed an exclusive deal that would cap the number of conference call members on all but Intel architecture.
Whoa.  If AMD weren't doing so well right now, this would be a major anti-trust mistake.

Slashdot | Apple Antitrust Case Gets Green Light

the key to such a lawsuit would be convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market.

Are Higher Resolution iTMS Videos On The Horizon? :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

With Apple's push towards the entertainment center with Front Row and rumors of forthcoming large screen displays, an increase in the resolution of videos sold through the iTunes Music Store just makes sense.

EFF: Breaking News

The patent -- for a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances -- locks musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocks innovations by others.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Sony CD DRM Paper Released

Today Alex and I released our paper about the Sony CD DRM episode. This is the full, extended version of the paper, with a bunch of new material that hasn’t been published or posted before.
The experiment was a success, giving us lots of good comments and suggestions that helped us improve the paper.

Techworld.com - Ericsson to offer hosted Napster service

Ericsson has announced a new service allowing users to pay and download music, ringtones and artist images from the Napster peer-to-peer network to their mobile phones and PCs.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

Remember, in Australia it's still illegal to time shift TV programs by recording them and watching them at a later time, although it's safe to say almost all viewers do .

Open Access News

India has digitized 149 university libraries.

--Ari

Sirius Satellite Radio and Howard Stern Go Ear to Ear with XM - Knowledge@Wharton

The fact that Stern's show is already being swapped around the Internet leaves Fader wondering "just how durable the retention rate will be" for Stern fans who only subscribed to Sirius to get Stern.
A very good point.  This seems different than music, where downloading hasn't been shown to hurt sales, but I'm,having trouble articulating exactly why I think that, so perhaps not.

The Grammy Paradox - They're awful. But they're good for pop music. By Jody Rosen

Ray Charles has won 17 Grammys, Aretha Franklin 16, Frank Sinatra 10. But they also refused to acknowledge the existence of hip-hop until 1989 and didn't get around to giving the Rolling Stones a Grammy until 1994. In 1991, Milli Vanilli took the Grammy for Best New Artist. In 1980, the year of the Clash's London Calling, Prince's Dirty Mind, and Talking Heads' Remain in Light, soft-rock wimp Christopher Cross won a clean sweep of the top four prizes.

Matchmaker Pairs Computer and Stereo - New York Times

Slim Devices predicts that Pandora will become a wildly popular feature, and that's probably true (although after a 90-day trial, it costs $36 a year). It offers all the new-music serendipity of Internet radio, with the personal touch of your own CD collection.

Furdlog » Silk Purse, Sow’s Ear?

A sign that subscriptions are still a tough sell? Or that Apple doesn’t want to play? Napster Posts Loss Despite Surge in Sales

Wired 14.02: Posts

The real issue is the blurring of lines between blackhat hacking and legitimate business.

Wired News: Netflix Critics Slam 'Throttling'

Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix's online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged.

A Rant. All 406 Pages of It. - New York Times

His targets are the Baby Bells, which he contends owe every American household about $2,000 because they reneged on their collective promise to deploy ultra-high-speed broadband Internet access via optical fiber to millions of homes.
The flip side of the networks claims that they should be paid more for bandwidth.

Mommy, Help Me Download 'Farmer in the Dell' to My MP3 Player - New York Times

Fisher-Price, synonymous with Elmo and Power Wheels, will introduce a digital music player and digital camera for children ages 3 and older that will be sold during the 2006 holiday season.

MPAA: DRM "helps honest users"

But no one goes to the iTunes Music Store because of the DRM. No, the more accurate way to look at it is to say that people go there in spite of it. The MPAA, however, has a very different spin on DRM. In their view, DRM is your friend, and life without DRM could be messy and complex.

AT&T Warns Apple, Others, Of Patent Infringement

AT&T possesses several patents related to video compression, which the company says are an essential component of the MPEG-4 video technology. In a bid to drive its global licensing program, AT&T has targeted Apple Computer, Inc., CyberLink Corp., DivX, Inc., InterVideo, Inc., and Sonic Solutions as unlicensed companies whose products and software utilize the MPEG-4 technology.

Digital Spy: NTL, BitTorrent to team for download service

NTL and BitTorrent have announced details of a new "technical trial" with a view to launching a legal video download service in the UK.
SNIU

OnTheCommons.org | David Bollier's blog

It's not widely appreciated that "Centralized Media" - broadcasting, cable television, films, recorded music - have a serious Achilles' Heel. They have huge overhead costs.
via OANews

Furdlog » The Dynamics of New Technology

They went after guns. Then it was T-shirts. Now, in Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s effort to make Boston’s neighborhoods safer, officials have targeted a new possible accomplice in city crime: Pay phones.
I love the title.  "New" technology is dangerous.

Three great links from Tarlton

How Sony Survived: Peer-to-Peer Software, Grokster, and Contributory Copyright Liability in the Twenty-First Century 84 North Carolina L. Rev. 646 (Jan. 2006)
Shades of Grey: Can the Copyright Fair Use Defense Adapt to New Re-Conceptualized Forms of Music and Art?55 American University L. Rev. 267 (Oct. 2005)
From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright and Cultural Context84 North Carolina L. Rev. 547 (Jan. 2006)

--Ari

Harvard Medical School - WebWeekly

HMS course lectures became available for download onto the iPods of students, faculty, and staff.

Oprah Signs Deal With XM Satellite Radio - New York Times

The Winfrey deal is relatively small in comparison with the $600 million, five-year agreement that XM's rival, Sirius Satellite Radio, signed last year with Howard Stern, the raucous radio personality. Mr. Stern began broadcasting on Sirius last month.

HBO wants its programming to be off-limits for DVRs

HBO has joined the fray with a recent FCC filing in which it argues that its programming—and all "Subscription Video On Demand" services—should fall into the category of "Copy Never."

FCC favorably views "a la carte" cable, while cable industry looks downright dirty

The Further Report finds that the 2004 report also relied upon unrealistic assumptions and presented biased analysis in concluding that à la carte "would not produce the desired result of lower MVPD rates for most pay-television households.

LiveScience.com - The Science of Hit Songs

Researchers created an artificial "music market" of 14,341 participants drawn from a teen-interest Web site. Upon entering the study's Internet market, the participants were randomly, and unknowingly, assigned to either an "independent" group or a "social influence" group.

Slashdot | Network-Monitoring Data Put to Music

software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system.

True "Video iPod" To Debut This Spring? :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

According to the site, a completely revamped iPod with a large 3.5" color display and a physical clickwheel that has been replaced by on screen "wheel" navigation is close at hand.

MP3 Inventor Develops Tool to Fight Piracy - The Data Compression News Blog - c10n.info

He referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he says require special players and are prone to hacking.
Watermarks are "prone to hacking" as well.  But the real issue is that DRM isn't about piracy.  If there were perfect indelible watermarking available, I doubt the content industries would stop campaigning for DRM.  It'd be a good test of their true intentions though.

Digital Music News

CDBaby recently revealed huge sales gains in 2005, which now includes a growing digital profile.

--Ari

Wired News: They Saved the Internet's Soul

It is important both for what it said about the internet and for the acknowledgement that to judge cases involving the internet, you really need to understand the technology

Senate looks at network neutrality and likes it

Most members on the committee, in fact, endorsed the idea of network neutrality. Ted Stevens (R-AK), who chairs the committee, said, "I do believe that net neutrality ought to be the basic principle of whatever legislation we pursue," though he also pointed out the difficulty of defining exactly what is meant by the term "network neutrality."

Blu-ray titles taking shape on pricing

While much attention has been paid to the two titans battling it out for next-gen supremacy, the fact remains that there's already a tough, time-tested champion in the ring: DVD. How well either next-gen format does is going to depend largely how how well either one can lure DVD consumers into buying the next-generation of products, and when.

Slashdot | Songbird Flies Today

While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms it is still only a Windows release.

Slashdot | Legal Victory for P2P in France

The Register is reporting that a french Kazaa user that had been sued by the SCPP (the french equivalent of the RIAA) has been acquitted by the courts in his county. 'The Judges decided that these acts of downloading and uploading qualified as private copying'

Slyck News - BitTorrent Clarifies Stance on Crackdown

The overall goal is to ensure that the BitTorrent protocol is as widely compatible, consistent, and reliable as HTTP is for other web content and to make the BitTorrent trademark a validating stamp in which software implementing the protocol is safe to use for the end user

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

While authorized P2P models are fairly common, is the world quite ready for an authorized BitTorrent indexer?

Digital Music News

VH1 has just launched several new podcasts, designed to promote its existing television lineup.

Slyck News - P2P Population Reaches Record High

For the last several months, the P2P population has reversed its mid to late year stagnation and decline. As is typical, cyclical variations in the total number of simultaneously connected users features small declines and plateaus, however over time the population has ultimately continued its march forward.

Linus on DRM. Copyfight: the politics of IP

As long as you expect Disney to feed your brain and just sit there on your couch, Disney & co will always be able to control the content you see

Boing Boing: Songbird, the "open source iTunes killer," flies today

It sees the online world through MP3-colored glasses -- it looks at an archive of public domain sound files or a music store's catalog, and displays available media for you.

Furdlog » Distribution Experimental Data

Jason Hirschhorn, chief digital officer at MTV Networks, said the preliminary numbers looked good but that the final numbers weren’t in yet.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Copyright Office Satellite Report

Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act.

The Patry Copyright Blog: On the Road Again

Good luck on that account.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Copyright Office Orphan Works Report

The report is the result of concern by the Copyright Office over the adverse impact on those who wish to use works whose owners cannot be located after a good faith, reasonably diligent search.

When All the 'Greatest Hits' Are Too Many to Download - New York Times

More than 20 years after the rock band Survivor scored a hit with "Eye of the Tiger," the song is rising up the charts again, notching brisk sales as a single online. Since the song became available on services like iTunes about a year and a half ago, it has sold more than 275,000 copies.

Podcasting and Copyright: the Impact of Regulation on New Communication Technologies, by Carter, Edward L. and Scott Lunt

--Ari

The End of Originality - Or, why Michael Bay's The Island failed at the box office. By Edward Jay Epstein

"It's a terrific idea; too bad it has not been made into a movie already or we could have done the remake."

Weapons of Business Destruction - How a tiny little "patent troll" got BlackBerry in a headlock. By Tim Wu

What would happen if a rogue actor managed to get hold of a powerful patent and threatened to detonate it and destroy e-mail as we know it? You'd have the BlackBerry NTP v. RIM case

TechCrunch » Songbird to Launch Tonight

Songbird, the eagerly anticipated new media browser and web player built on the Mozilla (Firefox) engine, will launch (for Windows) later tonight or this morning (unless it doesn’t, CEO Rob Lord tells me :-) ).

Who Cares About Grammys? He'll Take the Hit Records - New York Times

The Grammys are going to be over in one night. My songs are probably going to be on the radio for the rest of the year.

dailypennsylvanian.com - Academia, via your iPod

Gladney added that intellectual-property concerns pose some issues for open content.

Wired News: Making a Living in Second Life

In a recent contract with the UC Davis Medical Center, Rufer-Bach created virtual clinics in Second Life to train emergency workers who might be called upon to rapidly set up medical facilities in a national crisis.

Wired News: Podfading Takes Its Toll

Then, in a plot twist worthy of the hit TV show itself, the Hawaii-based couple suddenly marooned their audience and shut down.

Wired News: Digital Music Biz Ain't Booming

Plenty of other content online is free, including most news, and editors, writers and publishers are paid for their work, and in some cases, even make a profit. By comparison, the pay up-front business models of the modern digital-music industry seem like losing propositions.

Can You TiVo to See Just the Ads? - New York Times

Madison Avenue is busy figuring out the Web-active afterlife of the more than 50 commercials that appeared during Super Bowl XL on Sunday.

French court rules in favor of private P2P use

For now, the French court appears to be giving the go-ahead not only for downloading music on P2P networks for personal use, but also for sharing files that have been downloaded.

The slow decline of the blockbuster

Blockbusters, the one-time lifeblood of the Hollywood economy, are (like any aging star) losing a bit of their potency.

Slashdot | BitTorrent to Sue Over Trademark

The company will set the lawyers on anyone using the BitTorrent name, and trademark, if they are using it to distribute spyware or adware

Slashdot | BitTorrent and End to End Encryption

As ISPs like Shaw and Rogers throttle their bandwidth to counter the growth of BitTorrent, BitTorrent developers are fighting back with end to end encryption.

--Ari

even posting "Pepsi Blue" would make us liable. | MetaFilter

"Drove my Chevy to the levee..."? That's a lawsuit. "Pass the Courvoisier"? Yup. Lawsuit too. Artwork using Barbie Dolls? Lawsuit again... It's all part of the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, which would eliminate the non-commercial "fair use" protections of trademarks in art, literature, and speech

Number nine, number nine, number nine... | MetaFilter

Mix your own version

Librarians air concerns about DRM

In 10 or 15 years, the DRM choices our governments make today could be coming back to haunt us in ways that have very little to do with whether or not we can time-shift TV or backup the iPod, and everything to do with that cornerstone of intellectual egalitarianism: the public library.

Cable companies fear the approach of IPTV

n the flip side of the stories coming out about giant IP service providers worrying over squeezing more profits, the world of cable television has started to wonder if their future revenue might suffer from the rise of Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV.

Meet the New Media, same as the Old Media: blogging and the problem of access

In a recent post, Clemons calls attention to the growing phenomenon of blogger conference calls. Clemons' post is worth reading in full, because it outlines some of the thorny ethical problems surrounding the now routine practice of Democratic Senators and Representatives holding conference calls with prominent liberal bloggers.

Slashdot | France Moving Forward on Legalized P2P

News.com is reporting the French Minister of Culture will advocate P2P as a flat-fee service.

Technology, Technology news, Times Online

Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.

Slashdot | Torvalds Explains Dislike For GPLv3

I _literally_ feel that we do not - as software developers - have the moral right to enforce our rules on hardware manufacturers. We are not crusaders, trying to force people to bow to our superior God. We are trying to show others that co-operation and openness works better.'

CBS Programming Coming To iTunes Music Store? :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

CBS Digital Media President Larry Kramer has confirmed that that talks are currently underway with Apple to bring CBS programming to the iTunes Music Store.
No good for Google.

A Long-Time iPod-Hater Has A Change Of Heart :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

Why did I jump to the Apple music ship? Simply put, I'm tired of waiting for Microsoft and its partners to get their act together.

Open Access News

It doesn't discuss OA to literature but strongly endorses OA to data.

Furdlog » A Look at YouTube

There are also, obviously, legal and ethical problems with many of the clips on YouTube.

Furdlog » A Tidbit From Slate’s Fashion Week FAQ

And though designers rarely trademark their work, it would be hard to determine if the one you’ve decided to copy has done so.

--Ari

Honey I've Got Rhymthms I Haven't Sued Yet: Ninja Tune's Matt Black on, among other things, doing business with iTunes | MetaFilter

The iPod’s a great product. However our experience in dealing with them, as regards licensing music for iTunes, has been quite depressing.

No Frills DVD2iPod v2.7 Released :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

As the name implies, this is a simple application that will convert DVD video to an iPod-friendly format.
Illegal under the DMCA.  But the industry may be wise enough not to sue.

Slashdot | RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer

Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life, was sued by the RIAA

Survey says: music costs too much, and it sucks

80 percent of respondents said that they believed that the unauthorized download of music was "stealing," and 92 percent claimed to have never engaged in such shenanigans. 58 percent of respondents said that music is getting worse.

CBS kicks Google off the island

CBS has just announced that it will begin selling Survivor episodes from its own website.

Digital Music News

Former RIAA head Hilary Rosen and previous IFPI chief Jay Berman have recently formed a consulting firm called Berman/Rosen Global Strategies.

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

Will DVD Jon Johansen, the former bane of Hollywood, sue Sony DRM (oops, sorry, Sony BMG) for thieving parts of the FairPlay code he wrote for VLC?

p2pnet.net - the original daily p2p and digital media news site

Both sides want consumers - that's YOU - to believe DRM actually exists.

Furdlog » Still At It

Since Jan. 9, when Stern debuted on Sirius, pirated versions of the shows have been made available for free via several online file-sharing networks just hours after Stern signs off. […]

Furdlog » Digital Distribution: Selling Commercials — Really

[…] In the past, fans of the commercials could see only pirated versions, posted haphazardly and clandestinely. Now advertisers, seeking to capitalize on that interest, want to make the spots widely and easily accessible.

Furdlog » End of the “Greatest Hits” Cash Cow?

What if fans who might have paid for a full album of “the very best” of an established act instead choose to pay substantially less and simply buy the very, very best song?

--Ari

BitTorrent Client Shootout

Specifically, they want to know what it is, which clients are best and where to go to find the freshest torrents.

Slashdot | Fired from an IP Law Firm for Anti-DRM Views?

Inga Chernyak, recently featured in a VillageVoice piece entitled "Code Warriors", has been fired from an IP firm in NYC for having "incompatible views".

TechCrunch » Pandora Releases Sharing Features

Pandora, which has lately been the subject of intense comparisons to competitor Last.fm, will release a number of new features aimed at sharing tonight.

A Bright Spot in the Dim Video Game Picture - New York Times

The used game business is more mature but remains tremendously profitable.
We've already seen crackdowns on eBay reselling of music.  Where will this market go when it happens to games?

Cartel Makes Business 2.0 Top 101, Twice. Copyfight: the politics of IP

Unfortunately, it's the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" list. In at number thirteen is the Sony rootkit fiasco and right below that at fourteen is blatant payola email from BMG to a Hartford Radio Station.

Wired 14.02: The Indie Movie Mogul

If you notice a lack of boneheaded action, smarmy romance, and brain-dead comedy, it's because Participant's mission was to make not blockbusters but messages - movies that promote social and economic justice. So Skoll is still giving back. This time, though, he may get an Oscar in return.

Open Access News

Comment. This is a good solution to a serious problem. I'm suspending judgment on whether there are better solutions. Bottom line: if you want to copy more than fair use allows, and you cannot find the copyright holder even after a diligent effort, then (if this proposal is adopted) you may proceed to do the copying at a lower risk than under current law.

--Ari

From the comments:
Regarding "the cost of DRM schemes", and also because it's something you seem like you'd be interested in, you might like this link from Planet Debian, both for what it says and for what it links to: http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/copyright-2006-01-28-06-50.html

Also: might you consider publishing your email address somewhere so that people can write you such things without signing up for a Blogger account?
Ethan

I turned on required Blogger registration some months ago in response to massive comment spam. It's worked well, so until Blogger gets a captcha-based solution I'm going to keep it on.
However, e-mail me at a b f r i e d m a n @ g m a i l . c o m and I will write you back or post it or whatnot.
Best,
Ari

Slashdot | Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News

Now that Google News is out of beta the newspaper publishers are starting to take notice.

Slashdot | Microsoft Changes Blog Censoring Policies

Microsoft attorney Brad Smith says that the company has a new policy to deal with a foreign government's request that alleges posted material violates its laws.

Steve Krause : Blog: Pandora and Last.fm: Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders

So let's start by saying that what these and similar services do is cool. How Pandora and Last.fm do it is an interesting compare-and-contrast.

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » What’s in the Secret VEIL Test Results?

So all we can conclude is that at least one of the transformations they chose for their test can remove the VEIL watermark most of the time.

Furdlog » Beyond Schadenfreude

The dismal debut of Steven Soderbergh’s experimental film “Bubble” has sparked a gleeful response from the nation’s theater owners, who were less than enthused about its simultaneous release in both theaters and on cable.
The human capacity to discount good ideas based on bad test cases never ceases to astound.

Furdlog » Yahoo Channeling a PCWorld Article on IPR

And consumer rights may end up being the biggest casualty as media companies hunker down and try to redefine what users can and can’t do with the content they’ve paid for and the hardware they own.

U.S. Copyright Office - Orphan Works

The Copyright Office has completed its study of problems related to “orphan works”—copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate.

IPac - Your Senator Needs an iPod

That's why we think all Senators ought to join Stevens' esteemed company as iPod owners.

--Ari