News archive (11 / 2001)

Dutch court ordered today that mega-popular FastTrack-based P2P application Kazaa has to shut down within 14 days if company doesn't find a way to prevent users from sharing copyrighted content through the service.

Case was brought to Amsterdam district court by Buma/Stemra, an association that represents Dutch composers, songwriters and music publishers.

If Kazaa doesn't shut down after 14 days, Kazaa will have to pay 100,000 guilders (appx. $40,000) a day, with a maximum of 2 million guilders, the judge ruled.

Kazaa is puzzled by the verdict and it doesn't understand exactly what to do, said KaZaA's attorney Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm. "Our software can't disappear, it is already out there," he said. "And the minute we take down our Web site, mirrors will appear."

Respected P2P analyst from Webnoize, Lee Black, told the press after the verdict that this was a typical example of court ruling over the issue that it doesn't understand. FastTrack-based software doesn't require central servers, specific company's clients or any administration whatsoever -- software has been created and it will be available virtually forever as long as users use it, despite judges shutting down original FastTrack client companies. Only thing what could shut down the network is to force FastTrack to make modifications to the network -- but even FastTrack can't control the network totally.

Yesterday The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that posting DeCSS code on the web is not protected by U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and that posting or linking to a site that contains DeCSS (or similiar tools that allow decrypting DVD-Videos' CSS encryption scheme) is illegal under DMCA law.

The appeals court said online publishing of DeCSS and linking to sites that publish it are not protected by free speech provisions of the First Amendment because the underlying software for those actions is "content-neutral" and serves a function.

Case was filed in 1999 by major movie studios against website 2600.com who posted DeCSS on its site and after movie studios demanded the site to take the tool off from the site, 2600.com offered links to other websites that contained the program.

Apple expects to break its previous record for downloads of QuickTime media player -- previous record was 100M downloads within a year from the first year QuickTime was released.

This year has been particulary good for Apple's media player, mostly because trailers of two highly anticipated movies, Lord of the rings and Star Wars II, are being distributed only in QuickTime format which requires the QT player.

Apple's QuickTime file structure format (QuickTime is like AVI -- itself it doesn't define the specific encoding methods, but the file structure instead) was also chosen to be the base format for standardized MPEG-4 format -- a decision that has caused lots of complains from Windows software developers, because of AVI's popularity among the platform's developers over QuickTime.

Ok, our DVD ripping guide was an instant success, but we kinda forgot to add the section for AVI splitting and now we have tons of users asking instructions for this procedure.

The AVI splitting itself is really easy task, you just need to remember few basic things and need to know what tools to use. As usual, our guide tries to be 100% idiot-proof with pictures and everything ;-) Read it from here:

https://www.afterdawn.com/articles/archive/cut_avi_with_virtualdub.cfm

UK-based EMI, one of the "big five" record labels, will license its music video catalog for UK-based Newsplayer Group for five years.

Newsplayer Group is developing a world-wide music video subscription service called VideoTV (URL will be video.tv) and expects to launch it in next year.

EMI has been the most active of big record labels to license its content to various services -- it was the first label to license its audio catalog to both MusicNet and Pressplay services.

DivXNetworks, the company behind the DivX4 codec, announced this week that Vivendi Universal's game publisher Blizzard Entertainment will distribute its upcoming game trailers in DivX4 format.

DivX4-encoded game trailers include Diablo II and Warcraft III. Trailers can be downloaded from Blizzard's website, Blizzard.com.

DivXNetworks expects to have total of 15 video content providers using its technology by first quarter of 2002.

Ok, nice guys at DataPipe added more HDD space to our server this morning, so site was down for appx. an hour. Sorry if this caused any inconvenience.

We ran out of HDD space, because our MP3 section, MP3Lizard.com has almost 2,000 free MP3s stored on our HDD.

-webmaster

International Olympic Committee is going to restrict 2002 Winter Olympics webcasts just as they did for the 2000 Summer Olympics. IOC has hired London-based company, Copyright Control Services, to find websites that try to violate IOC's copyrights.

This time the problem is not going to be as bad as it was in Sydney 2000, because now the games are held in U.S. and NBC is going to broadcast most of the events live, unlike in Sydney where no live material was available for American sports fans, just bunch of time-shifted events in prime time TV.

Copyright Control Services is going to monitor the Net using spiders and experienced surfers who can find websites offering links to illegal streams. The reason for webcast ban is money -- one third of Salt Lake City's Winter Olympics budget comes from broadcasting rights and obviously TV channels who have paid for the rights don't want competition for their broadcasts.

Source: The Salk Lake Tribune

Ok, normally we don't inform about various Microsoft security problems, because they are not related to our area of expertise, audio & video. But now experts have found a security hole in Windows Media Player v6.4, probably the most popular video player in the world -- most of the users prefer to use this, rather old, version instead of Microsoft's bloatware WMP v7.x. Media Player 6.4 can be found from all Windows operating systems and can be launched by using Start menu and Run and typing mplayer2.exe in the box. This player is highly recommended for DivX and MPEG-1 playback.

Anyway, the bug allows hackers to create .asf streaming files that can then launch any program found from users harddrive, opening a possibility for various attacks, loss of data, etc. Microsoft has already released a patch for this bug that can be downloaded from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-056.asp

National Music Publisher's Association (or NMPA) sued three P2P companies yesterday. In its lawsuit NMPA claims that Grokster, MusicCity and Consumer Enpowerment have violated its members' copyrights. Trade group is seeking maximum penalty of $150,000 of infringed work.

RIAA filed its own suit in October against FastTrack-based P2P providers.

In a long argument over the place where the lawsuit in between RIAA and P2P-provider Aimster should be held, some kind of decision has been finally made. A litigation panel ruled that two cases, one filed by RIAA against Aimster in Manhattan and one filed by Aimster against RIAA in Albany, will be bundled and handled in Chicago, Illinois. . Both cases will now be tried before Judge Marvin Aspen in the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

RIAA is accusing that Aimster violates its members' copyrights by allowing users to swap MP3s over the P2P service that piggybacks with AOL's AIM instant messaging service.

A group of recording stars filed briefs in San Fransisco federal court supporting Napster in its case against record labels. Artists main point in their brief in an opposition to an idea that record labels have been trying to push through in various courts and in U.S. congress that recording artists' work is so-called "work-for-hire" which under law is employer's property for 35 years. And now artists are claiming their rights to decide whether their music can be distributed through Napster or not.

AfterDawn.com congratulates Hannu ('krimu', our skin & MP3 editor) and his wife, Katja, who became daddy and mommy today :-)

World's biggest record label, Universal Music Group, a subsdiary of French giant Vivendi, has begun selling music CDs with copy-protected MP3s in Australia and in South America. CDs have regular audio tracks that can be played with any regular audio player, but CDs also have encrypted MP3s that can be played only with Visiosonic's PCDJ software.

PCDJ software also allows users to "mix" their tracks rather freely, but also the resulting tracks can be played only with PCDJ software. In exchange, Universal will start selling PCDJ's software advertisement space and companies will split the revenue from the ads.

TVT Records confirmed on Friday that they've settled their lawsuit against MP3.com, but declined to disclose any further details about the settlement. TVT Records sued MP3.com in heels of RIAA's lawsuit against the company, claiming damages of unauthorized use of its music in MP3.com's My.MP3.com service.

TVT's lawsuit got weird twist in this year, when a jury found MP3.com guilty of copyright infrigiment, but miscalculated the damages and awarded $300,000 to TVT instead of $3,000,000. Judge declared a mistrial in case and the opponents were heading back to court in last week.

File-swapping service Aimster has launched a new premium service for its users that costs $4.95 a month. Commercial service will allow users to vote for their favourite shared files and see top charts of previous week's downloads in the service.

Aimster plans to use the money for its legal costs -- company was sued by recording and movie industries earlier this year. The free service will continue to operate as usual.

In last few months, there has been a real wave of new "commercial DVD rippers" to the markets. Various companies try to squeeze money out of this highly popular niche that is growing enormously. Getting good step-by-step guides or one-in-all packages has been a real problem in DVD ripping for beginners.

And it still is -- virtually all of these commercial tools are just lame front-ends for freeware tools. And what's most alarming, normally the freeware authors don't have a slightest idea that their tools have been used in these combos -- basically using freeware software in commercial product requires a permission from the freeware author, at least if they use any of the most common licensing agreements with their tools. Obviously, the problem is that most of the authors behind best DVD rippers like SmartRipper want to stay anonymous, because it's not clear yet if these tools are legal in U.S. at all.

I approve software houses that actually add real value to their packages by providing extended guides, certain GUIs that they've built, etc.. But all of the commercial vendors need to disclose what their packages contain and if they contain tools from other vendors, do they have permission to use those. And when speaking of guides and instructions -- normally DVD ripping sites like Digital-Digest and Doom9 offer enough information to begin your DVD backup process. Bad example of commercial DVD ripping product is from 321studio.com -- their site doesn't provide any information about the package, FAQ requires entering your email address (let's say it together: SPAM) and so on. Then in other hand there are some good vendors, like ExpertsGuide who actually seem to disclose more information about their package and market their product as a guide, not a DVD ripping tool.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF) will defend P2P service operator MusicCity in its case against movie studios and record labels.

Record labels and movie studios (and their representing organizations, RIAA and MPAA) sued MusicCity and other FastTrack-based P2P services in this summer over copyright infringement.

Now, EFF is defending MusicCity, because it feels that MusicCity's case is significantly different from Napster's case where Napster was found guilty to copyright infringements. EFF and many independent analysts point out that Napster operated the central server that indexed the files shared in its network and in other hand, MusicCity/FastTrack network is totally independent -- there are no central servers or anything that any company could control. Kazaa, Grokster and MusicCity are just pure software vendors that provide tools to access this distributed network -- none of them controls the network in any way.

EFF has hired some really experienced lawyers to back its case -- one of the lawyers is from the original legal team of Sony in its '80s case where movie studios and TV networks sued Sony over its BetaMax VCRs claiming that VCRs should be found illegal in U.S. As most of us can understand, Sony won this case. EFF is also defending 2600.com in its famous "DeCSS" case against MPAA.

Hitachi announced on this week that they have developed a world's first multiformat DVD drive that will support all of the DVD recording formats -- DVD-R, DVD-RAM and DVD+RW. And nicest thing is that they have confirmed that the new drive will cost less than any recordable DVD drive available today from any vendor.

Manufacturers have been divided over the DVD recording standard and currently there are really three different formats that are NOT compatible with each other. Also, regular stand-alone DVD players don't support all of these formats.

Italian-based online music giant, "the European MP3.com", Vitaminic, has agreed to license its catalog of 250,000 tracks to Napster to use it in Napster's upcoming subscription service.

According to the contract, Napster will pay royalties for tracks it uses in its service and Vitaminic will compensate its artists for their music as well. Vitaminic mostly has free-to-download music from independent artists, but also features a recently launched subscription service with commercial tracks from over 1,000 indie labels in U.S. and in Europe.

Vitaminic, while relatively unknown in U.S., has grown huge by opening localized versions of its site all across the Europe, virtually every western European country has its own version of Vitaminic already. Vitaminic has also acquired several sites during last year, including Peoplesound from UK, IUMA from US and two French MP3 sites.

AfterDawn.com's sidekick MP3Lizard.com finally reached one of those "magic numbers" when we served our 100,000th MP3 download since 1999. Sure, it's not much if you compare us to likes of MP3.com, but heck, we're proud of that achievement anyway!

Join the celebration and d/l free music from independent artists -- simply go to MP3Lizard.com and scan through the genres and pick your favourites.

Warner Bros will collect all the Powerpuff Girls DVDs from the market, because the DVD contains Funlove virus in its PC section. DVD contains regular movie, which obviously is 100% safe, but also includes certain extra features meant for PCs and one of the files in that section contains Funlove virus.

Funlove doesn't remove any files from PC, but changes the Windows settings in a way that computer is vulnerable for attacks from the Net.

In an extremely long case where major movie studios and their organizations, MPAA and DVD CCA, have been trying to prevent the distribution of tools that allow decrypting the CSS encryption scheme found from DVD movie discs, California appeals court has made a decision that favours sites and individuals who distribute DeCSS code over the web.

California case was filed in 1999 against hundreds of individuals that distributed the code on their websites and was aimed to prevent this from happening. Now California appeals court decided that distributing DeCSS should be legal based on free speech rigths.

"Although the social value of DeCSS may be questionable, it is nonetheless pure speech," the decision reads. "Our respect for the legislature and its enactment of the (trade secrets law) cannot displace our duty to safeguard the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment."

In New York there's a separate federal case against 2600.com's owner, Eric Corley, who refused to remove links to DeCSS after MPAA's request. This case also been ongoing since 1999 -- first decision was that Corley violated the DMCA law, but there's still plenty of courtrooms to come in this case as well.