Independent recording label Artemis Records said on Monday it would waive fees charged to Internet radio stations provided they play music from their catalog for one year. Artemis Records is home to artists like country-rock singer Steve Earle and heavy metal group Kittie.
The announcement was obviously welcomed by the webcasters whose livelihood has been threatened by the royalty rates set by the Library of Congress in June. Other independent labels will probably follow Artemis' example to waive the fees. What better way to promote your artists than by making the catalog an appealing choise for web radio stations struggling to stay on-line.
According to ZDNet, RIAA's website, RIAA.org, was disabled by a massive DoS (Denial Of Service) attack for four days. Attacks started on Friday last week and ended yesterday.
Attacks started shortly after RIAA encodersed a bill written by House representative Berman on Thursday, that would allow copyright owners to use force to distrupt file swapping in P2P networks. The RIAA said it would not speculate about the reason for the attack.
In DoS attacks, attackers normally "capture" hundreds or thousands of computers and use those computers simultaneously to attack specific site by sending bogus data and requests for the server.
Well not quite, but almost. Senator Joseph Biden, the head of Foreign Relation commitee, is on a mission to stop the theft of intellectual property. In February he released a report titled "Theft of American Intellectual Property: Fighting Crime Abroad and At Home" in which he describes counterfeit products as a major cause for loss of revenue for American software companies.
Shortly after ToAIP:FCAaAH (sounds like someone falling, doesn't it? "FCAaAH...!") was released, Biden introduced a bill titled "Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002". Originally the bill targeted physical counterfeiting, such as fake holograms and packages, but was later rewritten to cover digital rights management technologies as well.
In essence what the bill means is that it would be illegal to fake a DRM watermark and distributing the product, e.g. a song, with the fake watermark. Now why would anyone want to fake a watermark? There are several projects around, such as Microsoft's Palladium that will, eventually, embed operating systems, computers, and all sorts of gadgets with DRM modules -- whether you like it or not. Now if you have a perfectly legitimate MP3 of your own making, you wouldn't be able to listen to it with these devices, or operating systems, equipped with a DRM scheme of some sort. If there's a software available that would allow you to create a valid, but fake watermark for the song, it would be illegal to use it. The bill would make this type of action a federal felony, and you could end up in prison for the next five years after first scooping up up to $25,000 in civil penalties per offence.
We all remember how the prices developed in the early days of CD-R drives, and there is no reason why this wouldn't be the case also with DVD recorders.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Cheaper DVD recorders may not be under the tree this Christmas, but Taiwan chip makers hope to make the consumer machines the stocking stuffer of choice by next winter.
Aiming to sharply lower the cost of DVD recorders, the island's top two optical chip makers are preparing chip sets that should make the machines more attractive to consumers by the second half of next year as greater competition and higher volumes drive IC prices down. "After that, there won't be any reason for recordables to be so expensive," said Chin Wu, president of ALi Corp., formerly known as Acer Laboratories Inc.
Currently, DVD recorders from Panasonic and Philips sell for between $600 and $1,000 at places like Circuit City. Once the Taiwanese enter the market, Wu believes that can come down to under $300 by the end of next year.
MediaTek Inc. plans samples for the third quarter next year. Its offering will be similar to ALi's, except that it will use a third-party MPEG-2 encoder/decoder.
Both companies will also spin their DVD-R IP into offerings for the PC market at around the same time. The new chips come at a time of increasing competition for MediaTek, which has seen ALi nip away at its DVD player market share and newcomer Via Technologies Inc. slash its margins on more mature CD-ROM chips.
Seoul, July 26, 2002 -- Settec, Inc., a Korean copy protection provider, has recently introduced new version of Alpha Audio copy protection, called M3 Type, and signed to apply its technology to upcoming music albums released by number of Korean record labels. Settec will be showcasing its improved and new version to the music industry at Popkomm 2002, Cologne, Germany.
Settec’s new M3 Type is consisted of audio session for music tracks and data session for custom player program. While this idea has been applied in the past, Alpha-Audio M3 Type adopts new technology; PC playing is enabled through direct access of original music tracks, not through compressed encrypted audio data files. "The benefits for this direct access feature are many. Previously, technologies have apparently used compressed audio files in the data session for PC playback, taking away disc space and shortening playing time. Now the disc space is considerably reduced to a minimum to accommodate only Settec’s custom player program. In addition, since M3 Type uses the original music tracks for PC playing, sound quality when played through PC will be the same as the original",said vice president of Settec, Donggyoo Kim.
Three House representatives, Rick Boucher(D-VA), George Nethercutt(R-WA) and Jay Inslee(D-WA) introduced a new bill, dubbed as Internet Radio Fairness Act that would save small webcasters from the death.
Librarian Of Congressset the new webcasting royalty fees in June and since that, several small webcasters have either ceased their operations or are planning to do so. According to Rep. Boucher, "both the CARP and the Librarian of Congress were working under a flawed law that has produced a royalty rate which harms not only the hundreds of webcasters that have already shut down operations, but also Internet users seeking innovative music programming and artists seeking alternative avenues through which to promote their music."
According to the new proposed bill, small operations with less than $6M of annual revenue, would be exempted from the webcasting fees. Also, all future CARPs must change the royalty rate standard from the current "willing buyer/seller" model to the "traditional standard" which was created back in 1976.
Australian Federal court ruled today that "chipping" PlayStation consoles is not illegal. Sony originally launched legal case against Sydney man, Eddy Stevens, for selling pirated PSX games and providing mod chips for PSX users.
With mod chips, users can play backed up games, pirated games and imported games (PSX and PS2 have region coding). Sony failed to prove to the court that its copy protection measures installed physically on the devices, are there because of the piracy and not because they want to limit the games sold in regions (games cost significantly less in U.S. than in Australia).
Anyway, Stevens was found guilty of violating trademark laws and selling pirated games, but those charges are going to be handled in next month.
RealNetworks continues its honeymoon with open source community and announced today that it has signed an agreement with Xiph.Org Foundation to integrate Ogg Vorbis audio format with recently announced Helix DNA client to give tools for developers to build media players that support Ogg Vorbis format and use the same player technology as Real's commercial RealONE Player uses.
Additionally, both parties agreed to develop Ogg Vorbis plugins for Helix DNA media delivery server platform as well as for Real's RealONE Player.
It seems that Ogg / Xiph.org Foundation have managed to make all the right moves in last few months -- they got the VP3 video codec, media delivery platform, Helix client and delivery platform. Now, only thing what audience wants to see is how the guys who work with these projects, can make them work together. An open source competitor to Microsoft that would deliver patent/royalty -free audio and video formats using open source technology from the encoder through DRM to delivery to client software.
Obviously there are nags; Real's own video and audio formats remain proprietary and some of the license terms of the software Real hands out are more restrictive than in GPL.
Just wanted to ask all of you guys, who own DVD-R (or DVD+R/W) writers to test and help to improve our new web-based tool.
This little helper helps you to determine if the movie is DVD-5 or DVD-9 -- in other words, does the movie fit on one DVD-R disc without any modifications or not.
We would also love to get submissions from the users for DVD-9 entries -- if you have successfully backupped a DVD-9 movie to DVD-R, there's a feature that lets you to add the information to our database about how you did it. Did it require removing the extra features from the disc, etc..
If you're interested, please feel free to try it at:
News.com has an article of a upcoming bill that would make it legal for copyright holders to hack individual users' computers if they share illegal material through the Net.
If passed, the bill would make copyright holders, such as MPAA and RIAA, immune to all state and federal legal actions if they disable, block or otherwise impair a publicly accessible peer-to-peer network. If an individual user's computer was damaged because of the copyright holder's action, he/she would have to request a specific permission from the U.S. attorney general before filing a lawsuit against copyright holders. And to make matters worse, this suit could be filed only if the monetary value of the damaged hardware would exceed $250.
"I think it's wildly overreaching," Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University, said. "Copyright owners are in essence asking Congress to say that peer-to-peer file trading is such a scourge, is so bad, that stopping it is more important than enforcing any other laws that federal or state governments may have passed on computer security, privacy, fraud and so forth."
Singapore's Creative Technology will soon ship a tiny MP3 player that does away with cables when downloading music from a computer.
The Nomad MuVo is a thumb-sized device with a detachable storage portion that can be inserted directly into a computer's USB port, allowing for drag-and-drop file transfer.
Besides music files, the flash-memory storage can also hold any type of data file. Creative is riding on this to market the product as an all-around portable data-storage gadget.
Click Here to go to Gateway!
"You can transfer and store music, share digital images and data or back up your files in just seconds--no need to burn a CD or send files through e-mail," said Craig McHugh, president of U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs.
As an update to the JPEG story from last week, where American company called Forgent Networks announced that it owns core patents that cover JPEG picture compression technology and wanted companies who use its technology, to pay licensing fees.
Anyway, The Reg has an excellent coverage of this topic. Basically the latest stuff includes the fact that Forgent has already at least one licensee, Sony Corp, who has paid $15M in licensing fees to Forgent.
JPEG committee who develops JPEG standard and the new JBIG standard, is calling people to provide evidence of prior art to the patent claims. If there are existing evidences that the technology Forgent has patented, has been used before their patent application, it renders the patent worthless.
RealNetworks made probably one of the recent multimedia history's boldest move today when it released its new media delivery platform, dubbed as Helix.
New platform allows delivery of virtually all kind of multimedia, including Microsoft's Windows Media format. Previous versions of Real's servers have been centered around Real's own proprietary media format. But the most significant change in Real's strategy is the fact that Helix is going to be open source product.
The fact that Real releases its product as an open source, is dramatic when you take a look back in history -- Real has been extremely obsessed with its own format and by opening the secrets behind its server technology, it opens the doors for open source developers to make their modifications, maybe even players that play Real's formats.
One of the webcasting pioneers, American FM radio station KPIG, has shut down its streaming service. Station managed to simulcast its highly popular live shows for whopping seven years before it had to call quits.
Station simply states that the new webcasting royalty fees that were ruled in this summer by Librarian of Congress are simply too high to maintain the service. According to KPIG, the costs for continue the streaming would be around $3,000 a month just for webcasting royalties and as it says it doesn't make any money out of its streaming service, choice was clear.
Out of nowhere a company called Forgent Networks has came to center of public eye claiming that they own JPEG patents and now claim that all software manufacturers who use JPEG technology, have to pay licensing fees to the company.
The full announcement can be found from here. Sounds pretty amazing, since JPEG has been generally considered as "patent-free" picture format and is probably the most popular image format in the world. There's a huge debate going on over this claim, probably best place to check out people's opinions is (not very surprisingly)Slashdot.
Yet another proof that useless software patents should be removed from patent laws in U.S. and never to be introduced within EU.
RIAA said that it is contacting IT and consumer electronics companies to negotiate on possibility to include "broadcast flag" on all future digital radio broadcasts.
RIAA wants to have the ability to "tag" all digital broadcasts, whether they're send through Net, cable, satellite or regular broadcasting stations. The aim is to make all consumer electronics and software solutions to recognize the flag and not to allow further distribution or saving the streaming if the flag is set.
I've written news about companies suing various individuals, based on whatever laws they can think of, in various countries. But I've kinda wondered the fact that major corporations seem to be able to sue people who live in totally different countries and they sue them in the U.S.
Well, today I had some spare time and actually tried to find out about this and it seems that there are few international treaties that cover pretty scary things. Basically the thing is that if one, just ONE, country of the countries who have signed these treaties (Hague treaty being the scariest one) has a law (or in these not-so-honest, "invents" a law) that restricts something -- let's say distributing tools that allow listening MP3s -- they can sue the company or individual who breaks this law in country where it is perfectly legal to do so in the country where it is illegal. And if the court in this country finds the case in favour of the company who sued the individual or company in other country, the other country's courts have to ensure that the foreign court's order is taken in action.
Group of traditional radio broadcasters (you know, those that you hear from AM/FM radio :-) have appealed the court order that ordered them to pay royalties for streaming their content over the Net.
So, these giants, including Clear Channel Communications(world's biggest radio company), are basically saying that while small Net-only broadcasters should pay for both, songwriters and so-called sound-recording owners, the "real" radio stations should not pay anything for streaming. Traditional radio stations in the U.S. don't pay for artists, record labels, etc -- they only pay for songwriters. And now they're saying that this should be enough to cover both, traditional and Net radio broadcasts.
After months of negotiations between patent owners and possible licensees, MPEG-4 licensing contract is finally ready. Joint licensing will be done through MPEG LA, just like MPEG-2 is done.
New terms seem to be much more relaxed for Net content publishers. Publishers have to pay $0.25 per subscriber or $0.02 per hour for MPEG-4 usage. Fees are also capped at maximum $1M per year. Also, small publishers with less than 50,000 subscribers, don't have to pay licensing fees at all. There are also several other licensing methods -- cable and satellite TV operators pay an annual lump sum for MPEG-4 licenses if they wish to use it (instead of now-standard MPEG-2).
Apple released its Quicktime 6 today, just hours before the MPEG LA's announcement. And yes, their new version is 100% MPEG-4 compatible. Encoder and decoder providers, such as Apple and DivXNetworks and various hardware manufacturers have the same $1M cap as web publishers do and they pay only if they sell/provide more than 50,000 units to public.
Universal Music Group, part of French Vivendi, has created a new full-time position within the company, dubbed as head of anti-piracy. Lawyer and ex-music-TV producer David Benjamin will be appointed as a senior vice president of anti-piracy.
Benjamin will oversee company's anti-piracy efforts and work with label's artists, songwriters, producers and industry associations such as RIAA.
According to the source the Roxio Toast software for Apple Machintosh will start blocking protected audio CDs when attempted to copy. I've never liked the company on their products, but this move by Roxio is just unbelievable.
Owners of such Secure Content ("Secure Content Owners") may, from time to time, request Roxio or its suppliers to provide security related updates to the DRM components of the Software ("Security Updates") that may affect your ability to copy, display and/or play Secure Content through the Software or other applications that utilize the Software. You therefore agree that, if you elect to download a license from the Internet which enables your use of Secure Content, Roxio or its suppliers may, in conjunction with such license, also download onto your computer such Security Updates that a Secure Content Owner has requested that Roxio or its suppliers distribute
Chairman of Turner Broadcasting System made more controversial remarks related to the rise of digital video recorders, such as TiVo. He says that consumers' ability to skip commercials could kill the current advertisement-supported TV as we know it and eventually change all TV channels to rely on subscription fees.
This is actually what Internet publishers have feared and in some extreme cases already realized -- users have the ability to "skip" or "ignore" ads by using technical methods and therefor pushing the advertisement income the publisher receives, down. TBS is part of AOL TimeWarner and controls media names such as CNN and WB.
According to survey, around 70 percent of DVR owners use their devices to skip the commercials. Obviously as a counter-argument, the advertisement biz is worth of $60 billion and is unlikely to disappear, but what will be the method that they'll use in future, if the eyeballs watching 30sec ad clips every 15mins are going to disappear. TV stars wearing "Buy our product" T-shirts maybe -- open and ruthless product placements?
Anyway, interesting stuff. More from Associated Press via Yahoo!.
MPAA has increased its antipiracy efforts against individual Net users in this year. The number of DMCA letters sent out to users' ISPs has doubled since last year.
MPAA's attitude is still much more careful than its music industry counterpart's, RIAA's, which has begun suing individual P2P users who distribute its members material. In most of the cases MPAA just sends out the letter to the ISP of the user who it has tracked down as an individual who distributes major Hollywood movies through P2P networks. Then ISP sends out a notice to the user demanding user to take down the offending material within 24hrs or user's Net connection will be terminated. If user complies with the request, almost all do, the case is dropped. According to MPAA, they basically want to "educate" users -- but in some extreme cases legal action can be considered.
South Korean court ruled today that country's biggest P2P service, Soribada, has to shut down its service immediately.
"Soribada didn't violate copyrights directly, but it must bear indirect responsibility for the degree of its involvement in violations of copyrights," judge Kim Sun-hye told South Korean reporters Friday.
Case was launched in February by Recording Industry Association of Korea which represents appx. 133 labels. In separate case in last year, the authors of the service, Yang Jung-hwan, 28, and his brother Yang Il-hwan, 32, were found guilty of violating Korea's copyright laws and were ruled to pay $75,000 in damages to record labels.
South Korea has one of the world's highest number of Internet users compared to its population, almost 50 percent, and most of them using broadband connections.
MPAA's international arm, MPA, has offered $150,000 reward for people who help them to bust DVD pirates in Asia.
MPA said that in 2001 there were appx. 4.8M pirated DVDs seized worldwide and 98 percent of those were seized in Asia. Mainland China is not a major concern of MPA, since its pirated production goes mostly to domestic consumers, but the main problems are caused by Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong, according to MPA.
MPAA(and itse member studios) has finally sued now defunct $1-a-pop movie service Film88.com which has caused major shockwaves through the movie industry in this year.
Company seems to be owned by a Malaysian businessman and his California-based company. Company first appeared in Taiwan under Movie88 brand and offered latest Hollywood hits through streaming technology for a price of $1 a movie. MPAA however used its local contacts in Taiwan and urged authorities to take the site down. Next time the site reappeared (named as Film88) seemingly located in Iran, but its servers were physically located in Netherlands. MPAA's international arm, MPA, contacted company's ISP and they took the site down.
So, MPAA basically wants to prevent the company from appearing again, this time in some other country that does indeed have reliable hosting facilities and lacks western copyright laws. This time they actually have a target on American soil -- the Californian company.
Vivendi Universal announced this week that it will make available around 1,000 of its 11,000 albums through EMusic. However, albums that will be available, are mostly albums that are not chart-toppers, but from smaller names instead.
According to Vivendi's Universal Music Group, they want to evaluate whether selling music through the Net will make people also to buy the physical copy of the album or does it cannibalize the physical album sales.
EMusic, which is also owned by Vivendi, is one of the only online music services that delivers the goods without any major strings attached -- users are free to transfer the tracks to their portable MP3 players, burn the tracks on CD, etc.
Recording and movie industry asked U.S. court to allow adding KaZaA's current owner, Vanuatu-based Sharman Networks, to the lawsuit that they're taking against other FastTrack companies. Judge granted the permission yesterday.
RIAA and MPAA sued three companies who used to run FastTrack-based P2P network back in October, 2001. Original lawsuit, filed in the U.S., is against American StreamCast Networks, Carribbean-based Grokster and Dutch KaZaA BV. Since then, KaZaA BV has sold its assets to Sharman Networks and ceased its operations and StreamCast Networks has, after a huge fuss, changed from using the FastTrack technology to open Gnutella P2P network.
Obviously, it is hard to understand how American court could rule against foreign companies who don't operate in U.S. soil, but if the companies are willing to defend themselves in the court, it can easily drain their financial resources.
Internal beta builds of Microsoft's forthcoming Service Pack 1 for Windows XP are finding their way onto the Internet thanks to some unscrupulous employees. Although public betas almost always leak to the Web, in the past Microsoft has been mostly successful at keeping private builds it issues to internal Redmond workers secure. But since SP1 build 1050 shipped to beta testers, unreleased builds 1060, 1063 and 1065 have cropped up on underground Windows sites.
These private builds usually contain few updates from public releases and are generally less stable, but that hasn't stopped hordes of enthusiasts wanting to run the latest XP code. Weighing in at over 100 MB the service pack isn't light on bandwidth, either.
Microsoft faced a similar problem two years ago when internal alpha builds of Windows XP, then code-named Whistler, leaked onto the Internet from Redmond labs. The breach prompted the company to change its policy of how Microsoft-only builds are distributed. Such leaks not only allow competitors to sneak a peek at what Microsoft has up its sleeve, but also give the general public a wrong impression of the final product, because internal releases are by nature incomplete and bug-laden.
One of the first developers who continued the work of Justin Frankel after he released the original Gnutella, Gene Kan became one of those few pretty well-known names in P2P world. According to News.comarticle, he died and was cremated last week, at the age of 25.
He launched his P2P career as one of the best-known Gnutella developers and was one of the guys to launch the "original" Gnutella site (gnutella.wego.com). Later on he took part of developing a P2P -based search engine dubbed as Infrasearch which was later acquired by Sun.
Despite the DVD Forum's reluctance to embrace the new Windows Media technology (dubbed "Corona"), the folks in Redmond still think their new package of codecs, players, and tools has a big part to play in the future of DVD.
Corona's biggest bragging point is the efficiency of its video codec, which promises to deliver high-definition video compression (up to 720 lines per inch) at 1/2 to 1/3 the bandwidth required by MPEG-2, according to Michael Aldridge, lead product manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media Division. Though it's content-dependent (video with more action requires more bandwidth), Aldridge said it can deliver the DVD-standard 480 lines per inch (lpi) with ease, meaning that in hard storage (rather than streaming) applications, Corona would let DVD manufacturers put more movies at 480lpi on a single DVD, or put higher-definition movies on standard consumer DVDs all without switching to blue-laser technology.
Therein lies the rub. Earlier this year, the DVD Forum agreed to pursue a blue-laser standard and continue using MPEG-2. While the forum—of which Microsoft is a member—hasn't rejected Corona outright, it hasn't exactly embraced it, either. "We've been developing a DVD-related format using MPEG-2 and some public open technology," said DVD Forum secretariat Hideyuki Irie. "Our policy is to keep standardization as open as possible. Currently, we don't have interest in adopting a new format other than the MPEG standard."
Company called Overpeer is "poisoning" various P2P networks with fake files. Company shares tons of files with attractive filenames, but files -- currently only MP3 files -- contain just garbage or 5sec loops of the track mentioned in the filename.
Overpeer does this on behalf of various content owners, most notably with world's largest record label, French Vivendi Universal. Problem isn't that big yet, but as many, many P2P users tend to download tracks and share them immediately without checking their accuracy, the problem can easily escalate.
Most likely this will lead P2P developers to figure out ways to "moderate" files, invent hashing systems to their software, etc. But obviously it will annoy users who have spent 20mins with their 56k to download a track and find out that the track they wanted to download is actually 100% useless.
More worrying for Microsoft than the resurfacing of this particular mod project is the claim that no mod chip at all is required to play pirate games on the Xbox.
A number of our sources have pointed out that in fact, what most Xbox chips in development do is to replace the standard retail Xbox BIOS (the chip on the motherboard which tells the Xbox how to behave when it is powered on or rebooted) with a hacked version of the BIOS found in Xbox development kits – which, of course, will happily boot gold discs, copied DVDs and games from all regions.
This requires no hardware modification to the console – someone with the appropriate equipment can open up the machine, alter the BIOS program in a procedure known as "flashing", and voila – one "chipped" Xbox, except with no chip.
Unlike chipping PS2s, this process is innately illegal since it requires the use of a modified version of Microsoft's BIOS program and the encryption keys held within it, thus constituting a breach of copyright. However, legal issues aside, this loophole in the Xbox's security is a headache for Microsoft and, indeed, for any publisher or developer working on the system. So far, the relative expense of chipping a PS2 (it can cost upwards of £100 to install a Messiah chip) has kept the number of chipped machines to a minimum; however, should Xbox modifications become as cheap and simple as PSone modifications were at the height of that console’s success, a similar level of chipping and hence piracy can be expected.
The hacker magazine 2600 will withdraw it's appeal to the Supreme Court since they see the chances of them winning the right to post the DeCSS code were rather slim. They see they have made their point and cannot take the case any farther.
2600 was sued by eight motion picture studios in December 1999 for publishing the source code of the DeCSS software and linking to other sites providing DeCSS downloads.
DeCSS is a tool developed by Norwegian Jon Johansen for viewing DVD movies with unofficial players. DeCSS has enabled computer users to view their DVD movies on alternative platforms, such as Linux, on which licensed, commercial DVD software is not available. On the other hand DeCSS also allowed users to decrypt and copy the content of DVD-Video discs on their computer hard drives for further processing.
DeCSS did not, actually, break the DVD encryption. Rather it relied on using a decryption key from a well known DVD-player software. The DVD license dictates that this key should always be encrypted. However in this case, it was not. The key has since been labeled "untrusted" and most DVD movies cannot be viewed with the old DeCSS.
After suing the centralized song-swapping services such as Napster, rather successfully might I add, the music companies are now preparing an attack on the users of peer-to-peer sharing networks.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is planning on filing copyright lawsuits against the people sharing the most songs on song swapping services, such as KaZaA. The lawsuits would be a part of a larger scale campaign, which would include a public campaign encouraging music fans to respect the copyright laws.
So far the entertainment industry has avoided suing individuals -- mostly because of the negative publicity associated with giant corporations suing individual Internet users.
At the time of writing this there was over two million users on the KaZaA network. Finding and identifying the biggest filesharers from this haystack might prove out to be a bit more laborious than RIAA expects.
Finnish Hantro has introduced a capturing software today that allows capturing real-time video stream into MPEG-4 format. What makes the product worth mentioning is the fact that it is designed for the Nokia 7650 mobile phone.
Nokia 7650, which is available at Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, uses Symbian operating system and includes digital camera built-in and this camera can be used as a digital camcorder when using Hantro's product. Hantro's encoding software allows resolutions upto CIF (352x288) resolution, allows sending the videoclips directly from the phone via email or by using MMS (multimedia messaging system) directly to other MMS-capable phone with MPEG-4 decoder.
Product is currently available only to operators and manufacturers, but Hantro is also considering bringing it to consumer markets when Symbian/Java/digicam phones get more popular.
One of the competing music subscription services, FullAudio, signed an agreement today with AOL TimeWarner's Warner Music to allow its users to burn Warner's tracks to CD.
Normally users of these subscription services are not allowed to burn their downloads to CDs or to transfer the tracks to portable digital audio players. Luckily, it seems that record labels are finally getting to understand that if they wish to offer legal alternatives to P2P networks, they have to lift their restrictions on how users are allowed to use the tracks they've paid for.
Listen.com yesterday became the only online music subscription service to have secured rights to all "big five" record labels' music catalogs. Company announced that it signed a deal with Vivendi's Universal Music Group to use UMG's music in its subscription service Rhapsody.
Listen.com now has the most complete music selection when compared to its major record label -backed competitors, Pressplay and MusicNet, but it still lacks music from specific artists, such as Beatles. Reason for this is the fact that some of the biggest names in the business own their rights to their music, unlike most of the current stars, who have signed contracts that make their music a property of the record label.
Biggest problem is not the selection of the music, though -- biggest problem is to get consumers to pay for something that they've used to get free from various P2P networks. And that is a problem that all subscription services have to figure out before they can seriously expect people to sign up to their services. Other issue is obviously the flexibility -- if subscription services can't provide the same flexibility as "free" MP3s can (CD burning, playback with portable MP3 players, etc), they're not going to go anywhere with their business plans.
FreeAmp will soon be going away! The Zinf project will continue where FreeAmp left off.
The Zinf audio player is a simple, but powerful audio player for Linux and Win32. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio CD playback, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming, RTP streaming, a powerful music browser, theme support and a download manager.
Zinf is based on the FreeAmp(R) source code. However, AMP(R) is a trademark of PlayMedia Systems, Inc., and therefore the original name of the project cannot be used any longer. On this website the old project will be referred to as FreeA*p.
SunnComm is about to release a new version of the MediaCloQ protection and accroding to this article their focus is on hardware compatibility. I wonder how are they going to match compatibility with protectivity?
At the presentation, which took place at SunnComm's corporate offices, the company explained that its new "revolutionary technology" had been kept under wraps due to the "intense competition within this market segment." SunnComm's Peter H. Jacobs said, "This is a very important step for our company and we are excited to be able to showcase MediaCloQ 5.0 to our stockholders."
Jacobs added that his company had been working closely with current and prospective record label and media customers. "Our technology needed to create a legal and licensed way for consumers to make personal copies on their computers while inhibiting unauthorized duplication of digital content. We also had to make sure that the CD plays on just about every CD player and DVD player out there. I believe MediaCloQ 5.0 accomplishes this."
Out of nowhere a company called Forgent Networks has came to center of public eye claiming that they own JPEG patents and now claim that all software manufacturers who use JPEG technology, have to pay licensing fees to the company.
