News archive (8 / 2002)

If I remember correctly, KiSS was one of these 1st generation MP3/DVD hybrid players to hit the european market. Now they have annouced that an MPEG-4/DivX supporting players are coming up. The MPEG-4 codec is provided by Sigma Designs, that was recently accused of open source GPL license abuse.

MILPITAS, Calif.—August 28, 2002—Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM), a leader in IP video streaming solutions, and KiSS Technology, a leading European vendor of DVD and DVB products, jointly announced an agreement to use Sigma’s EM8500 progressive DVD decoder chip in a new line of advanced DVD players. This new generation of DVD player goes beyond the bounds of a simple plug-and-play appliance, enabling consumers to play downloaded content, in several formats including MPEG-4, and view them on their television in superior quality.

About MPEG-4 in DVD Players

MPEG-4 is the latest digital video compression standard, enabling content developers to create sophisticated programs containing audio, video, text, graphics and interactivity. The object-oriented environment of MPEG-4
provides for complex scene compression at low bit rates with correspondingly small file sizes, making it ideal for either lower cost or higher capacity storage. Moving forward, MPEG-4 will make its way into all forms of set-top appliances, including digital cable systems, media gateways, video endpoints and now consumer DVD players.

Newsforge has done excellent job by digging into this topic that's been red hot for the last few days. Looks like we were all 'slashdotted' big time..

Dave Arland, a U.S. spokesman for Thomson Multimedia, says that MP3 licensing terms have not changed in seven years, and that as far as he knows there are no plans to change them in the future. According to Arland, the Slashdot poster who claimed Thomson's license structure changed recently "was apparently misinformed."

The controversy was created by the removal of this line in the old MP3 royalty licensing page from the current version: "No license fee is expected for desktop software mp3 decoders/players that are distributed free-of-charge via the Internet for personal use of end-users."

But the lack of these few words on the latest version of the MP3 licensing Web site does not represent a change in Thomson's policy.

Arland says Ogg Vorbis is apparently using this small Web site wording change "to get publicity," and that if Ogg Vorbis or anyone else wants to produce multimedia encoders and players and give them away, that's fine with Thomson. But he said Thomson does not do that and never has; that its policy has always been to allow free use of the company's MP3 patents in "freely distributable software" while charging royalties to all commercial software or hardware makers that use Thomson's MP3 technology.

Recording Industry Association of America's official website RIAA.org was hacked today with very, very funny modifications on the main page :-)

Earlier today hackers managed to break into RIAA.org's site and modify the site with pro-file trading messages and direct links to MP3s. Here's a short copy/paste from modified site:

RIAA to sue music sharers? Not Anymore

With the legal file sharing service kazaa still online, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced that it intends to offer the latest albums for download from riaa.org.

As you are probably aware, the RIAA has been pursuing a policy of preventing this activity in recent months

We have recently become aware that this approach is yielding only limited results and in some cases may in fact be harming sales and the artists' revenue stream.

The RIAA wishes to apologise for the heavy-handed manner in which the popular chinese site Listen4Ever was closed down, and would like to present the following items for free download as a token of its goodwill.

Of course the list is relatively small, but please be patient - we expect to offer over 300 next week. We also intend to offer pre-released movies in the coming months.

The Xiph.org (The people behind OGG Vorbis) were quick to respond to the apparent change of the MP3 licensing policy. This is a must read!

August 27th, 2002
Dear Thomson Multimedia:

Thank you for removing the license-fee exemption for the release of free mp3 decoders.

Thank you for the unbelievable amount of free publicity we have received in the wake of this announcement. If it weren't for the change in mp3 licensing, there's a very real chance that the continued adoption of our open standards may have slowed down.

Thank you for presenting a reminder to people that when they choose a patented alternative over a free one, they will eventually have to pay in one way or another. It's been difficult to send this message all by ourselves; we're glad you've decided to step up to the plate and knock it out of the park.

Thank you for providing the impetus for millions of people and hundreds of companies to give an open, free alternative a try. We love it when people get a chance to evaluate technology, and we've been happy to present them with a superior alternative to mp3. If it weren't for the removal of the free-decoder exemption, it might have taken even longer for people to try it out.

It seems that Thompson & Fraunhofer IIS-A have changed the MP3 technology licensing fees. They are now charging $0.75 per decoder or $5.00 per codec. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the numerous freeware applications that utilize MP3 technology. There are already rumours that RedHat has removed all MP3 components from their upcoming Linux distro release.

On the other hand, this just might give OGG Vorbis the push it needed?

UPDATE:Quick browsing around the internet revealed that this might not be a real change in MP3 licensing policy. Yes, the website has changed, but there has been no official announcement or press release by Fraunhofer or Thompson. Wait and see.

mp3licensing.com

Most of us had a sigh of relief when several consumer electronics companies announced earlier this year that they have agreed to develop a new blue-laser DVD based on standards that all participating companies have agreed upon. World might have thought that in future (when blue-laser will kill the current red-laser technology) we could avoid the current situation, where recordable DVDs have three different format "camps" that are not compatible with each other. But no...

Japanese consumer electronic giants NEC and Toshiba announced today that they are developing their own version of blue-laser DVD technology, which would not be compatible with Blu-Ray (the standard proposed earlier this year). Toshiba reps defended their decision that their blue-laser DVD solution offers better backwards compatibility to existing DVD technology -- most notably, Toshiba-NEC's technology doesn't use cartridges to protect the disc. For consumers, this is a non-issue, since it is most likely that all Blu-Ray as well as "Toshiba-NEC technology" players will play existing DVDs anyway. But the carrot is meant for content publishers -- changing the DVD plants to use new technology that requires usage of cartridges is more difficult than changing to a technology that doesn't.

According to various sources, Sigma Designs is still violating the GPL license in their products. Despite releasing the source code yesterday after they got busted red-handed, they haven't announced anywhere that their codec code is based on XviD development team's work -- and in GPL rules, all contributors have to be awarded in copyrights correctly.

So, basically Sigma was forced to release their code, after they stole it and used it for many months without any mentioning of GPL anywhere, but they still try to turn their partial compliance with GPL into a PR stunt. This violates also American copyright laws, as well as GPL license. Now general public gets the picture that they've developed the free MPEG-4 codec by themselves, which is not true, getting all the good press and praise from the end-users.

Also, DivXNetworks has announced that they will support XviD fully in this matter. It also seems to be that Sigma has included some parts of original OpenDivX code into their codec as well -- once again, without any mention in their copyrights about this.

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 22, 2002--Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq:SIGM - News), a leader in IP video streaming solutions, today announced the release of the source code behind its free MPEG-4 video CODEC that works as a plug-in under Windows® and encodes digitized video content into fully compatible ISO MPEG-4 video files. The complete source code will be available for download starting August 23, free of charge, through Sigma's website (www.sigmadesigns.com), to support developers wishing to enhance the MPEG-4 encoding.

"We are pleased to provide the development community with an open source MPEG-4 CODEC, and anticipate that this will accelerate technical improvements and enhance the proliferation of MPEG-4 content," stated Ken Lowe, Sigma Designs' vice president of business development.

About Sigma Designs, Inc.

Sigma Designs specializes in silicon-based MPEG decoding for streaming video, progressive DVD playback, and advanced digital set-top boxes. The company's award-winning REALmagic® Video Streaming Technology is used in both commercial and consumer applications providing highly integrated solutions for high-quality decoding of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., the company also has sales offices in China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.sigmadesigns.com/.

According to Kaspersky Labs, there's a yet another worm spreading across the FastTrack network. Worm, dubbed as Duload, distributes itself through KaZaA and has already few variants.

Most of the variants seem to be harmless, but at least one tries to download and install various Trojan horses to user's computer, risking the computer security and opening backdoor for crackers.

More info can be found from Kaspersky's advisory.

XVID is a leading open source MPEG-4 video research project, founded by the German student Michael Militzer in August 2001 to continue the efforts of DivXNetworks' former OpenDivX project.

Sigma Designs' headquarters are located in Milpitas, California. The company specializes in MPEG based video hardware for encoding and decoding. Recently Sigma Designs' introduced the Xcard, the first consumer hardware MPEG-4 decoder in the form of a personal computer add-on card.

XVID TEAM REQUESTS SIGMA DESIGNS' TO HALT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

ERLANGEN, GERMANY -- August 22nd, 2002 -- The XVID development team, author of the popular XVID MPEG-4 video codec, claims that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec is an illegal copy of the XVID software and publicly requests the company to stop violating their software license and copyrights.

XVID is a leading open source MPEG-4 video research project: software distributed by XVID is covered by a Free Software license, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The XVID team announced that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec includes wide portions of XVID codec software. By not offering a corresponding source code distribution and by claiming sole authorship on the product, Sigma Designs' Inc. is violating the GNU General Public License and the copyrights of the XVID authors.

RIAA has dropped its lawsuit against major backbone ISPs, stating that the site they wanted to block, Listen4ever.com, has been shut down. Site has been unavailable -- at least from western countries -- since Sunday.

RIAA's legal pressure against major backbone ISPs caused a huge media attention earlier this week, because of its possible effects to the Internet as a whole -- censorship and forcing ISPs to block specific sites, like in this case, could lead in a situation where various countries start asking backbone providers to block content that is not "acceptable" in specific country, etc., ultimately limiting Net's freedom dramatically.

Anyway, RIAA still has plans to sue the individuals who operated the site in Peoples Republic of China, through its international sister organization, IFPI.

RIAA has asked federal judge to order Verizon Communications to reveal the name of its customer who, RIAA says, has traded copyrighted MP3 files using P2P networks. Verizon hasn't complied yet, because this is first time ever that RIAA uses DMCA law to squeeze individual P2P users' names from ISP.

Normally, DMCA requires ISP to reveal its customers' names if they store illegal material on ISP's servers, but as this case is somewhat different -- user used his own computer to connect P2P network -- Verizon has decided to play it safe, so it doesn't get sued by the customer.

Even RIAA seems to understand -- according to their staff, they think that Verizon is more than willing to hand out the name, but they simply want to do it through the court so that they don't get into nasty legal trouble with their customers. And obviously, its bad press to comply something like this without pushing it little bit further in the legal system.

Technology sector versus content owners war is getting tougher. Yesterday, an American ISP called Information Wave Technologies (or IWT) announced that they will actively block RIAA from accessing its network. According to IWT, this is a response to a proposed bill and RIAA's plans to attack against individual P2P users who share copyrighted material over P2P networks.

Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulnerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data.

Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site.

Many 'less official' sources have suspected that the MP3 phenomena is actually good for the music industry and now a Forrester survey backs this opinion up.

Forrester Research has surveyed a thousand music customers and concludes that MP3 downloads are good for the music business.

Twenty per cent of those surveyed - two groups Forrester describes as "music lovers and music learners" - buy 36 per cent of CDs, and these enthusiastic downloaders said MP3s had no effect on their CD purchasing.

"The idea that digital music is responsible for slump is completely false," concludes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff.

The news will dismay the entertainment pigopolies*.

Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.

The Register

Recently there has been quite a bit of talk about the maximum speed that a compact disc can handle. Recently when Plextor annouced their new drive they built in a "speed lock" that the user needs to unlock to use speeds above 40x.

Now the Freaks have a nice sample of what can happen to a CD when the going gets too fast.

The IL-2 Sturmovik CD was in an AOpen 52x CD-ROM and suddenly a huge 'bang' .. it exploded and shattered probably into more particles a modern videocard can render realtime. The front of the CD tray even blew off and the CD .. shattered to pieces.

CDFreaks.com

The Recording Industry Association of America has finally gone crazy. At leant it sounds so. RIAA has sued several major backbone ISPs, including telecom giant AT&T, Cable&Wireless, Sprint, UUNet and Advanced Internet Services.

The suit seeks a court to rule that backbone providers (backbone providers are the networks who transfer virtually all the data between Internet locations, continents, etc -- despite what ISP you happen to use, your ISP rents the bandwidth from backbone providers anyway) have to block access from American users to website called Listen4ever.com which has servers located in People's Republic of China. The site offers illegal copies of latest chart hits in MP3 format.

Because RIAA's too long arm can't reach legally sites that are located in the PRC (the lawsuit says that the site operators are located in China as well), it now tries to block all the access to this site. But then this lawsuit raises scary questions -- if RIAA succeeds of blocking the site, other copyright owners are going to do the same. And there are helluva lots of things in the Net that are illegal in the U.S., but perfectly legal in other countries. So, if RIAA wins -- welcome censorship. We can only hope that ISPs are willing to fight the fight and not to bow to RIAA's request -- they have the financial power to fight back if they want to (unlike most of the other RIAA targets).

The well known and seriously outdated Blade MP3 encoder project has been officially discontinued by the developer Tord Jansson. This is actually very good news since many people were still using Blade while LAME MP3 encoder outperforms it greatly in quality and speed. Great thing is that he now promotes OGG Vorbis on his very popular website.

*Today we have a better alternative in Ogg Vorbis.
*Audio encoding technology has never really been my cup of tea
*...and felt that other free encoders (most notably LAME) did a much better job for the average mp3 user

BladeEnc News

According to this study the pay services will come eventually and grab a market share, but I really have to wonder why the reaction time of the music industry is so slow?

Digital distribution of music through services such as Morpheus and Kazaa will continue to thrive, with use peaking in 2005, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Yankee Group predicts 7.44 billion unlicensed audio files will be swapped in 2005 among consumers aged 14 and older, up from 5.16 billion in 2001.

After 2005, however, Yankee predicts free music swapping will begin to decline. Yankee projects 6.33 billion unlicensed audio files will be swapped in 2006.

If Yankee's projections are right, it could be bad news for the recording industry, which has been launching its own pay services and working to thwart unlicensed music swapping. The entertainment industry is also pondering legal moves against individuals.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Internet piracy of music has shaved 5 percent from music sales in both 2001 and 2000. Although the declines can be attributed to other reasons, Yankee said, unlicensed music swapping is "certainly a significant contributing factor."

Norwegian DeCSS case against Jon Johansen has been delayed. Johanssen, who is accused of creating the "notorious" DeCSS tool that allows people to copy contents of DVD to their HDDs, is facing charges of breaking into secured computer system.

Obviously, the charges are ridiculous and it took two years for MPAA to pay^H^H^Hconvince Norwegian government that they should prosecute Johansen. Problem obviously was that there isn't such law in Norway that would make it illegal to develop, distribute, etc a software that allows copy protection circumvention. So, they had to use the law that is used for cracker cases, where people break into mainframes in order to steal information from servers, etc. And the most ridiculous thing is that, according to everyone who knows something about the DeCSS history, Johansen actually didn't even code the original software :-)

Anyway. The case been now postponed until 9th of December this year, because both parties want to appoint "technically savvy" judge for this case, which will probably get worldwide attention once it begins.

Source: The Reg

In recent weeks, since EUCD is getting closer and closer -- the final date is 22nd of December -- we've been studying other countries laws governing distribution and usage of "copy protection circumvention devices", such as DeCSS.

In U.S., it is illegal (according to New York's Appeals Court and Federal Court -- not by Supreme Court yet) to distribute DeCSS code or executables that allow circumventing DVD copy-protection known as CSS.

In EU it will be illegal from 22nd of December.

In Australia, it seems to be illegal as well -- the law was amended in 2001 to say this:

COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 - SECT 116A

Importation, manufacture etc. of circumvention device and provision etc. of circumvention service

(1) Subject to subsections (2), (3) and (4), this section applies if:

(a) a work or other subject-matter is protected by a technological protection measure; and
(b) a person does any of the following acts without the permission of the owner or exclusive licensee of the copyright in the work or other subject-matter:
(i) makes a circumvention device capable of circumventing, or facilitating the circumvention of, the technological protection measure;
(ii) sells, lets for hire, or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire or otherwise promotes, advertises or markets, such a circumvention device;
(iii) distributes such a circumvention device for the purpose of trade, or for any other purpose that will affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright;
(iv) exhibits such a circumvention device in public by way of trade;
(v) imports such a circumvention device into Australia for the purpose of:

According to Japanese newspapers, world's number three in red-laser diode market, Sanyo, will start mass-production of "next generation" blue-laser diodes in April, 2003.

Blue-laser, because of its shorter wavelength, allows storing almost six times more data on optical disc (26GB per side on normal 12cm disc) than now-used red-laser technology. Major manufacturers have already agreed on blue-laser DVD standard, dubbed as Blu-Ray which will debut on next year (when Japan begins terrestial digital TV broadcasting).

Source: Reuters via CNET

Very few, unfortunately, seem to understand that DVD rippers and other neat toys like that are going to disappear from European Union by end of this year. Law -- or actually a directive -- called EUCD was passed by EU Council in 2001 and it can't be changed anymore and now member states are required to implement it into their own legislations.

Anyway, now UK Patent Office's consulation papers have been released online. Papers indicate what needs to be changed in current UK law to comply with EUCD. As said, UK doesn't really have much option to choose whether or not to pass these laws, so it is just matter of details in other EU countries as well.

Some chilling stuff to read, I save your time and copy-paste one nasty piece:

296ZB. (1) A person commits an offence if he—
(a) makes for sale or hire, or
(b) imports otherwise than for his private and domestic use, or
(c) in the course of a business—
  (i) sells or lets for hire, or
  (ii) offers or exposes for sale or hire, or
  (iii) advertises for sale or hire, or
  (iv) possesses, or
  (v) distributes, or
(d) distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner

World's largest video rental chain, Blockbuster (owned by Viacom), has launched a trial in several U.S. cities that aims to take share of current or future NetFlix user base.

NetFlix, a four-year-old company, offers unlimited DVD rentals through its website, delivered directly to subscriber's door (free shipping and return), for $19.95 a month. And as those who use NetFlix, are considered to be "hard-core DVD users", Blockbuster is obviously interested of this area of business.

Blockbuster's model is somewhat different anyway, they offer $19.99 monthly subscription where late fees don't apply until after 30 days and users can rent upto two films at once. Service is being offered currently in Houston, New York, Seattle and Phoenix. Difference between Blockbuster's subscription service and NetFlix is the fact that Blockbuster movies need to be rented from local Blockbuster stores while NetFlix doesn't have any physical rental chain whatsoever.

Source: News.com

Nineteen U.S. congressmen have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking him to go after online swappers who distribute copyrighted material in P2P networks. They also ask that these people should face jail time because of their actions.

According to the letter, dated 25th of July, Justice Department should devote more resources to police online copyrights, go after P2P networks and their users.

RIAA has already announced that it very pleased with the suggestion. No surprises there. An analyst for a digital civil-liberties group said the Justice Department probably had better things to do with its time.

The letter "implies that Justice should be going after relatively innocent behaviors that I suspect most Americans don't think warrant the time," said Alan Davidson, an associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Both parties, webcasters and RIAA, will ask court to overrule Librarian of Congress' decision from June to set the fixed royalty fees for webcasts.

Obviously, both sides appeal for different reasons -- RIAA obviously claims that the set royalty fee level is too low and meanwhile webcasters say that the fee structure is putting webcasters out of business. Later argument seems to be more accurate, since according to Radio And Internet Newsletter, over 200 webcasters have already shut down their businesses because of the royalty fee decision.

According to experts, court decision will take at least several months. Case is expected to go in court by end of this year.

Source: News.com

iM Networks and Listen.com have announced a deal that will see iM-operated devices to support Listen.com's Rhapsody music service.

iM Networks provides "Internet radio tuning" software and hardware solutions to consumer electronics manufacturers and companies who use its products include Philips, Panasonic and Creative Labs. With iM-enabled stereo equipment, users can use Internet radio stations in their home stereos just like they would be regular radio stations.

With deal, users who have iM-enabled devices, will receive 30-day trial for Rhapsody's music service and will get offers for full subscriptions. iM will also integrate Listen.com's artist information into its "Tell Me More" ecommerce system.

Source: M12N

American General Mills has partnered with Columbia Tristar to offer free full-length DVD movies on cereal boxes :-) In the past General Mills has ran similiar promotions giving away free CDs, but this is the first time in the U.S. that consumers will get free DVDs with cereal boxes.

Promotion is about to begin in this fall and company will give away appx. 8M DVDs. Movies will be "family-oriented". General Mills says that 50-60 per cent of American households already have DVD players, so it is appropriate to offer free DVDs as well.

General Mills' brands include Cheerios and Golden Grahams.

Source: MediaLine News

LAS VEGAS--Sega's defunct Dreamcast gaming console, which has long fallen out of favor with gamers, has surprisingly gained a new lease on life.

Two security researchers on Friday showed attendees at the Defcon hacking conference here how to reuse the small off-white boxes as stealthy network monitoring devices.

"When you only have a few minutes, you need to be able to drop something off that will let you access the network later," Aaron Higbee, a consultant with Foundstone and one of the two programmers who worked on the project, said of the Dreamcast consoles.

Click Here to go to IBM!

Higbee and his programming partner, consultant Chris Davis of RedSiren Technologies, created the software to turn a Dreamcast into a network bug. Their software, when burned onto a CD-R and placed in a Dreamcast that has a broadband network adapter, allows the game console to give a hacker access to the network to which it is connected.

Rather than teaching hackers in the audience how to monitor others' networks, Higbee and Davis said the demonstration was intended to alert network administrators to the danger that many innocent-looking devices could pose to network security.

News.com

President of the Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro, and Silicon Valley House Representative, Zoe Lofgren, commented proposed copyright bills and also the existing DMCA law in a panel held in Silicon Valley. Panel included attendees from RIAA and several consumer electronics and IT companies.

"The DMCA was a very flawed law," CEA President Gary Shapiro said. "We signed off on it, and it was a huge mistake."

Rep. Lofgren said that "the DMCA has had unintended consequences." She said she signed off on the law because she was convinced it would be applied narrowly to prevent piracy, but instead it has been used to thwart technological development. "I think we have had a very wide set of anti-technology rules emerging from the courts," she said. She also said that the new, proposed copyright laws should not be used to kill technological innovations and prevent evolution of new business models.

RIAA's representative said that the pleas for fair use rights mask a desire for widespread stealing of digital content. "Anybody who doesn't want to talk about this as a stealing problem hasn't created anything," he said.

After seeing its restrictive business plan to fail, Pressplay, a joint venture of Sony and Vivendi, has changed its music subscription service dramatically.

Previously users of Pressplay could only stream and download a very limited amount of songs each month for their subscription fees, but now Pressplay will remove almost all of the obstacles. By paying the monthly fee of $14.95 (the big change is that 12months non-refundable subscription is required), users can download and stream an unlimited amount of songs during their membership. Obviously all tracks include DRM scheme, but the change is still big. Users are also allowed to burn upto 120 songs a year to CD-Rs if they want to, making those tracks truly DRM-free.

But Pressplay still faces a major problem from its rival, Listen.com, which is the only subscription service that has rights to all "big five" record labels' music catalogs, while Pressplay has content only from its owners, Sony and Vivendi, and from British EMI.