The recording industry lawyers have discovered that they can prove whether or not an MP3 file was selfmade or downloaded from the Internet. The claims were made in a case against a New York woman, who has been accused of sharing 1000 files through a peer-to-peer network.
The woman claims to have made the MP3 files herself, but RIAA lawyers beg to differ. They have discovered that the headers (or more likely ID3 tags, which are actually located at the end of the file) on the MP3 files on her computer included "the username of another computer user". Also the hashes of some of the files matched songs found on p2p networks earlier.
It's the latter that has even some significance. A hash is a "digital fingerprint" of a file created using a pre-defined algorithm (eg. MD5 or SHA1). The hash uniquely identifies a single file, ie. it's extremely unlikely that any two files would result in the same hash.
MP3 files of the same song, even when created from the same source, differ from each other somewhat, due to differences in encoder routines. Then again just editing the ID3 tags on the MP3 files changes the hash as well.
The Freenet Project aims to produce an anonymous P2P (Peer-To-Peer) file sharing program, which would guarantee the users security and privacy. As we can see from the recent news items, there definitely is a huge demand for a solution that keep the users safe from the authorities’ actions.
So far Freenet hasn’t gained too many users, even though the project has received some media attention. The software is not ready to challenge more popular P2P clients (Kazaa, Direct Connect..) in terms of usability. Also, the high security routing method has been extremely slow.
But there is hope that the routing issue will be soon solved, which would definitely help Freenet to gain more users. The Freenet Project is now inviting advanced users to test their next generation routing. The new method promises to be possibly the most efficient P2P network ever seen and still maintaining the security and privacy.
The core idea behind the Next Generation Routing design is to make Freenet nodes much smarter about deciding where to route information. For each node reference in its routing table, a node will collect extensive statistical information including response times for requesting particular keys, the proportion of requests which succeed in finding information, and the time required to establish a connection in the first place. When a new request is received, this information is used to estimate which node is likely to be able to retrieve the data in the least amount of time, and that is the node to which the request is forwarded.
The only case so far where an alleged file swapper has decided to fight against a subpoena requested by the RIAA is heating up. The Californian woman, known by the court only as "Jane Doe" and by the RIAA by her Kazaa username Nycfashiongirl, has stated through her attorneys that she is innocent to the alleged copyright infringements.
So, according to the DMCA, if copyright holder has any proof whatsoever that the user might be responsible of copyright infringements, the ISP of that user has to hand out the personal details to the copyright holder. Copyright holder is not required to sue the user after they've got the personal details.
Australian Federal Court has decided to allow Sony Playstation owners to "chip" their consoles. The decision makes it possible for Australians to modify the consoles so that they will play games from different regions, as well as copied games.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) supported the individual sued by Sony Computer Entertainment in the case, and applauded the decision.
"Australian consumers can now enjoy games legitimately bought overseas, as well as authorised back-up copies, by legally having their consoles chipped," said ACCC chairman Professor Alan Fels.
The Australian Copyright Act prevents copyprotection circumvention devices, such as mod chips, if the copyright protection measures have no commercial significance. However in Sony's case the court saw that the protection was implemented to allow Playstation games to be priced differently in various regions.
Sony was disappointed by the ruling, and is concidering to appeal.
The webcasting a.k.a. Net radio issue is back in headlines again. Group of small net radio operators, the Webcaster Alliance, has sued RIAA over the webcasting royalty issue.
The whole mess, that has taken years to solve, was created by the U.S. Congress in 1998 by setting up a royalty fee for Net radio broadcasts (while traditional radio stations in the U.S. don't pay any royalties whatsoever). The mistake they made was that they didn't specify how much the royalty fee should be.
Anyway, the last decision that was made about the royalty rates was made after talks between RIAA and small group of webcasters, most notably including all the biggest webcasters, that set the current royalty rates. Current system is that webcasters pay royalties based on certain percent of their revenue (with an exception of large webcasters who pay fixed price per each broadcasted minute).
Now the Webcaster Alliance has sued RIAA because it claims that RIAA has refused to negotiate with them for alternative royalty rates and claims that the group of webcasters that negotiated the current royalty system didn't represent webcasters in general, but only a group of specific type of webcasters.
Big Mommah of all government owned non-commercial broadcasting companies, UK's BBC, is planning to bring parts of its massive video selection available through Internet for free.
The corporation won't bring its massive entertainment collection to Net however, because its DVD sales figures are just too lucrative to justify such a move, but it has plans to bring other shows, documentaries, etc available to the public. The schedule and pretty much all the technical details are still unknown.
Several legal music services, copyright organizations and legal scholars have filed "friend of the court" briefs asking to overturn an earlier court ruling that said companies behind P2P software aren't responsible for possible copyright infringement of their users.
"The district court's misapplication of law, if permitted to stand, will create loopholes in the law...that will frustrate efforts to limit online piracy and serve to encourage and embolden potential infringers of creative works," read the brief.
In April, federal Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that P2P software makers can be compared to VCR manufacturers -- both have illegal applications, but the companies behind them cannot be held responsible for the misuse.
Hong Kong based Lik Sang International today announced it has settled the lawsuit with Sony out of court. Sony sued Lik Sang for distributing copy protection circumvention devices, also known as mod chips. Lik Sang has now agreed to cease trade in PlayStation modchips, and to refrain from publish any information regarding Sony's copy protection systems. Additionally Lik Sang will pay compensation to Sony.
Lik Sang is still in court with Nintendo and Microsoft in similar cases. According to The Register "the decision to settle with Sony was taken due to new developments in international law surrounding mod chips and similar devices, as well as for simple financial reasons."
Lik-Sang.com is currently operated by a new owner, and is not affected by the cases in question.
Scientists and concerned web users all over the European Union have started rallying against the proposed software patent directive that is going to be submitted for European Parliament on 1st of September.
Traditionally, most European countries don't allow patenting software at all, but there has been a huge variety of differences between EU member states as some of the countries have similiar software patent laws to those of the U.S. Now the new software patent directive is trying to enforce all member nations to approve software patents, pretty much in identical way to American software patent system.
Many European scientists and software developers -- both commercial and specially open source developers -- have raised their voices against the proposed legislation and now the grassroot movement against the legislation is getting ready for real life protest in Brussels tomorrow.
Some of the prime examples of valid software patents in the U.S. include blinking cursor and nested menus.. Do we want similiar patents that would curb software development and make lawsuits such as the one that SCO has filed against the Linux community possible in Europe? If you don't want this to happen, please consider signing this petition and visit this page as well for questions on how to oppose the directive.
Californian Supreme Court decided today that a piece of code that we know as the DeCSS code, can't be protected by U.S. constitution's free speech amendment.
The case was filed originally back in 1999 by DVD CCA against dozens of Californian (and, apparently, residents from other states as well) residents, accusing them of violating DVD CCA's trade secrets by distributing a code, the DeCSS, that allows circumventing the copy protection mechanisms found on DVD-Video discs.
MAD (MPEG Audio Decoder) is a high accuracy MPEG decoder filter. The software is available in open source and for example as a WinAmp plugin. MAD is tested to provide very high accuracy MPEG audio decoding. Now the source code is being ported into a Direct Show filter that player software can utilize for audio decoding.
This is a DirectShow filter for the MAD library. The idea is mostly to provide an example on how to write a DirectShow audio-filter, however the filter itself can be used as a replacement for the standard MPEG 1 Audio Layer 1, 2 and 3 filters.
The leader of MP3 piracy group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC), Mark Shumaker, 21, has pleaded guilty to violating copyright laws. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and US$250,000 fine.
This is the first time an online-focudes piracy group is being charged in federal criminal prosecution. The final sentence is to be decided November 7th in Easrtern District of Virginia.
The plea was, obviously, welcomed by Recording Industry Association of America who has long urged the Justice Department to focus on online music piracy, just like they focus on software piracy.
Copyright holders and anti-piracy groups claim MP3 groups, who release bootleg copies of yet un-released music, do so to for money, when in fact many groups just compete to be the first one to release a particular album. It doesn't, of course, make it any less illegal.
The Nero 5.5 version has not been abandoned by Ahead software, even though they have already moved to version 6.0. This was expected though, since Ahead software announced to release yet another update to the 5.5, despite the fact that the 6.0 is already out.
On Ahead softwares FTP server, there is now an update to version 5.5.10.50 available, but as usual, Ahead gives no information on the changes in this release.
This summer's major movie flops, such as The Hulk and Gigli didn't fail because of their bad script, bad acting or just overall lack of originality. Not at least if you listen to movie studios.
Movie studios claim that the habit of spreading the bad words about movies to your friends after you've seen a movie that you considered as a "not worth paying for" is to blame. And specifically the new technologies, such as instant messaging and mobile phone text messages (SMS) are to blame.
According to movie studios, five years ago the so-called drop-off rate between movie's premiere weekend and the second weekend was appx. 40 per cent in the UK and now it is 51 per cent.
Now, we're waiting anxiously when MPAA decides to ban mobile phones and IM tools -- obviously they are to blame, 10 years ago people didn't have any means to communicate with each others and even Really Bad Movies made profit, right?
Californian woman has filed a case against the music industry lobby group RIAA in order to get a subpoena that was filed against her, to be overturned.
According to her -- she has filed the case anonymously and is only referred as "Jane Doe" in court papers -- lawyers, RIAA's methods of seeking individuals' personal information from ISPs by using the DMCA law's subpoena clauses, violate her privacy and her constitutional rights.
"This [seeking personal info of file swappers] is more invasive than someone having secret access to the library books you check out or the videos you rent," said Glenn Peterson, one of the attorneys, in a statement.
She is the first individual to challenge RIAA's rights to obtain personal data after Verizonlost its subscriber privacy case in New York against RIAA.
A new version of the super-light-weight, yet versatile video and audio player, Media Player Classic has been released.
The new version has built-in MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoders with DVD-support, which means that you can play DVD-movies without a commercial DVD-player software. For multi-channel audio you will need the AC3Filter package, which is also freeware.
For a 800 kilobyte software, Media Player Classic does amazing things! You can now forget Windows Media Player for good.
The Peer-to-Peer file sharing activity of the consumers seems to have slightly fallen, or so claims the NPD study.
NPD tracks consumer file-sharing activity. It calculated that 14.5 million US households downloaded music files in April. In May the figure fell to 12.7 million, and dropped to 10.4 million in June, the company said today.
But sometimes the statistics can be fooling as...
in April some 852 million songs were acquired via the Internet. Come June, the figure fell to 655 million. April, says NPD, was a record-setting month, but the fact it doesn't provide a figure for May, suggests the dip was relatively small.
Indeed, the average number of files downloaded per household grew between April and June, from 59 to 63.
It could be that the recent and more aggressive actions by RIAA, which have been targeted towards individuals may have scared some P2P-users. Also, corporations may now be more aware of the P2P-usage, and have been monitoring the Internet usage of the employees more closely. One must also take into account that the summer time typically is less active in the Internet, as the northern side of the globe is enjoying the summer vacation season - vacations at least have an impact in web browsing activity.
DVD tweaking tool DVD Region-Free has been updated to version 3. The new version has been rewritten to gain more speed and stability, and it includes new features especially aimed for backing up DVDs from different region.
DVD Region-Free detects when a DVD player software checks for the region information on the drive and disc, intercepts them and lets you view movies from different regions without patching your DVD software or DVD-ROM drive. Now the software also detects DVDFab, DVD2One, Pinnacle InstantCopy, DVD Shrink and Nero Recode to copy DVD from any region directly.
In addition to the very nice new feature, the update includes lots of bugfixes, and other small changes.
Major record labels and movie studios announced yesterday that they will appeal the court ruling that was delivered back in April that gave a first major court victory for P2P networks.
In the ruling, federal court decided that P2P companies Grokster and Streamcast Networks(owner of the P2P tool Morpheus) weren't liable for the copyright infringements that happen in their P2P networks.
"...decision was wrong,"RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement Tuesday. "These are businesses that were built for the exclusive reason of illegally exchanging copyrighted works, and they make money hand over fist from it. The Court of Appeals should hold them accountable."
"Grokster and Streamcast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights," Judge Wilson wrote in his decision back in April.
RIAA says that Wilson ignored earlier court decision that involved the legendary Napster in which case Napster was held liable for copyright infringements its users made using its network. But according to Grokster's spokesman the judge followed that case very closely and managed to see the structural differences between Napster and Grokster/Morpheus (that were both based, at the time of the case was filed, on FastTrack network which doesn't use central servers unlike Napster did).
The mobile phone giant makes a move to acquire more gaming industry expertise and technology. Sega.com Inc is a daughter company of the Sega Corporation. The company concentrates in developing multi player platform technology - The Sega Network Application Package (SNAP).
Sega was already on of the game producer to support Nokia N-Gage hand held console in the first stage of product launch. This deal strengthens Nokia’s position and status in the gaming market significantly, in addition to providing Nokia with Sega.com’s technology.
"At the moment online and mobile gaming are the hottest trends in the gaming industry. This was a logical step to bring online elements to mobile gaming.
...
Sega.com Inc has developed a working platform, which combined with the N-Gage console will give the players whole new possibilities and experiences."- Ilkka Airaksinen, the manager of Nokia Entertainment and Media Business unit.
RealNetworks has signed a deal with Best Buy which allows it to sell subscriptions to its online music service Rhapsody at Best Buy stores and web site.
Rhapsody is now available at more than 15 online distributors, and after the Best Buy deal in over 560 retail stores in the North America.
Real also announced that it has managed to sign the Rolling Stones' music to be sold digitally via Rhapsody. Until now the Stones have refused to sign an online deal with any distributor.
Real's Rhapsody is trying hard to compete with Apple's iTunes, which has turned out to be a huge success. While iTunes sells tracks at $0.99 each, the song downloads cost only $0.79 a track at Rhapsody.
Even though MP3 players have been around for quite some time, the sales figures still haven’t reached their peak. It is safe to say that the market penetration of MP3-able products has been steady but slow. But now it seems that digitally compressed, and possibly digitally distributed or shared, music is an acceptable media and the consumers are realizing its full potential.
Headset CD/MP3 player sales continue to rise in the triple digits, which helps push the audio category as well. In June, unit sales were up 202 percent, compared to the same period in 2002, to total sales of 547,000 units and dollar sales were up 104 percent to a total of $27 million.
...
"The growth in MP3 has been monumental in 2003, with it clearly being a purchase criteria for consumers seeking on the go audio," said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis. "The great news is that this trend has only just begun, now that the format is moving into the mainstream with the new profit based online music services."
The famous DVD copier programs receive yet another update.
DVD X Copy XPRESS v3.0.2:
Fixes drive speed error cause at beginning of burning session.
DVD X Copy GOLD v3.0.2:
Now contains the latest version of DVD X Copy XPRESS.
DVD X Copy XPRESS is a DVD copier program that uses a lossy compression method to shrink the video stream, so a that a movie fits to a single 4.7GB DVD-R. The GOLD package contains the XPRESS and the original DVD X Copy, which is a lossless DVD copier that can split the movie for buring it to two DVD-R blanks if the movie exceeds 4.7GB capacity.
Microsoft has opened a pay-per-song service in Windows Media Player 9 environment. The service, labeled MSN Music Club is currently available in U.K.
Songs in the service are priced at $1.21 per track or $12.75 per album. Subscribers, however, can download tracks for $0.99 at cheapest.
"This is a very significant boost to the European on-line market," says Mark Mulligan, a Jupiter Research senior analyst. Mulligan sees consistant prices and comprehensive catalogue the two most important features of the service.
One of the big attractions of iTunes has been the fact that the service permits users to burn tracks on CD or store them on a portable device. It's unclear whether or not Microsoft's service allows this.
The European Commission is already investigating if Microsoft's bundling the Media Player with Windows is against the European antitrust laws. At least for now Microsoft has a free advertisement spot on virtually every Windows desktop in Europe.
Provided the use of the tracks isn't too limited, MSN Music Club might turn out to be very successful indeed.
Audible Magic develops tools to identify copyrighted music material, based on a "fingerprint" information that is unique per each and every song. According to Audible Magic their technology is able track songs distributed online and possible could be used for blocking illegal audio distribution. The source indicates that Audible Magic is about to close a deal with Universal, so that Universal Music will deliver the fingerprints of each title released directly to Audible Magic.
The new arrangement, expected to be announced Tuesday, will see Universal give Audible Magic a "fingerprint," or digital identification tool, for each song it releases, before albums are shipped to retailers. The company uses those fingerprints to identify copyrighted songs online or in other venues such as CD-manufacturing plants to help guard against unauthorized copying.
...
"What it does is accelerate the time to get music into our database," Ikezoye said. "That's when piracy is the biggest problem--right around the release date."
Well, I couldn't be more sceptic about this technology. It seems to be full of potential inaccuracies, like the fact that psycho acoustic compressors (such as MP3, AAC, Vorbis, MusePack) strogly alter the sound signal for an example. It also seems that it would be al too easy to go around this "finger print tracking" by wrapping the audio files inside another file format.
Nokia has started the N-Gage promotional tour today. The first event took place in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. On the tour the N-Gage is demonstrated in action to the media and consumers. Also taking place is a Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 contest, with a chance to win a trip to the grand final taking place in Paris.
The N-Gage is the first next generation hand held console. In addition to offering a high quality gaming experience, the N-Gage has a fully featured GSM cell phone built-in, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, audio player features, email protocol support for mobile communications and more.
The N-Gage is entering the market with no competition, as its features go far beyond the Nintendo’s GBA. Nokia has approximately a year to freely increase its market share, until the Sony Playstation Portable is released -- by the end of 2004. Sony has a whole lot of work to do before the product launch, as the PSP is currently in the planning stage.
As the retail release date is getting close, the N-Gage.com is now accepting pre-orders.
The makers of DVD X Copy product line have released new tools for CD/DVD data recovery. DVD X Rescue and CD X Rescue are solely for recovering damaged data discs back to use.
The 321 Studios are also very smart in polishing their public image. They are now offering this new software free for schools, hospitals, religious and other non-profit organizations. A very smart move from a company that is struggling with legal issues.
They are also introducing a great bundle deal, as DVD X Copy GOLD buyers can now purchase a DVD+R recorder for just $99!
321 Studios, the leader in DVD back-up software, announced today the launch of a nationwide initiative named Project X Rescue. Under this initiative, 321 will donate DVD X Rescue or CD X Rescue, a revolutionary technology which enables the recovery and restoration of data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective media, to libraries, schools, universities, hospitals, religious and other non-profit organizations.
The DVD X Rescue and CD X Rescue products were developed in response to consumers’ frustration with imperfect media sources, specifically the fragility of CDs and DVDs. Consumers publicly logged complaints about a CD or DVD that skips, a photo disc with treasured photos that could no longer be accessed, their garage band’s live recordings that skip and other personal and business technology dilemmas. 321 Studios developed these new products to enable consumers and businesses alike to create a brand new and problem-free copy of a DVD or CD from a damaged original.
The Japanese game and console manufacturer is struggling with their flagship gaming machine. According to the source, the product lines are halted until the unsold inventory of built machines is cleared.
The Japanese company Nintendo has temporarily halted production of its GameCube consoles until the autumn.The struggling games maker says it needs to clear its warehouses of unsold machines before it makes any more of them.
Nintendo’s excuse for the lack of market demand is a rather interesting one.
Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, has also said he wants to move away from increasingly sophisticated and time consuming games, which dominate the games industry at the moment.
The games market shrunk dramatically last year, Mr Iwata said, because players were getting frustrated with the ever more sophisticated games.
In gaming industry discussion the common opinion seems to be the opposite of Satory Iwata’s. Many people consider Nintendo’s game portfolio childish, too simple or lacking variety. People are choosing PlayStation 2 or Xbox due to the more challenging games that are more targeted to the mature gamers. Now it seems that Nintendo is concentrating to the same old niche that has been it’s strongest part always: Simple but fun(?) games.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's and Boston College's challenges have proved to be successful -- at least for now. A Massachusetts court has decided that the universities involved do not have to provide RIAA with the identities of the alledged song swapers immediately.
There's not much to cheer about the ruling, though. It's based on a legal technicality -- RIAA has filed all the subpoenas in D.C. federal court, when it should have filed them in the appropriate local courts instead.
RIAA says it will file subpoenas wherever courts require them to.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched their new anti-piracy campaign with the slogan copying is stealing. TheRegister takes you back to the pre-digital age, when the movie industry was concerned about the state-of-the-art technology of the time: The VCR. This short article also goes through some of the major and more recent milestones in the battle between free digital content distribution & copyright owners.
In another 1980s US case (Sony vs Universal City Studios), the court agreed that video recorders would be used to copy television programmes. UCS claimed that Sony was liable for copyright infringement as it supplied the video recorders.
As we can see, the events of recent days, months or years actually aren’t that unique, and that the history is once again repeating itself.
Microsoft's home entertainment system Windows XP Media Center Edition is coming to Europe. Thirty OEM manufacturers will be building PCs based on the operating system.
Media Center is, like the name suggests, intended to be used in the living room as the central hub for digital entertainment. It's features include personal video recorder, DVD player, and Internet connectivity. It remains to be seen how keen consumers are to purchase devices based on quite expensive PC technology. The prices will quite likely be much higher than those of regular home entertainment devices, such as DVD-players or game consoles. Building an entertainment center around the Xbox concept might prove to be more successful.
PC manufacturer Gateway has released a 1.5-ounce (43g) portable USB storage and music device. The 128MB Gateway Digital Audio Player DMP-200 will be available this week at $129.99, with the 256MB DMP-300, priced at $169.99, being released August 14th.
The product connects directly to a standard USB 1.1 port with a built-in connector, and is powered by a single AAA-size battery. Physically the device is roughly the same size as USB pen-drives, and when connected to a PC, works just like one. No special drivers are required for Windows XP (and probably not for Windows 2000 and ME either), and the unit is visible as a removable drive under the operating system. Both MP3 and WMA formats are supported, and ID3 tags are viewed on a three-line LCD display.
Listen.com is one of the pioneers in the digital music distribution business. Listen.com offers their RHAPSODY music service for their customers.
RHAPSODY is the premier digital music service powered by Listen.com. RHAPSODY gives you unlimited access to the largest legal collection of digital music in the world. You can listen to complete albums on-demand. Create your own custom playlists. Play what you want, when you want. RHAPSODY is the leading music subscription service that gives you unlimited playback of your music. Combine that with CD burning, Internet radio and in-depth artist info and recommendations, and you've got the one service that does it all.
In the past Listen.com has found growth in buy-out deals, but now the company is sold to the RealNetworks. This way Real makes a swift entry to the blooming market sector, which suddenly heated up after the launch of Apple iTunes.
Recently RareWares organized a public lossy audio compression listening test. The formats and encoders in this test were: AAC(Apple QuickTime by Dolby), LAME MP3,MusePack, OGG Vorbis, WMA Pro, Blade MP3.
How to interpret the plots: Each plot is drawn with the five codecs on the x axis and the ratings given (1.0 through 5.0) on the y axis. N is the number of listeners used to compute the means (average ratings) and 95% confidence intervals. The mean rating given to each codec is indicted by the middle point of each vertical line segment, and the value is printed next to it. Each vertical line segment represents the 95% confidence interval (using ANOVA analysis) for each codec.
The results lead us to some interesting conclusions. First of all, MusePack is considered to be optimized for higher bitrates but it’s performance seems to be top notch even at the 128kbps range. Dolby’s AAC is close and so is OGG Vorbis, but the performance of WMA Pro by Microsoft was a slight surprise perhaps. LAME MP3 encoder is competitive, but loses to the newer and more advanced formats. BladeEnc demonstrates a bad example of audio compression and hopefully these test results help to wipe out the myths of the quality of BladeEnc permanently.
BBC News Online has released an article investigating the reasons behind declining CD sales world-wide. Not too surprisingly they reach the same conclusion most of us have reached years ago -- the reasons are not in peer-to-peer or any other online piracy.
The top three reasons are CD piracy, declining number of releases, and new consumer markets. While RIAA claims that the CD sales are declining due to P2P swapping, they forget to mention that while CD sales dropped by 7% in 2002, the pirated CD sales rose 14%.
In 1999 38,900 individual titles were released in the US. The number of releases fell by 30% by 2001 when only 27,000 titles were released. With fewer titles on the market the number of units sold is bound to decrease as well. The number of titles released dropped mostly due to the fact that there are fewer old vinyl records being re-released on CD -- most of them have already been released and purchased by consumers looking to replace their vinyls with compact discs.
The last, but definitely not the least of reasons are the new entertainment markets. Consumers are investing a bigger portion of their "entertainment budget" to DVDs, mobile phones and other forms of entertainment.
Well, who wouldn’t? Earlier this week Sony won their court ruling appeal against the court’s decision to allow MOD-chips and similar methods that used to bypass protections of console games. This makes MOD-chips illegal in Australia.
However, yesterday, the Federal Court upheld Sony's appeal against the decision, and ordered that the company be awarded legal costs. The chips are now illegal. The decision comes as a blow to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which intervened in the orginal case to argue in favour of upholding the chips' legality.
Now however, the The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has raised it’s voice against the recent court ruling.
The ACCC believes region coding is detrimental to consumers as it severely limits their choice and, in some cases, access to competitively priced goods," said the new ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel. "The ACCC is disappointed that technology which can overcome these unfair restrictions will not be generally available for consumers' use.
Actually the region coding is not the worst feature of game console original games. The expensive game discs receive heavy usage, lot of swapping in and out from the device possibly in daily basis. And many of the console gamers are small kids, often carelessly handling the valuable discs. The consumers should have their fundamental right to make a backup in order to protect their property.
The recording industry lawyers have discovered that they can prove whether or not an MP3 file was selfmade or downloaded from the Internet. The claims were made in a case against a New York woman, who has been accused of sharing 1000 files through a peer-to-peer network.
The only case so far where an 
