The U.S. Senate has passed the PIRATE Act bill, which raised several concerns when it was proposed. The Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act of 2004 allows the Department of Justice to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright pirates. Up until now the copyright holders have had to file the lawsuits themselves.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and many others, see the PIRATE bill as a lobbying victory of the recording industry, whose only purpose is to make the taxpayers fund their quest against P2P piracy. P2P United executive director Adam Eisgrau said that "The recording industry needs to find a way to turn the 60 million U.S. residents who have used file-sharing software into customers, instead of regarding them as criminals."
The bill still has to be passed by the House and signed by President George Bush to become a law. It was introduced in March, and moved to the Senate floor without a hearing.
The road for the next generation optical video recording is already being paved. Consumer electronic giant Matsushita announced today that the first recorder with a mighty 50 gig capacity will be released for the Japanese market under the Panasonic brand. The device features tuners for terrestrial and satellite digital and analog broadcasts.
The DMR-E700BD, the high-end model of Matsushita's DIGA DVD recorder series, will be put on the Japanese market on an open-price basis on July 31, said the major consumer electronics maker known for its Panasonic brand.
The new model can record up to four and a half hours of digital high-definition programming or up to 63 hours of analog programming, Matsushita said.
The Supreme Court of Canada delivered today a yet another blow to music industry when it ruled unanimously that Canadian ISPs are not required to pay royalties to music companies because their users use the Net connections to download music.
Earlier this year, Canadian Federal Court ruled that downloading copyrighted material from P2P networks without copyright holder's permission is perfectly legal for personal use. The ruling is similar to several court decisions in other countries across the world that have so-called "blank media levy" in use to compensate copyright holders.
More interesting was the ruling back in March by Federal Court that found that sharing copyrighted music via P2P networks is legal in Canada as well. While "distributing" copyrighted material without a permission is illegal in Canada, court decided that simply sharing a folder full of copyrighted material, such as music, via P2P networks such as Kazaa doesn't count as "distribution".
However, record labels' Canadian organization, Canadian Recording Industry Association, has lobbied heavily to change the existing legislation in the country and in May this year, a committee recommended to Canadian government to tighten its copyright laws to outlaw distribution of music via P2P networks and to allow record labels to introduce DRM schemes to audio recordings.
According to ITIC the General Manager of SCPP (Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques, the French RIAA) Marc Guez has announced that about 20 "John Doe" suits have been filled in Paris and other provinces of France against copyright infringers. The lawsuits are seen as a prelude to more lawsuits expected to be filed in September.
More than 200 people have already been sued for P2P copyright infringements in Europe. Some of them have settled out of court, while other cases are still in process. Copyright infringement might lead to a sentence of 3 years in prison and up to 300,000 euros ($365,000) in fines in French penal court. The plaintiffs can seek further compensation for their damages in civil court. According to ITIC it is not possible to settle a case out of court in France.
Association of Independent Music, an organization that represents almost thousand British indie labels, has told to press that it has officially recommended for its members not to sign a deal with Apple to distribute the songs via iTunes service under the contract terms offered to indie labels.
Apparently Apple has offered a fixed income deal to indie labels that would last three years and as the online music industry is still in its infancy, indie labels fear that such deal could seriously hamper their ability to benefit from the booming trend.
Lack of indie labels isn't a small issue either in Europe, as small labels represent over a quarter of continent's record sales -- a percentage that is one of the highest anywhere in the world. Apple has plans to launch a European -wide iTunes service in October. AIM stated that "In a year or so, they may decide to increase their prices -- but all that extra markup would go to Apple (and not to the labels). We are not going to throw our music away. The terms are simply unviable."
Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat announced that their future distributions would include Real Networks' RealPlayer and Helix Player. Real will also begin distributing the Helix Player under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The GPL license will be offered as an alternative to the previous license schemes -- RealNetworks Public Source License and RealNetworks Community Source License.
Real and Helix Players will probably prove popular especially among users who prefer a familiar GUI, and are satisfied with the software bundled in the distribution. Others may prefer to use other open source players available, such as Xine, MPlayer, and Video Lan Client (VLC), which offer a much wider variety of codec support.
One of the world's largest mobile phone operators, German T-Mobile, announced today that it will launch its own legal online music store, aimed to mobile phone users. T-Mobile's service will launch on next week in five countries: the UK, Germany, Czech, Austria and the Netherlands. The nag? Service requires a specific phone that supports T-Mobile's "Ear Phones" technology and the company will start selling such handsets on next week's Monday.
It is not clear which company or companies have created the handsets -- and whether consumers are willing to change their Nokias and Samsungs to a handset that offers a possibility to pay for downloaded music. Also, the service currently only offers a catalog of 500 "mixes" that are limited to 90 or 120 seconds in length. However, T-Mobile promises that over 250,000 tracks will be available in "CD-quality" (I think we've heard that term before, haven't we?) format by Christmas. Also, the tracks will cost either €1.50 or £1.50 (obviously the higher price, £1.50, is only for British consumers..) and they can't be transferred to PCs or "real" digital audio players.
T-Mobile has licensing deals with three out of five major record labels; with Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music.
British equivalent of the RIAA, British Phonographic Industry(BPI), revealed this week more information about their plans to launch the official UK music download chart. The chart will go live on 1st of September this year and will feature the BBC's Radio One channel as its main broadcasting partner. The chart is compiled on weekly basis from the sales figures of the UK-based legal online music services.
BPI also released the first "semi-official" UK download chart that also includes the sales figures from AppleiTunes' UK version that launched 15th of June. The chart is for the week beginning at 13th of June and ending at 19th of June and shows quite well how iTunes managed to dominate the charts despite missing two days of the chart's timeline -- Pixie's track Bam Thwok took the number one place in the charts despite being an exclusive track to iTunes service.
The so called DualDisc is one of the proposed solutions to fill in the gap between the Compact Disc and the DVD age, as music industry and consumers have been quite slow in adapting to the next generation technology.
DualDisc essentially involves sticking a CD onto the back of the DVD Video or DVD Audio disc. The CD Audio layer is thinner than a Compact Disc, to ensure the DualDisc falls within the DVD specification thickness of 1.5mm.
DualDisc was devised as a way of adding backward compatibility to new audio disc format. For the labels, that allows them to ship a single product rather than separate DVD Audio and CD releases, and ensures consumers can build second-generation audio collections before they switch to new hardware.
The U.S. Senate is preparing a bill that would ban P2P file-swapping networks, and could also imperil some consumer electronics devices. The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act bill introduced on Wednesday would make whoever intentionally induces any violation of copyright law legally liable for the violations.
In April 2003 federal court judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast is not liable for copyright infringements that take place using their software. Wilson saw that P2P software is comparable to a video recorder, which can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of VCRs cannot be held responsible for possible copyright infringements.
Since the IICA is designed to counter the rulings and put the blame on manufacturers, it could outlaw not only P2P networks, but also ReplayTV, and even the VCR. According to Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in copyright law, the wording of the bill is so broad that it might even put the Web sites distributing the software at risk for inducing infringement.
Senate members downplay the concerns by stating that the bill is aimed specifically at those who "conduct their business with the intention of inducing others to break the law".
Apple's online music store, iTunes, has managed to repeat its American success story in Europe as well. Apple announced today that its store sold over 800,000 songs during the first week in Europe. The service was launched in the UK, Germany and France on 15th of June -- the European -wide service will launch October this year.
According to Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, out of the 800,000 songs sold during the first week, more than 450,000 were sold in the UK. The figure is 16 times higher than what UK's strongest competitor, OD2, managed to sell during the same period via its distribution partners.
According to an article published by Team Xbox (an IGN site) Microsoft has issued a statement that yesterday's rumors regarding Xbox 2 not being backwards compatible, were not true.
"Recent stories in the press about future Xbox products are nothing more than pulp fiction. Microsoft hasn’t made any announcements regarding the next generation, so it’s far too early to speculate about specifics, including backward compatibility. In fact, this media conjecture is irresponsible. The credibility of any publication willing to compromise fact in favor of a catchy headline must be questioned. Xbox fans are smart enough to distinguish truth from sensational reporting."
Now as you can see, Microsoft isn't saying that Xbox 2 will be backwards compatible. They are probably still trying to make up their mind on the matter. However using a different CPU platform might make it impractical to try and implement adequate backwards compatibility.
I don't know whether this can be considered even a news topic anymore, but more of a regular death toll update for an on-going war. Anyway, Recording Industry Association of America has sued yet another 482 P2P users in the United States for illegally distributing copyrighted music over the P2P networks.
This time the cases were filed in St. Louis (total of 213 cases), Washington D.C. (206 cases), Denver (55 cases) and New Jersey (6 cases). As always since the appeals court order in December, RIAA was forced to sue the users as "John Does" as it can't obtain their identity details before it has sued them.
After these lawsuits, the RIAA jihad has so far dragged 3,429 P2P users to court in the United States.
One of the oldest online music companies still in the business, American Loudeye, has agreed to purchase British online music service OD2 for $38.6M (€31.9M, £21.2).
OD2 has a slightly different business model compared to its biggest rivals, Apple's iTunes and Napster as the company doesn't operate a music store itself, but rather provides music store solutions, audio file delivery services and licensing services to third party operators. Specially in the UK company has managed to gather rather impressive distribution partners, including Coca-Cola, HMV and Virgin.
Combined company hopes to fight head-to-head with the "big boys" in the rapidly growing legal online music business, especially in Europe where OD2 has a rather strong position because of its brand-name distribution partners.
The DVD recorders are evolving very quickly. Already the capacity has been doubled by using the two layers, and now the fastest recorders already spin at 16x. Philips believes that a dual layer drive will be a mainstream PC feature as early as by the end of 2004.
Philips said it planned to produce 600,000 of the devices every month. Computer makers will pay between 80 and 90 euros ($97-$109) per DVD writer when buying in large quantities, while consumers will have to pay around 180 euros.
The product, which has two layers that take the maximum storage capacity up to 8.5 gigabytes or four hours of DVD quality video, will be a mainstream feature in personal computers by the end of 2004, Philips said.
Leading European satellite operator Astra and 60 European broadcasters have agreed on a HDTV initiative that aims to create a standard HDTV platform across the Europe. Astra is the satellite provider that most large European satellite broadcasters, including British Sky Digital, use.
The group agreed to standardize on two broadcast resolutions, 720p50 and 1080i25. 720p50 means that the broadcast resolution would be 1280x720 pixels with 50 full frames per second (==progressive) and 1080i25 means a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with 25 full frames per second (==interlaced). Both resolutions are the most commonly used HDTV broadcast resolutions in the United States (but American HDTV uses higher framerate). Both resolutions are natively in 16:9 aspect ratio.
Group also agreed to create a pan-European "HDTV" label that would be granted to devices, such as TVs and digital set-top boxes, that are ready to receive and decode HDTV material. Compression formats that the European HDTV will use are MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC.
Gameindustry.biz adds confirmation to what has been suspected for some time, as the hardware and component details have been reveled - XBox 2 will not be compatible with Xbox 1 games.
This sounds like Microsoft is shooting itself to the leg, and is executing the opposite of Sony's strategy with the Playstation. One of the key factors of the success of the Playstation series is that the older games remain playable with the next generation console. According to Sony, the PS3 will support PSOne and PS2, possibly extending the product life cycle of PSOne technology to the third decade!
Speculation about the backwards compatibility functionality has been rife since it emerged that Xbox 2 - codenamed Xenon - will have radically different hardware to the original system, with a non-x86 processor, no hard drive and an ATI, rather than NVIDIA, graphics chipset, all of which would make running Xbox titles on the platform very difficult.
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GamesIndustry.biz has now learned that Microsoft does not plan to provide any backwards compatibility in the next-generation Xenon platform - and indeed, that senior executives at the company don't believe backwards compatibility to be an important feature for consoles.
Our side-kick project, MP3Lizard.com, reached one major milestone today, when the 1,000,000th song was downloaded from the site.
MP3Lizard.com evolved into a service for indie artists back in January, 2001 when we transferred our artist promotion service there from AfterDawn.com (indie artists have been part of our service since the very beginning, from June 1999).
Currently MP3Lizard.com has almost 6,000 tracks from over 1,500 bands and all of those tracks can be downloaded freely and legally. Many users have expressed their satisfaction to the service by emailing to us and we're pleased that the service has managed to gather a loyal userbase that seeks alternatives to the everyday "Top 40" musical selection that mainstream media broadcasts.
We'd like to thank our users -- and specially the artists who distribute their music via MP3Lizard.com -- for making the service what it is today.
For the first time since the introduction of copy protected CDs (or non-standard 12cm plastic discs, as I like to call them) one of them has managed to top the United States album charts. According to Nielsen SoundScan figures, "Contraband" by Velvet Revolver was the #1 album in the U.S. last week.
The album, released by BMG, uses MediaMax copy protection, and the protection is also clearly marked on the album cover. MediaMax isn't actually a copy protection at all. When you insert an MediaMax protected CD in a Windows or Max OS X computer it will automatically install a device driver on your computer, which detects when audio CDs are being ripped, and distorts the audio. Systems running, for instance, Linux or older versions of Mac OS are not affected at all. Windows (and probably Max OS X) users can "bypass" the protection simply by disabling autorun.
Obviously BMG sees the success of the album as a sign that people accept the copy protection. That is, of course, probably the most naive conclusion in the history of logic. If the consumer doesn't have an alternative, and wants to buy the album by former members from Stone Temple Pilots and Guns 'Roses, maybe he or she buys the copy protected album? Should there have been both a copy protected and a standard Audio CD available on the market, then you could perhaps make some conclusions about the acceptance of copy protection. To make things interesting, BMG could have priced the standard CD a buck more expensive.
CDRWIN is a classic disc duplicator software, with very limited disc authoring features. It became popular in the early days of CD-R recording in the 90's, as it was a resource friendly compact application with a stable CD-R burning core routines - unlike Easy CD Creator. Later it has made the headlines as the author has been blamed for using the source code of an open-source project CDRDAO. But most importantly, CDRWIN made the .BIN/.CUE disc image format as a true industry standard.
The recent 3.9G version is a major milestone for the software, as it adds the support for DVD recordables, bringing the classic software to the next generation of optical recording.
What's new in versions 3.9:
More than 1500 different CDROM and DVD recorder models are now supported. Please see
Supported Devices for a complete list.
Support for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW discs.
Support for the UDF and UDF-Bridge filesystems.
Multi-recorder support (record multiple discs at the same time).
Last year, a big controversy surrounded the MPAA's decision to ban all so-called "screener" DVDs. Screeners are pre-release versions of movies, sent out to critics and to people who are allowed to vote in various movie industry events, most notably in Academy Awards a.k.a. Oscars.
This year, it seems that DVD screeners can be brought back to critics and other special interest groups, by encrypting the DVDs so that they can be only opened with a special DVD players that support such encryption scheme.
The technology is developed by Dolby's subsdiary called Cinea and according to the company, "discs are encrypted using the AES 128-bit encryption standard. It's a National Security Agency-level standard, a world-class, state-of-the-art encryption standard".
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, says that they're having talks with individual studios whether they would support the technology or not. After a court order in last December, MPAA can't force studios to adopt the technology, but it is left to individual studios to decide whether they support the scheme or not.
Basically the encrypted discs would mean that if (and cynics would say, when) screener copies leak to the Net again, the only option is that someone who received an authorized screener DVD must have leaked it as the discs can't be given to friends or relatives as they don't have the equipment to play the discs (or copy the discs).
Oh, did you recognize the name of the company behind the scheme? Yes, the same guys who developed the original DIVX DRM-equipped DVD format (not to be confused with the DivX video codec)..
Napster, the original music sharing software, hasn't been so popular during it's legit and commercial age. A bunch of economically strong companies have entered the online music sales business, lead of course by the Apple iTunes. But now Napster introduces a seriously attractive bonus for their new customers - how about a free 128mb RIO Chiba Sport MP3 player to go with your subscription?
In order to get your player, one must subscribe 1 year of Napster service. But there is also an option to invest $80 more and one will get a RIO Nitrus with mighty 1.5gB of storage for music.
A brave marketing move to gather more customers, or is Napster once again shaping the future business models? It has been suggested by several analysts that in the future we do not pay for the IT hardware, but the service subscription fees instead.
Check out Napster.com for more details, and the limited time RIO offer.
According to reports from a private meeting held between Hollywood and technology executives, Steve Jobs urges movie studios not to license content for HD-DVD right off the bat. Instead the movie industry should wait until they can be assured by the technology companies that the HD-DVD movies cannot be copied using the HD-DVD burners, which are bound to come along sooner or later.
Jobs, who appeared more as the CEO of Pixar, even went so far as to say that high-definition DVD burners should not be bundled with computers at all unless the piracy concerns are properly addressed. Mac Observer's article, which quotes the Wall Street Journal, doesn't specify what sort of assurances Jobs would require.
The new models DESR-5100 and DESR-7100 offer improved user interface and the ability to add 'DVD style' menus for content copied from the unit's HD to a DVD recordable. Also, the device now features an analog satellite TV tuner and technology to improve reception quality of the terrestrial transmission tuner. According to Sony, a software update will be released on July 15th, in order to bring the original models up-to-date.
The new PSXs will ship in the standard white styling, but the 5100 will also be made available in a silver finish for a limited period, Sony said. Japanese punters should expect to pay around ¥74,000 ($676/£369) for the 160GB model or ¥95,000 ($868/£474) for the 250GB 7100.
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The PSX is expected to ship in Europe by the end of the year.
321 Studios, the makers of the well known X Copy software products, have been sued yet again -- this time by three computer game makers.
Atari Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Vivendi Universal Games Inc. joined forces and sued 321 Studios under DMCA allegations. According to Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association trade group representing U.S. publishers of computer and video games, 321's Games X Copy is illegal under the DMCA law, because its sole purpose is to circumvent copyright protection.
What makes this case absolutely absurd is the fact that backing up computer software is perfectly legal under provisions in federal copyright law. There are other products, such as Alcohol 120%, which are capable of backing up copy protected discs as well, and they are, like Games X Copy, perfectly legal. The only difference is that 321 Studios has been actively speaking on behalf of consumer rights -- every consumer should have the right to make backups of the products they have purchased, if there is a possibility of the original product being damaged. Obviously the movie industry, and now the video game industry, don't agree with this.
DVD Forum, the organization that controls the development of official DVD standards, has approved a new format called DualDisc. The format is aimed to compete against the SACD audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips.
DualDisc is basically a disc that has a DVD-Audio content on the other side of the disc and regular audio CD on the other side of the disc. The aim is to create a format that would allow record labels to produce DVD-Audio compatible discs, that provide far better audio quality than regular CDs, while maintaining the backwards compatibility to traditional CD players.
Apple's iTunes has finally arrived to the old continent, even though the service is available only in three European countries at this stage. However, Apple announced also today that it will launch a European Union -wide version of its service in October, making the online music service available to users of all 25 EU member states.
As expected, iTunes pricing is higher in Europe compared to the original American version. In States, each song costs $0.99 (£0.54, €0.82), but in countries using the euro, each song costs €0.99 ($1.20, £0.66). Highest price is however in the UK, each song in iTunes UK costs £0.79 ($1.44, €1.19).
iTunes' European music library contains over 700,000 songs and carries an established brand name, which should make it much easier for Apple to emulate its American success also in Europe.
Sharman License Holdings will not be able to file for an Europe-wide trademark for P2P utility Kazaa. According to German company Nemetschek CREM Solutions the word "Kazaa" is phonetically too close to the company's own "Casa" -trademark. The Casa trademark is used for a database software.
The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, OHIM agreed with Nemetschek, which means that Sharman has to file for a separate trademark in every European country, and it will most likely not be able to use the Kazaa brand name at all in Germany.
British OD2 prepares for a long and, most likely, aggressive fight against the online music industry's golden child, Apple's iTunes. As iTunes is about to launch tomorrow in UK and various other European countries, OD2 has already hit its first punches in the fight by launching a streaming jukebox service that allows users to listen tracks from its 350,000 track library for a mere penny each.
The nag? You can't download the songs nor burn the songs for that price, obviously. The price applies only to a single listening experience, but at £0.01 each ($0.0181 or €0.0150), it sounds rather tempting offer. More permanent downloads, that can also be transferred to portable audio players that support Microsoft's Windows Media 9 specs, users have to pay £0.75 ($1.36, €1.13) per song.
As the online music industry is still very much in its infancy in the Europe, the stakes are high for the companies to gain the "critical mass" and the brand recognition across the continent before the market gets saturated with similar services.
Various organizations representing Australian music artists, music retailers, radio stations and other music industry groups have submitted a proposal to Australian Federal Government asking the government to introduce a blank media levy to Australia and to loosen the copyright legislation in the country to allow music copying for personal use.
The levy fee scheme is well-known in various countries, such as Canada and Finland, where consumers are allowed to make personal copies of CDs (in most countries, even without owning the CD) and to download tracks from P2P networks legally. Obviously distribution copyrighted material to large audiences without a permission, such as sharing files via P2P networks, would be still illegal.
Not surprisingly, the only large organization opposing the proposed amendment to the legilation is the Australian equivalent of the RIAA, the Australian Record Industry Association(ARIA).
Also, it should be noted that however nice the "copy freely as you pay it in blank media prices" system sounds, at least in Europe the basis of it has been destroyed already -- the levy remains on blank media, but circumventing technical copy protection mechanisms found on many current audio CDs is nowadays illegal (or will be soon, as the last remaining EU countries implement the EUCD to their own legislation), even for personal use. So, recording industry basically doubles the profits -- they collect levy on blank media, but also make it illegal to copy CDs..
The joint effort of Starz Encore, a cable TV film supplier, and Real Networks is now offering a movie pay-per-download service. The downloads are unlimited with a decent $12.95 monthly fee, but the selection of movies is limited to 100 movies which are rotated monthly.
The movies will only be playable when viewed through the RealNetworks Realplayer which has basic copy protection and some DRM rules to prevent subsequent copying. It’s seems likely that the service is really effectively a video rental transaction and that permanent copies of the film will not be allowed.
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The original deal is a five year exclusive deal between the two where they share revenue, which means that Starz can’t change its mind and offer Microsoft Windows Media Player files, for at least another three years.
Recording Industry Association of America has crafted a proposal to American regulator, Federal Communications Commission, that would add DRM functionality to the digital radio platform used in the United States. Organization plans to submit the proposal to FCC next week.
RIAA is concerned about the fact that terrestial digital radio stations deliver audio in "too good quality", typically bundled with meta data (such as artist name and song information) making it easy for listeners to make CD-quality digital copies of tracks played over the airwaves.
RIAA proposes restrictions to upcoming digital radio recorders that would make it possible for listeners to record digital broadcasts, but would not allow dividing the broadcasts into individual songs. RIAA also wants to add a "copyright flag" to the equation, making it possible for content owners to set up a flag that would tell the recording devices that the broadcast can't be recorded at all, not even in full form.
Over 300 American terrestial radio stations already do digital broadcasting, typically in addition to their analog broadcasting. RIAA's proposals wouldn't affect to the two satellite radio operators, XM and Sirius, as -- according to the RIAA -- they "...have an incentive to limit it [digital recording] ...".
The DVD Forum Steering Committee has approved the HD DVD-ROM Physical Specifications. In a meeting held on June 9-10, 2004, the committee approved the specification for the mandatory audio codec of DVD-Audio ROM-Zone -- the codec will be High-Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC).
However the committee did not approve the motion to "retain the provisional approval of the CODECs until the level of information concerning the licensing terms for VC-9 is the same as the level of information concerning the licensing terms for AVC/H.264." What this really means in terms of the VC-9 (Microsoft's WM9) codec, is unclear.
For years the WinDVD has been one of the most popular, if not the most popular, software DVD players on the market. Over the years WinDVD has received a lot of positive feedback about the quality of it's video codec.
The codec has been tuned slightly and now features 'Trimension DNM' motion compensation technology, which is promised to improve picture quality in high action sequences.Also notable are the improved audio adjusting and tweaking possibilities. The QuickClip feature allows user to capture snippets of the movie.
Five years and a couple of months ago it was a yet another very boring working day in a Finnish new media company (one of those born in 1990s and already folded since that) -- and it was the coldest winter ever in Finnish capital, temperatures dropping to -40C. One web developer -- me -- with a serious addiction to MP3s felt very, very bored of creating yet another feedback form functionality for some furniture company's web site and felt that he needed "something". At that time there was a wave of great new sites appearing on daily basis, focusing on digital audio -- most notable ones for me were sites called MP3.com and Dimension Music. One provided indie artists a way to promote their music for free and the other was a niche site covering news that related to the MP3 revolution that had begun three years earlier.
Then I had a thought -- not a very original thought nor a very noble thought, but a thought anyway -- why not try to emulate those ideas, add couple of additional features to the equation, make it bilingual and see what happens. Obviously I couldn't do it alone -- not financially and not technically, so I needed help and started calling my friends. After a couple of phone calls, the team of eight guys was ready and we began discussing about our expectations for the site. The first steps in the history of the site were taken..
The joint on-demand video venture Movielink has been cleared of all antitrust suspicions by the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division. The division found no evidence that Movielink has led to collusion or decreased the industry's willingness to license content to competing services.
The antitrust worries were justified, because Movielink is a joint venture of Time Warner and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, among others.
Online DVD renter Netflix has said it will begin testing online movie delivery this year. Movielink faces competition from other services as well, such as Disney's MovieBeam.
According to the source, the representatives of the legendary pop band Beatles are negotiating with music e-tailers for an exclusive distribution deal. The market value of the classic band seems to be everlasting, so the price tag for the exclusive deal will be huge.
"One of the things that has held back digital music online has been lack of availability of very popular artists, notably among them The Beatles," said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. "If they are able to come to some sort of licensing terms, it bodes very well for the online model and would probably pave the way for some of the other holdouts to come online."
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"We've had several discussions with them, because we think it would be terrific to make all The Beatles' work available in digital services," said EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer. "We would be delighted if they made that decision."
A new website, euro-copyrights.org, has been launched. The site aims to give a full picture of the EUCD's status in European Union member states and its implications across the Union.
The EUCD, European Union Copyright Directive, legislation is basically an European version of American DMCA legislation, allowing content owners to restrict consumers' ability to use, backup or modify content that they have purchased by making it illegal to circumvent technical copy protection measures.
Site is a joint operation between Elaborate Bytes(the makers of CloneDVD), RankOne Media Group, Free University of Amsterdam and several academic authors across the continent.
Out of the 200 people sued by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) in Europe eighteen have settled their case out of court. Seventeen of those are from Denmark, and one from Germany.
The IFPI has been suing European song-swappers since March, and since then, for instance, 30 people have been prosecuted in Italy, and 88 in Denmark. According to IFPI 23 more Danish cases are currently benign negotiated out of court.
The number of illegal swapping has dropped by 30% from last year -- thanks to litigation and legal music download services, says IFPI.
The IFPI is looking to file more lawsuits in other western European countries, such as France and United Kingdom.
As presumed, Ahead continues to broaden their product range to cover the whole digital media sector. As digital photography, cameras and camera phones, is getting more and more popular, it's not too surprising to see Ahead expanding to this field as well. High resolution digital images demand a lot of storage capacity, which in most cases is a CD-R or a DVD-R and therefore related to Ahead's core competence. The nice thing about Ahead's policy is that they bundle these new products to the Nero 6 Ultra Edition, which offers quite a bit of tools and value to the customers, making it a more appealing purchase even if one already has the limited OEM version.
Nero PhotoShow Elite is packed with amazing features. Users can capture, edit and manage photos and photo albums, create musical slideshows, make screen savers and even order customized photo gifts. Users can choose to print their photos at home or order quality prints online seamlessly from within the application. Nero PhotoShow Elite’s editing tools include red-eye correction, cropping, cloning, paint brush and auto-fix, to name a few. Nero PhotoShow Elite also unleashes the user’s creativity, enabling them to add text, clip art, captions, frames and other effects with a click of a button. These editing tools can be applied to photos or slideshows. Photos can easily be made into musical slideshows to share with family and friends online via email or HTML link. They can even save their memories by burning them to CD or VCD. All this can be accessed through a user-friendly interface that anyone can operate.
Sony unveiled today its latest DVD burner model, DRU-540A. The drive allows 12x writing on 8x certified DVD+R discs.
Drive also supports 4x burning of DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs and 8x burning of DVD-R discs. The 12x DVD+R burning means that burning a single full disc will take appx. six minutes to complete. The drive is expected to hit the retail shelves in July and the price is set to $180 in the United States.
Apple will be hosting a press conference in London on June 15th. At the conference Apple, who billed the event "The biggest story in music is about to get even bigger.", is expected to launch iTunes in Europe on that date.
The iTunes music store has been very successful since its launch in the United States -- partly because it took quite a while before it faced serious competition there. In Europe the story could be somewhat different, though, since OD2-based services have been around quite a while now, and Roxiolaunched its Napster service in UK two weeks ago.
Analyst expect, however, that iTunes shouldn't have too much trouble catching up with its rivals thanks to soaring iPod sales.
According to the Britain's official record sales tracker, Official UK Chart Company, British consumers have bought already over 500,000 legal music downloads this year.
The download chart is due to launch officially later this summer, but has been functional for a while now. The chart includes all the major online music services available in the UK, apart from the recently launched Napster UK, which will be added to the system soon.
Official UK Chart Company is a joint venture between British Association of Record Dealers and the UK's own equivalent of RIAA, the BPI. BPI's chairman, Peter Jamieson, praised the latest download figures by stating "We have yet another milestone in the development of this exciting new market for music. Invesotrare are showing confidence in the future of music... This is shaping up to be a breakthrough year for the music industry."
The top seller in the UK download charts this year has been Coldplay's 2,000 miles.
Biometric vendor Veritouch that also supplies materials to the U.S. government, has together with Swedish design company Thinking Materials developed a wireless media player that uses biometric security.
The concept is based on media files that can be only played by a user that is authenticated with his/her fingerprint scan, thus extending the current DRM capabilities beyong device-based authentication. According to Veritouch, they have shown the prototype, dubbed as iVue, to the representatives of RIAA and MPAA already.
The possibilities of restricting user access to media files that he/she owns even further by using biometric authentication are rather horrifying. Want to play your brother's CD? Get him to your car first to authenticate the playback with his fingerprint..
The PC is pushing into the living room, but disguised as a "dvd player". Meet the Linux based MediaREADY 4000 that promises to fill your living room with a flood of cross-media content: DVD/MPEG-2/MPEG-4 playback, still photos, e-mail, WWW, karaoke and of course CD/MP3 audio features. And on top of it, the device is of course ethernet and USB2.0 connected.
This kind of products always make me wonder the stability of the software that they utilize...
MediaReady™ 4000 is the first commercial product based on CAC Media's MediaReady Convergence Software Suite (MCSS). It is a product that combines complete PC functionalities and strong Consumer Electronic (CE) capabilities. Technically MediaReady 4000 is a computer and an advanced DVD player bundled together in one box in a form factor of a DVD player that suits to the living room environment. The product connects to the TV, Stereo, home network and Internet and brings the best of all in one harmonious play.
The prices of full-length CDs fell to $13.29 in the first quarter of 2004 according to a study. That's a decline of 4 percent from Q1 2003.
The survey, released by the NPD Group, also says that the average CD price at top 50 nationwide sellers was $13.36 -- down 3.1 percent from 2003.
NPD President Russ Crupnick stated that both the file-sharing boom and growing competition for entertainment dollars are behind the decline. Both the DVD and video game markets are growing at double digit rates.
Fast-food giant McDonald's has announced that they will start offering free music downloads from Sony's Sony Connect music service for American customers who purchase Big Mac Extra Value meals. The promotion is set to last between six and ten weeks in States. Company also plans to roll out the campaign in Europe later this year.
The annoucement comes after the deal was first rumoured back in March and confirms that McDonald's is taking seriously the latest trends in popular culture. More importantly, the move is, according to analysts, a clear sign that McDonald's is trying to break free from its "kids only" image that has been highlighted by the long strategic relationship McDonald's has had with Disney. McDonald's made its first ever loss last year and is trying to get slightly older consumers back to its restaurants and tapping into a trend that is popular with people in their late 20s and early 30s looks like a good start.
Bundling seems to be the key for music services to gather new users -- everybody knows about the disappointing deal that iTunes had with Pepsi. It is interesting to see what are the keys for online music services to try to gain ground in new market areas, such as Europe and Asia later this year.
French company has announced that they have developed the first competitor to the notorious EZ-D discs made by American company, Flexplay.
So far Disney has been the only major movie studio to run trials with disposable DVDs and so far the consumer interest to the format has been rather limited. Both discs, EZ-D and the new French competitor, dubbed as DVD-D, are aimed to the DVD rental market, removing the need for consumers to return the discs back to the rental store and allowing movie distributors to extend the DVD rentals outside traditional rental stores, like BlockBusters, as there's no need to have the infrastructure to handle the returns.
Just like EZ-D, the DVD-D is compatible with existing DVD players and uses a chemical coating on the discs that can be pre-set to make the disc unreadable after pre-selected time period, typically between 8 and 24 hours.
The recent legal struggles at 321 Studios have resulted into more than just problems for the company -- nearly 300 people have received the pink slip during the past couple of months.
Both the movie industry and copy protection company Macrovision have won injunctions against 321 Studios' DVD backup software, which has pretty much put the sales of the software on halt. The company is still offering software for burning DVD video, creating DVD slideshows, backing up games and more, but they just were not enough to save the jobs.
According to 321 Studios' Director of Public Relations Julia Bishop-Cross, the company has shrunk from nearly 400 employees down to about 50.
Robert H. Moore, founder and President of the company, has not given up on fighting the rulings. According to him the consumer should have the right to fair-use of the product he or she has purchased -- including circumventing possible copy protections in order to make a backup copy. The controversial DVD X Copy software has several anti-piracy provisions, which makes it impractical to make movie copies for resale.
Good luck to 321 Studios -- and to the American consumer. You can read more about the Protect Fair Use campaign at ProtectFairUse.org.
Isamu Kaneko, the developer of Winny peer-to-peer software, was indicted by the prosecutors on Monday. Kaneko was charged with violating the Japanese Copyright Law by creating a tool to assist people in downloading and sharing copyrighted material.
Kaneko has denied the charges, which by any standard, are odd at best. The prosecutors, however, said Kaneko has stated that he does not support the current copyright system, and has also commented that violating copyright laws is the way to fight the system.
Software developers are supporting Kaneko. Which ever way the ruling goes, it will set an important precedent.
$13.30 sounds a bit rough as the suggested retail price, but yes indeed the Mitsubishi made and Verbatim branded dual-layer discs hit the streets in Japan. Mitsubishi has been recognized as a premium optical media supplier for years, and is best known for its patented azo-dye.
The first dual-layer DVD+R recording media are set to go on sale in Japan at the end of this month and overseas in June, disc maker Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co. Ltd. said last Friday.
The discs were developed jointly by Mitsubishi Kagaku, which uses the Verbatim brand-name, and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV and offer 8.5G bytes of recording space compared to the 4.7G bytes of space available on a standard DVD+R disc.
They will cost around ¥1,500 (US$13.30) per disc in Japan, said a spokeswoman for the company.
The U.S. Senate has passed the PIRATE Act bill, which raised several concerns when it was proposed. The Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act of 2004 allows the Department of Justice to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright pirates. Up until now the copyright holders have had to file the lawsuits themselves.
The road for the next generation optical video recording is already being paved. Consumer electronic giant Matsushita announced today that the first recorder with a mighty 50 gig capacity will be released for the Japanese market under the Panasonic brand. The device features tuners for terrestrial and satellite digital and analog broadcasts.
The Supreme Court of Canada delivered today a yet another blow to music industry when it ruled unanimously that Canadian ISPs are not required to pay royalties to music companies because their users use the Net connections to download music.
