Apple Computer today released a statement in which it accuses RealNetworks of hacking [SIC] the iPod copy protection when creating the Harmony Technology
"We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod(R), and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws. We strongly caution Real and their customers that when we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods," Apple said in their statement.
Apparently Apple confused the terms "hacker" and "cracker". It was painfully obvious when Harmony was announced that Apple would draw out the DMCA card.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act seems to be abused time after time without actually being used to it's intended purpose. The DMCA was designed to protect copyrights, but instead it is being used by RIAA, MPAA, and now Apple to maximize their profits.
In their counter statement Real said that "Consumers, and not Apple, should be the ones choosing what music goes on their iPod." Additionally they try to capture the essence of DMCA. "The DMCA is not designed to prevent the creation of new methods of locking content and explicitly allows the creation of interoperable software."
In rather surprising decision, a Manhattan -based U.S. federal judge Denny Chin, decided against an earlier ruling by Washington D.C. appeals court. Judge Chin decided that Cablevision, an ISP that operates in New York, New Jersey and Conneticut, has to provide personal details of its subscriber to RIAA even before RIAA has sued the individual for copyright infringements.
The earlier decision in December forced RIAA to sue P2P users as "John Does". It meant that RIAA had to drag the P2P users, who it suspected to violate copyright laws, to court before it could even know their names. Before that decision, RIAA was able to use DMCA legislation to force ISPs to hand out personal details of their subscribers, whether RIAA eventually decided to sue them or not.
However, there were some good aspects in recent ruling as well; court recognized that RIAA (and other copyright holders as well, who opt to use DMCA against individual users) had to have solid case against the user before it could force ISP to hand out the identification details of the user.
Digital video processor manufacturer ESS Technology has been denied the right to sell its products to some of their clients. A preliminary injunction was issued by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis late Friday.
The Motion Picture Association of America accused ESS of braking the CSS license agreement, which prohibits microchip manufacturers from selling DVD chips to hardware manufacturers who have not licensed CSS technology. MPAA claims to having acquired and disassembled a non-licensed player which was equipped with an ESS chip.
ESS claims to be in full compliance of the CSS license, and every other agreement they have made.
Unlicensed players often have some or all DVD copy prevention mechanisms disabled or have key combinations that makes it easy to disable them. With the lack of Macrovision protection DVD content can be copied to a VCR or DVD recordable.
RealNetworks has released Harmony Technology, which, according to Real, is a "transcoding and transcrypting" software. Using Harmony consumers can transfer content from various DRM formats to formats supported by various portable players.
Harmony Technology supports all major file types and their DRM protection including MP3, AAC, WMA and RealAudio. With Harmony Real's RealPlayer Music Store supports more than 70 secure portable media devices, including all 4 generations of the iPod and iPod mini, 14 products from Creative, 14 from Rio, 7 from RCA, 9 from palmOne, 18 from iRiver, and products from Dell, Gateway, and Samsung. Generally speaking, Harmony supports any device that uses the Apple FairPlay DRM, The Microsoft Windows Media Audio DRM, or the RealNetworks Helix DRM, giving RealPlayer Music Store support for more secure devices than any other music store on the Internet.
RealNetworks has tried to form an alliance with Apple for quite a while now, but in vain. Apple has consistently refused to license its DRM technology to third parties, which eventually resulted in the creation of Harmony. With Harmony iPod users can choose where to buy their songs online -- they are no longer restricted to using iTunes. Apple may eventually find that allying with Real might have been a good move afterall.
Motorola, the world's second largest mobile phone manufacturer, has signed a deal with Apple to deliver iTunea compatibility to cell phones.
Under the terms of the deal, Apple will develop a new version of its iTunes player for mobile phones and Motorola will bundle that application to its next generation phones. Users will also be able to transfer files from PC or Mac iTunes to their phones and vice versa -- and the DRM scheme used in iTunes music store is supported by the phone player as well, so all tracks purchased via the music store will be playable on Motorola's new phones as well. Tracks can be transferred over specific connection cable or over standard Bluetooth connections.
Roberto Amorim has released the results of the low bitrate 32kbps listening test. At such high compression levels, the aging of the MP3 format is clearly shown, as LAME is outperformed with a large margin. The winner is Nero Digital AAC compression, but it is rather surprisingly challenged by the MP3Pro format. The rest are quite evenly tied.
t's also interesting to notice what a wonderful technology SBR is, since it managed to bring the deprecated MP3 format to compare well against the state-of -the-art in audio coding.
QDesign also was a pleasant surprise. Considering it's an encoder that hasn't been developed since mid-1999, it managed to compete very well against modern encoders
Although Vorbis didn't perform well, almost getting under the big tie at second place, part of it can be credited to the fact that it was being tested at 22kHz. The severe lowpass at this bitrate seems to have introduced serious quality issues in the samples tested. One can hope Xiph enables 32kHz sampling for 32kbps, and further tunes such small bitrates
Go to Rjamorim.com for the detailed results and commentary.
The good old CDRInfo has been the leading resource for optical storage hardware reviews for years, frequently publishing very comprehensive reviews on latest devices. The Greek are doing well: 1st they win the football European Championship and then CDRInfo.com has been redesigned.
Their latest reviews are the Double Layer recorders from Sony and NEC. You can read the NEC ND-2510A review from here and Sony DRU-700A article is available here. Check out the improved site in general at CDRinfo.com
The Register has published an interesting article on implementing the Napster service at Wright State University. Wright State is one of the six colleges that recently signed up with Napster -- mostly to avoid legal trouble with RIAA.
While every student at the university will have to pay a quarterly $189 communications fee, which will be used, among other things, to cover for the Napster expenses, only half of the students will be able to take full advantage of the service.
"Apparently, Wright State students are meant to think of each other as Comrades and take care of each others' critical music needs," Ashlee Vance writes. In addition the director of computing and telecommunications at Wright State, Paul Hernandez estimates that an extra $8 per quarter Napster fee will be added on top of the communications fee.
The deals rise several other concerns as well. Please read the entire article at The Register.
British High Court has ruled that selling, advertising, possession for commercial use and even use of PS2 mod chips is illegal in the UK. The ruling was based on UK's implementation of the notorious EUCD legislation that UK implemented to its national legislation, virtually without consumer friendly amendments, back in October 2003. The European Union Copyright Directive legislation makes it illegal to sell or distribute tools that allow circumventing technical copy protection mechanisms.
The ruling was made against a Briton, David Ball, who sold 1,500 Messiah 2 PS2 mod chips in the UK. Mod chips are basically hardware modifications to games consoles that allow playing imported games, game backups, self-made software and, obviously, pirated games. Many Linux distributions and media player tools require mod chips to be installed in order to run the software.
Apple Computers has confirmed that it has signed deals with independent labels Beggars Group, Sanctuary Records Group and V2. The deal brings artists like Basement Jaxx, The Pixies, Prodigy, Black Sabbath, Sex Pistols and Stereophonics to European iTunes music stores.
"We're thrilled to add three of Europe's largest indie labels to our iTunes Music Store in the U.K., France and Germany," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We welcome Beggars, Sanctuary and V2 to the iTunes family and plan to add many more independent labels soon."
The lack of music from independent labels has been iTunes' biggest hurdle in Europe where many popular artists are represented by smaller labels. With three major indie labels on board, it's quite probable that iTunes will soon be able to sign smaller labels as well.
iMesh peer-to-peer file sharing network claims to have over 10 million users globally. The Recording Industry Association of America started legal action agains them back in 2003, and their efforts paid off. iMesh agrees to prevent unauthorized song swapping and pay a compensation of $4.1m for the RIAA.
iMesh hasn't said why it agreed to settle out of court, but it's likely it found itself seeing defeat in the courts or financial ruin resulting from protracted legal conflict. Whatever, the company was spinning the settlement today as a "pioneering" move in the world of P2P.
iMesh will now seek to create a P2P environment in which users can share songs legally - and that means paying for them. "It allows us the opportunity to migrate to a business model that will continue to provide users with the P2P experience that they have come to expect from iMesh," company COO Ofer Shabtai said in a statement.
Dolby has added its patents for the High Efficiency AAC audio encoding format to the MPEG-4 licensing pool, which is controlled by the MPEG LA. The decision means that now companies can add HE AAC (which is also known as AAC Plus) to the technologies they license via MPEG LA. MPEG LA's function is to provide a one-stop licensing shop for all the MPEG audio and video patents.
HE AAC is a more advanced form of AAC audio encoding that is used by various companies, probably most notably by Apple in its iPod audio player. HE AAC has been recently approved by the DVD Forum to be used in DVD-Video disc's "ROM zone", a standardized computer-compatible section found on upcoming DVDs.
Roxio's online music store Napster today announced that it has signed deals with six more colleges in the US. Penn State University and University of Rochester will be joined by Cornell University, George Washington University, Middlebury College in Vermont, University of Miami, University of Southern California and Wright State University (Ohio).
The Napster subscription allows students to play music online, but the tracks cannot be burned on CD for listening elsewhere.
The new deals prove that RIAA's lawsuits threats are effective. By suing thousands of individuals across the country, the Recording Industry Association of America has forced the universities to either face lawsuits or find legal means to provide music to their students.
Universities will probably soon end up signing similar deals with online movie providers, and who knows what. In the end it is always the students who end up paying for the services.
It is obvious that the legal online music stores are the way to go, but is threatening by lawsuits really the way to get people to use them?
Once again the great, open sourced video decoder FFDSHOW, has been updated to a new version. The new version, FFDSHOW 2004-07-18, contains massive changelog, just as always with FFDSHOW. The changelog is here:
matrix mixer supports more sample formats (untested)
VC6 compilation fixed (very likely VC6 support will be dropped after VS.NET 2005 will be released)
templatized matrix mixer
DivX 5.2 DirectShow decoder fitler has extremly high merit - raised ffdshow's to be higher by one
noise shaping and dithering when converting from float to integer samples
selectable output audio sample format
optimized mixer matrix multiplication
warnings fixes, SSE denoise3d compilation disablen on MSVC 6 in release mode, mixer crash fixed
working on mixer filter
use libavcodec audio resampling functions
reserve few bytes at the end of input audio buffer
subtitle lines split fix, compilation fixes
working on audio upsampling
float raw audio samples fix
mixer order can be changed
volume filter handles more sample formats
AVIS audio input (DirectShow) accepts more sample formats
accept floating point uncompressed audio
more bit depth conversions
working on audio sample bit depth conversion
decss audio input pin (copied from Media Player Classis)
better handle audio format changes during playback
check for new sample creation success
don't trust supplied ac3 channel number info
merging optimized routines from mplayer's liba52
luma offset fix by Andy
clear input buffer when decoding audio using libavcodec
better keyboard handling in codecs and keys pages
mmx2 HQ denoise3d works in release more only
few fixes and mmx2 HQ denoise3d (currently disabled) by Andy
possibility to create "core" and "addons" instalation packages
fixed aac decoding, imported faad2 library
better ac3 support
working on liba52 integration
multithreaded encoding using libavcodec
connect to WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE
updated mp3lib and postproc
split long subtitle lines
updated libavcodec - h.264 decoding fix, support for AVC1 FOURCC - official FOURCC for mpeg4 avc video
Apple is getting ready to launch the next generation iPods next week. The next edition of Newsweek will feature an article on the new device. A preview of the article is available at Newsweek website.
The new iPod has an iPod mini feel to it -- the control buttons under the screen are gone, and the features are moved to the ClickWheel. The menus have also been changed to make navigation and playlist creation easier. Despite being thinner than its predecessor, the new iPod should run for 12 hours when fully charged.
The 15GB model will be dropped altogether, and the prices of the larger capacity models will be cut by $100. That puts the price of the 20GB model at $299 and 40GB model at $399.
Engadget has a larger version of the Newsweek cover with a picture of the new Pod. You might also want to check out a picture available at Spymac.
Despite numerous attempts by Bertelsmann AG to dismiss the lawsuits filed against it for funding Napster, it will have to, at least, go for a summary judgment. That is because U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel denied Bertelsmann's request to dismiss the case.
Bertelsmann signed a deal with Napster in 2000 and later invested over $80M in the service, which kept the P2P company running up until 2002, when it finally filed for Chapter 11. In early 2003 Bertelsmann was sued by several record labels seeking $17 billion in damages.
The German media giant insists that the funding was intended to keep Napster alive in order to turn it into a legal music service. Judge Patel, however, said that the case has to be answered in court.
"Plaintiffs' allegations that defendants exercised full operational control over Napster during periods in which Napster remained a conduit for infringing activity may be wholly unfounded... Regardless, such questions must be left for resolution upon motions for summary judgment or at trial," Patel wrote.
Sony plans to extend the reach of its recently launched Connect online music store service to digitally downloaded videos as well.
Sony has the luxury of owning one of the biggest movie studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, that also produces several TV shows. It is unclear however, whether Sony plans to launch a competitor to Movielink(in which Sony is one of the main partners), or does the company aim to focus the content to portable devices and short movie clips.
The move, which is expected "within next 12 months", is also seen as an attempt to gain some ground in online video distribution before Connect's main rival, iTunes, extends its reach to videos as well.
A group of technology and entertainment industry giants have teamed up to create a new, flexible content protection system for the future high-definition DVDs. The technology, dubbed Advanced Access Content System (AACS) would grant the users limited rights to copying the content to, for example, a portable player or a desktop PC.
The group includes companies like IBM, Intel, Warner Bros., Disney, Microsoft, Sony and Matsushita. All the companies have developed content protection systems of their own, sometimes working together with other companies. But the AACS alliance is the first time the companies come together for a single, universal solution.
For now there is no AACS technology or even specifications to license, but the AACS Licensing Authority says it would have the technology available for licensing by the end of the year.
It is obvious that the transfers can only be made between DRM capable, non-blacklisted devices. Content providers will, of course, also be able to dictate how strict the limitations on a disc are -- you might, for instance, be able to copy a movie to a portable player, but not on your desktop PC.
Nokia changed the mobile messaging by combining a digital camera into a cellular phone. This was the Nokia 7650, the first ever cam phone that changed the trend. Samsung has been the rising star of the mobile phone industry, and now they come with an unique concept - they put a phone into a camera.
A 3 million pixel camera phone with digital camera level resolution has been introduced on the Korean market. Samsung launched its new video-clip-recordable 3 million pixel camera phone SPH-2300 on Sunday.
If the so called sidetalking of Nokia N-Gage looked stupid, imagine yourself walking on the street and talking to a camera.
See Chosun.com for more details & a picture of the new device.
According to The Times Apple Computer and independent record labels may might strike a deal as early as today, which would put artists such as White Stripes and Basement Jaxx available via the iTunes music store.
Last month the Association of Independent Music, which represents almost a thousand British indie labels, recommended its members not to sign a deal offered by Apple, because it would have locked them into a long term contract at fixed prices. Apple is now expected to offer a contract that is more in the lines of their contracts with the bigger record companies.
The independent labels represent over a quarter of the total album sales in Europe, so getting them onboard is quite essential for iTunes.
It took just over nine days for Apple's iTunes music store to clock 5 million new downloads and reach 100 million downloads since Apple announced the Countdown to 100 Million Songs -contest in early July.
The 100 millionth song downloaded was Somersault (Dangermouse remix) by Zero 7, and it was downloaded by Kevin Britten from Hayes, KS. As a reward he will receive a 17-inch Apple PowerBook, 40GB iPod and 10,000 iTunes songs.
Apple also gave away 50 20GB iPods for every 100,000th song downloaded between 95 million and 100 million.
You can find a list of some of the other winners at Apple iTunes site.
So far Sony seemed to have no rush with the PS3, as they are extending the PS2 life cycle with the PSX, but now things seem to have changed. Sony Corporation has announced that the PS3 will be demonstrated in the E3 expo on May 2005. This means that the project has matured quite a bit from the conceptual stage, and may put some pressure on the competitors Microsoft and Nintendo.
The company also plans to show off a demonstration version of the new machine at next May's Electronic Entertainment Exposition (also called E3), the video game industry's giant annual confab.
The news from Sony follows a similar announcement from Nintendo, which plans to show off its new console, code-named "Revolution," at E3 also, according to published reports.
According to a survey by On-line Testing Exchange (OTX) and MPAA about 24 percent of Internet users have downloaded at least one movie from the net. The survey interviewed 3,600 people in eight countries.
Out of the people surveyed the Koreans seemed to be the most active movie downloaders -- 58 percent of them have reportedly downloaded movies. Most of the people (56 percent) who are currently downloading movies intend to continue downloading in the future, and 17 percent of those who aren't downloading at the moment say that they might start downloading in the future.
As the high-speed broadband Internet connections become more and more common, and the compression technology evolves, the number of downloaders is expected to grow rapidly in the future.
Tired of having a one-way conversation with your iPod? Done with all the strange looks when you have a fight with your iPod because it never seems to listen to you? Well, the folks over at Apple have come up with a solution. The iPod buddy! While not the official name, Apple has developed a proprietary software for their iPod enabling it to convert text of bands, tracks, albums and menu items into speech.
The benefits of this would be so iPod users can either hear the next track coming up without looking at the screen, or increase safety by letting drivers navigate the menu without looking at the screen. Bicyclists could also benefit from this by not having to read the screen in areas where the lighting is not optimal. Although Apple has not commented on this development, the patent registered with the US Patent Office clearly shows that this feature could be available for the sixth generation iPod.
In the aftermath of recent stories released about some third-party iPod manufacturers as well as recent technical issues with the most recent version of the hardware, Apple hopes this will give them another edge in the growing portable music player market.
Samsung and Audible announced today a partnership, which means that Samsung's new digital audio players will support Audible's spoken audio format and Audible's audible.com online store.
At first, the "AudibleReady" label will be added to Samsung's line of HDD-based portable digital audio players. Audible offers a wide variety of audio books, spoken versions of newspapers and variety of other content in spoken form. Buyers of new Samsung devices will get a free trial to Audible's online services.
European mobile phone operators and video-on-demand service providers have requested the European Union Competition Commissioner Mario Monti to help them gain access to premium content, such as latest movies, music and sports video clips.
In the conference held on Thursday the company representatives told that content providers have little interest in doing business with new media companies. For instance LuxSat, an video-on-demand rental service, has a tough time licensing content to its service.
Mobile service providers are on different tracks. They wish to license the latest sports content, but have also had difficulties getting the content they want.
Mr. Monti acknowledged the problems, saying that video on demand services are "hindered, however, by strong tendencies by established TV operators to protect their position to the detriment of new technologies and new players." He also stated that attractive content is a must-have feature for mobile services to prosper.
Law professor Damien Geradin of the Institute for European Legal studies in Liege, Belgium feels that the only way to solve the problems in licensing premium content is by legal means. "I believe competition law will be the main tool to solve this problem," he said.
The Business Software Alliance announced today their latest estimation of usage of illegally copied software. According to BSA, globally 36% of the software used is pirated. In the European Union the number was just a percent higher at 37%, while in the USA the estimation is significantly lower at 22%.
Among key findings:
The piracy rate in the Asia/Pacific region was 53 percent, with dollar losses totaling more than $7.5 billion.
In Eastern Europe, the piracy rate was 71 percent, with dollar losses at more than $2.1 billion.
In Western Europe, the rate was 36 percent, and dollar losses totaled $9.6 billion.
The average rate across Latin American countries was 63 percent, with losses totaling nearly $1.3 billion.
In the Middle Eastern and African countries, the rate was 56 percent on average, with losses totaling more than $1 billion.
In North America, the piracy rate was 23 percent. The losses totaled more than $7.2 billion.
Apple's highly popular digital audio player iPod mini will be launched outside the United States on 24th of July. The expected UK retail price for the device is £179 ($332, €268), but Apple has warned that it most likely can't meet the expected high demand until September which might tempt retailers to push the prices higher at least temporarily.
iPod mini is essentially a smaller and cheaper version of the original iPod, with smaller HDD storage space. iPod mini has 4GB storage space, while the top "big" iPod model has 40GB HDD in it. The device is compatible with songs purchased from Apple's iTunes music store that launched in the UK, Germany and France 15th of June.
The global launch of the iPod mini was delayed earlier this year because Hitachi, who makes the mini HDDs for the device, couldn't meet the high demand. The device has been a hit in the States and is expected to become one of the most popular digital appliances in other countries as well.
As preview copies of movies, widely known as screening copies or screeners, constantly leak to the internet, the movie industry is planning a to implement a much stronger hardware based copy protection. The new scheme includes special DVD player hardware, watermarking, and inserting contact information to the image.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has endorsed a plan to distribute about 6,000 special DVD players to members. Specially encrypted discs, known as screeners, would be earmarked for a specific academy voter and would play only on that person's machine. The player also would imprint an invisible watermark on the disc each time it is viewed. In addition, if someone uses a camcorder to tape the movie as it is playing on a monitor, that image would contain information on the person assigned the machine.
...
The success of that effort led Cinea Inc., a division of Dolby Laboratories, to approach the academy about a combination of encryption and watermarking so studios could once again distribute screeners on DVDs.
Soundbuzz.com and Creative have launched their first online music store in Singapore. Further services are planned for Hong Kong and India regions. The top market for pirated CDs is in Asia, so online music stores will have a tough time competing there.
Much like Sony Connect and Apple iTunes, the Soundbuzz -service offers music in a format that is compatible with a portable player -- in this case the Creative's upcoming Zen Touch player. Soundbuzz offers music for S$1.99 (US$1.16), and has a catalog of about 250,000 songs.
Sony has already said it has no plans to launch a service in Asia. Apple hasn't so far announced its plans regarding Asia.
According to the source the change is from MPEG-2 (DVD, SVCD players) decoders, to MPEG-2 encoders (Personal Video Recorders) and MPEG-4 enabled chips. The deliveries of MPEG-2 encoders is expected to double in 2004, in comparison to the previous year. Broadcasters are expected to utilize technologies offering higher compression rations, namely MPEG-4, in the future, thus increasing the market demand for the hardware.
DVD players are adding support for MPEG-4, as are set-top boxes connected to bandwidth-limited networks. MPEG-4 ICs will grow at a triple digit rate reaching more than 100m units in 2007.
While MPEG-2 decoders for Super Video Compact Disc (SVCD) and DVD will decline as the devices are replaced in the market by DVD recorders, MPEG-1 decoders have found a new market in CD players with MP3 support, as they are a very economical solution for CD player manufacturers wishing to add MP3 playback. DVD recorders and PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) will push shipments of consumer MPEG-2 encoder ICs to more than double in 2004 over their 2003 shipments.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has today announced that Dan Glickman will follow Jack Valenti as president and CEO of the group.
Glickman is a former U.S. agriculture secretary of the Clinton administration, and has also sat on Congress' copyright and intellectual property subcommittee. His predecessor, Jack Valenti, headed the MPAA for 38 years, during which time he created, for instance, the U.S. movie rating system. He will continue to supervise the system with the President of the National Association of Theatre Owners
Glickman is likely to continue Valenti's guest against piracy. "I am eager to begin working closely with my new colleagues at MPAA, here and abroad, with the Congress, the federal government, state legislatures, with officials of nations on all the continents, as well as the global creative community," said Glickman in his statement.
Glickman will begin his tenure on September 1, 2004. Valenti has agreed to continue in the CEO post until that date.
Roberto Amorim keeps pushing new audio quality comparisons with a steady pace. Now it is time to focus to ultra low bitrates around 32kbps. Even though storage capacity is constantly getting cheaper and more widely available, there is still plenty of uses for a low bitrate compression.
With most modern formats reaching transparency, or getting close to it, at 128kbps as my Multiformat at 128kbps listening test demonstrated, the real arena where codecs are competing, and most development is going, is at low bitrates. There are important reasons for that: dial-up streaming, storage savings, bandwidth savings for the streaming station... such low bitrates can also be useful for 1 CD DVD rips.
This test's purpose is simulating a dial-up streaming feed. For that reason, bitrates are kept at 32kbps CBR, and VBR isn't being used.
The encoders and parameters tested are:
LAME encoder 3.96 -b 32
Ahead HE AAC+PS 32kbps CBR High Quality
Ogg Vorbis post-1.0.1CVS --managed -b 32 resampled with SSRC
Real Audio 32kbps stereo music codec in Helix Producer 10
QDesign Music Codec 2 Pro 32kbps at 32kHz, Quality mode
Probably the most controversial movie director at the moment, Michael Moore, has told to press that he doesn't have any problem whatsoever with people sharing his latest movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 illegally over the P2P networks.
"I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that," Moore said. "I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world to change. The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening."
"Is it wrong for someone who’s bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it’s not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared."
It is also interesting to notice that the company distributing Moore's latest movie, Lions Gate Films, seems to share his views on piracy as well, as the company has stated it doesn't oppose the practice of people sharing the movie over the P2P networks for free. Obviously company hasn't released any public press statements about its views as it has to maintain good relations with the MPAA and the other movie industry establisments.
Recording Industry Association of America announced this week that it will add the legal digital download statistics to its "gold" and "platinum" sales certifications.
In near future, gold award will be awarded to a song that has been sold for more than 100,000 times and platinum award for tracks sold for more than 200,000 times. Multi-platinum is awarded to every 200,000th times the song is sold after the first platinum limit is reached. The digital download certifications will be launched in August this year.
In a joint venture announced recently to help independent filmmakers to enjoy the spotlight of the emerging HD-DVD technology, Microsoft has partnered with Amazon.com to use their CustomFlix subsidiary in producing some 1000 Indie titles. Spurred by CustomFlix's DVD On Demand service which authors and stamps a fresh DVD only when an order is placed is said to help these independent film artists with costs associated with releasing films on HD-DVD.
Vice President of music and movies for Amazon Peter Faricy stated, "This collaboration with Microsoft is a great opportunity for independent filmmakers to reach Amazon customers with their films via the HD DVD format. By working together with Microsoft and leveraging the proven CustomFlix DVD on Demand model, we can lower the barriers to entry for independent filmmakers and dramatically increase the selection we offer our customers."
CustomFlix, which is a company owned by Amazon, will be at the forefront of the DVD availability. By eliminating the cost of inventory, their DVD On Demand service will usher in independent filmmakers into a realm that some may not have been able to enter before. Co-founder and managing director of CustomFlix, Dana LoPiccolo-Giles "With retail shelf space at a premium, our model eliminates the risk of carrying inventory and immediately expands the number of great HD DVD titles available to consumers."
The date for the Kazaa vs. MIPI trial has finally been set -- November 29th, 2004. At the same time Judge Murray Wilcox dismissed several claims raised by Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, regarding access to the evidence seized by MIPI in the raid earlier this year.
Sharman immediately appealed the raid and said that the Anton Pillar order, which allowed MIPI to execute the raid, was granted based on incomplete information. In March Wilcox ruled that the order was processed in correct manner. The evidence, however, was handed to an independent solicitor until both MIPI and Sharman could agree on how they should be given access to the evidence.
In the hearing held on Thursday, Sharman attorney Robert Ellicott claimed that the February raids were in violation of the Australia's Telecommunications Act. According to Ellicott MIPI "recorded communications from the routers of the raided premises." Judge Wilcox rejected the submission due to lack of evidence.
Since the parties failed again to agree on several procedural issues, they will have to return to court on July 16 to present the court with a solution.
Distributor Fubra Limited has taken action in the fear of tightening copyright laws, and stopped selling the best selling killer application Alcohol 120%.
Following legal advice it would appear that it would be of very doubtful legality for Fubra Limited to continue selling Alcohol 120%.
Therefore we have decided to terminate all such sales and activity on our domain site (www.alcohol-software.com) effective from today the 30th of June 2004.
..
We are sorry that we have had to take this action and can assure you that we are now working on a number of exciting new software products to help you make the most of your computer which won't hopefully involve complex legal problems and we will be launching them on our site in the coming weeks.
But don't worry, since this isn't the end of Alcohol 120% -- at least not yet. Currently the software is available for download and purchasing at a new domain Alcohol-soft.com.
This incident has raised a lot of discussion in the scene, and there are also suggestions that there might copyright issues in the source code of Alcohol products. We can only hope that this is not the beginning of the end for such a killer product, but it might be wise to get your copy while it is still available.
Leading digital video and audio software manufacturer and developer CyberLink today announced PowerDVD Copy software which, like many others on the market, compresses DVD-Video discs on a single 4.7GB DVD±R(W) disc.
PowerDVD Copy enhances the digital home experience by allowing users to easily copy a high quality DVD. The user-friendly interface offers all the features users need on one page, making it a breeze to select the source and destination and then copy. PowerDVD Copy optimizes disc space and video quality by automatically shrinking the video file to store 8.5 GB of data onto 4.7 GB discs.
"CyberLink PowerDVD Copy is the must-have DVD copying software for video lovers," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "It lets users copy their favorite videos easily onto discs, which they can then share with others or simply store as a backup copy."
Advanced options allow customizing discs with chapters, subtitles, languages, and other special features. PowerDVD Copy is ideal for individuals to create a collection of their favorite videos as well as for businesses to duplicate training or promotion discs.
For greater compatibility, PowerDVD Copy supports a broad range of burner models, including DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW drives with double-layer burning capability.
One of the most legendaric computer manufacturers of all time, if not the most legendaric of them all, Commodore, is back. Well, it is not entirely true. There wont be a new Commodore computers available, at least not in foreseeable future, but the Dutch company called Tulip who purchased the Commodore brand back in 1997 after the once-giant computer maker had went bust, plans to launch a line of digital audio players in August that carry the name of Commodore.
The names of the players are straight from the history books (with a modern twist, of course): the most interesting device seems to the e-Vic(as in Vic-20) which has 20GB HDD, 128x64 pixel screen and it supports MP3s, WMAs and WAVs. Other devices are called m-Pet and f-Pet and are based on flash memory and can have storage space of 128MB or 256MB.
Apple Computer today released a statement in which it accuses RealNetworks of hacking [SIC] the iPod copy protection when creating the Harmony Technology
In rather surprising decision, a Manhattan -based U.S. federal judge Denny Chin, decided against an 
Digital video processor manufacturer ESS Technology has been denied the right to sell its products to some of their clients. A preliminary injunction was issued by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis late Friday.
