The British Academy of Film and Television Arts will be supplying eligible voters with secure DVD players to prevent piracy. The academy have made a deal with Cinea, to distribute its SV300 DVD players. The SV300 can play encrypted discs using a security system called S-View. The system was developed to help movie and TV producers secure their content both at production and post-production stages. Only authorized persons can access the protected content.
Distributing protected DVDs to voters is a top priority of the entertainment industry now in their battle against Piracy. The MPAA tried to ban DVD Screeners last year as DVD copying has become very easy, and each year pirated DVD screeners emerged. "We are very pleased to be working with Cinea to give our members the opportunity to receive secure screeners. The British academy takes the threat of piracy very seriously, and we welcome any solution that can reduce the risk of unauthorized copying,"said the chairman of the academy's film committee, David Parfitt in a statement.
The Orange British Academy Film Awards will take place on February 12th.
...but doesn't rule out Blu-ray either. Sanyo is a major player in the consumer electronics market, but also a significant component supplier. Many high profile brands have relied on Sanyo based technology, such as Plextor and TDK to mention just a few from the CD-R age.
The HD-DVD format is promoted by an alliance lead by NEC and Toshiba, while Matsushita and Sony are the key players of the Blu-ray camp. But Sanyo is not picking sides -- it's more of a supply and demand question than anything else.
While Sanyo will use HD-DVD in its completed products, the major Japanese maker of key parts for use in DVD equipment such as optical pickups and blue lasers also said it would supply parts to both the HD-DVD group and the Blu-ray group if there is demand.
"We will take a different approach in the components business," a Sanyo spokesman said.
Sanyo said it decided to endorse HD DVD for its DVD hardware products because that format seems more user-friendly as far as DVD software is concerned, he said.
Dutch anti-piracy foundation, Brein, has sent an injunction to shareconnector.com demanding that they stop offering eD2K links within 5 days. Managing director of Stichting Brein, Tim Kuik, confirmed that the creators of the site have received the injunction and that they had already had contact with them. If shareconnector do not remove the eD2K links, then the site owners may be sued. Shareconnector however seem determined to stand their ground in this quote from Adi, the founder of shareconnector.
"First off all the news is real. Secondly chill down and relax because ShareConnector is not going to be shut down by anyone. BREIN is a pathetic private organization that tries to scare ed2k sites away. Not us!
At the moment there isn't much to say and on Monday we will hear more from our lawyer. I will make an announcement when we know more."
Hosting Company Mindlab also received an injunction and a spokesman is quoted as saying "We contacted our lawyer and will decide on Monday what to do".
It is still unclear whether eD2K links actually break any copyright laws. These links are not direct links to content, but are references to files on the donkey network. Basically, they are just a quick link to files you could simply find by searching using one of the many donkey network clients.
It seems that Cogeco, a Canadian ISP has begun sending its users warnings about their activities on P2P networks. The strange fact is, the warnings appear to be under DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) laws, which are U.S. laws, not Canadian laws. The BT tracker that seems to be gaining attention is the Swedish suprnova.org tracker. The emails also encourage the ISP's to limit users from accessing suprnova.org.
These actions can be compared to those taken in European countries for about the past year. Basically, someone affiliated with the MPAA or other anti-piracy organizations would begin a download on a P2P network, then record all the IP's it downloads from. After recording all the data it needs, it would continue to send the information the ISP, hoping that they will deal with the issue. However, there are some complications too. For example, some networks like the donkey network, trade files in small parts and in no particular order. In other words, you may be downloading the end of the file first. Whether you have the full file or not, as long as you have just one part, your client will be able to upload to other users. So would the MPAA ever take you to court for sharing a part of a movie, that is only a couple of MB's and pretty much completely useless without all the other parts?
Later this week, Microsoft is expected to enter the music downloading market with the launch of the MSN music. The launch will coincide with the launch of Windows Media Player 10. The MSN music service is expected to be a major competitor of Apple's iTunes service, which currently makes 70% of online download sales. Apparently, Windows Media Player 10 will feature a built in music store, which obviously has some windows users worried.
Regulators in the EU are already looking at the launch of the MSN music service with some suspicion. It appears Microsoft may be attempting to use its dominance in the Operating System market to promote its music store. In the United States already, Microsoft were ordered to remove a link which brought users through Internet Explorer to a Microsoft branded CD store. Microsoft Windows comes bundled with Windows Media Player, so it seems that in newer versions of the Windows operating system, you could say it becomes bundled with an online music store instead.
The music downloads will come in the Windows Media Audio format and can be played on any Windows machine and some portable devices. They are expected to cost about $0.99 per track. MSN music will first launch on Thursday 2nd September.
Confirming the announcement made in January, world's second largest computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard told today that it will start selling its branded version of Apple's iPod digital audio player in next month.
HP's versions of iPod will include 20GB and 40GB models that will cost exactly the same as Apple's own models do -- in the U.S. that means $299 and $399, respectively. The players will be called "the Apple iPod from HP".
In addition to iPod deal, HP also announced that it will follow the footsteps of Gateway by entering to the consumer electronics market by launching a line of flat-panel TVs, media PCs, digital projectors and stand-alone photo printers.
American cell phone operator Sprint has delivered first major victory for Apple in software companies' fight for mobile platform dominance by launching a video service in the U.S. that uses Apple's QuickTime video format to deliver video clips for mobile phones.
Previously, RealNetworks has dominated the mobile video market as its mobile video player comes bundled with all Nokia's Series 60 smart phones. However, the new service from Sprint is now limited to only one handset, Samsung MM-A700.
The new music e-store for smaller independent labels has been launched today. According to the source, the music selection is going to be quite massive, as Karmadownload.com promises to deliver music from over 3000 independent labels around the world. The music is offered in the standard and non-crippled MP3 format. In addition to selling music, the site will also offer other service, for example to the unsigned artists.
We will be presenting the best new music from the Independent sector, featuring unsigned talent through to music from some of the most credible and leading Independent record labels from around the world. We’ll also be featuring exclusive downloads you won’t find anywhere else including exclusive compilations, remixes and live gigs.
...
We are aiming to keep our pricing as low as possible starting from £0.99 for a single track but offer strong discounts for multi-track purchases and LP’s. These discounts start at £2.50 for a 3-track purchase and further discounts will be given with each additional track purchased.
Security site Secunia has issued a warning about a security exploit using WinAMP skins. The problem is within WinAMP's skin zip files' (.wsz files) insufficient restrictions to control what can be launched from skin file's XML "browser" tag.
With this exploit, a skin file can launch executable programs when used with WinAMP, thus allowing malicious WinAMP skins to be created that can do virtually anything with user's computer. At the moment the solution to the problem is to use some other media player instead of WinAMP. The vulnerability has already been found in the wild.
The anti-monopoly agency of Japan has raided a number of major companies on Thursday. The companies are suspected of blocking other firms from offering ring tone services to cellular phone users. According to the source, around 300.000 songs are delivered to Japanese mobile phones daily. The irony of the incident naturally is that recently it has been the music industry (RIAA) raiding the consumers, but at the 'other side of the world' things really have gone the other way around.
Fair Trade Commission official Toshihiko Oizumi said investigators suspect more than 10 companies violated Japan's fair trade laws by preventing the Japanese mobile phone operators from offering the service.
Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, EMI-Toshiba Ltd., Avex Inc., Victor Entertainment Inc. and Label Mobile Inc. were among those raided, said Oizumi. He refused to disclose all the record companies' names.
Today, the trade group representing the U.S. music industry filed lawsuits against 744 P2P users. They claim these users used P2P networks like Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire and eDonkey to share copyrighted music illegally. This brings the total number of users sued to 4749. It appears the RIAA must be still in shock and very frustrated at recent court rulings that backed up the legality of P2P networks. The RIAA are blaming P2P file sharers for a massive decline in music sales over past years.
The true identities of the users being sued are unknown to the group so they are known as "John Doe" defendants. There were also suits against people who were identified but did not agree to an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA.
Today the U.S. Department of Justice launched an assault on P2P filesharing. Using search warrants, they searched five homes and the offices of one ISP. This is the first time the department has applied such drastic measures against file sharers and comes shortly after courts ruled that P2P networks cannot be held responsible for copyright infringement. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the raids today saying that individuals from Texas, New York and Wisconsin were under investigation. The Operation has been named Operation Digital Gridlock and is targeting the illegal sharing of movies, games, software and music.
This is not surprising however, as the U.S. Government seems to always have sided with the entertainment industry in the fight against P2P trading. Even a comprehensive study at Harvard revealed that P2P doesn't have much of an effect on sales.
"When online thieves illegally distribute copyrighted programs and products, they put the livelihoods of millions of hard-working Americans at risk and damage our economy,” Ashcroft said. "The Department of Justice is committed to enforcing intellectual property laws, and we will pursue those who steal copyrighted materials even when they try to hide behind the false anonymity of peer-to-peer networks." Ashcroft did not explain what he meant by false anonymity. They believe the individuals and the ISP were operating five P2P networks known as, The Underground Network.
The software giant is making it's late entry to the music e-tailing business, as the next version of the Windows Media Player are said to come with the online music store features integrated. While the entrance is way behind Apple,Real and others, Microsoft has once again a definitive edge. It can promote the latest WMP through Windows Update and most likely will bundle the software to the SP2 updated Windows retail and OEM CDs.
Early-release versions of the player look like knock-offs of Apple's iTunes Music Store, complete with brushed nickel finish. But hey, why mess with success? A button in the upper right corner of the player will take consumers to the download store.
Microsoft has told entertainment executives that it expects to introduce as many as 130 million people to its music download store as computer users are prompted to update their media player software. And that's not counting the 300 million people who drop by the MSN site.
The owner of the UK's largest music venue has begun selling music downloads of live performances. Music from artists such as Dido and the Scissor Sisters will be available subject to the performer’s consent following a deal between the label and the Mean Fiddler. Downloads from the Reading and Leeds Festivals will be available this weekend on MeanTunes.com, however at this time, the domain does not work.
The service has been previewed with tracks from a James Taylor Quarter performance at London's Jazz Café. The tracks don't appear to have any content protection and are in MP3 format. They are being sold for £0.50 each currently but are expected to rise in price to between £0.99 and £1.50.
A group of labels plan to introduce a disc to the market later this year that will combine both CD and DVD technology. The group of labels also includes EMI Music, Sony, BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, the worlds major recording labels. The labels plan to have a full normal CD album on one side and extra content such as DVD audio, lyrics, interviews etc on the other side. This comes at a time when traditional music sales are losing ground to file-swapping and legal download services. The discs will be available from October and should be compatible with most CD and DVD players.
DVD audio has been around now for a long time but never really took off in the music market yet. Tests conducted earlier this year showed that DualDiscs received an impressive response from consumers.
"By combining video, surround sound and Web connectivity in a single disc, we are presenting our artists with a broader palette to express their creative vision, while at the same time giving consumers what they told us they want--greater value driven by unique content that brings them closer to the artist," said a statement from CEO of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Andrew Lack. "We're confident that this groundbreaking new initiative will help to re-energize traditional music retail."
The European Commission will launch a probe into dealings between Microsoft and Time Warner to take giant ownership of ContentGuard, a US DRM company. The deal could lead to Microsoft extending its monopoly in the Operating Systems business, to the locks and keys used to protect distributed digital content.
"It appears to the Commission that the transaction might possibly create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for Digital Right Management (DRM) solutions," said the European Commissions office in a statement. The technology used by ContentGuard was devised by Xerox. Time Warner bought most of Xerox's share in April while Redmond increased its holding in the company. Sony is also a licensee. On January 6th 2005, the investigation report.
Yesterday, Sony revealed some details about the chips they will be using to power their upcoming Playstation Portable. The chipset includes the CPU, a 3D graphics engine, a media processor, a security processor and a power manager. The MIPS R4000-based CPU runs at 333MHz, its frontside bus runs at up to 166MHz, with both frequencies controlled by processor load and it contains a vector processing engine according to Sony chip designer Masanobu Okabe. The graphics sub-system will operate across a 512-bit bus and is capable of rendering 664m pixels per second and 35m polygons per second. The core operates at 166MHz and includes 2MB of integrated buffer DRAM and a further 2MB of embedded DRAM is dedicated to the main processor.
The dedicated security engine will be used in attempt to prevent game piracy and protect the PSP from being hacked. Sony's other gaming consoles have all been hacked and modchips are used to bypass the security. Sony hopes this new technology will eliminate piracy of PSP games.
The PSP will support USB 2.0, MemoryStick and up to 32MB of DDR SDRAM. The PSP will feature a 4.3in, 480 x 272 widescreen LCD and will weigh 260g. It measures 17 x 7.4 x 2.3cm. It uses a 1.8GB optical disc called Universal Media Disc to store content.
LiteOn IT is the biggest optical drive manufacturer in Taiwan. Currently LiteOn ships an average of 0.5m - 0.6m units each month. The company expects these shipments to grow to an average of 0.7m - 0.8m units in August, then to 0.9m - 1.0m each month next quarter. This means that next quarter, LiteOn IT may become the largest maker of DVD burners in the world.
The growth in shipments is partly due to an adequate supply of DVD burner chipsets from MediaTek, LiteOn IT indicated. Other DVD burner makers in Taiwan, including BenQ, Behavior Tech Computer (BTC), Quanta Storage and Accesstek, are considering adoption of Mediateks chipsets because the company offers lower prices than imported products and can act as a second source to secure stable supply. Mediatek recently began volume shipments of chipsets for use in 16x DVD burners, the company said.
Currently, the largest vendors of DVD burners are NEC with an average of 0.7m - 0.8m unit shipments per month. Hitachi-LG Data Storage come second with the same figures, followed by Pioneer in third place with an average of 0.6m - 0.7m unit shipments a month. LiteOn IT is in fourth place currently with an average of 0.5m - 0.6m unit shipments a month and in fifth place is BenQ with the same figures of shipments (See diagram on source).
Police in Poland have broken up a piracy ring which consisted of at least 100 hackers. The group has been accused of selling pirates movies and music and has also been accused of hacking academic computer systems all over the world to store the material. Police spokeswoman Agata Salatka said, “They broke into the biggest systems they could find and set up 'warehouses' to store pirated games, films and music. They distributed the goods through the Internet, and also supplied bazaars with the latest hits -- even before their official premieres,”. This is one of Poland’s biggest piracy related busts. Salatka also said they had detained the ring leaders but wouldn’t give any details on them but did state that evidence was gathered on at least 100 people.
Poland has had much praise from anti-piracy groups worldwide in recent years. The country has tightened its copyright laws and its law enforcement is still challenging the piracy that flourished in the 1990’s. Despite this action, pirated movies, music, software and games are still being sold at bazaars in cities around the country.
International police blame eastern European manufacturing centers for contributing a huge part of the estimated $29 billion of pirated material in the year 2003 alone. In this raid, Polish police say that all suspects are over 18 years of age, some still only secondary school students. This is the latest raid in an on going International crack down on piracy.
One week after the announcement of significant price reductions, the Real Networks is already able to show impressive results. Since they began selling music for US$0.49 per song (or $4.99 for most albums) they already sold 1M music tracks.
Recently Real Networks has been weaving an aggressive strategy, clearly aimed towards the market dominating Apple iTunes. It's besides price reductions, they have introduced Apple iPod compatibility and signed deals with universities. A slap in the face for Apple - let's see how the fruit company responds.
Real and Apple came to loggerheads shortly after RealPlayer 10.5 was introduced in beta last month because the new software includes a technology, called Harmony, that allows songs downloaded from Real's music store to play on Apple's iPod devices. Apple has not licensed to third-parties the technology which enables songs to play on the iPod.
While the dispute between the two companies continues to simmer, Real is claiming booming sales at its online store. The company said it has sold one million songs in the last week, although it did not reveal how many songs it sold from the online store on average before the sale.
The MPAA has sued two chipmakers, Sigma Designs and MediaTek for allegedly selling DVD chips to companies that are breaking copy-protection rules. This is the second lawsuit to target DVD hardware makers in an effort to crack down on DVD players that differ from a Hollywood system of copy control features. The MPAA is accusing both companies of selling DVD-player chips that contain features not allowed under the general DVD technology license. The trade association said that the act "violated the license the chipmakers had to sign to build the DVD chips in the first place".
MPAA Chief Technology Counsel Dan Robbins, said in a statement, "Responsible corporate citizens honor the contracts they sign. There is no leniency for irresponsible companies that seek to circumvent the system and operate outside of the law". The lawsuits are the latest in an MPAA campaign aimed at hardware makers after seeing some success in stopping the spread of DVD Copying Software developed by 321 studios. The MPAA uses an in-house lab to disassemble DVD hardware and other products, to check if they comply with Hollywood requirements. The difference between these lawsuits and earlier lawsuits focused on DVD copying software is these cases don’t rest on copyright law but on the contracts used to control DVD technology itself.
A new file downloading service called Ruckus is currently be tested by students at the Northern Illinois University. The service is being provided by Ruckus Network and was developed by a group of MIT students. Ruckus offers unlimited movies, music, tv shows, local content and community features to the students for free, both from major labels/studios and from indie artists. It will also have work by artists in your own college community.
Bryan Ajuluchukwu is a freshman economics major at NIU and is currently testing the new service. He is just 1 of 170 students living on the third floor of Grant Towers who is testing Ruckus. Ajuluchukwu, said he would definitely recommend the service to other students stating "It was better than other programs because it’s legal. This is a good idea for the university to do for the students so we have some entertainment." According to Keith Kruchten, president of the Residence Hall Association, Ruckus will be available to residents in the third through sixth floors of all Grant Towers on Thursday.
From 12th-19th August, over 20 NIU community advisers and Grant Towers staff tested Ruckus followed by 700 students whom were added to the testing on the 19th. On September 1st about 2,500 students in all Grant Towers will have limited access to the network. The full model of Ruckus will be open to all Grant students in October.
Macrovision, one of the world's leading copy protection providers, plans to add iPod and iTunes support to its software in Q4 according to mailings sent out with the company's CDS-300 version 7 beta release. The company is confident that it will be able to incorporate FairPlay support into its CDS-300 copy control mechanism. This report would suggest that Macrovision has licensed Apple's DRM technology or are very confident of doing so.
Macrovision wants to use this technology to provide iTunes ready compressed audio tracks as well as Windows Media Audio files in its CDS-300 copy protection mechanism. Real Networks also wanted to use FairPlay to open an online music store for iPod users. The Q4 update is also expected to include its RealTime DRM Encoding system, which will allow users to convert the disc's audio to FairPlay-protected AAC files, ATRAC 3 tracks or Windows Media Audio files.
Reaching an agreement with Apple will mean that copy protected CDs in the future will not leave iTunes users out and will give users the ability to choose an alternative to Microsoft software.
Assistant Attorney General for antitrust, Hewitt Pate, took a small swipe at the Pirate Act, a law that encourages federal prosecutors to sue copyright infringers. The recording industry has been pushing the Pirate Act as an attempt to deter file swappers on P2P networks out of fear of potential Government Lawsuits. Pate referred to the Pirate Act as "something that people should take with a grain of salt" at a conference held by the Progress & Freedom Foundation.
Pate said the Justice Department's position on the Pirate Act would appear in a task force's report that will be presented to Attorney General John Ashcroft this fall. The intellectual property task force was created by Ashcroft in March and is headed by David Israelite. Senior Vice President of Government Relations at the RIAA, Mitch Glazier said that Pate's comments "weren't that negative". He went on to say that if the Pirate Act becomes law, prosecutors would "now have a choice of how badly they want to hurt the violator."
Copyright Lawyers and lobbyists for peer-to-peer firms are alarmed by the Pirate Act. They have been watching the RIAA's action on P2P users very closely and fear the Justice Department could be more ambitious in the hunt for Copyright Infringers. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, showed his support for the Patriot Act stating, "Tens of thousands of continuing civil enforcement actions might be needed to generate the necessary deterrence, I doubt that any nongovernmental organization has the resources or moral authority to pursue such a campaign.". Federal Prosecutors can file charges against P2P users using the No Electronic Theft Act which passed in 1997. In 2002, a letter from Congressmen to Ashcroft requested the prosecution of Americans who "allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Not one P2P Criminal Prosecution has taken place in the U.S.
As you might have already noticed, Dela has joined the AfterDawn.com editor team. In addition to writing news articles, Dela will also be posting guides, and updating other content on the AfterDawn.com site.
I'm sure you will be a lot of quality content provided by him! By distributing some of the maintenance work we (me and dRD) can hopefully focus more on the administrative side of things.
You can always use our news submit form to let us know of interesting events!
According to the British Phonographic Industry, music downloaders in the UK have purchased 2m tracks since January 1st. The organizations numbers also show that physical singles and album sales have grown in value between Q2 2003 and Q2 2004. Between January and June 2004, only 0.5m legal tracks were downloaded, but the figure has now grown to 2m in just 3 months since June.
Napster launched in the UK on May 20th followed by the launch of ITMS UK on June 15th, which basically explains the rise in download sales. About 200 single titles are available for purchase in stores in the UK at any given time, whereas the figure for the online world is 40,000 titles as it appears downloaders prefer to purchase individual tracks rather than a full album. Despite these numbers, the traditional market is not being affected. In fact, whilst quite understandably, vinyl and cassette revenues have fallen, CD sales are on the rise with the UK album market showing a 3.7% market growth between Q2 2003 and Q2 2004. Single sales have shown a 6.4% rise over the same period. If you compare the 12 months to June 2003 with June 2004 album sales showed a rise of 3.3% to £1.11bn while the whole music market was up 3% to just over £1.22bn.
More colleges are signing up for legal music services to keep their students from getting sued by RIAA. Marietta College, Ohio University, the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the University of Denver, Wake Forest and Yale University have made an arrangement with Cdigix which allows educational institutions to provide their students with legal downloadable access to more than 800,000 songs through MusicNet, as well as broadcast-quality video from leading film and TV content providers.
The Ctrax music service will be available to the students starting this fall at a monthly rate of $2.99. The monthly fee allows an unlimited number of tethered downloads. Permanent downloads cost 89 cents per track. Cflix video-on-demand service will cost $9.99 per month or $3.99 per individual movie on a pay-per-view basis. The students will also have free access to Clabs, which gives them convenient access to video and audio media content required to fulfill their coursework via their own computer versus making a trip to the central campus Audio/Video lab.
Also on Friday the Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) announced that it has signed a deal with Napster to allow students to buy music at discount prices. The service, known as VUmix, will be available from October 1st, and will cost $16 per academic year for the students, and $6.95 per month for faculty members. Earlier this year the Tennessee Board of Regents rejected the Napster deal as too costly for the students.
British radio station Virgin Radio(which is not part of Virgin Group anymore) has teamed up with Napster UK to launch an online music chart called (very creative..)The Napster Online Music Chart.
The timing is rather interesting, as the new chart will go live on 29th of August, just days before the official UK download chart will launch on BBC Radio 1. The official UK chart includes Napster's sales figures, but also sales figures from Apple's iTunes and from all OD2's partners.
The deal between Virgin Radio and Napster is also slightly confusing to general public, as the Virgin Group, who used to own the Virgin Radio, is about to launch its own digital music service called Virgin Digital that will rival Napster in the UK and in the United States.
A federal appeals court has ruled that file sharing companies are not liable for copyright infringements carried out using their software products. The U.S. Senate is preparing the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, which is based on the exact opposite of the court's ruling.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit finds r Grokster Ltd, Streamcast Networks Inc. and Sharman Networks Ltd fundamentally different from for example (the now late) Napster in the sense that the services do not have a central server. According to Judge Sidney R. Thomas "The technology has numerous other uses, significantly reducing the distribution costs of public domain and permissively shared art and speech, as well as reducing the centralized control of that distribution."
In their appeal the P2P companies relied on the Betamax legal doctrine. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that Sony was not liable for copyright infringements taking place using their VCRs. The same doctrine applies to CD- and DVD-recordable drives and media, recording software etc.
Player league tables, voice communications, online gaming host services - Nintendo has been granted an U.S. patent covering all these key online gaming functions. The patents have been filed as early as April 1999.
The two patents detail a "home video game system with hard disk drive and Internet access capability", but the second filing adds provision for "substantially real-time" online multi-player gaming, connection via an online gaming service, support for online "player performance data", using the connection to download information and do so securely through an authentication process, and the communication across the Net of "audio input signals".
RealNetworks' campaign against Apple's protectionist attitude towards FairPlay DRM used in iTunes and iPod has backfired in a way that was only to be expected. Apple and Mac enthusiasts have attacked Real's FreedomOfMusicChoice.org campaign site by posting anything but supportive comments.
At first the "Don't break my iPod" -petition was filled with negative or critical comments. A poster by the name of MacUser wrote: "I choose to use a Macintosh. Why won't Real support me? Rhapsody doesn't work on the Mac. So even if I was interested in buying music from Real, I can't do it." Real soon replaced the petition with one that did not allow posting comments. That petition started filling up with signatures such as 'Real Sucks'. Now the petition only shows the total number of signatures.
Of course that did not stop the comments. Now the blog entries are filling up with insightful comments like "Real Player is garbage."
It's not all bad, though. One comment in particular captures the essence of the whole issue. "You already have 'freedom of music choice' so why don't you quit whining," the poster called Funksaw writes and continues: "The problem isn't the iPod, it's your DRM scheme." Indeed. Un-cripple the music and you un-cripple the players.
In an attempt to seek publicity in its campaign against Apple's policy in protecting the iPod DRM technology, RealNetworks today announced a huge sale in its RealPlayer Music Store. For a limited time Real is offering all songs at 49 cents per track. Most albums are available for $4.99.
Last month Real announced the Harmony technology which allows consumers to transcode and transcrypt DRM protected music from one format to another -- including Apple's FairPlay, which it uses to encrypt songs purchased from iTunes. Until Harmony was announced the only place to purchase music online for the iPod player was iTunes. Apple soon claimed that Real had illegally cracked their code, and threatened that future iPod versions would not work with Harmony.
Along with the campaign Real also launched FreedomOfMusicChoice.org -- a blog site promoting Real and its demands for Apple to allow others to provide DRM protected content to the hugely popular iPod portable music player.
Once again Real's campaign has a lot of similarities with Protect Fair Use -- a campaign sponsored by 321 Studios.
Music Managers Forum, an organization that represents 650 British music industry managers, have publicly announced that they oppose the rapidly growing trend of bundling free music CDs with (especially British) newspapers and tabloids.
Apparently their reasoning behind the statement is that by giving the music "free" with a newspaper issue, consumers get the idea of music itself being free or extremely cheap -- undermining the recording industry's mantra about music being extremely valuable intellectual property that should be compensated well. Also, MMF is worried that by giving out the most popular tracks of the album in a "free" CD ("free" being slightly misleading, as the newspaper pays for that music and charges it in higher retail prices from buyers anyway), the habit discourages people from buying artists' albums. Then again, we could argue that ever since legal online music stores that offer single-track purchases arrived, the value of a full album has plummeted anyway, as most consumers really just want to have the tracks that they hear on radio and TV and not the rest.
Anyway, now some labels have already stopped from allowing their tracks to be used in newspaper promotions, but some still consider it to be an easy, additional way to monetize from artist's music.
The SP2Torrent.com offered an alternative distribution method of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 package, utilizing the efficient BitTorrent P2P software. In distribution of large software packages, such as SP2, the advanced P2P technology could really be of help, but the M$ thought otherwise. The software giant aimed their legal guns at the distributor to shut it down.
Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. We've stood up to these kinds of legal threats before (see the Grey Tuesday protests), but we decided not to bother this time, because we started this site primarily as a demonstration and to that end it's already been a huge success. SP2torrent.com showed how filesharing technlogy gives people without budgets or huge servers the power to solve problems themselves, without waiting for the government or some corporation to do it for them. For another demonstration that's still in action, check out p2pcongress.org. If you need Windows XP SP2, you can download it from Microsoft's inscrutable webpage.
One should be very careful installing the SP2 anyway and consider waiting for a while, as there are a lot of incompatibility issues reported after the initial launch. The incompatible titles include well known games and applications, and even MS originated developer tools.
World's largest movie rental chain, Blockbuster, has finally bowed to pressure from online DVD rental services like Netflix and launched its own online DVD rental service in the United States this week.
Blockbuster's service cuts the Netflix's monthly fees by $2, offering a model where users of the service can hold three movies at home at any given time and pay $19.99 per month for the service. In addition to that, Blockbuster also offers two free "offline" rentals a month from its rental stores.
Blockbuster also announced that it will try to cut the logicstic costs of the online service by integrating its online and brick-and-mortar services by end of 2005, sending the movies and handling the returns at local Blockbuster stores rather than in nationwide warehouses. Concept sounds familiar -- that is exactly the way how Tesco built the world's only hugely profitable online grocery store service in the UK. But selling bread online and fighting against established online players like Netflix are two different things, even when you have a brand name like Blockbuster has.
Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, who is known for his work with DeCSS and PlayFair, is continuing his efforts to un-cripple DRM crippled hardware and software.
Johansen has released a software called JustePort, which lets owners of Apple's AirPort Express to stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to the device from any source -- not just iTunes. Since iTunes is only available to Windows and Mac users, JustePort gives for instance Linux users the opportunity to take advantage of AirPort.
JustePort itself supports only MPEG4 Apple Lossless (.m4a) files as input, but since the RSA encryption key used is now available, it is easy to develop full-featured third-party streaming clients for AirPort.
Earlier this year Johansen developed PlayFair (now known as Hymn), which removed the DRM wrapping from songs sold at the iTunes Music Store. Last month he released FairKeys, which lets iTMS users to extract FairPlay keys from Apple's servers. The keys are required to authenticate computers to play songs purchased from iTMS.
Despite the fact that games are constantly being cracked, and the un-protected versions then distributed illegaly, game producers still invest on copy protection technology. Macrovision is the long time industry leader, best known for the DVD copy protection scheme. SEGA, despite the fact that they gave up in the console production, is still one of the leading game content producers and developers. In the future SEGA Europe relies on Macrovision copy protections, the SafeDisc.
SafeDisc® Encryption Technology To Appear On SEGA’s Forthcoming PC Titles
Macrovision® Corporation (Nasdaq: MVSN), the leader in copy protection, has signed an agreement with SEGA Europe under which the software publishing giant will use Macrovision’s SafeDisc® advanced security solution on its forthcoming PC CD-ROM titles.
SafeDisc is the leading PC game protection solution available to interactive entertainment publishers, offering multi-level encryption which can be efficiently integrated by the software developer deep within the code of a game without affecting the game’s performance. These layers ensure that the robust security can remain intact far beyond standard copy protection schemes which simply ‘wrap’ each game in an encrypted ‘sleeve’.
MPAA has announced that it has reached a settlement with the late DVD backup software vendor 321 Studios, which ceased all operations last week.
With the agreement 321 Studios will make a substantial payment to movie industry's anti piracy campaign. The settlement also demands 321 Studios to stop selling its software -- which it already did.
"321 Studios built its business on the flawed premise that it could profit from violating the motion picture studios' copyrights," MPAA CEO Jack Valenti says in a prepared statement. "This is not the end of the story in our massive fight against piracy."
The exact amount of the settlement was not announced.
Who will be the first to demo the next generation of console gaming? While Nintedo and Sony have confirmed to go live in the E3 expo 2003, Microsoft has not yet set the date. GameSpy raises speculations that M$ might be targeting to the CES 2005, in order to beat the competitors by several months. But currently it's all just speculation, with no comment from Microsoft itself.
Going back in time, it was Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates who unveiled the Xbox at the... CES 2001.
Last week it was revealed that Gates would be the keynote speaker at CES 2005, immediately prompting speculation that it would be deja vu all over again and that Gates might unveil the Xbox 2.
Microsoft is sticking to their typical stance of not responding to rumors and speculations, but on the other hand has not yet issued any sort of denial either.
The trend of music e-tailing keeps on growing, as we have learned from the headlines today and through this summer. Apple had the guts to be the first world class pioneer in this new market, and has the largest market share with a large margin to the competition.
And as there seems to be demand for this new kind of music distribution, there is also supply: Apple announced today that the iTunes currently offers.
CUPERTINO, California—August 10, 2004—Apple® today announced that the iTunes® Music Store now has over one million songs available for download in the US, becoming the first and only online digital music service to offer consumers a million song catalog. The iTunes Music Store features music from all five major record labels and over 600 leading independent labels from around the world. With more than 100 million songs downloaded and more than 70 percent market share of legal downloads for singles and albums, the iTunes Music Store is the world’s number one online music service.
“The iTunes Music Store offers the world’s most extensive collection of downloadable music with over one million tracks available,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Applications. “With more than one million songs, over 600 independent labels and dozens of innovative features, iTunes is the ultimate destination for discovering and downloading music.”
Software company turned music business Roxio on Monday announced that it would sell its consumer software division for $80 million and put all focus on the Napster online digital music store.
Roxio, known for software titles such as Easy Media Creator and Toast, plans to change its name to Napster. Less than a year ago Roxio was still best known for its recording solutions. Now it seems they want to dissociate themselves from the image and avoid confusion by changing the name altogether.
"With the successful completion of the transaction, Napster will emerge as a well-positioned pure-play in the fast-growing digital music sector with a substantially enhanced balance sheet that will support our growth plans," said Chris Gorog, Roxio's chairman and chief executive officer.
The software division will be sold to Sonic Solutions. Under the terms of the deal, Sonic will purchase essentially the entire Roxio software operation including Roxio's CD and DVD recording, authoring, photo and video editing application products including Easy Media Creator, PhotoSuite, VideoWave, Easy DVD Copy and Toast. Sonic expects to retain most of the current employees of the Roxio organization. Sonic intends to continue the Roxio brands, and current distribution and OEM relationships.
United States attorneys general from 47 states and territories have sent an open letter to peer-to-peer vendors. In the letter the AGs demand that P2P companies should do a better job in warning users of the dangers of trading illegal files.
The demand is much in the lines of "Warning! Hot coffee is hot!" and "Warning! Smoking endangers your health." Some companies have already warned their users about the possible consequences of sharing illegal content, but that's not enough. "However, more needs to be done by your companies to warn your P2P users as to the specific legal and personal risks they face when they use P2P technology for the illegal ends of disseminating pornography and 'sharing' copyrighted music, movies and software," the letter says.
The letter demands, for example, that centralized filtering systems should be implemented to remove illegal content from the networks. P2P trade group P2P United CEO Adam Eisgrau said, that implementing filters is against the nature of P2P software. "That cannot be done without radically changing the innovative nature of this software," Eisgrau said.
According to MPAA and RIAA the entertainment industry loses billions of dollars each year to piracy. However instead of trying to take advantage of the possibilities offered by P2P, the industry has adopted the way of trying to intimidate everyone away from their P2P sharing habits.
A counter measure to the Apple / Motorola alliance. Less than a month ago Apple and Motorola teamed up to transform iTunes services to the mobile phone platform. Now Nokia announces the partnership with the digital music distributor Loudeye. Such partnership was definitely expected, but it is slightly surprising that the chosen partner is not Real Networks, which currently supplies media player software for the Nokia phones. One interesting detail is that in the Loudeye PC targeted service, they utilize the Windows Media format, which is not currently supported by the Nokia phones.
For its part, Nokia doesn't appear interested in entering such a business itself - essentially it sees the deal as a way of building demand for its handsets. With almost all phones bought by mobile networks and sold on to subscribers, Nokia's key customers are not consumers but networks. If it can put them in the way of a service that has real customer appeal and - crucially - encourages users to make use of their data-oriented networks, almost certainly 3G ones, then hopefully they'll buy more handsets from Nokia.
Virgin(probably one of the world's most diverse companies..) has filed an official complaint against Apple in France. Virgin has submitted a complaint to French Competition Council complaining about the fact that Apple refuses to license its FairPlayDRM system to third parties in order to make their online music stores compatible with Apple's hugely successful iPod digital audio player.
The complaint made its way to the media today in Apple's latest Securities and Exchange filing and represents yet another legal action against it since it launched the iTunes Music Store last year.
Gameindustry.biz reports that Sony officials has confirmed that the Playstation 3 will feature a Blu-Ray disc drive, providing content developers with more than 20gb of storage. This is naturally very beneficial for Blu-Ray against the competing standard HD-DVD, as Playstations are products of very high volumes. PS3 alone will guarantee a potential content market of millions of Blu-Ray enabled players.
Single-layer Blu-Ray discs can store up to 27Gb on one layer of data, compared to 4.7Gb on DVDs, although the version of the standard favoured by Sony holds only 23Gb - still around five times larger than existing DVD discs. The Blu-Ray specification also allows for reading existing DVD discs, so the PS3 will almost certainly still be able to handle standard DVD movies and PS2 titles.
E-Data announced today that Apple has settled a patent lawsuit E-Data had filed against Apple's iTunes Music Store service. E-Data's patent can be considered one of "those whacky ones", as it covers such "limited" process as "downloading and recording of information, such as music, onto a tangible object, such as CDs, DVDs and MP3 players."
E-Data's patent expired in the United States already in January, 2003 -- three months before Apple launched its online music service, but the patent is still valid in Europe and iTunes launched its service in Europe in June, 2004. Earlier this year, Microsoftsettled with E-Data to avoid court case against its European music download services.
E-Data also announced that it has sued yet another 14 companies for violating its patent. Companies include The New York Times Company, Hallmark Cards and Ticketmaster.
The Recording Industry Association of America keeps demonstrating its fine ethics by suing more P2P pirates who destroy the entire music industry and cause malnutrition to artists. It seems that someone has told the recording industry that "there's no such thing as bad publicity." Sadly that's not the case.
Last month RIAA sued 90 named and 500 unnamed "John Doe" defendants. One of the named defendants is a couple from Iowa, who had no clue that their children, teenagers of 18 and 15, were downloading music off the Internet. Sandy and Richard Nauman are both completely computer illiterate -- according to Sandy Nauman neither of them could retrieve a song from the Internet to save their lives,
A lawyer has adviced the Naumans to settle with RIAA out of court. The settlements have been around $3,000.
"To me, it's very ridiculous," Sandy Nauman said. "To be honest with you, I was more worried about other things they're getting off the Internet other than songs."
Amen to that.
So far RIAA has sued more than 3,500 individuals. Luckily they still have millions of users more left to target.
As part of the free-trade agreement (that was signed today) between the United States and Australia, Australian government and the leading opposition party of the country have both accepted the fact that Australia now has to implement all the key proportions of the American DMCA legislation into its own national legislation.
This means that after Australia implements the required changes, selling, developing or distributing of tools that allow copy protection circumvention will become illegal. Open source DVD players for Linux? Illegal. DVD backup tools that circumvent CSS copy protection found on virtually all DVD movies? Illegal. Copying tracks to your iPod from a copy-protected CD that you legally own? Illegal.
The agreement also requires Australia to allow software patents -- patenting code has been so far impossible in Australia -- and requires Australia to extend the time that copyrights are valid.
The supply of DVD+R DL media is on the increase, as brands and manufacturers are launching their DL product lines. The latest to jump on the DVD+R DL bandwagon is Imation. For years Imation has been one of the largest and most visible recordable media brands, relying on CMC Magnetics products.
Imation Unveils Double Layer DVD Media
New DVD format holds up to four hours of video or 8.5GB of data files on a single side
OAKDALE, Minn. (August 3, 2004) — Imation Corp (NYSE: IMN), a worldwide leader in removable data storage media, today introduced its new double layer DVD+R media — the industry's next advancement in DVD technology to meet the increasing storage requirements of consumers for high-capacity applications, such as digital video. The new disc nearly doubles the storage capacity of a DVD recordable disc from 4.7GB to 8.5GB on a single side, without having to turn the disc over during recording.
"Double layer DVDs meet the demand for high capacity media needs of consumer applications such as digital video recording or editing. Double layer Imation DVD+R DL media will enable users to record nearly double the data on one disc," said David Ferraresi, vice president, Imation Optical Products Business. "By expanding our line of optical media with double layer DVD discs, we are able to provide users with the most advanced storage solutions they need to better manage and store their digital information, while maintaining the highest degree of reliability and protection for that content."
321 Studios, the makers of the well known X Copy backup and authoring solutions has shut down its operations.
The company, which was the first to offer software for backing up DVDs, was the target of the movie industry from day one. After fighting, and losing, several lawsuits the company eventually ran out of resources and was forced to cease its operations.
The statement posted on 321 Studios' website states that "Despite 321 Studios’ best efforts to remain in business, injunctions entered against 321 Studios by three US Federal courts earlier this year has resulted in 321 Studios no longer being able to continue operating the business." The company can no longer offer any kind of support what so ever: "Unfortunately, 321 Studios can no longer offer phone, email or live chat support for any of its products."
Also the DVDXCopy website is currently closed.
The DVDXCopy forums hosted by AfterDawn.com are still up and running, and will not be closed. You might also find valuable information in our other discussion forums.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts will be supplying eligible voters with secure DVD players to prevent piracy. The academy have made a deal with Cinea, to distribute its SV300 DVD players. The SV300 can play encrypted discs using a security system called S-View. The system was developed to help movie and TV producers secure their content both at production and post-production stages. Only authorized persons can access the protected content.
...but doesn't rule out Blu-ray either. Sanyo is a major player in the consumer electronics market, but also a significant component supplier. Many high profile brands have relied on Sanyo based technology, such as Plextor and TDK to mention just a few from the CD-R age.
Dutch anti-piracy foundation, Brein, has sent an injunction to 
