News archive (3 / 2005)

The UK games industry is looking very healthy but needs more support from the government according to Screen Digest. More games are being sold overseas than in the UK which obviously is an excellent sign for the economy. This means that in the UK the interactive entertainment industry is financially doing better than the television and film industries. The rising cost of making the games is sending talent overseas from the UK. The games industry employed 7.5% more people than in 2000, but the number of actual developers fell by 6% leaving the gain in mostly publishing, distribution, and retail jobs.

Roger Bennett, director general of Elspa (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) said the financial success was a "marvellous achievement" but the industry needs more government support to remain this healthy. "Our greatest asset is our creativity and in recent times we have seen this talent being leeched away through lack of funding and more attractive prospects overseas," he said. He claims the UK is in danger of losing its position as the source of global blockbuster titles.

The cost of developing the games has already caused many studios to completely shut down. One of the largest and oldest independent games developers in the UK, Argonaut which is responsible for the Harry Potter games, went into administration after a severe cash crisis in October. The global games market is worth some $28bn (£14.5bn). Gamers spent more than £1.34bn in 2004, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas the biggest seller. The UK-developed game managed to sell over 1 million copies in just nine days.

Ok, so you all know Lars Ulrich right? Some of you may know him simply as Metallica's drummer, and some of you might know him as the man who called you a thief when you downloaded a Metallica song from Napster, or both. Whether you like him or not, Lars has done something quite amazing for music by standing up for Beatallica in their dispute with Sony Music. AfterDawn reported that Sony accused Beatallica of violating copyright laws and demanded that the webbmaster pay an unspecified amount of damages.

Lars stepped into the whole mess voluntarily and because of him Beatallica may soon be back online. He asked Metallica's longtime attorney Peter Paterno to try and defuse the situation with Sony on behalf of the band. Sony is now indicating that it may agree to just drop the case, if they even had a proper case in the first place. Ulrich says he believes that cover bands, mash-ups, and the right to re-interpret art on the internet are things worth fighting for.

Lars getting involved is probably known by many of you already but I just found this news article and yes I was shocked. It was a good thing to do for music and perhaps it will show major record labels that their artists don't always agree with the way they handle music. The attack on Beatallica should have never happened in the first place and lets hope that friendly negotiations that are currently in place between Beatallica and Sony go well.

The new Nintendo DS handheld console has set a new record for opening sales of consoles in the UK. In just two days the company sold 87,000 DS consoles in the UK after its launch on Friday. In May 2002, Nintendo also had similar success with its Gamecube console that managed to sell an impressive 69,000 devices in its debut weekend. Below that comes the Xbox which sold 52,000 in its first week, which is still better than 46,000 PS2 consoles sold in its opening sales.

You have to take into account however that the Xbox and PS2 consoles were considerably more expensive than the Nintendo DS console which is selling for just £99. Nintendo are probably also delighted to hear about Sony's announcement that the European launch of the Playstation Portable (PSP) has been delayed by a number of months. It is rumoured that the console will hit Europe by the end of June.

Nintendo seemed to have an aggressive ad campaign for its DS hand-held console, which it claims is aimed more at women than men who would be more likely to go for the look of the Sony PSP. The PSP has some advantages over the DS also, including deals with Movies studios to offer movies for the console in UMD format.

AfterDawn reported that the BBC was investigating the leak of a brand new Doctor Who episode weeks before it is due to be aired. Now Wired has an article that claims the BBC may have leaked the episode themselves in order to increase interest in the new series. It is a method of advertising known as viral advertising. A group called the Broadcast Assassins were brought in last year by the BBC's entertainment group to "discuss the impact of new technologies on viewing/listening behavior," said Asa Bailey, a veteran advertising expert and member of the group.

"We told them all about the how-tos, and how to do viral advertising," said Bailey, who is also founder of the Viral Advertising Association. He said the BBC was very interested to find out how to use Viral advertising to inform the public of its upcoming programming. "I told them they should release things before their time, like what they've done with Doctor Who," he said. "Give out the first episode online, because it's going to be valuable. You've got that cool factor, and it's the whole, 'I've seen it before you have' kind of thing."

Two men who were allegedly members of an Internet piracy group known as DrinkOrDie have been convicted of conspiracy to defraud. Alex Bell, 32, of Grays, Essex, and Steven Dowd, 42, of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside are just two of 60 members of the group that were arrested. They denied that they downloaded pirated software for profit and said that they simply wanted to check the software before purchasing it. They were among eight Britons arrested by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in December 2001.

Det Con Kevin Brownless, one of those who led the inquiry in Britain said it would be wrong to think of the group as a bunch of Robin Hoods. He said a conviction would send a message out to other British software pirates and maybe deter them from their acts. DrinkOrDie is estimated to have released literally billions of dollars worth of pirated software on the Internet, free for people to download.

"Software which ends up on the shelves of shops like PC World represents years of work to produce that product. Huge amounts of money are spent on research and development and the only way that can be reimbursed is by people paying for software in the appropriate way and not downloading it for nothing. People have got to realise that the people who create computer software are entitled to the protection of the law and those who break the law will be dealt with by the courts." Det Con Kevin Brownless said.

Alexander Hanff got a bit of a nasty shock last Saturday morning when he opened his front door only to be served with a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros. The movie studios claim that he ran a BitTorrent hub where he made it possible for P2P users to download and share copyrighted movies with each other. In case you've been away for about the past four months, you probably are familiar with action taken by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) against several BitTorrent sites.

However, this situation is a little different. For example, he was served with a lawsuit by major Hollywood studios at his home in England on a Saturday morning. He also never administered the site, just paid for it. A group of online friends ran the site, and he has never even met one of them in person. Also, he has no plans in backing down and taking a beating from the studios, he plans to fight this battle.

"I am certainly not going to settle for anything that will compromise my integrity or the integrity of our members," Hanff said. "They can bankrupt me. I don't own a house, so they can't take it. I own a few guitars that they can have and an old inkjet printer. It's a waste of their time and of my time." He believes that BitTorrent hubs should be treated the same as P2P networks, which are generally considered legal. On a BitTorrent hub, there are no pirated files, only .torrent files which can be used along with a BitTorrent client to locate other BT users who can share the files with you.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is once again attempting to warn British P2P users off sharing copyrighted music online. This time the BPI has made a controversial comparison; they compared the fight against illegal file sharing to battling drunk driving. Last week, they also won a court ruling that is going to force six ISPs to hand over the identities of 31 subscribers that the BPI alleges to have shared copyrighted music on P2P networks illegally.

One BPI spokesman said this action will be part of a long-term process to attempt to deter people from illegal file sharing. "In terms of behavioral change, the U.K. government has broadcast the dangers of drunk driving, but people still drunk drive," said the BPI spokesman. The ISPs have less than two weeks to hand over the information to the BPI who will probably use it to sue the individuals. Usually these cases are settled out of court and it’s likely the users will hand over about £2000 each.

The BPI are relying on the publicity of their action to deter people from uploading music on P2P networks but do admit that it's a tough battle to win and it could take a very long time to see results. "We're reluctant to say, 'OK, the job's done. Let's spend money on making records,'" the BPI spokesman said. "I suspect that the problem won't go away just because we've launched two rounds of litigation." However comparing file sharing, which hurts nobody except maybe a major label executives bank account and drunk driving which leads to the death of many people annually is a bit careless of the BPI.

Many people were disappointed when Motorola failed to display any of their upcoming iTunes phones at CeBIT in Germany. Speculation that spread suggested that the reason the phone has not been publicised at all yet was over disagreements with mobile phone carriers but Ron Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile phone division downplayed such rumours. "I've got lots of carriers fighting to be the first one we go with," he said. In fact the reason that nobody got a look at iTunes phones is more of Steve Jobs fault, Motorola believes.

"The first thing you're seeing here is a merger of two different industries with different ideas of launching products." he said. "Steve's perspective is that you launch a product on Sunday and sell it on Monday." he added. Motorola generally like to show upcoming products very early, but as we all already know, Steve Jobs isn't too keen on the idea. Garriques said Motorola is on schedule to deliver two phones that can play music downloaded from the iTunes service this year.

The possibility of storing digital audio on a mobile phone the same way you store it on an iPod or any other digital audio player has enormous potential, as now in a lot of places in the world, everybody seems to have a mobile phone and the trend of always having the best and newest mobile phones hasn't died just yet.

In an absolutely amazing decision, Apple has won the rights to the iTunes.co.uk domain, despite the fact that its owner Benjamin Cohen registered it years before Apple ever had the iTunes music service. AfterDawn reported that Apple had accused Cohen of cyber squatting, even though he registered the domain on 7th November 2000 whereas Apple were only had the trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6th December 2000. Benjamin Cohen is the chief executive of CyberBritain Holdings.

In October 2004, Cohen attempted to sell the domain to Napster but the offer was refused. Apple offered him $5,000 which he rejected and asked for $50,000. Domain Registrar Nominet has ruled that the name registration was abusive and that Apple had the rights to the brand. Of course, Cohen has said that he is determined to appeal the decision. During the case it is also reported that some unusual claims were made about Apple.

"The Respondent expressly said that the Expert appointed by Nominet should not be an Apple Mac user, because in the view of the Respondent there is a 'cult' associated with the products of the Complainant, which attract fanatical users," said Claire Milne, Nominet's independent expert adjudicating the case. In my opinion (and I'm sure a lot of yours) this decision was very unfair and I'm very interested in seeing what will be the outcome of an appeal.

The market for MP3 players may quadruple by 2009 according to iSuppli. They believe that the amazing growth is fuelled by the amount of new HDD-based MP3 players that have appeared following the overwhelming success of Apple's iPod device. There were 36.8 million total MP3 player shipments in 2004 and iSuppli expects this to rise to 132 million units in 2009 which is at a compound annual growth rate of 29.1% from 2004. This years growth is expected to slow compared to that in 2004 however.

Unit shipments of MP3s will rise to 57.7m in 2005, up 57% from 36.8m in 2004 according to iSuppli. Apple demonstrated the dominance of HDD-based players over Flash-based players as they can hold much more data. Apple's iPods can hold thousands of songs, hours and hours worth of playback. Of course this expected growth is good for Apple, but it is likely we will see more tech companies working to beat the iPod and take a bigger chunk out of the market.

Sony has already challenged the success of the iPod but only so far with flash memory based players that it hopes will dethrone the iPod Shuffle. The new Sony devices have one major advantage over the iPod Shuffle; they have a display, which the iPod shuffle does not. Sony also has said it will release a device later this year it is confident can knock the iPod off the top spot.

Pretty soon, everyone will be able to build collections of music videos due to deals including CinemaNow and MediaPass Network. CinemaNow has come to agreements with the Warner Music Group, Epitaph Records and TVT Records to sell their music videos. This is the first time music videos will be made specifically for Microsoft's Windows Mobile-based devices (Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs, Smartphones etc..). WatchMusicHere.com is set to launch today with 75 music videos.

However, by December the company hopes to add another 1,500 music videos to its list, both new and old videos. Initially the service will offer some videos like Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". The music videos are expected to be offered for prices between $1.99 and $2.99. "We are thrilled to be working with the record labels as they explore this promising new revenue stream," CinemaNow president Bruce Eisen said. "We are equally as thrilled to be working with Microsoft's Windows Mobile division to continue to provide valuable content for their innovative product lines."

"This is the first time music fans can purchase videos the same way they do a music track," said Frank Barbieri, Microsoft's group product manager, Windows Mobile Media. "It's yours to own, so you can move it anywhere that supports Microsoft's Plays for Sure." Mediapass has a different way of offering however. It will allow you to watch music videos freely on the site but if you download them you will have to pay for them.

Sony has confirmed that the European release date of the Playstation Portable hand-held console will be delayed again in Europe. Sony did not give any date for when the console will be available but has said it will be a matter of months not a matter of weeks. Online retailer Amazon.co.uk lists the release date for the console as June 24th whereas HMV lists it as June 6th. Sony said the reason for the delay is to meet the anticipated demand for the console in the U.S.

Sony wants to ensure that 1,000,000 PSP devices are available on the U.S. market when the console is released and also to have a continuity of supply thereafter. So basically it all came down to Sony's lack of ability to make enough consoles for each market by its original set date which was a March release. The console release then slipped to April and now it looks like European gamers will have to wait until June at least.

Nintendo has released its hand-held console, which is good news for the company as its release is now not as much in competition with the Sony PSP release as it was. This may be why Sony decided to announce the delay and give their reasons, to prevent gamers from being fed up of waiting and purchasing a different console instead.

A French Appeals court has ruled in favour of a person who downloaded about 500 copies of movies off the Internet. This ruling was reached because the movies were seen as private copies which were not re-distributed and also this person had paid a tax on blank DVD media that would be shared with the entertainment industry. The source article is in French so using a rough translator its hard to find further details but from what I can see, nothing was said about how he actually downloaded the movies.

If he downloaded them through P2P then it would more than likely that the movies were re-distributed, or parts of the movies, which would be illegal. Also not much was said about the type of downloads they were, whether they were copied from theatres before official release date, or DVDRip copies. Nevertheless, it’s a good decision for a court to come to when you consider he had already paid extra tax on the blank media.

Obviously it would be more profitable for the entertainment industry to receive full price for someone acquiring a movie, which is why they are trying to close down all the resources online that allow people to share movies and other copyrighted material with each other. However, while doing this, they still also try to get blank media and portable music player's taxed to get even more money, just in case you decided to copy something copyrighted onto them.

Several Dutch ISPs have agreed to cooperate in a crackdown on illegal filesharing in the country. They said they will send written warnings to any customer suspected of trading copyrighted material online illegally. They will forward letters from the Brain Institute, which represents the entertainment industry in the Netherlands, letting the customer know that what he/she is doing is illegal and the possible consequences of such activity.

However, the ISPs did refuse to hand any names of personal information of the customers over to Brain. "This is a service, a warning to clients that they are doing things that are against the law," said Maaike Scholten, spokeswoman for providers HetNet and Planet Internet. They see this as an opportunity to dampen illegal sharing so their customers don't end up getting sued.

The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in December 2003 that programs used to swap files was legal but of course did not rule out any action that could be taken against those who use the programs to trade files illegally. In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America has sued thousands of file-sharers for illegally sharing their copyrighted music. The same thing could eventually happen in the Netherlands if the Brain Institute decided to go after the sharers.

Apple representatives at CeBIT Friday were forced to ask Taiwanese company LuxPro to remove a digital music player from its display case. The "Super Shuffle" digital audio player looks almost identical to Apple's iPod Shuffle at first glance. The main differences between the two devices are the Super Shuffle does not support Apple's AAC format and also has its own FM tuner, which the iPod Shuffle doesn't. The player does support Windows Media Audio with Digital Rights Management.

Apple representatives would not comment on what action the company will decide to take, as this does appear to be a case of copyright infringements on its design work. As we all know, Apple has been quick to launch lawsuits in the past against companies it accused of stealing it's design ideas and also has won. Some press reports indicate Apple is weighing it's legal options in this case.

The Super Shuffle was removed from display on Friday after complaints by Apple's lawyers but apparently it was back on full display by the next day. German technology site Heise Online described a discussion between an Apple product manager and the company representatives that did not end with any mutual agreement. Apparently, even the advertising done for the product looked a lot like those used by Apple.

Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP was raided on March 10th by Swedish authorities; an action that has been praised by Hollywood who say its at a major blow against movie piracy. However, questions are now arising about the legality of the raid as data involving thousands of users was seized. This may violate Swedish data privacy laws. Four servers were seized, containing 23TB of data. On these servers were approximately 1,800 movies, 5,000 software files and 450,000 audio files.

The Motion Picture Association of America was delighted with the raids. A spokesman said Bahnhof was a "haven for high-level internet piracy for years" and home of "some of the biggest and fastest servers in Europe". Bahnhof has been quick to defend itself from such accusations saying it does not condone in piracy and suspended two staffers, suspected of hosting vast quantities on warez on its systems without management permission.

Bahnof released a statement expressing their concerns about the data seizures which could have involved data from as many as 20,000 users. The raid against Bahnhof is not the first anti-piracy bust in the country but it's reportedly the first to take place without any advance notice.

Companies are very busy preparing the next generation of optical recording, even though the current DVD recordable techonoly isn't too mature yet. It seems that the developement eace is boosted by the fact that there are two competing camps, Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and neither of them wants to finish second. Sonic is a major player in the software, especially OEM bundled software, market and has demonstrated Blu-ray recording with Philips & BenQ.

Sonic Solutions®, the leader in digital media software, and Philips & BenQ Digital Storage Corporation (PBDS), a leading Blu-ray (BD) technology company, today debuted Blu-ray Disc recording/playback solutions that will allow consumers to burn and play back discs in the new high-capacity BD digital media format. In a joint demonstration with PBDS, Sonic unveiled its AuthorScript Blu-ray Data Recording Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Blu-ray support in its popular Roxio- and Sonic-branded RecordNow and CinePlayer HD consumer software applications. Deployed on almost 200 million PCs, Sonic’s AuthorScript is the core burning engine that underlies all of Sonic’s professional and consumer software applications; it is also the leading CD and DVD burning SDK used by software developers such as Adobe, AOL, Microsoft, Sony and many others. With the AuthorScript Blu-ray SDK, Sonic makes it easy for software developers to add support for recording BD discs into their applications.

In the on-going battle between HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray formats, the next big name to choose a side is Apple. The company announced at CeBIT in Germany that it has decided to pledge its support to Blu-Ray technology, probably because of its higher capacity than HD-DVD. As well as simply being a supporter of Blu-Ray, Apple will become a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will hold a seat on the group's board.

"Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple's leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVDs." Blu-Ray has growing support from tech companies and movie studios. Some of its biggest supporters are Samsung, Dell, Sony, Panasonic, Phillips, Mitsubishi, Disney and Twentieth Century Fox.

Apple are set to release QuickTime 7 in summer, which promises to have much better support for HD Video. Developed by Sony, Blu-Ray has a nice capacity of up to 50GB. However HD-DVD has got some advantages over Blu-Ray that its supporters like to boast about including backwards compatibility and its capability of data storage, when Blu-Ray is made primarily for Video.

In Australia, anti-piracy operatives have raided an ISP suspected of using BitTorrent technology to allow the pirating of hundreds of thousands of songs and video clips. MIPI investigators used an "Anton Piller" search warrant to search the premises of Swiftel Communications in Perth and seized digital evidence relating to Internet transactions of illegal songs and video clips. MIPI General Manager Michael Speck declared the operation "a new and important development in our fight against internet music piracy"

MIPI alleges that Swiftel used BitTorrent "to link infringers to music clips and sound recordings" and also believes that hundreds of thousands of downloads have been conducted within the past year. "The record industry will continue to take legal action to protect its copyright whether it's on the internet or elsewhere. We will continue to act against ISPs who we believe are set up as vehicles for piracy." Speck said.

The Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) has an on-going court battle with Sharman Networks, owners of Kazaa in Australia. The ARIA alleges that Sharman operate the worlds largest music piracy service and make no effort to filter the trading of copyrighted material, which the ARIA believes is possible to implement into the network. That trial is set to conclude later on this month.

Don't worry - the wicked emperor will not make a barbecue of your cellphone. It's CeBIT time and Nero related press releases keep flying in.

Nero is expanding their multimedia product line to new areas, as they announce plans to release the Nero ShowTime mobile multimedia player. The new video playback software about to be released on the Symbian, Windows CE, and Windows Mobile devices.

So Nero is supplying, but is there demand? At least in the Nokia camp, the RealPlayer is a standard feature in Symbian models. It comes with MP4 and 3GPP support built in. Also, there are 3rd party video players for .AVI/Divx and MP4 already on the market. So the question is, what market segment Nero wishes to conquer with this release? My personal guess is that seamless transportation and converting of content in between a PC and a cell phone plays an essential role - if Nero can make this process more straight forward and user friendly, they have a chance of finding some room on the market. Of course, their target may as well be striking deals with mobile device vendors, rather than the consumers.

Nero ShowTime Mobile will bring the full Nero Digital™ media experience to a wide range of existing and upcoming personal devices. With a unique design, Nero ShowTime Mobile will provide a single, intuitive look on all the supported platforms regardless of the Operating System. Users will no longer need to search for and adapt to a new player or re-encode their multimedia collections every time they upgrade their cellular phone or PDA.

Nero send us an announcement regarding a new LightScribe enabled Philips DVDRW16LSK 16x DualLayer enabled recorder. Not surprisingly, the Philips drive comes with the Nero Burning ROM, which was the first recording software suite to support LightScribe disc labeling.

Nero, leaders in digital media technology and Philips, one of the world’s largest manufactures of consumer electronics, announced today that they have partnered with LightScribe to bring the Direct Disc Labeling technology to consumers. With this implementation, Nero, Philips and LightScribe allow the user to take control of the entire digital media creation process from start to finish.

Philips’ new DVDRW16LSK, a 16X dual layer, dual format DVDRW drive, supports LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling, which is a new technology that offers consumers and businesses a simple, no-hassle way to burn professional silkscreen-quality labels on their CDs and DVDs.

“Nero and Philips together provide the perfect vehicle to bring LightScribe to consumers,” said Jim Corbett, Executive Director of Nero AG. “Nero’s family of award-winning digital media products and Philips’ new 16X DL burner with LightScribe’s Direct Disc Labeling, gives the user artistic license to design disc labels any way they like.”

After data is recorded to a disc, users can then turn the disc over, reinsert it into the drive and burn a precise, iridescent label with their desired text and graphics using the same laser that burns the data – no printer, permanent marker or adhesive labelling is required.

Source: Nero

Sony has unveiled a line up of cheap flash-memory based walkman digital audio devices in another attempt by the company to knock Apple Computers off the top of the digital player market. Apple has seen much success from its iPod models. The new Sony devices will sell for as cheap as less than €100 ($132.2) and support the MP3 format. Sony's products have a reputation for being over-priced so the company hopes the lower prices will address the issue.

"Until now, the complaint was that Sony products sold at a major premium," said Gregory Kukolj, general manager of the personal audio group in Europe. Twenty-six years ago, Sony introduced the WalkMan device to the world and dominated the market for two decades. However, as music turns digital, Apple's iPod has stolen the lead from Sony and increasing competition from other manufacturers has made it harder for Sony also.

You can now get Sony devices that store 256MB, 512MB or 1GB of music. Apple's iPod shuffle sells for €99 but does not have a display like the new Sony devices. The 1GB Sony model will sell for about €240. "The digital player market is still in its early stages. In the European Union alone the personal audio market is 20 to 22 million devices a year. More than 10 million of those are CD portable players; there is a huge opportunity," Kukolj said.

A new virus capable of attacking cell phones has emerged, and experts are warning that this type of virus could become more prevalent over time. This virus is the first virus that is capable of spreading using simple multimedia messages as well as Bluetooth. There have been no reports of attacks by the virus just yet according to Symantec Corp. Past viruses that targeted mobile phones spread through Bluetooth enabled devices, so their potential to spread was not very high.

"It's the first case of this nature," Ero Carrera, an anti-virus researcher at F-Secure, said in an interview Tuesday. "It would be equivalent to e-mail in computers. If it were to start going around, it actually has the potential of becoming really widespread." It could affect cell phones that run on Symbian Series 60 operating software. It sends messages to other mobile phone numbers and email addresses found in the users contact list.

The virus tempts recipients to download attachments that have messages like Happy Birthday. The biggest problem for someone with an infected phone is that they are charged for the messages the virus sends and also their battery is drained quickly. "We certainly are seeing a growing trend and an increasing number of threats targeting mobile devices and cell phones in particular," Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager with Symantec's security response team said. "At this point, we really consider these types of threats to be in their infancy."

Following an investigation by the FBI into the Internet's underground warez scene, three members of a global computer piracy ring have pleaded guilty to distributing millions of dollars worth of games, software and movies all over the world over the Internet. The men pleaded guilty in U.S. District court to federal copyright charges, becoming the first people convicted in what the U.S. Justice Department said was the largest-ever investigation into software piracy.

"It's a competition of different groups racing to release pirated software over the Internet," said Seth Kleinberg, a 26-year-old Los Angeles man who, with a high-school education and a home computer, cracked the computer industry's toughest copyright protections. He faces five to six years in prison when he is sentenced in July. Jeffrey Lerman, 20, a University of Maryland student from Long Island, and Albert Bryndza, 32 of New York also pleaded guilty.

The investigation, dubbed "Operation Higher Education" spanned across the United States and about a dozen foreign countries, prosecutors said. The FBI has recently built a brand new state-of-the-art computer crimes facility to deal with Internet based issues like Software piracy.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is being asked to investigate web sites that claim to offer legal music downloads for very low prices but in fact only offer downloads usually of freeware software available on the Internet which are often used to download music illegally. Such Web sites typically charge $30 to $40 and prominently advertise services as "100 percent legal." Some of these sites then have small print that warn users about Copyright Infringement and link to resources to find out more.

A Washington-based civil liberties group, the Center for Democracy and Technology, said it planned to file a formal complaint early Tuesday with the trade commission charging such Web sites with deceptive trade practices. "They're fooling people into spending money to buy products that are competing with legitimate products," said Alan Davidson, an associate director for the group. "These are the people who are really polluting the marketplace."

Lawyers for www.mp3downloadhq.com said that, "the company genuinely regrets that anything it has done or failed to do has been interpreted, as potentially confusing or misleading", and promised to remove the "100 percent legal" claims from its website before Friday. Www.Mp3DownloadCity.com and www.MyMusicInc.com are both targeted in the Center for Democracy's FTC complaint but neither site would comment.

The BCC is investigating how a brand new episode of Doctor Who has appeard on the Internet to download three weeks before the shows official air date. TV episodes leaks are not that rare anymore on the Internet, but three weeks before an initial airing is quite a long time. This is the first episode of Doctor Who to be made since the show was cancelled in 1989. A show spokesperson said the leak was a "significant breach of copyright".

"We would urge viewers not to spoil their enjoyment and to wait for the finished version, which airs at the end of the month," a statement said, indicating that the episode might not have been fully complete yet at all. A 45-minute episode called Rose appeared on the internet on Monday. Rose is the name of the Doctor's assistant, played by pop singer Billie Piper. "The source of it appears to be connected to our co-production partner," the BBC statement said.

Their co-production partner is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). A CBC spokesperson said: "We are looking into it. That's all I can say at this point because we don't know exactly what happened. It certainly wasn't done intentionally." This new episode is highly anticipated by fans who have been waiting for a new series ever since the show was first cancelled. In 2003, it was voted the show people would most like to see back on TV.

Laura Tunberg, a movie-studio attorney was browsing through eBay back in 2001 when a particular item caught her eye above all the rest. It was a James Bond DVD box set but the only problem was that her employer, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. was not selling any James Bond box sets. Randall Hobson Guthrie III was selling a box set however, from his home in Shanghai. Tunberg ordered the box set from the seller to see if it was actually real.

When it came, she was shocked. The box set had a proper MGM logo on it as well as an official looking hologram. "All our stolen artwork was on the front," recalled a surprised Tunberg. When the assistant e-mailed Guthrie asking how many James Bond collections he could provide, the reply came quickly. "I can sell you as many as you want," Guthrie wrote.

This simple little eBay transaction resulted in a three year investigation that included Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a special unit of U.S. Customs and Chinese police. It was the very first time that U.S. agents worked together with Chinese agents to close down a counterfeiting network. A raid on Guthrie's apartment turned up 210,000 pirated DVD movies made by Chinese DVD replicators, including some copies that were illegally recorded in a movie theatre. (See CAM and Telesync).

The fact that Bram Cohen decided to make BitTorrent open source may be the biggest reason why the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) has not gone after it. If you read headlines all over the Internet you see that the MPAA launched a pretty heavy assault on some of the biggest BitTorrent sites like LokiTorrent but don't be confused, BitTorrent as a technology or Bram Cohen its author has not come to any harm legally. Also BitTorrent is often viewed as its own P2P network, which it is not.

BitTorrent relies on tracker sites for torrent files (and this is where BitTorrent comes into contact with centralized distribution) but without these sites, BitTorrent would be pretty much useless. While centralised distribution is not a problem for legitimate companies who are using BitTorrent to distribute files, it would be a severe problem for any site that offers torrents for pirated files.

Look at the Napster case. Napster had a big central server that assisted in all the trading on the network. For this reason it was an easy target for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to attack. Centralised distribution pretty much killed Napster. But then networks that work differently appeared like FastTrack (which Kazaa uses). The network is setup so that the users on the network make the sharing happen, not any major central server (known as decentralised distribution).

According to BBX, the IFPI's (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) legal actions against the Russian web site AllofMP3.com have failed. The current copyright law of Russia does not currently involve digitally distributed media at all, so therefore AllofMP3.com didn't actually break a law. According to the source, the IFPI is not giving up yet.

"We have received no confirmation of any decision and we do not expect it for some time," a spokeswoman for the IFPI said.

"However if it is true that the prosecutor has not taken the case this would be very disappointing considering the blatant and large-scale infringement that continues to take place.

"If these reports are confirmed we will take the case further."

Source: BBC

A list of 12 movies to be released on the UMD format has been released by the film studio Lions Gate entertainment. The list includes recent blockbusters like Spider-man 2, but also some old school classics like Rambo: First Blood.

The Punisher and House of the Dead along with older titles such as Total Recall and Rambo: First Blood, will be in the UMD format, with disks costing between $20 (£10.40) to $30 (£15.60) for new titles and $10 (£5.20) to $20 for older films.

The capacity of an UMD disc is about 1.8GB, being only a portion of the capacity of a dual layer DVD. This means that very efficient compression must be applied for the video. On the limited size screen of the PSP this is hardly a problem, but it seems like the UMD copy of the movie will not be of archival quality.

Source: BBC.co.uk

Sharman Networks have had their assets frozen pending the outcome in a lawsuit brought against them by the music industry. This includes the personal assets of Sharman's directors including their homes. The assets of Altnet, which licenses technology to Kazaa, have also been affected. This comes just days after Altnet said it would setup a system that would give a cut of Kazaa’s advertising revenue to independent record labels. Alnet's president Lee Jaffe says this is just an attempt by the major labels to cut revenue stream going to their smaller rivals.

"They're just trying to freeze any money going to independents," Jaffe said. "We made an announcement that we had convinced Sharman to share its advertising revenue with all the labels that we've signed deals with ... and I think that really freaked them out." Managing director of Australia's Music Industry Piracy Investigations, Michael Speck claims the action has more to do with preserving the assets of the respondents in the Kazaa case. "What freaked us out is finding out they'd sold their homes," Speck said.

"Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming recently sold her house to Sharman's accountant only 12 months after she bought it", Speck said. If the lawsuit goes in favour of the music industry, then those frozen assets may be awarded to the major record labels as damages. However, Jaffe insists that this move is only another attempt by the major record labels to protect the music industry's monopoly of the marketing and distribution of music. "It's frustrating that four record labels would want to prevent dozens of other record companies from getting paid," Jaffe said. "That, to me, doesn't make sense. That's upsetting."

According to Stuff Magazine, Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP) is the top gadget in the UK for 2005. The PSP pushed Apple's iPod music player into second place on the list. The "Top Ten Essentials list" predicts what gadgets will be the most wanted for a particular year. Owning all 10 gadgets will cost you £7,455. Sharp's 902 3G mobile phone, the Pentax Optio SV digital camera and Samsung's Yepp YH-999 video jukebox were also in the top list, showing the dominance of portable gadgets.

"What this year's Essentials shows is that gadgets are now cheaper, sexier and more indispensable than ever. We've got to the point where we can't live our lives without certain technology," said Adam Vaughan, editor of Stuff Essentials. "Take digital cameras, who would now pay to develop an entire film of photos? Or legitimate downloads, who would travel miles to a record shop when they could download the song in minutes for 70p?"

These devices will remain on top for this year but next year we will see a whole host of new technologies that will gain our most attention. Predictions for the list in 2006 are High Definition TV (HDTV), Xbox 2 and mobile phones with better MP3 capabilities.

Lawmakers across the United States continue to propose legislation they claim will safeguard kids from the effects of video game violence. Most violent video games in the United States are rated M (meaning Mature) by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. For example, Senator Shawn Womack authored a bill that would require all stores that rent or sell video games, to display games with a rating of M at least five feet away from the floor. A vendor who violated the law could be fined up to $500.

Washington State representatives Mary Lou Dickerson, Jim McCune and Jim McDermott have authored a bill that would hold game companies accountable when a minor commits a violent act that may have been inspired by a game they played. "These games choreograph violence in a stylized and romanticized way that encourages children and adolescents to associate violence and killing with pleasure, entertainment, feelings of achievement and personal empowerment," the bill states.

An Alabama family recently filed suit against Take Two Interactive over its Grand Theft Auto games after a young man killed three police officers. All games are created with one of their major aims being to get an emotional response from the player. What I would like to know is how can you blame that emotional response you got from a video game after you murdered three police officers? It's not fair to blame gaming companies for your own actions. In fact, this just gives people (mostly offending minors) a way out by simply blaming a video game at home for their actions.

Lions Gate Entertainment plans to release movies in the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format for the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). This moves makes Lions Gate the first outside film studio to support the UMD format. Initial releases for the PSP will include recent thrillers such as "House of the Dead" and "Saw" and older action films such as "Total Recall" and "Step Into Liquid".

"Lions Gate has embraced each new viable technological advancement in the home entertainment arena as it has appeared on the horizon," Lions Gate President Steve Beeks said in a statement. "The PSP is truly an incredible machine that will quickly become a popular format with which to enjoy filmed entertainment...From the time it was initially announced, we were preparing for ways we could mileage our extensive library to deliver content for the platform."

Sony see their new PSP device as a potential breakthrough for digital media. The device also has 3D graphics and built in wireless networking. While the device is being marketed mostly for its gaming capabilities, movies have now also become a major factor in the potential success for the PSP.

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia has said it has dropped plans to develop mobile phones with fuel cells at least for a few years. The company has said the sector is not yet mature. Nokia's Matti Naskali said the firm had not abandoned the technology, saying: "Fuel-cell technology is promising and Nokia continues to follow it closely." A fuel cell is refilled like a lighter, instead of re-charged and would deliver more standby time increased power for resource hogging applications such as video.

Tero Ojanpera, head of Nokia's research centre, demonstrated a Nokia mobile phone running on methanol in 2004. The fuel cell combined the methanol with air to produce power. The prediction then was that it would take only about two years to see fuel cells in mobile phones. Although now several issues with the technology has dented the firms hopes. Methanol is in fact flammable so current air transportation rules prohibit its carrying on an aircraft without special packaging.

Motorola, Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC and Hitachi are also researching fuel cells for mobile phones and some portable computers. Most people would laugh at this idea before thinking about the possible benefits of it. Imagine a Nokia phone with a battery and fuel cell. You can recharge the battery at home but what if you are somewhere where you can't recharge? Simply "re-fill" your phone and you are back up to full power again.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is delighted with the results it has gotten from its first wave of lawsuits which initially was launched against 23 P2P users it alleges have illegally distributed pirated music files over P2P networks. The 23 have paid about £50,000 out of court in settlements with the BPI, averaging around £2,200 each, with one person paying £4,500. Fifteen of the 23 used the Kazaa P2P network, four used Imesh, two used Grokster, one used WinMx and one was on BearShare.

From the first wave, 17 men and six women aged between 22 and 58 have signed High Court undertakings admitting they illegally shared files and promising not to do it again, the BPI said. "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from.", said Geoff Taylor, BPI general counsel. "These settlements show we can and we will enforce the law," the BPI said.

The BPI has admitted that many of their targeted "pirates" are most likely in fact children and some of the adults settling were settling on behalf of their children. "Some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to," the organisation said. The payments made to the BPI will go back to the copyright holders (typically major labels). The BPI claims also that the lawsuits are not about the compensation, just about the deterrent, adding that they believe illegal trading on the Kazaa (FastTrack) network has fallen by 45% due to the global crackdown.

Napster creator Shawn Fanning's Snocap tracking system has nabbed yet another major deal, this time with Sony BMG. Snocap is a copyright management and filtering system that can allow P2P users swap songs legitimately over P2P networks. Fanning's Napster was shut down year ago after US judges said it was breaking copyright laws; the service was later re-launched as a legit online music download service. Snocap has already nabbed a deal with Universal and is in talks with EMI.

Snocap tracks the trading of legitimate songs, which in turn allows the labels to charge for the music. "The internet will become a much richer resource for music fans everywhere," said Shawn Fanning, commenting on the deal. "This is an important step toward the growth of a digital marketplace where consumers can discover, share and purchase music from massively deep, almost infinite catalogues."

Snocap is exactly what the major record labels were seeking; a way to turn P2P networks into very profitable tools for distributing music at low costs. Current legal music stores online require a lot of bandwidth to sell music downloads to customers while P2P has some advantages. One advantage with most P2P networks is they are generally more reliable. Imagine if the iTunes servers all went down for a few hours, that's thousands of songs that won't be sold and when the servers went down, imagine how many users ended up with incomplete downloads?

The 15th annual Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, is an independent film festival with a digital twist. There is an impressive line-up of nearly 200 films, most of which are available to download via the festival's website. DVD quality downloads are available for viewing online powered by a video-sharing system from Kontiki. It has many similarities to BitTorrent; files are shared in chunks (swarming) amongst peers.

The files are in Windows Media Video format, and are copy protected, which kind of leaves Mac users out of the fun. Halfdan Hussey, the festival's executive director and co-founder, said the Kontiki-powered system will be available to Mac users by next year. "The internet will be a staging device for direct delivery of indie movies to a user's desktop or home entertainment center," Hussey said. "My prediction is it will bring new revenue to independent filmmakers and distributors outside of the realm of Hollywood within the next two to four years."

Source:
Wired

Apple's iTunes Music store has reached yet another milestone and displayed its early dominance of the digital music download market by announcing it has now sold over 300 million songs. It was only back in January that Apple had announced it sold 250 million songs, indicating that download purchasing is increasing, at least at the iTunes music store. iTunes has approximately 65% of the entire digital music download market.

However, it's not easy to get an accurate indication of just how successful the store is with Apple withholding information on the total number of people who purchased from the store, and how many of those people purchase regularly from the store and other figures. Nevertheless, the figures still show that, judging by sales, the store is still the most successful available for internet users.

However, it's not all success for Apple. iTunes is currently under investigation for its pricing of downloads in the UK which are in fact more expensive than all the other European stores. Apple also has received criticism for not allowing users in an EU state download from an iTunes music store in another EU state.

Software Giant Microsoft has stepped up its battle against piracy of its products internationally, this time targeting Chinese Consumers. The company has said that some users of pirated copies of the Windows XP Operating System can get a big discount on a legitimate copy of the software by handing over some information to them. Users of pirated XP Home Edition could get a legit copy for 786 Yuan ($95) and users of the XP Pro Edition could get a legit copy for 1,270 Yuan ($153).

To claim this discount, Chinese pirated XP users simply have to fill out a form explaining how they came into possession of a pirated copy of the operating system. Microsoft is mostly interested to hear from consumers who bought PCs which had the operating system pre-installed. I would find it highly unlikely that any user who downloaded a pirated copy knowingly will be sent a discount.

In the UK, Microsoft made a similar offer, except they were offering free copies of Windows XP to users of pirated copies. However, if you look at the two countries, China blows the UK away in piracy rates so it would cost Microsoft a lot of money to give away free copies to Chinese users. Chinese users have to go through a mandatory test on the Microsoft download site that determines if their OS is legit before it allows them to download any updates. This test will be put in place for all users globally this year.

Milwaukee-based Beatallica has become a new victim of Sony. Beatallica has been ordered by Sony to shut it's website down and pay up an unspecified amount of damages. Beatallica has attracted much attention online with its compositions such as "Leper Madonna" and "Got to Get You Trapped Under Ice". The band says it is not ripping off Beatles songs, just simply parodying them in a loving tribute that is protected by copyright laws.

Sony dont seem too convinced however. "Such uses of Sony/ATV compositions without the express authorization or license has caused and continues to cause substantial and irreparable injury, and is in direct violation of Sony/ATV's rights.", Sony told the band in a letter. The band's "Webmaster of Puppets", David Dixon said, "I think they're being very short-sighted. The amount of income that we generate from this is minuscule. None of us are quitting our day jobs."

An Online Petition has emerged where enraged fans can show their support for the band by simply signing their name in opposition to this action. At time of writing, it has collected 6900 signatures. If you believe that the action taken by Sony is unfair, then go and sign the petition to show your support.

Up until now, we have seen copy protected music CDs and Digital Rights Management attempt to stop unauthorized copying of music files (or CD ripping). Now two New Yorkers, Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic, have come up with a new method that may seem like more of an annoyance than a copy protection. Their invention could make it possible for you to hear a disturbance on a pirated file when played back.

Details of the this method are scarce so far, but to give an example of what you might get, imagine just simply using an Audio Ripper to rip from a CD or something to MP3. Now imagine playing back that MP3 and hearing the artist give out to you for ripping the music to MP3. That would be a pretty weird experience wouldn't it? But this new invention could maybe make that a possibility.

With help from the US Air Force Research Laboratory, the inventors found they could bury around 20kb of speech data in a song without affecting how it sounds. Their technique exploits the fact that the tones of a musical instrument are made up of a complex pattern of randomly phased harmonics. These phase shifts are so small they are imperceptible to the ear. But a software decoder, which could be built into MP3 players or file-sharing applications, detects the phase shifts and turns them into speech.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is known to be one of the most violent games on the market currently. What makes San Andreas stand out is that it's made to be very life-like, unlike other violent games that may have you battling Aliens on some distant planet or something. It's because of this sort-of realistic look that GTA: SA has fallen victim to criticism. Now the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has decided to impose restrictions on when the TV adverts for the game are broadcasted in the UK.

From now on you will only see adverts for this game on UK TV after 9PM as the Advertising Standards Authority believes that advertisements for such a product that is designed for Adult use should not be seen by children due to the nature of the game. The ASA also said it understands any parents concerns with the advertisements for this game around any form of daytime programming.

"We could understand the parents concerns that it was inappropriate for young children to see this level of violence in advertising for a product which was only available to adults." a spokesman for the ASA said. "The advertising was shown in breaks around programmes which, although not designed specifically for children, were considered to be acceptable family viewing."

Intel has joined the growing support for P2P technology just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the MGM vs. Grokster case. Some of the most influential computer scientists and intellectual property experts have also voiced their opinions on the case, in support for P2P technology to be allowed to prosper and not stopped because some Internet users use it for copyright infringement. Lower court decisions found StreamCast was not liable for any copyright infringing performed by users of Grokster.

The reason why P2P companies believe they are entitled to this protection is because 20 years ago, Hollywood and technology clashed over the Video Cassette Recorder. Sony Corp. vs. Universal City Studios came to the conclusion that Sony could not be held responsible for any pirating done with its hardware because it had many legitimate purposes. So this time around Hollywood want the Supreme Court not to rule on the significant "non-infringing" purposes, but on what it claims is the software’s main purpose.

Hollywood studios claim that P2P companies rely on mass copyright infringement to stay in business. P2P software usually comes with some form of advertising, which generates revenue for the P2P Company. Intel, whose own growth mirrors the rise of the digital age, told the court the entertainment industry is seeking to rewrite the rules that are the building blocks of the information economy. "Here's the core problem, not just for Intel, but all the companies that innovate around Intel's products," said James M. Burger, a Washington attorney who prepared Intel's brief. "How do you know what your product is going to be used for out of the box?"

Recordable media error rate scanning is valuable tool for determining the quality of the recorded media. It is the most convenient way (but not the most accurate) for the end users to evaluate the quality of their purchases, and assists in avoiding bad buys. You can see examples of error rate analysis here, where Kprobe software was used in our article.

But this feature has not been available for all DVD-R drives so far. LiteON is propably the first to have such features, and recently it has been possibly to perform on many other major brands as well, including Pioneer and BenQ.

But now Erik Deppe, the author of CDSpeed, bring the error rate scanning support on the NEC drives, models 3500 and newer. This is great news, since NEC is making very good drives at affordable prices, so they have a large customer base. Now with NEC customers also being able to analyze their discs, loads more media quality information can be expected to popup on the Internet.

Read the announcement at: CDFreaks forum

The DVD6C Licensing Group who holds most of the DVD technology's patents, has decided to reduce virtually all of its royalty fees, including the royalties collected from DVD player, DVD movie and blank DVD media manufacturers. The changes will kick in retroactively, beginning from 1st of January, 2005, for the licensees who sign the revised licensing contract with the DVD6C before June 30th.

Under the revised licensing fees, the minimum licensing fee for blank media (DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM only, DVD6C's licenses don't cover "plus" formats like DVD+R) will drop by one U.S. cent, from the current $0.075 to $0.065.

Similarly, minimum DVD player licensing fees will drop from $4.00 to $3.00 and pre-recorded DVD media (including DVD-ROM, DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs) royalties will drop from minimum of $0.05 to $0.045. It is also interesting to note that since September, 2003 DVD6C has been the sole authority to license DVD cases as well -- one DVD case carries a minimum licensing fee of half a cent under the revised pricing structure.

We have recently covered DVD-R (or +R) quality related topics, and the latest review by CDR-Zone.com adds up to it quite nicely.

Verbatim is one of the most famous media manufacturers, which have always been delivering top quality from their plants. Verbatim is the brand of Mitsubishi Chemicals, the famous inventor of the metallized azo dye used on optical media.

The CDR-Zone used five different drives for the tests: Pioneer DVR-108, Philips DVDR1640, NEC ND-3520 and 3500 AG, and a LiteON SOHW-1653S. Burned at the maximum speed of 16x, the error rates seemd to be quite good, if not excellent, on the Pioneer and the NECs. On the Philips and LiteON we can see slightly higher error curves, but they are not alarming and still easily within the specs. At least in the LiteON's case, this seems like an issue of the drive or firmware, since the 1653 model hasn't performed too well in high speed recording tests.

The MCC030RG20 dye code used for the Verbatim 16x DVD-R branded media seems to be carrying on the tradition that Mitsibushi Chemicals have established when supplying Verbatim with their media. We encountered no bad or fatal recordings on any of the used review recording devices.

Read the review and see the graphs at: CDR-Zone.com

If you think back to the headlines in January 2004, you may remember that actor Carmine Caridi was questioned by investigators after screener copies of motion pictures for award consideration that were sent to him, leaked onto the Internet. Some of the titles were "Something's Gotta Give," "The Last Samurai," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "Thirteen". Invisible watermarks on the screeners lead investigators to Caridi.

It later emerged that Caridi had sent his screeners to Russell Sprague, who he believed was simply a movie enthusiast. However Russell had alternative plans and made copies of the movies instead, which then appeared on the Internet. He was facing up to three years in prison and was to be sentenced on March 21st. However, Sprague has been found dead in a Los Angeles prison cell.

His body was discovered on Monday and the US Marshals Service suspects he may have died of a heart attack. He had pleaded guilty to copyright infringement in a Los Angeles court last April. Caridi also was fined $300,000 for providing Sprague with the screeners in November. It is also believed that he was expelled from the Academy for the Screener leaks.

Francis Hwang, director of technology at Rhizome, a digital-arts collective, was blocked from selling a modified iPod on eBay. The device which has received the name Negativland vs. U2 iPod was blocked from auction after Apple complained it violated its copyrights. Hwang has decided now to sell the product on his website instead. He tried to contact Apple for an explanation but received no reply, and still has no idea what, if any, copyright violations occurred.

"I think it's unfortunate that Apple didn't explain to me or anybody else why they did it," said Hwang, "That kind of behaviour seems to speak of an attitude that is very corporate; you are accountable to the shareholders and customers but not to anybody else." Hwang added seven albums from Negativland to the special edition U2 iPod. U2's label, Island Records, sued Negativland in 1991 for using an unlicensed sample of "I still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

Hwang believes that the lawsuit was anti-artistic and questioned why Apple would pick U2 for make a special edition iPod. "When you look at the Island Records v. Negativland case you see an internet era intellectual property case before the internet," said Hwang. "I paid money to Apple and I used my own credit card to buy a U2 iPod, this thing that I'm selling is mine to do so." He intends to sell the iPod even if Apple attempt a legal attack, then donate the money made to Downhill Battle.

Several artists have told the United States Supreme Court that they believe P2P file-sharing networks should not be blamed for illegal file sharing. They want P2P networks to be kept alive to ensure that artists have an outlet separate from major record labels to distribute their music. The group has said that not all artists believe file-sharing is bad. "To the contrary, many musicians find peer-to-peer technology...allows them easily to reach a worldwide online audience. And to many musicians, the benefits of this..strongly outweigh the risks of copyright infringement," they wrote.

The group includes contemporary artists like Jason Mraz, as well several popular artists from years past such as Steve Winwood and Heart. Mraz claims that the "illegal filesharing" has given him more exposure. Apparently half of his concertgoers have found him through P2P networks. The group claims that closure of P2P would rob artists of a technology that can potentially increase exposure and income.

"Distribution of recordings to retailers was controlled largely by a few large national record companies and by several 'independent' labels before P2P", the group argued. They say that while they think copyright infringement is wrong, artists who may no longer be commercially viable still have a way to keep their music out in the open. This comes days before the Supreme Court is to hear arguments between MGM and Grokster.

Human emotions can be categorized to eight basic emotions. The MovieProfiler.com takes advantage of these basic emotions, and categorizes movies based on their emotional attributes. The search engine allows to search for movies based on an emotional or segment profiles set by the user.

For the end user, the MovieProfiler is just like any other Internet search engine, but the criterions for the searches are different. The user feeds the emotional values, describing what expectations one has for a movie: terror, anger, sorrow, joy, disgust, acceptance, anticipation, and surprise ( Link to basic emotions info) As a result, the user will see a list movies that match the emotional profile one has specified.

The searches can also be performed by a segment profile, which is a more practical approach. In the segment profile search one specifies characteristics of a movie: romance, "chick flick", "guy movie", "buddy film", tempo, targeted age group or whether the movie is suitable entertainment in hangover.

User interaction is a big part of MovieProfiler.com. Registered users can add movies to the database, review & comment movies or discuss at the message board. As an additional feature, users can maintain their own personal Watch List for keeping track of movies. All of the services are provided free of charge for registered users.