Many gamers in the EU, as well as in Australia and New Zealand will be delighted to finally be able to get their hands on a PSP console (without importing) tomorrow. Across Europe, PSP devices were being sold for the past couple of days, but games are not to go on sale until tomorrow. The launch comes finally after months of uncertainty about the PSP release date that left European gamers feeling snubbed by Sony.
The PSP console was released late last year in Japan, and then in the United States in March earlier this year. Sony is aiming to make the device attractive not only as a portable gaming console, but also as a portable entertainment device capable of music and video playback. Since its launch articles have appeared all over the web showing you how to convert video files or DVDs to playback on your PSP via a MemoryStick.
And along with the excellent success the PSP has gotten, there also has to be a degree of headaches for Sony due to the enthusiasm of thousands of hackers worldwide who eagerly awaited the console's launch. As a result it is possible to run homebrew apps on the PSP under firmware versions 1.00 or 1.50. This makes it possible to play games that were not made for the console as well as various other tasks such as launching some PSP games from MemoryStick.
Creative has made a statement confirming that some of its Zen Neon portable music players, about 4,000 in total, have shipped accidentally with the "W32.Wullik.B@mm" worm. These 4,000 players were all sent to Japan. The windows worm dates back to 2003. It is a mass-mailing worm. On the player, there is an infected file but Creative has said that users would have to browse through the device's filelist and click on it while connected to a PC in order for it to affect the machine.
The company released the serial numbers of the players that are suspected to be infected with the worm. They are serials "1230528000001 through 1230533001680". Shipments of the Zen Neon 5GB model have been suspended temporarily while the company investigates the issue. The company apologised for the annoyance that has been caused to consumers over this matter.
The statement was posted on the company's Japanese site so there are only rough web translations to rely on, which are still complicated to understand. Creative Zen players are becoming increasingly popular, as Creative is now the biggest competitor of Apple Computers. Creative hopes to take some of Apple's 80% market share for portable digital music players away over the coming years by introducing new models that will compete with the iPod.
BitBurners.com has published an article that shows the results of several quality tests with different blank DVD media burned with a Pioneer DVR-110D.
We have just upgraded our test facilities with Pioneer DVR-110D recorders yesterday and here are the first test results. In these initial tests we burned a number popular media types and scanned the error rates.
Overall the 110 seems to be a worthy successor for the 109/A09. Already the results demonstrate high quality and usually it improves in time as the Firmware updates are released.
The name "Rio" will always be remembered in the MP3 player market. The current owner of Rio, D&M Holdings is to quit the MP3 player market however, the company has announced. This comes after D&M Holdings sold its Rio division's technology and people assets to SigmaTel in July. The company then said it was "examining additional strategic options for Rio". Rio was originally part of Diamond Multimedia and was a true pioneer in digital music hardware. However the flash-based players were quickly overtaken by HDD-based players such as Apple's iPod.
In October 1998, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), joined by the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies filed a complaint seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction against Diamond Multimedia's announced MP3 player device which sold for a price of $199. The RIAA claimed it had to file the complaint to protect its artists and the creative content of the music industry.
Hilary Rosen claimed that the MP3 player violated the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), and in doing so "encourages consumers to infringe the rights of artists by trafficking in unlicensed music recordings on the Internet." However US District Judge Audrey Collins denied the injunction that would have halted Diamond Multimedia Systems, from distributing the player.
Creative Technology, one of the first companies in the world to produce MP3 players has been awarded a patent for the interface used on many digital music players on the market. Creative said not only does the patent apply to its own MP3 players, but it also applies to Apple's iPod music players also. Creative is Apple's biggest rival and the company is seeking to out market Apple.
Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo had said the company was taking aim straight at Apple and that he MP3 war had started. Currently Apple's iPod has about 80% of the MP3 player market. The patent that was awarded to Creative details how files are organised on an MP3 player. For example, the basic MP3 player would first show a list of artists, when an artist is selected, a list of albums would appear and then finally a list of tracks on the album.
Creative applied for the patent back in January 2001 and was awarded the patent on 9th August. "The first portable media player based upon the user interface covered in our Zen Patent was our Nomad Jukebox MP3 player," said Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo. "The Apple iPod was only announced in October 2001, 13 months after we had been shipping the Nomad Jukebox based upon the user interface covered by our Zen Patent."
It appears that Apple Computers is preparing to make a big announcement next week which may be as critical to the company as the release of the iPod was in 2001. Reporters have received invitations from the company for a "special event" that takes place in San Francisco on Sept 7th. "1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything," the invitation reads, referring to the release of the first 5GB iPod nearly four years ago. "Here we go again."
Anytime Apple prepares to announce anything, details are always very scarce but rumours always run wild, and this time is no exception. Some clues are around as to what the company might be planning. Firstly, Apple recently has made a deal with Samsung for about 40% of the company's flash memory production. This could mean that Apple is hoping to make a larger capacity iPod Shuffle or maybe even change its iPod mini to flash based memory instead of HDD-based.
Another rumour has stemmed from record company executives that have said Apple has been asking to license music videos for distribution through the iTunes music store. Could Apple be working on, or have completed an iPod that is capable of playing video? It has been all success for Apple in recent years, mainly due to the demand for iPods amongst consumers. Now, Motorola has revealed that a long awaited iTunes phone will ship before the end of September.
A failed network interface on one of our database backends caused some 30 minutes of downtime at AfterDawn this morning (from 3:07AM EDT to 3:40AM EDT).
We have re-routed all traffic and service should be back to normal. Some further downtime can be expected when the failed hardware is replaced.
There is also a scheduled maintenance at our ISP on September 2nd at 2:00AM central, which will cause a short outage to all our services.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the downtimes.
AfterDawn.com staff
Update: The failed NIC has been replaced on the server and no further downtime should occur.
Sirius Satellite Radio has unveiled a new portable music player called the S50, which is designed not only to store MP3 files from a PC, but also to store the company's programming aswell. Users of the new portable music devices can record and play back up to 50 hours of satellite radio programming or music files. The user is required to use a home dock or car dock to record programming or to play live shows. The car dock comes bundled with the player.
It measures 1.9in x 3.9in x 0.7in and has a colour display with voice-assited channel navigation. Sirius is hoping to make a dent in the digital music market that is currently dominated by the iPod music player owned by Apple Computers. It will sell for $359 (including car dock) when it ships in October this year. The player has different sections where different types odf audio will be stored and can be then played back from.
For example "My Sirius Channels" automatically records the programming from a users three favourite channels and "My Sirius Songs" is where people will save their music which they can then organise into playlists by connecting the home dock to a personal computer. There is also a feature called "Scheduled Record" which will allow users to capture their favorite shows on a one-time or recurring basis.
Major Hollywood movie studios have filed another round of lawsuits against file sharers it alleges to have distributed copyrighted movies over the Internet. However, this time is different from all over lawsuits. The studios have not been searching through P2P networks for IP addresses, they got the IP addresses from P2P companies own logs. In total, 286 lawsuits were filed against sharers in the United States. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said the logs were from file sharing sites shut down earlier this year.
These would be BitTorrent websites that were shut down although even though a court in Texas ordered LokiTorrent to turn over server logs in February, the MPAA admitted that none of the lawsuits filed were related to that. This is sort of "propaganda" by the MPAA to try to dissuade file sharers from using BitTorrent sites in fear that their trading actions might be logged. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcolm said in a statement.
Apple's iTunes music store has a rep for offering quite expensive music downloads, a fact that even major record labels are getting fed up with. However, it emerged last Thursday that Apple was selling full albums in it's iTunes music store for less than all other music services available; just 50 yen (equivalent of about €0.36). The reason the price sounds far too good to be true... is because it was.
Apple immediately moved in to say that the price move, which as about 30 time less than it should have been, was simply a "terrible mistake". The company pointed out that the price change only hit a few dozen less popular albums. iTunes has already been popular in Japan, selling over 1 million tracks in just four days after the service launched in the country.
China is soon going to be imposing limits on how much time gamers spend playing online video games. The controls that the government in Beijing will be introducing are aimed at deterring gamers from playing for longer than three hours straight. The government says it has the gamers' health in mend with the new controls that are aimed mostly at online role-playing games like World of Warcraft. Twenty million gamers play regularly in China, mainly in Internet Cafes.
Gamers in China spent nearly US$500 million on games last year. The government has encouraged the growth of gaming online and is hosting a two day conference in Beijing hoping to attract more foreign investment. However, the popularity of the games is growing so rapidly that it has led to concerns that some people may be getting too caught up in these game. In one case that's used as a tragic example, a player killed a fellow player for stealing a virtual sword. He later received a suspended death sentence.
New measures are now expected to be introduced in October. The new system will impose penalties on players who spend more than three hours at a game. The abilities of the gamers' characters will be reduced past the three hour limit. After five hours the abilities of the character will become severely Llimited. Also players are forced to take a break of at least five hours before they can return and play a game.
The BBC has interviewed Brad Duea, president of online music service Napster. The last couple of years have been very eventful for the music industry which saw litigation against people who share music collections with each other, falling sales of CDs and the rise of legal music download services and portable music players. However, it's not like it is all easy for consumers either, who have to be bombarded with new ways of buying music and new ways of using it (DRM restrictions etc.).
Napster is a big part of the transformation the music industry is under. How could anybody forget the trouble the original Napster caused when the music industry freaked out at the thought of a "music free for all" and hit the service with all they had. Now the new legal Napster has 410,000 subscribers who hand over subscription fees for access to over 1.5 million songs, a sort of music rental service.
"The number one brand attribute at the time Napster was shut down was innovation. The second highest characteristic was actually 'free'." Mr Duea said. "The difference now is that the number one attribute is still innovation. Free is now way down on the list."Roxio, which originally made burning software bought Napster and created the service available today. The music market is now worth a whopping $33bn a year. In the first half of 2005, downloads from legal online music stores accounted for 5% of all music sales.
A well known and much used eDonkey2000 listing site has closed its doors due to mounting legal pressure. The German The-RealWorld.de site focused primarily on links to TV shows. It did not host any copyrighted files however, just ed2k link that can be used to find content easily on the eD2K network. Here is a message left on the homepage of the site.
TRW is under legal attack and forced offline for the time being.
For the legal defence TRW seriously needs your help. Please donate whatever you can via the paypal donation option below.
Even 1-2 Euros would help already and paypal offers secure payments via credit card as well as from your bank account in many countries.
If any donations might be left after this situation, they will be donated for a good cause like EFF or Oxfam.
Thank you very much for your help!
The Webmaster
Many of the sites users suspected that something was up as over the last few months several links to certain TV shows were disappearing from the site.
Warner, one of the world biggest record companies is setting up a label that will drop CDs completely in favour of offering their artists' work as music downloads. The idea of the new "e-label" is to take some of the pressure off the artists' backs. The artists signed to the e-label won't have to worry about the pressures or costs of recording, manufacturing and distributing full albums. Warner chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr sees this as a revolutionary move for the music industry.
"Our most important job is to work with artists and help them hone their craft," he said. One of the biggest reasons he gave for the new label was that too many young artists were being dropped from labels if their first album failed to sell enough copies. "While the old system allowed an artist time to develop and grow, today's business is such that an initial commercial failure for most artists means they no longer get a second chance." he said.
Instead of having their artists release full albums of music every couple of years, they will release "clusters" which will comprise of about three or more songs from their artists every few months. Albums and singles are usually only available for download from legal music stores when they are released on CD. Now Warner is experimenting with another approach to releasing and selling new music.
The developers of the infamous Halo game have finally confirmed that a Halo movie is being made by two major Hollywood studios, Universal Studios and Fox. Novelist Alex Garland (28 days later, The Beach) has witten the script. The main character in the movie will of course be Master Chief, the hero in the video game. The movie will not be released until summer 2007 and an issue date of a new version of Halo has not been announced.
The company responsible for the games, Bungie which is owned by Microsoft has worked out "all the kinks" with Hollywood studios and is now ready to begin work on the movie. Garland is delighted to be on the project and commented that playing Halo for him was an experience of "being in a movie". A director has not been chosen yet, but Bungie have made it clear that they expect the best director possible to get for this project.
They said they are looking for "someone who's as committed to the Halo universe as Peter Jackson was to Tolkien's Middle-Earth". The original Halo game sold more than 5 million copies and brought an excellent sequel released last year.
Sony BMG has made history in the digital music world by teaming up with Playlouder MSP to make its music catalog available online. Subscribers can exchange licensed music in any birate they want freely. A portion of the subscription fees will be divided among Sony and other artists. Playlouder MSP is to supply the broadband connection itself. This is the same basic idea as used by radio where the revenue generated compensates the artists.
"PLMSP's unique position as the world's only licensed music ISP allows it to control the flow of music files over its network ensuring that all file-sharing traffic stays within its 'walled-garden'," the company said in a statement. "By controlling the network on which the music flows, PLMSP is able to effectively and accurately track and monitor the distribution of digital music through a sophisticated method of audio fingerprinting and return the appropriate share of revenues back to the rights owners."
To battle against possible leakage, PLMSP will deploy watermarks and "deep packet searches" software on the network. "We aim to prevent close to 100% of P2P traffic from going outside the MSP 'walled garden'", said Paul Sanders in an FAQ. More deals will be unveiled soon by PLMSP. The service will go live in the UK only next month, but similar services such as Shawn Fanning's Snocap will launch soon also. If such a service had become available after the original Napster shut down then potentially millions of dollars could have been made by rights holders and artists.
Sony has no plans to drop the price of the Playstation 2 (PS2) console to compete with Xbox 360 in the next few months according to the head of Sony Computer Entertainment in the UK, Ray Maguire. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is scheduled to go on sale in November is the first next generation console that will be released. It will be followed by the Playstation 3(PS3) console early in 2006. Following that release will be Nintendo's Revolution console.
Due to its first mover advantage, Microsoft is confident it will win the battle with Sony worldwide. Sony is hoping to up sales a bit by offering different types of games for the PS2. The PS2 was the first in the current generation of consoles to be released. It was released in Japan in March 2000 and then across Europe in November 2000. Due to competition with Microsoft and Nintendo the price of the console fell quite dramatically over the past few years.
Microsoft believes it made a mistake by releasing the Xbox console a year after the PS2 was released and made sure it would be first to release a console this time around.
North American PSP users can now update their PSP's Firmware to v2.0 using the wireless Network Update feature on the device. The 16MB update is almost identical to the Japanese version of the firmware which was released in July. The update adds support to the PSP for the PCM (WAV) audio and AAC audio formats. 4:3 Screen Mode has been added for video saved on Memory Stick. Data security has also been improved and the company said it also is built to enhance digital photo sharing (TIFF, GIF, PNG and BMP have been added as viewable file formats).
Sony would like for PSPs to look more like good portable entertainment devices. "The Internet browser and other added functionality ... will further enhance the user experience beyond the unprecedented portable entertainment already provided by PSP," said Andrew House, executive vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America. Sony has sold almost 2 million PSPs in North America since March.
While the update looks very appealing to PSP users, many are holding off due to the "increased security measures". These fixes will make running homebrew on your PSP impossible so you won't be able to use emulators, launchers etc... if you update to this firmware version.
News is circulating that the highly anticipated Motorola iTunes phone has gotten FCC approval, which might indicate the device has moved even closer to commercial debut. A user manual for the E790 GSM phone on the FCC's websites details that iTunes "is a software application you use to manage the music on your computer and transfer music to your phone". The manual also describes how songs can be purchased and downloaded from the handset.
Motorola is not commenting on the FCC approval but a spokeswoman Monica Rohleder told Wireless Week, "as has been previously communicated, all is on track for the Motorola mobile phone with iTunes and we will provide additional information upon availability." The partnership between Apple and Motorola began in July 2004 and since, there has been much speculation over the fate of the iTunes phone.
It received a lack of support from major carriers because the phone still depends on computers and the Internet to purchase music instead of being a revolutionary phone that is able to purchase music over-the-air. Verizon Wireless also has plans to challenge the iTunes phone in co-operation with LG Electronics who will produce the handset for the service. There was more speculation last week that Apple and Nokia had come to a deal to include iTunes software in Nokia's upcoming N91 phone and other N Series models.
In a world where content holders need to protect their content as best they can, companies are often forced to part with a lot of money to license DRM technology for the purpose. Sun Microsystems Inc. is offering the digital world another gift. The company announced a project called the Open Media Commons which is aimed at creating an open-source Digital Rights Management (DRM) standard. To add to the fact that it will be open-source, it will also be completely royalty-free.
DRM effectively allows restrictions to be placed on digital content that can thwart piracy efforts. However, DRM has not gotten a warm welcome from consumers who believe that limitations on some DRM protected content are too strict. Sun Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz believes the growing number of rivals of DRM standards could stifle innovation and economic growth due to the standards being incompatible with one another.
"The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we're up to and others who want to collect a fee for using their own DRM standards", Schwartz told Reuters. Analysts believe the project is ambitious. Content owners, software developers and device manufacturers need to be on board to make it work. Schwartz plans to call for cross-industry collaboration in developing the technology. He believes it is the key to the free creation, duplication and distribution of digital content.
The BBC has teamed up with Rok Player to bring cult classic TV shows to mobile handsets. Both Red Dwarf and Doctor Who episodes are available for mobile handsets after the BBC decided to license full length video content for distribution instead of just the usual teasing clips you can find for cell phones. Rok Player technology allows users with compatible handsets to view content such as films TV shows and music videos on their handsets.
"BBC Worldwide is always looking for new opportunities, both in the UK and abroad, that allow consumers to enjoy their favourite TV content again and again, while delivering additional revenues to the BBC and to the talent behind the classic programming," said Marc Humphrey, Business Development Manager, BBC Worldwide. So far, The Rok Player website only lists several Nokia phones as compatible.
The content you can purchase from the Rok Player site is available on Digital Video Chips. You can also buy content from Nokia stores.
The player uses the phone's multimedia memory card. Originally, there are only four episodes available for phones, one Doctor Who special and three red dwarf episodes. Rok Entertainment Group is no stranger to popular content either, offering content like Shawshank Redemption, Wallace and Gromit and Spongebob Squarepants for mobile phones. Music from the Ministry of Sound, Sony BMG and Eagle Records is also offered by the Group.
According to Yomiuri newspaper, Toshiba and Sony have given up efforts for development of a unified stand for next generation DVD. Sony is backing it's Blu-Ray Disc technology, whereas Toshiba is backing the HD-DVD format. Both utilize the use of blue lasers, which have shorter wavelength than red lasers allowing data storing at high densities. The result is much bigger capacities than DVDs, which are needed for High Definition movies and next generation games.
Both camps had decided earlier this year to attempt to create a unified standard instead of engaging in a format war. However, it appears both sides back their technology too much and neither side will bow to the other. The war is over dominance in the future market for formats that can store high definition material. So basically, the war is over potentially billions of dollars. Now both camps are ready to go forward with product launches.
Both sides have suggested that talks could continue, but it's unlikely as both formats are due to appear late this year. Toshiba has confirmed it is moving forward with product launches and Sony will probably waste no time continuing with it's launches either. Now the fear among consumers and businesses is that HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray will be like the disastrous VHS vs. BetaMax war. However, some suggest that multi-format devices will appear, so the winner will be decided by content offered and not their technical specs.
A company that specialises in P2P software that allows mobile users to listen to music has released new software for podcasting with cell phones. Melodeo released Mobilcast, software that's designed to help users find and download podcasts for their mobiles. The success of podcasting, which started just with underground podcasting, has sparked interest with major companies across the world. Apple, of course, is looking to tap this resource a bit.
In the next iTunes software update, there will be the ability to create and distribute your own podcasts. Podcasts are used by everyone from underground techies to BusinessWeek. So far however, in order to enjoy podcasts, you either have to have a PC or a digital music player like an iPod but Melodeo believes that podcasts reach will grow by millions through cell phones.
"The mobile phone is the perfect tool for finding and listening to podcasts,"Don Davidge, senior vice president of sales at Melodeo, said in a statement. "With Mobilcast, Melodeo applies the same software and user experience to podcasts that we have applied to other types of digital media." It makes perfect sense really; mobile phones are owned by far more people than digital audio players.
Yahoo Japan, owner of the most visited web portal in the country has started an online music stream service to attempt to attract consumers. It will be free to listen to the Streaming music from the site, but users cannot record the streaming music. Yahoo Japan hopes that this service will lead to more CD sales and sales of music downloads. This new service comes at a time when the market for music downloads in Japan is heating up.
Apple recently launched it's iTunes music service in Japan, offering songs for mostly 150 yen. The company shocked even itself when iTunes Japan managed to sell 1 million tracks in four days after it's release, making it the most successful launch of iTMS in the more than 20 countries offering the service. Yahoo Japan charges 210 yen to download new songs and 150 yen for older songs.
Apple's introduction of iTunes in Japan is seen by Sony as a threat who currently sells the most MP3 players in the country. Apple hopes that iTunes will boost the sales of iPods so it can dethrone Sony on it's own turn.
Apple currently has a tight grip on the MP3 player market in the world and on sales of music downloads. The company has sold over 20 million iPods and 500 million track downloads to date. However, increasing competition might loosen Apple's grip. Analysts now give Apple's hold another 12-18 months before it slips. Apple's success in the digital music world so far has been incredible as the company seems to be able to turn to gold anything it touches.
Apple immediately dominated the category of flash-based MP3 players with the introduction of the iPod Shuffle. The company has also brought podcasting from the underground into the mainstream by adding support for podcasts to iTunes. The company currently has 80% of the MP3 player market and 75% of online music download sales but competition is started to grow at an alarming rate so how long can Apple keep this?
"It's inevitable that over time their market share declines,"Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster says. "It's safe to say that nobody can sustain an 80 percent market share in a consumer electronics business for more than two or three years. It's pretty much impossible." While Apple struggles to hold onto the dominance, the company is most likely saddened to see falling support from record labels. Many believe however that Apple is bringing the lack of support on itself due to the company’s policies.
A spokesman for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a body that represents music labels in the UK and International major record companies made a comment today that suggests the BPI actually sympathises with parents they file lawsuits against because of their kids online activity. "We genuinely feel sorry for parents who are caught up (in this) because their children have been file sharing illegally," he said. He was commenting on how Sylvia Price, a 53 year old mother was forced to settle because she couldn't afford to contest the lawsuit.
Her daughter Emily is only 14 years old, and has been accused by major record companies of illegally distributing copyrighted music over P2P networks. Her mother was shocked to discover that the BPI was suing her for this and is very displeased that the BPI didn't simply warn her daughter before taking legal action. "They should have sent something to saying 'if you keep doing this we will fine you' - they should have sent a warning first," she said. The BPI however, claims that people sharing music illegally had been initially contacted through messaging systems on file-sharing networks.
Across the United States, increasing numbers of University students have access to music for free through legal services but why is it that many of these students continue to get their music from file sharing programs instead of their legal alternative? Let's not forget about the possible legal consequences while sharing music illegally on P2P networks and of course the threat of viruses or the spyware content of some of the worlds biggest used P2P software. So why are so many students actually sticking to P2P instead of their new free ways to listen to music?
The answers are actually quite easy and understandable. The main reason is because of the limitations that they face while taking advantage of the free music. In order to listen to the music, a lot of time students have to stay at desks and can’t just walk around and listen to it on a portable device like an iPod. That's because while these students are free to listen to the music, the 99c per track download charge applies when they want to be able to burn the music to CD or to store it on a portable device. Most of the copyrighted music on P2P networks has no limits on copying or what you store them on, and are in some cases, of higher quality.
Singapore police said on Thursday that three Internet users have been arrested and charged with illegally distributing digital music files. This is Singapore’s first crackdown on file sharing of copyrighted material since new copyright laws came into effect in January this year. The men, aged 16-22, are accused of sharing more than 20,000 files in "Internet chatrooms". The three could now face stiff penalties for their actions.
Under the amended Copyright Act, Internet users who download pirated material on a commercial scale could face up to five years in prison and a fine up to S$100,000. The Police were working on a tip by the Recording Industry Association of Singapore (RIAS), which represents local record companies and of course major International record labels. According to the police, they used an Internet chat program and a music-sharing program to distribute the content.
The RIAS told Reuters that it had sent warnings to those engaged in illegal file sharing and that prosecution was a last resort. According to Industry analysts, the growing availability of broadband Internet connections in Asia is driving the numbers of illegal music downloaders up especially in countries like China where piracy is already rampant. The result, we are told, is a major slump in music sales.
Despite an earlier report by Finnish daily Taloussanomat, Nokia has no plans to bring iTunes to the N91 multimedia phone. After the earlier report, Nokia dismissed it but said that because of the designs of the phones, software developers could easily make programs like iTunes for the phones. "There is no commercial agreement between Nokia and Apple to integrate iTunes into the N-series devices," said Kari Tuutti, spokesman for Nokia's multimedia division.
"But since this is based on a computer platform, anybody -- including Apple if they so wish -- can very easily develop this kind of application and offer it to consumers, via the Internet for example." he added. Tuutti said the mobile phone giant had seen such applications in the research lab but didn't make any commercial deals. "We are not making any exclusive arrangements with any music store, but believe that we want to give the consumer the choice of where they want to purchase their music." he said.
In the near future, multimedia phones are expected to compete with MP3 players like Apple's iPod music player. Nokia's N91 phone will store up to 4GB of music and will run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks. The phone is expected to become available by the end of the month.
Lions Gate Entertainment has announced plans to release movies and other content using the Blu-Ray disc format when it becomes available next year. Blu-Ray disc is a competing format for post DVD supremacy developed by Sony Corp. Also in the competition is HD-DVD developed by Toshiba. Both formats offer much more capacity than normal DVDs which is needed to store High Definition movies on discs. Both sides have also got strong competition.
Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and The Walt Disney Co. are studios that also support the Blu-Ray format. Studios backing HD-DVD include Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios. Studios are looking for the best format to allow the storing of much higher quality copies of movies and of course, good protection against piracy, which so far the traditional DVD failed to give.
Due to the amount of support building on each side and each camp claiming their technology is the best; it looks like the world is headed towards another format war which will rival the fuss BetaMax vs. VHS caused. With equipment expected soon for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, consumers will be confused and not sure which technology to go with. A much better scenario would be a unified standard, but there has been no luck with that.
Software giant Microsoft has revealed just how much money gamers will have to spend to get their hands on a new Xbox 360 console later this year. The console will be launched simultaneously in the U.S., Japan and Europe "in plenty of time for the Christmas market," according to European home and entertainment head Chris Lewis. In the U.S. it will cost $299 and €299 (£209 UK) in Europe. The price rises to $399(€399 £279 UK) if you want other accessories like wireless controllers, detachable hard drives and headsets also.
The price of the console in Japan was not revealed, nor were any details on the amount of units that will be initially available in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The Japanese price details will be revealed at the Tokyo games fair next month. No actual dates have been set for the console's launch either, although the belief is that it will be launched in November. A Christmas release of the console should spark many sales, months before Sony's PS3 is expected to be launched and Nintendo's Revolution console.
The first mover advantage is being played by Microsoft, which launched it's Xbox console over a year after Sony launched the PS2. This was a mistake that Microsoft was not willing to make again. Sony currently holds two-thirds of the games console market.
The company responsible for the WinDVD software, InterVideo, has sued Dell for infringing one of its patents. This particular patent (number 6,765,788) details a "method and apparatus for integrating personal computer and electronic device functions". For example, think of play/pause, rewind and fast forward buttons on a laptop that allow it's DVD drive to act like a regular DVD player. InterVideo yesterday said it had filed a formal complaint with the US District Court of Northern California.
InterVideo believes that Dell added such functionality to many of its products even though the company knew the technology belonged to a third-party. This is not the first case over this patent either; last year InterVideo alleged Acer had infringed the same patent but that case was resolved to the company's satisfaction. InterVideo asked the court to ban Dell from making, importing, marketing and selling devices which infringe the patent.
It also wants the court to make Dell pay the legal costs as well as unspecified "enhanced damages".
Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five children, is one of the thousands of victims of lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) aimed at P2P filesharers. The record companies say her computer and internet account were used to illegally distribute copyrighted music through P2P networks. Many of the past lawsuit victims settled for sums ranging from $3,000 to $5,000. The RIAA's settlement centre wanted her to pay $7,500 to settle the case.
However, she has said that she would rather pay lawyers fees than give in to record company intimidation. Of the thousands of lawsuits, none of the cases have ever gone to trial. "I am still nervous about the whole thing," she said. "I just got so aggravated about how threatening they were." She accuses the settlement centre of bullying her, trying to get her to accept the settlement offer. "I didn't do anything wrong," she said. "Why should I pay them?"
The P2P software she is supposed to have infringed copyrights with is Kazaa. It is installed on her computer but she claims she had no knowledge of what it was before the lawsuit. She also says that she believes a friend of her children is responsible for the infringement she is being accused of. Many hope that one day someone will battle the RIAA suit in court. "If this particular woman is willing to go to trial, that's something new," said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "The threat is so great that most people don't even risk it."
In a world where you can now use a pre-paid mobile phone service and not have to hand over any personal details, the Malaysian government fears that this freedom is being exploited by terrorists to both communicate anonymously and to trigger explosions. For this reason, the government is to put a stop to this freedom and force all pre-paid users to register their details with phone companies while buying a pre-paid sim card.
This new requirement will come into effect in Malaysia from the end of the year. Existing customers will not be able to keep their anonymity either as they will be forced to register when they go to buy credit for their phones. 14 million out of Malaysia's 16 million mobile phone users, use pre-paid services instead of subscription-based "bill phones". As well as fearing terrorists, the Malaysian government cites prank SMS text messages as another reason.
In the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, it used to be a common practice to take the heads of rival village warriors as trophies. Even today the word "head-hunter" sparks fear in many villages there. In 2002, SMS text messages caused villagers to flee their homes as the text messages warned of head-hunters that were in the area. Also in January 2005, a month after the Tsunami Disaster in Asia, thousands of people fled their homes around Semporna, after fake text messages warned of another wave.
You will remember that last week we wrote a news article about a 20 year old man, Devin Moore, who murdered three police officers and blamed Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series for the influence that led to the actions. The Jury refused to believe his claims. Now a study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign casts more doubt on the possibility of violent video games causing an increase in real-life aggression amongst players.
The study, which included 2 groups including players – a group of 75 people who had no prior MMRPG [massively multiplayer online roleplaying game] play and who played AC2 for the first time; and a control group of 138, who did not play, found that exposure to highly violent videogames caused no considerable increase in real aggression. The two groups ranged in ages of 14 to 68 years old, with an average age of 27.7 years.
The debate over violent videogames has long been an issue around the world. People are blaming games for their actions in increasing numbers. This is much the same as the debate over violent movies and music tracks that contain violent lyrics and content. It seems likely that overall, videogame developers will win this battle.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) believes that bootleg or illegal copies of CDs are a much greater threat to the music industry than illegal downloading is. Fans get twice as much music from illegal copied CDs than from unauthorised downloads according to RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol. He echoed a report from NPD that says 29% of music acquired by music fans last year came form content copied onto recordable media. 16% has been credited to illegal music downloads.
Only 4% of music acquired was credited to legal music downloads while legit CDs still held strong at almost 50% of all music sold. The solution to illegal filesharing is litigation according to the RIAA, but how can you fight illegal copying? The answer, according to the RIAA, is copy protection. The amount of copy protected CDs being released has increased dramatically.
However, copy protection on CDs is not without it's flaws. Firstly, most copy protected CDs prevent you from ripping the audio tracks, but it's possible to dump DRM protected WMA files onto your windows machine. The problem here is that these files are not compatible with Apple's iPod music player. Apple has been reluctant to license it's FairPlay DRM technology for reasons like this one; they'd much prefer people buy their music from iTunes instead of getting it from a copy protected CD.
This may very well be my last post here at CD-RW.ORG and Afterdawn.com. Oh boy, it was back in 2002 when this co-operation started, so my feelings are quite mixed at the moment. Since now the CD-RW.ORG is transformed into BitBurners.com and is detached from Afterdawn.com and Afterdawn Ltd's other operations.
It has been an amazing perioid of over 3 years. We have seen the generation change from CD-R to DVD-R, which has changed the recording hardware industry quite a bit. Software has evolved a lot, and video features are much more important today than they were 3 years ago.
I can't list all the names from the 'good old days', when I used to be an active member at the Afterdawn's forums. I just wish to thank you all for the good times and interesting conversations. I wish to thank the Afterdawn.com core team: dRD, Ketola and Dela. We had our highs and lows during the years, but I think if we sum it all together we can say that it was a succesful perioid - Afterdawn has grown into whole new heights during this time and CD-RW.ORG enjoyed a rather steady few years and earned recognition being alongside Afterdawn.
A Jury in Alabama has rejected a claim by a 20 year old man who murdered three police officers and then pleaded not guilty by reason of mental defect after blaming Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto games for the influence behind his actions. This is just one case of many where a court exonerated a video game when a criminal alleged that he/she was influenced while playing a game. Devin Moore was 18 at the time that he committed his crimes.
He grabbed a gun from a patrolman and then proceeded to kill three police officers before escaping in a patrolman's car. Later on, he was arrested and he told officers that "life is a video game, everybody has to die sometime". This phrase was used by lawyers defending the man who claimed that his long hours spent playing Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City influenced him to the extent where he could be no longer be liable for his actions.
However, the Jury sided with prosecutor Lyn Durham who argued that the man was fully aware of what he was doing and that he "knew it was wrong". He could now face the death penalty for the murders. Even after the Jury's decision, families of the victims have filed civil cases against Take-Two Interactive and two major retailers. No court has ever ruled in favour of plaintiffs in these types of cases.
Software giant Microsoft is looking to take a cut out of the market for third-party peripherals for it's Xbox 360 gaming console. The Xbox 360 has a new security system embedded in the console that will block the use of any unlicensed devices with the console. This means that all controllers, steering wheels etc... released for the Xbox 360 will have to be authorised by Microsoft. This information comes from a new contract between Microsoft and peripheral maker Mad Catz.
You may remember that Microsoft put a "seal of approval" on certain third-party hardware for the Xbox console. This system, Microsoft claimed, was put in place to help customers get the best possible experience with the console. This new security system is like an extension of that method. It is normal for a console manufacturer to demand royalties for units of software sold for the device, but not for hardware.
Interestingly, the Mad Catz contract seems to only permit the manufacturing of wired controllers for the Xbox 360 and not other add-ons such as wireless controllers, memory units or add-on hard drives. It's unclear whether Microsoft will allow third-parties to create a wider variety of peripherals, or if the company will only allow first-party accessories.
Blockbuster is being increasingly hurt by online movie rental services. Today the company announced a disappointing $57M loss in the second quarter largely due to the company's "no late fees" policy. Blockbuster scrapped the late fee's for movie rentals in order to compete more with online rental services. In the U.S., Blockbuster customers can keep a rental free of charge for seven days after the movies return date. However, if a movie is returned later than this, then the customer is obliged to purchase it minus the cost of renting it.
The company is now revising its full year financial targets. Shares in the company fell by 11% following the news. The company is finding it hard to compete with services online including Netflix which are gathering thousands of more users weekly. Blockbuster also admitted that some of the 9,000 stores worldwide may have to be closed. "As the decline in store-based video rental industry continues, stores will have to close," chief executive John Antioco said.
In the same quarter last year, Blockbuster announced a $48.6M profit. However the company has insisted it will return to profitability in 2006.
As it prepares to enter the online music download market, retailer HMV has said it will attempt to educate more consumers on how to download music from the Internet. The company said the program is aimed at women, older people and "music fans in general". The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) estimates that 96% of downloaders are male. Computers will be installed in 200 HMV stores and HMV's own music download service will be launched in September.
"Record stores have generally been a bit of a male preserve," an HMV spokesman said. "When more women are comfortable with downloading they may find it less intimidating to do that on their own computers, rather than go into a record store." Digital area's will be installed in stores that will have staff to explain and show people how to download music. The portable digital music players will also be sold in these areas.
HMV said it will sell millions of songs at prices similar to Apple's highly successful iTunes music store. It is expected that retailers such as HMV would attempt to tap the music downloading resource due to the massive surges worldwide in legal music downloads in the last year. The number of legal downloads tripled to 180 million worldwide in the first half of 2005, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
CacheLogic, a world leader in Peer-to-Peer traffic management and network intelligence solutions, released a study of file formats that are used mostly in file sharing over P2P networks. Some of the conclusions found are quite surprising. Firstly we see that Video takes 61.44% of overall P2P traffic by volume (on the four major P2P networks) while audio account for 11.34%. Finally 27.22% goes to other non-audio and non-video file formats.
P2P traffic distribution by format
The study showed that Microsoft video formats represent 46% of aggregate worldwide Peer-to-Peer traffic. 65% of all audio files by volume of traffic are still traded in the MP3 format, but a surprising 12.3% are in the open-source Ogg file format (almost all exclusively traded on the BitTorrent network, particularly in Asia). The study also again showed that the eDonkey2000 network is the "network of choice" for video sharing.
Several artists and agencies in Japan are being forced to deal directly with Apple in order to add their works to Apple's Japanese iTunes Music Store because of Sony Music Entertainment's failure to come to an agreement with Apple. Sony Music Entertainment is separate from SonyBMG; the Japanese label being the only part of Sony Music to be left out of the merger. This is simply because Japan is Sony's home turf and the existence of iTunes there is more of a threat than a treat.
For example, Japanese rocker Motoharu Sano is signed with Sony but revealed on his website he plans to offer some of his songs for download on the Japanese iTunes site. "I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are," he told Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper. Also a management agency for a number of popular Japanese bands, Amuse, has decided to maybe go against an earlier decision of not partnering with Apple and is pondering a deal.
iTunes Japan sold over 1,000,000 music downloads in just four days after it was launched. This made the Japanese launch the most successful of all countries that currently offer the service. Apple hopes that the availability of iTunes will lead to more iPod sales, a hope that does not settle well with Sony. The electronics giant sees this as a threat to Sony MP3 player devices which have already done well in the country, as well as the sale of PSPs.
Rockstar Games has released a patch that removes the sex minigames hidden in the code. A fan discovered the games had hidden minigames in the code that were disabled by default. A patch he released called "hot coffee" unlocked these minigames and brought whole lot of trouble to Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive. Since the patch was released, Rockstar became the target of politicians such as Hillary Clinton and the game was given an AO (Adult Only) rating instead of it's previous M rating.
Now as promised, a patch has been released to remove the content from the game completely for concerned parents. As well as removing the minigame, it also adds support for HDTV and fixes a few bugs in the game. The controversy over the third party-made patch even led to the game being removed from shelves in Australia and is likely to cause more headaches for Rockstar Games before the controversy dies down.
Of course, the availability of this new patch will not change the AO rating in the United States, which many people feel is very unfair to the software company considering the game was given an AO rating because of the availability of a patch that the company didn't release. There is currently a version of the game without the sex content in development as the company battles to get it’s multi-million selling game back on the shelves.
The Blu-ray Association has adopted a copy protection and content management scheme that it described to be "comprehensive". It is immediately speculated that this DRM scheme would provide security to prevent the piracy of the future PS3 console.
The Blu-ray content management system include three components: Advanced Access Content System (AACS), a Blu-ray specific enhancement for content protection renewability called BD+, and a ROM Mark unique to Blu-ray Disc to prevent mass production piracy and sale of unauthorized copies.
AACS will enable content providers to manage copies with network functionality and internet connectivity in a secure manner. The ROM Mark will be a unique and undetectable identifier embedded into movies, music, and games. BD+ will be a programmable enhancement that will let content providers respond to organized attacks and update compromised code.
But will any protection be enough to prevent piracy? I personally doubt it. For decades more and more advanced protections have been developed, and later cracked. MOD chips circumvented PS1, PS2 and Xbox protections, so why couldn't they do it in the future as well? On the other hand the Blu-ray format itself may slow down piracy at first, until the recorders get more popular and cheaper.
Since it's launch in Japan just last week, Apple's iTunes music store has already sold over 1,000,000 legal music downloads. This makes it the most successful launch of any of the 20 countries currently offering iTunes. Worldwide, Apple has sold about 500,000,000 downloads currently and accounts for 80% of all legal music downloads in the United States. Apple's iPod music player now seems set to become quite a success in Japan, but faces stiff competition.
Sony is already doing very well with it's MP3 player line-up in Japan. Apple is hoping to mimic the success it had with it's iPod device in many other countries since 2001. Over 22 million iPods have been sold so far since the device was first released. The million song sales in 4 days is more success than Apple had thought iTunes would receive this early in Japan. "We are extremely happy with the results," said Eddy Cue, vice-president of applications at Apple Computer. "We think we have got a huge success."
The store sells most songs for 150 yen, about $1.35. About 15 Japanese record labels have signed up with iTunes currently, but Sony Music Entertainment has not yet.
The folks at Sony really don't like the Hong Kong based Lik-Sang, a popular online store for gamers. Back in the 2002 they sued Lik-Sang for selling MOD chips for PS2. This time they are against them for selling Sony PSP portable devices.
The PSP is yet to be released in Europe and the official release date is set a 1st of September. Lik-Sang however has been happy to sell and ship the devices to European customers. Sony feels that this is "unlawful interference with Sony's economic interests".. Another issue was the PSP owners manual that was made available on the Lik-Sang website.
Sony warned Lik-Sang on 14 June it would begin legal proceedings if the manual was not removed, along with links to Sony's own website. Lik-Sang maintains it immediately complied with that request.
Lik-Sang vowed to fight the case, claiming it has Hong Kong trade regulations on its side. They, it said, "allows free trade once an item entered the market for sale". In other words, what we do with a PSP once we've bought it is up to us - and that includes selling it on to consumers in the UK and elsewhere.
A new directive being pushed by the European Commission could criminalise indirect copyright infringement in the EU, with many similarities to the "MGM vs. Grokster" case in the U.S. If adopted, it would go further than the act of uploading or downloading copyrighted content on P2P networks and would criminalise aiding or inciting copyright infringement. In some cases, operating P2P services could be considered a criminal offence.
"The problem here is some activities, such as the creation of software, can be used for legal and illegal purposes, as is the case with Grokster," says Urs Gasser, professor of law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "It gets really messy, because it is unclear what is legal or not legal, and it is problematic to operate with such abstract terms."
The same fears are now spreading through Europe that spread through the United States during the MGM vs. Grokster case. Many believe that this could seriously damage technological innovation in the EU. For example, a project could be abandoned because in future a certain aspect of it could be adopted by pirates, which could then leave the owners/operators liable for that copyright infringement by the third parties.
The dispute between Apple and CyberBritain's Benjamin Cohen continues as the High Court has rejected an application for a Judicial Review into the ownership of the iTunes.co.uk domain name which was first registered by Cohen in November 2000. Originally Apple accused Cohen of being a "cybersquatter" and took him to UK registry Nominet looking for ownership of the domain name. Cohen registered the itunes.co.uk domain name on 7th November 2000, whereas Apple were only had the trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6th December 2000.
Cohen made use of the domain by forwarding it to a music search engine service at his CyberBritain site. Apple had offered a small sum of money (about $5000) for the domain, which Cohen rejected. Cohen then reportedly attempted to sell the domain name to Apple's rivals Napster, but the offer was rejected. Nominet ruled that the name registration was abusive and gave the rights to the iTunes.co.uk domain to Apple. In March, Cohen announced that he applied to the High Court for a judicial review of his dispute with Apple over the address.
Today Nominet announced that Cohen's call for a Judicial Review had been rejected. "The judge noted that the application was flawed in several respects, being both late and unnecessary given the right of appeal which forms part of Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service, which Mr Cohen had failed to use," said Nominet in a statement. In a statement Edward Phillips, Nominet's solicitor said: "I am pleased that the judge has rejected Mr Cohen's case at the first possible opportunity, which leaves no doubt that it was without merit. We will now be looking at recovering our costs of defending this unnecessary action."
We just noticed this morning that our software download counters had hit the 40 million milestone last night, marking yet another small milestone on our long, long journey. Comparing the latest milestone of 40M to the previous one I wrote about -- the 25M download milestone back in last September -- shows that our software section has become more and more popular. Currently we serve over 1.6M software downloads each month (that's almost 40 downloads every single minute).
Anyway, this is once again one of those moments that I'd like to thank all of our users, people who recommend our site to their friends, people who link to our site, people who contribute to our forums, software reviews, etc. You're the guys who truly make our site what it is -- a place with wealth of information and a place that is nice to visit again and again :-)
A man has become the first ever person to be indicted under a new law in the United States that prohibits making "cam" copies of movies in movie theatres using a concealed camcorder, the U.S. Justice Department stated. Curtis Salisbury, 19, of Missouri made copies of films such as "The Perfect Man" and "Bewitched" which were later distributed around the world by a "warez group". Later on these movies landed on P2P networks where they were downloaded and shared by possibly millions of people.
As well as supplying this group with the copies of the movies, the Justice Department also said that he downloaded several other pirated movies and software from the group. He could face up to 17 years in prison for the crime. Warez groups are what the Justice Department sees as the elite of Internet piracy, releasing tonnes of movies, software and music to the world often long periods of time before their retail release or theatre dates in the case of movies.
Officials did say however, that while being the top of the piracy chain on the Internet, warez groups generally are not motivated by profit. However in this case, the Justice Department said Salisbury had sought payment for movies that he uploaded to the groups sites. He was originally arrested as part of Operation Site Down that targeted member of warez groups in over a dozen countries, many of which have also been charged.
Last August, a married couple were arrested for music, film and game piracy in Operation Zouk, a nationwide scheme headed by the Department for Work and Pensions. Today, they were finally handed jail terms of between 6 months and 21 months at Liverpool Crown Court. They were convicted of copyright offences and benefit fraud. When their home in Formby was raided, £28,000 worth of pirated discs were discovered. During the entire operation nationwide, 57 arrests were made and £500,000 worth of counterfeit discs was seized.
"Not only are consumers short-changed when they buy poor quality fake goods but legitimate retailers also lose out on business," said Andrew Naisbitt, head of Trading Standards for Sefton Council. Andrew King was sentenced to 18 months but also faces an addition term for an earlier intellectual property theft conviction for which he received a conditional discharge. Angela King, his wife, received a six month sentence for her part in the operation.
The games industry trade body, Elspa, accuses the couple of selling pirated games, music and film discs while also claiming benefits. "These offenders were not only riding on the back of the creative industries but also lining their pockets with taxpayers' money," said Elspa's deputy director general Michael Rawlinson. The affect of the case has also led to the couple separating.
On Wednesday a group of developers announced that new software for filesharing will be available by the end of the year, but this software has an advantage over most other P2P software. The claim is that this P2P software will provide it's users with real anonymity. Called a "Darknet", this new system offers users anonymity while sharing information on a decentralised system. While offering anonymity, making copyright infringement safer is not the aim of this group.
Since P2P file sharing networks became popular, large amounts of copyrighted material has been shared amongst the users of the networks, much to the anger of the copyright holders. Many (including the recording and movie industries) have taken legal action; the recording industry accounting for more than 14,000 suits worldwide so far since the first lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2003.
The tactics used to find people who are sharing copyrighted material seems foolproof; everyone has an IP address. This IP address is required for file transfers to take place. That means, anyone who is downloading from someone on a P2P network, can very easily find the IP address of that person (and also, it is easy to find IP addresses of people who have potentially got copyrighted music in their "shared folders" by making a simple search of a P2P network).
Apple has launched it's highly successful iTunes music store in Japan; the worlds second largest market for albums. The songs are priced at about 150 yen ($1.35, 75p) each, and the store opened already offering more than one million tracks. Of course the launch of iTunes in Japan is seen more of a way for Apple to try to accelerate iPod sales, which generate much more revenue for the company. However, Apple's Steve Jobs did boast a bit about iTunes again.
According to Jobs, iTunes is available now in 20 countries, which account for 85% of the global; music market. There is no question about whether Apple is currently in the driving seat of digital music or not; for now most experts agree that is most definite. Some have credited the company with revolutionising the way songs are bought and heard. However, it's Apple's iPod music player that the company cares most about.
Launching iTunes in Japan can only do well for the multi-million selling devices, which currently account for 36% of all portable digital music players sold in Japan - compared to a market-dominating 70% in the United States. "We think this is going to change the experience of discovering and buying and enjoying music in Japan." Jobs said. "Together with the iPod, we think we are ushering in a whole new age of digital music."
Online music distributor Napster reported a net loss of $19.9 million, but the company believed that they will get back on the surface with their rapid growth of revenues.
A part of their growing strategy is to expand their services to Japan. Napster has announced a joint venture with Tower Records Japan to launch it's service in Japan.
"We look forward to announcing a number of new strategic initiatives later this calendar year designed to create new revenue streams, improve margins and accelerate our path to profitability," said Chris Gorog, Napster's chairman and CEO.
..
And looking to the Japanese deal, Mr Gorog said: "Our partnership with Tower Records Japan represents a significant development in the globalization of the digital music industry and one which will take Napster to a new level."
Following the example of the recording industry, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed more lawsuits against file sharers it alleges to have distributed copyrighted movies illegally over P2P networks. The cases could result in fines of up to $150,000 or prison terms. A warning also went out from the MPAA which said there would be no let up in the fight against piracy.
"People needed to learn that piracy was harmful to the people who use their talents to create movies", said MPAA director for worldwide anti-piracy, John Malcolm. Not only can users of P2P services be sued for uploading and downloading copyrighted material, now in some cases, filesharing companies could be held liable for infringement by their users also due to the Supreme Court decision back in June.
John Malcolm said that the MPAA doesn't like suing people or paying for lawyers but that it would have to continue its fight against online distribution of stolen movies. In 2004, it is estimated that the movie industry lost $3.5bn (£1.9bn) to piracy, but that figure doesn't include online file sharing. A lot of P2P users who share and download movies condemn the lawsuits saying that the movie industry doesn't offer "proper" legal alternatives for movie downloading.
The British Internet Broadcasting Company (BiBC) is launching a new service for video downloads which it hopes will mimic the success iTunes and music have. The service will allow customers to download videos of VHS quality. Currently it is only live comedy and live music videos. Due to the major studio's fear of piracy, there are no feature films on offer at this time. "Film producers have been a bit reticent," admitted BiBC's founder, Paul Hague.
"But this is about proving and showing there is a market. I am fairly confident once that they've seen this, they'll come on board," he told BBC News. The aim right now is to have some movies available for purchase by the end of the year, which will be just a trial period for the service. Analysts are not too impressed however with the service so far, mainly due to the lack of major content. "Content is absolutely key," said Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan. "It doesn't seem to have that much secured at the moment."
Another main reason for Hollywood not to jump into a movie download business like the music industry has, is that they don't want to undermine DVD sales of movies. Also when you assess damage done by piracy, the movie industry has been nowhere near as damaged as the music industry; so you could say the music industry jumped into the legal music downloading business because it had no other choice.
Sony may delay the release of the PlayStation 3 console until 2007 if right conditions prevail, GameSpot writes.
According to Wedbush Morgan Securities Sony might delay the release if Microsoft drops the price of the 1st generation Xbox to no lower than $99, and if the Xbox 360 console is not a huge success at launch. In that case Sony might drop the price of PlayStation 2 to $99, which would still bring the company profit.
The reasoning behind the strategy is that dropping the PS2 price would disrupt the Xbox 360 launch. In that scenario Microsoft would be selling both the Xbox (at $99) and Xbox 360 (at $299.99?) at loss, while Sony would still be making profit with PS2.
It is quite unlikely that Xbox 360 would do so bad at launch that Sony could afford delaying the launch of PS3. Then again the plan could save Sony alot of money. It is estimated that Sony could lose more than $1 billion on PS3 hardware.
There is a lot of rumors, gossip and unconfirmed information floating about the next generation of gaming consoles.
Based on an unconfirmed source within the staff of Walmart, it is now suggested that the retail price of the Xbox 360 in North America is US$299.99. Also the release date for the product would be November 4th. Microsoft is yet to make an official statement, we will have to wait as more information submerges for confirmation.
Unconfirmed reports stemming from Walmart employees have today suggested a North American retail price for the Xbox 360 and its launch titles, allegedly set to arrive in shop stores on November 4th.
Naturally a smidgeon of sceptism should be maintained until Microsoft makes an official announcement, however the $299.99 price point hardly appears to be out of the bounds of possibility
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is to take its first court action against 5 file sharers it accuses to have been illegally distributing music on P2P networks. More than 60 people already paid settlements to the BPI in its campaign against illegal file sharing. According to the BPI, the five people in question (three men and two women) made 8,906 songs available over the Internet. People who have settled with the BPI have paid up to £6,500 in compensation each.
"We have tried to agree fair settlements, but if people refuse to deal with the evidence against them, then the law must take its course," said BPI general counsel Geoff Taylor. "We will be seeking an injunction and full damages for the losses they have caused, in addition to the considerable legal costs we are incurring as a result of their illegal activity." More than 14,000 people worldwide have been sued in a campaign which the music industry calls an "educational tool".
Despite the large increase in legal music downloads, the music industry is not willing to stop or ease their tactics. The belief is that the rise in legal sales is directly due to the legal action on filesharing. However P2P usage continues to rise even now at huge rates. Research firm, The Leading Question found that people who illegally shared music files online spent four-and-a-half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans. This is not enough to convince the BPI. "They are undermining the legal services, they are damaging music and they are breaking the law," said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.
Our buddies at the CDR-Zone have published yet another in-depth review of DVD recordable media. This time they have tested 16x DVD-R media by BeAll. As we haven't seen a lot of reviews of this manufacturer's products, it's refreshing to see BeAll properly tested.
It certainly lives up it its cost effective claims and offers low cost 16x recording with a good degree of quality overall. We have seen much worse 16x media sold under better known branding brands achieving lesser results in tests and if all spindles of BeAll 16x DVD-R media are of similar quality then buyer confidence should be good. That said BeAll developers have produced media in the past that is known to have variance and we await more testing inhouse with different batches of this media before we can fully recomend it as consistent media.
Many gamers in the EU, as well as in Australia and New Zealand will be delighted to finally be able to get their hands on a PSP console (without importing) tomorrow. Across Europe, PSP devices were being sold for the past couple of days, but games are not to go on sale until tomorrow. The launch comes finally after months of uncertainty about the PSP release date that left European gamers feeling snubbed by Sony.
Creative has made a statement confirming that some of its Zen Neon portable music players, about 4,000 in total, have shipped accidentally with the "W32.Wullik.B@mm" worm. These 4,000 players were all sent to Japan. The windows worm dates back to 2003. It is a mass-mailing worm. On the player, there is an infected file but Creative has said that users would have to browse through the device's filelist and click on it while connected to a PC in order for it to affect the machine.
