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New guide to staying safe online launched
idtheft2 BT has published a ten-point guide to help prevent internet users becoming victims of online identity theft.
The guide appears in an internet security report published today, written in conjunction with government, Get Safe Online, Lloyds TSB, Metropolitan Police and Yahoo....Ray Stanton, head of security at BT Global Services, said: ?Online identity fraud is a growing and, until now, a silent part of fraud in the UK, which accounted for £1.7 billion last year, £35 per adult per year.
New guide to staying safe online launched
February 15, 2006
Quentin Reade
Computer BT has published a ten-point guide to help prevent internet users becoming victims of online identity theft.
The guide appears in an internet security report published today, written in conjunction with government, Get Safe Online, Lloyds TSB, Metropolitan Police and Yahoo.
The report found that 8 per cent of UK PC users have fallen victim to online fraud and 15 per cent know someone who has been targeted by an internet criminal.
However, the report shows that customers are still not taking appropriate, available steps to protect themselves - one in ten people questioned, for example, indicated that they would have no qualms about giving their credit card details to an unidentified third party.
Ray Stanton, head of security at BT Global Services, said: ?Online identity fraud is a growing and, until now, a silent part of fraud in the UK, which accounted for £1.7 billion last year - £35 per adult per year.
?We want to make sure that people are aware of the threat and are protecting themselves online, so they can enjoy the benefits of the internet.?
Ten point guide to protect your online identity
1. Keep your wits about you at all times
Understand the risks and operate on the internet in the same way as you do in the offline world, with caution and appropriate scepticism. But do not be frightened; with simply precautions it is safe to use online banking and traders.
2. Question why a website is asking for information about you?
Think about whether it is somewhere or someone you want to give your details to. Only use secure web sites and also use common sense when it comes to phishing emails and web sites
3. Never give any online security details to anyone unless it is completely necessary.
Be particularly cautious if you share your accommodation with other people. Consider pass-wording your computer to avoid unnecessary access.
4. Look after your password
Change your passwords regularly and avoid standard passwords like a family member's names or dictionary words. When creating a password use a combination of letters, numbers and even special characters, like an exclamation mark when possible. This will make your password 'strong'. Do not use the same password for every secure site you are registered with.
5. Never click on links in emails
Always type the web site (www) address for banks, financial institutions and retail sites into the browser address line or store them using the browser's favourites function.
6. Keep up-to-date
Keep your security software (anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and firewall), operating system and applications such as Microsoft Office up-to-date at all times.
7. Remove the spies
Check all files on every computer that is connected to the internet at least once a week using anti-spyware and adware applications.
8. Keep your connection secure
Make sure everyone who uses the computer understands the precautions they need to take when online. Do not leave your broadband live unnecessarily and if you use a wireless modem ensure you set it to use at least 128-bit encryption if you are registered for online banking.
9. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is
Don't open emails or go to sites that claim you have won a prize, unless you've entered a specific competition. If an email looks suspicious and is unsolicited delete it and don't open it.
10. Know where to go for help should you be a victim of online identity theft
There are wide range of organisations and groups that people can turn to for advice should they be the victim of online identity theft. These include the police, industry bodies and suppliers of online services.
bino Malicious spyware poses a significant threat to desktop security and integrity. This paper examines that threat from an Internet perspective. Using a crawler, we performed a large scale, longitudinal study of the Web, sampling both executables and conventional Web pages for malicious objects. Our results show the extent of spyware content.
For example, in a May 2005 crawl of 18 million URLs, we found spyware in 13.4% of the 21,200 executables we identified. At the same time, we found scripted "drive-by download" attacks in 5.9% of the Web pages we processed. Our analysis quantifies the density of spyware, the types of of threats, and the most dangerous Web zones in which spyware is likely to be encountered.
We also show the frequency with which specific spyware programs were found in the content we crawled. Finally, we measured changes in the density of spyware over time; e.g., our October 2005 crawl saw a substantial reduction in the presence of drive-by download attacks, compared with those we detected in May.
p2p news / p2pnet: Today is the day Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco face a US congressional human-rights hearing to explain why they're actively cooperating with China to help keep news and information from the country's citizens.
The four companies claim it?s simple: follow China's dictates or be banned from doing business there, in the process robbing the population of Net services, albeit it limited ones.
"In a joint statement issued last month, Microsoft and Yahoo said that they lacked the leverage on their own to influence world governments," says the BBC.
And yet the entertainment and software cartels are aggressively, and successfully, forcing China to follow distinctly non-party lines when it comes to so-called "copyright crime".
Motion Picture Association of America boss Dan Glickman is an old friend. He regularly visits China where Hollywood has set up a number of joint "operations," with the sole purpose of keeping the movie studios fat and happy.
And in Hong Kong, Hollywood star turned California governor Arnold Schwarzenneger recently staged a blatant Hollywood-inspired dog-and-pony show with martial arts comedian Jackie Chan.
But things are apparently different when it comes to free speech.
"Superficially, members of China's Internet community are free to search for whatever they want. But when using the Google search engine, they will be unable to find information on certain topics," says an editorial in the Tapei Times. "You are free to set up a Web log (blog) and air your opinions, but you may well find that your blog is suddenly and inexplicably closed down. Those who assume that their Internet presence is anonymous may suddenly discover records of their transactions across the Internet used as evidence against them. On the Internet, the Chinese government is an omnipresent Big Brother, and in a cyberspace without borders, it has set up a "cyber curtain."
"That China has been able to create this 'cyber curtain' is not a reflection of its extensive power, but due rather to the connivance of the world's major Internet companies, who have provided the means for China to keep a tight rein on freedom of speech on the Internet. Google openly expressed its willingness to cooperate with the Chinese government, and Google staff have secretly connived with Chinese officials to ensure that certain search terms, which the government finds objectionable, will not turn up any results. Last year, Internet giant Yahoo provided information that helped the Chinese government to sentence "dissidents" Shi Tao (師濤) and Li Zhi (李志) to lengthy prison terms. Microsoft also shut down a popular Chinese-language blog that has published content unacceptable to the Chinese authorities.
"These leading Internet companies claim to espouse freedom and openness yet, in order to win access to the China market, they have seen fit to bow to pressure from Beijing. In doing so, they have sold out fundamental values. Human-rights organizations, Reporters without Borders and the international media, which all uphold freedom of speech, have harshly criticized the behavior of these firms.
"The struggle between money and values that these companies have entered into is a terrible one. The world's most popular Internet portal site, Yahoo, has stated that it is 'deeply concerned' by some governments' efforts to control access to the Web, and hopes that the 'cyber curtain' can be torn down.
"But the company is not so naive as to believe that any company, whatever its size or share price, can resist pressure applied by the Chinese government. That's why the firm has announced that it will cooperate with Internet, media and communications companies, and the US government, to resist efforts by the Chinese government to monitor Internet traffic. This is a late awakening, but it is certainly better than staying asleep.
"This battle against the pernicious affects of the cyber curtain will be fought on the keyboards and in the minds of every free individual. Every free person should write to the media and to their government to support freedom of speech; every person, organization and nation should express repugnance at China's violation of human rights, and call for the ripping down of China's 'cyber curtain'."
But is it all merely a question of time? Will China eventually let its people go?
"Even as China chills debate, filters out dissenting views and harasses or imprisons critics, many observers believe it eventually will lose the information battle," says the Los Angeles Times.
"I don't think they are winning because deep in Chinese people's hearts, they don't agree or obey," it quotes Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing lawyer and free-speech advocate, as saying.
"Ultimately, the authorities can't win with these sorts of tactics."
Also See:
BBC - Net firms face grilling on China, February 15, 2006
Tapei Times - China's censorship affects us all, February 15, 2006
Los Angeles Times - Battle Heats Up Over Chinese Censorship, February 15, 2006
=====================
If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It's a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
p2p news / p2pnet: "About 90 percent of software used in China is pirated, according to researcher IDC and the Business Software Alliance, a trade group funded by Microsoft Corp," says Bloomberg News, going on:
"DVD copies of Hollywood movies sell openly on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai for as little as $1 apiece."
Britain?s The Economist has questioned the veracity of both the BSA and IDC when it comes to statistics involving "piracy".
"It sounds too bad to be true," it said in BSA or just BS, "but, then, it might not be true.
"The association's figures rely on sample data that may not be representative, assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data," it says. "Moreover, the figures are presented in an exaggerated way by the BSA and International Data Corporation (IDC), a research firm that conducts the study. They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms.
?To derive its piracy rate, IDC estimates the average amount of software that is installed on a PC per country, using data from surveys, interviews and other studies. That figure is then reduced by the known quantity of software sold per country-a calculation in which IDC specialises. The result: a (supposed) amount of piracy per country. Multiplying that figure by the revenue from legitimate sales thus yields the retail value of the unpaid-for software. This, IDC and BSA claim, equals the amount of lost revenue.?
Meanwhile, China has closed 76 Web sites and arrested 18 people, "for providing downloads of Hollywood movies, music and other illegal content, responding to pressure from the U.S. and Europe [read Hollywood] for enhanced protection of intellectual property," says Bloomberg.
It has the US movie, publishing, software and recording industries saying illegal reproduction of their goods in China caused losses of $2.4 billion last year and, "The Bush administration is considering complaining to the World Trade Organization, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman said yesterday," it states.
Would that America's top administrators, Shotgun Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, would exert the same kind of pressure on US companies that support censorship in China.
Also See:
Bloomberg News - China Shuts 76 Web Sites, Arrests 18 in Online Piracy Crackdown, February 15, 2006
BSA or just BS - New student file sharing horror, August 22, 2005
=====================
If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It's a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Legal options in digital entertainment are growing. But they come with restrictions that can hobble your ability to enjoy the content you've paid for--and even threaten your control over your system.
Dan Tynan
From the March 2006 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006
« Previous Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next »
As we move to a world where all entertainment is delivered digitally, the battle over copyright protection is turning into a full-blown war. And consumer rights may end up being the biggest casualty as media companies hunker down and try to redefine what users can and can't do with the content they've paid for and the hardware they own.
From Apple's iTunes and Real Networks' Rhapsody music network to movie rental sites like CinemaNow and Starz' Vongo, legitimate digital media services are exploding. But each additional option brings a new battle, new restrictions, and even new dangers for unsuspecting users. Copy protection included in Sony BMG audio CDs allowed virus writers to co-opt the system and sneak onto users' PCs. Satellite and HD Radio, which promise higher-quality audio and more content, may become difficult for listeners to record if the music industry has its way. And TV fans are finding that cable stations are limiting their ability to time-shift shows; pending federal legislation may curtail their rights even more.
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Worse, since we last looked at this battle in 2002, technology firms, which once struck a balance between the rights of content owners and the rights of users, have sided more and more with Hollywood as they strive to secure the content they believe will help sell their products.
We'll look at the multiple fronts of the digital wars--from file sharing to music to TV--and give you a hint of what's next.
* Copyrights and Wrongs
* Musical Discord
* Digital TV Behind Gates
* Vista Blurs High-Def
* Playing Fair
* Digital Media Faq
Next Page: Copyrights and Wrongs
Copyrights and Wrongs
Peer-to-peer file sharing remains the bogeyman, driving entertainment companies toward ever-increasing control over content. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision holding Grokster liable for the actions of its copyright-defying users, and despite more than 13,000 lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, file swapping is still growing. According to P-to-P research site Big Champagne, some 6.5 million U.S. users share files at any one time--up more than 30 percent from the year before.
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Media companies have responded in two ways. Using their influence in Washington, D.C., they've pushed for laws friendlier to the rights of content owners. At the same time, Hollywood has threatened to withhold access to its libraries unless electronics manufacturers build devices with sufficient copy protection.
This is not the way the copyright process was supposed to work, according to Jessica Litman, author of Digital Copyright (Prometheus Books, 2001).
"Copyright law was intended to protect reading, viewing, and listening as much as creating and distributing," says Litman, a professor of copyright law at Wayne State University Law School. "Now it takes what people previously saw as their rights and treats them as loopholes the copyright owners will close, if they can."
Take books, for example. You can read a book anywhere you want, skip chapters at will, give the book away or sell it, quote portions of it on your blog, or scan it into your PC and print out a copy. And when the book eventually becomes part of the public domain, you can do anything you please with it--including printing copies and selling them at a profit.
Buy an electronic book, however, and your rights start to wither. You're now subject to the terms of an end-user license agreement. Depending on the EULA, you may be able to read the book on only a limited number of machines (usually just one), and you probably won't be allowed to sell it, lend it, or make backup copies.
As you move up the content spectrum to digital music, movies, radio, and TV, the rules can be just as restrictive.
"[Hollywood's] model is to make experiencing copyrighted material--reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie--legally like going to a movie theater," Litman says. They want you to buy a ticket, watch ads, eat only their food, leave when they want you to, and pay for it all again each time you do it, she says.
Brad Hunt, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the MPAA, disagrees, arguing that content owners are seeking ways to offer users more options than they have with today's media. "Instead of saying 'here's the movie locked to a piece of plastic, take it or leave it,' content owners may make other rights available to you to do more with it," he explains.
Next Page: Musical Discord
Musical Discord
The primary battleground for digital content has long been music. To combat widespread file swapping, the record industry has attempted both copy protection for CDs--most notoriously in the form of Sony BMG's XCP rootkit (see "Copy Controls: How Far Will They Go?" for more)--and digital rights management schemes for online music. Each has made life more difficult for legal purchasers of music.
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Usually, copy-protected CDs don't prevent you from making copies so much as they limit how many copies you can make and where you can make them. If you played a protected Sony CD on your PC, for example, you could rip three copies of the CD to your hard drive. If you then put this music into your Windows Media Player library, you could burn three other CDs. But Sony's XCP scheme prevented iPod fans from easily copying MP3s from the CD to their music libraries, though a workaround was available upon request.
Online music rules are even more complex. You can play music purchased from iTunes on up to five systems, for example, but if you want to add a sixth, you have to log on to one of the other machines and "de-authorize" it. You can burn a playlist to a CD, but no more than seven times. You can share tunes across five computers on a local network, but the other users can only listen to the music. Still more restrictive are the rules for iTunes' video downloads--there's no sharing at all.
Yet as DRM schemes go, iTunes' FairPlay system is fairly transparent, Jupiter senior analyst Joe Wilcox notes. "People know it's there only if they try to violate it," he says, adding that with Windows DRM, he's had problems with both legit music playback and the purchasing process.
Moreover, incompatible DRM schemes can lock users into a particular technology. If you purchase your music from iTunes, realistically you have two options: to buy iPods for the rest of your life--since iTunes music won't play on other players--or to ditch your library and start over. Players that support Windows Media Audio DRM are more plentiful, but similar restrictions apply to them.
Later this year, new DRM technologies may challenge the hegemony of FairPlay and WMA, says Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies and editor of DRMwatch in New York. One approach, the Marlin DRM scheme, is based on personal identity: It would let you access content on a variety of portable devices according to who you are, not what device you're using. Another DRM platform, code-named Coral, would allow service providers to convert content from one DRM format to another, making it playable on a wider variety of devices. Both schemes are backed by two closely allied consortia whose members include 20th Century Fox, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, and Sony.
Navio, a small Silicon Valley startup, is taking yet another tack. Instead of buying digital files, users, in Navio's scheme, buy the rights to enjoy them. So when a user is at work but wants to hear a song that he downloaded at home, he can log in to Navio, which confirms that he has rights to the song and allows him to download or stream the song to a new device. Files can still use DRM technology to prevent unfettered file swapping, while consumers get many of the same freedoms they've grown used to with analog content.
Navio CEO Stefan Roever, whose company seeks to change purchasers of digital media into buyers of the rights to enjoy that media in myriad devices."If the rights are properly defined and ubiquitous, they'll become more valuable to consumers than the actual files," says Navio CEO Stefan Roever. Then only people with no money and lots of time will fool around with file sharing, he adds.
Navio already enforces media rights for the Fox Sports and Fox Music Web sites, and at press time it was preparing to announce a deal with a major record label.
Meanwhile, another front is opening in the war over digital music: The RIAA is pushing for legislation that would prohibit listeners from recording or sharing individual songs broadcast via new digital radio services unless they paid a fee for each song. Nevertheless, the group favors being able to record digital radio in blocks of 30 minutes or longer.
"We support time-shifting," says RIAA spokesperson Jenni Engebretsen, but not "cherry-picking individual songs and storing them in a library on an MP3 player in a manner that substitutes for a sale."
According to Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group based in Washington, D.C., such rules would extinguish fair-use rights that listeners have enjoyed in the past--there are no such restrictions on the right to record personal copies of songs from traditional radio broadcasts.
Next Page: Digital TV Behind Gates
Digital TV Behind Gates
The battle over rights in the digital TV arena is already well under way. By March 1, 2007, according to Federal Communications Commission rules, all new TV devices (tuners, VCRs, DVRs, and set-top boxes) for sale in the United States must be capable of receiving digital TV signals. For the past few years, media conglomerates have been scrambling to keep their expensively produced, highly profitable digital content from drifting all over the Net. But the protections they've devised may keep viewers from doing things they are accustomed to doing--such as recording, time-shifting, and sharing shows.
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In 2003, the FCC ruled that over-the-air digital TV shows must carry an 8-bit "flag" that broadcasters could use to limit how viewers recorded such programs; all TV gear would have had to recognize this flag. But last May, a federal court struck down the broadcast flag, ruling that the FCC had exceeded its authority. Flag supporters have tried to persuade Congress to authorize the flag; that has yet to happen.
The MPAA's Hunt says such controls are necessary. "If content owners have no assurance there will be some form of protection from redistributing digital TV, that high-value content normally provided to broadcasters would move into the pay-TV world," he says. That could mean networks like ABC and NBC might no longer get the rights to show Star Wars or Harry Potter movies, for example.
Meanwhile, TiVo owners recently got a taste of what life under such a flag might be like. Last September the popular DVR service changed how it responded to the Macrovision copy protection built into pay-per-view and video-on-demand content. For the first time, content owners could prevent viewers from recording PPV and VOD shows on a DVR. They could also require deletion of shows from the recorder after a certain period. TiVo already prevented viewers from burning protected content to DVDs or using the TiVoToGo service to transfer it to a PC.
Fred von Lohman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, says that this change is a classic case of content owners taking away features consumers have paid for.
"Two years ago the TiVo you bought did one thing, and now suddenly it does something different," he says. "Despite the fact we're buying more media than ever before, products are treating us more and more like pirates each day."
But TiVo VP of product marketing Jim Denney says the changes have had little impact on the vast majority of TiVo users.
More restrictions may be on the way for home recording. At press time, sponsors had just introduced the Digital Content Security Act (HR 4569) in the House. This bill would close the "analog hole" by requiring devices that allow users to make digital copies from analog sources to employ copy protection technology. If the analog hole were closed, protected shows could carry signals that prevented them from being copied by any device at all, or could limit copies and prohibit them from being digitally redistributed, or could restrict viewers' time-shifting abilities to within 90 minutes after a broadcast.
Next-generation home recording via high-capacity blue-laser DVD technology promises a little more freedom but also additional restrictions. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs (the two major blue-laser DVD formats) will carry a digital watermark that will let players identify illegally copied discs and prevent playback of the content. Backers of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats have announced their support for "mandatory managed copies," which will allow home users to make a single copy of their high-definition discs and share them across a home network--something that consumers can't legally do with today's commercial DVDs.
Next Page: Vista Blurs High-Def
Vista Blurs High-Def
If microsoft has its way, your digital entertainment options will be served via a PC in your living room. To fully enjoy the benefits of digital content, however, you may have to buy new hardware.
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When Windows Vista appears later this year, it will allow playback of HD video--but it may do so only if your monitor or TV supports Intel's High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection scheme. Without a DVI or HDMI port that handles HDCP, your aging 42-inch plasma set could display the film at lower DVD-quality resolution, or not play it at all (for details, see "Most Monitors Won't Play HD Video,"). The same will likely be true of Blu-ray and HD DVD recorders, though final specs of the content protection scheme for those two formats were not available at press time.
The Vista DRM scheme puts playback decisions in the hands of content providers. But showing the content at a lower resolution is more likely than shutting it off, says Marcus Matthias, a product manager in Microsoft's Digital Media Division. "Frankly, we'd have zero interest in doing all this if it wasn't something [that content owners that Microsoft partners with] were interested in having," he admits.
Although HDTVs sold today typically support digital copy protection via their HDMI ports, many older models do not. According to Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research for market research firm iSuppli in San Jose, California, the percentage of HDCP-compatible computer monitors was "in the low single digits" when she surveyed the market in 2005.
HDCP will make it more difficult for consumers to share HD content--and will keep them from making legal "fair use" copies--by preventing the capture of HD programs by unlicensed devices. But like most DRM schemes, it's unlikely to stop determined pirates. In 2001 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University uncovered several flaws in the scheme, long before it was developed for commercial purposes. German electronics company Spatz is already selling devices that it claims convert HDCP signals for non-HDCP displays.
Olin Sibert, a longtime DRM developer, believes that Vista's DRM, while technologically impressive, is unlikely to be effective in the long run. "Content that can be experienced can also be copied. You can place obstacles in the way, but you can't ensure content will never be copied."
Next Page: Playing Fair
Playing Fair
Only the most rabid BitTorrent users would want to live in a world where copyrights don't exist, but nobody wants one side to call all the shots either.
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"Hollywood is speaking with one voice, holding the reins on the one thing everyone needs: content," says EFF's von Lohman. "In that kind of environment, consumers are going to get screwed."
But Microsoft's Matthias says that it's in everyone's best interest to find solutions that media firms and users can live with. "At the end of the day, if consumers don't see a value proposition for next-generation content, there are a lot of very big companies who've made some very big bets that aren't going to pan out," he notes.
As happened with the backlash against Sony BMG's copy protection technology, users must reject bad DRM schemes--not because they violate computer security, but because they punish the people who actually paid for the digital content, say consumer advocates.
"One approach [to piracy] is to make it as hard as possible to create and share illegal copies of digital content," writes Navio's Roever in his corporate blog. "Another is to make it as attractive and easy as possible to buy digital content. The more successful the industry becomes at achieving the latter, the less it will need to rely on the former."
Next Page: Digital Media Faq
Digital Media Faq
Music
Work with--and around--content protection on your digital music files.
How do I know whether my CD has copy protection on it? Copy-protected CDs often come with a label identifying them as such, though that's not legally required. Amazon.com clearly identifies CDs containing copy protection schemes, so searching there for the CD title may turn up the answer.
Ack! My CD has DRM all over it. What can I do? Not a lot. Most tools for bypassing DRM are illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, though low-tech workarounds exist. Some users have circumvented Sony BMG's copy protection by placing a strip of tape on the CD's outer edge where the data layer is, to stop the PC from reading it--but if the tape comes loose, it could gum up your CD drive. Other solutions involve drawing over the outside track with a black marker or disabling the computer's autorun feature--and thereby preventing the copy protection software from loading--by holding down the <Shift> key as the CD loads.
Can't I rip MP3s without a PC? If your MP3 player offers in-line recording, you can legally rip MP3 files directly to it from your stereo, bypassing your PC. Archos, Cowon, iRiver, and Samsung all make players with this feature. Video Without Boundaries' Flyboy portable video player can do the same with DVDs. Since this method relies on analog output and doesn't break digital encryption, it doesn't run afoul of the DMCA.
Video
Beware of viewing and recording pitfalls as you navigate the digital video waters.
My DVR has "flagged" a program I recorded and will delete it in a week. Is it still possible to keep a copy? Nope. If content owners use Macrovision's copy protection to flag a program, you can't burn a copy of that show to any other storage medium. But this affects only a small number of pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs, and it applies only to TiVo subscribers--so far. Other video recorders or TV service providers may have different rules; for example, the Dish satellite network lets you record pay-per-view programs but not its Dish on Demand movies.
I'm in the market for a new high-def display. Should I wait until the DRM dust settles before I buy? Not necessarily. Virtually all new HDTVs have an HDCP-compatible digital interface, which is the one new HD players will use. More and more PC monitors do, too; look for the term "HDCP-HDMI" in the product description as you shop.
Contributing Editor Dan Tynan writes PC World's monthly Gadget Freak column. He is also the author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, from O'Reilly Media.
p2p news / p2pnet: Can you imagine world without data compression? And where you never have to back anything up?
US inventor Michael Thomas, owner of Colossal Storage, hopes to achieve exactly that. He says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn utlimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage, to be exact.
To put that into perspective, mega is 1,024 times kilo, giga is 1024 times mega, tera is 1,024 times giga and peta is 1,240 times tera.
Back in May, 2004, we wrote, "Electrons' electro magnetic properties cause an interesting effect that you depend on. Absolutely. It's called electricity and electric current is measured by the abundance, or lack, of electrons in the ferroelectric nucleus, better known as voltage or static charge. Ferroelectric spintronics is, in turn, the method by which electric fields and photons change the properties of ferroelectric molecules."
In the past, data storage has only been able to orient the direction a field of electrons as they move around a molecule, Thomas told p2pnet. "But now there's a way to rotate or spin the individual electrons that make up, or surround, the molecule," he says.
"Normally all the electrons could spin randomly working against the best electrical signal. The electrons are also capable of spinning in both directions a once. But my unique method for creating uniform in-sync spinning electrons will for the first time allow a whole new field of science and electronics to emerge.
"With the ability to control electron spin we will see much smaller electronic devices on the market."
An analogy would be our solar system with all the planets circling the Sun in a clockwise direction. Spintronics would add spin to the planets and their moons in a determined direction as they rotated around the sun.
"One field under study is optical spintronics following Faradays laws," Thomas continues. "The potential data capacity is enormous, and there'd be a very high data transfer rate. Consequently, there'd be no need for expensive compression software like MPEG and others, and no need to backup data."
The goal of spintronics is to generate a perfect spin current using an electric field and UV photons in a high-k dipole dielectric material like a ferroelectric molecule, says Thomas, going on:
"It was important for the material to be a bianry dipole that could then be made reversible, have non-dissipative of power, and not suffer from leakage current lost over time."
What would this mean to you? It would allow the manufacture of double sided disks made by separating the ferroelectric molecular coating layers by a plastic, metal, glass, or ceramic substrate.
And how would this allow you to store immense amounts of data on the discs?
"I'm convinced intraband / outerband resonant absorption by circularly polarized UV photons leads to spin polarization of electrons and, that it's possible to create an 'Atomic Quantum Switch' which carries an electro-static field, electro-magnetic field, and spin orientation," he said.
"And that can be made to represent non-volatile 0's and 1's."
Thomas' agent in Japan is in talks with "several big name companies," he states, saying he expects it'll be two to three years before prototypes will be built.
"I'd say we can expect a finished product to be on the market in about four to five years," he says, adding the cost would probably be in the range of $750 each.
Thomas is a 30-year pioneer whose projects include a computer with a 3D display, instant response, able to run every available OS and application simultaneously, virtually no power consumption or moving parts and complete security - and whose physical component is about the size of a pack of playing cards.
Also See:
spintronics - Spintronics, May 6, 2004
instant response - Every file you ever owned on 1 disc, February 25, 2004
Many MP3 players become obsolete within a year of launch
Posted by Seán Byrne on 15 February 2006 - 00:53 - Source: Independent Online Edition
While the vinyl record is considered obsolete as a medium for music since the 90's, the record was invented back in 1900, starting off as a 78rpm 10" disc. Later on 45rpm and 33rpm records came out, however a good majority of later record players could play even the earliest 78rpm records. While vinyl has pretty much done away with in most music stores today, it was one of the longest running popular means of carrying music. The cassette had a shorter life, which was introduced in 1963 by the Philips Corporation and began dying out as medium for pre-recorded music in the late 90's. The MiniDisc had an even shorter lifespan of about 8 years before it got taken over my MP3 players, at least as portable player for music.
Now, we are already seeing many MP3 players becoming obsolete. For example, consumers are ditching their 1 to 2 year-old models for shiny new models, just like most consumers replace their mobile phone. A lot of the early versions do not support DRM, which makes them unsuitable for most music download stores. While Apple now allows users to send in their iPod for a battery replacement, not that long ago, Apple expected consumers to fork out on a new iPod once the battery gave up after about 1.5 years of average use.
Finally, Sony which has only launched their Sony Walkman Bean just six months ago has already discontinued it. The Bean was well featured with a 50 hour battery life, 45g weight, but with poor sales, Sony decided it will discontinue this model in April.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There was time when that phrase carried technological currency. You didn't buy a new television just because your 1960s wooden cabinet version had gathered a little dust.
Sony's Walkman Bean had the basic specs for success: it is well-designed, smaller (just 45g) and cheaper (£79-£99) than the celebrated iPod, and has up to 50 hours of battery life. But after less than six months on the market, Sony has announced that the Bean will be discontinued in April.
The reason behind this can be traced back 40 years to one Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. He predicted that the number of transistors on a chip - and so its performance - would double roughly every two years. "Moore's law" is what drove the quick growth of computer processors in the 1990s. Now cameras, TVs and music players have also "gone digital", a similar theory applies.
The industry says that the quickening pace of technological change, and more importantly, the growing influence of fashion, means that most mobile phones and digital cameras are discontinued within nine months.
The full article, which also discuses about the short lifecycles of TVs, VCRs, mobile phones and digital cameras can be read here.
With Apple coming out with a new iPod every couple of months, all it takes is for a couple of months to go by and before their new model to become discontinued. While there are a few improvements that can be made to the iPod, it will be interesting to see what Apple will come out in the next generations. At least for now, their iTunes store is still compatible with their earliest iPods, however it will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Even though a new pre-recorded cassette will play back in cassette player made 40 years ago, chances are that the iPod may become obsolete over the next couple of years, particularly with how quickly technology is changing and the music industry constantly trying to impose tougher DRM measures.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13068
Why your MP3 player is already out of date
After less than six months on the market, Sony's Walkman Bean is to be discontinued - a victim of the digital revolution and the fashion for ruthlessly upgrading. Oliver Duff reports
Published: 14 February 2006
f it ain't broke, don't fix it. There was time when that phrase carried technological currency. You didn't buy a new television just because your 1960s wooden cabinet version had gathered a little dust.
Sony's Walkman Bean had the basic specs for success: it is well-designed, smaller (just 45g) and cheaper (£79-£99) than the celebrated iPod, and has up to 50 hours of battery life. But after less than six months on the market, Sony has announced that the Bean will be discontinued in April.
The reason behind this can be traced back 40 years to one Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. He predicted that the number of transistors on a chip - and so its performance - would double roughly every two years. "Moore's law" is what drove the quick growth of computer processors in the 1990s. Now cameras, TVs and music players have also "gone digital", a similar theory applies.
The industry says that the quickening pace of technological change, and more importantly, the growing influence of fashion, means that most mobile phones and digital cameras are discontinued within nine months.
Televisions and DVD equipment fare a little better but current hardware will be rendered obsolete by the imminent arrival of "high definition" pictures, incompatible with any models older than two years.
"You do get exceptions, but six to nine months is about standard [shelf life] for the majority of mobiles," said Bryan Magrath, the operations and marketing director of Dixons.
In the past year, the company has phased out video recorders, portable cassette players, 35mm film cameras and, most recently, cathode ray tube televisions. "The rates of sale on these products slowed to such an extent that it is no longer viable to keep them in store," said Mr Magrath.
The reason behind this is obvious, really: the digital revolution. "A lot of products that had longer life cycles in the past were analogue and weren't running on the digital treadmill," he explained. "Once products start to have integrated circuits, they get into the relentless upgrading you see with computers."
There is a more fickle reason behind the quickening turnover of consumer electronics: fashion. "Our attitude to technology has changed from using something until it breaks beyond repair, to constantly replacing it because something cooler is in the market. I know people with five or six iPods who change their mobile every few months. That's not unusual,"said Tom Dunmore, editor-in-chief of the gadget magazine Stuff.
Until recently, old mobile phones were treated as obsolete kitchen drawer-fillers but they have enjoyed a resurgence as users tire of relentlessly-expanding functions and the nostalgia for 1980s "brick chic" grows.
Garry Evans runs RetroFones, a website selling second-hand phones. He reports that some mobile users prefer an older handset. Two classic favourites are the late Nineties Motorola StarTAC that became the blueprint for today's flip-top mobiles, and the Nokia 8110, famous for featuring in The Matrix.
"The problem with phones today is that they are so complicated they are more prone to breaking down," he said. "There are more things that could go wrong and I don't think they are manufactured to last.
"If your phone breaks down, it's cheaper to buy a new one than have your old one repaired."
Mr Magrath says that when Dixons purchases break: "We divide products into two categories. Pretty much anything under £150 probably isn't worth repairing."
Mobile phones
Modern mobile phone technology is said to date back to April 1973 when a Motorola employee, Dr Martin Cooper placed a gloating call to his rival Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs, while walking the streets of New York talking on a Motorola DynaTAC. It weighed almost a kilogram and looked like a beige welly.
Bell Labs launched a trial commercial cellular network five years later in Chicago, but mobiles only began to proliferate in the mid-1980s with the introduction of the first generation of "cellular" phones. Initially, these were designed for installation in cars, but some were converted for use as "transportable" phones. They were the size of a briefcase and cost thousands of pounds.
In the 1990s came the second generation of digital phones. The larger "bricks" disappeared and tiny 100-200g devices became the norm.
When WAP internet technology was introduced in 2000, comparatively few users took advantage. The same was true of the third-generation (3-G) technology, meant to convert the handset into an entertainment centre.
The Motorola E1000, now retailing for free on most contracts, was one of the first 3-G phones on the market, but while it had the new technology, it was huge and had a comparatively short battery life. It will be relegated to the dustbin with the release of the company's 3D version of its super-slim V3 phone.
Digital cameras
The first camera dates back to ancient Greece, with the pinhole camera obscura. But while the camera - in its simplest form - worked, there was no way of preserving images. The first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.
In 1889, Thomas Edison invented the first commercially successful camera. But amateur photography did not take off until 1923, when Eastman Kodak produced the first 16mm reversal safety film, and Bell & Howell introduced cameras and projectors with which to use it.
The first digital camera, developed in the 1970s, weighed 8lbs, was the size of a loaf of bread and captured black and white images on a digital cassette at a resolution of .01 megapixels. Steven Sasson, an engineer working for Eastman Kodak, is credited with the design.
Technology has come so far and so fast that anything currently on sale below four megapixels is of questionable worth because there are already camera phones - notably by Nokia and Sharp (for Vodafone) that take three-megapixel pictures. More are on the way, meaning that it is hardly worth paying a premium on such low-quality pictures. At the higher-spec end, once non-professional photographers move past nine megapixels - more than adequate to enlarge to A3 print size - it becomes overkill. Expected developments in digicam technology include such basics as moving the power button further from the capture button - so a rushed attempt to take a picture doesn't turn the camera off - and obtaining better quality in poor lighting, currently a big downer.
Music players
Developed in the 1870s by Thomas Edison, the gramophone, or phonograph, was the first device for listening to recorded music. Cylindrical tube-like records were used; the 10-inch disc was developed 30 years later in 1900 and record players became the most popular way of listening to music for almost 100 years.
In 1963, the Philips Corporation introduced the cassette recorder. They became widespread in living rooms and in cars, and reached the pinnacle of their performance by the mid-1980s. But in 1988, the advent of compact discs eclipsed both the cassette, and the record player. The MiniDisc had a brief heyday in 1996, but soon became obsolete as the MP3 player began to dominate the market.
The iPod digital music player, which has colonised the online music market, was introduced in 2001. Domination has been secured with the opening of the iTunes store (500m downloads by July 2005), smaller models (the Mini, the Nano and the Shuffle), a 60 gigabyte video iPod, and a new remote control iMac computer with easy access to music, photos and movies. Tens of millions of players have been sold. Most other MP3 players, like Sony's Bean, have struggled against such market dominance.
Computers
The personal computer has come a long way since the birth of the abacus some two millennia ago. Charles Babbage is credited with being the first person to design a fully programmable computer as early as 1837 - an "analytical engine" that would use punched cards and operate on steam power.
It wasn't really until the Second World War, when the military required fast, accurate retrieval of electronic data, that computers stepped out of the pages of science fiction and into reality. One notable achievement was the American ENIAC (1943) which used 18,000 vacuum tubes and 1,800 square feet of floorspace.
In the 1970s, technology moved on from very powerful single-purpose computers to cheaper systems for the consumer market. The Apple II, launched in 1977 from the modest surroundings of Steve Jobs' parents' garage, was many people's first foray into personal computing, and its popularity allowed the trio to create a team of computer designers and a production line.
Computing has become ever more affordable, although the Mac Mini (£359) will be left out in the cold when Apple moves all of its computers to Intel processors (the Mac Mini has a G4 processor, now two generations old).
Now that PC development has reached the boundaries of most people's expectations, ever-increasing processor sizes are only really useful for those who want 3D gaming - the next wave of machines will be "media centres" for the living room. The basic idea is a "computer in a telly" with only one cable - the power cable. It will have a wireless mouse, keyboard and internet capability - and a wide screen. One such machine is the Sony VA1, released next month.
Video recorders
The first professional videos were Quadraplex machines introduced by Ampex in the US in 1956. They became the industry standard for 20 years and had good picture quality, but they also had drawbacks: expense, an inability to freeze pictures and quick-wearing tape heads.
It was not until the 1970s that videotape moved into the mass market, with the arrival of the Japanese analogue systems: Sony's Beta (1975) and JVC's VHS (1976). VHS won that format battle due to its longer tape time (three hours, compared to 60 minutes) and was adopted as the industry standard for film releases for more than 20 years. But VHS finally succumbed to the disc-based DVD format after it was introduced in 1997, gradually overtaking VHS sales and rentals to the point where VHS is no longer sold and will before long become the concern of historical collectors.
DVD technology has developed to allow affordable recording. £399 buys a Sony DVD/HDD recorder, allowing you to not only record to DVDs, but also store your favourite films on an 80GB hard drive. The problem is that existing DVD technology is not all that it is cracked up to be: it will begin the journey to obsolescence when incompatible high-definition televisions start flying off the shelves. The real question is who will win the format war: Blu-ray discs or HD DVDs (available later this year).
The profligacy of digital video formats on the internet means that standalone video players may in turn succumb to "media centre" computers in people's lounges.
Televisions
The small screen has come a long way since John Logie Baird gave the world's first public demonstration of a working television system in 1926. The squat model had a tiny little screen in the corner and a bulge at the back to cover the whirring discs of lenses that made it work.
In the past 80 years, the screen has become far bigger and of rather better quality than the 30 lines of scanned image he displayed, barely enough to reproduce a recognisable human face.
Baird's cumbersome set was quickly surpassed by the cathode ray tube (CRT) television, manufactured in the 1930s and used in almost all televisions for six decades until the invention of the LCD panel.
The turn of the millennium heralded the arrival of flat-screen plasma TVs working on similar principles to a fluorescent light, with gas injected between two panels to create ultraviolet rays and the red, green and blue phosphors which make up the image. Last month, Dixons announced it would no longer stock traditional CRT televisions.
For £1,200, Samsung sell a 42in flat-panel plasma television with a sharp, vibrant picture. The problem is that it will be obsolete after "high-definition" (HD) television arrives, offering twice the picture quality.
Couch potatoes with more cash may be interested to know JVC are releasing a gargantuan 70in HD TV in March, expected to retail for under £3,500. The only problem is they may have to sell the couch to get it in the living-room.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article345...
Apple investigates iPod batteries after five seperate lawsuits
Posted by Dennis on 11 February 2004 - 18:41 - Source: BBC NEWS
Quakester2000 and GristyMcFisty both used our news submit to tell us that Apple is investigating the batteries of their iPod portable digital music players. The investigation is a result of five lawsuits, which were filed against the company in December last year. The reason for the lawsuits are the iPod's batteries. The battery life is not as long as Apple advertised and besides that, the battery life degrades over time.
In its quarterly financial report to the US Securities and Exchange, Apple said it had been named in the class action suits and that it would be looking into the claims alleging "misrepresentations by the company relative to iPod battery life".
The allegations detailed in the legal action, under the names Chin, Keegan, Hughes, Westly and Craft, include unfair competition and claims of false advertising, fraudulent concealment and breach of warranty, Apple says.
The lawsuits say Apple's claims about the built-in battery have violated California's competition laws, and that it has breached the state's Consumer Legal Remedies Act.
Since the end of last year, Apple has offered an extended warranty scheme which covers iPod owners for an extra year. It has also provided a battery replacement for affected iPods, at an extra cost to consumers.
p2p news / p2pnet: Some 87% of 2,484 students polled at 150 Canadian colleges and universities say they've had "virtual sex" online.
What is virtual sex?
Dating service CampusKiss.com (Yup) doesn't say, exactly, but as part of a Valentine Day promo post, it gives an amazingly detailed set of answers to questions in which 51% of males and 49% of females said they'd had virtual sex, listing IM (53%), webcam (48%) and phones (44%) as the most loved (ahem) means.
Offline, locales listed as unusual places for sex included:
* campus bar (2.4%)
* classroom (4.24%)
* Parent's bed (16%)
* library (4.63%)
* prof's office (1.68%)
* public transport (5.93%)
* public washroom (15.18%)
But a, "whopping 46% of students chose 'other' to this question with places as wild as graveyard among the most popular".
And women seem more daring than men, says the survey - 50.3% versus 42% choosing 'other' locales including:
* Goodwill dumpster
* Airport runway
* Alexander Graham Bell Museum
* back of my mom's car as she was driving it
* traveling freakshow caravan
So what's the first thing the people who answered the questions do afterwards?
Some 32%, "go running to the bathroom" (35% of women vs 30% of men), 31% fall asleep, 19% light up and 12%, "get the munchies and go to the fridge".
5.9.1.1, 2006 02 15
- Important: When installing this version over an existing
installation, you must reboot your machine. Otherwise the changes
made in the AnyDVD device driver will not have any effect!
- New: Added workaround for DVDShrink / Nero Recode "Out of memory"
error when copying Macrovision RipGuard protected discs with
menus, e.g. "Madagascar" R1 (US)
- New: Error zones on RipGuard/Arccos/PuppetLock protected titles are
now replaced with "valid material". 3rd party tools like DVDDecrypter
will now work better (no more "Pack Header Error" messages - another try,
this time it should really work).
- Note: To use DVDDecrypter with AnyDVD set I/O Model to SPTI or ElbyCDIO.
Set CSS Cracking method to none. Disable checking for structure
protection.
- New: Added "AnyDVD Ripper". This little tool repairs defective DVDs
while copying them to your harddisk. It can be started from the menu of
the AnyDVD fox icon. It can be started as a stand alone application from
the start menu as well, so it can be used even if AnyDVD is not registered
and the trial period has expired.
It is identical to FixVTS (http://www.videohelp.com/~FixVTS/) but instead
of fixing problems "in place" it copies the files to your harddisk directly
from the source DVD. It fixes the problems while the files are copied.
Some DVDs which have severe mastering defects e.g.,
"Menace II Society" R1 (US) can now be copied with all DVD copy tools
(elby CloneDVD, DVDShrink, etc.) Many thanks to the author of FixVTS!
- Fix: Hang after update check with some system configurations
- Some minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages
CloneCD is a powerful CD-Copy program. It writes in Raw mode, which allows it to have total control on the data written. Therefore, it will produce real 1:1 copies of your CDs. Because of its special operation, it requires a CD-Writer which is capable of writing in this mode.
CloneCD 5.2.8.1 Changes:
- Fix: Capacity of DVD-R media was sometimes not reported correctly
- Updated languages
p2p news / p2pnet: The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD)says it's the area's largest provider of contract law services and that the concept has proven so successful that to date, 40 of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County were using it, "for their complete municipal law enforcement services".
Does Hollywood count as a city? Maybe that's why the MPAA and RIAA were able to get LSAD officers to act as music and move industry cops to "develop and implement innovative tactics to protect artists, songwriters, record labels and many others in the music community".
Wow.
"Whether the pirates are on the street or on the tracks, they cannot escape the radar of these vigilant officials," declares Mike Robinson, the MPAA's (Motion Picture Association of America" new director of US Anti-Piracy Operations.
So what did the LASD do to earn such fulsome praise?
They nailed nine subway hawkers who were peddling counterfeit CDs and DVDs.
?Just as piracy changes, so must our enforcement strategies," says Brad Buckles, Robinson's opposite number in the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). "We cannot allow our nation?s public transportation system to serve as a vehicle for the pirate goods trade." After all, "allowing criminals to line their pockets through the sale of pirated music ? hurts local record stores, and musicians".
Indeed. And it's "damaging to the quality of life in the community as well," he states without explaining what it's damaging, or how.
The investigation was jointly conducted by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Transit Services Bureau, the MPAA and the RIAA, boast the latter two in a joint puff release.
They don't say how many sheriff's officers were involved in the farce, how much it cost or how many other investigations were side-lined while it was in hand.
If anyone has any doubts about the content industry's resolve to destroy fair use and usher in new ways of charging you for uses that were previously both free and fair, look no further. As part of the triennial review of the effectiveness of the DMCA, a number of content-related industries have filed a joint reply (PDF)
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/reply/11metalitz_AAP.pdf
with the government on the effectiveness of the DMCA and the challenges that lay ahead for copyright. As you might expect, the document is a celebration of the DMCA, and the industries are pushing for even more egregious abuses of technology to fatten up their bottom lines.
With regards to the argument that the DMCA is bad law because it prevents users from making backups, the joint reply dismissed such arguments as "uncompelling." First, they argue that there is no evidence that "any of the relevant media are 'unusually subject to damage in the ordinary course of their use.'" This "cart-before-the-horse" argument suggests that people do not need to backup anything that does not have a high failure rate?a view that fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of backups. Furthermore, they argue that the success of DVD sales vis-à-vis VHS demonstrates that whatever problem there might be, it's not big enough to matter to consumers, because DVD sales are skyrocketing while VHS isn't. Thus high sales volumes are indicators that the consumer are well served, which is an argument that we'll hope never takes hold in the pharmaceutical industry (Vioxx sure did sell well!).
Such are the lengths they will go through in order to keep the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA intact. But supporting the status quo isn't in their interest. No, the idea is to embrace and extend. To wit, the joint reply also argues that making backups of your CDs is also not fair use.
The [submitted arguments in favor of granting exemptions to the DMCA] provide no arguments or legal authority that making back up copies of CDs is a noninfringing use. In addition, the submissions provide no evidence that access controls are currently preventing them from making back up copies of CDs or that they are likely to do so in the future. Myriad online downloading services are available and offer varying types of digital rights management alternatives. For example, the Apple FairPlay technology allows users to make a limited number of copies for personal use. Presumably, consumers concerned with the ability to make back up copies would choose to purchase music from a service that allowed such copying. Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices. Similar to the motion picture industry, the recording industry has faced, in online piracy, a direct attack on its ability to enjoy its copyrights. (emphasis added)
As you can see, the argument is hinged partially on the cost of replacements. Why should you be allowed to make backups of CDs you've purchased when you can replace them? And why should CD backups be legal when users can already decided to purchase from (DRM-laden) services that do allow the limited copying of lossy music files? Here, again, we see the way in which the RIAA et al. would like to see contract law take over the domain of fair use. "Leave it up to DRM, you big dummies!"
But they're not done with that argument. The real kicker is buried in a footnote, where the joint reply suggests the unthinkable: that making copies of CDs for any purpose may, in fact, be infringement.
Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even "routinely" granted, see C6 at 8, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright holders in the Grokster case, is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.
Allow me to translate: just because people have been copying CDs in the past doesn't mean that that they had the authorization to do so, and a general trend does not override such explicit authorization. But as the EFF has picked up, the RIAA is engaging in a little historical revision. Their last comment about the Grokster case is attempting to change the substance of comments that were uttered by their own legal counsel. Why they would do this is abundantly clear when you see the statement in question:
"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."
It looks like someone is having a change of heart.
In the world of the joint reply, if and when the RIAA and its member studios say that copying your CDs is not permitted, then it's not permitted. Forget fair use. Forget historical precedent. The joint reply here is arguing that copyright owners have the authority to deny what has become fair use?what their own lawyers have admitted is fair use in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. The upshot is that this argument suggests that the most common form of CD "copying"?namely ripping CDs for use on computers and portable players?is not necessarily fair use. The joint reply adds:
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use, for reasons similar to those the Register canvassed in detail in her 2003 determination that back-up copying of DVDs cannot be treated as noninfringing. [Ed note: see above arguments.] While we recognize that access controls may in some circumstances affect copying, the fact remains that there is no general exception to the reproduction right to allow back-up copying (except the limited exception in § 117 for computer programs) and thus no justification for allowing circumvention of access controls for this purpose.
Inasmuch as the joint reply was grafted in defense of the DMCA, it remains unclear if the RIAA has any plans to take up this line of argument in front of legislators or the public. It does mark, however, yet another development in the erosion of fair use, and it demonstrates that the insidious notion of "customary historic use" stems from part of the industry's campaign to legislate new business models that fly in the face of fair use, the doctrine of first sale, and limited copyrights.
EFF says Clear Channel patent doesn't sound right 2/15/2006 5:05:25 PM, by Peter Pollack
A while back, we reported on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) effort to take down some of the bogus patents that have been popping up in recent years?patents granted on previously existing or very obvious technology. Yesterday they decided to throw down the gauntlet on one of them: the recording patent purchased by Clear Channel in 2004, which that company claims grants them exclusive rights over any system used to make recordings during concerts with the goal of offering them for sale in digital format immediately afterward.
Clear Channel claims that its patent creates a monopoly on all-in-one technologies that produce post-concert live recordings on digital media and has threatened to sue anyone who makes such recordings with a different system. This has forced bands like the Pixies into using Clear Channel's proprietary technology, and it hurts investment and innovation in new systems developed by other companies.
I do not have a legal background, but I do have an audio one, so I took it upon myself to look up the original patent that Clear Channel purchased. Although much of the document is fairly dry and formal, I think it's worth reprinting part of the abstract of the patent application:
[...] the present invention provides an event recording system that has an event-capture module, an editing module, and a media recording module. The event-capture module captures an event signal [...] and transforms the signal into a primary event file that is accessible as it is being formed. The editing module is communicatively connected to the event capture module. [...] Likewise, the media recording module is communicatively linked to the editing module for receiving the one or more digital track files from the editing module. The media recording module has a plurality of media recorders for simultaneously recording the one or more digital track files onto a plurality of recording media. This allows a plurality of recording media, with the entire event recorded upon each media, to be available shortly after the event has ended.
To summarize, the patent unites a recording device, a digital editing device, and a digital reproduction device, for the purpose of making multiple copies of a recording available quickly. In essence, the patent applicants claim to have invented the recording studio, with the additional parameter that the reproductions be made available "shortly after the event has ended."
Wiring together a few existing parts of a recording system does not necessarily mean you have a patentable concept, so the other key point besides the nebulous delivery deadline is the unified nature of the system. The EFF has decided to attack the patent using the concept of prior art, and the horse they're backing is the Telex EDAT, a combination of software and peripherals that convert a PC into a mastering system for cassettes and CDs. Since EDAT was released in the late '90s, it predates the 2003 patent which Clear Channel purchased in 2004.
I think the EFF makes an excellent case, although I think it's a reflection on the sad state of our patent process that they even have to. I could probably spend an hour listing ways you could record a live performance and offer it for sale quickly, beginning in the 1940s with a bank of reel-to-reel recorders and ending in current day with MP3s downloaded onto a USB flash drive. The only thing that made post-concert recordings emerge in the last few years is feasibility. Before the advent of high-speed CD recorders, it would have been impractical to offer copies for sale after a concert: most other media would have either been prohibitively expensive or required more time to dupe than the audience's trek to the door.
In my reading of the patent application, it appears that the "inventors" did little besides assemble existing technology, then write a patent designed to lock up a broad range of activities. In that sense, they were successful: they scored their patent and managed to sell it to some big sucker with deep pockets. It's Clear Channel's problem now. They bought it, and are placed in the position of defending the indefensible.
That's not to say Clear Channel won't win. Those corporate deep pockets will now be used to cast legal doubt on the EFF's case. As we saw with the on-again off-again Microsoft FAT patent situation, it's not easy to overturn a patent, and almost anything can happen once lawyers pull out all the stops.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6191.html
By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 15 February 2006, 10:26
WE REPORTED YESTERDAY that a serious problem with Windows Media Player could be addressed by downloading the monthly Tuesday Windows update from Vole Central.
See Dangerous bug found in Windows Media Player.
We also reported that when we'd done so on two separate machines, we noticed that one of the patches failed to install.
This, fortunately, wasn't the WMP patch, which installed just fine. It was Security Update for Windows XP number KB913446.
This was undoubtedly a SNAFU, because this morning said patch now works fine. Below is a screen capture of the problem, which was also confirmed by many of our readers from all over the world. µ
Microsoft has an unsupported Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP. It contains no setup (only instructions) and the interface is quite basic. But the software does its job very well.....(free).....GO THERE!
From Tom's Corner
A few days ago I needed to install software from ISO images. There were two possibilies: burning the ISO images to a CD-ROM or using a virtual CD-ROM drive that can mount ISO images. My preference went out to the latter, so I decided to Google for it. And apparently Microsoft has an unsupported "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP". The reason why it's unsupported became clear after downloading the product. It contains no setup (only instructions) and the interface is quite basic. But the software did its job very well.
This tool is even not searchable through the "Microsoft Download Center", but it is mentioned on the MSDN Subscribers FAQ.
You have surely other tools to do that like the excellent Iso Buster
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2004/01/15/58918.aspx
Firms' China actions 'abhorrent' p2p news / p2pnet: Depending on what you read, four major Net companies have been "slammed," "grilled," "scolded" or merely "chided" for helping China implement censorship policies
But whatever you read, they all, "found themselves branded collaborators with the Chinese government in suppressing dissent in return for access to a booming Internet market," as the Associated Press.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco were testifying the House International Relations Committee and, "Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," it has Tom Lantos saying.
"I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."
The companies claim a lust for profits wasn't the motivating factor for their involvements. Rather, as good corporate citizens, they're following China's rules, but only to help Chinese surfers.
Yahoo's senior vp and general counsel, Michael Callahan, told the committee his company was "very distressed" at having to comply with Chinese law, says AP.
Yahoo is said to have recently given China information which allowed the authorities to jail two cyber-dissidents.
Elliot Schrage, vp of global communications and public affairs for Google, which has admitted its role as a censor for China, was able to say it was, "not something we did enthusiastically or something we're proud of at all. ... We have begun a path that we believe will ultimately benefit our users in China."
Under "pointed questioning about Google's role in abetting censorship, Schrage, his voice cracking, said: 'I am not ashamed of it, and I am not proud of it'," says Fortune.
Jack Krumholtz, "Microsoft's top Washington operative," said Bill and the Boyz were, "deeply troubled" by the requirement that Microsoft censor blogs but said that, as a result, "There's more opportunity for freedom of expression in China today," says the story, adding:
"U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who chaired the House subcommittee hearing, compared the tech company's actions to IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Smith, a New Jersey Republican, dismissed the claim by firms that they have to obey local laws.
"If the secret police a half century ago asked where Anne Frank was hiding, would the correct answer be to hand over the information in order to comply with local laws?" Smith asked.
"We must stand with the oppressed, not the oppressors."
Cisco, accused of providing technology that allows China to filter internet content, "testified that it sells the same equipment in China that it does elsewhere." says the Times."
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Associated Press - Congress chides 4 companies over China, February 15, 2006
Fortune - Tech execs get grilled over China business, February 15, 2006
Times - Google and Yahoo face their Congressional critics, February 15, 2006
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If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It's a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
Then and Now, what happened to Janet Jackson, Ugh!!
Janet Jackson Is So Fat She's Been Told...
...to lose 20 pounds by September or her record company won't release her new album. If that's not an incentive to diet and work out, what is?
That's the word from New York Post "Page Six" gossip columnist Richard Johnson who reports that her label, Virgin, needs a thin, lithe Janet in order to properly market it. An unnamed inside source dished to Page Six, "Janet had a really bad year. After the incident at the Super Bowl [two years ago], it just went downhill. Her album 'Damita Jo' was a flop. Then her brother Michael had the child-molestation trial--it just wasn't good to her."
So Janet enjoyed her comfort food and her waistline grew. And grew. In January, the New York Daily News reported that she feasted on a steady diet of "fried chicken and soul food" that included macaroni and cheese, candied yams, pork ribs and buttered corn bread, ballooning up from 118 pounds to a peak of 160 pounds.
Now Virgin has hired a personal trainer for Janet and put her on a diet. Still, yo-yo weight gain and loss is not that atypical for the pop star. "Janet always gains weight when she's not working and always loses it in time to promote her albums. Janet always takes care of it when it matters," the friend told Page Six.
p2p news / p2pnet: Music fans who bought Sony BMG music CDs polluted with secret digital restrictions management (DRM) software can now claim clean CDs and extra downloads as part of a class action lawsuit settlement, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF and co-counsel Green Welling LLP, Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Ruchman and Robbins, and the Law Offices of Lawrence E. Feldman and Associates, together with a coalition of other plaintiffs' class action counsel, reached the settlement after negotiations with Sony BMG in December of 2005, it says.
"Anyone who purchased Sony BMG CDs that included First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software can receive the same music without DRM," says the foundation. "Some will also get downloads of other Sony BMG music from several different services, including iTunes."
Music fans have through the end of the year to participate in the settlement and should receive their compensation within six to eight weeks, says the EFF.
Welcome to the Information Web Site for the
Sony BMG CD Technologies Settlement www.sonybmgcdtechsettlement.com
(Last updated on February 13, 2006)
This website was established to provide information about a proposed class action settlement involving SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Inc., SunnComm International Inc., and First 4 Internet, Ltd. (?Defendants?).
The proposed settlement involves persons who bought, received or used SONY BMG CDs with either XCP or MediaMax software. If you have installed XCP software or MediaMax software on your computer, you will need to uninstall the software or download an important security update as part of this claim process.
If you have played a CD on your computer that contains either XCP or MediaMax 5.0 content protection software, you should update or uninstall the software to reduce your risk of security vulnerabilities.
The Summary Notice and other documents explain the settlement, the benefits it provides, and the options that you have, including how to submit a Claim Form. Claim Forms are due by December 31, 2006. If you would like to submit a Claim Form online, please click here.
You may obtain further information about this Settlement by clicking on the appropriate link(s) at this website. For more detailed information, please click on the Notice to Class Members.
To submit your claim in hard copy by U.S. mail, click here.
Certain documents are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. If your computer is not already configured with the Acrobat software to view and print these documents, you may get Acrobat for free by clicking the logo below.
http://www.sonybmgcdtechsettlement.com/
p2p news / p2pnet: Leave no stone unturned in the quest to milk the last drop of money from cash-cow consumers, is the motto of the Big Four record label Organized Music cartel.
With that in mind, will it soon be out of bounds, "to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod"? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use By Fred von Lohmann - Deep Links
It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the MGM v. Grokster argument last year?
Apparently not.
As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:
"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."
For those who may not remember, here's what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:
"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."
If I understand what the RIAA is saying, "perfectly lawful" means "lawful until we change our mind." So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance. What about all the indie label CDs? Do you have to ask each of them for permission before ripping your CDs? And what about all the major label artists who control their own copyrights? Do we all need to ask them, as well?
P.S.: The same filing also had this to say: "Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use...."
p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Four record label cartel's IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and Hollywood's MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) have enthusiastically endorsed the China National Copyright Administration's (NCA) shut down of 76 web sites as, "hard but effective," says state news agency Xinhua.
The friendly ties between China and the entertainment cartels haven't been remarked upon, let alone criticised, in stark contrast to its dealings with four of America's largest Net companies, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco, who are being attacked for their efforts to work with the People's Republic. During their testimony to the House International Relations Committee, yesterday, "Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," Tom Lantos told them.
"I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."
But insomnia doesn't trouble MPAA boss Dan Glickman. He sleeps very well indeed, thank you, and in fact spends much of his time jetting back and forth between the US and China as Hollywood further cements the already close relationships between what amount to two totalitarian regimes.
"This special operation has achieved its purpose and has been favorably looked upon by the public and overseas rights-holders' organizations," NCA deputy commissioner Yan Xiaohong is quoted as saying.
"The administration also fined 29 websites 789,000 yuan (98,625 U.S. dollars) and transferred 18 suspected criminal cases to judiciary courts during the operation," Yan said.
But one special operation wasn't enough to, "eliminate Internet infringement, he said, because like many other countries, "China has not found a right approach yet".
Meanwhile, "the State Council is expected to issue a statute on Internet information spread rights to regulate networks and fortify the defense of private and non-profit Internet websites," Yan said, According to Xinhua.
"China joined the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1980 and its two international treaties out of the total six - the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of their Phonograms," says the story, adding that Yan said China is now considering joining the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, "both enacted for copyright protection on the Internet".
China's goal is to, "create an environment favorable for both copyright protection and the product dissemination, and thus leave Internet information on hand for the public's study and entertainment," Yan added.
Also See:
76 web sites - China 'piracy' clamp-down, February 15, 2006
Xinhua - China stands firm in fighting Internet piracy, February 15, 2006
disgrace - Firms' China actions 'abhorrent', February 15, 2006
=====================
If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It's a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
p2p news / p2pnet: Amazon is getting ready to join the ranks of companies bent on cashing in on music downloans, albeit that a corporate online music market doesn't yet exist to any significant degree.
Amazon is in advanced talks with the Big Four Organized Music labels about another rental service, "with a range of features designed to set it apart," says the Wall Street Journal.
"Among them: Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs, not unlike mobile phones that are included with subscription plans as part of the deal.
"Music executives privately welcome Amazon's plans, which they see as one of the only credible challenges to Apple's hegemony in both digital music and portable players. Now the question is whether Amazon's massive customer base is enough to offset a long delay in entering the online music business."
Apple's iTunes is far more of a promo vehicle for iPod than a genuine service and moreover, compared to what's happening in the world of independent online music, where literally billions of songs move computer-to-computer every month, Apple's iTunes sales which, says the company, are approaching the one billion mark after its 2003 start, don't amount to a hill of beans.
And as long as the Big Four continue to use their various 'trade' associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in their bizarre marketing scheme through which they're trying to sue customers into buying product, those hundreds of millions of potential buyers will remain far out of reach.
Be that as it may, "The service could be launched as soon as this summer, according to people familiar with the matter," says the story. "Amazon declined to discuss the service, and hasn't finalized deals to license content from major music companies: Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group; Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG; Warner Music Group Corp.; and EMI Group PLC."
Among likely partners for a subsidized hardware offering is Samsung Electronics, "whose flair for stylish design is raising hopes among music executives that the initiative could create a strong alternative to iPod," says the WSJ, going on:
"Amazon has been busy building technology for digital downloads. Amazon says it has hired 3,000 people companywide, including many software-development engineers who presumably are working on digital content initiatives, over the past year. That is more than Google and Yahoo, which hired 2,659 and 2,185 people companywide, respectively, last year."
Also See:
Wall Street Journal - Amazon Plans Music Service To Rival iPod, February 16, 2006
