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Logitec Japan to launch first 12x DVD-RAM Burner
Posted by Quakester2000 on 21 February 2006 - 00:35 - Source: Nforcershq

D4rk0n3 used our news submit to tell us that Logitec Japan looks like it will be the first to launch a DVD burner capable of burning the new 12x DVD-RAM format. The external drive from Logitec will write +/- R Dual layer media at 8x and DVD+R/-R at 16x. The external drive is powered by Panasonic technology.

Logitec is planning to release two versions of the drive one with both firewire and USB 2.0 compatibility and one with just USB 2.0 compatibility. The drives will be compatible with both Windows XP and Apple’s Mac OS X. Both drives will hit the market at the same time which looks like the end of March, with the drives costing $139 for dual Firewire/USB connectivity and $121 for USB 2.0 version.

LogitecLogitec Japan announced its first external optical drive in Japan that burns DVD-RAM at 12x, DVD+ or -DL at 8x and DVD+R/-R at 16x. The external DVD-RAM is powered by the Panasonic technology.

RAM driveLogitec plans to release two versions of the drive. The LDR-MA16FU2/WM will come with a dual USB 2.0 and FireWire interface, offering compatibility with both Windows and Mac OS X users. The USB 2.0 version of the drive, called LDR-MA16U2, will be also available in the Japanese market at the same time, by the end of March. The drives will cost 16,380 Yen ($139) and 14,175 yen ($121) respectively, according to Logitec.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13095

 

Are player-driven games the future of digital gaming?

By Ryan Paul

Monday, February 20, 2006
Introduction

Gaming is arguably one of the most interactive and progressive electronic entertainment mediums in existence today. As innovative new gaming concepts stretch the limitations of current technology, developers are looking for unique ways to make games more immersive and engaging. As the cost of producing content increases, and player demand for a broader selection of content continues to escalate, developers are searching for new ways to allow gamers to participate in the creative process, by facilitating player-driven construction and distribution of new content.
A brief glance at the history of player-driven construction

Player participation in game content development has existed since the development of table-top role-playing games. Dungeon masters frequently construct and share game content with their fellow DMs and collaborate in order to create a gaming experience that is more innovative and unique. This principle of distributed development carried over into the first network game development communities. In the early days of multiplayer network gaming, individual developers used open source code bases to create specialized digital worlds of their own, sometimes called Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). Integrated world construction commands eventually allowed administrators to extend these networked, text-based virtual worlds in real time, and administrators subsequently began configuring their games to allow players to participate in the creation process. Many MUD developers shared components of their virtual worlds, distributing elaborate code base feature enhancements and game regions in Internet forums and mailing lists.

When commercial games hit the scene, some developers designed specialized tools to enable users to make their own custom levels and characters. Even in cases where no such tools were made available by the developers, the gaming community reverse engineered their favorite games and constructed the tools on their own. Doom WAD editors largely contributed to the popularization of this process, and developers began to see the widespread demand for extensible gaming frameworks.

Another major step was taken in 2002, when Bioware released Neverwinter Nights with a powerful level editor that enabled players to create vast worlds and stories that can be distributed for use by other players on the Internet. These days, many mainstream games are shipped with construction and extension tools. Blizzard's sophisticated map builders for Warcraft III and Starcraft allowed users to produce new multiplayer maps and eventually entire single-player campaigns that vastly increased the replay value and lifespan of the Blizzard products. Blizzards map editors are extremely easy to use, and although they provide some relatively sophisticated scripting functionality for advanced users, they feature a simple drag and drop interface that enables any user to get into the content-creation scene.

Some developers also build new games as mods on existing engines. The Alien Swarm mod for Unreal Tournment features a top-down view and a lot of very unique content. Available for free download, such mods often have sophisticated plots, lots of custom objects and weapons, and task-driven campaigns designed by players for players. In addition to being a platform for new games, Unreal Tournament is also the foundation of some very intruiging specialized interactive applications designed for a variety of purposes. The United States Military recently funded the development of a computer game designed to teach soldiers how to interpret Iraqi gestures and body language. The program, which will help the troops learn how to positively interact with Arab citizens, was built on top of the Unreal Tournament game engine.

In some cases, players have improved other aspects of the game besides content. Many player-created World of Warcraft modifications improve the interface, provide access to additional information, or simplify management of particular game elements. In these cases, the modifications provide tangible game improvements that increase the efficiency of gameplay and resolve issues unanticipated by developers. Some of these alterations are designed to meet the needs of players in specific contexts, or players with specific habits, needs, and techniques.

The ability to alter gameplay attributes and generate new content enables players to create new kinds of games without the overhead incurred by building a new game from scratch. In many cases, players have used games in unique ways that the initial developers never even imagined.
The relevance of player-driven construction in contemporary gaming

The vast majority of conventional games allow players to participate in preconstructed stories. An elaborate series of objectives are provided, and the story unfolds as those objectives are completed. What if players could create their own objectives for themselves and for each other? What if player communities could be leveraged in the content-production process to reduce the cost of developing new material? These are the questions that game developers are beginning to ask as a whole new generation of advanced gaming technology emerges.
Spore

The philosophy of player participation is now beginning to expand beyond the limited confines of specific characters and plots, and it is scaling up to a level of much greater flexibility. Sims inventor Will Wright is currently engaged in developing an ambitious new game called Spore (warning, evil Flash content), which establishes an extraordinarily sophisticated, tiered-gameplay model in which players manage and direct gameplay activity on a virtually infinite scale. From controlling the activities and genetic properties of a specific creature to the manipulation of whole galaxies, Spore gives the player the ability to invent entire civilizations. Spore also takes interactivity and content distribution to the next level by allowing the diverse civilizations instantiated by various players to interact with each other asynchronously over the Internet. Players can populate their universes with galaxies constructed by other players, as well as introducing other player-created elements into their own worlds and civilizations.

Extraordinarily elegant integrated-modeling tools allow players to imbue their worlds with highly unique appearance and functionality. Player modifications dictate the natural development of the virtual characters and civilizations, so players can choose to model a highly diverse assortment of concepts, ideas, and themes. In demonstrations at various gaming conventions, Wright shows users how easy it is to create whatever they can imagine, from vicious, flesh-eating carebears to assorted alien oddities. The real magic of Spore is its versatility. It shatters conventional assumptions by providing an environment in which the user can dictate the functions and constraints of gameplay.

You can play the game at practically any level you want within the massive scope that it encapsulates. Are you interested in creating a massive intergalactic confederacy so that you can see how positive interaction influences the various member societies? Do you want to construct opposing imperial forces and watch the outcome of their assorted attempts at conquest? Do you want to play at a lower level, orchestrating tribal raids and resource accumulation of primitive warring factions on single continent? Do you want go even lower, and see how the genetic alteration of specific species influences the way that they interact? Spore makes all of it possible, and quite a bit more, and it does so by providing a framework and a platform in which the player chooses her own objectives. Wright describes the goal of player-driven gaming with an analogy:

"Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas."

Spore will provide its players with a constant stream of new content and material without requiring additional investment or developer resources. The production process is distributed across the entire player base, leveraging the creativity and unique perspectives of individual users across the globe. It meets the user demand for content while making the game experience more immersive.
Xbox Live

Will Wright isn't the only game developer that understands the value of player participation. Microsoft Xbox team leader J. Allard is convinced that player participation in the content construction process is applicable to console games as well as computer games. With Xbox Live, Microsoft already has all the infrastructure it needs to distribute content over the Internet and allow players to contribute content of their own. Allard points out that the player participation model resembles the community oriented development approach that has contributed to the success of open source software:

"(Gaming) is the only medium where we yield control of the protagonist. Let's yield control of the director--and the producer," said Allard, a vice president at Microsoft. "We're going to take on the Wikipedia model. We're going to take on... the open-source model, if you will, for gaming."

Although I doubt that Microsoft plans to release the source code of their gaming technology, Allard's analogy is incredibly astute. The collaborative, open development model dramatically expands the pool of available human resources and it promotes ideological interchange that can illuminate new possibilities. By taking advantage of the Xbox user base, Microsoft can ensure that its games never become stale while also procuring valuable insights into the way that the players perceive and overcome the challenges of content development. Allard comments on the implications of player participation:

"If only 1 percent of our audience that plays Halo helped construct the world around Halo, it would be more human beings than work at Microsoft corporation," Allard said. "That's how much human energy we could harness in this medium."

Multiverse

A relatively new gaming company called Multiverse is also cashing in on community development, albeit with a very different approach. Multiverse has developed a complete platform for rapid development of MMORPGs. Multiverse eliminates the barriers to entry by providing a comprehensive client-server architecture that is highly extensible and comes with a wide variety of specialized plug-ins that provide support for gaming components like movement, combat, artificial intelligence, and game economy. Developers can extend the framework with their own specialized plug-ins and content.

Multiverse also supports a developer marketplace that will allow individual developers to sell and trade components with other developers. On top of all that, Multiverse also makes it easy for developers to capitalize on their productions, by providing a complete framework for subscription services. Scheduled for release later this year, Multiverse will make their tools and development framework components available for free, and take a portion of the revenue from individual developers that profit from their own worlds. Multiverse will also provide commercial hosting services for those that do not wish to host their own games. Multiverse cofounder Corey Bridges comments on the ease with which a Multiverse-based game can be altered:

"Say you don't like the combat system," said Bridges, "or say you want to extend it, you can just extend it or swap it out. What this does is it gives game developers of all stripes and strata a niche to do what they do best."

The technologies developed by Multiverse will effectively give rise to a new kind of independent game development industry, one in which the developers can easily pool their resources and media assets to reduce overhead costs and jumpstart development. Much like the MUD communities of old, developers will start with an existing code base that can be customized for the particular needs of their game, and they can swap snippets with other developers in order to augment the functionality and appeal of their respective games.

Game content construction as a collaborative art form

Even though some nay-sayers like Roger Ebert argue that the gaming experience represents a kind of cultural self deprecation, the increasing complexity and sophistication of modern gaming is impossible to ignore. With enormous budgets and massive development teams, the magnitude of game production is rapidly becoming comparable to that of movie production, and movie industry icons like Steven Spielberg are getting into the gaming business. Ebert says that many games make us less "cultured, civilized and empathetic," but any gamer with an appreciation for intellectual stimulation will tell you that he is simply wrong. Consider Final Fantasy VII, which dealt with controversial themes like poverty and unsustainable abuse of the environment. Not only did Final Fantasy VII immerse the player in an experience that elevates thought provoking themes, but it did so in a way that is compelling, artistic, engaging, and emotionally redeeming.

Character development is one of the most important parts of any story, and a medium that actually places the player inside of the character can create a bond or relationship that just isn't possible within a medium that is not interactive. What better way is there to stimulate empathy? Becoming Illidan, for instance, can provide us with a very unique perspective and powerful insight into the internal struggle that motivates his decisions. Suddenly we are given an opportunity to empathize with Illidan on a whole new level. His desire for power, his dark sense of abandonment, his feelings for Tyrande, and his hunger for revenge are all painted with immense clarity when the player takes on the responsibility of acting as Illidan. Games in which the player becomes the character are only one example. The diversity of the interactive gaming medium can facilitate immersion in all sorts of different ways. The digital, interactive medium enables game developers to transcend the limitations imposed upon movie producers, to create an experience that has unique and extraordinary potential.

With the ability to construct game content, players also gain the ability to create highly sophisticated, collaborative, and immersive art pieces with unprecedented capacity to inspire others. As players around the world contribute to the development of a single game, the cultural and ideological interchange promoted by the process will lead to the betterment of all participants. It will provide a new medium through which players can learn about each other: the way that other people think, feel and perceive their own worlds and fantasies. A collaboratively constructed game will become an articulation of universal imagination focused into something tangible, cohesive, and interactive. Although the Xbox Live user base has its share of crass and intellectually defective players for whom f-bombs and racial slurs probably represent the extent of their willingness to engage in cultural interchange, a well-designed framework for collaborative development would make it easy for like-minded players to come together and establish their own groups within the larger organizational hierarchy.
Looking to the future: interoperability and open standards

As many open source developers know, community-driven development generates a number of challenging problems. As more players contribute to the game development process, many new needs will have to be filled. By looking at analogous aspects of open source software development, it is possible to predict some of the future problems, solutions, and paradigm shifts that will emerge from player driven development.

When players invest a lot of time and effort into building elements for a game, they will not want to have to start over again from scratch with a different game. Consider, for instance, a peculiar ground vehicle that a player designs in Spore. Why shouldn't that player be able to use his vehicle in Project Gotham Racing? At the very least, the players will want to migrate the designs and appearance of elements from one game and bring them over to another. Some early examples of content interchange across games can be found in the Maxis repertoire. Sim Copter players could fly through cities that they had constructed themselves with Sim City. That kind of interoperability can be made possible on a much larger scale with open standards. If game developers create common interchange formats, custom content will be portable between games and platforms. That kind of interoperability is already apparent in the tabletop roleplaying community, where Dungeon Masters regularly create rules for using content across games. Dungeon master SrKingDavy comments:

A lot of what you're saying is the future of computer gaming, I've been doing for years on [the] tabletop. [For instance] having players design a car in a role-playing game, given character resources and knowledge, and then using that car design in a racing auto-duel game. I think more video game developers need to look to their roots. I don't know a single tabletop gamer who hasn't created his own house rules or drastically changed the rules of a game to practically create a new one, and in tabletop [gaming], it's all realtime.

The intrepid dungeon master is getting at a very important point. The ability to customize aspects of the game as it is being played is part of what makes tabletop roleplaying games so fun. The mutability and limitless flexibility of a good tabletop roleplaying game has yet to be matched on the desktop computer or gaming console. A stronger emphasis on player-driven development and interoperability has the potential to transform the electronic gaming medium and make it as engaging as traditional tabletop roleplaying games but without the frustrating latency of dice rolling.

The marriage of open standards and player-driven gaming

The open source community has created standardization initiatives like the FreeDesktop project to promote interoperability between popular technologies. Independent gaming standards organizations can create their own open formats to facilitate sharing of user constructed game content the way that the FreeDesktop project facilitates sharing of user constructed icons across Linux desktop environments, for instance.

If game interchange formats are publicly documented open standards, individual players and independent third-party developers will even be able to create new games that leverage content created for other games. Say that you create a really sophisticated alien creature in Spore. Wouldn't it be cool if you could upload that critter to your handheld computer and use it in a virtual pet game created by an independent developer? You could take an electronic facsimile of your digital critter to work with you on your handheld computer and face it off against your coworker's critter via IR handheld link combat! That kind of interoperability and the new applications that will extend from it will add a whole new kind of value to popular games, and it will give players more reasons to keep playing. To a certain extent, interoperability may also compel players to buy additional games that they might not have considered purchasing before.

Use of open standards will also promote development of third-party tools that can interact with particular games. If a game server uses RSS feeds to emit notification of specific activities transpiring within the game, for instance, players and independent developers could interface with that data using many common existing tools or by developing their own specialized tools. Getting RSS notifications that tell you what is going on in your virtual world could be a powerful tool. You could be informed when your intelligence operatives discover that the enemy is mobilizing an attack force, or when your scientists invent space travel technology. While you are waiting for those notifications, you might be playing as one of your civilization's primordial ancestors in a Smash Brothers style melee match within a totally different networked game.

As player-constructed content becomes more popular, intellectual property issues may become a problem. In the open source community, there are standard licenses like the GPL and BSD licenses that dictate the terms under which source code can be used and shared. Game players will also need to have clearly defined mechanisms for content distribution under terms that they can dictate themselves. Although those terms need not necessarily conform to the ideals of software freedom embodied by many popular open source licenses, content distributed under free licenses will certainly stimulate productive sharing and innovation. In the context of Spore and Xbox live, Maxis and Microsoft will probably establish mandatory licensing schemes of some kind that will protect their right to use player-contributed content. Hopefully those companies will have the foresight to construct those licenses in a way that will promote further sharing, modification, and open redistribution. The Creative Commons organization has designed a standard assortment of content distribution licenses that are very easy to use and understand. By selecting from an assortment of simple license features, players can easily choose specific licenses that meet their needs, and they can protect themselves and their content by distributing material they have created for use by others under such licenses.

Developers that leverage Multiverse technologies may soon discover a very challenging limitation that can significantly impede sharing and distribution of self-made content. In some cases, particular models or plug-ins may depend on other assets and plug-ins. Developers will need easy ways to automate resolution of content dependencies. Open source developers have created powerful package management platforms that simplify dependency handling. On my Ubuntu Linux system, I can use Debian's APT package management tool to install software and automatically install all the components on which that software depends. The Multiverse Marketplace will have to support something similar so that players can easily tell what plug-ins they will need in order to use certain player-created components within their own game.

As the body of player-created content grows and players begin to expand upon the work of their peers, the need will emerge for useful search mechanisms. Externally accessible metadata in a consistent, open format would make it possible for developers to construct search engines designed specifically for indexing and retrieving information about various player-contributed game elements from a wide variety of different kinds of games. A player that wants to construct a new object would be able to use these search engines to find similar existing game elements that can be altered to meet their own needs.

At present, Multiverse isn't far from providing such functionality internally. The Multiverse client application is already designed to facilitate searches that will help players find games and worlds that match specific criteria, and the Multiverse Marketplace is designed specifically to provide quick and easy access to content created by other developers. With more sophisticated systems and some open standards, a search engine could potentially index content from a variety of different kinds of games on a variety of different platforms in order to simplify the sharing of content between them, much the way that the Koders search engine facilitates rapid discovery of publicly available source code.
Conclusion

Players clearly want to take part in the development process, and enabling player participation will vastly increase the volume of available content for particular games. Prominent game developers are already actively leveraging innovative new technologies to develop games that emphasize player-driven creation and distribution of content. In the long term, this new approach to game development could reduce the barriers that prevent creative independent developers from building great games and it could also stimulate greater artistic awareness in players, and eventually necessitate a higher level of interoperability between disparate games and gaming platforms.

With innovators like Maxis, Microsoft, and Multiverse leading the way, greater emphasis on player involvement will have tremendous impact on the way that people perceive gaming, the way that games are made, and the way that players interact with software and with each other. As the next generation of gaming technologies emerge, users and developers should look to the future and think about the potential benefits of open standards, collaborative game production, and licensing solutions that will not stifle creativity.

 

Movie studios may be moving against region encoding hacks, other exploits

2/20/2006 1:51:39 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

Five major US studios are suing Samsung for developing and briefly selling at least one DVD player which they allege was not properly secured to protect the contents of encrypted DVDs, according to reports. A brief investigation into the matter suggests that Disney, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Time Warner and and Universal Studios are pursuing the company for being "hacker-friendly," inasmuch as the company has developed products that allow savvy users to bypass the limitations imposed by content owners. While neither the studios nor Samsung have revealed the contents of the suit, Samsung has admitted that they believe that their DVD-HD841 DVD player is at the center of all of this.

"In fact, we do not exactly know the contents of the lawsuit and the intention of the plaintiffs. We have yet to receive the complaint,’’ a Samsung spokesman said, guessing that the DVD-HD841 player is at the center of the lawsuit. "If so, I do not know why the movie studios are complaining about the products, of which production was brought to an end more than 15 months ago.... We stopped manufacturing the model after concerns erupted that its copy-protection features can be circumvented by sophisticated users,’’ he said.

The fact that Samsung is so willing to speculate on the cause of the lawsuit publicly piqued my interest, so I began looking into the situation over the last couple of days. Here's what my digging has turned up.

The DVD-HD841 player was sold for only a few months in 2004, and the unit was not well received by consumers. Aimed at budget-conscious consumers looking for an upscaling DVD player, the DVD-HD841 failed to deliver, and Samsung pulled it from the market. The units can still be purchased on many sites catering to used electronics, but new units have been missing from retail shelves for about a year.

Why would such an unremarkable player be at the center of a lawsuit? As it turns out, the DVD-HD841 player allows users to circumvent both region encoding and HDCP. It has been known for some time that the major studios are unhappy with the number of DVD players that allow users to circumvent region encoding practices, either by allowing too many "resets" of a unit's geographic location, or allowing users to turn off compliance altogether.

Samsung's player allows users to completely disable region encoding compliance, meaning that the player can handle any DVD without the need for resetting geographical locations, or other such inconveniences. While Samsung does not provide a menu option or instructions on how to do this, news quickly spread that a code entered by remote control under the right settings would rid users of this annoyance.

But Samsung's offenses did not stop there. Similar codes could also be used to turn off HDCP compliance, making it possible to use DVI-D interfaces with non-HDCP compliant sources. In short, users could output high-quality digital HD content (including upscaled DVD content, no less) to any interface they wanted, completely stripped of encryption. The upshot of this is that Samsung released a player that would be ideal for pirates (although pirates already have myriad ways around these protections, anyway).

Additional investigation has revealed that while the DVD-HD841 player did not last long on the market, the design was partially used in other DVD players, including the DVD-HD747 and the DVD-HD941. I was also able to determine that similar hacks work on other Samsung players, although I was not able to verify in all instances whether or not a player was based on the DVD-HD841 main board. I did locate a number of resellers who were hacking various Samsung players and reselling them. Without a doubt, Samsung appears to have produced a bevy of products that can be exploited in this way.
Consumer electronics, bow down!

Still, Samsung is not the only company that has manufactured players that consumers have subsequently been able to reprogram in some form or another for the purposes of bypassing content protections, although exploits for circumventing HDCP are rather rare. The question is, why this lawsuit, now?

The answer lies in the next-generation of optical formats. While DeCCS essentially destroyed the content protections designed for DVDs, the next-generation is supposedly protected with far greater technical acuity. Blu-ray discs, for instance, will feature protections designed to either dynamically obtain new keys or even revoke existing keys from devices that are compromised. In this respect, I believe that this lawsuit is about sending a message. As the studios hope to see a flawless introduction of their new digital rights management schemes, they want to make it clear to all consumer electronics companies that they do not want to see their plans foiled by companies catering to those of us who want to bypass the content industry's protections.

Are we all dirty pirates? Not in the slightest.

The reason for this lawsuit happening right now is simple. The studios know that there is going to be a significant spike in demand for next-generation players that can bypass HDCP over the next few years. When Joe Consumer discovers the delicious little treat known as "HDCP"—a treat that will likely make it impossible to play HD content on displays and TVs without HDCP support—he's not going to like it. While there are no official numbers, we believe that there are millions of HDTV sets in the United States that were purchased before HDCP and HDMI (a DVI-like interface with HDCP) were made available. As things currently stand, those TVs will never display HD content according to their true abilities. Those nice, expensive HDTVs will be trapped in 480p purgatory.

A next-gen player that can deliver HD content to such televisions would be a big, big seller. People who buy TVs that support 1080i expect them to display HD content in 1080i, not 480p. One way around that would be to disable HDCP. Hollywood wants to make it clear that this is simply not acceptable. It shouldn't have been done in the past, and the stakes are higher going forward.

I'll be keeping an eye on this story as it develops.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060220-6219.html

 

DRM and the tech industry's "girlie men"

2/20/2006 1:25:47 PM, by Hannibal

If only I could've been there to stand up and clap:

"Why are you such a bunch of big girls?" asked Birch. "Why don't you tell the content owners to just get stuffed?" He continued unabated: "You're too seduced by the content industry, Hollywood is not even a $10 billion industry. Hollywood is small compared to the telecom industry. Why don't you take a stronger line? Consumers don't want DRM at all. You can't sell DRM."

Thus the EET reports the outburst of audience member David Birch, who stood up during the Q&A part of a panel on DRM at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona and let rip at the telecom industry panelists. David Benjamin, who filed the story for the EET, reports that Birch also told the panelists that telecommunications industry is 15 times the size of the content industry.

In a later column at the EET, Spencer Chin approvingly cites the story of Birch's outburst, and manfully (though not entirely successfully) attempts to laud Birch for "stirring the pot" while simultaneously censuring name-calling at professional conferences.

I say bring on the name-calling. In fact, if Mr. Birch happens to read this post, we'd like to formally offer to let him have the mike for a moment so that he can preach, heckle, and harangue a bit more in a guest editorial on content vs. the carriers. Just drop us an email.

For my part, the coverage of Birch's rant definitely got me thinking. The total cost of Peter Jackson's King Kong was somewhere north of US$200 million. That's quite a bit, but such big-budget blockbusters are rare, and you can make and market a Hollywood movie for well under half that figure. Indeed, Brokeback Mountain had a production budget of only US$14 million.

In the tech industry, the price of a new fab is currently around US$5 billion, a price that puts such facilities out of reach for all but the biggest players like Intel and IBM. Still, that's 25 King Kongs, or over 350 Brokeback Mountains, or 1,000 five million dollar episodes of a big-budget HBO series like Rome or The Sopranos. My point is that, for even just half the price of a single 65nm fab, the tech industry could buy a few small studios and just start throwing tons of free content at the world. Or, for the full price of a fab, they could fund almost a decade worth of low- and medium-budget content to give away as an inducement for people to buy hardware.

Intel, IBM, and other tech companies with large investments in Linux know full well that you can sell a lot of hardware by giving away the software. Why not give away the content too? How many dollars worth of media center, home networking, and home network attached storage hardware could you sell if consumers knew that there were terabytes of free, unencumbered, high-definition, processor-intensive, storage-hungry, bandwidth burning, digital content awaiting them on the Internet—content that they could copy, share, and shuffle around among as many newly purchased media devices as they like?

I'll freely admit that 90% of what I know about the cost of Hollywood movies and TV shows I learned from Google over the past two hours. I'll also admit that drawing big-picture conclusions about how the tech industry could crush the movie industry based on a comparison of the cost of a fab to the cost of some movies and TV shows has a certain "late night dorm room bull session" quality to it. Nonetheless, I stand by my general claim that, for the price of what a single tech company invests in a single new fab, the hardware and telecommunications industries as a whole could dump enough free digital content on the world to fuel a very profitable explosion in consumer hardware purchasing.

So c'mon, tech industry. Why let Hollywood push you around and, even worse, hold hostage tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in potential sales? If investments in open source can pay off in server hardware sales, why couldn't investments in free movies and music pay off in home entertainment, networking, and storage hardware sales?

Think I'm smokin' crack with this idea? Skeptical that low- to moderate-budget, freely available alternatives to Hollywood-produced content would magically translate into increased consumer and infrastructure hardware sales? Find it unlikely that tech companies, who can't even seem to produce advertising that's entertaining and attractive, could ever fund a TV show or movie that you'd actually want to watch? Drop into the discussion thread and tell me why.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060220-6218.html

 

World Series of Video Games coming to a city near you... maybe

2/20/2006 3:12:19 PM, by Peter Pollack

Gamers, rev up your thumbs. Games Media Properties, the company behind the touring GameRiot festivals, has announced their latest endeavor: a series of six gaming tournaments to be held at various locations around the country during 2006. Entitled the World Series of Video Games (WSVG), the tour is scheduled to kick off in Louisville, Kentucky over the weekend of June 15-18, travel to four more cities for additional "circuit events," then culminate in a December finale that will attempt to match the best players from each local tour stop.

"To date, video game competitions worldwide have been narrowly focused on one platform or another," said Scott Valencia, Executive Vice President, Games Media Properties. "The professional gaming movement requires a structure and an inclusive platform in order to grow.

That may be true, but Sony and Nintendo die-hards are invited to stay home anyway. Although described in its own press release as "definitive," the WSVG is a PC- and Xbox-oriented affair. That news should come as little surprise, as the primary corporate sponsors are Intel and Microsoft. The GameRiot festivals also focused on the same platforms.

In fact, aside from size and a focus on selecting national champions, it's hard to figure out exactly what the substantive difference is between the WSVG and the GameRiot tour. The GameRiot tour stops were much smaller deals, held in 20 or 30 cities over the course of the year, and the WSVG seems to be an attempt to reposition the GameRiot tour as a national event with a focus on regional, rather than local, participation.

That's not to say that the WSVG doesn't have potential, however. It looks to be BIG, with about 150,000 square feet of space available for gaming and exhibitions. In addition, gamers will be encouraged to bring their own gear for a giant LAN party.

Events will include PC and console tournaments, a 3000-user "Bring Your Own Computer" ("BYOC") and first ever "Bring Your Own Xbox" event, concerts, consumer electronics exhibitions and more. This event is timed to coincide with DreamHack, the world's largest LAN (Local Area Network) party, to be held in Jonkoping, Sweden during the FIFA World Cup. American and European teams will have the ability to compete against each other from these two events, and the events will vie to set a world record for the largest LAN party ever held.

No word is yet available on what other cities will be host to the World Series of Gaming, or where the finale will be held. Games Media Properties is promising 1 meeeelion dollars in cash prizes—a magic number that looks good on press releases and promises to make a trip to the regional stops worthwhile for a least a few skilled participants. Perhaps in future years, those participants will include gamers from all the major platforms, and the results will truly be "definitive."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060220-6220.html

 

Windows Vista editions announced? Almost.

2/20/2006 6:57:47 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

More than a handful of news sites are reporting that Microsoft has revealed the final shipping versions of Windows Vista. Those sites are incorrect. Microsoft has not announced the final shipping editions, or "SKUs," for the much-anticipated operating system. Upon seeing the reports, I decided to confirm my skepticism with my contacts.

"Microsoft recently posted a web page designed to test the Windows Vista help system that included incomplete information about the Windows Vista product line up. This page has since been removed as it was posted prematurely and was for testing purposes only. We will share more information about the Windows Vista line up in the coming weeks," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars Technica.

While it is inaccurate (and not to mention sloppy) to report that the official list has been published or released, questions still remain regarding whether or not this list bears any strong resemblance to what we expect to see once an announcement is made. In short, my answer is yes.

In September of 2005 I reported that Microsoft was internally planning seven separate editions of Windows Vista. For the most part it appears that Microsoft is continuing on with this approach. The following is the list derived from Microsoft's temporary documentation:

* Windows Starter 2007
* Windows Vista Home Basic (including "N")
* Windows Vista Home Premium
* Windows Vista Business (including "N")
* Windows Vista Ultimate
* Windows Vista Enterprise

As you can see, there are six core versions, two of which have permutations meant for the European market ("N" editions lack the Windows Media Player). There is essentially nothing new here, but since I reported on all of this months ago, perhaps I will run down these versions in order to paint a picture of where things are likely headed. Consider it a refresher of sorts.

Starter is a crippled OS aimed at the two-thirds world. It will limit users to three concurrent applications, and provide only basic TCP/IP networking, and won't be suitable for most games. You should not expect this edition to be available at retail. Home Basic Edition is really the sibling to today's Windows XP Home. It's basic, simple, but not crippled to the extent that Starter is. Most enthusiasts are likely to saddle up to Home Premium Edition, however. This version will build on the Basic Edition by adding, most notably, the next-generation of Media Center. It's similar to XP Pro in power, but with all of the added bells and whistles for entertainment. At the same time, you shouldn't expect Microsoft to support Active Directory or Domain use with either of these editions. The company really hopes to keep home editions out of the workplace. This brings us to the suits!

Windows Vista Business Edition is situated to take over where Windows XP Professional currently fits in the business work. It won't feature the MCE functionality that Home Premium Edition has, but it begins to provide the kind of functionality you'd expect in a business environment, such as support for non-Microsoft networking protocols and Domain support. Enterprise Edition will likely include added features such as like Virtual PC integration and the ability to encrypt an entire volume of information, although with regards to the latter it remains a distinct possibility that encryption will be made possible for the BE, as well. The EE edition will also only be available to volume licensing customers.

Last but not least, there's the Ultimate Edition. Very little is known about this edition except that it will be aimed at high-end enthusiasts, and will build upon Home Premium Edition. Microsoft may marry some of the Business features with Premium's entertainment-centric line-up, but we suspect that the major differences will be in support and application add-ons.

So what is missing in this newer list that was present in my list stemming from five months ago? Small Business Edition. It may still be coming, or Microsoft may have nixed it in favor of a single Business release. Time will tell.
Why so many?

It seems as though there is quite a bit of confusion as to why there are so many different releases. Thankfully, I can clear that up. In short, Microsoft is seeking to do two things. First, they want to make as much money as possible. Second, they want to make as much money as possible. Trust me, it will make sense in a minute.

The one-size-fits-all approach has its merits, but for Microsoft, it creates no shortage of problems. On the marketing side of the fence, Microsoft is trying to roll out operating systems at different price levels to meet different needs. The company clearly hopes to entice enthusiasts into paying a little more for Home Premium or Ultimate Edition. At the same time, the company hopes to see similar results with its business offerings. With more choices, the company knows it can play with feature sets and optimize profit margins. This is how they intend to make more money off of the directions that the OS was previously heading (Core, Tablet, Media Center, etc).

I think the more crucial point has to do with piracy, however. Consider: one version of Windows is a "bad thing." One activation key gets out, and whammy, piracy galore. With six editions, with six separate key algorithms, this becomes more complex. Now, consider what happened with Windows XP's "corporate" edition. Corporate licensing keys leaked out, and Microsoft was in trouble. A leaked corporate XP key meant that anyone who could find the key could install Windows XP. Piracy was rampant. This time around it will be different. The "cool stuff" in the Home Premium and Ultimate editions won't be accessible to pirates with a corporate key for the Business edition. Volume licensing will only be available for the two business-oriented versions, and I suspect that this was done precisely in order to reduce the attractiveness of pirating Windows for a specific type of pirate (namely, the casual, enthusiast pirate).

We'll bring you more details when the official announcement has been made.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060220-6224.html

 

Big Music: cold and ruthless

p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Four record labels are cold. Cold and ruthless.

"After a girl’s brother was killed in gang violence, she inherited his laptop," says the Tartan Online, Carnegie Mellon's student newspaper, quoting lawyer Charles Mudd.

Before she'd ever used the computer, her brother had downloaded songs with the usual suspect, Kazaa, and the girl, Mudd's client, "took the computer to college with her, where she was then subpoenaed for the songs that had been previously downloaded.

"Even with a death certificate, the RIAA would not drop the suit."

Mudd was one of the panelists in a public debate on Electronic File Sharing hosted by the University of Pittsburgh last Friday, says the story.

For its Computer Science Day, the university invited two experts to work with two undergraduate debate all-stars and, "The event was legitimized by the participation of Geoffrey L. Beauchamp, an attorney for the RIAA’s own law counseling firm, Conrad O’Brien Gellman & Rohn, and Charles Lee Mudd, president of the Charles Mudd Law Offices, which has represented several defendants in file-sharing lawsuits."

(Thanks, Alex H)

Also See:
Tartan Online - Panel discusses RIAA, February 20, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7979

__________________________________________________________________


Panel discusses RIAA

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Charles Lee Mudd, Esq., one of the debating attorneys, discussed RIAA lawsuits last Friday at Pitt.

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Analogies flew fast and furious at the Public Debate on Electronic File Sharing hosted by the University of Pittsburgh last Friday.

In an October article, The Tartan reported that an undisclosed amount of students were facing subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA returns to campus,” Oct. 10, 2005). Now, four months later, the University of Pittsburgh invited two involved attorneys to discuss the issue in a public forum.

For their annual “Computer Science Day,” the University of Pittsburgh invited two experts to work with two undergraduate debate all-stars in an event that moderator Gordon Mitchell, an associate professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh, hoped would “move past the battle-royale pyrotechnics that you see on Hardball with Chris Matthews or Crossfire.”

The event was legitimized by the participation of Geoffrey L. Beauchamp, an attorney for the RIAA’s own law counseling firm, Conrad O’Brien Gellman & Rohn, and Charles Lee Mudd, president of the Charles Mudd Law Offices, which has represented several defendants in file-sharing lawsuits.

Two distinguished University of Pittsburgh debaters, junior political science major Tony DiMattio and junior history and philosophy major Melina Forte, were paired with the attorneys.

DiMattio worked with Mudd in support of the proposal under debate: “Lawsuits against individual P2P users should be sharply curtailed.” Forte and Beauchamp worked against this idea together.

“In March 2004, the RIAA shifted tactics from a focus on sites such as Napster to a focus on the individuals downloading,” Mudd said in his opening speech.

He detailed one client’s involvement with the issue: After a girl’s brother was killed in gang violence, she inherited his laptop. Before she ever used the computer, her brother had used Kazaa to download songs. The client took the computer to college with her, where she was then subpoenaed for the songs that had been previously downloaded.

“Even with a death certificate, the RIAA would not drop the suit. They are ruthless,” Mudd said. Mudd suggested that, at the very least, a warning should be sent to perpetrators, giving them a chance to cease and desist before the courts should become involved.

“I hope that from this debate, people walk away with the sense that there are a lot of players there,” said Mudd, referring to the collective actions of file-sharing programs, file-sharers, program developers, and the recording industry itself.

“I must be popular,” quipped Beauchamp to begin his opening statement, referring to his association with the RIAA. The crowd applauded his statements, regardless of any resentful undercurrents.

“It is wrong,” he said, referring to the indisputable fact that downloading copyrighted material, in any form or medium, is illegal. His arguments centered around this concept.

Beauchamp repeatedly compared the music industry on the Internet to a shopkeeper in a bad neighborhood.

“Smith & Barney reports that $5.4 billion has been lost to downloading,” Forte informed the crowd. She also pointed out that statistics could not accurately tell how much downloading would occur without the lawsuits.

“These lawsuits fail to account for individual circumstances,” DiMattio said.

At the end of the debate, the crowd was invited to ask questions to the debate panel. One audience member compared laws in some countries that will chop off shoplifters’ arms to lawsuits in the U.S. that cost individuals thousands of dollars for downloading a few songs.

When asked afterwards, three of the four participants said they support the side for which they debated. Forte was the only exception.
News | Sci/Tech | Forum | Sports | Pillbox
http://thetartan.org/2006/2/20/news/riaa

 

Belgian police bust Razorback

p2p news / p2pnet: With more than a million users, the biggest eDonkey/eMule server in the world, Razorback, was taken down this morning by the Belgian federal police. One administrator is reportedly under custody at the time of writing, as reported by Ratiatum.com.

We have very little information. The whole batch of Razorback servers were seized around 10am, French time, Belgian federal police.

Although the Razorback association has its headquarters in Switzerland, the core system was set up in Belgium. Razorback did not host any illicit content and was even participating very actively in the distribution of legal content such as Ratiatum's download network (1 million+ P2P distributed freeware and shareware so far) and Jamendo's free music.

The server used for eMule and eDonkey was, however, indexing millions of files swapped on P2P networks, and a large part of it was illicit. The main Razorback administrator said in the past he was willing to blacklist files reported to him by copyright holders, but no one replied the offer.

Razorback was participating in numerous legal projects, providing marketers with precious network usage statistics, and even by distributing DRM protected files for content providers.

But the disappearance of Razorback will change absolutely nothing to the millions of eMule users, who already benefit from an entirely decentralized network called "Kad".

Guillaume Champeau - Ratiatum

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7980

 

Google: 'No license in China'

p2p news / p2pnet: Laura Song, Google's representative in China, has denied that Google.cn is operating without a license because of trouble with regulators

"Domestic newspaper Beijing News reported Google had not obtained the ICP license needed to operate Internet content services in China, and that the government was concerned and has begun to investigate into the problem," says Interfax China.

But, "Google's business operation always complies to the regulations and laws of the Chinese authorities," Song is quoted as saying.

Google launched its Chinese language platform under license from domestic web site Ganji, Song (http://www.ganji.com told Interfax, it states.

"The company would not be able to share the license with Ganji.com if it had not been approved by the local government," it has her saying.

Foreign investors, "have usually become minority shareholders in joint ventures with local Internet companies, or signed deals so the foreign investor receives payment for technical support to a Chinese client," says Reuters, going on:

"But the China Business Times, a business paper with a sometimes nationalist slant, blasted Google for even telling users that links are censored, likening the company to "an uninvited guest" telling a dinner host 'the dishes don't suit his taste, but he's willing to eat them as a show of respect to the host'."

Yahoo! used the license of its wholly-owned subsidiary 3721 Technologies to operate its business in China while eBay was also licensed to operate as an ICP after it acquired EachNet, says Interfax, adding:

"As a direct foreign investment from Google, Google.cn cannot receive a Chinese ICP license. Consequently, the company will need to launch some form of joint venture or make an acquisition in China to officially get a license.

"Song would not comment on this issue saying that the company is confident it will expand its business and improve its services in China step by step, abiding with Chinese laws."

Also See:
Interfax China - Google.cn sharing license with Chinese website Ganji.com, February 21, 2006
Reuters - Google rejects reports over its China licence, February 21, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7978

 

Triblet: New Dutch p2p network

p2p news / p2pnet: Laura Song, Google's representative in China, has denied that Google.cn is operating without a license because of trouble with regulators

"Domestic newspaper Beijing News reported Google had not obtained the ICP license needed to operate Internet content services in China, and that the government was concerned and has begun to investigate into the problem," says Interfax China.

But, "Google's business operation always complies to the regulations and laws of the Chinese authorities," Song is quoted as saying.

Google launched its Chinese language platform under license from domestic web site Ganji, Song told Interfax, it states.

"The company would not be able to share the license with Ganji.com if it had not been approved by the local government," it has her saying.

Foreign investors, "have usually become minority shareholders in joint ventures with local Internet companies, or signed deals so the foreign investor receives payment for technical support to a Chinese client," says Reuters, going on:

"But the China Business Times, a business paper with a sometimes nationalist slant, blasted Google for even telling users that links are censored, likening the company to "an uninvited guest" telling a dinner host 'the dishes don't suit his taste, but he's willing to eat them as a show of respect to the host'."

Yahoo! used the license of its wholly-owned subsidiary 3721 Technologies to operate its business in China while eBay was also licensed to operate as an ICP after it acquired EachNet, says Interfax, adding:

"As a direct foreign investment from Google, Google.cn cannot receive a Chinese ICP license. Consequently, the company will need to launch some form of joint venture or make an acquisition in China to officially get a license.

"Song would not comment on this issue saying that the company is confident it will expand its business and improve its services in China step by step, abiding with Chinese laws."

Also See:
Interfax China - Google.cn sharing license with Chinese website Ganji.com, February 21, 2006
Reuters - Google rejects reports over its China licence, February 21, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7977

 

Microsoft Office Communicator: Skype Killer?

2/21/2006 8:58:23 AM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

UK-based The Business Online is running a story filled with some remarkable claims, including this attention-grabber: "MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone." The implication is both clear, and familiar: Microsoft is going to step into a market, throw its weight around, and do serious damage to its competitors. This is a story that I suspect we'll be seeing picked up and regurgitated over the next year or so, merited or not. As such, I wanted to cover part of the landscape.

First, just how is Microsoft going to wipe billions off the market value of telecom companies? Via the assassinator: Microsoft Office, the Professional (Plus). The recently-announced Office 2007 includes support for a Microsoft application dubbed Office Communicator. Available only to Professional Plus and Enterprise installations (which in turn are only available through volume licensing), Office Communicator is much like MSN/Windows Messenger, but with a focus on the workplace. After a stint as codename Istanbul, Office Communicator debuted in 2005 as the interface of choice for Microsoft's Office Live Communications Server 2005. The application aimed to bring VoIP, video, instant messaging, and sharing into an easy-to-use "chat-like" interface. The takeaway here is that Office Communicator is not new, nor are Microsoft's VoIP ambitions. Rather, starting in around 2002, the company started developing server and client technologies aimed in the direction of "enterprise" VoIP and related services.

What the next release of Office will bring is the possibility for customers to bridge Internet-based networks with those of the wireless providers such as Verizon and Vodafone. This is not a Microsoft-specific phenomenon, but the Microsoft name is going to weigh heavily in the solution. The company is well positioned: it has the dominant desktop OS, the dominant "office suite," and a legitimate entry in the mobile phone world with its Windows Mobile operating system for mobile phones. What the company wants to see is simple to describe: businesses armed with Windows Mobile phones that can interact with Office Communicator, passing voice, e-mail, and other data to users over either IP-based networks or wireless phone networks.

"Our focus on providing new solutions for subscribers offers the greatest opportunities for our partners," Ballmer said. "From the back end to the front end, Microsoft has the assets and expertise to unify mobile communication in ways that are compelling for customers and differentiated and profitable for mobile operators, developers and device-makers." Later he added, "To grow, the wireless industry needs to provide end-to-end solutions and innovative services. We're creating great new tools to do just that."

Why bother? Savings. Imagine your own cell phone switching over to WiFi-based networks when they are in range and available. Depending on where you live, this could translate into significant savings for businesses weighed down by hefty wireless charges. Then there's the convenience issues, as Ballmer notes.

"Most people have a personal life and they have a professional life. And they want the device that goes in their pocket to give them one glimpse of their information, whether it happens to be part of their private life or part of their professional life."

A single number and a single phone is ideal (for some), especially if you include the ability to intelligently route calls. For instance, you could possibly instruct your calling system to only forward calls from certain users to you based on conditions such as whether or not you're in the office, or the time of day. And that's not all. Microsoft apparently has fun in mind, too.

"The mobile device is of top-shelf importance to Microsoft. It's going to be a strongly growing part of our revenues. The phone will be at the centre of digital entertainment," Ballmer said.

Without a doubt, the Internet-to-cellular bridge is going to be a hot technological development. Last week we reported on the emergence of Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) in Europe, and what it might mean for VoIP providers such as Vonage and Skype. With Microsoft thinking along the same lines, it seems clear that some kind of convergence is assured.

Still, whether or not Microsoft is about to shave away gobs of value from publicly-traded telecoms is anyone's guess. At present, however, it looks like there's more than one company interested in crossing the Internet-to-cellular bridge, which at the very least means that competition is afoot. Microsoft seems poised for success in business environments where Microsoft technology is thoroughly used. Yet the price of entry—which will in the final analysis will likely include not only the cost of Office, but also the cost of back-end server support&#mdash;will probably leave the wireless companies more or less locked in battle not with Microsoft, but with the companies that cater to individual VoIP service.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060221-6227.html

 

Time to pay for podcasts

2/21/2006 12:25:11 PM, by Nate Anderson

Are you ready to pay for podcasts? Audible hopes so, and they're moving into the pay-per-podcast world through a partnership with Ricky Gervais, creator (and star) of the BBC's original version of "The Office." Gervais produced 12 episodes of "The Ricky Gervais Show" podcast for UK newspaper The Guardian, which offered them as a free download. The show proved so popular, though, that it was recently snatched up by Audible, which plans to charge for the show's second season that begins on February 28.

Since podcasts are almost universally available free of charge, no one is quite sure how much they might be worth. Audible is guessing that people will pony up US$1.95 to hear Gervais' popular show, which is a half-hour of conversation between Gervais, his co-writer Stephen Merchant, and a dim-witted sidekick with a round head called Karl Pilkington. A subscription plan for the entire season will cost US$6.95 and will include at least four shows. The podcast has done quite well at iTunes, currently placing in the number four spot, and Audible has no plans to pull the show from Apple's music store—they're just going to raise the price. Consumers have generally been trained to believe that podcast content is cheap, so Audible is taking a bit of a risk with this strategy. As David Joseph, an Audible VP, puts it, "There will be a little bit of controversy because everybody wants something for free."

If the format change is successful, expect to see other popular podcasts attempt to monetize their shows once they become popular. One barrier to making money may be the popular RSS format, which is not currently designed to support authentication. This may make it harder for users to easily subscribe to and automatically download paid podcasts. Subscription information could be included in the URL, though for security reasons this would probably require the use of HTTP authentication and SSL, a move that would require updates to both the client software and the websites that host the content. For now, the simplest scheme is probably to partner with a third party like Audible, which handles all billing, subscription, and authentication issues.

The move is the latest indication that podcasts are going mainstream, though it does not mark the death of free shows. Many of these podcasts are created by amateurs as a labor of love and would have difficulty attracting a paying audience, while others remain free of charge by accepting advertisements or partnering with a firm that underwrites their expenses (as The Guardian originally did for Gervais). Clearly, podcasts are popular: Apple announced that it had collected more than one million podcast subscriptions in only two days once it began offering a podcast service last year as a part of iTunes, and everyone from NPR to the Lush Bimbo has gotten into the act. Why, even esteemed journal Nature offers podcasts now.

Podcasts are clearly more than a flash in the pan. Whether they are also destined to be money makers remains to be seen, but shows like Gervais' are a good place to begin the experiment.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060221-6228.html

 

Big Music and p2p

p2p news special / p2pnet: “If you look at what Warner just announced in Germany, the studios are finally starting to embrace peer-to-peer,” Weiss said. “We've said all along that we could be an ally of the content companies.”

The above quote was attributed to StreamCast Networks ceo Michael Weiss in a Video Business Online article slugged Studios, tech companies team up with Both look at developing digital distribution business as the sub-head.

Partnered by Bertelsmann AG (BMG) and its subsidiary Arvato, America's Warner Bros plans to push In2Movies, an alleged corporate peer-to-peer business, and we wondered, "Where does P2P come into it?" - given that p2p is a two way street and that Warner is a one-way company – it's way.

StreamCast and its Morpheus file sharing application are synonymous with p2p, and Weiss gave p2pnet his views in more detail.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

P2P and the music industry – Allies?
By Michael Weiss, StreamCast Networks

I've maintained forever that P2P can be the entertainment industry's greatest allies. But first, let's define "P2P." It's a software technology (peer-to-peer) and StreamCast is a software technology company. Morpheus is our product. Let's call this 'the Technology.'

P2P also represents a community (people-to-people) formed by users of P2P software technology. Morpheus also symbolized a vibrant community.

Unfortunately, a big part of the Morpheus Community 'feeling' was lost because of the reality of defending a gargantuan lawsuit, resulting in us having to make some compromises to pay legal bills.

We learned that the Community doesn't shy away from telling us what they don't like, so we've made changes whenever we could in response. The lesson here is: the P2P Community is strong and powerful, or put in common marketing terms, the customer is always right! We know that so we're working diligently to try to re-create that exciting sense of "community" that lived before the Grokster vs Morpheus case.

How can P2P (the 'Technology' and the 'Community') be entertainment industry allies?

1) The P2P Community has become the biggest and most efficient focus group for the record labels to identify and promote popular new songs and find the best new artists to sign based upon what consumers like. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of artist development.

The labels have long claimed that 90% of the artists they release are losing money for them and this is offset by the few megastars that break through each year.

Embracing P2P fully, working with P2P Technology companies and, perhaps more importantly, embracing the P2P Community, can take most of the guesswork out of the A&R process, save the labels a mint, and provide consumers with more of the music they really want to hear and are willing to pay for.

2) The popularity of songs being shared using P2P (the Technology) is used today by many labels as a vehicle to get traditional radio airplay – and it's certainly a lot less riskier than resorting to payola.

Instead of working with third party research firms to determine what's popular with P2P users (the Community), the labels could (and should) develop a working relationship with P2P companies (the Technology) to provide an efficient way of reaching out to biggest music fans of all.

The labels will find the P2P companies are more than willing participants in helping to create an environment where artists can thrive and work hand in hand in creating the type of research and marketing that can expose new artists to a world-wide audience.

3) If history is any indicator, the century old battle of Old Media vs New Technology will play out with similar results -

Phase One: Old Media will always try to stop New Technology (remember Overpeer; spoofing?);

Phase Two: Once Old Media finds it can't stop New Technology, they'll try to control it ('the current phase of lawsuits and legislation');

Phase Three: Once Old Media realizes they cann't stop or control New Technology, they'll embrace it and make more profits than ever before.

Ultimately, Old Media will embrace P2P ( the Technology) and the results will provide lower distribution costs (say goodbye to UPS trucks, CD returns by retailers, CD pressing plants, record store personnel, etc), more efficiency (in the A&R Dept) and reduced bandwidth costs for digital distribution (i.e. Warner in Germany).

The offset in costs for the record labels increases profit margins and exposes rabid fans to more music. P2P Technology will also provide a more level playing field for indie artists by lowering their cost to market. P2P can certainly fuel an entirely new golden age of creative expression-with the cream rising to the top.

4) All the independent research released to date shows that P2P users (the Community) are largest consumers of music. In fact, last year Forbes Magazine reported that 70% of people purchasing music through authorized on line music stores like iTunes did so after first sampling the music through P2P (the Technology).

Why not make this music available for purchase through P2P (the Technology) and skip making consumers take that extra step of going to an on-line music store to purchase?

Why not give P2P users (the Community) the option to purchase with P2P (the Technology)?

So instead of suing P2P (both the Community and the Technology), the entertainment industry should embrace P2P (both the Community and the Technology) for all the good that can come of it.

Also See:
Video Business Online - Studios, tech companies team up, February 10, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7982

 

Copyright Awareness Week

p2p news / p2pnet: Ever heard of Copyright Awareness Week? If you haven't, that's no big surprise. It's yet another of the oily PR stunts dreamed up by the entertainment and software cartels as they continue their drive to turn copyright infringement, a purely commercial civil matter, into a major crime on the level of rape and murder.

It's a ridiculous proposition, but, mainstream-media backed, it's succeeding and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) says it's, "partnering" with "other groups" to, "promote education of students about the history and importance of copyright laws during a March Copyright Awareness Week".

As we've suggested repeatedly, copyright law has no place in ordinary education systems. Yet the corporate music, movie and software industries are invading classrooms not only in America, but also around the world with their spurious message that copyright infringement is of vital importance.

And parents and educators are not only letting them do it, they're helping - helping to turn their kids into good little mindless consumers.

Now, during this phony Copyright Awareness Week, "Age-specific curricula are available online," says the MPAA, going on that supporting it are the vested interest Copyright Society, Directors Guild of America, The Film Foundation, the Entertainment Software Association and Business Software Alliance, creators of Willy the Copyright Weasel (right).

Thank God we home-school our daughter.

JN

Also See:
Willy the Copyright Weasel - They're brainwashing YOUR child, July 4, 2005

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7985

 

Google Desktop 3 is unsecure

p2p news / p2pnet: Google has admitted its new Desktop 3 facility is just as unsecure as email.

A main feature of the new tool is an option that allows searches across multiple computers and which as part of the process, automatically holds copies of files on Google servers for up to 30 days.

Now Gartner says the "mere transport (of data) outside the enterprise will represent an unacceptable security risk to many enterprises," because intellectual property could be transported out of the business, states a CNET News story, going on:

"Google told ZDNet UK on Monday that it recognized the risk, and recommended that companies take action. 'We recognize that this is a big issue for enterprise. Yes, it's a risk, and we understand that businesses may be concerned,' said Andy Ku, European marketing manager for Google.

"Theoretically any intellectual property can be transferred outside of a company," Ku said. "We understand that there are a lot of security concerns about the Search Across Computers feature, but Google won't hold information unless the user or enterprise opts in (to the feature)."

Ku also says it's the responsibility of individual businesses to take care of the problem.

"The burden falls on enterprises to look after security issues," Ku said. "Companies can disable the Search Across Computers facility."

Google was, "unable to comment on the risks posed when individuals share sensitive information" and, "Some users may, and some users may not be able to," said Ku, adding that companies should follow their own policies, says CNET.

Also See:
Desktop 3 - Google Desktop 3 danger alert!, February 9, 2006
CNET News - Google admits Desktop security risk, February 20, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7986

 

Apple monopolization claim

p2p news / p2pnet: iTunes user Thomas Slattery was angry because he was, "also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted music to go, he said just over a year ago.

But he did more than merely gripe. He also sued Apple for unspecified damages and now he's been given the go-ahead to launch a monopolization claim against Apple Computers under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act.

His complaint alleges Apple has an 80% of the market for legal digital music files and more than 90% of the market for portable hard-drive digital music players, says eHomeUpgrade.

"As some of you know we've been having some thoughtful discussions on Apple, iPod, and its DRM in the forums (here and here), but I don't think any of us knew that the numbers were as high as the judge found the evidence to be," says Alexander Grundner in his post.

"Also of interest was that Judge Ware specifically rejected Apple's argument that tying doesn't apply since consumers can buy iTunes music for playback on their computers without having to own an iPod. I'm sure some will say that this is not a monopoly, but ask yourself: What other online music services, other than the iTunes Music Store, offers Apple's Fairplay DRM wrapped music for you to purchase for your iPod? That's right, exactly zero. So unless you own a physical CD and have ripped the tracks to MP3 or AAC, there's no other way to add music to the device other than by way of iTunes. (OK, there are two non-traditional exceptions: 1) Services like eMusic that sell DRM-free MP3s, and 2) Real's Harmony software that can convert their copy protected music to a compatible format for the iPod – Note that Apple threatened Real with a lawsuit for providing this feature.)"

Also See:
forced to purchase - Apple sued over iTunes, January 6, 2005
eHomeUpgrade - Northern California Judge Gives Green Light to Monopolization Suit Against Apple, February 7, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7984

 

Razorback Bust: by the MPAA

p2p news / p2pnet: As Ratiatum's Guillaume Champeau posted earlier, eDonkey/eMule server Razorback was this morning shut down by Belgian police.

The cops were, it goes without saying, acting for, and on behalf of, the entertainment cartels.

Below is the relevant action-packed section from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), released under its MPA (Motion Picture Association) clone.

Brussels, Los Angeles-- In a joint operation today police and prosecuting authorities in Belgium and Switzerland shut down the infamous file-swapping network Razorback2. Razorback2 was the number one eDonkey peer-to-peer server facilitating the illegal file swapping of approximately 1.3 million users simultaneously. Razorback2 was operated as a commercial enterprise indexing over 170 million files including millions of copyrighted movies, software, games, TV programming and music with international and U.S. titles. The site was regularly used by people located all over the world, with the vast majority of users based in Europe.

"This is a major victory in our fight to cut off the supply of illegal materials being circulated on the Internet via peer-to-peer networks," said Motion Picture Association (MPA) Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. "By shaving the illegal traffic of copyrighted works facilitated by Razorback2, we are depleting other illegal networks of their ability to supply Internet pirates with copyrighted works which is a positive step in our international effort to fight piracy."

Swiss authorities arrested the site's operator at his residence in Switzerland this morning and searched his home. At the same time, on the authority of a local magistrate, Belgian police seized the site's servers located at an Internet hosting center in Zaventem near Brussels. The operation conducted by Swiss and Belgian authorities aimed at cutting off a major supply and facilitator of illegal files to several popular illegal file swapping networks. By shutting down Razorback2, the ease with which pirates can obtain illegal content online will slow dramatically. Since November of 2004, authorities have closed down all of the major eDonkey servers in the United States, and now, Europe.

The operators of Razorback2 had clear financial motives. In addition to collecting "donations" from users, revenue was also generated through the sale of advertising on the site, usually promoting pornographic websites. In addition, the availability of offensive content will be inhibited. The operators of this eDonkey site chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos.

"Razorback2 was not just an enormous index for Internet users engaged in illegal file swapping, it was a menace to society," said Executive Vice President and Worldwide Anti-Piracy Director John G. Malcolm. "I applaud the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their actions which are helping thwart Internet piracy around the world."

Razorback2 posted statistics on its site regarding the number of uses online at any one time, reveling in its reputation as the world's largest P2P facilitator. Today, users attempting to connect to Razorback2 read the message "Razorback space 2.0 appears to be dead."

Chris Marcich, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the MPA's European Office said: "We are very grateful to the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their cooperation and effective action in dealing with this particularly egregious enterprise and the individual profiting from it."

The rest of the piece rants on with the usual BS about how much the movie studios have lost to counterfeiting, how hard they're working to combat it, etc, etc.

Also See:
shut down - Belgian police bust Razorback, February 21, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/27/281991#1771839

 

Yahoo vs Allah

p2p news / p2pnet: With the ongoing Muhammed cartoon wars powerfully in mind, it seems Yahoo has ruled against Allah.

Ed Callahan's mother, Linda, was trying to sign up for a Verizon email address," reports The Register, but, "She could not get it to accept her surname."

Verizon's partnership with Yahoo was the problem because, "Yahoo! will not accept any identies which include the letters 'allah'," says the story.

But god, messiah, jesus, jehova, buddah, satan, priest and pedophile are A-OK.

"On one level this is just silliness," The Register has Callahan saying. "But we have a war on terrorism and it's migrating to be a war on Muslims - this just shows the confusion there is between the two and how pervasive this is."

A spokesman for Yahoo! UK said, "This sounds like a glitch. But we will get back to Ed and Lindy Callahan with a full answer as soon as possible," adds the story.

But, "Hello, my name is Kallahar (well, it's an alias, but Kallahar really is a family name of an 1800's Irish family (Ancestry of William Kallahar, born 1830)," says, Yup, Kallahar on his web site.

He goes on, "I recently tried to create a user on Yahoo with my name. Unfortunately, Yahoo said it was unavailable.

" 'That's odd" I thought, 'maybe I created a user years ago and forgot about it.' Thus I tried 'kallahar2', then 'kallahar3' then 'kallahar385753984753'. All of them came back as 'unavailable'.

"I did some more research, and came up with the following interesting results.

"All of these were tested in the 'test4allah408754873' format to ensure they weren't simply conflicting with an existing user."

Kallahar, too, found god, messiah, jesus, jehova, buddah, satan, priest and pedophile were cool with Yahoo, as were Nazi, puppy, cock, penis and mohammad.

Also acceptable were:

* rapeismyhobby1
* pedophilepriest88
* killallmuslimsandarabs1
* nazisaremybestfriends
* jewskilledjesus999
* iloveadolfhitler293409
* wasapmahniggah8888


"Obviously some of these words are legitimately banned, it's understandable that yahoo doesn't want fuckme@yahoo.com or anything like that," says K-allah-ar. "Similarly they don't want people impersonating administrators, security, yahoo, etc. However when they ban 'allah' they also ban 'theyareallaheadofme99'.

"There is a valid profile at profiles.yahoo.com/kallahar2 which is my old profile (now disabled) with an update date of 1998. The Kallahar account lists 2000 as the last update date. So apparently allah wasn't banned until after 2000."

Famous *allah*s include Dirty Harry Callahan, points out The Register ......

Stay tuned.

Also See:
Muhammed cartoon wars - Animated Jesus, Muhammed cartoons, February 9, 2006
The Register - Yahoo!Mail bans Allah and Dirty Harry handles, February 20, 2006
web site - Is Yahoo banning Allah?, February 20, 2006

(Tuesday 21st February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7981

 

EA lowers prices for new games

2/21/2006 1:33:34 PM, by Jeremy Reimer

Game publisher Electronic Arts is reducing the price of some of their games, revealing today that EA will debut its The Godfather and Black games at US$39.95, a 20 percent discount on previous debut prices.

"[US]$39 is resonating with consumers given the transition," EA spokesman Jeff Brown said. "There are indications that $39 is a solid and sustainable price point."

In addition to these price cuts, EA is also reducing prices on some older games, such as Fight Night Round 3, which was shipped to retailers yesterday for Playstation 2 and the original Xbox, also with a suggested price of US$39.95.

The Godfather is an action-adventure game in the style of Grand Theft Auto which loosely follows the original movie it is based on, and allows the player to guide a young thug through an entire career in the Mafia. It will ship March 21 for Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube, PC and Xbox 360, with a Playstation 3 port planned. Black is a first-person shooter (FPS) where the player becomes part of a covert ops assault group. It has just gone gold and will be released for Xbox and PS2.

These price cuts come in the wake of disappointing earning results and layoffs at Electronic Arts. EA is one of many gaming companies struggling with the drop in sales that accompanies any new console release. Consumers generally put off purchasing titles for current-generation systems while they save up for the next-gen console. While early adopters rush to purchase the new console, the majority of the market holds back, waiting for the inevitable price drops on the new hardware. However, this time the down cycle has been even more pronounced due to the shortages of Xbox 360 hardware during the crucial Christmas season last year.

The other difficulty facing game companies is the rapidly rising costs of game development. It was expected that the increased costs for making next-gen games would be somewhat offset by higher retail prices, similar to how the rising cost of making Hollywood blockbusters has been covered by a steady increase in ticket prices. However, if consumers refuse to pay these prices, as they appear to be doing, the consequences for the industry could be dramatic. Large publishers like EA can afford to drop prices and wait out the down cycle, but what will happen to the smaller firms? The industry may have to find some other way out of this predicament, such as reducing the length of games, releasing them in episodic format, or finding other revenue sources (such as the monthly subscriptions that have been pouring in to games like World of Warcraft). Which reminds me, I really must finish off that last quest...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060221-6229.html

 

Sony Shows Smallest HD Camcorder Yet

Company continues its high-definition push with this tiny, lightweight model.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Sony will soon start selling a new consumer high-definition camcorder, its smallest and lightest to-date and a model it considers the "trump card" in its envisaged world of high-definition content creation, editing, and sharing, the company says.


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The HDR-HC3 follows on the heels of the company's HC1 model, which was launched in the second half of 2005 and has been selling well in several markets, according to Sony. The Tokyo-based company will launch the HC3 camera in Japan in March and overseas from April. It hopes the unit will mean high-definition camcorders can capture a larger slice of the digital-video camera market in 2006.

Last year high-definition camcorders accounted for 7 percent of all camcorders sold in Japan, according to a Sony estimate. For 2006 the company thinks high-definition camcorders, of which it has the largest market share in Japan, will capture around 20 percent of the domestic market, said Naoya Hatai, general manager of mobile network product marketing group of Sony, at a Tokyo news conference on Tuesday.

At that level it would give high-definition camcorders based on the HDV format a market share equal to standard-definition models based on DV, according to Sony's estimates. The company sees DVD-based camcorders taking a 45 percent share of the market and hard drive-based models having a 15 percent share in 2006 in Japan.

Smaller and Lighter

The HDR-HC3 is both 26 percent smaller and lighter than the HC1 thanks to continued miniaturization of the lens unit and main components. Sony has combined the functions carried out by 11 integrated circuits into 3 chips and that's enabled engineers to bring together two main circuit boards and a small audio board from the HC1 into a single circuit board in the HC3. This not only helps reduce size and weight, but there's an overall reduction in power consumption too, said Sony.

A standard battery will last for around 1 hour 40 minutes in high-definition video mode while using the viewfinder and not the camera's 2.7-inch widescreen LCD.

The camera uses one of Sony's recently launched ClearVid CMOS image sensors and can take 4-megapixel class photos even while something is being video recorded. The same sensor is more sensitive than that on the HC1 so the camera can capture video at lower light levels--down to 11 lux versus 15 lux for the HC1, said Sony. In front of the sensor is a 10X optical zoom lens.

Also new from the previous model is an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) output, for watching high-definition content on a suitable television. The previous model supported high-definition output on analog and iLink connectors. Like the last model it records video in HDV format, which uses conventional MiniDV cassette tapes.

The HDR-HC3 measures 3.2 inches by 3.1 inches by 5.5 inches and weighs 1.1 pounds. It will go on sale in Japan on March 3 and will be available overseas beginning in April, said Sony. It will cost around $1354 in Japan and no prices have been disclosed for overseas markets.
http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124782,00.asp