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Changes to business digitisation brings

  • Dixons to promote Napster 2.0 in the UK

    The now-legitimate music download service Napster has signed a multi-faceted deal with UK electronic retailing giant Dixons. Dixons will install Napster 2.0 software on all the own-brand computers (Advent, Ei System and Patriot) and sell Napster-branded blank CDRs, CD wallets and CD labelling kits in store. Dixons have also committed to promote the service on its Web site and in stores, with the campaign starting in two weeks.

    Despite announcing the closure of 300 stores around the UK Dixons are the dominant electronics retailer in the UK with more than 1,100 outlets in the UK, including the PC World, The Link and Currys chains.

    The costs of the UK version of Napster are not known but at current exchange rates the US equivalent would be singles at $0.99 (£0.53) and full albums for around $10 (£5.33).

    Napster have also announced that they will launch their service in Canada, claiming it to be the first legitimate offering there. They will be provding Canadian consumers a localised version of Napster 2.0, complete with Canadian-specific radio stations, promotions and content from domestic acts. Details of the UK offering have not been revealed.

  • EU challenges EU-wide music royalty structure

    The European Commission has sent a shot across the bows of the EU royalty collection agencies, saying they fear by them working closely together across the EU, but bound within their own territories, they will extended the national monopolies the societies current hold in the off-line world, to the Internet, potentially in breach of EU competition rules.

    The EU executive said it sent a ‘statement of objections’ detailing its regulatory concerns to the organisations over their so-called ‘Santiago Agreement’ – a pan-EU system that allows national organisations to collect music authors’ copyright proceeds.

    In 2001 the collecting societies of the UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA) and the Netherlands (BUMA) notified the Commission of the ‘Santiago Agreement’. Since then, all other societies from the European Economic Area, with the exception of the Portuguese society (SPA), have signed up. They were also joing by the Swiss society (SUISA).

    While strongly supporting the “one-stop shop” portion of the Agreement, and acknowledging adequate copyright protection and enforcement, the Commission “considers that such crucial developments in online-related activities must be accompanied by an increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users throughout Europe as regards their service providers, such as to achieve a genuine European single market. “. The EU wants to encourage competition between the agencies, not consolidation, in their words,

    “The Commission considers that the territorial exclusivity afforded by the Santiago Agreement to each of the participating societies is not justified by technical reasons and is irreconcilable with the world-wide reach of the Internet”.

    Coming on the heels of the EU record fine of Microsoft Media player, we feel this shows that the EU Commission is serious about protecting the rights of the public to the fair and reasonable access to media in a digital age.

    The collecting societies have two and a half months to reply to the Commission’s objections.

    EU Press release – Commission opens proceedings into collective licensing of music copyrights for online use

  • RIAA Starts New Wave of Lawsuits

    Keen to keep up the pressure on illegal music swappers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched another wave of lawsuits against illegal music sharers.

    So far, the RIAA has launched 2,454 cases since last year, though none of the cases has reached trial stage yet – however, 437 have agreed to pay damages of about US$3000 (€2500) each.

    It seems that the RIAA have yet to learn from the bad publicity that accompanied their last lot of legal action: 69 of these new cases are students. Whilst praising colleges for raising awareness of the illegality of copyright infringement, Carly Sherman, president of the RIAA said, “There is also a complementary need for enforcement by copyright owners against the serious offenders to remind people that this activity is illegal.”

    The Recording Industry Association of America

  • Google Goes For US$2.7 billion (€2.26 billion) IPO

    It’s been rumoured for a long time, but Google are finally heading for an IPO – so that means everyone finally get a chance to look at their finances.

    Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston will act as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering.

    Google generated US$961.9 million (€804.4 million) in revenue in 2003, reporting a net profit of US$106.5 million (€89 million) – and the company has been profitable since 2001. Google has already reported sales of US$389.6 million (€325.8 million) in the first quarter of this year – up 118% on this time last year.

    This only goes to show that there definitely is money in search-based advertising.

    Google said in the letter announcing the filing: “It is important to us to have a fair process for our IPO that is inclusive of both small and large investors. It is also crucial that we achieve a good outcome for Google and its current shareholders,” the co-founders wrote. “Our goal is to have a share price that reflects a fair market valuation of Google and that moves rationally based on changes in our business and the stock market.”

    Google are currently trialling their comparison shopping service, Froogle which will bring them further into competition with Yahoo! who recently acquired Kelkoo in Europe to expand into the growing arena of comparing prices across internet shops.

    Google reports the IPO

  • European Anti-spam Laws Useless

    European anti-spam legislation won’t do a thing to quench the flood of junk email across the region, says a report from the University of Amsterdam.

    Why? Because Europe isn’t sending the bulk of it. As the study say “The simple fact that most spam originates from outside the EU restricts the European Union’s Directive’s effectiveness considerably.”

    The study was conducted over nine months by Dr Lodewijk Asscher and a team at the Institute for Information Law at the university.

    Europe’s guidelines for direct marketing are contained in the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communication. The directive was passed in July 2002 and the compliance deadline was six months ago. So of course, you’ve been seeing less spam since then. Yes, we thought the real outcome was different too.

    The legislation requires that users only receive bulk emails that they have opted-in to. Nice idea but since opting-in is a key way that spammers harvest addresses in the first place, and the legislation is yet to make a single prosecution against a spammer, the model is somewhat flawed.

    In fact, the directive is so duff that Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal haven’t even bothered implementing it yet and have been threatened with legal action.

    In order for anti-spam legislation to work, all countries have to have compatible directives in place. Since there is a lot of money in spam for some regions, this is going to be difficult.

    The study – available from 1 May

  • Forgent Networks Sues 31 Companies Over JPEG Patent

    Forgent Networks are claiming ownership for a patent filed in 1986 by Compression Labs – a dormant company acquired by Forgent in 1997

    Forgent Networks are now suing, amongst others, JVC, Matsushita, Fuji Photo, Agfa, Dell, HP, Apple, Adobe … the list goes on.

    The suddenly flurry of activity could be something to do with the fact that the patent was filed 18 years ago, and Forgent have less than two years to milk some revenue out of it. However, since the defendants have now been notified, Forgent can now take their time seeking damages, and they can claim damages all the way back to when the claim was issued.

    Unisys and Compuserve began to seek royalites on their LZW compression algorithm in the late 90s as that patent neared its expiry. Hence, 20th June 2003 was known as “GIF Liberation Day” when the patent finally expired.

    If these suits are successful, everyone will have to charge more for software that uses the JPEG format (i.e. Almost everything) or the file type will just be abandoned for something less controversial. This will suit Microsoft, as the PNG format will be most likely benefit.

    We ran an April Fool on a company who claimed to own the patent for plain text in programs – but now we’ve seen this story, we rather wish we hadn’t.

    Forgent Networks

    The Register comments

  • Police Seize 200 Computers in Anti-Piracy Raid

    Law enforcement agencies in 11 countries have seized 200 computers in raids on piracy networks around the world. No arrests have been made yet, but charges are expected to be brought.

    The 120 synchronised raids were targeted at illegal operations in 27 US states and also in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the UK. The raided groups are suspected of distributing games and films as “warez”. The US Customs Department estimated (and we suspect this is a real finger in the air guess) that the 100 participants identified were responsible for 95% of all pirated material online. We think that is highly unlikely.

    The raids, part of Operation Fastlink, were described by US Attorney General John Ashcroft as “the most far-reaching and aggressive enforcement action ever” against online piracy. Amongst the equipment seized were 30 file servers. Looks like someone won’t be downloading that copy of Half Life 2 they were hoping to.

    John Malcolm, chief of antipiracy operations for the Motion Picture Association told the Associated Press: “Today is a good day for creative artists. Without copyright protection and enforcement, piracy will dramatically and deleteriously impact the future of the American film industry.”

    ZDNet on the story

  • Napster Hits Problems as European iTunes Launch Confirmed

    Napster has run into licensing problems as it prepares its UK launch – with only four months to go. It would appear that the fragmented nature of Europe’s music labels, licensing bodies and royalty collection services are causing headaches for the new music services.

    Negotiations are apparently heading back on track in the UK, but are only in preliminary stages in Europe.

    Former Napster investors Bertelsmann AG will be in court in San Francisco next week where music labels are accusing the media giant of keeping the download service operational because of its investment in 2000.

    Bertelsmann invested US$90 million (€76 million) in Napster in 2000, hoping to turn the service into the legal music site it is now. Now Universal Music and the EMI Group are claiming the $90 million investment cost them approximately $17 billion (€14.3 billion) in lost revenue because of illegal downloads.

    Not a bad return on an investment, really.

    Reuters

    Napster – still Coming Soon

  • NAB: New 5.1 Extension Means Better Compression

    Dolby Laboratories have announced an extension to their Dolby 5.1 codec, called Dolby Digital Plus. The codec extension is of particular interest to television broadcasters because of the efficiency of its compression: if audio tracks take up less room, then it leaves more bandwidth for more channels.

    Broadcasters are keen to deliver more channels to customers – particularly when they’re charging them – but need to keep picture quality up to, or even better than, current standards.The existing DD codec supports but rates from 320Kbps to 640Kbps for 5.1 audio – yet this new extension will reproduce 5.1-channel sound down to 192Kbps. Dolby Digital Plus has a new top end to – up to 6Mbps, which will no doubt be handy in the future.

    Importantly, Digital Plus is backwardly-compatible with previous versions of the 5.1 codec.

    Dolby have already come up with an interesting application for the new codec – a DVD could access a studio’s website and stream a live director’s commentary, or other interactive content, through the viewer’s TV.

    Dolby Digital on Digital Plus

  • RIAA Drops “Clean Slate”

    The Recording Industry of America has dropped their Clean Slate programme, it emerged after a California man challenged the initiative in court.

    “As public awareness about the illegality of unauthorized copying and distribution of music files over peer-to-peer computing has dramatically increased since the inception of the program, the RIAA has concluded that the programme is no longer necessary or appropriate, and has voluntarily withdrawn it,” stated the RIAA attorney.

    Clean Slate was an initiative which encouraged people who had uploaded and shared music files to sign up and acknowledge in writing that they had broken the law. Individuals then promised that they had removed all illegal music files from their computers, and in exchange the RIAA pledged not to sue them when it started taking legal action against file swappers.

    Only 1,108 people have signed up for the programme since in was launched in September 2003, most of them in the first few weeks.

    Eric Parke challenged the Clean Slate programme in court, and accused the RIAA of fraudulent business practices. Clean Slate was criticised from its début as offering limited protection: it never promised any sort of guarantee if a body other than the RIAA, say for example a record label, decided to prosecute someone on its handy list of offenders.

    When Parke took the RIAA to court over the programme, they requested that the case be dismissed, as Clean Slate had been quietly dropped. Nice of them to tell everyone.

    The terms of Clean Slate