Content

Content in its shift to become digital

Italian DJ Gets Huge Fine For Copied MP3s
A “well known” Italian DJ could be hit with a record-breaking fine of up to 1.4 million euros ($1.8 million, £968,000) for using thousands of pirate music files in a nightclub near Rome, police said on Wednesday.
Police in the town of Rieti, near Rome, said they raided a popular nightclub earlier this week as part of a king-size crackdown on piracy and seized 500 illegally copied music videos and more than 2,000 MP3 music files.
The get-tough operation, targeting radio stations and clubs around the region, was led by the Fiscal Police (Guardia Di Financa, that deal with financial crime), who also seized a large quantity of “audiovisual material” and software.
There are a lot of inaccurate reports floating around about this and we wanted to get the full story, so called up the FIMI in Italy. They told us that the copyright law in Italy dates back to 1941 but was most recently updated a year ago. Under the law the DJ was fined 100 Euro ($130, £69) per copied track, this figure was then doubled to 500,000 Euro. Only if the fine is not paid within 60 days, will it increase to 1.4m.
The reason for the doubling was unclear. Under Italian law, the precise details of the case are not made public until the case comes to court.
The DJ is free to appeal against the fine. Once the fine has been finalised, the money can be paid off monthly.
“For the MP3 files, which were kept on the DJ’s personal computer, the DJ has received a fine of 1.4 million euros,” Rieti finance police said in a statement (the fine is subject to administrative recourse). The DJ may also be subject to further criminal sanctions.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said the fine was the biggest ever slapped on an individual for unlawful music copying and the use of copyrighted music in the MP3 format.
“We are pleased with the fine imposed by the Rieti Fiscal police,” said Director of the Italian Recording Industry Association (FIMI) Enzo Mazza.
He continued, “This deejay was touring clubs and making money out of the music he played – while those who had invested time, talent, hard work and money into creating the music in the first place did not get a cent. We hope this precedent will serve as a deterrent for those who are thinking of doing the same.”
Seeing as venues already pay money to the collection societies for public dance licenses we find the size of this fine a little baffling.
It could certainly be argued that DJs can act as ambassadors for new music (and therefore the music companies) with some high-profile DJs having a considerable influence on the record buying public.
After all, why else would record companies ply DJs with endless vinyl/promos and other inducements in the hope of getting their tunes played?
Perhaps now that times are more lean for the record companies, they’re cutting back on the freebies.
It appears the line between theft and promotion can sometimes be a blurred one, and we’re not convinced that punishing DJs with such enormous fines is the way the record industry should be protecting their sales…
17 February, 2005
TrustyFiles Claims First P2P Software to Report Child Pornography
The Internet! It’s stuffed full of evil kiddie fiddlers and dodgy geezers out to grab our children!
Well, that’s what some aspects of the media would have us believe, but there’s no denying that there is an unsavoury side to the Internet, and that peer to peer file swapping networks have made it easier for paedophiles to share their filth.
Well, thank goodness for the crime-busting heroes at RazorPop who have released their new TrustyFiles 2.4 High Performance File Sharing, billed as the “peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing industry’s first child-pornography file-reporting solution”.
TrustyFiles claims to makes it easy for file-sharing users to report child pornography by simply clicking on a dodgy file and selecting the “Report Child Exploitation” command. This then fires off an anonymous report to P2P PATROL’s child-pornography lead processing resource [http://cphotline.org].
TrustyFiles also keeps an eye on users’ Web habits, spawning a warning message when a user enters a search term known to be associated with child pornography.
“Razor who?” “Trusty what?” do we hear you say?
Well, that’s we thought too. They describe themselves as “the leading multi-network client with Kazaa, Gnutella, Gnutella2, and Bit Torrent search and download, as well as personal, private, and public file sharing” but we’ve never heard of them.
So we took a look at their Websites.
RazorPop’s homepage is a very weird affair, featuring a photograph of a woman in a doctor’s coat holding a CD aloft. A jagged line connects the picture to a woman unhappily holding a big picture of herself, which in turn connects to a guy frozen in an action pose trying to grab a CD. Most odd.
Suitably baffled, we clicked over to the TrustyFiles homepage, a garish affair festooned with glowing testimonials from conveniently anonymous customers – and some of those were a bit, well, strange.
Listen to what David V from who-knows-where has to say about the product, “If I’m posting this, it means my message has a real good meaning…its really easy to use ..I see why 100% users vote thumbs up”
Err, thanks for that, Dave.
5 star awards from obscure shareware sites are proudly plastered all over the homepage, although none of them were linked to the actual sites so we couldn’t check them.
So we looked up Trustyfiles on Usenet to see what people were people were saying about them. And the answer is: not a lot. Try as we might, we couldn’t find anyone even remotely as enthusiastic about the product as the mysterious David V.
By now you’ve probably worked out that we’re more than a little cynical about this release.
It’s not that we don’t feel that child pornography is a serious issue, but we’re concerned that companies who appear to be exaggerating and exploiting this issue for commercial leverage may encourage further legislation that will harm legal users.
We’ve never heard of RazorPop or the daftly-named ‘Trustyfiles’ software so, frankly, whatever they do isn’t going to make a tot of difference to the surfing habits of the Web world.
Now, we’re not saying that they’re not an honestly committed company, but we’re less than convinced about this product, and their unconvincing Websites don’t help their cause.
Without an industry-wide initiative, we don’t see the point in releasing restrictive P2P software that is unlikely to make users switch from far better-known programs, particularly when it’s hard to find much enthusiasm for the Trustyfiles product.
http://RazorPop.com
http://TrustyFiles.com
17 February, 2005
3 Exceed 10 million Mobile Video Plays
UK 3G operator 3, proudly trumpeted the fact that more than 10 million music videos have been watched by its customers on their mobiles since the launch of its Video Jukebox service only six months ago.
Cocking an industrial-sized snoot at all those naysayers who declared that people were more likely to poke their eyes out with a rusty nail than watch videos on phone, this represents a huge growth in the market.
Naturally, 3 are keen to build on their success and have announced a new agreement with SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK which will double the list of artists whose music videos are available for fans to download or stream onto their video mobiles.
Sony has a bumper pack of artists on its rosters, allowing 3 customers to shake their mobile booties to the likes of Destiny’s Child, Lemar, Manic Street Preachers, Natasha Bedingfield and the Zutons. And, err, Britney Spears.
Not all of these videos will be available concurrently, however, as 3 have an editorial team selecting popular content for their ‘Today on Three’ service. This normally gives users the choice of between 40-60 videos, with the video selections changing regularly. 3 told us they found customers are interested in videos that are “the latest, and then they move on”, only being interested in “what’s current.”
3’s Chief Operating Officer, Gareth Jones enthused: “Thanks to our innovative jukebox service, we’ve created a significant mobile audience for music videos in just six months. We’re offering the latest music videos, on demand, straight to your mobile, and our customers are lapping it up.”
Clive Rich, Senior Vice President, SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK also underlined their company’s support for mobile music downloads, “It’s clear now that there is huge consumer demand for mobile music and it is our policy to deliver our artists’ videos and music to their fans anyway, anyhow, anywhere – at any time. This market will continue to grow.”
We asked 3 for a breakdown of how many people were paying each time they played a video, and how many had taken advantage of the fixed price, “all you can eat”, five pounds a month deal. Surprisingly they didn’t have that information yet.
We have to admit that we were surprised by this enthusiastic uptake, but questions remain as to how many of these downloads were simply people taking advantage of the free video deals currently offered to new subscribers. We’ll have to see if they continue to download at such an enthusiastic rate once they have to start paying for it.
3
16 February, 2005
PacketVideo Ships on 17m Mobile Phones in 2004
In their 2005 “State of the Company” address just made public, PacketVideo bigged up their successes in 2004 and mulled about the future of mobile multimedia.
Clearly, 2004 was a time of happiness and joy for PacketVideo, with the company announcing that 17 million phones embedded with PacketVideo media software were shipped by top handset OEMs worldwide in 2004.
PacketVideo also helped launch five 2.5G and 3G multimedia services, including the recent Verizon V CAST video-on-demand (VOD) service in the US, and the OrangeWorld service on Orange Signature phones in 2004 and early 2005.
PacketVideo is the numero uno supplier of embedded multimedia communications software for mobile phones with more than 60 ‘design wins’ and 17 million handsets shipped in 2004.
The company’s software enables mobile phones to take digital pictures, record home movies, play back digital music and videos, and make two-way videophone calls.
PacketVideo specialises in building and ‘commercializing’ (we think that’s American for “selling”) multimedia capabilities such as VOD, music on demand (MOD) and two-way video communication and messaging.
“These much-anticipated multimedia services, made possible by the growing availability of 3G networks, are finally a reality for millions of people around the globe,” trumpeted Dr Jim Brailean, CEO of PacketVideo. He continued, “PacketVideo’s software is at the heart of delivering these new and innovative services that let customers download, play, and share streaming audio, video and live broadcasts on their mobile phones.”
Looking to the future, PacketVideo expects continued growth and technology innovation, and anticipates an increase in both lovely lolly and market share.
“We believe 2005 will be the year of multimedia services such as VOD, MOD (Movies On Demand) and two-way video telephony. We will see the multimedia technologies permeate all levels of handsets, allowing more and more consumers to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities,” enthused Brailean.
PacketVideo
16 February, 2005
SIPassure, VoIP Firewall First from Borderware
BorderWare has unveiled a new application-level firewall, SIPassure, which it claims is the first firewall to protect against Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) security exploits.
As the take-up of VoIP increases, individuals or businesses that reply on VoIP for all of their phone calls potentially leave themselves open to being cut off from an inconsistent service from the ISP and potentially malicious hack attacks. SIPassure hopes to address the latter.
Announcing the product at the annual DEMO conference in the US, the SIP-based technology is designed to protect VoIP communications from hackers, spoofers, phishers and other malicious threats.
With VoIP proving attractive to both consumers and businesses (nearly one out of five US Internet users saying they are likely to upgrade their traditional phone service to VoIP), industry vendors and researchers have begun to sound the alarm bells that VoIP is vulnerable to a number of potentially disastrous security exploits.
“With SIP, your firewall is like a Swiss cheese,” says Jean-Louis Previdi, senior vice president and research director, EMEA Meta Group. “For SIP to work effectively, you have to open all ports of the firewall, so the protocol can browse and choose a port to initiate a session, which compromises security.”
In response, vendors have formed the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) to raise awareness, offer research and product security testing.
“As the VoIP revolution unfolds, users need to be aware of the many exploits that could compromise their next Internet call,” says Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer.

“BorderWare’s VoIP security technology guards against many of the pitfalls associated with the adoption and deployment of this new communications technology. BorderWare’s SIPassure has the potential to make VoIP a safe option for everyone,” he adds.
BorderWare claims to protect users against Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that can eat up large amounts of bandwidth in a VoIP network.
There’s also security against eavesdropping and “man-in-the-middle” attacks that allows hackers to become part of a VoIP call without the communicating parties knowing someone is listening.
The software also offers protection from Call Redirection, which enables a hacker to automatically call-forward a connection to their system as well as providing protection against Malicious Calling, VBombing and VoIP Spam, which are attacks that flood the receiver with hundreds of false voice mails within seconds.
Finally, SIPassure also claims to keep users safe Fake Caller ID, in which a hacker can masquerade as a trusted person making legitimate voice calls to an unsuspecting patron.
John Alsop, Chairman, BorderWare explains the risks:
“While the industry works to secure voice communications at the transport layer with VPN-type encryption, hackers are developing tools that attack Internet calls at the application layer, gaining unauthorized access to a VoIP connection.”

“To protect VoIP communications at the application layer you need a SIP firewall that is able to authenticate the user attempting to make a connection and to provide systems administrators with the ability to easily set and enforce their VoIP security policies.”
16 February, 2005
Smart2Go , Maps and Local Guides to your Mobile Phone
The Smart2Go Personal Navigator is claiming to be the first mobile navigation system to combine satellite navigation with an extensive travel guide. For travellers who don’t know their A-Z from their GPS, the Personal Navigator promises to make finding your way around town a breeze, with routes, directions and 3D maps being generated at a click of a button on your PDA/smartphone.
Initially running on Series-60 Nokia phones, the package is supplied with a separate GPS location device that uses Bluetooth to find its precise location. Instead of just serving up a boring old route from A to B, the Personal Navigator digs into its database (compiled by Tele Atlas) to dish up a load of useful local information to guide users to petrol stations, banks, car parks, etc.
Hard drinking, wild-living road warriors will be pleased to learn that the program can serve up details of nearby pubs and nightclubs, while more cultured types will enjoy looking up museums, tourist sights, shopping information.
Additionally, Personal Navigator can also provide recommendations, updated daily, for events in culture, sports and more – and if you fancy meeting up with your friends, smart2go can send them route details by sms or e-mail.
Although Smart2Go is a fully fledged satellite navigation system, it can speed up route calculations by utilising its own maps, stored in memory, rather than making the user wait (and pay) for a connection to an external server.
Maps of many European countries and the United States are already available. Locations can be entered through the keypad and the resulting navigation directions are spoken loudly and clearly (available in four languages).
Smart2Go are clearly going for the mass market with this application, as it runs on all Nokia Series60-Standard smartphones with Bluetooth and SD/MMC slot. The company is also promising versions of smart2go for MS Windows Smartphone, PocketPC, Nokia Series 80 and Palm OS in the near future.
Smart2Go Personal Navigator
Gate5
Tele Atlas
15 February, 2005
‘Ultra Low Cost’ Mobile Handsets Announced by GSM Association
In response to demand from emerging markets the GSM Association (GSMA) is forging the way toward for a new ‘Ultra-Low Cost’ mobile handset market, producing sub-US$40 (Euro 31, £21) handsets. Some of the more cynical observers are wondering if this is an attempt to create a demand, or an early move to ensure a toehold in the potentially lucrative emerging market.
This initiative was kick-started by GSMA-commissioned research that identified handset cost as the single biggest barrier to mobile communications affordability in emerging markets.
Although we can’t help questioning the need to commission an entire study just to discover that ‘poor people can’t afford handsets’, the GSM Association aims to use the economies of scale of GSM to drive a new ‘Ultra-Low Cost’ market segment.
The GSMA brought together a group of its operator members that serve emerging markets to create critical mass through a special procurement initiative.
“One of our key goals as a global trade association is to help connect the ‘unconnected’ people of the World, a mission that is critical to the social and economic development of many emerging market countries,” said Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSM Association. “By directly addressing the cost of handset ownership, we believe that we can unlock the new ‘Ultra-Low Cost’ market segment.”
The operators participating in this stage of the initiative are: AIS Telecom, Bharti Televentures, Globe Telecom, Maxis Mobile, Orascom, SingTel Mobile, Smart Communications, Telenor Mobile and Turkcell. Together, they represent significant presence in Eurasia, the Arab World and Latin America.
A handset specification and tender was issued to 18 different handset vendors, with Motorola’s family of products (built on its new, ultra-low cost C114 platform) being selected.
The handsets are optimised for their durability, long talk time, and design preferences of emerging markets and Motorola has committed to start delivering these products during the second quarter at a price point below $40 (ex factory) – with a strategic intent to work with GSMA members to develop follow-on products at sub $30 (Euro23.10, £15.89) price points.
Once shipments begin, the initial unit volume target for the first six months is a massive 6 million handsets, which equates to around 1 percent of the global handset market.
As economies of scale kick-in, this new market segment has the potential to add more than a 100 million new connections per year.
Motorola’s Chief Executive Officer, Ed Zander comes over all touchy-feely in the announcement:
“Connecting the unconnected with new Ultra-Low Cost, high quality, beautifully-designed handsets is a critical component of Motorola’s growth strategy – and it is the right thing for us to do as a good global citizen. We are delighted to have won the opportunity to seamlessly partner with the GSMA and member operators to deliver the magic of mobile communications to those who have never experienced it.”
(Note: Motorola had sales of US $31.3 billion (Euro24.1 billion, £16.5 billion), in 2004). The next stage of the project will see the project extended to other emerging market operators, while more vendors will be encouraged to supply terminals for this sizable segment.
According to GSMA estimates, in the region of 80 percent of the world’s population have wireless coverage but only 25 percent use mobile services.
By bridging the gap between supply and demand, the GSMA hopes to accelerate mobile penetration into a user segment currently seen as financially unrewarding.
“This announcement is just the beginning,” enthuses Conway, Chief Executive Officer of the GSMA .
“We also believe that the creation of the ‘Ultra-Low Cost’ market segment represents a significant step towards a sustainable business case for all players in the supply chain. Our mission is to aid economic and social development, by ensuring more people than ever before benefit from mobile communications.”
The mobile usage equation has three major elements: handset, service provision and regulatory / tax requirements.
While the GSMA is working with operators and vendors to address the first two, the third requires serious government support to lower taxes and regulatory requirements.
The GSMA will be reaching out to governments and regulators across emerging markets towards this goal.
GSM Association (GSMA)
Industry Comment (GSMWorld)
15 February, 2005
Nokia, Microsoft Music shock: 3GSM
Much to everyone’s surprise, Nokia has just announced at 3GSM that they are to put Microsoft’s Media player software on their handsets.
Prior to this, Nokia has had a long running, and seemingly-solid relationship with Real Networks.
Music bought in either format will be invisibly exchangeable between mobile phones and Microsoft’s media player.
Microsoft Digital Media big gun, Amir Majidimehr was brought on stage to explain that Microsoft would be creating a software ‘bridge’ between their digital music format/DRM and OMA, the mobile worlds chosen DRM.
In return Microsoft will also be supporting OMA DRM and AAC music format in their Windows Media player, via a plug in.
When asked about how this would affect the relationship with Real, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Mobile Phones said that as an open platform, Nokia was happy to work with all audio players. Quite if Real will be as casual and off-hand about it, is highly doubtful.
We suspect there will be much shouting and screaming at Real Networks.
14 February, 2005
Nokia mPosition System Brings in Cambridge Positioning Systems Matrix
There’s a big future in locations-based services and Nokia are making their move to provide technology for it. As part of the Nokia mPosition System, Nokia is rolling out the Nokia intelligent Gateway Mobile Location Center (iGMLC) 4.0.
Billed as a new, cost-efficient platform for location-based services (LBS), the Nokia iGMLC platform is highly flexible and simultaneously supports both GSM and WCDMA 3G location based services. “The new platform offers our customer a cost-efficient means of deploying location based services, as well as excellent scalability and flexibility in terms of capacity and choice of positioning technologies,” says Heikki Hemmi, General Manager, Location Business Program, Networks, Nokia
Nokia are hoping that this system will provide operators with a future-proof and cost-effective solution for providing mobile services based on the location of the user, as Hemmi says “The platform supports the entire range of complementing positioning methods, from low-accuracy to high-accuracy technologies.”
Teaming up with Cambridge Positioning Systems (CPS), Nokia aims to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art solution, with the platform supporting a variety of positioning technologies for both GSM and WCDMA 3G.
This includes new support for enhanced Cell Identity and Mobile Station-based A-GPS (based on the Secure User Plane (SUPL) protocol) and support for Cambridge Positioning Systems’ SUPL Matrix for 2G.
Secure User Plane Location (SUPL), works on any network and doesn’t require additional investments in the core and radio network, as Chris Wade, CPS Chief Executive Officer explains, “CPS believes SUPL is the simplest and most cost-effective route to high accuracy. Matrix is particularly suited to this new open standard due to its ability to offer high and robust accuracy, all-area coverage and fast location fixes in a software-only implementation.”
With the Nokia mPosition System allowing mobile operators to build complete end-to-end systems for Location Based Services (while supporting both legacy and LBS enabled handsets), we think this is a significant development.
The Nokia iGMLC 4.0 platform will be available in the second quarter. Support for MS-based SUPL A-GPS and CPS’ SUPL Matrix for 2G will be available as a software upgrade in the third quarter.
Cambridge Positioning Systems
Nokia
Nokia Location Services
14 February, 2005
MobileKeeper: Mobile Phone Data Backup ‘Over The Air’
If you’ve ever had your phone stolen, left it in a cab or, like a colleague of ours, managed to send it spinning down the u-bend whilst attempting a tricky feat of toilet-based multi-tasking, you’ll know the pain of unexpectedly parting company with your phone.
Although losing a phone is not only an inconvenience, losing the stored messages, photos and personal data stored on it can be irreplaceable – so forgetful, crime-attracting drunks should be delighted by the release of media is generated on mobile phones, this type of application will become even more useful.
Created by MobiComp, a leading mobile computing and wireless solutions provider, the Symbian-signed, MobileKeeper client-server solution enables operators to guarantee safekeeping of increasing volumes of valuable information stored on subscribers’ phones.
Working as extended storage for the mobile device, the application offers “over the air” data backup for the mobile device allows storage and recovery of contacts, calendar, tasks, SMS, MMS, ring tones, images, videos, J2ME applications and anything else you can fit on your phone.
MobileKeeper’s main functions include ‘ Keep It’ (replicates all/defined information), ‘Get It’ (recovers all/part of stored data), ‘Explore It’ (works as a File Explorer allowing to keep, get, move, delete items) and Profiles (allows the user to define several profiles for storing/recovering/scheduled backups).
The application relies on open standard technologies, with a client-server architecture, and Web services layer for integration with the mobile operator infrastructure.
MobileKeeper is currently on trial with a number of European mobile communications operators.
With the advent of longer pub licensing laws in the UK, we suspect there may be a growing demand for this kind of product.
Mobile Keeper
11 February, 2005