Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

DVD-Jon Officially in the Clear
Norwegian computer programmer, Jon Lech Johansen will be relieved to hear that his countries state prosecutor that handles computer crime, ØKOKRIM, today that they will not appeal the court ruling clearing him of wrong doing on 22.Dec.03.
His alleged crime was that he circumvented the copy protection scheme on his film DVD. His plea was that he wanted to play his legally purchased DVD on his Linux computer, and as there was no software that enabled him to do this, we wrote deCSS that removed the protection enabling him to play it. This is not normally something the general public would hear about, but DVD-Jon, as he became known as, uploaded the software to the Internet enabling others to use it.
In January 2000, he was awarded the Karoline Prize, a prestigious national prize in Norway, given annually to a high school student for academic excellence and making a significant contribution to society outside of school for deCSS.
When he turned 18, ØKOKRIM Chief Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde indicted Johansen for violating Norwegian Criminal Code section 145(2), which outlaws breaking into another person’s locked property to gain access to data that one is not entitled to access. The US MPAA gave considerable support to ØKOKRIM.
On 22 December 2003 the Norwegian courts came to the decision that DVD-Jon could not be held accountable or punished for others’ use of his program and that “DVD is so vulnerable to damage that the purchaser must be entitled to make a copy, for example of a movie he is particularly interested in preserving”. Today ØKOKRIM confirmed that they would not be appealing the decision to a higher court.
Hollywood will not be pleased with the outcome of this. It will be seen as a now legal “leak” for their DVD content in Europe.
Aftenposten report
ØKOKRIM
5 January, 2004
PSX Spec Downgraded but Still Sells Out
Following the recent launch of Sony’s PSX, which combines the functions of a PlayStation 2, PVR and DVD burner (full details), there have been a number of dissenting voices over the reduced specification of the released product. Despite this, the first shipment to shops is reported to have nearly sold out on launch day, with long queues on the day of its release. The size of the initial shipment has not been disclosed. A spokesperson for Sony added that they plan to ship one million PSX systems by the end of 2004.
Quite a number of what would appear to be vital functions and features of the PSX have been downgraded or removed, which Sony say is to time pressures in hitting an xmas released date. The most surprising omission is of a functioning Ethernet port, clearly vital for accessing online content and sharing content between rooms in a household.
A number of formats will not initially be supported. MP3 playback will be missing, but Sony’s copy-protected ATRAC will be and TIFF and GIF graphics formats, although JPEG will continue to be supported. Two disk formats, CD-R and DVD+RW have also been dropped. The speed of the DVD recording has been halved from x24 to x12 which should have too much of an impact.
Financial analysts have been damning in their views of the changes with Kazumasa Kubota of Okasan Securities has described the PSX as a “publicity stunt”, while Kazuya Yamamoto of UFJ Tsubasa has claimed that “lowering the specifications of the PSX hurt Sony’s image”.
We feel the removals have been more about anti-piracy than a need to “rush” the release and are probably victims of the long-running struggle between Sony’s content and CE division.
Sony PSX site
19 December, 2003
BT Extends Radio Broadband Trial
Following satellite coverage, but this has not been taken up due to its very high costs.
Their new approach is to provide high-speed connections to a central point, then distribute to households that have uninterrupted, line-of-site to the antenna (picture right) mounted on top of the subscribers rooftop. Labelled as P2MP (Point to MultiPoint), it provides a two-way connection that will, in their words, supply connections of a similar speed to 512k ADSL.
For the trial, they are working with Israel-based company, Alvarion, using their BreezeAccess product that operates in the 5.8GHz Band C radio spectrum.
Other similar services have been available around the UK for some time. Firstnet (who were bought by Pipex in August this year) have been running a similar service in densely populated areas around cities including Leeds, Bradford, Nottingham, Reading and Coventry for locations up to 10km away from any of its base. They are offering two-way 512Kbps, 1Mbps or even 5Mbps services.
Porthleven trial site
BreezeAccess from Alvarion
Firstnet
17 December, 2003
Apple Hits 25m Song Downloads
Further success for Apple have been announced as they declare they have now sold 25 million downloaded song through their iTunes music store, which is currently only operating in America. At this rate they are selling at an average of 1.5 million downloads a month.
Appropriately for this time of year the 25th million track was “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” by Frank Sinatra.
One of the new features introduced into iTunes 2.0 was the ability to purchase online gift certificates for others and to give download allowances for children, who do not have their own credit cards. Over $1 million dollars (~€812,420, ~£572,600) worth of these, vary between $20-$200, have been sold since October.
This announcement comes on the heals of US Time magazine naming iTunes Music Store as the Invention of 2003.
Apple iTunes
Time – Invention of 2003
16 December, 2003
First US WiFi City
Cerritos, a city of 51,000, 26 miles (41 kilometres south east of LA, California will be the first city in America to have complete WiFi coverage. In a deal between the Cerritos and the provider, Aiirnet, will involve Aiirnet installing transmitters all over the city, placing them on public buildings, traffic lights and other structures covering the 8.6-square-mile (22-square-kilometer) area.
The residents of the city has had problems getting broadband access as DSL doesn’t extend over the whole city and their cable service has remained analogue, so has been unable to provide Internet access.
The city authorities have agreed to purchase sixty access accounts for some of their field-working employees. Residents who want access will have to pay $34.95/month.
The City of Fredericton in Canada announced back in November that it would be offering a similar service to its 81,000 residents, but being Canada, access will be free.
Yahoo/AP story
City of Cerritos Web Site
Fredericton in Canada goes WiFi
12 December, 2003

UK Reaches 3m Broadband Connections

UK regulator Ofcom announced yesterday that there are now over three million broadband connections in the UK as at Nov 2003. These are broadly split between DSL (55%) and cable (44%).

While we always support the promotion growth of broadband, knowing it is an essential ingredient of a digital lifestyles, we feel that Ofcom including connections speeds a low as 128 kbit/s, outside the excepted normal definition of broadband, leads the figures to be a little misleading.

Looked at in positive terms, the number of broadband households has more than doubled in the last year, with one in five of all UK homes with Internet access now having a broadband connection. This equates, in real terms, to around 10% of the UK population.

Take-up rates for ADSL connections continue to exceed cable modem connections by a factor of 3 to 1 which is fantastic news for BT. It is only when you dig into the detail of the figures, you start to understand the twisted nature of broadband in the UK. Excluding Kingston-Upon-Hull, while has a private telcom provider, nearly all of the DSL connection are provided, at some level, by BT, with only a pitiful 7,800 lines, less than 0.5% of DSL lines installed, having been Local Loop Unbundled (LUU), ie not provided by BT (see table below). We don’t define this as a competitive market.

Table: Broadband take-up at end November 2003

Total broadband		3,021,000

DSL	Total	1,674,000
	BT Wholesale	1,664,000
	Kingston	10,000
Cable modem	Total	(Oftel estimate) 1,331,000
	NTL	931,000
	Telewest	(Oftel estimate) over 400,000
Fixed wireless access		Over 2,500
Satellite		Over 6,000
LLU		7,800

Source: Ofcom

Oftel’s Internet and Broadband Brief

11 December, 2003

Coke To Sell Music Online in the UK
Soft Drinks company, Coca Cola, will be launching a pay-for legal music download service in the UK in January 2004. They are teaming up with OD2, who provide the technology, and will be offering more than a quarter of a million of tracks.
It is thought that this will be a major boost to the profile of downloadable music given their recent controversial deal to sponsor the BBC’s Top Of The Pops TV pop show and the BBC Radio 1’s weekly top 40 countdown show. Given the target of these shows it is strange that the system will only be usable by people over 18, as a credit card is needed to purchase tracks.
A spokesperson for HMV, high street music sellers, was clearly deluded in their comments, “From a retailer’s point of view, we feel confident that people will stick to established retailers that have a lot of experience in the area. They can offer expertise and depth of knowledge and we feel the vast majority of record buyers would want to continue buying from these sources,” but they would say that wouldn’t they.
MyCokeMusic.com
9 December, 2003
HomePlug IC Now Under $10
Intellon Corp. have announced their third generation of chip for use in powerline-enabled devices. Priced at under $10, the lowest current unit price cost, it enable builders of devices to embed Ethernet connectivity using nothing more that the powercord of the device plugged into the wall socket, creating a network around the building.
The HomePlug Alliance is a US-based organisation that promotes the use of power circuits to carry Ethernet signals and their HomePlug 1.0 standard can now carry up to 14Mbps of data theoretically.
The single chip, INT5200, includes a fair bit of functionality; a HomePlug 1.0 physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC), three host interfaces including MII, Ethernet 10/100BT MAC, and USB1.1 device, and a complete analogue front-end (AFE) with receive and transmit amplifiers, all in CMOS technology. Backward compatibility has been maintained by using the same pin out as previous versions.
While transferring data using the power cord of devices seems like a panacea, some parties have voiced concerns that such devices cause interference with radio signals, both within and outside the households using them.
Intellon
The HomePlug Alliance
3 December, 2003
Digital Terrestrial Television Launches in Japan
Digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting was launched in Japan yesterday by Junichiro Koizumi, their Prime Minister.
Launching in three cities; Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, it is their first step towards turning off analogue transmissions by July 2011. It also happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary year of television broadcasting in Japan.
Although digital broadcasts can be seen over fairly large areas in Osaka and Nagoya, viewing in Tokyo is still narrowly confined to its central areas for the NHK general service. Potential viewers are estimated at 12 million households but some estimate that the actual number of viewers at about 300,000 due to reception and delivery problems. With these small numbers, it is currently seen more as an experiment than a commercial rollout.
Japan has had satellite digital broadcast since 2001, drawing 4.7 million households so far.
Japan Times
2 December, 2003
Apple QuickTime DRM Cracked
Apple iTunes Music Store (iTMS) has been a huge success, with over seventeen million tracks having been sold to date. When music is paid for and downloaded it is stored in a Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected format, AAC.
Jon Johansen, a Norwegian programmer, has written program, QTFairUse, which enables Windows users to save purchased music files without the DRM. It works by taking a copy of the raw data that QuickTime temporarily saves to disk, after it has removed the DRM, before it plays the music track. QTFairUse only grabs the raw AAC file, many further steps and programs must be used to make it playable. Currently this process is beyond highly technical users, and well near impossible for general computer users.
A number of publications have reported that iTMS has been cracked. It is important to note that this is incorrect; it is in fact a weakness in the Windows version of QuickTime that has been exploited. It is assumed that Apple would be able to close this gap.
Johansen came to the worlds attention when he distributed a program called DeCSS, that circumvented the copy protection scheme on DVD, so he could play DVD’s on his Linux machine, that did not at that time have software to play DVD’s.
QTFairUse
25 November, 2003