USA

BitTorrent Signs Anti-Piracy Agreement With MPAA
P2P network, BitTorrent has signed an agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America to collaborate on stopping Internet piracy.
After a press conference, a joint release was released by BitTorrent founder and CEO Bram Cohen and MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman announcing that BitTorrent have agreed to remove all links directing users to pirated content owned by the seven MPAA member companies.
The agreement will effectively prevent bittorrent.com from locating unlicensed versions of popular movies, making it harder for freeloaders to find online illegal copies of films.
“BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely,” Cohen said.
“BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorised content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine,” he added.
Thousand of BitTorrent fans the world over will be clenching their fists and shouting “Traitor! You’re doing deals with the Devil,” while other more balanced, less angry-types will be saying “Smart move Bram, you’ve built a technology that they cannot stop and the fact they’ve done a deal with you proves that. Hey and you’re not getting your shirt sued off your back.”
In September, Cohen revealed that his company had raked in $8.75 million in venture funding to develop commercial distribution tools for media companies, and the MPAA deal looks to be part of a strategy to make the technology more attractive to Hollywood moguls – no doubt with an eye to future lucrative movie download deals.
With an estimated 45 million users, the BitTorrent technology pioneered by Cohen does its clever stuff by assembling digital files from separate bits of data downloaded from computer users all across the Internet.
The decentralised nature of technology makes it the easiest, most convenient way to fill your hard drive with dodgy movies galore, while making it harder for Hollywood to find and identify the movie swappers.
In an attempt to stop the piracy, the MPAA has been slapping lawsuits around like confetti during the last year, successfully closing down 90% of targeted sites using the BitTorrent protocol for illegal distribution of movies.
The MPAA claims that the film industry lost $3.5 billion to movie piracy last year, with a recent study predicting the figure to jump to $5.4 billion this year. The MPAA claim these losses are excluding revenue lost through online file-swapping, so the true figure could be even higher (although other will say the figures are already gloriously exaggerated).
With tears welling up in their eyes, the MPAA said that film copying hurts hundreds of thousands of employees dependent on the movie industry, including sound and lighting techies, carpenters, cinema staff, video store employees and quite probably the popcorn sales assistant too.
But not, we suspect, the fatcat industry bigwigs.
BitTorrent
23 November, 2005
iTunes Becomes Seventh Largest US Music Retailer
Apple’s iTunes online store has been ranked the seventh-largest music retailer in the US in the third quarter, charging into the top 10 for the first time.
According to research from the NPD Group, iTunes Music Store has climbed from fourteenth place last year to overtake many US High Street music stores.
Based on the number of songs sold, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon.com remained the top four, although iTunes rising star is expected to overtake more stores by the end of the year.
Already eating iTunes’ dust are big names like Tower Records and Borders, reflecting music fans’ growing passion for online music.
“With the growing interest in digital music, forecasts of more iPod demand this holiday, plus the stocking-stuffer appeal of iTunes gift cards, we can expect Apple to increase its share even more by year’s end,” predicted Russ Crupnick, music and movies industry analyst for the NPD Group in the report.
Launched in April 2003 to offer downloadable tracks to users of its best-selling iPod digital music player, Apple has sold more than 600 million songs, with the service boasting more than 10 million iTunes account holders.
Combined revenue from the iPod, Apple’s fastest- selling product, and iTunes music accounted for a massive 40 percent of sales last quarter, up from 27 percent a year earlier.
Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple have already shifted over 30 million iPods since the product launched in 2001.
iTunes
23 November, 2005
Cisco and Scientific Atlanta Converge
Convergence took a step forward Friday past as Cisco announced the takeover of Scientific Atlanta (SA). The price? $6.9 billion cash.
SA shareholders don’t get a big premium (around 4%). The markets had already priced the shares to allow for a takeover talk, of which has been ongoing for some time – Sony being rumoured as one of the prospective suitors. Conversely, Cisco stockholders aren’t too enthused with the takeover, and see the cable business as riskier than the high margin routers that have been Cisco’s cash cows.
The acquisition looks a good fit though, Cisco are keen to push their IPTV proposition, SA’s strength in the US set-top-box market (they have around 40% market share) will allow them to capitalise on the access to the home that video brings. The companies’ combined news release majors on this, John Chambers, president and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems said “Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.”
The release also notes that the coming together of the two companies “creates a world class, end-to-end triple play solution for carrier networks and the digital home”
Formed in 1951, SA has long been a market leader in Cable TV, has a healthy balance sheet and already has one large IPTV customer in the shape of SBC Communications. The critical mass of SA as part of Cisco should help it win more.
Expect both Motorola (SA’s main US competitor) and Microsoft to consider how best to respond to this strategic move by the dominant Internet hardware backbone provider.
Cisco
Scientific Atlanta
21 November, 2005
Grokster U-turns And Closes Service
Grokster, the online music sharing service, much legally embattled, has decided to shut the service and pay $50 million to settle claims against it.
Visitors to their site will now see the following message
The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal.
Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.
There are legal services for downloading music and movies.
This service is not one of them.
Quite a turn around from their previous stance and not exactly expected.
AP is reporting that the settlement
permanently bans Grokster from participating, directly or indirectly, in the theft of copyrighted files and requires the company to stop giving away its software.
You would think that this would pretty much be the end of them, but no.
There is a plan to launch a service that they say will be a “safe and legal service” under the name Grokster 3G.
As you would expect with such a massive turn around, the record industry is pretty happy. Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) explained their position, “As the Court articulated in no uncertain terms, there is a right way and a wrong way to conduct a business. This settlement makes clear that businesses are well aware when they are operating on the wrong side of that line.”
The fallout from this sudden turn-around by Grokster is far from clear. They were originally one of the strongest proponents of the right to run a P2P service without restricting the content that is exchanged on it.
Certainly, it will put significantly more pressure on StreamCast Networks Inc., which distributes Morpheus, and Sharman Networks Ltd., which distributes Kazaa, who were co-defendants of the original court case.
What is not certain is if Grokster will be able to pull any of their current users over to their new Grokster 3G service – effectively ‘doing a Napster’. We suspect that it’s highly likely that many of the current Grokster’s will feel betrayed by their change around.
Grokster
8 November, 2005
Motorola Phone Sales And Profits Soar
Mobile phone heavyweights Motorola, have reported bumper earnings for the third quarter, with profits more than tripling after record sales.
Purring contentedly over a ‘none more black’ balance sheet, Motorola announced that the results for the three months until the end of September revealed a net profit of $1.75bn (~£1bn, ~€1.46bn), compared to $479m from the same period last year.
Handsets were up 41% year-on-year with quarterly sales soaring 26% to a new high of $9.42bn, from $7.5bn for the same period in 2004.
The world’s second largest maker of mobile phones also managed to grab a bigger share of the global mobile phone market, barging their way to a fat 19% slice – up 5.5% over the year, and up 1% since the second quarter of 2005.
Since Ed Zander took over as the company’s CEO in 2004 Motorola have been on a roll, with sales and profits heading in a stratospheric direction.
“We are very excited about our third quarter results and overall performance year-to-date… Excluding re-organisation charges, all four of Motorola’s businesses grew profitably during the quarter,” said a deeply chuffed Zander.
During the last quarter, Motorola managed to ship 38.7 million mobile phones, including 6.5 million of its fashionable slimline Razr units and a quarter of a million iTunes music phones.
The US company is now forecasting pocket-bulging fourth-quarter sales of $10.3bn.
Motorola
19 October, 2005
“Internet Spam Gang” Gets $37m Fine
Leo Kuvayev, the leader of the largest Spam gang, and six of his business partners have been handed a $37m (~E30m, ~£21m) fine by the courts in Massachusetts.
They were prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) and the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.
Running the two businesses, 2K Services Ltd. and Ecash Pay Ltd, from both a Boston Post Office and Russia, he was helped to court by information supplied by Microsoft. The spammers had used many different Hotmail accounts to blast the unsuspecting world with their spam, where they sold counterfeit Vioxx, Zoloft, Paxil, Lipitor, and Viagra; copy-software; and Casino playing.
This was no small operation. Microsoft collected more than 45,000 spam messages believed to be from the Internet Spam Gang in just 22 days between 12 June and 4 July 2004. Not bad, with an average of 2,000 emails per day.
These boys had permanently itchy feet online as well as in real life. They registered domain names in Monaco, Australia and France, and used computer servers located in China, Korea, Brazil and Taiwan.
Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Riley took civil action against the collection of companies and obtained an emergency court order, bringing down a number of websites including BadCow.com.
Leo’s been known about for a while. A glance to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, shows information that was collected about Leo Kuvayev, or Leonid Aleksandorovich Kuvayev to give him his full name, as far back at June 2004. Wikipedia reports that all of this information was then passed to the Head of Macromedia anti-piracy unit, and eventually made it to the FBI.
From this, we can see that Mr Kuvayev didn’t limit his business activities to just being the worlds largest spammer, but ran software copying organisations and online casino’s and most frighteningly credit card processing.
He appears very enterprising, does’t he? He’s also listed as the 2nd worst spammer on the Spamhaus top ten – (thanks to them for the photo).. Not bad for a 32 year old (if you like that sort of thing) .
On the amusing side, In what we assume must have been his less wealthy days, Leo looks like he tried to sell a few of his possessions on usenet. Interestingly the ad says that they ‘Must sell by 5/31/96’ – on the move again?
We suspect that the chances of him being caught is pretty slim, and those of him clearing his $37m fine, slimmer still.
We also wonder how long it will be before Viaden.com removes the testimonial from Kuyayev!
Case information from Massachusetts Attorney General
14 October, 2005
One In Five Americans Has Never Been Online
A new study has revealed that one in five Americans is without home Internet access and have never been online, potentially hindering their access to crucial information and services.
The survey by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project has highlighted the existence of a digital divide running along lines of age, race and income.
American wrinklies are lagging far behind in Internet adoption, with only 26 percent of folks 65 and older going online, compared with 67 percent of the 50 to 64 group.
One in five American adults (22 percent) remain completely untouched by the Internet and have never been online or received an email – roughly the same percentage of the population as in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the study also found that people with lower incomes and less education also registered lower percentages of Internet adoption.
Although around 70 percent of white Americans use the Internet, only 57 percent of African-Americans are online, with an emerging divide among those who have high-speed “broadband” Internet access and those on cranky old dial up.
The Pew study found that the majority of those using broadband are affluent and well-educated and that 66 percent of households earning $75,000 (~£42,260, ~€61,825) or more annually have a high-speed broadband Internet service at home.
This compares to just 21 percent of households on low incomes ($30,000 a year, ~£16,900, ~€24,730) possessing a high-speed Internet service.
Broadband makes it easier for surfers to whiz around the Web and download music, view videos, enjoy free VoIP calls and access online services and important information on topics like health and finance.
The differences are similar between those who have college degrees and those who have high-school degrees with Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project, commenting, “What’s starting to emerge … is an elite group of people who are pulling away with what they can do online.”
Fox added that businesses and governments should not forget the needs of the unconnected population and ensure that offline sources for health and government material is made available.
The study estimated that 53 percent of Internet users now have a high-speed connection at home, up from 21 percent in 2004, while a separate report last week by Nielsen/NetRatings, estimated that around 42 percent of the US population has broadband Internet service, up from 36 percent in January.
Pew Internet & American Life Project
7 October, 2005
Free Mobiles; Technology Terror?; RIAA Boycott – Teenage Tech News Review
Handy… Literally!
Engadget has a story on how Montclair State University in New Jersey is handing out free phones to it’s students to enable them to easier communicate with each other. The handsets feature software which allows them to receive “channels” of information, which users sign up for. These channels include things like the dinner menu and the location of the university’s shuttle buses, as well as channels students have set up of their own.
I can admit I am actually kind of jealous of this: I would love the ability to be able to do this at school, checking up on when holidays are, what’s on the menu, and what my time-table’s like. Sadly, I think my school would have some difficulty in preventing the chavs from selling them on eBay, which of course is an entirely different issue.
This is the problem with technology like this: Those most likely to adopt it are, by default, young people, who therefore can’t afford it. Give it to them instead then, and a select few will take advantage of that. Technology like this, for now, is only for older people I think. This isn’t to say it isn’t exciting though: I still find socio-technological implementations, usually referred to as MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software), fascinating, as although there isn’t yet much of a market for these sorts of services, there will inevitably be, and when there is, it could well change the way we communicate with each other forever.
Sounds nasty!
Everyone over here in Europe likes to text, or “txt” for short. I’m not entirely sure how popular the practice is over in the US, but in the UK it’s used mainly by teenagers, although others use it too, because of it’s extremely low cost in comparison to making voice calls.
The New York Times is reporting that apparently, using SPAMming techniques, it should be possible to flood a cities GSM infrastructure by sending as little as 165 text messages a second into the network. This is made possible because text messages use the same communications infrastructure and network that voice calls are made to as well. Imagine what could happen if someone flooded a network, so that no calls could be made, and then at the same time a co-ordinated terrorist attack occurred. People would be unable to call the emergency services, and wide-spread carnage and destruction would occur.
This is particularly scary for me, as I would be at a loss in an emergency without my phone: It’s central to how I find people and communicate with them, and when I really need to get in touch with them, I wouldn’t be able to. This reliance and taking for granted of technology is something that most of my generation are likely guilty of, and when everything does kick off and there’s no electricity, phones or water, I would have severe doubts that a lot of them would be able to cope with it.
It was only really recent events (London bombings) that brought this to my attention, but it has made me realise that reliance on technology could be very turned around and be used against us.
That lot again
Yes, that’s right, the RIAA are at it again: A short time ago, a case against a mother on her daughter’s behalf of file sharing was dismissed in court. Now, the RIAA are back, but this time, they’re not suing the mother but her 14-year old daughter.
People like the RIAA make me so, so angry: At 14, no-one really knows what they’re doing. So a little girl downloaded some of her favourite songs from the Internet. That little girl was probably a paying customer as well, but her pocket money just wasn’t enough, and she just wanted to hear one more song by her favourite artist, but couldn’t afford it. Her friend said “you can get it for free from here”, and so that’s what the girl did. Next thing she knew, the very company she was a customer of, was sending threatening letters to her, demanding thousands of dollars in compensation.
Is this the right way of treating your customers? I know for sure it is one great way of driving them away. If you are in my position at the moment, of having a good few thousand songs you enjoy, then stop buying music unless it is from your local bands or from an independent label. It might sound an unrealistic expectation, but I have found so many great bands on the Internet and locally at pubs and other music venues, that I am quite confident I will never be giving another penny to those greedy folks over at the RIAA.
You can do something about it though, by going to www.boycott-riaa.com. Every little helps!
That would be my rant for the day, have a nice weekend :-)
7 October, 2005
Playstation: Emmy Awarded
Sony’s Playstation has been awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Technology and Advanced New Media for pioneering the 3D polygonal-based gaming experience, by the US National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).
Now for those who don’t know, there are a ton of Emmys – and why not. The entertainment industry is not only massive and expanding, but there are a huge number of people involved in the creation process, many of whom would go unnoticed without awards like this by those outside the industry, as so much attention is paid to those who appear on screen. The PlayStation’s award falls under the Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, being presented in Princeton today.
You can imagine that the awarding of this will make steam come out of the ears of those on the Xbox team at Microsoft
“Emerging technologies in digital media play an important role in the way in which people consume in-home entertainment, and gaming in particular has been a consistent source of innovation in recent years,” said Seth Haberman, Chair of Video Gaming and Technology Awards panel for NATAS. “We felt that the advent of PlayStation exemplified a significant shift in the direction of the gaming and are pleased to recognize Sony Computer Entertainment for its contribution.”
Many of those who’ve been playing games on the PS & PS2 will wonder why it’s taken so long for something as significant as the Playstation to come to the attention of this Academy. The PS is, after all, ten years old.
Is it only the cynical that would think that the timing of this award has anything to do with the wider entertainment business (read film) getting more closely involved with creation of film license games? Or even that they’ve finally woken up to the fact that the amount of money spent on video games out-sizes that spent on film.
Our long held view is that both TV and film are in big trouble when games develop to the point where their characters are given ‘back stories’ and the intelligence to apply them to during interaction in game play. Why would you want to watch TV when you could be in it?
A big congrats to all those involved in the creation of the Playstation. Ken Kutaragi must be a very happy man.
30 September, 2005
FiOS TV: Verizon US Launched IPTV Over Fibre
Verizon has launched an IPTV service in Keller, Texas delivered over their fiber-to-the-premises network.
The service will carry High Def (HDTV) as well as the expected Standard Def. The initial offering will include 330 TV channels, over 20 HD channels, close to 600 video-on-demand with 1,800 planned by the end of the year.
The quote from Bob Ingalls, president of Verizon’s Retail Markets Group won’t exactly be getting the customers running for the phone to place orders. Strapping on his biggest, boldest PR engine, he revved “This is not cable TV. This is not satellite. This is FiOS TV. Customers who liked what FiOS did for their Internet connection will love what it does for their TV. We’ve harnessed the speed and capacity of broadband with the power of broadcast to create a revolutionary, new entertainment experience.” We really hope the offering and services FiOS TV customers contain more content than this empty drivel. (Ed: If you’re not adding anything, why bother saying it?)
FiOS Internet connections, or FiOS for Home as Verizon call it, have been available in a number of areas of the US since June last year, including Keller. It provided 15Mb connections from $45/month and 5Mb from $35. At the very expensive end, they’ve also got a 30Mb offering, but at around $200/month.
With the currently level of video compression combined with connections of that size, there will be no problem delivering multiple TV services (different programmes) to different rooms – even at HD.
Verizon are offers three set-top boxes: standard definition for $3.95/month; HD for $9.95/month; and a digital video recorder set-top box with HD channels for $12.95 permonth. Content packages between $13/month – $40/month are layer on top of this.
Later this year Verizon expects to roll-out the service to Wylie, Sachseand Westlake, Texas. Following this they plan to head to Florida, Virginia and California.
FiOS for Home
Verizon FiOS TV (confusingly saying available soon)
23 September, 2005