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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
BitTorrent File Sharer Arrested
A Hong Kong doleboy has been slapped down by The Man after he was found guilty of distributing three Hollywood films using BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file sharing technology.
A report in the Taiwanese English-language newspaper The China Post named unemployed Chan Nai-Ming in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
The 38 year old used BitTorrent to distribute “Miss Congeniality”, “Daredevil” and “Red Planet” and heard the knock on the door from customs officers in January 2005.
Nai-Ming pleaded not guilty to copyright infringement but was convicted after a four day trial. He will be sentenced on 7 November, 2005, although some Websites are reporting that he’s already been fined $641 (~£360, ~E529).
The Hong Kong government is claiming the action as its first successful action against peer-to-peer file sharing, with Hong Kong Commerce Secretary John Tsang confident that it would deter other potential file-sharers.
Since the arrest, the Hong Kong customs department said that illegal file-sharing had plummeted by 80%.
The OpenSource BitTorrent software has become one of the most popular means of downloading large files, with the technology allowing users to download fragments of a large file from multiple users, rather than in one hefty lump.
Initially, the program needed centralised tracker files to manage this process, but BitTorrent’s creator, Bram Cohen announced that they were no longer needed in the last year.
As it’s grown in popularity, BitTorrent has garnered the unwelcome attentions of spyware and adware pushers along with the corporate might of recording companies and movie studios.
Thousands of peer-to-peer downloaders using software like Napster and SoulSeek have already been sued for copyright infringement over the past few years, with the US Supreme Court ruling last year that peer-to-peer makers could be sued if they encourage users to copy material.
We expect the corporate-profits-defending big boot of The Man to be seeing a lot of door-kicking action in the upcoming months.
BitTorrent
MPAA to pursue film file-sharers
26 October, 2005
FUD Encouraged By Macrovision Report
Macrovision, a company who sell content protection (DRM) system, have today released a report they commissioned into content copying.
The findings? That ‘Casual Piracy’ is “a Growing Challenge in the Entertainment Industry” and that “mass market penetration of digital recording devices and broadband/file-sharing networks are prompting many entertainment brands to enrich their content protection strategies and influence bottom line performance.”
Let us translate. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is coming and the public had better start getting used to it.
This is on the basis of what to us appears, from a quick once over of this report, a pretty unscientific approach, as the following paragraph from page 10 illustrates.
“In order to estimate exactly what effective content protection represents, respondents were also asked to estimate how many units/titles were copied (burnt) for each 100 sold and how many were illegally downloaded for every 100 sold.”
How can someone write “estimate exactly” without seeing the paradox? They just have well asked them “How paranoid are you about content copying?”
Their conclusion directly under this nonsense? “None of the figures make for comfortable reading.” WHAT?!?!? Just because these figures are presented in a table in a report with graphs next to them, doesn’t elevate them from what they are – guesses. At this point we stopped reading this report – we had some drying paint that needed watching.
I hope that each time a ‘report’ or so called research like this is published, that it is gone through with a fine tooth comb pointing out its weaknesses. This kind of nonsense needs to be countered.
FUD rules
I have, for years, been questioning the content industry – How are you going to sell DRM to the public when what you’ll be selling them some less good/useful than they had before? The answer has always been a resounding silence.
When I asked a very senior person at Fox (his name escapes me) why DRM would be required when the vast majority of their customers are fair, reasonable and trustworthy, his response stunned me – “We take the opposite view, we treat everyone as dishonest.”
To me, that summed up both the arrogance and distain of the company, and possibly that of the current ‘entertainment’ industry. Any company that has such a low opinion of their customers, will eventually come to a sticky end – and it’s quite right that they do.
Through the sheer panic of suddenly waking up to the changes that technology has been bringing to media for decades (hell, I had digitised audio tracks on my Mac Plus, soon after it was released in 1984), the ‘entertainment;’ business has been listening to technology companies, who by strange co-incidence have something to sell – content protection systems.
That combined with the universal truth that fear is contagious, leads to a point where we are now. The current media companies being near terrified that _all_ of the customers are waiting to steal from them, so they must be restricted – and DRM-selling companies are more than happy to help them in their fear.
Their perceived need to restrict their customers is costing them _huge_ amounts of money and it will continue to … and to what gain?
They stop their customers from using their purchases how they feel fit – well, at least until the latest hack removes the protection – and in the process, further alienate their customers, building resentment.
Why don’t they spend all of this effort, time and money creating new content – engaging their audience further?
I wonder if the ‘entertainment’ companies have spared a thought as to what would happen if their businesses did fail? Do they not see that generally the technology companies are going to win anyway even without them?
PDF of complete report.
BTW, don’t try copying text out of the report, it’s protected unsurprisingly.
25 October, 2005
Sony Layout TV Plans For PSP’s Future
Listen to Howard Stringer’s speech
Those coming all the way to Tokyo from around Europe and the US, in a hope that Howard Stringer would continue his already well documented shake-up of Sony by making big announcements at his Keynote at the first day of Ceatec would have been disappointed.
If you’re interested in the development of Sony products and where Sony will be going in the future, you were in luck.
The queues to get in for press and punters were huge, with one wag wondering if the hall was full of Sony people trying to find out if they still had a job.
The message from Stringer was strong. It needed to be. Sony is undergoing a massive transformation.
Politically, presenting in Tokyo was an important act – delivering this radical message in the home town of Sony’s head office.
The summary? The three pillars – Restructure, Sharpen, the use of software to “use Sony’s marriage of content and technology to create unique competitive advantages and compelling user experiences.”
While admitting that they have “fallen short in matching innovation with the expanding appetites of our customers,” he told those gathered that gone are the competitive businesses units (silos in Sony lingo) that many claim are partially responsible for Sony wobble. The future will be a united Sony, with a centralised management, looking across the business creation tools; content; phones; games.
Of all the tempting nuggets that Stringer, we’re going to focus on the PSP.
In the nine months that its been on the market, it’s sold 6m units worldwide, making it, they claim, the most successful portable games machine to date.
That’s all fine and dandy, but how will they change the way PSP users consume other media?
Well, here’s the exciting part, he promised that owners will “soon be able to deploy the device’s built-in WiFi, to watch video from home entertainment terminals, anytime, anywhere in the world.”
Now if that doesn’t excite, he also said “to expect to see” a PSP with a high capacity MemoryStick which can be synchronised a Digital Video Recorder (DVR).
The tempting morsels cry out for more details, ones that weren’t provided – which I guess is the point saying them at a big event like this.
Quite what Sony’s definition of a ‘home entertainment terminal’ is, wasn’t explained, nor was if it will require the purchase of another piece of kit.
It’s also unclear if the PSP that we should ‘expect to see’ will be a new model of the machine, or a new MemoryStick with increased capacity.
We’d imagine that PS owners will be prepared to put their hand in their pockets to get any of these and will be tempted by being able to download their choice of TV shows to PSP overnight ready for the trip to work does.
If you want to check out further details, feel free to listen to Howard Stringer’s speech (30Mb) yourself.
4 October, 2005
DoJ Operation Site Down: Raids In 11 Nations
In a pretty gung-ho move that shows a lot of seriousness, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced the results of Operation Site Down. More than 20 raids occurred in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK, as well as 70 in the USA.
Four arrests: David Fish; Nate Lovell; Chirayu Patel; and William Veyna were made in the US with them being charged with violating federal copyright protection laws.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was nothing if not stern, “By dismantling these networks, the Department is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain—a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of the illegal digital content now available online, and by penetrating this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft, we have shown that law enforcement can and will find — and we will prosecute — those who try to use the Internet to create piracy networks beyond the reach of law enforcement.”
We’d imagine there’s been a fair degree of celebration at this news in the entertainment world – dinner tables will be booked.
The DoJ reported that hundreds of computers had been seized, leading to at least eight major online distribution networks being shut down.
With the size of the seizures we’d imagine there’ll a big gap left in the world downloading. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to repair itself.
One thing the Attorney General said particularly struck us, “this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft.” Let’s hope the two of these are bound together, and he’s not talking about a separate illegal world of high-technology. Now that would be worrying.
While closing down some file sharing networks for a period of time will temporarily throttle the flow of material over the Internet, we see far more direct financial loss through gangs selling DVD’s around pubs, clubs and streets of the UK, where this has reached such a level that we have seen a pub with “No DVDs” signs on the door.
File trading on the Internet is done by spending the time doing it, but it has no financial gain. The DVDs being sold in public are making someone very rich.
It does make you think that if downloading high-quality movies without seeing the head of someone getting up in the middle of the film to go to the toilet were easy, most of that fiver that people pay on the street would end up in the film company’s pocket. Sadly they’re waiting for DRM to be in place first.
US Department of Justice
4 July, 2005
Napster Faces DRM Crack As WMA Files Compromised
Napster may have a new headache on its hands, with a DRM hack recently surfacing.
A team of programmers led by Cody Brocious are rumoured to be very near an implementation of a utility that will allow people to turn songs acquired through Napster Light and Premium into unencrypted files.
Users will still have to pay for the initial download of the file (to acquire the key from Napster) with the tool then stripping the WMA files of their underlying DRM protections.
Previously, users keen to distribute encrypted DRM-protect files have had to resort to unwieldy workarounds such as recording from the sound card.
Once stripped of its DRM, songs downloaded from Napster can be re-encoded and played back across a number of different systems – undermining the entire business model of the Napster service.
The tool is reported to be unable to circumvent Napster To Go songs using Janus DRM (WMA DRM v10) which is different from the DRM applied to Light and Premium songs.
The latest hack seems to be driven by a desire to make the Napster service functional on both Linux and Mac platforms, instead of just Windows, with Cody seeing his actions as “ethical,” irrespective of legality, and he is willing to “fight the DMCA.”
He wants to be able to play his lawfully acquired Napster music on Linux.
The Cracking of Napster WMA DRM
Cody Brocious
15 April, 2005
BBC Launches Creative Archive Licence
The BBC has moved a step closer to establishing a ‘public domain of audio-visual material’ with the launch of its ‘Creative Archive’.
The BBC, Channel 4, the British Film Institute and the Open University have teamed up to create the Creative Archive Licence, which aims to pave the way for the legal downloading of film, TV, radio archives and digital content via the Internet by the public.
The four partners in the Creative Archive Licence Group have issued a call to other organisations to join them, with Teachers’ TV and the Arts Council England already committing themselves to join the gang.
The Creative Archive Licence will give a new generation of media users legal access to material which they can use to express their creativity and share their knowledge – all completely free of charge.
The Licence follows on from pledges in the BBC’s Building Public Value document which committed the broadcaster to ‘help establish a common resource which will extend the public’s access while protecting the commercial rights of intellectual property owners.’
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC liked the look of it: “The Creative Archive Licence provides a unique solution to one of the key challenges of rights in the digital age, allowing us to increase the public value of our archives by giving people the chance to use video and audio material for their own non-commercial purposes.”
The Creative Archive Licence offers an innovative approach to the rights issues that often affect the use of archive material, allowing people to download and use footage and audio for non-commercial purposes.
Each user will agree to abide by the licence conditions before gaining access to any of the available material.
The hope is that soon-to-be launched pilot download schemes will help fuel creativity activity across Britain, with clapperboard-toting types using the footage in personal projects, classroom presentations and their own arty-farty creations.
The long term aim is for work created under the licence to be uploaded back to the originating Website and then shared with others across the Internet.
Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute, liked the cut of the project’s jib: “The Creative Archive Licence gives UK citizens increased opportunities to access and engage with moving image material from the bfi National Film and Television Archive. The project is an important step forward in enabling people to create their own works and explore the potential of digital film-making.’
The Creative Archive Licence hopes to emulate the success of the US based Creative Commons system, where less rigid copyright arrangements have stimulated artistic activity.
The BBC will initially be making footage from natural history and factual programmes available under the licence later this summer, and the BFI will be releasing a package of silent comedy, early literary adaptations, newsreel footage and archive footage of British cities in the early 20th century.
Interestingly, because the BBC is license fee funded they are releasing the content to UK-only Internet users, relying on a GeoIP solution to allow downloads from only UK hosts (not that we think it would be particularly hard for determined folks to circumvent those restrictions).
Creative Archive
14 April, 2005
Legal Action for UK P2P File-Sharers
In a never-ending quest to stem the flow of illegal file sharing, the UK record companies’ trade association, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), has announced that is taking legal action against another 33 illegal filesharers in the UK.
The legal action coincides with the IFPI’s (BPI’s international counterpart) announcement of action against 963 illegal filesharers in 11 countries.
This latest action brings the total up to 90 who have faced legal action since its campaign against Internet piracy began last year.
The UK recording industry started its campaign to spank pesky filesharers in October 2004 when it announced legal action against 26 illegal music swappers.
Those cases have all now been settled, with defendants shelling out more than £50,000 (US$94,600, €73,200) total in compensation.
The BPI ramped up the pressure on March 4 this year, declaring that it intended to pursue proceedings against 31 more illegal filesharers. The offenders were sent details of the BPI’s legal claims against them yesterday after their identities were revealed by their Internet service providers.
Sensing blood, the BPI also intends to proceed against another 33 illegal filesharers and will be going to the High Court next week to seek disclosure of their identities.
The 33 new cases include users of the popular KaZaA, DirectConnect, BearShare, SoulSeek, Grokster and Imesh peer-to-peer applications.
All of the accused are alleged to have been indulging in an orgy of uploading involving hundreds or thousands of music files illegally and face civil action for an injunction and damages.
BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor wagged his finger in a threatening manner and intoned, “We have warned people time and again that unauthorised filesharing is against the law. Anyone who is engaged in this activity faces having to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. It’s now easy to get music online legally. We will maintain our campaign until the message gets across.”
Try as we might, we still can’t get the words, “Stable door”, “horse” and “bolted ” out of our heads here.
BPI
IFPI
13 April, 2005
Police Hard Drive Sold On eBay Stuffed With Secrets
A hard drive, containing confidential data belonging to the Brandenburg police in Germany, was auctioned over eBay and bought by a student from the city of Potsdam for €20 (us$25/£14) according to a report by Spiegel, a leading weekly German newspaper.
The 20GB hard drive contained sensitive information detailing internal alarm plans on how the Police should handle “specific incidences” like hostage and kidnapping situations.
The drive also contained tactical orders and analysis of political security situations, along with contact names in the ‘crisis management group.’
This strictly confidential material should only be available to top level intelligence staff, the head of police, and the executive group around the Minister of Interior Schönbohm.
Schönbohm immediately banged tables loudly and initiated an investigation to discover how the hard drive ended up being sold over eBay and whether the information was leaked as a criminal act or some sort of inside blunder/employee theft (our money’s on the latter).
This cock up by the Brandenburg Police is not the first time a hard drive sold over eBay has set security bells ringing.
Last year, mobile security specialists Pointsec bought a load of hard drives off Internet auctions like eBay to find out how much sensitive company information they could unearth (and publicise their expertise in the bargain, natch).
Not surprisingly, they discovered that they were able to read 7 out of 10 of the hard drives, with their first purchase revealing the access and login codes to a major financial services group.
Peter Larsson, CEO of Pointsec Mobile Technologies, adopted an earnest face and commented, “Even when companies or individuals believe they have wiped the hard drive clean, it is blatantly clear how easy it is to retrieve sensitive information from them both during their current lifetime and beyond it.”
He added that this week’s exposure of leaked and highly critical information from the Brandenburg police in Germany “reinforces how important it is to never let mobile devices or hard drives leave the office without being adequately protected with encryption and strong password protection – even after they have been discarded.”
Pointsec sagely recommends that unencrypted drives should be re-formatted to within an inch of their lives before disposal (well, at least eight times) or professional “wipe-clean” software used.
Of course, if your drive contains nuclear secrets or damning photos of your late night encounter with an armadillo in stockings, the only way to absolutely guarantee the destruction of the data would be to torch it. And then take a hammer to it. And then stamp on it. And then…..
Out-law.com (via The Register)
8 April, 2005
New BBC Dr Who Episode Leaked Onto Internet
An episode of the new series of the sci-fi drama Doctor Who has been leaked onto the Internet, three weeks before the series is expected to begin on BBC One.
The 45 minute episode was being downloaded from at least three bit torrent sites yesterday, although is unclear whether it was the final cut or mid-production ‘rushes’.
Dr Who was first shown on BBC1 in 1963 and its cheap’n’cheerful props, low tech production values and less-than-convincing monsters managed to terrify several generation of viewers.
Under a hail of protests from its hardcore fans, the series – the world’s longest-running science-fiction television programme – ended in 1989, with a one-off movie reprise in 1996.
Reuters are reporting that the BBC is looking into the possible today, “This is a significant breach of copyright which is currently under investigation,” a BBC spokeswoman told Reuters. Commenting on where it came from, they said, “The source of it appears to be connected to our co-production partner,” she added, referring to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
In 2003, Dr Who was voted the show people would most like to see back on TV.
The eagerly awaited new series, filmed in Wales, features the well respected actor Christopher Eccleston as Dr Who, with former teen pop singer Billie Piper as his assistant.
Naturally, we wouldn’t get involved in illegal downloads, but reports suggest that the new series has lost none of its kitschy appeal, with a bizarre plot involving man-eating dustbins and animated mannequins.
Apparently, the Doctor is still flying around the Universe in his trusty Tardis, although the interior has changed with a darker interior and more hi-tech gadgetry.
In one scene, the Doctor watches the Kennedy assassination – a knowing reference to the first-ever episode of the series, which was screened on that fateful day.
Some American sites who have viewed the episode are already giving it less than flattering reviews, but we suspect that’s as much to do with the cultural differences as anything else.
After all, if you haven’t grown up under the threat of the evil Daleks, how could you ever expect anyone to ‘get’ Dr Who?
Dr Who
Reuters:BBC Probes ‘Dr Who’ Internet Leak
8 March, 2005