eBay not liable for bootlegged content
General IP Issues
11/9/2000; 12:02:29 PM
'In a ruling late Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Stuart Pollak in San Francisco County dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Grateful Dead fan who sought to stop sales of illegal concert recordings of the band....
'In dismissing the suit, Pollak said he based his ruling on the Communications Decency Act, which forbids computer service providers for being punished for the speech of others.
SDMI: We're not hacked yet Music & MP311/8/2000; 11:30:05 PM 'The three remaining watermarks in the Hack SDMI contest weren't all "successfully" broken after all -- or so goes the news that is coming out of the SDMI meetings Wednesday in Washington. Although all three watermarks had hacks that passed the "oracle" test (which examined whether or not the watermark had been removed), according to the official testing committee report sent out today, two of the security systems managed to pass through the listening and repeatability tests unscathed.'Oh? Well... look closer...'The latest results are hardly cut-and-dried. According to SDMI documents, the attempt to break the watermark from Verance, one of the participating companies, failed the listening tests -- but only by a 2-to-1 vote (which suggests that one set of "golden ears" found the sound quality of the hacked files to be perfectly adequate). Another watermark, from Blue Spike, did not pass the repeatability tests, which required that the attack be repeated on three different songs; but only because they failed on one or two of three possible tracks, which suggests that the hacks were successfully repeated on at least one song.'Of all the possible responses SDMI could have come up with to the results of this contest... this is about the stupidest I can think of. Despite the evidence in front of them that the security systems are already not working reliably, they seem all set to go ahead anyhow, because they've only half met their arbitrary criteria.Well, you know what? In the end, their arbitrary rules for winning only matter one way: Who gets what "prize" money. Out here in the real world, once a few people get a hold of those "half-working" hacks, and a better sample set (from real-world SDMI-protected music), those "half-working" hacks will mutate into "fully-working" hacks in no time at all. And shortly after that, they'll be perfected. These problems aren't going to just go away once the public gets their hands on real SDMI music, not to mention all those "boycotting" hackers. I can only hope that internally SDMI is calling this a failure, because based on this official information, it is a failure, and where it isn't a failure, it will be. (I'd guess less then two months for "the public" to fully hack any of the current systems, esp. based on the fact we've already got hints on how to crack them.)
SDMI: We're not hacked yet Music & MP311/8/2000; 11:25:06 PM 'The three remaining watermarks in the Hack SDMI contest weren't all "successfully" broken after all -- or so goes the news that is coming out of the SDMI meetings Wednesday in Washington. Although all three watermarks had hacks that passed the "oracle" test (which examined whether or not the watermark had been removed), according to the official testing committee report sent out today, two of the security systems managed to pass through the listening and repeatability tests unscathed.'Oh? Well... look closer...'The latest results are hardly cut-and-dried. According to SDMI documents, the attempt to break the watermark from Verance, one of the participating companies, failed the listening tests -- but only by a 2-to-1 vote (which suggests that one set of "golden ears" found the sound quality of the hacked files to be perfectly adequate). Another watermark, from Blue Spike, did not pass the repeatability tests, which required that the attack be repeated on three different songs; but only because they failed on one or two of three possible tracks, which suggests that the hacks were successfully repeated on at least one song.'Of all the possible responses SDMI could have come up with to the results of this contest... this is about the stupidest I can think of. Despite the evidence in front of them that the security systems are already not working reliably, they seem all set to go ahead anyhow, because the submitted cracks only half met SDMI's fairly arbitrary criteria.Well, you know what? In the end, their arbitrary rules for 'winning' only matter one way: Who gets what "prize" money. Out here in the real world, once a few people get a hold of those "half-working" hacks, and a better sample set (from real-world SDMI-protected music), those "half-working" hacks will mutate into "fully-working" hacks in no time at all. And shortly after that, they'll be perfected. These problems aren't going to just go away once the public gets their hands on real SDMI music, not to mention all those "boycotting" hackers. I can only hope that internally SDMI is calling this a failure, because based on this official information, it is a failure, and where it isn't a failure, it will be. (I'd guess less then two months for "the public" to fully hack any of the current systems, esp. based on the fact we've already got hints on how to crack them.)
PSINet, AT&T Get Caught Serving Spam
Spam & E-Mail
11/8/2000; 4:45:56 PM 'U.K. organization has uncovered proof that two of the world's largest Internet infrastructure companies, AT&T (T) and PSINet (PSIX) , have signed contracts with companies that send unsolicited commercial e-mail, also known as spam.'
It's funny in its own way... anti-spam laws apply to all non-spammers. Talk about your feel-good policies... that's as bad as most privacy policies.
What It Takes To Legally Webcast Music
Music & MP3
11/8/2000; 12:52:27 PM
Wondered how complicated it is to license music for legal broadcasting over the Internet?
'Today's word is ``labyrinthine.'' Keep it in mind.'
Who defines the rules for the Net ring?
Free Speech
11/8/2000; 11:34:57 AM
'WE ARE USED to thinking of censorship as something governments do. But on the Internet of late, censorship appears to be more of a private enterprise.In the last two weeks, we've looked at AT&T@Home's termination of several different Internet accounts that belonged to Wesley and Digital Convergence's proprietary claims on its CueCat; both actions demonstrate the newfound power of big companies to enforce commercial censorship. Although different situations in many respects, @Home and Digital Convergence both successfully used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get their rather dubious intellectual property claims upheld....
Court lets company pursue download patent rights Patents11/7/2000; 12:12:35 PM 'E-Data, which says it owns the technology that allows information to be distributed via the Web, will be allowed to continue its legal bid to collect royalties from scores of Web sites. 'The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit threw out late Friday a lower court's decision that E-Data's patent did not entitle the company to charge fees to the thousands of sites that sell downloads of video games, music and other products online....'The case had at one time been closely watched because, had the courts agreed with E-Data's interpretation of the patent laws, tens of thousands of sites might have owed the company royalties for software downloads.'Yes, all of those tens of thousands of sites that dare use the Internet to do the non-obvious: Move data from one place to another. Damn, I wish I thought of that!
Calif. Shuts 'Nader Trader' Vote Swap Web Sites Political Speech11/6/2000; 9:18:47 PM 'California authorities have shut down a vote swap web site aimed at so-called ``Nader traders'' -- people in battleground states who agree to vote for Democrat Al Gore if someone in a less contested state votes for the Green Party's Ralph Nader.'``We did notify the site manager that they were in violation ofCalifornia election law and they did need to cease activities onthe Web site, and they complied,'' Shad Balch, a spokesmanfor California Secretary of State Bill Jones, said Tuesday.'Old news, from Oct. 31, 2000. Interesting because vote trading may or may not be legal, depending on what state you are in and how that state interprets its own laws. California laws shut down a nation-wide website.
After Napster Deal, BMG Execs Depart
Music & MP3
11/6/2000; 11:10:01 AM
'Just days after German media giant Bertelsmann formed an alliance with Napster, BMG Entertainment's two top executives have announced that they're leaving....
'Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff said the timing of the Napster deal and the BMG resignations was coincidental. However, Zelnick had been an outspoken critic of Napster as late as July, when at a conference in Los Angeles, he compared Napster users to thieves.'