Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
MP3 Players Hot, Getting Hotter
Mon December 15, 2003 02:13 AM ET
By Paul Bond
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - U.S. shipments of portable MP3 music players will reach 3.5 million units this year, almost doubling last year's total, according to a report from Jupiter Research.
The consulting firm forecasts a 50% year-on-year growth rate in 2004.
The sales pace of MP3 players is expected to mirror that of the VCR, which is not nearly as quick a growth story as the DVD player has enjoyed. But sales of DVD players have peaked in the United States and are expected to fall to slightly more than 10 million units by 2007 from 25 million units last year. By that time, MP3 players will outsell DVD players annually.
Do the math, and all those annual sales of MP3 players will add up to an installed base of 26.1 million units by the end of 2006, which Jupiter considers "critical mass," as the devices will be in 15%-20% of American homes. By 2008, the installed base should be above 45 million.
Jupiter bases its prediction on the assumption of a three-year average life span for MP3 units.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Canopus Releases Hard Drive-Based Video Player & Case
Canopus (Japan) will release a hard drive case and MPEG movie player, MTPlayer MP20-HDD, during the first part of January 2004. The price is currently listed as open price however store managers expect the unit will sell for around ¥19,800 and the hard drive case, MTHDD25, is expected to sell for around ¥4,980. The unit is compatible with Microsoft Windows ME/2000/XP.
The MTHDD25 hard drive case can connect to the computer via a USB 2.0 connection. The case attaches to the MP20-HDD as one unit. The maximum size of the hard drive is a 9.5mm, 120GB 2.5 inch hard drive. The hard drive is not included with either the case or the player.
Data is transmitted from the hard drive case (MTHDD25) to the player (MP20-HDD)via a slot located on the upper portion of the player. The video player can playback MPEG-1/2, MP3 and JPEG files. The video player unit contains both video and audio out ports, S video out, composite, analog RGB, component (a cable for this is available separately), and analog audio (mini jack).
The video player contains an internal MTV and MTU hardware encoder in order to playback MPEG-2 files. MPEG-1 files can be streamed at a rate above 320x240 pixels. The unit does not support VBR or ID Tag playback for MP3 files. The maximum size for the display of JPEG files is 5120x3840 pixels. The size of the player is 162x111x30mm.
Posted on December 12, 2003 08:09 PM
http://www.akibalive.com/archives/000383.html
iPod Challenge Heats Up
Friday December 12, 2:02 pm ET
By Dave Marino-Nachison
I came across an interesting article on washingtonpost.com earlier this week that, just in time for the holidays, took a serious look at four alternatives to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL - News) white-hot iPod portable digital music player. So, while you could be forgiven for thinking nobody else was "doing" digital music besides Apple these days, there's more to the story.
I don't, however, necessarily mean that from a strict product perspective -- though that's the chicken to go with the egg of this story: a market that wanted to grow, but needed someone to serve it properly first. Articles like the one linked above are as good an indication as any that plenty of companies are ready to do that now.
Writer Daniel Greenberg tested Creative Technology's (Nasdaq: CREAF - News) Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra, Dell's (Nasdaq: DELL - News) Digital Jukebox, Rio's Karma, and Samsung's YP-910GS Napster. What's most interesting to me here is that all four are seen as credible alternatives to the iPod -- and all, like the iPod, stand to run you several hundred dollars. (The models Greenberg compared go for $300 to $400.)
How quickly shoppers forgot that they don't need to spend anywhere near that much! Run a quick search on "portable MP3 player" over on eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY - News) and hundreds of items -- from MP3/CD player combos to smaller, jogger-friendly items -- can be had for well under $100. Thing is, though, the bidding is slow to nonexistent at the bottom of the price range, even for new items. Nobody wants 'em.
Then again, did anyone ever want those machines? Looking not too far back, you'll remember the early adopters struggling to come up with the right features, memory, and price. When sales didn't take off as hoped, they simply went into self-destructive price wars.
Sometimes cutting prices is enough to make markets move, but that's a difficult gamble in unestablished sectors. Apple, to its credit, restored life to the business -- and this was well before its iTunes music-purchasing website went live -- by creating something that worked the way users actually wanted it to work and worrying about the rest later. By doing so, it helped to revive a struggling market.
Now, of course, the increased strength and legitimacy of the competition threaten Apple's advantage. All indications, however, are that there's a rising tide here that should be able to lift several boats.
Considering an iPod alternative this holiday season? Talk it over on our Apple discussion board.
Dave Marino-Nachison can be reached at dmarnach@fool.com.
Scheme Hatched To Counter Digital Rights Balkanization
By John P. Mello Jr.
TechNewsWorld
December 11, 2003
"We welcome all efforts to drive practical standards which make digital music even more convenient for consumers," Napster chief technology officer William Pence told TechNewsWorld. "The additional user convenience envisioned by the Content Reference Forum may well be meaningful to consumers, depending on how this market evolves."
A scheme to counter the Balkanization of digital rights management (DRM) on the Internet was unveiled Wednesday by a standards group whose members include ARM, ContentGuard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Universal Music Group and VeriSign.
The group -- called the Content Reference Forum (CRF) -- has posted specifications that it asserts will create interoperability between digital content technologies and build a framework to ensure that participants adhere to the agreements.
"The vision of the CRF is for consumers to enjoy as well as redistribute content with commercial terms beneficial to all members of the value chain," the organization said in a statement.
Pay-for-tunes services operated by Apple, MusicMatch, Napster and others are a good example of why standards are needed for online DRM, noted CRF chairman Albhy Galuten. "If you buy music on one service, it will work with certain devices and won't work with most other devices," Galuten told TechNewsWorld. "And it won't work with another service."
Drag on Market
Reader Tools
E-Mail Article
Printer Version
Talkback
Related Stories
While services like Apple's iTunes Music Store have rapidly increased sales since their inception, Balkanization has acted as a drag on the online music industry as a whole, asserted Jarad Carleton, an IT industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.
"This is a problem mainly when selling DRM-protected monetized content on the Internet," he told TechNewsWorld. "Electronic content protected by one DRM solution may not be accessible by another DRM solution's player or viewer. This is a serious issue that is holding back the rapid development of a monetized electronic content market."
The current situation in the online music business has developed because there's no incentive to do it another way, Galuten contended. "Businesses develop for opportunity," he said. "If you were building an operating system and you thought you had the leverage to win the space, you wouldn't necessarily want to interoperate with other devices."
"We welcome all efforts to drive practical standards which make digital music even more convenient for consumers," Napster chief technology officer William Pence told TechNewsWorld. "The additional user convenience envisioned by the Content Reference Forum may well be meaningful to consumers, depending on how this market evolves."
Geographic Balkanization
Galuten added that online music is Balkanized across another axis: geography. In many cases, distribution rights are narrow, so a record company might have rights to distribute an artist's music in one territory but not in another.
A universal distribution scheme must take that into account. "You need a mechanism for determining where someone is coming from, not only their rendering environment but their territorial affiliation, so you can do what is legally required under the contractual obligations between the artists and their distributors," Galuten said.
The scheme outlined in the CRF specification works like this: Content isn't identified by file type -- MP3 music file or JPEG image, for example -- but by a song title and artist tag, such as "Don't Speak by No Doubt." When users want that content, their platform will send information describing itself to the content provider and will receive content appropriate to that platform's circumstances.
Dynamic DRM
Related Stories
Open-Source Audio in a Proprietary Universe
26-Nov-03
Hacker Drills Hole in iTunes Security Blanket
25-Nov-03
Five Patents That Changed E-Business
24-Nov-03
Nokia Confronts N-Gage Gaming Device Hack
12-Nov-03
Sony Attempts New Copy-Protection Strategy
11-Nov-03
"It addresses the problem of the territory and platform dynamically," Galuten explained. "One of the difficulties with the existing DRMs is that they do not generate the offers and the content dynamically based on the existing environment. They package stuff ahead of time, and they say, 'If you can play this, you can play it; if you can't, you can't.'"
Concerns that the proposed specification might be bending over backward to satisfy the concerns of content providers and distributors at the expense of consumers' rights have been raised by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
EFF attorney Jason Schultz explained that the CRF is proposing a DRM to cover all possible uses of digital media. To do that, it needs to write software code to consider every single circumstance that could arise. "It's very tough to write software code that recognizes things like free speech or criticism or parody," he told TechNewsWorld. "Unless their specification allows for those kinds of activities, it's flawed."
Schultz said the CRF's goal to create a universal standard for interoperability is a good one. "But we're not for creating a standard that leaves out free speech and fair use under the copyright laws," he declared. "Until we can be assured that those things are protected, we don't think any standard is good enough."
PC, consumer engineers play different tunes on road to wireless music
By Rick Merritt
EE Times
December 11, 2003 (10:17 a.m. ET)
SAN JOSE, Calif. — PC and consumer engineers are taking separate paths to audio over Bluetooth, raising the possibility of incompatible wireless MP3 players, headsets and speakers. Word of the split comes as Bluetooth is gaining traction in its core market of cellular handsets and marshalling its forces for a next-generation spec that could deliver megabit data rates and multimedia capabilities.
A handful of top consumer companies, including Matsushita, Philips, Sony and Toshiba, have defined in a Bluetooth Special Interest Group working group a low cost means for streaming audio to Bluetooth headsets with plans to roll out products in 2004. For its part, Microsoft and a group of unnamed OEMs are hammering out a different approach to implement on the PC based on Internet Protocol over Bluetooth.
"We may see multiple standards existing," said J. Eric Janson, vice president of marketing for Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR, Cambridge, England), one of the top Bluetooth chip suppliers. "I'd sooner everyone go in one direction so we can optimize around that and take the cost out of it, but I'm not sure that's realistic at this point," Janson added.
In contrast to Microsoft's IP approach, the SIG's consumer audio/video working group has defined a mechanism for streaming audio over Bluetooth using the Real Time Protocol defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
"At this point there is a controversy as to whether IP is cost effective for simple devices like headphones. So far we haven't found a need for an IP address on such devices," said Tsuyoshi Okada, a staff engineer in the wireless group at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Osaka).
Matsushita and other companies in the SIG's A/V working group are preparing MP3 players, headsets and speakers using the current 723 Kbit/s Bluetooth version 1.2 spec and an advanced audio distribution profile (A2DP) defined by the SIG in May. Some of the companies are in talks with Microsoft to find ways to bridge the two efforts.
"We want to make sure our headsets interoperate with PCs," said Okada.
The issue for Microsoft is audio quality, particularly in an environment where there might be multiple Bluetooth devices. Wireless keyboards, mice and other 2.4 GHz devices could generate interference that could result in crackling speakers when PCs stream audio over Bluetooth. A2DP is essentially a point-to-point spec that doesn't take that scenario into account, said Mike Foley, a wireless architect at Microsoft.
"We're working with OEMs to come up with a solution...it's a very important issue," Foley said.
It's not clear whether the PC effort is part of an existing personal-area network group in the SIG or a separate ad hoc collaboration often favored by Microsoft. Foley would not name companies involved in the effort or say when the work will be finished.
"There are a lot of consumer companies that want to get products out, and if they wait for Microsoft it will delay them," said Jennifer Bray who tracks standards for CSR.
Microsoft elected not ship native support for Bluetooth in its Windows XP, though the company did ship in September an add-on pack with a Bluetooth application programming interface. Going forward, the company has kicked off an effort to define an umbrella set of APIs under its Winsock framework. Under the framework, that will probably be built into Longhorn, the next generation of Windows, developers would write to Winsock and Windows would determine what services are passed over what networks.
Apple Computer has taken a different approach, building Bluetooth support into its OS X and into its current series of Powerbook notebooks. David Russell, director of product marketing for wireless and notebooks at Apple, made a pitch to developers at the Bluetooth Americas conference here Wednesday (Dec. 10) to accelerate adoption by making Bluetooth easier to set up and use.
Russell would not comment on widespread reports at the conference that the next version of Apple's iPod MP3 player will use Bluetooth. He poured cold water on the idea of using Bluetooth to download music to the device that currently uses USB or Firewire interfaces for that function.
At the conference, consumer audio devices were seen as the next likely target for Bluetooth, for which some 75 million chip sets will ship this year, mostly for GSM phones in Europe and Asia.
In separate presentations, chip and software vendors indicated several challenges to delivering music over Bluetooth. Systems will need sub-band coding to efficiently move MP3, Windows Media or other codec files in a simple way to a headset or speaker. Headsets should have 80 milliseconds or less latency to stay in synch with video from a TV. A Broadcom manager said upcoming megabit versions of Bluetooth will be required to eliminate the need in wireless headsets for large and expensive buffers.
Janson of CSR noted that vendors also will have to work out ways to protect copyright for wireless music traveling between a device and a headset, another thorny issue.
The audio debate comes as the Bluetooth SIG is setting up a new road map committee to provide broad market input on directions and timing for the next revs of the short range wireless link. The committee could help the SIG get under control an expanding list of applications and software profiles to go with them as well as proposals for low- and high-end versions of spec that could clash with 802.11, ultrawideband and Zigbee networks.
"The SIG has become a dumping ground for profiles," said Seamus McAteer, an analyst with Zelos Group (San Francisco) who follows Bluetooth.
The SIG has already queued up work on a number of advancements for the technology that could be in a next major release of Bluetooth.
Philips Consumer Electronics CEO Departs; Division's Future in Doubt
Atlanta -- Larry Blanford, CEO of Atlanta-based Philips Consumer Electronics, will leave the company at the end of this month and be replaced by Reinier Jens, head of the Northern Europe division of Philips Consumer Electronics. Blanford, a former executive with Maytag, joined Philips three years ago. Recently, Netherlands-based Philips announced that it will lay off about one-third of its employees in the Consumer Electronics Division by the end of the year and that the operation will be shut down entirely if it does not reach profitability within the next several quarters.
http://www.pressi.com/int/nomination/81670.html
Search tools target digital music listeners
By John Borland
CNET News.com
December 11, 2003, 8:45 AM PT
A new generation of music recommendation services is emerging, aimed at helping listeners navigate the often bewildering mass of music now legally available online.
One of the most ambitious of these services, dubbed Soundflavor, is launching Thursday. The service, produced by a company called Siren Systems, promises to deconstruct songs into more than 700 component parts, and then make music recommendations based on how listeners' tastes match these musical elements.
Soundflavor and other rival services heading for market are part of a longstanding attempt to use technological tools to take over where friends' recommendations, reviewers or other traditional tastemakers leave off. The amount of information online now far exceeds anybody's ability to wade through all of it, but computers can be tapped to lead people to what might otherwise be undiscovered content, these technologists reason.
"Right now the digital music market is like a big haystack being dumped over your head," said Siren Systems President Pete Budlong. "A recommendation engine with good relevancy is like a strong magnet; you can pull a needle to the surface."
While still very far from perfect--and sure to face the continuing skepticism of listeners loathe to believe that computers can perform the subjective task of recommending music--the new tools could be an important part of driving demand for digital music on sprawling services like Apple's iTunes, analysts say.
"There's a lot of interesting potential here," said Michael McGuire, an analyst with GartnerG2, a division of the Gartner research firm. "It's going to be crucial for online music in general to have this kind of third party that stands outside the music services, and outside the record labels, providing that kind of search."
Several companies hoping to perform this task in the music business rose briefly to prominence in the late 1990s, attracting considerable attention and venture capital funding. Most of those companies ultimately were purchased by other companies- including Microsoft, in the case of startup Mongo Music--and folded quietly into other services.
However, the idea of "collaborative filtering"--finding other people who have similar tastes, and then trying what they like--has proven to be a lasting legacy.
Amazon.com's recommendation engine is based in large part on that idea. It tracks what a buyer purchases and views, and then makes recommendations based on the actions of other people who have made similar buying decisions.
Several of the newest tools are also grounded in this idea. The new Napster music service, for example, allows people to view the play lists created by other subscribers to the service, discovering music through others' listening habits.
Apple Computer's iTunes has a rudimentary version of this, posting play lists from celebrities such as Moby and Sting. An independent company has bolstered this with a new Macintosh-only iTunes plug-in called Goombah, which analyzes a listener's downloads, looks at other people's play lists, and makes recommendations based on the listening habits of people with similar tastes.
RealNetworks' Rhapsody has built in a different kind of system, allowing Weblog authors to post Rhapsody downloadable play lists directly to their blogs. These play lists can only be used by other Rhapsody subscribers, for now.
The human touch
Soundflavor takes a different approach. The company's founders spent several years developing a list of attributes they thought would accurately describe music--everything from beats per minute to whether a saxophone or female vocalist was used in the mix. They then hired actual people to listen to songs and rate them along those categories.
Their assumption was that using so many attributes might result in some surprising but still interesting recommendations, such as finding a rock lover a jazz song that matched his tastes in almost every respect other than genre, for example.
Soundflavor is launching Thursday with information on just 4,000 songs in its database, largely focused on alternative rock. This is because its initial test customers were rock radio stations, said Siren Systems President Pete Budlong. That database will expand as new songs are analyzed, the company says.
A Soundflavor account is free; people pay for the songs they download or CDs purchased.
Relying on human ears is expensive, as previous companies have found, however. Listen.com once employed a large staff of musicians to rate and review songs, but ultimately laid most off as the company's funds dwindled.
Ultimately Siren Systems hopes to strike relationships with song distribution services such as iTunes, Napster or RealNetwork's Rhapsody, however. It may also ask music labels to pay for the costs of analyzing their music if they want their music in the recommendation database more quickly, Budlong said.
Those revenues are important for business reasons. But that also raises the danger of turning ostensibly objective recommendation tools into the equivalent of paid search, where advertisers or sponsors get favored treatment, said Gartner's McGuire.
"It will be interesting to see how immune or roped off the system is from the pernicious effect of things like paid search and advertising," McGuire said. "They will need to go to great pains to let people know that there is money exchanging hands."
TI Targets Mobile Terminals with Next-Generation Bluetooth Solution
12/11/2003 - Advancing its commitment to deliver cost-effective, power-efficient Bluetooth® technology to wireless device manufacturers, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) [NYSE: TXN] announced its second-generation, single-chip Bluetooth solution. The BRF6150 provides full support for Bluetooth Specification Version 1.2 and leverages TI´s power management expertise to deliver the industry´s first Bluetooth solution with direct connection to the battery and power shut-down mode. This minimizes power consumption and simplifies Bluetooth integration into the device. Like the current generation BRF6100, the BRF6150 implements TI´s patented digital RF technology to provide the highest level of RF integration in pure digital CMOS process for reductions in solution size and cost.
"Building on the success of our first-generation Bluetooth solution, the BRF6150 will further enable the acceleration of Bluetooth penetration in cell phones, PDAs and other mobile devices," said Ari Rauch, general manager of TI's Short Distance Wireless Group. "Our solution is ideal for the wireless device market, offering the industry's lowest power consumption and most comprehensive and effective solution for Bluetooth/Wi-Fi interference issues."
The BRF6150 chip delivers the industry's lowest active mode power consumption. With 12mA for voice link, the chip consumes 30 percent less power than TI's closest competitor. The BRF6150's shut-down mode reduces power consumption further by powering down the chip to 6uA when it is not in use. In addition, the chip's direct connection to all available battery types eliminates the need for external voltage regulators, reducing integration requirements for mobile device manufacturers. The solution requires only 11 external components, which significantly eases electronic device design complexity.
TI's BRF6150 is certified by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) as Bluetooth v1.2 compliant, which includes support of Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) and Extended Synchronous Connection-Oriented (eSCO), for temperatures ranging from -40 degrees C to +85 degrees C. AFH is one technique used to overcome the interference problems inherent to close range 802.11b and Bluetooth operations resulting from the shared use of the 2.4 GHz band. The eSCO provides the ability to enhance voice quality by providing retransmission mechanisms.
TI's coexistence solution for collocated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, tailored for mobile terminals, is the only coexistence solution shipping today in commercial products. The BRF6150, which utilizes AFH and eSCO, offers an upgrade to the current coexistence solution. When manufacturers combine the v1.2 compliant BRF6150 with TI's Bluetooth/Wi-Fi coexistence software package for either the TNETW1100B chipset for 802.11b or TNETW1230 solution for 802.11 a/b/g, improved coexistence performance is achieved. This results in better utilization of the 2.4GHz frequency band and solves the most demanding coexistence scenarios for simultaneous Bluetooth voice/data and high speed Wi-Fi data.
The BRF6150 integrates a Bluetooth baseband, digital RF and antenna switch in a 4.5mm x 4.5mm package, offering mobile handset designers the ability to add Bluetooth functionality in a space of 50 square millimeters. Its package also supports stacked Flash prototypes for development, which eliminates the need for external memory, saving board space and making it easier for manufacturers to update the chip´s software during the integration phase. The BRF6150 seamlessly integrates with TI´s families of OMAPTM applications processors, TCS chipsets for GSM/GPRS, WCDMA and UMTS, as well as its cdma2000 1X and CDMA 1xEV-DV solutions. The BRF6150 will also be included in future TI wireless device reference designs, making Bluetooth integration easier for manufacturers.
Texas Instruments is exhibiting at Bluetooth Americas in booth number 340. Bluetooth demos will be available.
Built on TI´s Advanced Digital RF Architecture
The BRF6150 is the second product to integrate TI´s digital radio processor technology into a single, low cost device. The digital RF capability combines TI´s years of signal processing architecture expertise with advanced process technology capability to support both digital and analog functions in high volume, low power CMOS, rather than more expensive Silicon Germanium or Gallium Arsenide processes. By moving to an integrated digital radio architecture, TI will see a smaller, lower cost die area with each process node shift and can take advantage of standard digital design tools. A digital design also enables simple modification of key RF parameters to enhance performance through software rather than system or IC redesign.
Availability
The BRF6150 is sampling to customers today with volume production expected in the second quarter of 2004. For more information on the BRF6150 see www.ti.com/bluetooth.
Texas Instruments - Making Wireless
TI is the leading manufacturer of wireless semiconductors, delivering the heart of today´s wireless technology and building solutions for tomorrow. TI provides a breadth of silicon and software and 15 years of wireless systems expertise that spans handsets and base stations for all communications standards, wireless LAN, Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband. From custom to turn-key solutions, including complete chipsets and reference designs, OMAP application processors, core digital signal processor and analog technologies built on advanced semiconductor processes, TI is making wireless personal, intelligent and seamless. Please visit TI´s wireless pressroom at www.ti.com/wirelesspressroom for additional information.
Copyright body may slap levy on digital music players
Would boost price of storage media
Economy will suffer, retailers say
Dec. 11, 2003. 07:05 AM
TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER
That 20-gigabyte MP3 player going under the Christmas tree this season could soon cost 20 per cent more if the Copyright Board approves a proposed levy tomorrow on the sale of digital music devices.
It could also mean new levies on recordable DVDs, removable flash memory and micro hard drives, as well as increased tariff rates on blank cassettes and recordable CDs, assuming a music-industry group called the Canadian Private Copying Collective, or CPCC, gets its way.
Claude Majeau, secretary-general of the Copyright Board, confirmed yesterday that a decision on the controversial levy is to come out Friday morning.
Both the CPCC and a group of electronics manufacturers and retailers aggressively fighting the levy have been arguing their respective views since the Copyright Board began formal hearings on the matter in January.
"It's the kind of decision that's likely to leave everybody unhappy," said Michael Geist, a professor of Internet law at the University of Ottawa and technology counsel for Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
"The retailers won't like it because they don't like the levy, period. Consumers won't like it because they won't be paying a fair price for the product. And copyright holders will probably feel they're not getting enough."
The CPCC already collects a levy on blank cassettes, recordable CDs and Sony minidiscs, but in May, 2002, the organization, which collects and redistributes the levy on behalf of the Canadian music industry, proposed that existing tariffs be substantially hiked and expanded to cover M3P players and other digital-memory products that carry music files.
The original purpose of the levy was to compensate artists for the widespread activity of making personal copies of music that an individual already owns.
But the growing popularity of CD burners and free Internet music-swapping services changed the nature and magnitude of "copying." Increasing and expanding the levy is a small yet symbolic attempt at compensating artists and record companies for widespread piracy, the CPCC argues.
"Everybody in the private copying collective is hoping we'll get the levy extended to devices like iPods and other MP3 players with internal memory," said Paul Audley, policy advisor at the CPCC.
But Audley said hope and expectation are two different things, adding that the Copyright Board will likely stick with tradition and aim for a compromise.
"It will come down somewhere in the middle," he said. "And that certainly wouldn't reflect what people think (music) rights are worth."
CPCC plans to hold a news conference tomorrow at the Fairmont Royal York to discuss the impact of the decision.
Meanwhile, a group called the Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access, or CCFDA, is preparing for the worst. Members include big-name retailers, such as Wal-Mart, CostCo and Staples Business Depot, and high-tech powerhouses such as Intel Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Apple Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
"It's a significant potential hit," said Kevin Evans, vice-president with the Retail Council of Canada and CCFDA co-chair. If the levy does get approved, "we believe it's going to be the (retail) sales clerk that's going to get the full blasting from consumers."
Under the proposed levies, a pack of 50 recordable CDs that have 700 megabytes of capacity will have a 49-cent levy on each disc. Today, that pack costs $29.99, but the levy would impose an additional financial burden of $24.50 if approved.
The general argument against the levy is that it subsidizes the Canadian music industry by treating anyone who buys blank recording media as a potential music pirate, when in fact these same products can be used to store computer files, backup data, software and self-created music and video content.
"What you've got here is a levy that does not sufficiently target its purpose," said Geist.
The retail group, which insists it support the rights of artists and wants to open dialogue toward a better option, argues the levy is too broad and the method of tariff collection and distribution doesn't work.
Members also hold the levy will increase prices on products and tempt consumers to buy in the United States, where a levy does not exist. This punishes Canadian businesses, they argue, and will have an impact on the Canadian economy.
"We've got a levy regime that's way out of date and inefficient," Evans said.
So far, the organization has distributed $11 million back to Canadian artists since it began collecting the levy in 2000. It is expected to issue another $17 million to $18 million between next week and the end of January.
The Copyright Board decision comes as the Supreme Court of Canada begins a landmark copyright case that will determine whether Internet service providers must pay a tariff for being a conduit for the rampant downloading of free music.
That case, being followed by music companies and servie providers around the world, is expected to last six months.
Additional articles by Tyler Hamilton
Museum audio tour streams MP3 over Bluetooth
By Stephen Withers, ZDNet Australia
11 December 2003
A prototype museum or gallery audio tour system using Bluetooth technology has been successfully demonstrated at the Melbourne Museum.
Developed jointly by Melbourne-based Clarinox and Indian software giant Tata Consultancy Services, BeATS (Bluetooth enabled audio tour system) is designed to combine the best features of broadcast and CD/tape tours and eliminates their disadvantages.
Visitors can choose their own path through the exhibit, free of the restrictions imposed by a linear audio recording, and each section of commentary always starts at the beginning for every user.
Bluetooth is used to link the user device to access points spread around the premises, and to carry the streaming MP3 audio. The sound quality is high, and the system can accommodate multiple languages.
From the venue operator’s perspective, advantages include centralised storage of audio for ease of management and updating by its own staff, and the system can yield information about the routes taken by people and how long they spend at each point.
“We had a very good response to our invitation and it has provided us with some great ideas to incorporate into the final design,” said Trish Messiter, business development director at Clarinox.
“TCS handled the software for user registration, central server, file dispatch to access points and statistics generation and reporting. Clarinox handled the Bluetooth hardware and software for the exhibit device transceiver and the user Bluetooth device,” she added.
The use of Bluetooth means that when the design of the user device goes into production it will be small, inexpensive and able to operate for many hour without recharging, Messiter claimed. “We wished to test in a real environment prior to the final step of finalising the hardware design, particularly to incorporate the user perspective. This is because change is relatively easy [and] inexpensive to incorporate at this point.”
Group Seeks to Standardize Music, Videos
Wed Dec 10, 9:13 AM ET
Add Technology - AP to My Yahoo!
By GARY GENTILE, AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES - A new group that includes Microsoft Corp. and Universal Music is hoping to make it easier to play music and videos across competing technologies.
The Content Reference Forum aims to publish standards to allow consumers to play music or other digital content encoded in one format to play easily on any device and in any country while also obeying contractual obligations, such as paying licensing fees and enforcing copyright protections.
Competing technologies result in a lack of interoperability among formats and devices that limit the ways consumers can enjoy digital content, the group's founders say.
The group has published its first set of standards that would use Internet-based references to identify content and the business agreements attached to them. Under this scheme, devices would be sent Internet-based links instead of music files, for instance, and by accessing the link would be sent a song in the proper format and under terms set by the content owners.
The groups behind the effort include ARM, ContentGuard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Universal Music Group and VeriSign.
A main goal of the group is to encourage companies to use interoperability as the basis of new businesses.
"Sometime if you provide a technology, the business opportunity presents itself," said Albhy Galuten, chairman of the new group and formerly senior vice president for advanced technology at Universal Music Group.
The standards will be voted on by the groups members, then made available for licensing by mid-2004, the group said.
There is no guarantee the standards will be embraced. Businesses may decide it makes better sense to push proprietary technologies that force consumers to buy their products rather than make their content playable on a competitor's product.
_____
On the Net:
Content Reference Forum: http://www.crforum.org
Record label group signs ATF chief
By John Borland
CNET News.com
December 9, 2003, 3:37 PM PT
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Tuesday that it had hired the director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to head its antipiracy operations. Bradley Buckles will oversee the record label trade group's relationships with law enforcement agencies, which often help the organization target large-scale counterfeiting or commercial CD-burning operations, in addition to helping with operations against Internet piracy, which have received more attention in recent years.
"Brad's appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take piracy, here and throughout the world, very seriously," RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol said in a statement. "Piracy is becoming an increasingly sophisticated and lucrative criminal venture."
Researchers report progress embedding devices in fabrics
By Nicolas Mokhoff
EE Times
December 9, 2003 (12:18 p.m. ET)
WASHINGTON — The idea that electronics should blend into the fabric of people's lives is taking on a whole new meaning when devices are embedded in clothing. At the International Electron Devices Meeting here this week, several researchers detailed what is becoming known as "ambient intelligence," a concept expected to be implemented over the next decade.
"Ambient intelligence is the vision that technology will become invisible, embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context and autonomously acting," said Werner Weber of Infineon's Corporate Research Laboratory of Emerging Technologies.
In a keynote speech here, Weber cited the history of computers to explain the trend towards ambient intelligence: "While in the 1970s one computer served many users, and in the 1990s the personal computer served humans on a one-to-one basis, today more than one computing device serves each user. This trend towards distributed electronic intelligence will likely prevail in the near future."
Infineon (Munich, Germany) hopes to deploy application-oriented "ambient intelligence" in the next five areas. The first application could be a low-cost wireless network for ambient intelligence environments such as smart homes and hotels along with smart RF ID tags for distributed intelligence.
"Edutainment" devices with speech recognition are also being investigated for children as a natural and intuitive computer interface.
Infineon also is trying to integrate electronics into clothing while developing sensor and display functions distributed in a regular grid, especially for textile applications. The idea is to provide security and surveillance functions embedded in carpets, wallpaper and various kinds of canvas covers.
In developing a low-cost smart RF ID tag, Infineon is working on a sequence of process steps that will yield tags that cost one to five cents each. Chip size will be reduced by using ac-powered circuits leading to a system design with a silicon area measuring 0.02 mm2 for chips using a 128-bit code word.
Several milestones have already been reached to come up with a 1-cent RF ID tag, said Weber, "a cost that most businesses are willing to bear for such a device." But he cautioned there is more work to be done before a full working system can be realized.
Infineon is also exploiting interconnect and packaging technology for textiles using a polyester narrow fabric with several warp threads replaced by copper wires. The wires is coated with silver and polyester and a thin flexible printed circuit board is attached to the polyester fabric. The module is then encapsulated for mechanical protection.
The complete unit is molded forming a hermetically sealed casing that protects it against mechanical and chemical stresses. A speech-controlled MP3 player system was developed using the technique, and is based on a DSP/microcontroller processor system. The system is controlled either by speaker-independent voice recognition or by a keypad.
Researchers at 3M Co. also presented results of their work in organic semiconductor RF ID transponders. They developed pentacene-based transponder circuitry, patterned entirely using flexible shadow-masks and operating at frequencies greater than 1 MHz. The circuits are powered using near-field inductive coupling, and designed for operation without a rectification stage.
The thin-film ICs were formed on glass substrates, as large as 6 square inches, using vacuum deposited layers patterned through a 25-micrometer thick polymer shadow mask. The mask is formed using excimer laser ablation through a glass photomask.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley reported on organic transistors in fiber. According to the researchers, flexible transistors were formed directly on fibers, a significant step towards the realization of electronic textiles. The fiber transistors exhibit mobilities of greater than 10-2 cm2/V-s measured at 20V VDD. The entire transistor was fabricated without resorting to conventional lithography techniques with patterning achieved by shadowing from overwoven fibers. The process is compatible with textile manufacturing, and is therefore a promising technology for scalable e-textile fabrication, the researchers said.
A team from the Univeristy of Tokyo has meanwhile integrated organic field-effect transistors and rubber pressure sensors for possible artificial-skin applications. Sense of touch is important for next-generation robots which will require an acceptable artificial skin large enough and mechanically flexible to fit any shape. The researchers claimed that integration of organic transistors and rubber pressure sensors, both which can be produced using low-cost processing technology, could provide a solution for a practical artificial skin.
Dell Jacks Into the Digital Hub
DECEMBER 9, 2003
Chief Marketing Officer Mike George explains how the PC giant plans to extend its model into MP3 players, LCD TVs, handhelds...
Who's the most intriguing new entrant into the consumer-electronics field? It has to be Dell. This fall, the Round Rock (Tex.) PC giant jumped into the market with flat-panel TVs, iPod-like portable music players, and an online music service that lets consumers download songs for 99 cents a pop. Like Apple (AAPL ), Gateway (GTW ), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) before it, Dell (DELL ) is hoping to do well with digital doodads and home-entertainment devices, which are selling faster -- and at higher margins -- than PCs.
Advertisment
So far, the strategy appears to be working. During the busy weekend after Thanksgiving, traffic to Dell's Web site jumped 20% vs. the year before, aided in part by interest in its new electronics products. As it has done in desktops, notebooks, servers, and storage, Dell is betting it can use its low costs, direct-sales method, and strong brand to steal market share from incumbent players. BusinessWeek Dallas Correspondent Andrew Park spoke with Dell Chief Marketing Officer Mike George about the plan. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:
Q: What's Dell's strategy for tapping into the surging consumer-electronics segment, especially given all the new products already flooding the market?
A: As content -- whether it be photos, video, or music -- moves into the digital world, the perfect device for capturing, storing, manipulating, and distributing that content is the PC. The PC in turn sends that content out to other places [that] consumers want to access, whether that be a MP3 player, a TV, a printer, a handheld. We now view those almost as a part of our core business: How do we let people make full use out of the PC and realize the power of the PC as an entertainment hub?
Q: Are you seeing customers buy more than just add-ons to PCs?
A: We're seeing a lot of PC customers buy a 17-inch TV in place of a flat-panel monitor. [But] most of our 30-inch TVs are being sold independent of PCs, often to new customers. One of the things that isn't well-known is that we've had a very large and fast-growing software and peripherals business for several years now of products mostly sold separate from the PC. So this is not new for us.
Q: How much can you lower prices in these categories?
A: Our direct-sales model does in these businesses what it does in PCs, and we've deliberately chosen categories where that would be true. Take our 30-inch LCD TV, which is right now priced at $3,299. If you go to any of the major retailers or just look in the Sunday circulars, you'll find 30-inch LCDs TVs are typically over $4,000, sometimes as high as $5,000.
Q: The powerhouse consumer-electronics companies do a lot of slick product design and sexy marketing. How does Dell make customers take note of what it's doing?
A: We can keep up with anybody in design, but do it with our mind set. There's no question there's a competitor in [music players] that does great marketing and has a great reputation for design. We're not trying to be as esoteric in our design as the other guy.
More important than that, we've gotten great reviews for innovating around the user interface. I had never used a music player, but within a minute [of using Dell's] I got it, because it uses the same visual cues as I learned in navigating the Internet.
We did a lot of customer research and found there was a growing rebellion among customers of the leading brand about short battery life. You had to carry a charger with you, and the battery itself tended to die.... We put double the battery length in ours. It makes it a little bit thicker. I'll trade off an eighth of an inch of thickness to get double the battery life.
Q: Are you concerned about being outdone by another low-cost manufacturer like Apex or a low-cost distributor like Wal-Mart (WMT )?
A: We don't have the cost of brick and mortar. We don't have the cost of inventory, like the players you mentioned. We have the ability to be fluid, to work with multiple providers, multiple technology partners, so that we're never locked into one solution. We can always be reading the market, always be reacting in real time to our customer feedback. If we stay on our game, we can be successful in this business.
Q: Are consumers going to see Dell's advertising evolve to look more like Sony's (SNE ), Samsung's, or Apple's?
A: We're not going to try to imitate either the messaging or the style of the other guys. In the past, we've told consumers that Dell is the easiest path between them and the PC that they need. Today, you'll see us talk more about Dell being the easiest path between them and the technology they need.
You'll see us advertising the music player in new places, like Rolling Stone or Vibe or Spin magazine, but it should still feel like a Dell ad. We've been thrilled and humbled by the success we've had with the brand in the consumer space over the last few years. There was recently a Forrester poll that listed Dell as the most trusted among 49 technology brands. We're trying to be judicious about what we do so we don't ever put that at risk, but it's certainly the cornerstone of our willingness to go into these new arenas.
Q: After BusinessWeek ran a cover story on Dell last month, we received many letters from consumers who complained of bad customer service from Dell. As you jump into consumer electronics, are you in danger of stretching yourselves too thin?
A: We have tried to be very focused for exactly that reason. We don't want to outrun our ability to provide great service and support. We view any customer-experience shortfall as a failure that we've got to go fix.
We know from our internal tracking that our service and support scores are vastly higher than the competition. We know from external sources like PC Magazine that generally speaking our service and support scores are better. But any failure is a miss.
Downloading, MP3 Player Sales Double
By Robyn Greenspan
Persistence is paying off in the battle between the record industry and music sharers, as Ipsos-Insight determined that there has been a growing willingness among Americans to pay for their tunes.
The firm's research revealed that the number of paying music downloaders doubled in the first half of 2003 — coinciding with the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) announcement that they intended to begin prosecuting file-sharers and the release of Apple's iTunes music store.
Ipsos-Insight estimates that roughly 10 million Americans — or 16 percent — paid to download music or MP3 files off the Internet, while only 8 percent paid during the fourth quarter of 2002 and 13 percent paid in the first quarter of 2003.
"A twofold increase in the number of American downloaders exposed to for-pay music downloads in just a six month timeframe signals a remarkable shift in downloader behavior," said Matt Kleinschmit, director, Ipsos-Insight.
Among the age groups, those 18 to 24 are the most likely to have paid to download digital music, while 12 to 17 year olds were among the least likely. "Downloaders of all ages are clearly beginning to experiment with fee-based online music distribution in increasing numbers," said Kleinschmit.
Demand for Music Subscriptions and Downloads
Type of Consumer
(number sampled) Subscriptions Downloads Will Not Pay
for Music
Music aficionados (357) 21% 25% 46%
Free-music fans (514) 13% 19% 60%
CD purists (280) 10% 16% 71%
Passive populace (746) 7% 10% 79%
Source: Jupiter Research
Possibly reaping the benefits of digital music downloading are manufacturers of MP3 players. Ipsos-Insight found that 19 percent of U.S. downloaders own a portable digital audio player/portable MP3 player — up from just 12 percent in December of 2002.
"The rise in portable MP3 player ownership among U.S. downloaders, coupled with the growth in paid downloading, suggests that digital music enthusiasts may be shifting their overall music acquisition and listening behaviors from a physical to a digital approach," added Kleinschmit. "This should be positive sign for associated industries, in that legitimate market opportunities are increasingly prevalent in the world of digital music, even alongside unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing."
Jupiter Research (a unit of this site's corporate parent) expects U.S. shipments of MP3 players to practically double in 2003 to over 3.5 million, and will continue to grow almost 50 percent per year for the next several years.
In a 2003 Jupiter Research consumer survey, 6 percent of online adults said they would be buying a portable music device in the next 12 months, and the likely buyer is male (over 70 percent) and under age 35 (over 65 percent). Nearly 60 percent of customers in the market to buy a player will be shopping online for the holidays, seeking convenience and the ability to mail gifts directly.
The paid online music growth could be spurred by the high price of CDs, and between July and October 2003, 7.7 million digital tracks were recorded as sold, compared to 4 million physical units of CD singles.
HP's Strategy: Connect "Device Islands"
DECEMBER 9, 2003
HP's Strategy: Connect "Device Islands"
Consumer-electronics honcho Chris Morgan says by helping users "move content around," it can succeed in this brutal business
Last August, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) CEO Carly Fiorina unveiled an ambitious consumer-electronics strategy that left many industry observers scratching their heads. HP rolled out more than 100 new devices for the small-business and consumer markets, including printers and digital cameras as well as DVD recording systems to replace VCRs.
Such products just keep on coming: HP appears poised to jump into digital music players, a market now dominated by Dell (DELL ), Creative (CREAF ), Archos, and, most notably, Apple (AAPL ). Also among HP's coming attractions are a digital music service and flat-panel TVs, one of the hottest consumer-electronics items this holiday season.
To get a handle on how HP plans to crack a tough market that has chewed up plenty of American, European, and Japanese companies, BusinessWeek Online Technology Editor Alex Salkever spoke to HP Vice-President Chris Morgan, who oversees worldwide sales and marketing of consumer devices. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
Q: What attracts you to the consumer-electronics market? It's a brutal business.
A: If you look at what HP is already strong in -- computing, connectivity, digital-image processing -- we think those are going to be extremely important for the future of consumer electronics. We think consumers are going to want their products to be interoperable. That plays to our advantage. Not only are we the No. 1 consumer computer company in the world, we think that our understanding of big-business ecosystems will be a powerful advantage in helping us develop these solutions. No other big technology company has a position like ours.
Q: There are some areas where you haven't gone, such as home audio. Why have you chosen to focus on photography, music, and DVDs, among others?
A: Digital photography is a natural extension given our strength in computing and image processing. As computing platforms move into the entertainment space, products like the HP DVD Movie Writer [designed to help users transfer home video from tape to DVD, with the help of a PC] will start to become another focus. We're helping consumers preserve their memories.
In digital entertainment, we build media PCs that will help people move digital images, music, and videos from their home office into their living room. Those are areas where we think we can add value.
Q: What's your vision of digital entertainment?
A: Ultimately, consumers will want to move content around and not be constrained by device islands. The PC world, the music world, the photography world, all were separate. Increasingly, consumers are going to want to integrate them. They'll want to move content from camera to computer to e-mail or DVD, from camcorder to computer to TV, or just skip the computer and go directly from device to playback system.
Q: How far along are we toward merging those device islands?
A: There's a lot of work to be done. Digital photography is a great example of how we can move from stand-alone devices to a system where consumers get interoperability among devices. Now we have to go beyond digital photography to other entertainment -- music or video or any combination of digital media.
Q: In digital photography this is easy because most of the content isn't copyright-protected. But this concept of merging device islands can get sticky where the content is copyrighted, as in music or movies. How can you strike a balance? This issue touches on an increasing number of areas you're trying to break into -- your music player and DVD recorders, for example.
A: We are sensitive to the trade-offs. We spend a lot of time working with content providers to make sure we balance their interests with consumer needs. With products like the music center PC, we're following industry standards. We aren't taking any unique digital-rights approaches at this time.
Q: To put it bluntly, how can HP avoid becoming a Sony (SNE )? It makes great products but has a lot of trouble making money in consumer electronics.
A: The vast majority of Sony's profits come from games and movies. We don't think that will happen to us, and it goes back to looking at what HP is strong in. We're strong in innovation. As long as the consumer values innovation, we think that putting our innovation out there is the right strategy for the market.
Our innovations in printing and photography are proving that. We've gotten a huge response to the adaptive-lighting feature in our model 945 digital camera -- it automatically adapts lighting to make pictures look less black and white, and more nuanced.
I think the same is going to be true in the rest of the entertainment space. We will have to innovate to bring to market-differentiated solutions. If you look at the breadth and depth of HP relative to its digital computing and consumer-electronics base, we're extremely well positioned to innovate, not just in devices but in systems.
Q: How does the shift to digital change the attitude of people who buy consumer electronics?
A: They're no longer going to look just at the box. They're gong to look at how the box integrates into their world.
When we came out in August with our consumer strategy, we started from the proposition that electronic products today are still too complicated. The burden is on customers to be a system integrator and an expert. And they don't want to deal with that.
So a lot of the things we're working on revolve around simplifying the experience. The one-button proof sheet we have put on our all- in-one [printer/scanner/fax] digital-imaging devices -- that was an example of an important contribution to the market. The ability to push a button and print out a proof sheet of [photo] thumbnails without having to use any software, then pick the pictures you want, size, and print them -- that's huge. That's what we think we can bring to bear.
Daughter's downloads get mom sued
Rockaway Twp. mom, furious at music industry, vows not to roll
Sunday, December 07, 2003
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff
Michele Scimeca said she has tried to lay down the law when it comes to the online activities of her two teenage daughters.
So the Rockaway Township mom sounded surprised yesterday to learn that she is among at least eight New Jersey residents being sued by the music industry for illegal song-swapping.
"I think it's totally, completely ridiculous. It's not fair," said Scimeca, who said she is being targeted for what her 13-year-old had told her was a research project for school.
Scimeca, a secretary for an insurance company, said she and her husband, a mechanic, are "scraping by" to pay the mortgage and cannot afford a lawyer -- let alone penalties that could reach $150,000 per song under federal copyright law.
In a lawsuit filed last week in Newark's federal courthouse, Sony, BMG Music and two other labels listed some 1,200 songs -- the list filled 41 pages -- that allegedly were offered for illegal swapping by "DrEeMeR" over the Internet network KaZaA.
Scimeca said that screen name was used by her youngest daughter, a high school freshman, for a school-related project.
But the family's high-speed Internet service is billed to the mother, so she is named in the suit that claims copyright infringement of songs by Pearl Jam, Korn, Godsmack and four other artists.
It was among 41 lawsuits filed in at least 11 states by the music industry last week, and it marked the first time New Jersey residents have been singled out.
Since September, 382 people have been sued nationwide. The industry blames illegal downloading of music for slumping sales of CDs. At least 220 computer users have agreed to pay settlements, averaging several thousand dollars apiece, according to various published reports. Another 1,054 people have avoided prosecution under an amnesty program, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
"The legal actions taken by the record companies have been effective in educating the American public that illegal file sharing of copyrighted material has significant consequences," said RIAA President Cary Sherman in a prepared statement. "Consumers are increasingly attracted to the host of compelling legal online music alternatives. These lawsuits help to foster an environment that provides a level playing field for these services to succeed."
Scimeca said she had not yet seen the lawsuit. But she got wind something was up a few weeks ago when Cablevision sent her a letter, saying it had handed over information to music companies about her Optimum Online Internet account after receiving a subpoena.
Music labels can subpoena such details without a judge's authorization, under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. These subpoenas are being challenged in separate cases by the American Civil Liberties Union and SBC Communications.
When Scimeca questioned her daughter about the letter, she said, "I got a blank stare."
Scimeca said she has tried to be an Internet cop for her kids. The family computer is on the main floor of the house, in plain view, and she limits its use, she said. Chat rooms are banned. She peruses the girls' "buddy lists" and even monitors their instant-messaging sessions -- to the point where she knows "POS" is code for "parent over shoulder."
But, she said, "You can't watch them 24 hours a day. By the same token, if they are able to access a site, how are they to know it's wrong?"
Though aware of past controversies surrounding the Napster file-sharing service, Scimeca said she was "oblivious" to KaZaA and Morpheus, another service she said her daughter used and that now resists deletion from their computer.
The music industry should focus on shutting those services, she said.
"How can you blame a 13-year-old child for doing something they didn't know was illegal?" Scimeca said. "I'll start a petition to never buy another record again. It's bull. They need to work on cutting off the sites and shutting down the supply. Kids will always look for free stuff."
"It's not like she murdered someone," Scimeca said of her daughter, whose name she withheld. "When we were kids, we sat with tape recorders and taped songs off the radio. Was that illegal, too?"
She insisted the labels will have a hard time squeezing any money from her.
"I'd have to pay them a dollar a month," Scimeca said.
EarthLink and Musicmatch to Offer 99-Cent Downloads
< back
More Than 350,000 Songs Available From The Five Major Labels
and Hundreds of Independents
ATLANTA and SAN DIEGO, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EarthLink
(Nasdaq: ELNK) customers have a new reason to hum their favorite songs; to the
tune of $.99 music downloads. EarthLink, a leading national Internet service
provider, and Musicmatch, the leader in personalized music software and
services, today expanded their relationship to offer EarthLink subscribers the
ability to download individual songs for $.99 each. The EarthLink Digital
Music Center, powered by Musicmatch, can be accessed
at http://www.earthlink.net/extras .
Along with the ability to download more than 350,000 songs from the five
major labels and hundreds of major independents, the EarthLink Digital Music
service includes integrated jukebox software that enables subscribers to
organize their MP3 collections and listen to free Internet radio. Users can
further enhance their service by upgrading to the EarthLink Jukebox Plus,
powered by Musicmatch, which includes faster CD burning and a faster MP3
recorder. The EarthLink Jukebox Plus upgrade is available for $19.99.
"EarthLink customers want to experience the Internet on their own terms,
and Musicmatch's download services enable them to choose the music they want,
when they want it," said Erika Jolly, vice president of strategic brand
management at EarthLink. "Whether it is listening to the free radio service
while Web surfing, building a library of a rare musician's albums or buying
$.99 singles to compile a favorite hits list, EarthLink Digital Music delivers
the tools for our customers to more fully enjoy the time they spend online."
"Both Musicmatch and EarthLink service customers who use the Internet for
entertainment on a regular basis," said Bob Ohlweiler, Musicmatch senior vice
president of business development. "The expansion of the relationship with
EarthLink to deliver $.99 downloads provides a way for millions of online
consumers nationwide to explore and enjoy the Musicmatch experience."
EarthLink Digital Music Internet radio users can also upgrade to two
levels of premium service. For $2.95 a month, EarthLink Digital Music MX Gold
customers receive Musicmatch's Artist MATCH(TM) radio, which allows them to
create and save stations containing music from selected and related artists.
They also receive exclusive genre and era stations, CD-quality sound, no
advertisements and remote access from any personal computer.
For $4.95 a month, EarthLink Digital Music MX Platinum customers receive
all the services available at the Gold level, as well as Musicmatch's Artist
ON DEMAND(TM), which allows subscribers to choose the artists they want to
hear, and provides unlimited song skipping; and Composer ON DEMAND(TM),
enabling users to create custom composer playlists and discover composers by
searching and browsing by period.
The EarthLink Digital Music service powered by Musicmatch will also ship
with EarthLink's TotalAccess(R) 2004 software for easy installation and quick
access to the music consumers want to download and purchase.
About EarthLink
"EarthLink revolves around you(sm)." As a leading national Internet
service provider (ISP) headquartered in Atlanta, EarthLink has earned an award
winning reputation for outstanding customer service and its suite of online
products and services. According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2003
Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study(SM),
EarthLink is ranked highest in customer satisfaction among high-speed Internet
Service Providers. Serving approximately five million subscribers, EarthLink
offers what every user should expect from their Internet experience: high-
quality connectivity, minimal drop-offs and ISP-generated intrusions, and
customizable features. Whether it's dial-up, high-speed, Web hosting, or
wireless Internet service, EarthLink provides the tools that best let
individuals use and enjoy the Internet on their own terms. Learn more about
EarthLink by calling (800) EARTHLINK or visiting EarthLink's Web site
at http://www.earthlink.net .
About Musicmatch
Musicmatch, Inc. is the leader in personalized music software and
services, helping people find, manage, enjoy and buy music that best matches
their unique tastes. The company invented the digital jukebox concept in 1997
and since then has registered more than 40 million users of its best-selling
Musicmatch Jukebox. The Musicmatch Radio network, launched in 2000, now
features the world's most popular Internet radio station, Artist MATCH(TM)
Radio. The Musicmatch Downloads service is the easiest way to find, buy and
enjoy music. For additional information, visit http://www.musicmatch.com .
Musicmatch(R) is a registered trademark of Musicmatch, Inc.
HSN Enjoys Best Day In Company History Saturday's Net Sales Exceed $30 Million
Monday December 8, 1:03 pm ET
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- TV and Web retailer HSN received an early holiday gift this year in the form of a record-breaking sales day on Saturday, December 6 when the company took in over $30 million in just one day. That amount surpasses HSN's previous one-day sales record of $16.9 million achieved in December 2002.
ADVERTISEMENT
The record-breaking day featured a broad assortment of products that proved to have wide appeal including an exclusive desktop system from Gateway computers, cookware from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, beauty items from Adrien Arpel's Signature Club A line and world launches of electronic items such as an all-in-one Lexmark scanner/printer/copier, a combination Mustek digital camcorder/camera/MP3 player/voice recorder, along with a wide assortment of other holiday gifts.
The company has implemented various programs in the fourth quarter to improve the customer experience, such as a recently signed deal with UPS to deliver packages an average of two days faster and a newly redesigned hsn.com.
About HSN:
HSN, an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI - News), originated the television shopping concept in 1977. The idea materialized on a small AM radio station in Florida and has since grown into a global multichannel retailer with a thriving TV, catalog and Web business on hsn.com. HSN generated worldwide consolidated sales of close to $2 billion in 2002 and is the 4th largest cable television network in the U.S.
After-market for automotive 'bling bling' going nuts
Multi-billion dollar part of car business
Deirdre McMurdy
Financial Post
Saturday, December 06, 2003
(Scott) Munro
ADVERTISEMENT
Driving a brand-new car straight off the lot used to be a big deal. You'd take it for a bit of a cruise, let the folks and your buddies check it out -- and maybe drive it around the block. Everyone would comment on that great new car smell as they checked out the trunk space.
These days, however, that ritual is considerably more complex-and costly. The first place most new car owners drive their vehicle is to an after-market automotive supplier for big ticket upgrades.
"People pull in here right from the dealer and plop down $10,000, maybe $12,000 for a top-end entertainment system," says Scott Munro of Kromer Radio, who installs an average of five systems every day in Toronto.
"They'll have eight screens installed, infra-red headsets, surround sound -- the works."
Sophisticated navigation systems, satellite radio equipment, digital audio broadcast capability, MP3 players, rear-vision cameras and bumper sensors are also increasingly popular installations in new vehicles.
"Everyone wants something unique, wants to express themselves as an individual with some custom item or service," notes auto industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers.
"It's a big status thing -- and it's become a multi-billion dollar part of the auto sector."
That consumer trend has gained momentum as automakers have attempted to whet demand with low-cost financing deals and a variety of rebates and incentives. The cost of acquiring new cars and trucks is so low, the number of registered vehicles in North America now outnumbers licensed drivers.
Statistics gathered by Ford Motor Company indicate that three out of 10 households have at least three vehicles, a 27% increase in just four years.
At the same time, computer and technology companies such as Microsoft are entering the fray, attempting to offset the bottom-line impact of a maturing desktop computer market, by focusing increasingly on the 50 million new vehicles that are produced globally every year.
The vice-president of Microsoft's automotive business unit recently declared that the company plans to have its operating system in every car on Earth some day -- and it's already well down that road. The MSN platform is currently installed in 23 different car models including the BMW 7 series, Daimler, Volvo, Subaru and Toyota.
The company's "Tbox", which is expected to hit the market in the next year or so, would connect all the disparate technologies in a car from phones to audio and navigation systems.
Not only would a fully wired vehicle automatically turn on the windshield wipers as the first drop of rain lands, it would pay tolls, demand an oil change, and warn about traffic obstructions, while proposing alternate routes.
"The car has become the ultimate point of convergence-transportation. Communication and entertainment are being seamlessly blended," says Mr. DesRosiers. "It's about multi-tasking on wheels."
He adds that manufacturers are also scrambling to build on the consumer demand that typically surfaces first in the booming aftermarket.
They are adding a growing array of technology based options in an attempt to differentiate their products in an increasingly commoditized market.
They are also extremely eager to boost wafer-thin dealership margins by offering an expanded roster of installation and service opportunities.
Among the new technologies developed for the high-end market-but ultimately destined to become a standard feature some day is the Cadillac XLR's active cruise control. Radar sensors automatically apply the brakes if the vehicle ahead slows down, or if an XLR driver is abruptly cut off.
John Wood, an engineer who specializes in developing new technology for General Motors Canada, says that the company is also part of a consortium that backs the application of wireless Bluetooth technology.
"We're at the table and keeping our options open," he notes. "We're just waiting to see where the market is going to take wi fi."
Satellite navigation systems, are another example of features that initially became popular in the aftermarket (ranging in price from $3,000 to $5,500. They've now become a common feature in many luxury vehicle models and they are also a popular money-spinner, generating monthly fee-based revenues of about $20 a month depending on the range of services provided.
On that front, General Motors' On-Star navigation and communications system has moved to a hands-free voice-activated technology, with microphones embedded in vehicles' interiors.
Incorporated in the communications package is a "personal calling service" which replaces hand-held or even head-set cellular phone usage.
"About half of the navigation systems are just for the wow factor -- a new toy for some middle-aged guy with a wad of cash," says Mr. Munro. "The other half go to sales people and others who work on the road and really use their full capacity."
But even as the level of sophistication has accelerated, the cost of customization has declined. According to Tom Daley of ARA Auto Accessories in Calgary, an automotive MP3 player that stores 200 songs per disc cost $700 a year ago, and now sells for $300. Satellite radio gear that was $1,400 18 months ago, is currently priced at $500, he adds.
(Although satellite radio service is illegal in Canada pending a national radio policy review by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Mr. Daley says that many Albertans -- especially those in remote rural areas where traditional reception can be weak -- have the equipment installed domestically and then provide a U.S. address to activate service for a monthly fee of about $15. Kromer Radio, on the other hand, will install satellite radio equipment but doesn't sell it.)
Manufacturers, of course, are also quick to raise the bar on both technology and price as mass appeal builds. Alpine Electronics has just launched a new hard-drive MP3 player for in-dash installation that retails for about US$1,000. It's "Quick Search" function allows users to search for tracks by genre, artist, album, song or play list using a paddle switch.
"First it was eight-track tapes, then cassettes, then DVDs. Now no-one wants to bother with a bunch of CDs rattling around the car," says Mr. Daley. "The MP3 players are huge sellers."
So too are surround-sound audio systems. Although they are often associated with younger, male drivers, Mr. Munro says that Baby Boomers are also quick to spend as much as $5,000 on mobile sound quality.
"The young guys just want it loud. The Boomers want it loud but with clean, crystal quality," he notes. "And above all they don't want any cosmetic change to the interior of their vehicle."
That said, he adds, there's been no real advancement in speaker technology in recent years, although he does recommend digital audio broadcast (DAB) technology (about $1,000) for superior, traditional radio reception and some value-added features like text listings of artists and song titles.
While such safety features as air bags have become common, factory-installed features, there are several other after-market items that have gained popularity.
As sport utility vehicles and other urban "trucks" have become commonplace, the demand for sensors and rear-view cameras has soared because of the parking problems they pose. A bullet sized camera with a quarter-inch lens and screen display costs about $1,500. Installation of four sensors on a rear bumper that beep and show flashing green, amber and red indicator lights-cost about $580.
A Canadian company, SmartTire Systems of Vancouver , addresses both safety and environmental concerns with its tire sensors. According to communications director Randy Halischuk, about 50% of all tires are under-inflated increasing the risk of crashes and dramatically decreasing fuel efficiency (it drops by 1% for every three pressure per square inch of under-inflation).
The system which sells for about $300 installed, features a small screen, which can be plugged into a lighter socket-which informs drivers of tire pressure, heat and deviation from ideal inflation. It also flashes and beeps if a tire is about to blow or go flat.
"Our sensors have become standard equipment now in Bentley's and Aston-Martins," notes Mr. Halischuk. "That means they'll soon be installed in lower cost models. That's how it works: from after-market, to luxury models to mass market."
It's a life cycle that may be short, but for vendors -- sweet.
HOT WHEELS:
- DVD entertainment systems cost $1,500 for a package with one seven-inch, flip-down screen and run as high as $5,500 for four screens.
- Navigation systems with global positioning satellite service starts at $3,000 and run to $5,500.
- MP3 players cost $300 to $1,200.
- Back-up sensor systems run $600 to $1,500.
- Satellite radio gear is $500; digital audio broadcast receivers cost $1,000.
- Tire sensors, installed cost about $300.
Hey we need to improve our margins....
Porn In The U.S.A.
Nov. 21, 2003
Porn In The U.S. Uncovered
It is estimated that Americans now spend somewhere around $10 billion a year on adult entertainment. (Photo: CBS)
"Because there's a social stigma still attached to [pornography], you can charge a premium for it, the profit margin is higher. ... It makes pure economic sense.”
Fred Lane
Last year, the industry churned out 11,000 titles. The industry also has its own studios. (Photo: CBS)
(CBS) Selling sex is one of the oldest businesses in the world, and right now, business has never been better. One of the biggest cultural changes in the United States over the past 25 years has been the widespread acceptance of sexuality explicit material - pornography.
In the space of a generation, a product that once was available in the back alleys of big cities has gone corporate, delivered now directly into homes and hotel rooms by some of the biggest companies in the U.S.
It is estimated that Americans now spend somewhere around $10 billion a year on adult entertainment, which is as much as they spend attending professional sporting events, buying music or going out to the movies.
Consumer demand is so strong that it has seduced some of America's biggest brand names, and companies like General Motors, Marriott and Time Warner are now making millions selling erotica to America. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best place to see it is at the industry's annual convention in Las Vegas, where more than 200 adult entertainment companies gather under one roof to network, schmooze and show off their latest wares.
Presiding over it all is Paul Fishbein, the founder and president of adult video news, the industry's trade publication, which sponsors the expo.
Who’s out there? “Manufacturers of adult products, distributors, suppliers, retail store owners, wholesalers, distributors, cable TV buyers, foreign buyers,” says Fishbein. “They're all here to do business, and then you have the fans.”
The fans came from all over the country, stood in line for hours, and paid $40 to get into what was essentially an x-rated trade show. From appearances, you might find the same crowd at the boat show.
According to Fishbein, there are well over 800 million rentals of adult videotapes and DVDs in video stores across the country. “And I don't think that it's 800 guys renting a million tapes each,” he says.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last year, the industry churned out 11,000 titles. Suffice it to say, there was something for every sexual demographic - even material aimed at the 60 Minutes crowd.
In Fishbein's words, all of this is performed and produced by consenting adults, for the use of consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. The industry also has its own major studios.
“Here you have two of the leading companies in the business, VCA and Vivid,” says Fishbein. “They're known for the biggest-budget top movies in the industry, along with Wicked Pictures.”
The industry also has its own major stars, like Jenna Jameson, a teen beauty queen, turned showgirl, turned porn actress. With the approval of her family, she reportedly earned more than a million dollars last year performing sex for money.
“The way I look at it is this is kind of an art to me. I'm performing. I'm not doing it for the gratification of another man,” says Jameson. “I'm doing it because this is my job and I'm entertaining the masses. So it's just like being Julia Roberts, but just a little bit further, one step further.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The porn world now has all the trappings of a legitimate industry with considerable economic clout. Besides its own convention and trade publication, it holds marketing and legal seminars. It even has its own lobbyist.
“It employs an excess of 12,000 people in California. And in California alone, we pay over $36 million in taxes every year. So it's a very sizeable industry,” says Bill Lyon, a former lobbyist for the defense industry.
When 60 Minutes first spoke to Lyon last January, he was running the free speech coalition, a trade organization that represents 900 companies in the porn business.
“I was rather shocked to find that these are pretty bright business people who are in it to make a profit. And that is what it's about,” says Lyon.
What kind of reaction does he expect to get when he tells legislatures all over the country that he’s a lobbyist for the adult entertainment business?
“Initially, I think there's a degree of shock. But when you explain to them the size and the scope of the business, they realize, as all politicians do, that it's votes and money that we're talking about,” adds Lyon, who says there are reputable companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange that are involved in the business. “Corporations are in business to make money. This is an extremely large business and there's a great opportunity for profits in it.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last year, Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, pulled in $50 million from adult programming. All the nation's top cable operators, from Time Warner to Cablevision, distribute sexually explicit material to their subscribers. But you won't read about it in their annual reports. Same with satellite providers like EchoStar and DirecTV, which is owned by Hughes Technology, a subsidiary of General Motors.
How much does DirecTV make off of adult product?
“They don't break the number out. But I would guess they'd probably get a couple hundred million, maybe as much as $500 million, off of adult entertainment, in a broad sense,” says Dennis McAlpine, a partner in McAlpine Associates, who has tracked the entertainment industry for over two decades. “I would think it's probably more than what their overall profit is. The other areas are losing money. That's making money.”
Then there are the big hotel chains: Hilton, Marriot, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, which all offer adult films on in-room pay-per-view television systems. And they are purchased by a whopping 50 percent of their guests, accounting for nearly 70 percent of their in-room profits. One hotel owner said, "We have to have it, our guests demand it.”
One of the largest owners and programmers of in-room pay-per-view is Liberty Media, a publicly traded company run by media mogul John Malone, one of the most powerful people in the communications industry.
McAlpine says that adult entertainment has become a critical part of the entertainment business: “Adult is a major factor in determining the profits of a cable system, an in-house hotel system, a satellite system. It's a big profit contributor.”
So how do these corporations get involved in it?
“I think that they get involved in it because of the profit margins that are involved. One of the things about pornography that's consistently true across the board is that because there's a social stigma still attached to it, you can charge a premium for these materials. And because you can charge a premium for it, the profit margin is higher. So, it makes pure economic sense,” says Fred Lane, a lawyer and author of a book called “Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs Of Pornography In the Cyber Age.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The epicenter of the porn industry is Chatsworth, Calif., a quiet suburb north of Los Angeles. It is indistinguishable from the other middle-class communities that sprawl across the San Fernando Valley, except for one thing. Tucked among the defense contractors and aerospace companies are dozens and dozens of adult film companies like Vivid Video, the porn industry equivalent of Paramount or Universal. It makes adult films, distributes them on video, DVD, and then sells them to hotels, cable companies and over the Internet.
Bill Asher, Vivid's president, says these films are relatively inexpensive to produce, and Vivid has had double-digit growth every year for the past five years. Last year, he says consumers spent a billion dollars on Vivid products.
“We know that when we were selling the content to certain satellite companies, they did an analysis and we were the most profitable channel they had for the distributor,” says Asher. “I would say it [cable systems] is the most profitable channel … The industry is big business now. It’s mainstream. It's really no different than what Playboy was 30 years ago, 20 years ago.”
Asher, who graduated from Dartmouth and has an MBA, used to work at Playboy as a financial analyst.
“It's an issue of distribution. When customers can get to adult content, generally, they buy it. They enjoy it. The question was, ‘Would mainstream companies distribute it?’ Now, Playboy and Penthouse for 30 years have enjoyed the same distribution as other magazines. Adult movies really didn't have that up until recently,” adds Asher.
“And what happened was, as companies like Vivid came around, and made everyone more comfortable with adult product, mainstream companies said, ‘OK, we'll be willing to distribute it. We would like to join in the benefit - the financial benefit of distributing it.’"
Asher says it wasn't a hard sell. All he had to do was show and provide an upscale product on the polite side of the pornographic spectrum. “We strive to have good sets, good plots, attractive people. People who can hopefully speak and act. Everything that you would expect to see in a mainstream movie,” says Asher.
60 Minutes was hoping that at least one big mainstream corporation would talk to us about its involvement in adult entertainment. But no one did. A few gave us statements saying essentially their companies provide a whole range of entertainment choices, plus the ability to block them out, and such choices should be left to the customer.
“When 60 Minutes comes to your door asking about adult content, and you're a major corporation, my advice to you would be don't open the door,” says Asher. “What possible victory could come out of it for them? They are offering content, the customers are buying the content, everyone is happy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Needless to say, not everyone is happy about this.
“The first thing that a lot of people did when they got their VCR was rent or purchase an adult movie. ‘Deep Throat.’ ‘Devil in Miss Jones.’ ‘Behind the Green Door.’ ‘Debbie Does Dallas.’ That's what they asked for,” says Fishbein, who publishes “The Adult Video News,” the porn industry’s trade magazine.
“Most people had never seen an adult movie, because they had to go out in public, to a theater, to see it. I mean, sex is a very private thing. So, now that you can watch it in the privacy of your own home, nobody has to know. And I think that's what drove the VCR. And I think, to a degree, it's what drove a lot of people to get on the Internet.”
In fact, pornography has helped drive early sales and the development of most new entertainment technologies for the past 25 years - providing software for the latest gadgets, and a reason to buy them. And usually the first people who do are affluent young men who like porn.
Type the word sex into an Internet search engine like Google and you will get 180 million hits. For years, adult sites were the only ones to turn a profit. They have pioneered and helped to develop numerous technological breakthroughs from online payment methods to streaming video.
Lane wrote a book about this unofficial, commercial partnership between technology and the adult entertainment industry. He believes it has had a tremendous impact on American values, popular culture, and the government's ability to regulate pornography.
“The way I like to put it is that we went from 1,000 adult movie theaters in less than 10 years to 80 million adult movie theaters. And that basically is what happened with the VCR,” says Lane.
“The computer now, in terms of its penetration into American households -- the last figure I saw was somewhere on the order of 70-80 million households, out of the 100 million in this country? So again, we've got enormous potential for people to look at things in the privacy of their home.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Has it become more difficult in the United States to win an obscenity prosecution?
Absolutely, says Lane. “And as adult materials have found their way into different communities by different means, whether it's by cable television, or it's by hotel chains, people have grown increasingly comfortable with adult materials. And there seems to me to be, I think, a growing sense that what people do in the privacy of their own homes is their business.”
Porn is so accessible now that it’s working its way into the subtext of American culture, crossing over into fashion, music and television. Take, for example, a Christina Aguilera music video on MTV or VH1 or a Brittany Spears concert on HBO, dripping with sexual imagery obviously borrowed from the world of adult entertainment. You will even find porn references on the TV show, “Friends.”
Luke Ford, who spent seven years writing an Internet gossip column about the adult entertainment industry for his own his own Internet Web site, isn't sure what to make of it.
“It's become popular, cool, acceptable in this 18-to-25 age group. My age group, I'm 37, my age group and up. We think porn is something that's shameful. But for kids half my age, they think it's cool,” says Ford, who guesses it’s an act of rebellion, embracing one of society’s last taboos.
Ford, who is often referred to as the Matt Drudge of porn, gave 60 Minutes a tour of a backyard porn set in a residential neighborhood of Chatsworth that has been used by porn directors for more than 20 years.
“It is just like Hollywood,” he says.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like the porn industry itself, it becomes less glamorous the closer you get. If you take away the accountants and CEOs, you’re left with a small insular world, filled with renegades and outcasts, who like to flaunt society's rules.
“They come into this industry, because this is the single easiest way that they can earn $1,000 in a day, in two hours,” says Ford. “It's not like we're losing people from going to medical school or business school or becoming lawyers.”
Hang around the world modeling talent agency on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks and one of the first things you notice is that there is no shortage of men or women who are eager to work in the business.
“It’s just fun. I think it’s awesome that you, like, can be, like, a sex icon. I think girls will argue that it's a bad thing, you're crazy,” says Destiny. “Because you know everybody thinks you’re beautiful. Everybody wants to meet you.”
You'll also see why Fortune 500 companies making millions off the industry don't like to be publicly associated with it.
“Most girls who enter this industry do one video and quit. The experience is so painful, horrifying, embarrassing, humiliating for them that they never do it again,” says Ford.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The argument that pornography exploits women has long been one of the flashpoints for social debates about the industry. Now, anti-porn groups say hundreds of thousands of men have become addicted to it, leading to anti-social behavior, and causing divorce and family breakups.
“Just because this material is available, and citizens tolerate it, doesn't mean that they accept it,” says Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. Attorney for the Western district of Pennsylvania, and the point person in the Justice Department's campaign to rein in pornography.
When John Ashcroft was appointed attorney general among his first acts were to hang blue drapes in front of a topless statue in the lobby of the Justice Department, and to promise a crackdown on smut.
Buchanan's prosecution of a California company called Extreme Associates is the first major obscenity case brought by the federal government in more than a decade.
“We have just had a proliferation of this type of material that has been getting increasingly worse and worse. And that's why it's important to enforce the law, and to show the producers that there are limits. There are limits to what they can sell and distribute throughout the country,” says Buchanan.
She believes that three films produced and distributed by Extreme Associates by mail and over the Internet contain coercive and violent sex, along with other material that is vile and degrading.
Rob Black, president of Extreme Associates, considers that a compliment.
One film, called “Forced Entry,” includes shots of women getting raped and murdered. It also includes suffocation, strangulation, beatings and urination. Black calls “Forced Entry” a slasher film with sex, loosely based on the Hillside Strangler case. But 60 Minutes couldn’t find enough plot to show anything beyond the opening credits.
“They made absolutely no attempt to comply with federal law. In fact, it was probably their intent not to,” says Buchanan. “Because what they wanted to do was to make the most disgusting material available on the market. And they succeeded.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is federal law on pornography? The only explicit, hard-core sexual material that is absolutely illegal by law in the U.S. today is child pornography -- all other material must be put before a jury.
The Supreme Court last defined obscenity as material appealing to a degrading interest in sex, depicting it in a patently offensive manner, and lacking any serious artistic, literary, or scientific value. But this was way back in 1973, before the VCR and the Internet were in existence.
In California vs. Miller, the Burger Court recognized that individual communities had different values and opinions on pornography, so it allowed localities to make their own judgments, based on contemporary community standards.
But since 1973, standards have changed, and so has the definition of a community. Today, with the Internet, cable, and satellite television, most pornography can be transmitted directly into someone's home without ever disrupting the community, or its standards. And that will be Extreme Associates’ argument in court.
“It’s not involving the community. It's involving a private individual, who purchased these videos, and downloaded the images from the Internet into their home. So, where does that community standard apply,” says Black. “You can't apply a community to it if only one person is viewing it. They didn't go to a local video store. It was purchased privately by an individual at home, and sent to them in the mail. And that is the debate. And so, where is the community? Where do you apply it?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you apply community standards when you're talking about something that is just downloaded into somebody's home?
“I think that is precisely the question that the court has to answer. The original purpose of the Miller test was to give communities the opportunity to regulate what came into their borders, what was displayed on Main Street, what kids were actually seeing as they went around the community,” says Lane.
“Obviously, if something's downloaded into the privacy of one's own home, it doesn't have that kind of impact on the community. So the question is, does the community still have the right to determine what people look at?”
Buchanan says she’s doesn’t have to convince the entire community, just the jury: “We're focusing our resources on the most egregious offenders. So, we're looking at the producers and distributors who are producing the worst material, the largest quantity of material, the largest area of distribution.”
Buchanan says it is not the Justice Department's intention to shut down the adult entertainment industry or eliminate all sexually explicit material, even if it could. The point is to enforce some standards.
As for the big corporations that are now distributing pornography over cable, satellite, and the Internet, Buchannan says they need to exercise discretion. The Justice Department is currently investigating 50 cases across the country.
SmartPhones, Handhelds May Someday Threaten Laptops
Sat Dec 6,10:20 AM ET
Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Duncan Martell
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Psst... How about a souped-up handheld computer cell-phone combination that not only boasts a camera, surfs the Web, does e-mail, can play digital music and has a calendar, but also makes your toast in the morning?
You can have all of that right now.
Well, all but the toaster part. The point is, handheld computers and smartphones, even digital music players like the very popular Apple iPod, are getting ever more powerful, smaller, and can perform a dizzying array of functions.
These powerful gizmos are even starting to raise questions among electronics makers over how much longer it will be before you can leave your laptop at home as a doorstop and hit the road with only your uber-handheld.
"It's an interesting question that PC makers are contending with," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at market research firm Creative Strategies. "The industry is trying to figure out whatrole does the PC continue to play in the digital home of the future."
Devices such as the Treo 600 mobile phone-computer from Palm Inc. unit Handspring, the Clie handheld computer from Sony Corp (news - web sites). (6758.T) (NYSE:SNE - news), and others from Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL - news) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news), all have either the ability to play digital music MP3 files, play movies, surf the Internet wirelessly, do e-mail, calendaring and more.
"People want their stuff wherever they go," said Rob Enderle, principal of market research firm the Enderle Group.
For example, Apple Computer Inc.'s (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) iPod now has a voice recorder attachment, can store thousands of digital pictures, and allows users to manage contacts, calendar events, to-do lists. It even boasts an alarm clock feature and games.
These are, of course, all things that a new, modestly outfitted laptop computer can do now, but they are cumbersome and heavier to cart around than the handheld.
This move toward greater integration and convergence, also helped along by Moore's Law -- the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months -- is a replay of another trend that's been ongoing for nearly a decade.
For a number of years, a series of laptops known as "transportables," or desktop replacement notebooks, have been available. They weigh anywhere from 8 to 12 pounds and can now have a display up to 17 inches in diameter.
They can do just about everything a desktop can do.
That desire for everything in one place extends beyond having one's documents, PowerPoint presentations, e-mail access, digital music and other content on just a laptop PC.
The same trend that prompted consumers and businesses to flock to the notebook is now hitting users of cellular phones that also have small digital cameras in them.
Analysts say that by next year hybrid camera phones will be able to shoot 1-megapixel pictures suitable for e-mailing to a friend and carry flash attachments.
Within two years, some camera phones will boast at least 2-megapixel picture quality, good enough to print quality 4-inch by 6-inch pictures.
"People were leaving their digital cameras at home because the camera phone is good enough," Enderle said.
And when it comes to the digital living room, if a personal video recorder -- basically a high-capacity computer disk drive with program-recording software -- can wirelessly transmit digital video to a handheld or smart phone and manage your digital library, what need is there for a traditional PC?
"There's a lot of interest competing for that space -- the center of the digital home. What is it going to be? What will it look like?" said Roger Kay, an analyst at market research firm IDC.
As for the uber-handheld computer or smart phone supplanting the laptop any time soon, while the seeds for the debate have been sowed, don't expect it quite yet.
"We're not nearly to the point where road warriors can leave their laptops at home," Bajarin said, noting that he goes Treo-only when he's scooting around Silicon Valley for meetings and needs the phone function and access to e-mail. "We're probably a good 18 months away from that."
(The PluggedIn column appears weekly. Comments or questions on this one can be e-mailed to duncan.martell(at)reuters.com)
Online music merchants feel for groove
Copyright © 2003
Tribune Media Services
This story was published Thursday, December 4th, 2003
By JON HEALEY, Los Angeles Times
(LAT) - With 99-cent music downloads moving quickly from novelty to commodity, Full-Audio Corp. needed to set its online store apart.
So along with the standard layout of hit albums and popular songs, its MusicNow site features exclusive anthologies - such as "Shaken, Not Stirred," a collection of songs from James Bond movies, and "Mullet Rock," featuring bands with bad '70s hairdos.
By contrast, audiolunchbox.com doesn't peddle any hits, or even any flops, from the major record companies; the founders couldn't afford the labels' licensing fees. Instead, the store stands out online by offering an array of tunes from independent labels, including Epitaph Records and Barsuk Records. And unlike all its competitors, it puts no limits on what shoppers can do with the songs they buy.
"We're very focused on differentiation," Audio Lunchbox Chief Executive Morgan Harris said. "For us to go head to head with somebody who has million-dollar advertising budgets doesn't make sense."
That's a common sentiment these days among companies racing to enter the downloadable music market.
At least eight online music stores have been launched this year, most of them by small firms like Audio Lunchbox of Manhattan Beach and FullAudio of Chicago. The number of stores is expected to double in the next few months, including from such commercial behemoths as Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Viacom International Inc.'s MTV.
Getting music free - and illegally - has proved to be one of the most popular applications of the Internet age. Now, as companies large and small launch their stores, they must persuade fans not only to buy music but also to buy it from them.
Analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media, a technology research firm, likened the situation to the early days of the Gold Rush. Most stores have been able to carve out promising niches, he said, but may not be able to hold on to them as more companies elbow their way into the market.
"When there's no more virgin streams to stake, people are going to be jumping each other's claims, and it's going to be ugly," Leigh said.
Most of the stores are expected to offer nearly the same selection of songs for about the same price, with the same restrictions on copying. That will make it difficult for companies to distinguish themselves, giving an immediate advantage to the players that already attract sizable numbers of music fans.
To make matters worse, small profit margins mean that online stores will need high volumes to succeed. Downloadable music sales have been minuscule in comparison to CD sales or illegal downloads.
The leading outlet for 99-cent downloads has been Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, which has sold more than 17 million tracks since opening April 28. That's less than 1 percent of the music industry's U.S. sales during the same period. (And it's a barely measurable fraction of the downloads on Kazaa, the biggest online file-sharing network.)
"Our focus isn't to get rich overnight with this thing," said Harris of Audio Lunchbox.
Harris said the idea for the store grew out of the work he and one of the store's co-founders, Joshua Forstot, do at Hyfn Inc., a Manhattan Beach, Calif., technology company. Numerous record labels promote new bands or CDs by distributing free songs in Hyfn's music-playing software.
The original plan was to let people buy songs through Hyfn's players, Harris said, but the major record labels wanted advance money the self-funded company couldn't afford. Nor did Audio Lunchbox's crew agree with the labels' insistence that songs be wrapped in electronic locks to limit copying and deter piracy.
"It's hard enough to get people to purchase music digitally," Harris said. "They should be able to burn it and listen to it on as many computers or MP3 players as they want."
Hence the company's focus on independent labels, many of which have no qualms about using unlocked formats such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. The store launched last month with about 17,000 tracks from 36 labels, and it hopes to have more than 100,000 tracks from a wider lineup of partners by year's end.
That's a small catalog. Roxio Inc.'s Napster store has half a million tracks, and that total pales in comparison to the millions of tracks that have been released on CD.
For its part, FullAudio is counting on alliances with Microsoft and Best Buy Co. to introduce people to the MusicNow store and subscription service. Its software is an optional add-on to Microsoft's Windows Media Player (as is Roxio's), and the store is featured in Best Buy's retail outlets and on its Web site.
What sets MusicNow apart, though, are the compilations, or "track packs," its staff creates. Examples include collections of music from Looney Tunes cartoons, unfamiliar renditions of familiar songs and tracks nominated for this year's American Music Awards.
The often-clever mixes embrace the typical downloader's interest in plucking songs from multiple albums rather than buying artists' whole CDs. But unlike with a single artist's release, there's no volume discount - it's a straight 99 cents per song.
Greg Rudin, FullAudio's vice president of marketing, said making people aware of legal downloads was job No. 1; standing out in the crowd would take time. "Let's face it," he said, "personality doesn't develop overnight."
For some download ventures, such as Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple's iTunes and the forthcoming Sony venture, a key personality trait is tight integration between stores, software and portable players. Others, such as Napster, FullAudio and the expected entry from RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody, link their stores to subscription services offering unlimited music rentals for a flat monthly fee.
Another approach is to embed a store into Internet access software, as Time Warner Inc.'s America Online is expected to do next summer, or into the programs people use to play CDs and MP3 files on their computers, as San Diego-based MusicMatch Inc. and Apple have done.
Industry executives credit Apple and its chief executive, Steve Jobs, for sparking the explosion of interest in download stores. A smattering of online sites have tried selling downloads since the late 1990s, but Apple's iTunes was the first to make it easy to browse, buy, burn and transfer downloads to a portable player.
Another significant factor has been the major record companies, which stifled the online music business for several years with unrealistic prices and draconian restrictions on what people could do with downloaded songs. No longer trying to dominate the Internet with their own services, the labels have gradually made their licensing terms more favorable to independent companies and have started welcoming online partners.
That reflects a growing realization among music label executives that illegal downloads, not legal ones, were the prime threat to CD sales. But it also is a response to Apple's store, which quickly quadrupled the sale of downloadable tracks even though it worked only on Macs. Apple released a version for computers using the Windows operating system last month.
Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music retailers, has reported a steady increase in the sale of 99-cent downloads since August. Nevertheless, the small overall market suggests it will be hard for many to survive in the crowd of download vendors.
Audio Lunchbox's Harris is happy to see a growing number of players jump in with offerings dominated by major-label music.
"With all of these new stores popping up, how do they expect to make any money?" Harris asked. "I think they're all going to kill each other off eventually."
Cassie, when Microsoft licenses its software platform to companies making tablet PCs or smartphones to manufacturers like Acer, BenQ, Legend do you think they are all crying about the competition? No, in fact they expect it. Now none of us really know what kind of contract we have with APS but it has been alluded to that they will be a marketing partner with us for various markets beyond the airlines. But it seems reasonable to expect that at some point we could license our PVP platform to other companies who would then produce products without the exact "look and feel" of the digEplayer. These products may be aimed at markets other than those pursued by APS or may allow direct competition after some period of time it would seem...
What about all your reckless, unsubstantiated statements on this board and others? When will you be posting your retractions?
The Coming Download Downturn
Arik Hesseldahl, 12.05.03, 10:00 AM ET
How many online music download services can the market bear?
That's going to be a key question as the music download market warms up to a white-hot temperature in 2004. The rush is underway among several companies to build music download services and replicate the success of others already leading the way.
Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) and its successful iPod digital music player are the ones to beat, along with Roxio's (nasdaq: ROXI - news - people ) Napster service, and Rhapsody from Real Networks (nasdaq: RNWK - news - people ). Others include BuyMusic.com, MusicMatch and MusicNow.
In recent weeks you likely heard of others with plans to start selling downloadable music in the new year: Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) will start its push next year, adding music to its MSN service. Online retailer Amazon (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) is said to have its eye on a music service as is retailer Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ).
Dell Computer (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) recently launched its own music player but used MusicMatch as the download service to support it. Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) will likely follow a similar model by both launching an HP-branded player and outsourcing the download service to someone else. Richard Branson's Virgin Entertainment Group says it has plans to launch a service of its own next year.
The actual size of the market opportunity for music downloads is growing. That much is clear. Market research firm Ipsos-Insight said last month that as of June of this year one out of every six Americans over the age of 12 who had downloaded music had paid a fee to do so. That translates into about 10 million people, and represented a twofold increase in six months.
The increase coincided, it seems, with the Recording Industry Association of America's aggressive prosecution activities against illegal file downloads.
One interesting stat that Ipsos discovered was that less than a fifth of those "downloaders" owned a digital music player, which may indicate there's a substantial opportunity to sell players in connection with download services.
Using the service to sell players is about the only reason to get into the download business in the first place. No one is yet making money selling music online, though--by one reckoning, that of Gene Munster, analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray--Napster can break even by selling between 1.3 million and 1.5 million songs a week and can realistically expect operating margins north of 15%. And though Apple has never disclosed it, its iPod player is thought to carry a margin much higher than its iMac computer.
But here's the long-term problem with music downloads. While the going rate to charge for a song appears to be 99 cents each, it's album sales that present a tricky pricing problem. Another Ipsos-Insight study just out today suggests that consumers find that paying between $10 and $15 to buy a full-length CD is acceptable. But when it comes to downloading full-length albums online, they expect to pay less.
The range of acceptable prices for a digitally-downloaded album, Ipsos found, ranged from $5 to $10. Right now downloading an album on Apple's iTunes Music Store costs $9.90, suggesting there's some price pressure ahead that will bring the breakeven point for these services under attack.
That will turn the music download business into a struggle for market share, and the chief weapon will be what it has always been: special promotional prices, giveaways and profit-sapping deals, which can't help but extend the time it takes these services to achieve profitability. That means a shakeout is coming. And by this time next year, its results, and the victors, will be apparent.
Consumers Expect Substantial Savings On Digitally Distributed Albums
Business News [12-05-2003] more news
With the number of fee-based online music services growing each month and legitimate online music distribution poised to take off, new findings from global research firm Ipsos-Insight reveal that consumer pricing expectations for digital music are significantly lower than for those sold in a physical CD format.
Significant Gap Exists in Digital vs. Physical CD Format Pricing Expectations
New findings from TEMPO, the company's quarterly study of digital music behaviors, reveal that American Internet users expect to pay a substantially lower price for a permanent full-length album download from a well-known, established artist than for a full-length physical CD. Regardless of downloading experience, American Internet users aged 12 and older stated an acceptable price range of $9.99 to $14.99 for a new, full-length physical CD release. In contrast, the acceptable price range for a digitally distributed, full-length album download is only between $5.00 and $9.99 - roughly $5.00 less than for a physical CD. These findings are based on recent interviews conducted with a representative U.S. sample of 488 Internet users aged 12 and over.
"A roughly $5.00 decrease in the range of acceptable prices for a new, full length album distributed digitally versus in a physical format represents a significant decrease in perceived value for this product based solely on format or distribution method," stated Matt Kleinschmit, a director of research at Ipsos-Insight, and the study's author.
The research also found that these price expectations for a physical CD were consistent regardless of downloading experience, suggesting that lower prices for digitally distributed music are expected even among consumers who have not downloaded music.
"This may be indicative of a broader re-examination of the perceived value of music by consumers, in that they may be willing to pay more for a durable product that is perceived as more permanent and archival in nature, rather than a digital format that may be viewed as more temporary."
Consumer Acquisition Maximized at Price-points Much Lower than Current Market Levels
Perhaps more importantly, the recent research also reveals that consumer acquisition for a new, full-length physical CD from a well-known, established artist will be maximized at an $11.99 price-point. At this price, the greatest proportion of consumers indicated they would buy the CD (25%). Conversely, maximum consumer acquisition for a permanent full-length album download from a well-known, established artist will be achieved at a $7.99 price-point (with only 11% acquisition). Both of these price-points are far lower than current market prices for new, full-length releases from well-known, established artists in each respective format.
"Two important points emerged from our study. First, the price points that will maximize consumer adoption for both physical CDs and album downloads are much lower than those currently found in the marketplace. This suggests that recently launched online music services and traditional music retailers, both of whom are actively struggling to lure buyers to boost lagging music sales, may benefit from a more conservative pricing strategy. Second, the relative lack in purchase intent for a digitally distributed, full-length album download even at a $7.99 price-point is also surprising, and may indicate that consumers view digital distribution as a purchase channel primarily for individual songs or tracks, and prefer to purchase a physical CDs when they want to own the entire album."
Interesting bit from APS site designer...
http://www.sitecrafting.com/portfolio_aps.php
Information
Fast Facts
* APS Inc. - digEplayer
* Location: Tacoma, WA
* Website: www.digeplayer.com
* Status: Live
* Launch Date: October 2003
Project Details
Background
APS, located in Tacoma, Washington, was founded in 1997 by Bill Boyer. The Company was formed to provide much needed specialty security and safety devices for commercial and private aircraft.
APS has successfully designed and marketed a variety of products for the airline industry. Recently, based on the expressed needs of airline executives, the Company designed an In-Flight Entertainment System (several patents pending) called a digEplayer, that has generated tremendous interest from major airline carriers.
In addition, APS has entered into proprietary contracts with many key technology partners including; 20th Century Fox, E-Digital, DivX, DMX and others.
The Solution
SiteCrafting was contacted by APS to deliver a Web application that would integrate digEplayer reservations with the reservation systems of their airline partners. The application needed to track players, hold customer and order information, offer secure credit card payment, generate coupon codes and printable coupons, and print passenger manifests.
With the pending launch of the digEplayer system on Alaska Airlines, SiteCrafting was placed under a very tight timeframe. Delivery date from concept to completion was 18 days.
In addition, SiteCrafting delivered a newly designed corporate web presence for APS, Inc.
Internal theft is toughest piracy issue facing record companies
By JACK KAPICA
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
The music recording industry may have a legitimate beef with copyright pirates, but there's one kind of pirate it doesn't like to mention very often: itself.The toughest piracy issue facing record companies actually happens before a track or an album is released, and that can happen only when industry insiders get their hands on a copy before the record company is ready to launch it.
In fact, industry theft was not mentioned much in polite circles until a small Canadian startup company called Musicrypt, based in Richmond Hill, Ont., developed a system that can cure the malady, often worse than the kind we normally mean when we talk about Napster or Kazaa.
With pop music, timing is everything. It takes large amounts of money to develop artists, record them, crank up the publicity mechanisms and get them on the radio. Record labels can spend half a million dollars just launching a new rock band -- which is why the Recording Industry Association of America is so eager to drag a welfare preteen and a doting grandfather into court for downloading MP3 versions of various songs.
But most of the damage is not done by kids and their grandparents, but by the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who have access to the music before even before a single track or entire CD is ready for the stores.
A band must go into a recording studio, and may make several recordings of a single song before it's ready for burning onto a CD. Before they're finished, the tracks may have to be mixed at another studio, and they have to be shipped to head office and back, as the producers and marketers approve the right mix and select the track they will promote as the "single." Many copies are made of the album.
Traditionally, the music has been recorded on tape, and shuttling tapes from place to place been a physical process. Along the line, secretaries, marketers or shipping clerks might make a private copy.
Several hundred unauthorized copies never really hurt the industry seriously; the business considered getting a prerelease copy as something of a perk. Until Napster. Then one unauthorized copy of an unreleased track or even an entire CD could end up on all over the world before being officially unreleased.
Then the industry can say goodbye to its investment in launching, marketing and promoting a pop act, because it's already old news to Kazaa downloaders.
The industry even has a name for it: It's called a "leak." Three notable leaks occurred last year: singles by Britney Spears (I'm a Slave 4U) and Lenny Kravitz (Dig In) and a whole CD by Radiohead called Hail to the Thief -- a deliciously ironic title, considering its role in this story.
To appreciate the problem you'd have to be in the business, as were two 25-year music-industry veterans, Peter Diemer (from EMI and MCA Records) and Clifford Hunt (a producer for various labels). Together they worked out a high-tech answer to a high-tech problem.
They figured the best way to fight digital piracy is to use the system against itself. All it needed was a secure system of transfer and that would cut down -- if not eliminate -- illegal copies floating around.
Others had tried various systems, most based on password-protected encryption, which failed because passwords can be passed around so easily. Their plan was to wrap the music up in a biometric encryption program. They settled on an algorithm developed by SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., called BioPassword, which uses usernames and passwords only as texts so it can analyze typing style. The system requires users to log in eight times before they're approved.
Radio stations can download a song the day it becomes available, and not before, and then only certain people can do it, explained Musicrypt president John Heaven the other day. The system was developed originally for the U.S. military, he said, but at 98-per-cent reliability it wasn't good enough for the Pentagon, but it would serve the music industry very well.
So far, he said, record company EMI Group has signed on to deliver its records with Musicrypt, and the system is being tested by BMG Music Service, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
But Musicrypt is still facing two major hurdles. It's hard to get the five major players to agree on a single system (Sony is working on its own algorithm, but radio stations demand one system for all). Next, it's hard to get the 700 radio stations in Canada and the 13,000 in the United States to recognize the severity of the problem -- "Radio stations have not yet learned how leaks can hurt them by undermining their audience," Mr. Heaven said.
But so far, Musicrypt has a good penetration here. The system is being used to send tracks and albums to about 200 key market stations, which are the ones used by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems of New York, which tracks off-the-air music to create music charts. The latest to benefit is Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm, whose debut CD was shipped across the country just last week by Musicrypt.
"We're like an electronic Brink's truck," Mr. Heaven said.
jkapica@globeandmail.ca
OT ST to demo Nomadik apps processor at CDMA Congress
By John Walko
EE Times
December 4, 2003 (12:48 p.m. EST)
LONDON - STMicroelectronics will demonstrate its Nomadik multimedia application processor - and development boards for it - at next week's CDMA Congress in Florida. The company said today (Thursday 4th December) that it has already sampled several potential customers with both the board and the STn8800 chip.
The processors, which use an innovative architecture based on smart accelerators, enable portable terminals such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants to play music, take pictures, record video, and host two-way visual communication in real time.
Nomadik application processors are all compliant with the open standards now being developed by the MIPI Alliance created in July 2003 to standardize hardware and software interfaces for application processors. ST is one of the four founding members of the MIPI Alliance, which was created in response to broad interest in the earlier OMAPI initiative launched by Texas Instruments and ST in December 2002.
The Nomadic processors include interfaces for CMOS image sensors, wireless connectivity, smart cards and other peripherals. The architecture is scalable, allowing the addition of new features in future implementations and also to be implemented in reduced feature-set versions.
The next version, scheduled for release in the first half of 2004, will include a new selection of digital audio and video CODECs plus enhanced security support.
The processors are based on the combination of an ARM926EJ core together with programmable 'smart accelerators' that operate independently and concurrently to handle the key video and audio coding functions, including pre/post-processing. This distributed processing approach simplifies software development because developers typically need to write code only for the CPU.
The architecture supports the popular operating systems for mobile devices, including Symbian OS, Microsoft WinCE and Linux
The programmable audio smart-accelerator implements the main industry-standard digital audio encoders and decoders including MP3, SBC, MPEG2-Layer II, AAC, and many others. The programmable video smart accelerator supports H.263 and MPEG-4 CODECs using an extremely optimized ST proprietary technology. The new H26L (H.264) standard will also be available in future Nomadik implementations.
Ford31, it 's probably those darned Actel FPGAs which can withstand cosmic rays in space but probably puke out when it gets a little hot or cold LOL...
New digital media group formalizes status
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
December 3, 2003 (4:16 p.m. ET)
PARIS — The Digital Media Project (DMP), a new international group organized by MPEG founder Leonardo Chiariglione to propose policies and technical actions necessary for a global digital media market to flourish, has officially registered as a non-profit organization in Geneva on Monday (Dec. 1).
Among the nine DMP founding organizations are British Telecom, MPEG LA, Telecom Italia and the University of Tokyo.
Born out of frustration over the digital media logjam that has held back introduction of commercially viable digital content, the DMP, as part of its genesis, published a Digital Media Manifesto two months ago.
While announcing the formal organization, DMP also issued its first call for submissions regarding traditional rights and usages usually associated with content usage such as fair use, first sale and privacy. The objective of such a call is to "map traditional rights and usages from the analog to the digital space," according to the group.
Chiariglione told EE Times, "The reason why so many have attempted to deal with content in the digital space and have failed is because they have not considered, or not considered with sufficient attention the problem of traditional rights and usages. Unless these traditional rights and usages are considered, it is meaningless to start working on technology."
The DMP plans to break the digital media stalemate by acting on two fronts — technology and policy. For the technology parts, calls for proposals scheduled to be issued soon include: "interoperable digital rights management platforms," "interoperable end-user devices," and "end-to-end conformance assessment."
Besides the mapping of rights traditionally enjoyed by users to the digital media, the group will be asking for policy-related submissions for "phasing out analog legacies applied to digital media," "deployment of broadband access," and "improving development of and access to standards."
Chiariglione said that the DMP plans to come up with recommended action on policy issues within 18 months and on technical issues within 24 months.
The Digital Media Project expects a number of other corporations in the computer and consumer electronics industries — such as Matsushita, Microsoft and Samsung — to join the Project soon. The companies are currently undergoing internal company procedures to become DMP members. Project leaders are recruiting new members as well.
Elected to be on a DMP board of directors include Marina Bosi, MPEG LA, Leonardo Chiariglione, Thomas Curran, the Enterprise of the Future, Jose Neri, Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores, Richard Nicol, British Telecom and Hiroshi Yasuda, University of Tokyo.
Specially designed PDA downloads music via mobile phone
No longer will anyone on the move have to depend on the radio to hear the latest hits. The newly developed DRM Music Player (DMP) is a PDA whose sole function is to download and play music easily via mobile phones. A GPRS cell phone is connected to the DMP by cable or by infrared, and the connection to the mobile service provider is established at the touch of a button. The DMP then displays the music titles on offer. It is possible to listen to extracts and save the music onto the player if desired.
Manufactured by Siemens Information and Communications Mobile, the DRM measures 52- by 98- by 21-mm and weighs just 80 g.
Music files can also be easily transferred from the computer to the DRM via a USB interface. The files are stored on a plug-in 64-MB SD memory card, which holds up to 60 songs at a time. The card can be used both in the DRM Music Player and in the PC.
Audio files are compressed using MPEG-4 aacPlus. This is the world's most powerful audio compression technology, claims Siemens, delivering high audio quality even for the narrowband transmission channels used in mobile communications. The highly efficient aacPlus is a crucial factor in the technical and economic feasibility of mobile music services and is already being successfully used to transmit music. Since spring 2003, aacPlus has been used as a High Efficiency AAC Profile component in the ISO/MPEG-4 standard.
To ensure that copyright is not infringed, it is not possible to create pirate copies, thanks to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology from Basle-based company SDC AG, which patented this DRM solution in the US and in Europe in 1996. SDC Java DRM technology is in use in both the Internet and, with the introduction of the O2 Music service, now in the mobile market. It safeguards the licensing rights of music companies and singers; prevents the titles made exclusively available by the music companies from being copied without protection from the customer's PC or DMP to other devices; and stops music files being transferred and played illegally on PCs.
The DRM Music Player, which works with all major makes of cell phone, is known as a "White Label Device." This means mobile providers can launch the Player as their own product and under their own brand. What's more, the DMP can be sold both with new cell phones and as an accessory to the installed base. At the same time, mobile operators can make effective use of the powerful GPRS technology and move contents, which will be available in an even more comprehensive form with the subsequent introduction of UMTS.
In-depth negotiations are underway with several mobile providers in the US, South America, and Europe.
For more information, visit www.siemens-mobile.com.
Click here to enlarge image
The DRM Music Player (DMP) is a PDA developed to download and play music easily via mobile phones.
e.DIGITAL LAUNCHES NEW CORPORATE WEBSITE
Annual General Meeting Webcast Available Live
Thursday, December 4th
(San Diego, CA – December 2, 2003) – e.Digital Corporation (OTC: EDIG) announced today the introduction of its redesigned corporate website available at www.edigital.com. The most notable changes to the site are improved navigation and user interface. The new site also highlights e.Digital’s MicroOS™ digital technology platforms and derivative products.
“The new website was designed to enhance e.Digital’s corporate presentation through new graphics, clear channels and simplified information,” noted Jo Ann Platt, e.Digital’s manager of corporate communications. “Improved navigation for e.Digital’s diverse core audiences, including prospective OEM customers and partners, clients, shareholders and interested investors, enables each audience to quickly and clearly identify and navigate the parts of the site relevant to their interests in e.Digital.”
“e.Digital is facilitating the convergence of digital entertainment and technology and our web site should reflect those advances,” added Fred Falk, e.Digital’s chief executive officer. “The new site emphasizes e.Digital’s recent achievements and underscores the flexibility of our MicroOS technology.”
e.Digital’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders will also be available through the new site. The event is being webcast by CCBN and can be accessed at the e.Digital News Page: www.edigital.com/news.php beginning at 2:00 p.m. PST on Thursday, December 4th.
An audio replay of the webcast will become available through the same link listed above approximately one hour after it concludes and will remain available online for approximately 30 days.
Disclaimer: e.Digital has contracted for Internet audio streaming services through a reputable outside service provider. Although the company believes this service provider to be both reliable and effective, the company can make no guarantee as to the sound quality, ease of access, or level of customer service experienced by each participant.
###
About e.Digital Corporation - e.Digital Corporation specializes in technology innovation and applications integration through engineering partnerships with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) designing, licensing, branding, and manufacturing digital audio, video and wireless products and technology platforms. The Company also sells its Odyssey 1000™ digital jukebox through selected e-tail and retail outlets. Applications for e.Digital's technology include delivery and management of open and secure digital media with a focus on music, voice, wireless and video players/recorders, automotive infotainment and telematics systems, portable digital music players and voice recorders; desktop, laptop, and handheld computers; PC peripherals; cellular phone peripherals; e-books; video games; digital cameras; and digital video recorders. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS™ file management system to custom software and hardware development, industrial design, and manufacturing services. For more information about e.digital and its products, please visit the company website at www.edigital.com.
CONTACT: e.Digital Corporation: Robert Putnam, (858) 679-1504, robert@edig.com
PCs, Digital Camera Sales Healthy Over Holiday Weekend
Monday December 1, 2:22 pm ET
By Donna Fuscaldo, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Shoppers weren't out for just the must-have toy or sweater during the Thanksgiving shopping weekend, sales of notebook computers, digital cameras and printers also fared well.
Based on preliminary data from a handful of computer makers and electronic retailers, sales of most things digital were in hot demand, leading some to believe that the strength will carry through to the entire holiday season that kicked off on "Black Friday" and culminates on Christmas Eve.
ADVERTISEMENT"What we've seen in the past is what happens this weekend is very indicative of how things will play out through the holiday cycle," said Bill DeLacy, vice president of consumer sales at Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News) .
The Palo Alto, Calif., computer hardware and software maker said it saw double digit, year-over-year sales growth of digital cameras, printers and computers.
In an interview on CNBC on Monday, Vyomesh Joshi, H-P's vice president of imaging and printing, said sales of digital cameras rose more than 10% while notebook sales increased more than 50%.
While H-P said it expected demand for notebook computers to be strong during the extended shopping weekend, thanks to the proliferation of wireless computing, DeLacy said strength in sales of desktop computers was a "pleasant surprise."
DeLacy attributed that strength to a replacement cycle by consumers, which have made due with their old computers for several years now. He noted that H-P is currently at or above plan in every product category in terms of sales expectations for the holiday season.
For a second year in a row, computer makers and retailers are reporting healthy year-over-year increases in initial sales or traffic at its stores or web sites for the extended holiday weekend. Some are predicting the strength will carry through to the holidays, something that failed to materialize last year.
Take Best Buy Co. for example. Spokeswoman Erin MacMillan said the electronics retailer is confident it will have a strong holiday season this year. Thanks in part to aggressive promotions, MacMillan said notebook computers, MP3 Players, digital cameras, digital camcorders and digital TV's sold at a healthy clip during the weekend. And although the results are preliminary, MacMillan said orders on bestbuy.com appear stronger than last year as were some store lines.
At Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - News) , spokeswoman Karen Burk said some of the hot electronics items included DVD players, digital cameras and desktop computers. She said consumers were lured by the values Wal-Mart had to offer and that as long as the discount retailer continues to focus on value, it should have a good holiday season.
"For now ... it appears holiday sales are off to a very strong start" said Bill Shope an analyst at JP Morgan, who in conjunction with the JP Morgan retailing team gathered data from a slew of electronics retailers across the country over the Thanksgiving weekend. He said overall traffic in consumer electronics stores were strong and sales appeared to be "fairly robust."
According to Shope, the must-have gadgets included notebook PCs, particularly systems that cost less than $1,000, photo printers and digital cameras. Shope noted that the trend bodes well for H-P and Dell Inc. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News) , with H-P benefiting the most because of its retail PC and printing exposure. Officials at Dell weren't available to comment.
But H-P and Dell aren't the only ones that should benefit from a strong holiday shopping season. Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - News) , which has transformed itself from a computer maker to a purveyor of consumer electronics, said early results show that digital cameras and digital TVs were among its hottest selling items. Gateway is still analyzing its overall traffic and sales data, said spokesman Bob Sherbin.
Recently, shares of H-P were trading up 0.7%, or 16 cents, to $21.90, while Dell's stock increased 20 cents, or 0.6% to $34.77, and Gateway's shares climbed 1.6%, or 7 cents, to $4.53.
Meanwhile, Best Buy's stock was recently off 2%, or $1.21, to $60.79, and Wal- Mart was off 1.2%, or 69 cents, to $54.95.
-By Donna Fuscaldo, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5253; donna.fuscaldo@dowjones.com
It's deja vu all over again../
Microsoft Aims for Software in Every Car
Sun Nov 30, 7:18 PM ET Add Technology - AP to My Yahoo!
REDMOND, Wash. - First Microsoft set out to put a computer in every home. Now the software giant hopes to put one in every vehicle, too.
"We'd like to have one of our operating systems in every car on Earth," said Dick Brass, vice-president of Microsoft's automotive business unit. "It's a lofty goal."
Cars with the Microsoft software will speak up when it's time for an oil change. They'll warn drivers about wrecks on the road ahead and scout alternative routes. They'll pay freeway tolls automatically. The software running their brakes will upgrade itself wirelessly.
The Microsoft platform already is in 23 different car models, including the BMW 7 series, Citroen, Daimler, Fiat, Volvo, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota.
Brass made his remarks last week at a technology, tolls and transportation conference held at Microsoft and sponsored by the Discovery Institute's Cascadia Project.
Globally, there are 650 million cars, and 50 million new vehicles are produced every year, Brass said — comparable to the market for desktop computers.
Microprocessors already control major vehicle functions. And for years, Microsoft has been making inroads in automotive telematics, a combination of computers and telecommunications.
Brass said drivers spend millions of hours commuting and are distracted by myriad gadgets, including hand-held viewers that offer traffic reports from the state Department of Transportation.
Microsoft's "TBox," which he said will be available in 12 to 36 months, can connect them all and make them hands-free.
"The idea is to make it easy to bring phones and laptops into the car ... and connect to networks around it," Brass said.
The device has a processor, memory and a hard drive with no moving parts, said Peter Wengert, marketing manager for Microsoft's automotive unit.
At the conference, Brass showed on-the-street interviews asking what gadgets future cars should carry.
"I don't want Ford making PDAs, and I don't want Microsoft making cars," one man said.
But bringing the two together seems inevitable.
Brass said drivers could use the system to create 21st century vanpools and help reduce congestion.
"It's possible to imagine setting a system in place with 5,000 to 10,000 vans and have a dramatic reduction in traffic," he said. "With GPS and TBox, we have the tools we would need to put this all together."
Doug Klunder, director of the Privacy Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), asked Brass how Microsoft plans to protect individual information.
"We really, really, really understand the need for security and privacy," Brass said, suggesting that encrypting and not storing the information are two ways to address some concerns.
___
On the Net:
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/
Discovery Institute: http://www.discovery.org/cascadia/about.html
Hitachi Microdrive packs in a world
ALOKANANDA GHOSH
small wonders
Calcutta, Nov. 30: Small is big. You can now store a full-length DVD movie or 75 hours of high-quality digital music into a hard disk that is the size of a matchbox and weighs around 16 grams or just over half an ounce.
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), the company that took over IBM’s data storage business in December last year, has squeezed a capacity of four gigabytes (GB) in a one-inch Microdrive, making it the world’s smallest hard disk. Hitachi has 70 per cent stake in Hitachi Global Storage.
“The new drive uses miniaturised components, including a new read-write head that is almost the size of a grain of table salt. The density of the hard disk has been increased to accommodate 60 billion bits of data per square inch,” company officials said.
The new product will benefit manufacturers of portable devices, handheld and laptop computers, digital still and video cameras and MP3 players and other products that are data-intensive.
It is expected to broaden the variety and complexity of applications that can be run on handheld and other consumer electronic devices.
Consumer product manufacturers who are evaluating the product include Blaupunkt, Kodak, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax Corporation, Sigma and Sony. Many of these companies already support Hitachi’s present range of Microdrive.
Hitachi offers the Microdrive with capabilities ranging from 340MB to one GB.
Hitachi has used the IBM patented ‘Pixie Dust’ media technology, which involves taking a three-atom-thick layer of ruthenium, a metal similar to platinum, and sandwiching it between three magnetic layers.
Creative plans to clone its own products
John Lui
CNETAsia
November 21, 2003, 10:05 GMT
Tell us your opinion
Faced with the seemingly impossible task of beating China's illegal clone workshops, Creative Technologies is planning to join them
Singapore-based electronics firm Creative Technologies will look into making cheaper copies of its own products to fight the flood of clones coming out of workshops in China, said Sim Wong Hoo, the firm's chairman and chief executive.
Speaking at a forum during the recent Global Entrepolis@Singapore conference, Sim said that it was difficult to enforce design copyright in China, given the speed at which clone workshops appear.
The small factories are producing devices similar to Creative's Nomad Muvo USB-keychain MP3 player, he said. One workshop may shut down when enforcement action is taken, but others spring up to take its place, he said.
"We just came back from Shanghai, and there are 40 companies selling these," he said, holding up a Muvo. "You can't sue all of them. How can we fight them?" he asked.
One company will generate the molds for making the devices, then sell the resulting molded components to numerous smaller workshops, which in turn employ manual labor to assemble the final products, he said.
"So what we intend to do going forward is to actually clone ourselves. We can't beat them, so we'll join them. We will build this device in China and use the same manufacturing skills and do it in a big way," he said.
"Buyers may not get the glossy finish. We'll take away some features and fight them in the market at their prices," he said.
The cheaper versions may be sold under Creative's own brand name or under another name, he said.
Creative launched the Nomad Muvo in July last year and the firm's US patent for a "memory module with audio playback mode" was published in September 2003 by the US Patent & Trademark Office.
Creative makes a host of PC-based multimedia products and home entertainment electronics. Its products are aimed at the middle and higher end of the market. For the quarter ending 31 December 2002, Creative reported a net income of $18.9m (£12m), down from US$26.3m in 2001. Sales for the quarter also fell to US$230.9m from US$249.5m the year before.
In January, increasing costs and dwindling trading volumes prompted Creative Technology to quit the Nasdaq stock exchange.
While software piracy is known to be rife in China, hardware counterfeiting is also common. Firms such as Hewlett-Packard have worked with authorities to crack rings making fake copies of its products. Last year, the US-based IT giant came down on a factory making counterfeit Compaq servers.
To avoid running afoul of international agreements, China authorities are keen to develop an electronics industry that does not rely on foreign patents. To this end, they are supporting efforts to create China's own third-generation (3G) cellular data standard as well as its own movie optical disc format, the enhanced video disc (EVD).
A must read..The Guts of a New Machine
Published: November 30, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/30IPOD.html?pagewanted=5&ei=5062&en=6cc3b984324f9...
(Page 5 of 6)
PortalPlayer was founded a little more than four years ago with an eye toward creating basic designs for digital computer peripherals, music players in particular. Specifically, the company wanted to build an architecture around tiny hard disks. Most early MP3 players did not use hard disks because they were physically too large. Rather, they used another type of storage technology (referred to as a ''flash'' chip) that took up little space but held less data -- that is, fewer songs. PortalPlayer's setup includes both a hard disk and a smaller memory chip, which is actually the thing that's active when you're listening to music; songs are cleverly parceled into this from the hard disk in small groups, a scheme that keeps the energy-hog hard disk from wearing down the battery. More recently, PortalPlayer's work has formed the guts of new players released by Samsung and Philips. A trade journal called Electronics Design Chain described PortalPlayer as having developed a ''base platform'' that Apple at least used as a starting point and indicated that PortalPlayer picked other members of the iPod ''design chain'' and helped manage the process.
Advertisement
Interestingly, the legal section in the first version of the iPod used to include another copyright notice on behalf of a company called Pixo, which is reported to have created the original operating system for the iPod. Pixo has since been bought by Sun Microsystems, and the credit has disappeared from both newer iPods and even more recent software upgrades for the original model.
Apple won't comment on any of this, and the nondisclosure agreements it has in place with its suppliers and collaborators are described as unusually restrictive. Presumably this is because the company prefers the image of a product that sprang forth whole from the corporate godhead -- which was certainly the impression the iPod created when it seemed to appear out of nowhere two years ago. But the point here is not to undercut Apple's role: the iPod came together in somewhere between six and nine months, from concept to market, and its coherence as a product given the time frame and the number of variables is astonishing. Jobs and company are still correct when they point to that coherence as key to the iPod's appeal; and the reality of technical innovation today is that assembling the right specialists is critical to speed, and speed is critical to success.
Still, in the world of technology products, guts have traditionally mattered quite a bit; the PC boom viewed from one angle was nothing but an endless series of announcements about bits and megahertz and RAM. That 1.8-inch hard disk, and the amount of data storage it offered in such a small space, isn't the only key to the iPod, but it's a big deal. Apple apparently cornered the market for the Toshiba disks for a while. But now there is, inevitably, an alternative. Hitachi now makes a disk that size, and it has at least one major buyer: Dell.
The System
y visit to Cupertino happened to coincide with the publication of a pessimistic installment of The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column pointing out that Apple's famous online music store generates little profit. The more interesting point, noted in the back half of the column, is that Apple doesn't expect it to generate much profit -- it's a ''Trojan horse'' whose real function is to help sell more iPods. Given that the store was widely seen as a pivotal moment in the tortuous process of creating a legitimate digital music source that at least some paying consumers are willing to use, this is an amazing notion: Apple, in a sense, was willing to try and reinvent the entire music business in order to move iPods.
The column also noted that some on Wall Street were waiting to see what would happen to the iPod once Dell came out with its combination of music store and music player. (The Dell DJ is slightly bigger than the iPod but claims a longer battery life, which the company says is what its consumer research indicated people wanted; it costs $250 for a 15-gigabyte version, $300 for 20 gigabytes, or nearly 5,000 songs.) Napster's name has been bought by another company that has launched a pay service with a hardware partner, Samsung. But it was Dell that one investor quoted in the Journal article held out as the rival with the greatest chance of success: ''No one markets as well as Dell does.'' This was causing some eye-rolling in Cupertino; Dell is not a marketer at all. Dell has no aura; there is no Cult of Dell. Dell is a merchandiser, a shiller of gigs-per-dollar. A follower. Dell had not released its product when I met Jobs, but he still dismissed it as ''not any good.''