Having failed to score by the quality of its service alone, RealNetworks is now trying another ploy:
Pretending to care about indies.
The handful of corporate music services all two things in common:
They’re trying to sell exactly the same grossly over-priced ‘product’ from the same Big Four record label cartel wholesalers to exactly the same tiny user bases; and,
They don’t even register in the real world of online music where the p2p networks and independent download and musician sites serve literally billions of people, with thousands of new users logging on every day.
(more…)

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Digital Music News reported good news, bad news for Napster. While Napster surpassed 500,000 subscribers, its financial losses continued with rumors of layoffs and a sale.

From the article:
“Napster has recently reported a subscriber base of 500,000, an announcement that may have been timed to counter reports of an imminent downsizing. The increase represents a 100 percent jump over subscriber totals at the same point last year. “Doubling our subscribers over the last twelve months demonstrates the mass market potential of our music subscription model and the powerful appeal of Napster to music fans who want it all,” said Chris Gorog, chairman and CEO of Napster. The company also pointed to a total of 50,000 subscribers from its university programs.”

“The development follows reports of impending layoffs, and a possible fire sale or liquidation ahead. Sources to Digital Music News first made the claims over the weekend. Those reports have been denied by Napster, though continued quarterly losses and Apple’s dominance in the paid download market remain serious concerns. For the fiscal second quarter – reported in November – Napster posted net losses of $13.6 million. Previously, losses hit a record $19.9 million, though revenues have continued to climb in 2005. Meanwhile, Gorog pointed to a healthy “$100 million on our balance sheet” in comments Wednesday, though a classic cash burn scenario could be underway. The company will present its most recent quarterly results on February 8th.”
Via www.p2p-weblog.com

Well it only bloody worked!! My free Xbox came today and it was brand new, sealed in its box and works perfectly! Many were sceptical about this kind of thing but i had a good feeling so i went for it and it paid off! I must be honest tho, it wasn’t totally free, i did have to deposit £10 and play one game of bingo to complete my offer but that only cost me £1 and i withdrew the other £9 after the offer had completed. So in actuality it has cost me £1 for a brand new Xbox!

If you want my advice, sign up for the Blue Square Poker offer as you’ll get 2 referals when you complete it by depositing £10 and playing with it. Yes i know it’s £10 but whichever of the products you decide to get it’ll be worth it. Oh and be quick about it as that offer ends today
Via DigitaLife.us

[China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA chosen by the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry as the national 3G standard.]

“The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced in Beijing Friday that it has set home-grown TD-SCDMA as national technology standard for the telecommunication industry.”

Via digitalife.us

This is a bizarre story. P2P file sharing users who intentionally downloaded P2P software and allegedly and intentionally downloaded copyright music are now blaming the software developer.

Students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst were sued by RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America ), which demanded $3,750 to settle the copyright infringment case. 31 of the students now demand that P2P developer i2hub, owned 22 year old Wayne Chang, pay those fees.

From the Wall Street Journal article: “The letter on behalf of the students said i2hub’s promotional events on campus and advertisements on university buses implied a connection between i2hub and the university, and gave the service legitimacy. Ms. Kent also argued that i2hub coaxed students to share files illegally by requiring users to share one gigabyte of files in order to use the service.”

“Karen Frank, an intellectual-property attorney in San Francisco, said the students’ case depends on whether they can prove that i2hub misled them and that they weren’t aware that their use of the service was illegal. “It sounds like a pretty steep hill for the students to climb,” she said. “But it’s clever.”"
Via www.p2p-weblog.com

Click here for a FREE spyware scan and find out!

Finnish anti-virus specialist F-Secure Corp. has pushed out patches for multiple code execution vulnerabilities in its security software suite, prompting a new round of warnings that flaws in security products present a lucrative target for malicious hackers.

The updates from F-Secure, rated “highly critical” because the vulnerabilities put users at risk of security bypass and system access attacks, come just weeks after rival Symantec Corp. publicly acknowledged that a high-risk buffer overflow in its AntiVirus Library could allow the execution of malicious code.

For advice on how to secure your network and applications, as well as the latest security news, visit Ziff Davis Internet’s Security IT Hub.

Even more worrisome, the private researcher who discovered and reported the F-Secure vulnerabilities said several unnamed anti-virus vendors are also shipping products with the same security flaw.

“[F-Secure is] the first to actually publish a real advisory,” said Thierry Zoller, a penetration tester based in Luxembourg. He said some companies fixed the bugs silently or put a small notice in a change log, and hinted strongly that there are many anti-virus engines still vulnerable.
Click here for a FREE spyware scan and find out!

(more…)

IFPI, the international music industry association issued its report for the state of digital music in 2005.

Key findings:
* There are 2 million songs online, double from last year
* Mobile music sales are over $400 million
* Total digital music sales were $1.1 billion, up from $380 million in 2004
* Total digital downloads were 420 million singles, 20 times the amount two years ago. It is unkonwn why they didn’t compare it to the previous year.
* Digital music is 6% of record company sales.
* There are 335 legal download sites, up from 50 two years ago.
* Apple iTunes is now in 21 countries

On the P2P front:
* iMesh, the first authorized file sharing service, was launched
* Jupiter research says that 6% of internet users regularly download legally in the UK and Germany, compared to 5% who share files.
* Legal downloaders typically are first-time downloaders and are not converted file sharers. Only one in five legal music downloaders is also a file-swapper
* 50% of users who say they stop file sharing do so to avoid legal action. However that has had little effect as overall P2P use increases.
Via www.p2p-weblog.com

If you’re in Switzerland, did you know the Big Four record label cartels IFPI had a “grace period” for p2p file sharers?
No?
Well, it did but now it’s been terminated, says Heise Online, going on:
“According to media reports, the Swiss International Federation of Producers of Phonograms and Videograms (IFPI) is now filing suit to stop the illegal propagation of music files. The industry is thus making good on its promise of March 2004, which was repeated in November of 2005 in the “Game over” campaign, to take legal action.”

Apparently, the Big Four, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music, “wanted to use its ‘Game Over’ campaign as a way to offer all private ‘pirates’ a way to settle the matter out of court. The people affected would have had to agree to delete all illegal music files and pay costs and damages ranging from 3000-9000 Swiss francs (5800 euros).
(more…)

In America, the Big Four music cartel now routinely blackmails colleges and universities into peddling product via the likes of Napster and iTunes, with school staff working as unpaid PR and marketing teams.

Cartel members EMI, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG wield the threat of lawsuits for non-compliance, and now Britain’s famous the University of Oxford has apparently joined the club. It’s promoting iTunes on campus and one of its most prestigious colleges, Christ Church, admits it’s to act as a Big Four anti-p2p cop.

In the background the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), owned by the Big Four, is “monitoring” the situation.
More than 75 students were, “detected illegally downloading copyright material in the past two years,” says the The Oxford Student, going on:

“Alan Gay, deputy director of Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS), told The Oxford Student media corporations have already notified the university on 16 occasions this academic year that students have been illegally sharing files such as MP3s and videos. Sixty were detected in the previous year.

“These ‘cease and desist’ requests are legal notices designed to force the university to stop its members using file sharing software to exchange copyright material. Mr Gay said: ‘You get the impression that there’s a big searchlight going round, and sometimes it focuses on us, and sometimes we go for a while without anything happening’.”
(more…)

The Pirate Bay is on eBay.
No kidding ; p
EXCLUSIVE: Burn money on swedish piracy morons, aka TPB
That’s the header on an eBay auction that’s just gone up, and which as we write this, is at US $2,500.00 with six days, 12 hours, to go, ending on January 27 at 20:24:54 PST.
It goes on:
The Pirate Bay is the worlds largest bittorrent tracker. It also has one of the world’s most obnoxious, retarded yet pleasant crews behind it. You might know about us for two reasons: you’ve either used our tracker for getting some of those files you wanted or you have read the legal threats we’ve received—and our replies hopefully.
Since we have a lot of bandwidth usage and low salaries for working on our site, we’ve decided to go prostitutes on you and sell ourselves for money.

Yes, you heard us. We’re selling out ourselves.
Well, at least renting. You can now rent the crew for a whole evening of hilarious retarded fun. We’re poor and you’re not. We want your money and you want our company.

We don’t do sex though, unless you’re a really hot chick. But we’re kinda sure that the hot chicks don’t have to buy our company. It’s usually the other way around.
(more…)

Until recently, Digital Rights [read Restriction] Management (DRM) was a phrase well-known on the Net, but unfamiliar to most people without online accounts.
But now, thanks largely to Sony BMG and the spyware it tried to weasel onto customers’ computers through music CDs they’d innocently bought, DRM is fast becoming a term familiar to everyone.
“I’ve been trying to come up with a list of what ought to be the principles of ‘Responsible DRM’,” says Wendy Grossman.
You can read more on this here.

A senior Big Four record label cartel spokesman has finally admitted the cartel has been lying about the success of its bizarre sue ‘em all marketing and sales campaign.
The likes of Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol and Cary ‘Scary’ Sherman, the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) two master truth adjustment specialists, claim efforts to sue customers into buying product are succeeding and that significant numbers of file sharers are deserting the p2p networks in favour of the grossly over-priced corporate sites and their lossy, low fidelity downloans and downloads.
(more…)

…protect your PC…

Apple has virtually admitted a component in its latest iTunes upgrade was a form of spyware.
With the Sony BMG rootkit DRM debacle still drawing major media play, until yesterday, Apple’s iTunes 6.0.2 had an element called the MiniStore which author and Apple aficionado Kirk McElhearn called “invasive”.
It tracked songs being played and made suggestions about items uses might buy.
How did it know what to suggest? “Unbeknownst to users … the software was reporting their clicks to Apple and Omniture, a company that analyzes customer data,” says the Los Angeles Times, going on:
“Apple shrugged off the complaints at first, saying users could turn off the MiniStore if they didn’t like it. Besides, Apple said, it didn’t store any of the information it received.”
Now, however, a “revised” iTunes, “warns users about data being collected and lets them switch off the recommendation system,” says the BBC.
The loud public outcry forced to Apple rapidly pulling the offending sofware. Would it have done that left to its own resources?
You know the answer. But at least Apple was smart enough to take fast action to minimize the damage – unlike Sony BMG which wriggled and writhed and consequently, is still taking hits.

…protect your PC…

The Free Software Foundation’s discussion draft of the General Public License version 3 public is now online and takes a, “highly aggressive” stance against digital restrictions management (DRM) software, promises co-author and FSF general counsel Eben Moglen.

CNET News has Moglen saying the license includes anti-DRM provisions, “that could put it in conflict with movie studios and even digital video recorder maker TiVo”.

DRM is, “fundamentally incompatible” with the principles of the Free Software Foundation, Moglen and Free Software Foundation founder and GPL3 co-author Richard Stallman are quoted as saying.
“The planned anti-DRM changes to the GPL are significant because the entertainment industry regularly uses Linux-powered computers in the production process, notably for special effects and animation,” says the story. “In general, movie studios support DRM technology to prevent piracy.
(more…)

A Web-based e-mail client, tentatively called Office Live Mail, could be a key piece of Microsoft’s forthcoming Office Live software-as-a-service offering, according to a published report.
A posting on the LiveSide blog — an independent site run by a number of Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, among others, that is dedicated to tracking Microsoft’s Live efforts — describes the alleged features of Office Live Mail.

“Office Live Mail provides users with the ability to read and receive emails from any Internet-connected computer in the world. Ideal for those on the move, Office Live Mail can be accessed from either a web browser or Outlook 2000/2003. Here are some things to expect upon the release of the beta,” according to the LiveSide description.

Office Live Mail will be offered in two flavors, the posting on LiveSide said. Free accounts will provide users with 250 MB of storage, while paid, subscriber accounts will offer 2 GB of storage. Office Live mail will provide Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003 access via HTTP as a “trial service,” the report said, and will allow users to read messages from their MSN Plus, MSN Premium and other POP accounts.

The new service also will allow users to assign up to 100 “favorite contact” or “Quickname” designations to e-mail buddies, the LiveSide said.
(more…)

As expected, Google today launched a new video download service during a keynote here by co-founder and President Larry Page at the International Consumer Electronics Show.
The service, called Google VideoStore, allows consumers to buy and download video content from providers such as CBS Broadcasting and the National Basketball Association (NBA) from its Web site.

The service will act as a marketplace and lets the content providers decide in what capacity and for how much they want to sell their content, Page said. “Content producers are in charge, and they can decide if they want the videos for rental, download or other things,” he said.
Other Google Announcements

Google also unveiled the Google Video Player for playing the videos, as well as other content deals with Independent Television News, The Charlie Rose Show, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Classic Media, HDNet, and PorchLight Entertainment.

The Google Video service has been around for about a year, but only as a way to search television programming and upload video content onto the Internet, Page said.

Internet-centric companies such as Google, Yahoo, Apple Computer, and Microsoft are providing the means for consumers to download and purchase television video, as well as movies, to be played on PCs and handheld devices. An array of the latest in portable video devices were on display at CES this week.

Page also introduced a new package of free software, called Google Pack, designed to provide users with a basic set of applications for using the Internet on a computer.

Google Pack allows users to download Mozilla Firefox, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar, Picasa, Google Earth, and Adobe Reader 7.

In addition to the new Google VideoStore and Video Player, Page demonstrated and introduced other Google inventions during his keynote. One was a prototype for a Google Earth automobile dashboard co-developed by Google with Volkswagen AG, and another was a new version of Google Local for mobile devices, including Research in Motion Inc.’s Blackberry devices.
by Elizabeth Montalbano

The latest P2P buzz is its integration with your friendly browser. A number of efforts are underway for Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers that integrate Bit Torrent downloads. Here are two projects.

MozTorrent: “The MozTorrent plugin will be a small and simple add-on for Mozilla Firefox (and later the Mozilla Suite as well) to seamlessly handle BitTorrent downloads. The ultimate goal is to make it as easy to download torrents as downloading from the web in Mozilla. MozTorrent will be configured through the preferences window and downloads will be shown and controlled through the download manager.”

AllPeers: AllPeers is a free extension which combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent to transform your favorite browser into a media sharing powerhouse. Regain control! You decide which media files you want to share with whom and to maximise your privacy, communications are encrypted. Forget about complicated setup or obscure user interfaces. If you know how to use Firefox you know how to use AllPeers.”