Into Tech

CNN Alerts

How do I stop them?
John Kirkham

JS: You can’t, but they should be sorted into your spam folder. If not, create a rule to do this. These emails are not really from CNN, though they are a good imitation. Click a link in the latest version, My Custom Alert, and it takes you to a Russian website, where you are asked to download a malware version of Adobe’s Flash player (adobe_flash.exe). This installs a Trojan downloader which runs a service called CbEvtSvc and connects to a remote host. Your anti-malware software should remove this. If not, try running SuperAntiSpyware.

Photos to share

I have used Nikon Fotoshare to send photos by email. It was very quick and easy. Nikon is now offering My Picturetown. This is very slow to upload, and I cannot find out how to email the photos.
Robin Hood

JS: Fotoshare is an online photo album. Nikon plans to close it on September 10 and will then delete all the photos people have uploaded. MyPictureTown.com is similar but has drag-and-drop uploading and is claimed to be easier to use. There are a great many alternatives, including Photobucket (owned by MySpace), WebShots (American Greetings), Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google) and Windows Live Photo Gallery (Microsoft). SmugMug is good but not free.

They all have their fans, many of whom use more than one, so now there is framechannel.com to manage multiple services. There are even more sites that cater for people who want to upload one or two images, such as Imagevenue.com. You can use them without opening an account or signing in. When you upload a photo, these sites usually provide several links to cater for web pages and different types of message board.

Unfortunately, many of these sites make their money by displaying popup adverts, and some may even try to install malware. The best rule is to copy the “direct link” and email that instead of the photo. Avoid any links that contain the letters php.

What’s Kontiki?

I have installed the BBC iPlayer, but every time I activate it, a program called Kontiki pops up.
Denis

JS: When you download TV programmes using iPlayer - as distinct from watching streamed versions online - they are downloaded using Kontiki. This is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, which is also used by similar services such as Sky by Broadband and Channel 4’s 4oD. Kontiki seems to load and use your bandwidth, even if you are not using iPlayer: use the Windows Task Manager to see if Kservice is running.

The BBC has a page that explains how to stop it running on startup and when you are not using iPlayer. You can remove it altogether using the kclean.exe program. However, if you do, any Kontiki-based programs such as iPlayer will stop working.

Printer disposal

I have a not-that-old HP OfficeJet 6110 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier which I’ve recently replaced. It works, but is a little streaky on some printing. I’ve been trying to get rid of it in an ecologically sound way, but to no avail.
Chris Rowbury

JS: You could offer it on eBay, noting the fault and offering it as for “spares or repair” and probably “collect only”. Otherwise, try Freecycle.

Backchat

· Paul Niemiec wanted a cheap way to digitise cassette tapes, and I suggested using the open-source Audacity software. John Blackburn suggests the shareware CD Wave instead: “This software is simpler than Audacity and has the very useful (and, indeed, important) feature of being able to split the music into tracks, either automatically or with manual assistance. CD Wave will save the resulting tracks as WAV, MP3, OGG or FLAC files. WAV is for making audio CDs and MP3 is for the car. FLAC files are lossless, as you say, and are about half the size of WAV files.”

We never quite understood why various universities were cooperating with RIAA demands that it send “pre-litigation” letters to students accused of file sharing. These non-binding letters are often used to pressure students into paying fines, even if they’re based on weak (at best) evidence of file sharing. It certainly wasn’t in any university’s best interests to basically help out a private organization in a business model dispute with its students. Yet, some university officials, falsely convinced by the RIAA that this was more than a business model dispute, decided to help out. And the response? The RIAA has increased the flood of notices, and then convinced Congress to move forward on legislation that would legally obligate universities to act as the RIAA’s copyright cops.

It appears that more and more universities are realizing that they got shafted. The EFF points out that there’s widespread anger among university officials who felt they were trying to find a middle ground by cooperating, but instead find themselves swamped with more and more notifications and this new legislation that increases their legal liability over a business model dispute. And, the worst part? Now that they’re pushing back in court, the RIAA points out that dealing with these notices before wasn’t a burden, so universities aren’t being truthful that they’re now a burden. How’s that for a thank you for helping out originally?

If it hasn’t become clear by now, the RIAA doesn’t view universities as partners in all of this — and any university that thinks of the RIAA as a partner is about to get steamrolled by the RIAA legal machine. It’s time that more universities stood up not just for their own rights, but the rights of their students as well not to be targeted by questionable “pre-litigation” threat letters without more significant evidence. And, it wouldn’t help for the RIAA to finally recognize that this entire battle has done nothing to deal with the real issue: its own inability to recognize that its business model needs to change.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

You often hear it repeated that “ignorance is no defense” to breaking the law, but it may actually be working in one copyright infringement lawsuit. Ray Beckerman has the details on a case where the RIAA is suing a teenager who claimed “innocent infringement” as a way to get the damages lowered from the $750 to $150,000 per file that the RIAA always pushes for. So, while the RIAA pointed out that there was a copyright notice on every CD, the court sided with the girl who pointed out that there was no such copyright notice on Kazaa or the songs she downloaded. In fact, she wasn’t even aware that she was “downloading” — assuming that Kazaa worked more like a radio. Of course, before others make the same argument, it does pay to recognize that the facts in this case are likely to be unique to this case, and probably don’t apply in many other cases. The real problem still remains the ridiculous disconnect between the amount of “damages” allowed under the law and the actual “harm” (if any) caused by file sharing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We’ve written about the request from the MPAA to the FCC to grant a waiver that would allow the MPAA to use “selectable output control” (SOC) in order to block DVRs from recording their movies. As we noted, the movie studios basically would like to add in another movie release window, letting movies appear on television before they’re released on DVD. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so today. However, they claim that it’s impossible for them to do so unless they get to implement DRM via SOC to stop people from recording these movies. The MPAA’s own defense of this plan was exceptionally weak, but now some others are actually coming forward to defend the MPAA’s position.

Ryan Radia, over at the Tech Liberation Front, has a long and thoughtful article where he tries to paint the MPAA’s position as being pro-market and anti-regulation: “Consumers are willing to pay to watch new movies at home, and content producers are willing to transmit them, but government is standing in the way.” It’s a neat twist, but it’s 100% wrong. The government is not standing in the way. If consumers are willing to pay, the movie industry can absolutely offer up the movies and let them pay.

Radia’s claim is based on the entirely false premise that the MPAA needs this special kind of gov’t approved DRM in order to release its movies. Radia plays a neat trick in spinning this the other way, claiming: “But content owners aren’t required to ensure that all movies can be easily timeshifted and archived.” Yes, indeed, nor are movie studies required to use DRM.

There is absolutely nothing stopping the movie industry from making use of this “new business model” other than its own unsubstantiated fear of non-DRM’d content. It’s not a government regulation. It’s not some weird FCC rule. It’s the MPAA itself.

Mark Cuban gets it right when he points out what a huge mistake the MPAA is making in even bringing this issue up in the first place:

For all the money the RIAA wasted on trying to stop digital piracy, about all they accomplished was explaining to everyone exactly where and how to steal music. Please do not make the same mistake. Right now its a hassle to unitlize the analog hole to copy movies. Most people have no idea how to do it, particularly for HD delivered movies. Please do not go through a big process of teaching people exactly what the analog hole is in hopes of getting companies to prevent its use. All you are going to do is turn on the lightbulb for many who would otherwise not have a clue.

The theatrical exhibition industry just experienced a phenomenal several weeks with The Dark Knight setting record after record. People by the 10s of millions went to the theater, many multiple time to enjoy the unique experience of going to a movie. Could you please, please, please use the money you are going to spend fighting the unfightable and instead spend it on promoting the fun of going to the movies ? More people going to the movies is more people getting excited about movies. More people getting excited about movies means more people watching movies on TV, which is good for revenues, and more people buying DVDs or legal downloads of the movies. Again, good for revenues.

Piracy is not, and has never been, a real threat to the movie industry. The movie industry is doing incredibly well by releasing good movies that people want to see. Even if they’re available for unauthorized download, movie watching is a social experience, and the better the industry makes that social experience, the better it will do. Wasting time demanding unnecessary DRM isn’t necessary. It’s not blocking any business model. Wasting money fighting for this “analog hole” to be patched won’t stop piracy at all. If anything, it will attract more attention to that analog hole, while pissing off more viewers and making it that much harder to get movie fans to want to pay money to see movies. Even if the MPAA prevails, it won’t put a dent into unauthorized file sharing. People will figure out how to get around the SOC protection, and once a single copy is out there, it’s everywhere. Focusing on stopping file sharing is a lose-lose proposition.

So, please, movie industry, stop pretending you need DRM for your business models. You don’t. You never have. And the more you pretend you do, the more trouble you’re causing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The idea of the “Top 40″ music hit seems like a relic of a different age, and the Billboard best sellers list hasn’t done much to really update with the times. However, reader Will North writes in to point us to a rather interesting experiment being done by the BBC and IBM to basically reinvent the concept of the music chart with a beta test of a new offering called Sound Index.

Rather than just checking on sales at certain shops which (as Will notes in his submission) can be easily gamed, Sound Index tries to look at a variety of online sources to find out what music people are really interested in:

“Crawls some of the biggest music sites on the Internet - Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube - to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web. The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are.”

In other words, they’re reinventing the music charts, but making it much more accurate and relevant. But it doesn’t stop there, either. Rather than assuming there’s just one single chart to rule them all, the system lets you create custom lists for a better understanding of more niche-targeted music. So, say, if you wanted to know who’s hot on YouTube and Last.fm in the indie and punk worlds among US listeners between the ages of 20 and 30, you can create just that list. Or, as per Will’s suggestion, you could find out what female Emo fans between the age of 15 and 20 are talking about on Bebo — and get that list.

It does seem a little limited right now, but it’s definitely a step up from the lists you normally see these days, and shows that niche appeal can actually be worth something these days. That’s a big deal, because the believers in old time copyright insist that with more file sharing and such, only “mass market” music will survive. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening, as it’s easier than ever (often by leveraging such tools) for more targeted niche music to create a modest success by being tremendously successful within its own niche. Tools like Sound Index should make it easier to get even more recognition of success in those niches.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Slashdot points us to the news that a new study, by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which represents music rights holders, and Big Champagne, a company that measures file sharing activity claims that the music industry should embrace piracy rather than continuing to fight it. Specifically, it points to the success of Radiohead’s “name your own price” promotion, and the fact that the music was still widely available on BitTorrent, even though you could download it for free from Radiohead’s own site. This, the study’s authors, suggest, show that stopping piracy has little correlation to “success.” That’s not a surprising finding as plenty of previous reports have shown the same thing. In fact, albums that are considered a success tend to have a lot more unauthorized file sharing than those that are not. It’s not hard to understand why, either: popularity is popularity.

Slashdot highlights the fact that this is a study done by the music industry itself, suggesting that maybe the industry is open to changing its strategy. But, that’s not quite accurate. The “music industry” is made up of made different parts, with very different motivations. The two players who did this study are both angling for different benefits. Big Champagne has been around for years, and has established itself as the sort of “go to” player for the industry in monitoring file sharing. The more the industry embraces file sharing, the more business Big Champagne gets. As for the MCPS-PRS Alliance — that represents songwriters, composers and publishers — not necessarily the labels. MCPS-PRS is looking to establish a new set of draconian compulsory licensing system, where you could still make use of file sharing, but where it would (perhaps with Big Champagne’s help) get paid for every download through some sort of system, whether sharing in the ad revenue or through subscription fees. This is the deal it’s already worked out with Google’s YouTube, even though it’s unclear what legal basis there is for such an agreement.

So, this study is hardly the “music industry” embracing file sharing, but a very biased part of that industry trying to push the rest of the industry towards compulsory licenses and an effective “music tax” on file sharing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

While there are still some popular musicians who argue against file sharing, we’re seeing more and more realize that it’s hardly the enemy that the industry has made it out to be. The latest is the singer Duffy, who apparently has quite the hit album out, selling over a million copies. However, in a recent interview, she noted that unauthorized file sharing is “amazing” and that she doesn’t mind it at all if others are file sharing her songs. She points out that when she was growing up, it was often hard to get new music, and file sharing changes the equation: “I think it’s got more positives because it basically gives people access, what’s the harm in that? It’s just making music a part of everyone’s lives.”

This sort of thing is becoming more and more common — so why is it that the recording industry (and the politicians it preaches to) insist that file sharing is destroying the recording industry, and it has to be stopped to protect the very artists who don’t seem to have a problem with it?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sony, as a company, has had something of a split personality on issues having to do with unauthorized file sharing. The content side of the business is obviously very much against it. But the consumer electronics side of the house recognizes how it can be quite beneficial towards raising the value of consumer electronics. Even so, it’s still a bit of a surprise to hear an exec basically tell fans to just download unauthorized content. Reader Yakko Warner points us to the news that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO David Reeves was telling frustrated PSP users in Australia and New Zealand that they’re going to have to keep waiting for games to show up there… or they can just download them off BitTorrent:

“You can wait for it and you can have it in good quality, you know you can get the stuff from Bittorrent if you want to and download PSP games, it’s up to you.”

One would imagine that the legal team at Sony isn’t exactly thrilled about the “it’s up to you” line at the end there.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Responding, in part, to our analysis of how Hasbro’s handling of the Scrabulous situation was about as poor a business decision as it could make, Information Week’s Mitch Wagner asks a very good question: Can you name a company that has aggressively fought so-called “piracy” of its products and found that to be a successful business strategy? As he notes, there are plenty of examples of the opposite — companies that have learned to embrace such “piracy” and build business models around dealing with it. In fact, Matt Mason has a whole book of examples of that.

But is there a single company that aggressively sued for copyright infringement, and found that strategy to make good business sense?

It hasn’t worked with the recording industry — which is seeing more and more unauthorized file sharing every day, as its own sales decrease (and, it would seem, its legal bills increase). So, let’s help Mitch out. Can anyone think of a company where this strategy was actually net positive for the business?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

For a little over a year, there have been stories about how the entertainment industry has been pressuring Congress to make universities responsible for stopping copyright infringement on their network. This got a lot of attention late last year when Congress tried to tie such a mandate to a provision granting financial aid to students. In other words, the threat was that if universities didn’t act to stop file sharing, their students wouldn’t be eligible for financial aid. This got plenty of attention, and the bill never passed. The most interesting part of it, though, was that much of the reasoning for the bill was driven by MPAA claims that 44% of all illegal file sharing took place on college campuses.

There was just one problem with that: the number was completely wrong. Earlier this year, the MPAA admitted that it had made a small mistake, and the number was actually something like 15% (and even that could be argued).

You might think that would allow our Congressional representatives to focus their attention on something a bit more important — but with super low approval ratings, the people they actually represent matter a lot less than their biggest campaign donors. So, of course, the bill to turn universities into copyright cops is back once again. It is somewhat toned down, but will still require universities to basically be the mouthpieces of the entertainment industry, repeating their propaganda and ignoring that the problem is the industry’s obsolete business models rather than any legal issue.

However, as you read William Patry’s post on this above, you see that the MPAA is also positioning the legislative history on the law so that next year or so, they’ll be able to come back and insist on mandatory filters at universities. Basically, it looks like the MPAA tried to bite off too big of a chunk when it pushed for this law last year, so this year, it’s taking half a bite, but getting everything ready to get the rest of what it wants next year.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story