Interviewees do not usually suggest 3am on a Saturday morning as a meeting time. But Tetsuo Kogawa is not your avaerage guy. A veteran of Japan's now-dormant 1980's pirate radio movement, the author, broadcaster and university lecturer is Japan's most enthusiastic practitioner of matching cutting edge broadcasting technology with left wing politics. While his comrades remain welded to the old ways of communicating to the masses via the poster, leaflet and loudspeaker, Kogawa uses whatever the modern age throws up.

"The left are very cautious about the Internet. They think it is a commodity oriented media and very technical. They are suspicious of technically oriented communication," he says with a shrug.

For the last 4 years he has carried his message via Internet video streaming, producing the Net.RadioHomeRun program once a month from an improvised studio in the Goethe Gallery in Tokyo's Kita Ward. The program is mostly discussion with some mainly soul music. It would be easy to label him Japan's only Internet radio shock jock, and Kogawa acknowledges that he has been influenced by pugnacious U.S. talk show hosts.
But his program is a calm affair. The only truculence is to be found in its stridently anti-establishment opinions.

For Kogawa, the message and the medium, not the audience, matter most. He appears unconcerned that only 3 people are tuned in to the midnight to 4am show; his software can count the hookups. In the studio sit 10 people who have braved the windy winter's night to show up and contribute to the show. People sit around drinking beer and talking in Japanese and some English. "People from abroad hook in," Kogawa says.

A camera is connected to a television, which is linked to a computer, and all are wired to the sound desk. It is a sort of "reality" radio. Anyone from around the world can participate by email, a bunch of Canadian artists sometimes do or by calling to an old black rotary-dial phone resting antiquatedly amid a tangle of digital wires. Nobody calls.
Kogawa stresses that it is "free radio" but there is a format of sorts. The first 40 minutes or so are free talk. It is very democratic. There are no rules, anyone can hog the mike. The program often covers issues of daily living art, culture and society, but this morning's show is dominated by the war in Afghanistan. Chat veers briefly into soccer, mad cow disease, Marxist criticism of post- modernism, and the quality of German sausages, but it always quickly reverts back to the war. No one seems to like the Taliban but none agrees with the American bombing. Swipes are taken at the Japanese govt for supporting the U.S.

There is much nodding of heads and no dissension. The program begins to resemble a bunch of lefties in harmonious concord on world issues. Then Kogawa takes the mike and pours forth on the changes in the public speaking demeanor of U.S. president GWBush since the Afghan war started, to put direction into the rudderless dialogue. The Tokyo Keizai Univ. professor of communications is now on expert ground and slips easily into a teaching role. He shows video clips of Bush speaking since 9.11.01, pausing and rewinding to illustrate his point that PR handlers have successfully helped Bush to appear more statesman like by advising him on his public speaking mannerisms.
The clips show changes in the president's speechmaking poise since 9.11.01. They document noticeably improved camera eye contact during speeches and an increased tendency to lean into the pulpit, to mix authority and intimacy. Kogawa has already shown the video to his Tokyo Keizai students.

There he also teaches them the art of assembling a simple radio transmitter quickly and using basic materials. "Unfortunately it is against the law," he notes. The police don't seem to care; they never bother him. But why does a well-known figure with more than 30 books to his name spend one night a month broadcasting to a single digit listenership? Kogawa has a cog-in-the-wheel view of history, in which change is shaped less by the acts of great men than by the accumulated activity of little people.
"Hisory never moves by big events. History moves through small, sometimes boring, incremental events," he said. For Kogawa, a small group of likeminded people gathered before dawn in a radio studio may not appear important now. But it provides an alternative to the mainstream media and could be the start of something bigger. Kogawa is an old hand of movement on the verge.

Influenced by pirate radio in Italy where he once lived, Kogawa was a key figure in the development of hundreds of mini-FM stations in Japan in the 1980s and helped to set up the FM version of Radio Home Run, the most famous of them all. Those stations are now gone but they left an important legacy, providing an uncontrolled radio voice for ordinary people. "In the 19809s the regular television and FM stations were critical of our style, which was loose and chaotic, but later they copied us. Suddenly you saw these shows with lots of young girls sitting in studios talking away. "They stole our style, but not our content," said Kogawa.

But whom is his current style of show aimed at?He does not dwell on such questions. "If you have a demonstration it may be against the govt but we are not conscious of to whom or against whom. We just have something we want to say." For Kogawa the victory is in saying it.
Previous transmissions avail. at web site

U.S. radio's summer of anarchy ¹
Bill Continelli, W2XOY The Wayback Machine

The Radio Act of 1912 was hopelessly obsolete by the early 1920's. Conceived in an era of long & medium wave spark telegraphy, the Act was totally inadequate when it came to broadcasting & shortwaves. Commerce Dept gamely tried to stretch the Act to meet new requirements; 1922 & 1924 "regulations" that banned broadcasting by amateurs, set up the broadcast band, and carved out the 160, 80, 40, 20, and 5 meter bands, were really nothing more than "gentlemen's agreements", valid as long as they weren't challenged.

For a time, they worked. Amateurs enthusiastically settled in on their new bands and began working the world, while the number of broadcasters in the new 550 to 1500 kc region jumped from 30 to almost 600 in just 3 years. Technical advances had not kept up with this growth, however, and there were problems.
Crystal control of transmitters was still a couple of years away, and the unstable broadcasting stations drifted from their assigned frequencies, sometimes to the point of interfering with adjacent channels. Even stations off frequency by 400-600 cycles could cause ear splitting heterodynes.

Most receivers of the 1920's were either regenerative or TRF (Tuned Radio Frequency), good on sensitivity, poor on selectivity. As a result, the 1920's broadcast band was saturated with only 600 stations. (Compare that to today's medium wave where tight frequency control of 20 hz, coupled with directional antennas and selective superheterodyne receivers, allows over 4000 stations to occupy the AM broadcast band without undue interference).
Commerce Dept therefore issued regulations mandating such solutions as time sharing (where 2 or more stations occupied the same frequency at different times of the day), and daytime only operations. Stations were constantly moved to another frequency, or told to decrease power, in order to minimize interference.

The Dept also went after stations whose transmitters drifted onto adjacent channels. An interesting example of this was the Los Angeles station of "Sister" Aimee Semple McPherson, evangelist leader of Intl Church of the Foursquare Gospel. Her station was notorious for drifting up & down the broadcast band. When Federal Radio Inspectors tried to keep her on frequency, she imperiously wrote to Secretary Hoover, demanding his "Minions of Satan" stay away from her transmitter. The Almighty would choose her Wavelength, she wrote, not the Commerce Dept.

Many stations that had been moved, told to reduce power, or share their frequency, did what any patriotic American would do, hire a lawyer. Once the legal bloodhounds began digging, certain things came to light.
Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution allows the Federal Govt to regulate INTERSTATE commerce.
Furthermore, it is accepted fact that a Federal Agency cannot issue any regulations unless it was given the power to do so by Congress.
Lawyers for disgruntled stations challenged the Secretary's "regulations" on 2 fronts, first, that the Radio Act of 1912 gave the Dept no authority to regulate broadcasting stations, and second, that since many stations could not be heard across state lines, there was no "interstate commerce" and therefore no Federal jurisdiction. (This is the argument used by "Radio Free Berkley" and other low power pirate stations).

Day of reckoning arrived in 1926 when an Illinois Dist. Court held there was no Federal Law to permit Commerce Secretary to assign broadcasting licenses or frequencies. The Atty General admitted Federal Govt had no control over radio, except what was specifically authorized in the 1912 Act.
Pandemonium broke out. Stations, liberated from all Federal control, upped their power, jumped frequency, and/or began full time operations on daytime or time shared frequencies. Smaller stations were jammed off the air. Unlicensed transmitters appeared out of nowhere, dropped down on any convenient (or inconvenient) frequency, and began broadcasting. Anarchy was King.

Amateurs, of course, could have legally joined in this RF Orgy. There was nothing preventing them from going back to broadcasting, moving to new frequencies, exceeding the 1 kw limit, or anything else they desired. To their credit, they did nothing of the sort. One reason was the immense respect they felt for Secretary Hoover, a man who over & over publicly supported amateur radio in any way possible. They would abide by their "gentleman's agreement" with him.
The other reason was common sense. They knew that Congress would soon rectify the problem by passing appropriate legislation. The broadcasters were "big boys" with a lot of money, powerful corporate backers, and 6 million listeners; they could afford to violate the spirit of the law and get away with it. Amateurs did not have this luxury. They realized that any violations of 1922 & 1924 agreements, even if they were legally unenforceable, would cost them dearly in political support.

While the 550 to 1500 kc segment was a free for all, the amateur bands were disciplined & orderly, as hams mastered the art of crystal control, and improved their operating skills.
One area in which those skills were honed was expeditions. From the Arctic to the Antarctic, from MacMillan to Byrd, amateurs provided the necessary communications of almost every major explorer. Also, in the area of emergencies, amateurs provided communications during snow & ice storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods.

Federal Govt quickly moved to end the chaotic mess on the broadcast band. On 2.23.27, the Radio Act of 1927 was approved. This law defined "amateur radio" for the first time in a Federal statute, and created the Federal Radio Commission, which was given the power to classify & regulate all aspects of all radio stations for "the public interest, convenience or necessity". Criminal penalties were written into the 1927 Act for violations of the Act, or any regulation thereunder.

The Commission immediately went to work. "Minions of Satan" got Sister Aimee's station back on frequency, and shut down the transmitter of KFKB, the station of "Dr." John Brinkley, graduate of the Eclectic Medical School and proponent of prostate operations and (get this) goat gland transplants to cure all medical ills. Patients by the thousands listened to KFKB's broadcasts, and flocked to Kansas to have the operations, picking out their goat from the pens next to the hospital as they went in. After the Commission shut him down, "Dr." Brinkley went to Mexico by the Texas border, set up a 150,000 watt station, and continued operations.

In regard to amateur radio, the Commission, in effect, kept the status quo for the 15,000 hams. All agreements & regulations enacted by Commerce Dept were maintained & incorporated into current regulations. About the only change that hams noticed was the addition of a prefix on their calls, thus 1AW became W1AW, 1JS became W1JS etc.
However, the existence of a sympathetic Commission & friendly regulations wasn't enough. Radio was truly international, and, as a result, an Intl Radiotelegraph Conference was scheduled in Washington, D.C., for 10.4.27. Word from Europe & the Far East that many govts were anti amateur radio.

Russian firm cleared in digital-piracy trial
12.18.02   Jon Healey L.A. Times

Legal analysts said the verdict suggests that prosecutors will have a tough time using the DMCA against technology developers & hackers without solid proof that the defendants knew they were breaking the law. "That's going to be very hard to prove without a memo saying, 'Gee, this is illegal, but we should do it anyway,' " said copyright atty Jonathan Band.
Said ElcomSoft lawyer Joseph Burton: "Companies are going to be a little bit more careful ... and certainly federal prosecutors will more carefully consider when they're making decisions about charging somebody."

Copyright holders still can use the DMCA to bring civil lawsuits against those who develop circumvention techniques. Unlike criminal cases, such lawsuits can be won without proving any intent to break the law. Atty & copyright expert Evan Cox said lawsuits often aren't much of a deterrent. Bringing criminal charges "is an important tool, and I think it has been weakened by this case," Cox said.

DMCA was designed to boost online commerce by addressing copyright holders' concerns about Internet piracy. Among other things, the statute outlaws the manufacture, sale or use of any tool that picks the locks on digital files. Opponents say it leaves consumers unable to make backup copies of the digital goods they buy, transfer their music to portable devices or make other "fair uses" of copyrighted material.
Many copyright holders, on the other hand, rely on electronic locks to protect goods they deliver online. Their greatest concern, Cox said, is the emergence of simple tools that "consumers are easily & casually going to use to unlock things and hand them to all their friends."

Privately held ElcomSoft's main products are designed to help businesses & law enforcement officials recover damaged files or break open scrambled documents that were protected by lost software keys. According to court documents, ElcomSoft began selling an "Advanced eBook Processor" 6.20.01 to strip locks off of e-books in Adobe's format. Those locks help publishers prevent their books from being copied to other computers or devices, printed, edited or excerpted.
The purpose of ElcomSoft's program, according to co. Web site, was to let e-book buyers read their purchases wherever they wanted. The program was on the market less than a week when ElcomSoft pulled it in response to Adobe's complaints. Nonetheless, Adobe took the case to the FBI. FBI agents arrested ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov 7.16.01 after he spoke to a hacker convention in Las Vegas. A federal grand jury indicted him & ElcomSoft the following month; prosecutors eventually agreed to drop the charges against Sklyarov in exchange for his testimony.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose made 2 key rulings in the case, one favoring the prosecution and the other favoring the defense. In May, Whyte ruled that the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions were constitutional even though they applied to technologies that helped consumers make fair use of the scrambled files they purchased. This ruling echoed a decision from a New York appeals court.
Last week, however, Whyte instructed the jury that ElcomSoft could be acquitted if it honestly but erroneously believed it wasn't violating the law. As Burton stressed to the jury, co. executives thought the product was legal because it was designed for fair uses. The jury deliberated for less than 7 hours over 2 days.

"When you are bringing good cases under new statutes, sometimes you are going to lose, and that's what happened here," said U.S. Northern District of California atty Kevin Ryan. Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group that supported ElcomSoft, said jury verdicts don't have much value as precedents, so it will be hard for other companies to use the acquittal in their cases.
"It's great news, but I don't think it's going to let other folks in the future off the hook," he said.
Adobe spokeswoman Holly Campbell said the San Jose-based co. was disappointed by the verdict. "As we increasingly move from a paper-based to a digital society, we will find more instances where laws designed to protect the rights of authors and publishers will be challenged in light of the new capabilities technology provides," Campbell said. "These cases will be an important part of developing appropriate laws and guidelines that continue to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals and corporations alike."

If you thought the kneecapping of Napster was wack, wait until May 21, when most US-based Internet radio streams could cease to exist. Today, any geek with a computer & a dream can have his own Internet radio station without jumping through all those govt hoops that limit the number & broadcasting range of U.S. stations. This is a huge boon for listeners, esp. those with poor radio reception, or ones who want to hear something other than classic rock or Top 40. Internet radio has the potential to completely level the radio playing field that gigantic corporations now dominate. And that, of course, is precisely why it is being destroyed. In 1998, the most comprehensive copyright-reform package in a generation was passed, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was enacted in the wake of the dot-com boom, when questions about intellectual property, artists' rights, and fair use were popping up faster than you could say "start-up." Part of the act applied to streaming audio on the Internet, specifically music, and called upon the Librarian of Congress to approve a fee structure for this burgeoning medium.

In regular radio, stations are expected to pay songwriters a fee for every one of their songs that is played, but they don't have to pay record labels for use of the recordings of those songs. In other words, every time a station plays "Crazy," songwriter Willie Nelson gets a royalty, but MCA and the estate of Patsy Cline do not. Terrestrial radio has been exempt from paying fees to the labels themselves for the simple fact that they are helping to promote the music. It's free advertising. The folks at the Recording Industry Association of America, wily chaps who garroted Napster, want to change all that, and are helping create a whole new set of rules for online radio. Unlike with terrestrial radio, the RIAA wants labels to be compensated for music played online, and paid very nicely indeed.

On the other side of the coin are the online radio stations, which want to see Internet music treated the same as standard radio. And why not? Radio is radio, right? Nope. The RIAA argues that, unlike the imperfect analog signal of radio, Internet radio issues a "perfect" digital signal, which could destroy CD buying as we know it. Simply put, the RIAA just wants the major labels to control all music on the Web. Since passage of the copyright act, both sides bickered back & forth, with the RIAA proposing that stations turn over a whopping 15% of their revenues, and the other side asking for the standard 3% already turned over by regular radio stations. Guess what? They couldn't agree. Eventually a panel was appointed to try to figure out what should be done. It was called the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Proceeding, and, like the fish that shares its acronym, it waded through a sea of muck from both sides for months before coming to a decision. And, like the lowly carp, it had no clue about the economics of the Net, or of radio, or about how to combine the two.

Witnesses for the panel consisted of folks from the RIAA on one side, and Internet radio broadcasters such as AOL and Clear Channel on the other. Talk about your Scylla & Charybdis. Because no one from any private or dinky Web stations attended, the fate of the little guy rested in the hands of the large conglomerates who were fighting against the RIAA, but not exactly for streaming radio hobbyists or noncommercial radio. To put that in Berkeley terms, the little guy got screwed by The Man, yet again. In the end, this fishy panel decided to base the industry's fee structure on the only deal that had then been struck between the record companies & Web radio interests, an agreement between Yahoo & the RIAA. Problem is, this pact was inked shortly after Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for stock worth $5.7 billion .

[ As of 4.21.02, this top level domain was a redirect to http://broadcast.yahoo.com/home.html, and briefly, albeit too quickly to be read, displays the following,
"Y! Events has been discontinued. Please go to the following areas in Yahoo! to look for online programs:"
prefacing a list of thematic content subdirectories at the Yahoo.com tld ]

Those fees may look small, but that sh*t adds up fast. Consequently, even commercial stations such as KPIG will have to cease streaming. If they play 10 songs in one hour with 1,000 listeners, that's $7 an hour, which adds up to additional annual expenses of more than $60,000. "It's obvious that the RIAA would like to keep all control of music on the Web in their own hands: pay to listen, pay to download," says KPIG pgm consultant Bill Goldsmith.
"That's their ultimate goal." Goldsmith, who also streams the "eclectic, intelligent rock" station RadioParadise.com , says that the panel's decision will kill off any Web presence for his stations. "RadioParadise.com has a total income that's about 50% of what the royalty fees would be under the CARP proposal. It'll be about $7000 a month, and my income is half that."

KALX, which has the capacity to serve a whopping 60 online listeners at any one time but rarely reaches that mark, will shut down its Web stream if the decision is finalized in May, according to general manager Sandra Wasson. "A lot of stations have already gone off the air," she says, referring to fellow Bay Area college stations KUSF & KSJS. Although the noncommercial rates are much lower than those of commercial stations, the estimated $1,200 a year that KALX would have to pay to serve these 60 listeners still adds up to far more than it is currently required to pay songwriters by ASCAP ($244 per year), BMI ($244), and SESAC ($66). Not only is KALX not going to shell out the extra dough, it also couldn't possibly accommodate the ridiculous record-keeping requirements required under the plan. All online stations would also have to create voluminous reports filled with user data. For each song played, more than 30 items must be logged including: date, time, time zone (!!!), recording length, release year of track, ISRC code, UPC code, label, catalog number, and on and on. Keeping track of this data will be so time- consuming that someone would have to be hired solely to gather it, and that ain't gonna happen at KALX. Regular radio stations are not required to do any of this, except for an occasional songlist/songwriter audit over a period of a couple of days.

These rules set forth for streamers are nothing short of bullshit busywork designed to deter anyone from wanting to have a Web station of any kind. "For the most part, the radio industry understands the need to compensate copyright holders," says Web radio consultancy BRS Media George Bundy, who adds that everyone involved agrees that some royalties should be paid. "But the benchmark has been set too high." The union of recording artists doesn't always see eye to eye with the RIAA, but on this issue they stand together. American Fed. of TV & Recording Artists Ann Chaitovitz supports the new fee structure. "What I really see is that webcasters are crying wolf," she says, noting that streamers have heretofore had a free ride. She says the proposed fees are not only fair, but smaller than what artists really deserve. Chaitovitz also quarrels with regular radio's fee structure, which pays songwriters but not performers. "We are trying to change the radio laws," she says. "We've been fighting for that since before the Internet."

As usual, the RIAA is milking the cause of standing up for the "creators." "The concern is that the creators should be paid by those who are using their work," says RIAA sr vp for business & legal affairs Steven Marks. But what about all the promotion that artists & record companies get when their music is played online? Doesn't that sell records and help artists? Marks says no: "The arbitrators found that there was no verifiable evidence that there was any promotion." This argument is completely nuts, not to mention inconsistent. Why is KFOG's conventional broadcasting promotional, but its simultaneous Web stream not? The RIAA would argue that regular radio shouldn't be considered promotional either. "You don't get a car for free because you are driving around with a Ford decal," says Marks.

What's really happening here is that the RIAA is carrying its victory over Napster & digital downloading into the streaming radio arena. Its argument is that, since online signals are digital ones, they are therefore a threat to CD buying. Never mind that you can't burn a CD from a streaming radio signal, and often you can't even listen to a single song without annoying burps or farts. Somehow the CARP panel bought this crap, and now RIAA actually will start earning revenues from Internet radio that it cannot recoup from regular radio.
The next question might be, what will happen when regular radio signals go digital as well, which experts point out is the industry's next step. After decades spent fighting blank-tape manufacturers, students downloading free stuff on the Web, and now Web radio, the RIAA may at last be able to squeeze money out of the people who help them the most: conventional radio. Bundy believes terrestrial radio will still be protected, digital or not. And both Chaitovitz & Marks say their organizations have no interest in sticking it to tiny Web radio enthusiasts. "We look forward to working with the hobbyists," Marks says.

When the RIAA says "work with," it will probably be just like when the Germans "worked with" the Poles in '39, or when a Goodfella "works with" a shopkeeper in the form of easy monthly payments. The RIAA's interests begin & end with the economic interests of the big record labels. What's most appalling is how willingly it hangs its arguments on the interests of the "musical creators" it so dearly fucks over in most other cases. "There's a growing sense of public outrage," says KPIG Bill Goldsmith . "It's such a black & white, David & Goliath type of thing. You've got these struggling baby Webcasters like me, and this great big monolithic group of multinational corporations on the other side." Goldsmith holds out the hope that public outcry will convince the panel to reverse its decision, even though the only people who can officially argue against it are those same entities involved in the original ruling. The public has no say, except to contact their congressmen and hope that they will lobby on their behalf.

But George Bundy is flat-out pessimistic about the May 21 deadline. "I think there is a lot of work to be done, and not enough time. Unless the opposition moves quicker, it will get rubber-stamped." For the rest of us, the party is almost over. Stations will be forced to charge listeners, or cover the costs through the sale of advertising (fat chance), or give up all together. Most streaming radio will be a thing of the past.

RIAA Web site hack allows music file downloads
8.29.02   Ashlee Vance IDG News Service

The Recording Industry Assn of America's Web site apparently was hacked Wednesday, forcing the music industry backer into a most unnatural act, providing free music for download. The RIAA has led the fight against the trading of copyright music on the Internet. Hackers attacked the organization by altering its home page, changing some content on the site and making music available for download. Users flocked to the Web site called http://www.fark.com Wednesday morning to display screen shots of the RIAA's altered Web site and to list the songs they were able to download.
"There is a problem with our site that we are fixing," said an RIAA spokeswoman who declined to be named. "It should be back up shortly." The RIAA is declining to provide any details about when the "problem" with its Web site began or to confirm that the site was hacked.

The changes made to the RIAA site appeared to be retaliation for a lawsuit filed by the organization earlier this month against a Chinese music download site, www.listen4ever.com. The RIAA dropped its suit against the site last week after the site was taken offline. The RIAA Web site has also been hit by denial of service attacks in recent weeks in which computers controlled by hackers bombarded the site with requests, making it unavailable to most users.
A message on the apparently hacked RIAA's Web site said, "The RIAA wishes to apologize for the heavy-handed manner in which the popular chinese [sic] site Listen4Ever was closed down, and would like to present the following items for free download as a token of its goodwill." The altered RIAA home page included a link to that message, which was also available at fark.com. The message went on to say: "Of course the list is relatively small, but please be patient - we expect to offer over 300 next week. We also intend to offer prereleased movies in the coming months."
Some users were apparently able to download songs from the RIAA site for several hours early Wednesday until it became unreachable due either to heavy traffic or the RIAA taking the site down. Other links on the hacked home page led to messages such as "Piracy can be beneficial to the music industry."

The RIAA has filed lawsuits against several music trading sites over the last 2 years, most notably Napster, and has garnered considerable scorn from music fans who used Napster & similar sites.

Hackers rub MP3s in RIAA's face
8.28.02   Michelle Delio Wired News

Napster preps for takeover
8.29.02   Michael Singer internetnews.com

The stumbling block centers on misgivings by the Music Publishers Association and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Both trade organizations have been fighting Napster's clandestine business practices in court for years. RIAA's beef is that they want the court to rule that Bertelsmann's $85 million investment should be treated as equity, and not a loan. The German media giant had bankrolled Napster through much of its legal trouble with the music industry and, when the site decided to file for Bankruptcy protection, Bertelsmann inked a deal to pay $8 million for the assets.

If the judge rules that the Bertelsmann investment is not a loan, the bid would be in the vicinity of $9 million and could reopen the bidding process. Which begs the question: Why Bertelsmann is shelling out so much for Napster? Part of that lies in who is controlling online music these days.
The big five players include, AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, Sony Corp. Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Group PLC's EMI Record Music, Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group and Bertelsmann AG's BMG Entertainment. Everyone has a hand in Listen.com's Rhapsody service.
MusicNet is backed by RealNetworks, AOL's Warner Music, EMI Group, Bertelsmann's BMG, and independent recording giant Zomba Records. Pressplay is supported by Sony and Vivendi Universal as well as Yahoo! and MSN.

If Bertelsmann comes out in control of Napster as a legitimate service, the co. will corner the market with one of the best-known names in music file sharing history. Whether Napster will be successful as a legitimate service remains to be seen.
Meantime, lawyer Russ Frackman who represented the RIAA talked to internetnews.com about Napster as an institution and the DMCA as a whole. The copyright law specialist insists the recording Industry's litigation was never about anti-technology or against peer-to-peer. "We focused more on Napster's business plan, which (Napster defense lawyer David) Boies, failed to capture. In particular, I felt we were vindicated when Napster was shut down," said Frackman.

As for a Napster's plans to go legit along with other music file sharing services, Frackman sees no problem as long as they go through the proper channels. "I don't think there will be the problem they and others have the ability to operate if they want to that they could do what other permission to use it first," Frackman said. "There are all sorts of potential systems that use protected & authorized methods to operate. This is not any different than a restaurant that wants to play music."

Frackman also refutes critics that say he added gasoline to the fire by bringing the Napster lawsuit out in the open. He says the 1996 Digital Millennium Copyright Act helped pave the way for Napster's demise. The DMCA generally has the right idea. What's missing is that content owners and service providers need to cooperate in their relationship." Frackman said. "The problem is in trying to legislate is that current laws did not intended to cover this situation. The technology moves faster than the law can be written."
In the Napster case, Frackman said attempts to negotiate had failed and there was a perception by the recording industry that this new phenomenon could not be left alone. "While traditional copyright law worked, we were working on a blank slate," said Frackman.

Group is launching new types of licenses
Nonprofit's goal is promote creativity while reinvigorating public domain
12.16.02   David Streitfeld L.A. Times

"Using the copyright system, we will make a wider, richer public domain for creators to build upon and individuals to share," said Stanford law prof. & Creative Commons chair Lawrence Lessig. "Walt Disney built an empire from the riches of the public domain. We'd like to support a hundred thousand more Walt Disneys."

As a first step, Creative Commons has developed a group of licenses that will allow copyright holders to surrender some rights to works while keeping others.

wireless
802.11b, et al Project Orion Mobilog wardriving Madison WI  



A dispute over wireless networks
7.1.02   Peter Meyers NYTimes

That is the aim of the so-called free wireless network groups that have emerged in many large American cities. These groups, including NYCWireless in NY, encourage individual users to establish, publicize and share wireless networks. At the heart of the conflict lies a technology known as Wi-Fi, for wireless fidelity. Wi-Fi networks use radio signals to broadcast an Internet connection as far as 300 ft, permitting users with properly equipped computers to connect to the Internet at high speeds without wires. Many Wi-Fi networks, intentionally or otherwise, allow passers-by to use the networks without any password. And there are tools that amplify the Wi-Fi radio signal, enabling it to be delivered over an even larger area, like a park.

Many broadband providers fear that every user of a free wireless network is one less paying customer. "Our goal is just to protect our customer base," said Rosenblum, adding that TWC currently had no plans to extend this enforcement campaign to other areas that it serves. Rosenblum acknowledged he had no way of knowing how many of these free wireless networks were being operated, or how much money, if any, they were costing the co.. Among sources TWC consulted to track violators were public Web sites that promote the existence of these networks, including one operated by NYCWireless.
In at least one case a letter was sent to a user who said he had not actually set up a wireless network. "I don't actually have any wireless equipt; I've never had any wireless equipt," said Manhattan resident Justin Cobb who had indicated on the NYCWireless Web site that he was potentiality interested in some of the group's future projects. Cobb said he understood Time Warner's need to prevent nonpaying users but was also "really bothered by the fact I'm being accused of criminal activity." He said he was considering switching Internet service providers.

For the moment, most publicly available wireless networks are limited to small areas such as sidewalk cafes & parks, but several groups have discussed finding ways to create a free wireless "cloud" that would offer Internet access to larger areas. More immediately, broadband providers worry about situations in which one person pays for a broadband connection, then sets up a Wi-Fi network and shares it with a neighbor. Such an agreement would be illegal under the terms of Time Warner current policy.
There are, however, some smaller Internet providers that have promoted themselves as friendly to free wireless in the hope that the customers gained will offset potential revenues lost through freeloading. Acecape chief exec. Arkady Goldinstein, NY digital subscriber line provider, said it was "purely a cost-benefit analysis" to allow his customers to set up free networks. Mr. Goldinstein added that out of his firm's "several thousand" subscribers he believed "less than a dozen" have set up free networks.

A wireless end run around ISPs
Broadband subscribers can use simple Wi-Fi gear to share their connections with neighbors; "warchalking" spreads the word
7.3.02   Jane Black Business Week

"The whole problem with wireless networking is that you can't find a wireless access node without being online in the first place," says Hammersley. "Warchalking reminded me of when I was Boy Scout and we lay twigs in a certain configuration on the path to direct people to water. This seemed an elegant way of solving the problem." At 10:50 a.m., Hammersley scratched 2 half moons on the wall of his house. He also snapped a digital picture of his work and zipped it over to Jones. Hammersley had become the first "warchalker."
Within an hour, news of the symbols quickly spread across the Internet. Jones received 60,000 hits to his web site. Hammersley's blog was a top link on Slashdot.org & top portals for graphic designers. By the weekend, Jones had received news & photo evidence of warchalkers from Copenhagen, L.A., Seattle, even from the CIO of the state of Utah. "We're joking that a piece of chalk could destroy the entire multibillion-pound 3G [third-generation wireless] industry," laughs Jones, who admits he has been caught off guard by all the attention.