Category: Technology

E-Mail Takes Flight on United
United Airlines is set to announce Tuesday that it will begin offering in-flight e-mail services on all its U.S. domestic flights by the end of the year, according to a U.K. representative for the company.
The announcement will represent a first by a U.S. airline, and marks a strong move by United to woo business fliers and drum up added revenue in the face of strong competition by low-cost competitors. United is currently operating under bankruptcy-court protection, making its need to lure business travelers even more essential.
The new e-mail capabilities build on the JetConnect service already provided on United flights by Verizon Communication’s Airfone subsidiary. JetConnect currently offers news and weather as well as instant messaging and text messaging for $5.99 a flight.
New and Improved
The JetConnect service will boast added e-mail capabilities by the end of the year, at a cost of $15.98 a flight plus $0.10 per kilobyte of data over 2 kilobytes, the representative said. The e-mail service is being provided by Tenzing Communications.
More details of the service are expected to be released when United makes the official announcement later Tuesday.
The representative said that the carrier has no plans to extend the service outside of the U.S. until it measures demand domestically.

Apple’s Online Music Store Sells 2 Million Songs
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Computer Inc. said on Wednesday that more than two million songs have been purchased and downloaded at 99 cents each from its iTunes Music Store in the 16 days since it opened for business in the U.S. market, continuing strong momentum for the service.
Apple said that, as seen during the first week, over half of the songs bought were purchased as albums, further dispelling what it said were concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales.
The service, which has more than 200,000 tracks for sale, is integrated into its iTunes music software program and for now is available only on its Macintosh computers, and those computers have to be in America. A Windows version is due by the end of the year, Apple said.
Users can listen to free 30-second previews of any track on the service and search by album, artist, music genre and song title. Users click on a “buy it” button to download the music into a folder in the iTunes program.
From there, users can compile play lists and transfer them to CDs up to 10 times before they must shuffle the order of the playlist. They can also move the tracks to as many of its popular iPod digital music players as they like and up to three Macintosh computers.
Apple, of Cupertino, California, said that more than 4,300 songs were added to the iTunes service on Tuesday, including five albums from The Doors.
The online music store is now only available in the United States, but the company is expected to expand the service to overseas markets in the future.

THINK DIFFERENT
Apple Computer Inc. announcing on Monday that it has exceeded the expectations of the record industry by selling more than 1 million songs since the launch of its online Apple iTunes Music Store a week ago. Songs are just 99 cents per download and the service does not guarantee copyright protection.

Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be “easily” identified and face “legal penalties” for their actions.
About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and millions more will get notices in coming weeks, said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the music companies.
The message said in part: “It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. …When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON’T STEAL MUSIC either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a ‘file-sharing’ system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified.”
The mass messaging came after a federal judge on Friday delivered a setback to the music industry’s efforts to shut down song-swapping services, and a day after Apple Computer Inc. unveiled an online music store aimed at wooing users from the free networks.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday ruled the Grokster and Morpheus services should not be shut down because they cannot control what is traded over their systems.
Trade groups for the movie studios and record labels said they would appeal the ruling, the first significant legal setback for the entertainment industry in its battle against the popular “peer-to-peer” services that allow users to download files for free.
The RIAA’s Sherman said that while the messaging effort was planned long ago, the timing was fortunate since some song swappers might misinterpret Friday’s ruling to mean that copyright infringement was legal.
The move immediately angered some Internet users.
“Way to go, RIAA. Sue and threaten the public, your customers. I think I’ll go and download,” one posting on Yahoo said.
Sharman Networks Ltd, the Australian firm that owns Kazaa, said in a statement, said that rather than cooperating with the file-sharing network “the RIAA continues to choose to attack some of its most loyal customers.”
Sharman said it objected to any effort to enforce copyrights that violated the law, its own user agreements or that would “indiscriminately spam, mislead or confuse.”
Meanwhile, Verizon Communications, embroiled in a separate copyright infringement suit with the recording industry, said the move undermined the RIAA’s argument in that case.
Last week, Verizon suffered a setback when a U.S. court said the phone company must reveal the names of customers suspected of downloading copyrighted songs from the Internet without permission.
The RIAA argued that Verizon is obligated under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to help the music industry protect its copyrights. Verizon says it is willing to help, but argued that the law only applies to Web pages stored on its computers, not traffic on the “peer-to-peer” networks that merely travel across its wires.
Sarah Deutsch, an attorney for Verizon on Tuesday, said that the RIAA has said they could not contact users on their own.
“I think this undermines their case because now they are acknowledging they can contact the users on a massive scale,” she said.
Its not the first time the recording industry has targeted individual users. In April, the RIAA sued four students who were operating networks on three college campuses where it claims the networks were being used to illegally trade copies of music files.
The warning on Tuesday was sent by the RIAA on behalf of the world’s big record labels owned by AOL Time Warner, EMI Group Plc, Bertelsmann AG, Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp.
DON’T STEAL MUSIC
The RIAA said that by using song titles, it was identifying users who were posting copyrighted songs for others to download as targets for the messages, which were sent through the peer-to-peer networks’ own systems.
Sherman said the trade group did not plan to take further action against the users it had contacted for now. “There is no next step. We are just letting them know it’s illegal and they are not anonymous,” said Sherman.
“We’re not going to change behavior overnight. The only way we can measure this is to see if fewer people are offering files on Grokster and Kazaa,” he said.
Some experts doubted the effectiveness of the campaign.
“I think a small number of users will be deterred by this effort. It’s not going to come as a surprise to them the RIAA finds it unlawful,” said Jonathan Band, a copyright lawyer for Morrison & Foerster.

Apple Launching New Music Store Service
SAN FRANCISCO – Two years after angering the recording industry with its “Rip. Mix. Burn” ad campaign, Apple Computer Inc. has won its cooperation in creating the Internet’s least restrictive commercial music service yet.
The iTunes Music Store announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Monday draws from all five major labels in offering more than 200,000 songs at 99 cents a download — and includes some big name artists who previously shunned online distribution.
Unlike its competitors, the service has virtually no copy-protection — a major concession to consumer demand.
Apple lets customers keep songs indefinitely, share them on as many as three Macintosh computers and transfer them to any number of iPod portable music players. No subscriptions are necessary and buyers can burn unlimited copies of the songs onto CDs.
“There’s no legal alternative that’s worth beans,” Jobs told of reporters and industry analysts at San Francisco’s convention center.
Jobs has intensely courted music industry executives, who have been leery of digital music downloads and have aggressively used lawsuits and lobbying to stem the illegal copying and distribution of copyright works. That wariness has hamstrung other online music distribution models, keeping most of the best new music offline.
In contrast, Music Store already includes music by Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow, Sting and other artists previously wary about music downloads. Eventually, millions of songs will be for sale on the site, predicted Doug Morris, the chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group.
Morris, attending Monday’s launch, called it “a defining moment in the music business.”
By allowing people to do pretty much as they please with their digital copies, Apple and the music industry are acknowledging that, due to digital technology, online file-swapping can’t be eradicated.
“You can’t stop piracy, so you have to work with technology, and you have to get into the rhythm of it. That’s what Apple has done here,” said the musician Seal, who was at the announcement.
Even Hillary Rosen, who as CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has led the fight against Napster and it’s free online music-swapping successors, called Apple’s new service “cool, cutting edge” in a statement.
“It’s not stealing anymore. It’s good karma,” said Jobs, asserting that other industry-backed services’ subscription-based models treat music fans as “criminals” with extra fees and restrictions. Apple also announced a new version of the iPod — thinner and lighter. It comes with 30 gigabytes, or about 7,500 songs, and costs $499.
Initially, Music Store only works on Macintosh computers, but by year’s end, Apple plans to make it compatible with devices using the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft Windows platform — as it did for they iPod. Then, the service could have mass appeal.
While the service remains limited to Macs, which comprise less than 3 percent of the desktop computing market, the segment is big enough to let the music industry test a new business model, said Phil Leigh, an analyst at the research firm Raymond James & Associates.
“I think it’ll change the world a little bit,” Leigh said. “It’ll be the first legitimate online music service that will have major brand recognition, and it’s focused on portability and ease of use.”
Until now, most music found online lacked the blessing of the major labels — BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner. Millions of users are downloading free copies of songs through file-sharing services such as Kazaa — services that the recording industry have sued in an effort to stem what they deem as revenue-robbing piracy.
The RIAA has sued four college students who allegedly offered more than 1 million recordings over the Internet, demanding damages of $150,000 per song. Music companies also are lobbying corporations, urging them to crack down on the downloading of songs using company computers.
But their efforts suffered a major blow Friday when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., the companies that distribute Grokster and Morpheus, aren’t to blame for any illegal copying that their customers do using their file-sharing software. They’ve vowed to appeal.
Apple enters a market that has yet to establish much traction. Other providers of online music to paid subscribers have drawn only about 650,000 users, analysts estimate.
Pressplay, a joint venture of Sony and Universal, charges a flat fee of $9.95 a month to listen using their computer to an unlimited number of songs from the major labels. Consumers who want to purchase songs to store on their hard drive or burn them onto a CD pay an extra fee of 98 cents per song.
Apple charges no such fees but does incorporate some minor restrictions — playlists can be stored on no more than three Macs and once a user burns 10 copies of a playlist onto CDs, they have to “modify” the list before copying again. This can be as simple as shuffling the order of the songs.
All Music Store songs are encoded in the AAC audio format, which allows for faster downloads and higher sound quality than MP3 files of the same size. The format was developed by Dolby to provide the sound for industry-standard MPEG-4 video files.

Fox Licenses ‘The Simpsons’ to THQ for Wireless
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – If you’ve ever wanted your cell phone to say “D’oh!” when someone calls, you’ll soon have the chance. Twentieth Century Fox on Monday said it has licensed “The Simpsons” to the wireless division of video game publisher THQ Inc. to be developed into games, ring tones, screensavers and messaging tools around the world.
THQ, the most aggressive among the traditional video game publishers in the nascent wireless games industry, said the deal was a long-term one but declined to provide specifics.
“The Simpsons” premiered in late Dec. 1989 and quickly became an international sensation. In mid-February the show, currently the longest-running sitcom on prime-time TV, marked its 300th episode.
“The fact that it is in so many countries and so many languages, we think this will be pretty successful for us,” Doug Dyer, the general manager of THQ Wireless, told Reuters.
Dyer said THQ would like to begin releasing wireless products based on the animated family sometime in the third quarter of this year.
He also said the company plans to develop “channels” of Simpsons content, so wireless carriers could offer their subscribers an entire package of games, sounds and logos based on themes from the show.
Jim Beddows, vice president for wireless entertainment at Fox, said the company waited to license “The Simpsons” because it is “one of the top-tier properties of the 20th Century Fox Co.” and they wanted wireless technology, like color phone screens and high-speed networks, to develop further.
Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of Fox Entertainment Group, itself a part of News Corp. Ltd.

KaZaA fights back; files countersuit
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — The owners of the KaZaA file-sharing network are suing the movie and recording industries, claiming that they don’t understand the digital age and are monopolizing entertainment.
Sharman Networks Ltd. filed its counterclaim Monday in response to a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by several recording labels and movie studios. That lawsuit accuses Sharman of providing free access to copyright music and films to millions of Internet users in the United States.
The latest filing came two weeks after U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson dismissed Sharman’s claim that it could not be sued in the United States because it is based in Australia and incorporated in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
Monopolization?
Wilson had found Sharman subject to U.S. copyright laws because it has substantial usage by Californians and its actions are alleged to contribute to commercial piracy within the United States.
Sharman’s counterclaim alleges copyright misuse, monopolization, and deceptive acts and practices.
“In seeking to simultaneously stop illegal copying and to maintain their dominant position in the distribution of musical and movie content, the industry plaintiffs have obscenely overreached,” Sharman said.
It seeks a jury trial, damages, attorney fees and a permanent injunction against the entertainment industry so that it can’t “enforce any of their United States copyrights against any person or entity.”
Claims called ‘laughable’
Sharman said the entertainment companies are behind the times and don’t realize that consumers need not buy CDs, DVDs or videotapes to enjoy music or films.
Sharman also claimed that movie studios “dominate and, when they act in concert, have monopoly power” for the aftermarket distribution of first-run major motion pictures. Likewise, the company said, recording labels “when they act in concert, have monopoly power in the distribution of recorded music.”
Movie studios involved in the lawsuit include Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., Disney Enterprises Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp. The recording labels are BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner. (Warner Music is a division of AOL Time Warner, CNN’s parent company.)
In a statement, the Recording Industry Association of America called Sharman’s arguments “laughable.”
“Sharman’s claims are akin to the thief who plunders Fort Knox and then claims she’s not responsible because Fort Knox declined to buy her second-rate security system,” the RIAA said.
The case is one of the largest in the recent online copyright wars testing the international reach of U.S. courts.

Microsoft Introduces CD Copy-Protection ‘Fix’
CANNES, France (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp. announced on Saturday the introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry’s side.
Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or “burning,” new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers.
For example, most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too.
Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music’s proprietary technology simply by scribbling a magic marker pen around the edges of the disc, thus enabling playback on any device.
Microsoft believes it may have come up with a solution. The new software is called the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit.
It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.
$500 MILLION INVESTMENT
The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft.
Universal Music and EMI, two of the biggest record labels in the world, “are very excited about this because it enables the industry to build a CD with their own protections built in,” he said, speaking at the Midem music conference in southern France.
Microsoft has invested $500 million in digital rights management, or DRM, for music, Fester said. The Toolkit was co-developed with technology partners Phoenix-based SunnComm Technologies and France’s MPO International Group, he added.
Microsoft is making a concerted push into DRM, a hotly contested new field.
Technology and media companies, such as Microsoft, Sony, Philips and Real Networks, are looking to build a business out of securing copyright protections across the Internet and other digital media.
Microsoft has discussed plans for an upcoming operating system, code-named “Palladium,” that will seek to put user controls on all bits of information they store on a computer document, from medical records to billing information.

Switch, Baby, Switch!
If you miss Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live you can now catch him in his holiday parody of the Apple “Switch” ads
Fa la la la la la, la la la laaaaaaaaaaaaah!

She Speaks!
Ellen Feiss finally speaks! In this interview, the 15-year-old star of an insanely popular commercial talks about her newfound recognition, a proposed MTV series about her and rumors of her, er, altered state while filming. “I was as on Benedryl, my allergy medication, so I was really out of it anyway,” she says. “Thatís why my eyes were all red, because I have seasonal allergies. But no one believes me.” The long-awaited interview is so darn popular that Wired even wrote a story about it.