Archive - Feb 2, 2004 | Digital Media Wire

File-Sharing Networks, Entertainment Firms Back in Court on Tuesday

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 2, 2004 - 2:01am.

Pasadena, Calif. -- Operators of file-sharing networks Grokster and Morpheus will return to court Tuesday to face an appeal of the landmark ruling that said the companies and their software are not liable for copyright infringement. The April 2003 ruling, from U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson, prompted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to begin its legal campaign against individual file-swappers, which has so far targeted 914 individuals. Over 20 movie studios, record labels, music publishers and others have challenged Wilson's ruling with an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif. "The services are profiting to the tune of millions of dollars from music that is written by songwriters who are not getting a dime from the use of their music on these services. We believe that the (lower court's) conclusion is fundamentally unjust," said National Music Publishers Association attorney Cary Ramos. "[This case] is about whether copyright owners have the right to veto new technologies and stifle innovation," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann, who is representing Morpheus operator Streamcast Networks. "Innovators have a great deal at stake in the conflict over peer-to-peer (P2P) software." Judges will hear 30-minute arguments from both sides on Tuesday, but are not expected to deliver a ruling for several months.

tags: Law | File-Sharing | Back |

Germany's Bertelsmann Flouts "Baseless" $260 Million Fine

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 2, 2004 - 2:00am.

Berlin -- Bertelsmann on Monday responded defiantly to a U.S. court's recent decision that the media group must pay two former executives 209 million euro ($260 million). A California court awarded Jan Henric Buettner and Andreas von Blottnitz more than 104 million euro ($130 million) apiece for having helped set up AOL Europe. Their lawyers argued that the pair had received a fair share for their stake in the online provider, which Bertelsmann sold in 2000 for nearly $7 billion. Bertelsmann legal director Ulrich Koch characterized the decision as "baseless" and "built on lies" and vowed to challenge it.

tags: Bertelsmann | Germany | Baseless |

Major Label EMI Licenses Songs to Wippit Legit P2P Service

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 2, 2004 - 1:59am.

Cannes, France -- Wippit, a U.K.-based peer-to-peer file-sharing service that licenses songs from record labels before making them available to users, has licensed major record label EMI's recordings for the service, the Associated Press reported. Wippit CEO Paul Myers told AP that most of EMI's catalog will debut on Wippit in February, joining songs that the file-sharing service has licensed from over 200 independent record labels. For an annual fee of about $50, Wippit allows users to download songs that have been licensed to the service from one another's computers. Additionally, Myers told AP, Wippit is in talks with the four other major labels, and hopes two of them will provide licenses to Wippit in February.

tags: EMI | Musics | P2P Service |

TiVo Announces $50 Price Cut on Digital Video Recorders

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 2, 2004 - 1:58am.

San Jose, Calif. -- TiVo, a maker of digital video recorders and provider of associated services, announced on Monday a $50 price cut for its devices that will lower the cost of its Series 2 DVRs to $199 for a 40-hour model and $299 for an 80-hour model. Separately, the company said that the "wardrobe malfunction" incident at the conclusion of the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday evening accounted for "the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured," as "viewership spiked up to 180 percent as hundreds of thousands of households used TiVo … to view the incident again and again."

tags: TiVo | Digital Video | Recorders |

IT Companies Worst Software Pirates in U.K., Report Says

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 2, 2004 - 1:57am.

London -- According to a new study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), IT companies are ironically England's worst offenders when it comes to software piracy. The BSA said that out of the 50 settlements made with the group last year, 12 were made by IT firms, nearly a quarter of the total. The BSA's Northern Europe manager Siobhan Carroll said that the alliance was "particularly unhappy to see the lack of diligence within the IT sector", adding that, of all sectors, the IT sector should realise the "effect of piracy on software innovation and the development of the IT sector as a whole".