Leonardo Chiariglione and Thomas Curran, two of the digital media industry's top technical wizards, have formed a not-for-profit industry group called the Digital Media Project (DMP) whose goal is the development of an industry standard that will enable the interoperability of different digital rights management (DRM) schemes. The group wants to prevent the kind of incompatibility that is already emerging in digital media, such as that between iTunes and non-iPod-based handheld media players. For now at least, consumers can't download iTunes tracks to any media players except iPods.

Some speculate that it's already too late to bring standards and compatibility to file formats and DRM schemes in the digital media industry. Upstart Apple has started down its own path by using the FairPlay DRM. Neither Microsoft nor Sony, two potential digital media giants, use the same technology as Apple. Apple has, at least at this point in time, become the standards setter by virtue of its iTunes' dominance of the online music business. That leads to the current situation where downloaded tracks from iTunes can only be played on Apple's iPods and the upcoming iPods that Hewlett-Packard is making under an Apple license. HP has much larger and deeper global distribution channels, so if it puts marketing money and muscle behind its so-called "h-Pod," then the DRM that Apple uses could become the industry standard. Microsoft's DOS operating system became the industry standard for microprocessors when IBM decided to use it on its first PCs. It is possible that HP's worldwide distribution reach could do the same for Apple and the iPod. Many underestimate HP's marketing might in the retail channels where it successfully sells low-priced color printers and digital cameras.

The problem for the other makers of portable media players is the difficulty users have in getting an iTunes track onto their Creative or Samsung portable player. It's an involved, multi-step process:

1. Download iTunes tracks.

2. Burn them to a CD.

3. Use an MP3-capable PC media player to convert the files off the CD back to the PC in MP3 or WMA format. Microsoft's own Window Media Player, which is on many millions of PCs, won't convert files to the MP3 format unless a separately obtained plug-in is used.

The choice for manufacturers who seek a competitive edge over each other would be to pay a royalty to Apple or its suppliers. And manufacturers don't like to do that. It puts them in a similar position to PC makers who pay Microsoft the "Windows tax" - an amount that has allowed Microsoft to accumulate the largest cash hoard in business history.

Most consumers in the 21st century do not have the time, patience or focus to go through such a complex and time-wasting procedure. The easy solution for them is to spend a few bucks more and get an iPod. After all, they reason, it's the best seller - it's cool.

Along comes Italy's leading digital media engineer Leonardo Chiariglione who ran Telecom Italia's research operations for many years and founded the Motion Pictures Experts Group, which brought a sane and high-quality standard to the movie folks. Chiariglione teamed up with Curran, whose credentials include a stint as Bertelsmann CTO to found DMP, which has taken on the task of helping the digital media industry to resolve the issues of incompatible protection schemes it is already saddled with.

DMP has asked digital media companies and organizations to submit technical papers that would lead to interoperable DRM. The new outfit recognizes that different business models call for different DRM schemes. The goal is to have the ability for different music and video players - yes, handheld video will soon be here in large quantities - to play the same digital media file even though the file has multiple DRM schemes.

DMP says that the industry is in a "dangerous" stalemate and the situation "degenerates by the day" because of the uncontrolled spread of different DRM methods. It calls for the removal of this "major disabling factor" of the digital media industry. DMP says that the only feasible solution is to deploy technologies that are designed to interoperate, not necessarily a single DRM that attempts to meet every company's expectation. "Interoperable" is the word that DMP uses most often to describe its goal for DRM.

Another point that DMP stresses is that proprietary and closed DRM schemes prevent an open standard that any gear maker can use. With everyone "doing their own thing," a single technology standard that multiple makers can use to produce gear results in lower equipment costs for consumers and, in turn, may result in wider use. DMP argues that "only a competitive market of end-user devices from different manufacturers, capable of consuming protected content which end users can buy in the shops, can provide opportunities for sustainable Digital Media business that is respectful of rights holders and satisfactory to end users. Such an open end-user device market can kick off a phenomenon of a size comparable to the IBM PCs."

DMP co-founder Thomas Curran told a meeting of the group in Osaka this week that the digital media market is in a gridlock, lacking both a moral and technological framework and without a strategy for the future. DMP's appeal is to companies, particularly in Japan, South Korea and China, who are dying to make an iPod clone. Curran told them, "Standards governing the interoperability of digital rights management technologies are essential." And essential they are to getting the kind of heavy-breathing competition from multiple companies that brings down what consumers pay for gear and make products so affordable that nearly every consumer can afford one, as has happened with CD and DVD players. Apple this week reduced the price of iPods when it introduced new models, but there are still a number of CE makers who salivate at the thought of making hundreds of thousands of an iPod knock-off.

DMP's initiatives face the high hurdle of vested interests that want to lock consumers in to their own brands - the razor and blades marketing ploy. Interoperability would eliminate that. Apple, Sony and Microsoft seem to be the three companies with the most interest in preventing interoperability. None of the three have joined DMP. Sony has its own developed DRM, plus it has the DRM technology it developed when it and Philips purchased InterTrust. Its history includes its push for its own Betamax videocassette technology to become the standard rather than the VHS standard that the other consumer electronics makers wanted. Apple, having sold a hundred million music tracks and cleaning up with iPod, wants to keep its own proprietary technology from interoperating with other gear. iPod may not be the best media player forever, but as long as it's difficult for iTunes users to use other media players, it will keep its advantage.
Concerns about Rights Legislation and Digital Media Levies
DMP's first hardware focus is portable media players, but its reach includes all digital media devices. It even sees a place for its influence in developing the legislation that will govern future content rights in the digital media era. It is, for example, concerned about legislation, such as that in Germany, which levies a tax on the purchase price of any device capable of duplicating digital media or on the physical media such as the CD or DVD. The levy is applied even if the consumer intends only to make a legal copy, such as a backup in their own home for their use. Other countries in Europe as well as Canada have followed Germany's lead. DMP says that now the "levies are claimed on PCs, multifunctional devices, mobile phones with MP3 functions, some types of set-top boxes with integrated recording capacity and scanners; on CD recordable, DVD recordable and various types of solid state memory, and even on the Internet." It points out the contradiction in making non-infringing consumers pay a fee while massive abusers pay only a token. The RIAA this week extracted only a few million dollars out of P2P network iMesh, for example, even though iMesh made possible the illegal copying of millions of copyrighted music tracks. DMP is concerned that the unearned levies will result in the lessening of copyrights owners' "motivations to invest in alternative solutions like DRM because levies provide a temporary relief." It also points out that "legal country-based restrictions to the flow of media content and the lack of uniformity of taxation across different countries" still exist.

DMP forecasts that once started, levies will keep getting bigger. Levies can also be used to subsidize copyright owners that have not necessarily earned them. And as with any other tax, what starts out as a "dedicated" tax can soon be used for other purposes. A recent example of that is the billions that the states extracted from the tobacco companies to be used, supposedly, for the healthcare that would be needed by smokers. Instead, they've spent it on all kinds on non-healthcare items. Some states have even started borrowing money against future tobacco company payments to use for the day-to-day operation of the state government. "Dedicated levies on digital media products can go the same ways - up and out - up in cost and out to other uses than their original purpose, neither of which benefits the industry," the DMP says.

Digital Media Project Members

British Telecommunications UK

Chiariglione.org IT

Enterprise of the Future US

École Polytechnique

Fédérale de Lausanne CH

MPEG LA US

Multimedia Architectures JP

Sociedad Digital Autores y Editores ES

Telecom Italia IT

University of Tokyo JP

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute KR

DivXNetworks US

Pixtree Technologies KR

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd JP

INESC Porto PT

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation JP

BearingPoint Consulting US

Institute of Computing Technology,

Chinese Academy of Science CN

Victor Company of Japan Ltd

Back to Headlines

Archos, the French company specializing in "portable peripherals" such as MP3 players, mobile storage devices and accessories, has unveiled its latest family of pocket-sized digital video recorders.

The Pocket Video Recorder AV400 is the first line of portable DVRs that make it easy for consumers to take whatever video content they want with them, wherever they go. Not only can the AV400 connect to a PC or Mac to download files, but it can also download video content directly from a TV, VCR or cable/satellite set-top receiver.

The unit comes with a TV Cradle docking station that lets users record TV content. After connecting the Cradle to the television set for the first time, for subsequent uses, they'll simply have to dock the thing to record or view stored files. The unit has a Recording Scheduler that controls the VCR or set-top tuner to adjust the channel automatically and record based on the chosen schedule.

The Archos 20GB AV420

Besides TV and video viewing and recording, the AV400 lets consumers view photos, listen to and record music, and transfer photos from a digital camera and data files from a PC.

With weights ranging from 10 ounces-11 ounces depending on the size of the hard drive, the AV400 boasts a 3.5 inch-3.8 inch LCD depending on the model. It's available with disks ranging from 20GB-100GB and has an external speaker for listening to music and video without headphones and a built-in Compact Flash reader to transfer photos directly from digital cameras.

"While companies are focusing on music-only players or developing first-generation portable video players, Archos is steps ahead with pocket video devices that put all a consumer's personal media in their pocket," said Archos CEO Henri Crohas. "With our new line of products later this year, we plan to provide consumers a way to secure their digital content and are engaged with Microsoft to support its new version of Windows Media Digital Rights Management, when it is broadly available. Archos' AV line of products is very robust in terms of both meeting consumer expectations and addressing industry trends, which ensures Archos remains at the forefront of this growing portable video player market."

The new AV400 lets users:

- Record and play back video. The gizmo can hold 80-400 hours of TV programs and video content or 40-200 full-length movies in MPEG-4 video at DVD quality with CD-quality stereo sound. Listen with a built-in speaker or headphones.

- Schedule video recording. Users can program recordings via the Recording Scheduler that controls the VCR or set-top box tuner to schedule and automatically record TV programming.

- Enjoy a large color LCD screen. The unit features a high-resolution 3.5-inch or 3.8-inch color screen. Content can also be watched on a TV, PC or other video output device.

- Record and listen to music. The newly designed music player in the AV400 lets users record 300-1,500 hours of music with playback in MP3, WMA or WAV formats.

- Store and manage photos. View hundreds of thousands of stored JPEG photos, even as a slideshow. Transfer photos from computers using the USB 2.0 port or from memory cards using the built-in Compact Flash reader.

- Record and listen to the radio. The FM Radio and optional Remote Control transforms the player into an FM radio with full MP3 voice recording. Archos' patented retro-recording system saves a whole song from the start, even if it has already started playing.

- Take documents and files on the road. When plugged into a PC's USB 2.0 port, the AV400 can be used as an additional disk drive and can store any computer file.

To make the AV400 truly their own, users can personalize the screen background, edit movies, organize photos as thumbnails and manually set a bookmark during a movie or video to return to the same place.

The first members of the AV400 series, the 20GB and 80GB models, are currently available for $550 and $800 respectively.    Back to Headlines

Microsoft has set up a new group to strike up partnerships with the media and entertainment industries.

The new Media/Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group is supposed to drive Redmond's strategies for converging home entertainment technologies, personal computing and media, particularly with respect to business development, technical and IP policies and industry standards.

Microsoft has named Blair Westlake head of the new group. Westlake was previously a media consultant and before that chaired the Universal Television & Networks Group, which is part of the Universal Studios empire owned by the Seagram Company Ltd.

Westlake's mandate is to negotiate business alliances and ensure that Windows-powered devices can be used to deliver high-quality audio/visual digital information, entertainment, news and sports to the home.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to specify the size of the new group but said its "influence will be company-wide."

That part of the existing Windows Digital Media Division's business development group that's been tickling out strategic relationships with media and entertainment will move over to the new group.

Microsoft's media and entertainment strategy rests on turning the PC into a residential digital entertainment hub. As part of that goal, the company already offers Windows XP Media Center Edition - XP PCs enhanced for home entertainment - through a bunch of partners like Dell, HP, Gateway and Sony and is planning to get system builders selling the thing too.

Lieberfarb & Associates, a media, entertainment and technology consulting firm started by the former president of Warner Home Video, a subsidiary of Warner Bros Entertainment, is advising Microsoft on its strategy and partnerships.    Back to Headlines

Microsoft's formation of a group dedicated to digital media products indicates how strongly it believes that the industry will grow into a major market. The formation of similar dedicated industry sector groups in the past included the server operation, which now accounts for 25% of Microsoft's total revenues. This publication contends that the digital media industry, including the servers that will deliver entertainment to tens of millions of homes and the PCs in the home that control the home's entertainment network, will ultimately be larger than the commercial server business.

An e-mail interview with a Microsoft spokesperson regarding the new group follows:

The Online Reporter: How many people will the new Media/Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group have?

Microsoft: It is too early to speculate on the actual size of this group, but its influence will be company wide.

TOR: What are the existing MSFT operations that fall under the new group?

Microsoft: The main thing to note is that the Media/Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group is not a product group; rather it provides an internal inflection point with which to improve the ability of internal Microsoft groups (Windows, MSN, MSTV, Xbox, etc) to strategically partner with the media/entertainment, CE and PC industries on convergence experiences.

TOR: How does the new group relate to the existing Home & Entertainment operations?

Microsoft: The portion of the existing Windows Digital Media Division business development group that has been engaged in strategic relationship development with the M&E industry will move over to the new M/E&TCG group, but otherwise, the functions of other product groups are not affected.

Microsoft formed the new group to ensure effective business relationships, technologies, and policies are in place to enable the delivery of experiences that consumers want most.

TOR: What is the nature of Microsoft's relationship with Leiberfarb & Associates?

Microsoft: Lieberfarb & Associates is advising Microsoft in the development of media and entertainment industries strategy, partnerships and alliances. Warren Lieberfarb's expertise is utilized with respect to next-generation physical media and the development of policies and tactics for developing utilization of Windows Media Player and related technologies, including MCE and PMC, for distribution of high value information and entertainment content via new broadband Internet business scenarios and models.

TOR: How has the relationship changed because the press release talks of "expanded strategic relationship"?

Microsoft: It hasn't. It was more to clarify that Lieberfarb would be working closely with Westlake's group to accomplish Microsoft's strategic objectives.    Back to Headlines

Sony will have a working version of the PlayStation 3 in time for next May's E3 games show in Los Angeles in the US, the company said.

The head of the games business for Sony, the legendary Ken Kutaragi attributed with designing the PlayStation, told a conference that development was on schedule, contrary to reports he had read in the press.

But just because it will show in May 2005 doesn't mean that it will be ready to ship then, and typically shipment of product lags this type of demonstration by at least six months and up to a year.

Sony told Reuters that the PS3 launch is likely to be much the same as the PS2 launch, coming to market a year after first demonstrations, with Japan perhaps taking the device a full three to six months ahead of the US and Europe.

E3 should produce some fireworks then, with Nintendo promising the replacement for its GameCube. Microsoft now has to either accept that it is behind, which it has steadfastly denied, or deliver to the same timeframe.

This story appeared in our sister publication Faultline, published by Rethink Research. E-mail rhett@riderresearch.com for subscription information and rates.    Back to Headlines

Hundreds of thousands of homes in first world countries are making high-speed connections to the Internet and networking the home in order to have on-demand entertainment and information. With the exception of the nascent online music and the content-deprived online movie services, there isn't a lot of content for the digital home's entertainment network, particularly video material. The traditional media companies - the movie studios and TV production houses - have by-and-large been slow to make content specifically for Internet delivery.

The most likely "first movers" in Internet video content are likely to be start-ups with Internet video as their main focus. The price of the gear needed to make professional-looking video has declined dramatically in recent years as computer technology has driven prices down.

Now here comes a new education and direct-buying symposium series that will teach the emerging generation of Internet content providers how to make the right stuff. Called the Digital Lifestyle Expo, the two-day seminars will show educators and the public how to "harness the latest in digital technology."

Seminar examples are:

- "Digital Story Telling: Create Interactive CD/DVDs Like the Pros with eZediaMX for Distribution of Projects!" by Darin Reeves

- "Break Shoot Movies Like a Pro" by David Barrett

- "Digital Story Telling: From Storyboarding to Web Publishing!" by Darin Reeves

- "Shoot Movies Like a Pro" by David Barrett

2004 Schedule:
Long Beach, California, August 14-15

New York City, September 25-26

Atlanta, November 13-14

DLexpo, as it's called, is a "convergence program that bridges the gap between low-cost professional equipment and solutions, and individuals who never before could afford to utilize this type of equipment." Attendees will be introduced to video editing, audio production, digital photography, Web design and the all-important migration to HDTV. It will offer special pricing and seminars for schools and educators, in addition to the general public.

Instructors:

- David Pogue - New York Times technology editor and Macintosh expert

- Andy Ihnatko - Chicago Sun-Times columnist

- Hall Davidson - KOCE TV technology editor

- David Barrett - video producer and filmmaker

- Bill LaCommare - creator of Movieworks

- Colin Smith - founder of Photoshop Cafe

- Lynne LaMaster - certified Adobe Trainer

- Cameron Barrett - video producer and editor

- Josh Mellicker - owner, DVcreators.net

- Mike Lawrence - technology expert, Orange County Department of Education

Symposium presentations are in the morning and workshops in the afternoons with a hands-on expo running throughout. A special three-and-a-half-hour workshop on filmmaking with Final Cut Pro HD is open to the paying public. Josh Mellicker of DVcreators.net will lead the workshop. The special workshops for schools and educators are produced in conjunction with the Orange County Department of Education.

"This is a program that cuts through the noise of a thousand companies waving their hands in the air and is what attracted me to the DLexpo," said Cameron Barrett, video producer and former university professor who is organizing the educational offerings for DLexpo. "It's not another trade show with workshops going on in side rooms. It's a unique approach to getting the general public, already hungry for information and education about these tools, to find what they've been looking for."

Featured companies and products include:

- Apple iLife, Final Cut Express and Final Cut HD

- Adobe Photoshop Elements, Photoshop and GoLive CS

- Panasonic DV and 24p DV cameras

- Nikon digital cameras

- Movieworks multimedia software

- Hoodman DV accessories

- Epson printers

- eZedia interactive authoring software

- Samsung HDTV displays

The Digital Lifestyle Expo's goal is to bring together educators, consumers and experts who want to embrace the latest in digital technology, including video, photography, music, the Internet, wireless technologies and home entertainment. It says it will award thousands of dollars in prizes at each event, including editing hardware and software, an Apple iPod and other digital goodies. Potential buyers can meet the manufacturers and test the products.

California Event Management will run the Expos. It also produces and manages other shows such as the Gutenberg Festival and Clear Channel Radio's Yeah Baby!

More info is at www.dlexpo.com.    Back to Headlines

America Online continues to quietly push the Internet into new entertainment areas. It is re-making itself into a digital entertainment portal so that it will rely less and less on its declining dial-up business for revenue. Its forays show the unrealized potential that the Web has for becoming a, perhaps "the," dominant entertainment and information delivery mechanism. In addition to "bought-in" content, AOL is also developing its own.

The company has now proclaimed its Internet "radio" programming for children a success. The four-hour daily program called Radio KOL (Kids Online) is broadcast live from 3 pm to 7 pm Eastern time, and then repeated the following day. Available only to subscribers of AOL, it is heard by one million six-to-14 year olds each week. Host Rick Adams blends a mix of music, games, guest interviews and listeners' instant messenger and e-mail feedback. Adams told the Washington Post, "I'm astounded at American kids. They're very open, intelligent, and funny."    Back to Headlines

Cable TV provider RCN has launched its Digital Video Recorder (DVR) service that will allow its customers to record and pause, rewind and fast-forward TV programs so they can watch on their own schedule. RCN will use a set-top box with built in DVR features such as a hard disk that stores recorded programs. It will hold only 50 hours of video, at the low end of what consumers expect considering what's available at reasonable prices from other DVR providers. RCN DVRs are currently available in Boston and New York, and are expected to be available in all RCN markets by October 1.

RCN provides bundled phone, cable and high-speed Internet services delivered over its own fiber-optic local network to consumers in the most densely populated markets in the US: Boston, New York, Eastern Pennsylvania including Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The company's DVR set-top box will record HDTV if connected to a high-definition TV, but its limited recording capacity becomes a shortcoming as it will only record only seven to 10 hours of HDTV. RCN charges its subscribers $11.95 a month to add the DVR.

Like TiVo, an interactive TV program guide allows users to select easily the programs they want to record including all of the episodes of a particular TV series.

All of the cable TV services are fighting against the inroads that DirecTV is making on their customers. DirecTV offers $99 DVRs coupled with no additional usage fee for its premium subscribers as a very effective marketing ploy against the cable TV providers.    Back to Headlines

Who would have thought that three years ago when Apple Computer was busy building its first-generation portable digital music player for the fledgling market that the iPod would make the cover of Newsweek?

The July 26 issue features a picture of Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the seemingly ubiquitous iPod with the Cartesian quip: "iPod, therefore iAm."

Although Apple didn't start the digital music player revolution, it now owns roughly half the market. More than three million of the pricey white gizmos have been sold since they debuted in October 2001.

Newsweek senior editor Steven Levy notes that the iPod has appeared on TV shows and in movies and music videos. Apparently it's cropping up more often than it should. Levy says in the article: "It has been seen on innumerable TV shows, movies and music videos, so much so that Fox TV recently informed Josh Schwartz, producer of its hit series 'The OC,' that future depictions of music players would have to forgo the telltale white ear buds. Schwartz, himself a 27-year-old who still hasn't recovered from the shock of having his unit stolen from his BMW, was outraged. 'It's what our audience uses and what our characters would use,' he says."

Levy says Apple execs consider the competition so far to be "lame," but cautions that someday a rival might catch up to the iPod's popularity. Sony, whose Walkman defined the old-style portable music player market years ago, is finally coming out with a new line of digital players this summer. Sony America CEO Howard Stringer told Newsweek, "We feel that the experience is as good as Apple's, and we have the Walkman brand, which has sold 200 million units. We're in the game." Or so Sony hopes.

With Apple leading a play that should, by all rights, belong to Sony, it's no wonder the gloves are coming off. Levy says that, "To the delight of Apple (and the chagrin of Sony), the no-brainer description of the iPod is 'the Walkman of the 21st century.' And just as the Walkman changed the landscape of music and the soundscape of our lives, the iPod and the iTunes store are making their mark on the way we handle our music, and even the way we listen to it."

The article concludes that, despite all the growing competition, "At the moment, the iPod is the category. And everything points to a humongous Christmas season for the iPod. The introduction of the new iPods this week extends the company's technology lead. If Apple, as promised, manages to get enough drives to satisfy the demand, the mini iPod may achieve the ubiquity of its wide-bodied companion. And later this summer, when computer giant HP begins selling a co-branded version of the iPod, consumers will be able to get iPods in thousands of additional retail stores."    Back to Headlines

FCC chairman Michael Powell has taken some of the credit for the Wi-Fi boom in the US by claiming it was caused by more relaxed approaches to spectrum licensing.

Powell said the explosion of wireless usage was an entirely unplanned offshoot of federal decisions not to bother with certain chunks of the public airwaves, notably the 800 band.

"The government threw out that unlicensed bandwidth because they thought it was garbage; they thought it was the domain of baby monitors, microwave ovens and little remote control cars," he said, adding that the resulting Wi-Fi boom "is teaching the government a lot about what you can do with a chunk of spectrum where we aren't the arbiter of what can be done."

He warned that powerful interests meant that the government was unlikely to be able to be as laissez-faire over regulation of emerging Voice-over-IP services.

The above story is from Rethink Research's Wi-Fi Watch, published weekly and focused on business and technology developments in the Wi-Fi industry. Subscription info from rhett@riderresearch.com    Back to Headlines

***********************************

Streaming Media West Conference & Exhibition

October 26-28, 2004

Santa Clara Convention Center
Santa Clara, California

(800) 300-9868 [(609) 654-6266]

info@streamingmedia.com

www.streamingmedia.com/west

***********************************

Video codec maven DivXNetworks is working with the Italian communications house Wind to launch a secure, DivX-powered video-on-demand service through Wind's Libero.it Web portal.

Powered by the DivX Open Video System, an end-to-end solution for securely delivering DVD-quality video-over-IP networks, the new service will offer full-length premium DivX-encoded video. Subscribers will download the flicks and watch them on a PC. The service uses "progressive download" technology that's supposed to let users start watching the film in full-screen mode minutes after the download begins.

The Wind VOD service is said to provide users with high-quality video files that are seven-10 times smaller than DVD files and are protected by digital rights management.

Besides downloading the video to a PC, users will soon be able to watch them on the various DivX-certified consumer electronics players scheduled to hit market this year.    Back to Headlines

Online interactive community developer American IDC has inked a joint venture deal with wireless ISP RoamZone to create a service that lets users at any RoamZone hotspot access classic Hollywood movies.

Under the agreement, American IDC, the exclusive licensee for movie download service ETV, will deliver the movies over RoamZone's networks to thousands of hotspots around the world bundled with RoamZone's other services. ETV digitizes classic films that are in the public domain and lets visitors to its Web site download them for as little as 99 cents each.

According to American IDC CEO Gordon Lee, "This new venture will give a dynamic expansion of our global plan to bring our Hollywood movie content to millions of viewers around the globe, as RoamZone bundles its services to provide Internet TV, video and music downloading daily with ad insertion for additional revenue for all parties."    Back to Headlines

Virgin Pulse, a consumer electronics outfit set up in 2002 by The Virgin Group and retail chain Target, has changed its name, location and management and is setting out this time with "an invigorated focus on personal, portable, simple and connected digital products for consumers."

The newly dubbed Virgin Electronics left New York for Silicon Valley to be closer to the pulse of digital music. Headed by CEO Greg Woock, a former exec with Handspring and Creative Labs, the company will initially focus on digital music products, the first being a tiny MP3 player.

Virgin's Wearable 128MB MP3 Player
Weighs Half an Ounce

The Wearable MP3 Player - yes, that's its official name - is the size of a silver dollar, weighs half an ounce and is meant to be worn around the neck, arm, waist or wherever the user wants. The $100 gizmo has 128MB of memory and holds roughly 40 songs.

According to Virgin Electronics senior VP of marketing Joe Sipher, "The Wearable MP3 Player is exactly the type of product that you'd expect from a brand like Virgin. When we called it the Wearable 128MB MP3 player, we meant wearable. The product is so small and light it can be worn comfortably around the neck, arm - anywhere. No pockets required."

Consumers just have to plug the thing into the USB port on their PC or Mac to load songs and charge it at the same time over the same cable. It has a "simple" user interface; only two buttons are needed to turn the player off and on, skip songs and control the volume.

The Wearable MP3 player is currently available at Target stores across the US.

Virgin Electronics expects to release other digital music products this fall.    Back to Headlines

Apple took the wraps off the next-generation iPods this week, addressing the two major sales deterrents - battery life and price.

The fourth generation of the iconic portable digital music player now claims to offer up to 12 hours of battery life per charge, up from the eight in the older models. The new iPods also feature Apple's patent-pending Click Wheel introduced with the iPod mini. The Click Wheel combines a touch-sensitive scrolling wheel with five push buttons for one-handed navigation. For users who want to jazz things up a bit, the company added a "Shuffle Songs" command in the main menu that randomly plays through the whole music library.

Now, back to that price cut - Apple shaved 100 bucks off the price of the 20GB and 40GB models. A 20GB iPod, which holds upwards of 5,000 songs, now goes for $299 and the 40GB model, which can store 10,000 tracks, now sells for $399, putting both versions in line with competitive prices. Apple has given up on the 15GB model that used to sell for $299, and went with the two larger models as well as the 4GB iPod mini that sells for $249.

The new 4gen gadget is also smaller and sleeker than its predecessor.

It features the Apple Auto-Sync technology that automatically downloads an entire music library and keeps it up-to-date whenever the iPod is plugged into a Mac or PC using FireWire or USB. Users can also charge the new iPods via FireWire or USB as well.

The iPod requires Mac OS X version 10.1.5 or later or Windows 2000 or XP. Both models come with earbud headphones, a FireWire cable, a USB cable and a CD with iTunes 4.6 for Mac and Windows. The 40GB model also includes an iPod dock. Users who want a dock for the 20GB model can buy one for $39.

Hewlett-Packard, which will be the first company to offer its own version of the iPod, was apparently waiting for the new models to come out before getting busy. HP CEO Carly Fiorina said the company "decided to wait for this amazing new fourth-generation iPod, as it will offer our customers an even better experience." HP's iPod is due in September.    Back to Headlines

Tokyo-based Turbolinux claims to be the first Linux company to bundle a legal DVD player with its operating system.

It's put the PowerDVD player software from CyberLink in the new Turbolinux 10F, which it calls a multimedia version of its Turbolinux 10 Desktop cut. The player is supposedly worthy of Windows or Apple. Turbolinux says it's got software that grants legitimate DVD access to its users.

The DVD widgetry's got Dolby Digital sound certification and includes a Content Scrambling System (CSS) decoder for copyright protection.

Turbo says CyberLink got the approval of the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) to include legal decryption algorithms for Linux users.

The PowerDVD platform for Linux supports full menu navigation and includes a deal subtitle feature so users can display two different languages on-screen simultaneously.

CyberLink also has some software called PowerCinema Linux that's slated to be added to 10F up its sleeve. The software lets users listen to and organize music tracks, play back video files and access online content like Windows users can do.

Outside Japan, Turbolinux 10F is priced at $69, $39 if it's an upgrade from 10D.    Back to Headlines

Comcast, which with 5.7 million broadband users is the largest US broadband provider, has signed a deal with the Walt Disney Company to provide news and Disney content for children - and give its broadband service a competitive edge. Comcast and regional telco SBC have been the most aggressive US broadband providers when it comes to adding content to their broadband offerings. SBC offers Yahoo content and services. Comcast has been offering "The Fan" broadband multimedia player and Scripps Networks content from such cable channels as Home & Garden Television (HGTV), Food Network, DIY - Do It Yourself Network and Fine Living.

The agreement makes ABC News on-demand video and ABC News Live, 24/7 live streaming news programming, immediately and easily accessible to Comcast's broadband subscribers at no additional cost.

Later this year Comcast will launch an online Kids Channel for which Disney will provide Disney Connection, its broadband entertainment destination for kids ages three-11. It will be the first US launch of Disney Connection, although the destination is already available outside the states. Disney Connection includes frequently updated games, activities and videos from Disney, as well as select access to premium offerings such as Disney's Blast and Toontown Online. Disney says the Disney Connection basic and premium content will evolve over time. A premium, interactive educational service for preschoolers is under development now and is expected to launch in 2005.

It's an important offering for the cable giant - 40% of Comcast broadband households have kids.

Earlier this year, Comcast tried to buy Disney specifically because it believed that Disney content was exactly what it needed to help it sell broadband and maintain profit margins. The telcos have been cutting their broadband rates in order to compete with the cable companies and Comcast believes that attractive, name brand content such as that from Disney will help it sign-up new subscribers and keep its broadband prices high. As broadband service becomes more commodity-like, it is content and speed that will differentiate competitors.

Disney's ABC News already has existing deals with several of the regional telcos.

Last month Comcast added financial video content from CNBC/Dow Jones Business Video to The Fan. It also added to its online Sports Channel video offering with content from FOXSports.com including news, scores and standings from all major sports and leagues including MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, golf and major college sports. Comcast also added Major League Baseball content from MLB.com, with highlights available on The Fan, including the Daily Highlight, which showcases the previous day's top plays. Comcast's broadband subscribers can also receive discounts on MLB.com's All-Access service.    Back to Headlines

SBC Communications, the second largest regional phone company in the US, this week announced deals to expand its Wi-Fi network with Sprint and Telemex, Mexico's largest phone company. SBC also did deals with Concourse Communications and Wise Technologies, two smaller companies that operate hotspots in about 300 Caribou Coffee shops. SBC gains access to each of the companies' Wi-Fi networks and grants each of them the rights to use the SBC Wi-Fi network - all by year-end. SBC already has about 2,000 Wi-Fi locations and previously announced plans to have 20,000 by the end of 2006.

Market researcher Gartner forecasts that the number of US Wi-Fi hotspots will double by year-end to 130,000. Industry analysts doubt, however, that Wi-Fi subscriptions can become profitable because many public locations - from coffee shops to parks - offer access to free hotspots.
The DSL Connection
SBC is like the other local phone companies in looking to replace the revenue decline in its local phone service business. The cable TV companies have seized the initiative and two thirds of the broadband market, which should be the hottest growth service for the telcos. One major advantage that the cable TV companies have is that they can bundle TV programming together with their broadband service and their new local and long distance phone services - the so-called "triple play." Lacking TV content, SBC intends to bundle Wi-Fi access with its broadband and phone service. SBC currently sells daily and monthly access to its Wi-Fi hotspots and says that by year-end it will offer a discounted Wi-Fi service as part of a bundle with its broadband product.

SBC has been the most aggressive builder of Wi-Fi access points such as equipping McDonald's fast food locations and UPS' new network of retail stores. It is also the most aggressive and innovative broadband marketer of any of the large regional telcos. It is unique in the US in offering its broadband coupled with a selection of Yahoo content and services.    Back to Headlines

Regional telco SBC Communications ended the second quarter with 4.3 million digital subscriber lines for broadband Internet access, having added 315,000 in the June quarter. SBC and the other phone companies have seen a lengthy and continuing decline in the number of local phone lines. It lost another 558,000 residential access lines in Q2. Customers are canceling the second line that was used for a dial-up connection and even canceling the primary line, opting instead for a cell phones. The kids no longer want a phone in their bedroom; they want one in their pocket or purse.

The phone companies are beginning to face an even bigger challenge for local phone service as the cablecos start rolling out Internet telephony (VoIP), which costs significantly less than traditional local phone service. Having control of TV content, the cable TV services are able to offer bundles at attractive prices that include local and long distance service, basic TV programs and broadband.

SBC is second in size only to Verizon as a regional local phone company. It reported a 16% decline in quarterly profits because of costs related to a labor dispute and its settlement. However, SBC chairman and CEO Edward Whitacre said the company's revenue from long distance and data service such as DSL broadband was the strongest in several quarters. Long distance revenue grew 33% as SBC said it nearly doubled its long-distance lines from a year earlier, which helped it post a 1.1% increase in wireline revenue - long distance, voice and data - for the first time in three years.

SBC sells broadband with a package of Yahoo content and services called SBC Yahoo. SBC and BellSouth each own half of mobile phone service provider Cingular, which is in the process of buying AT&T Wireless for $41 billion.    Back to Headlines

There are about 30 million American homes that won't be able to get either DSL or cable modem broadband for the foreseeable future because broadband-capable wires don't run past them, says Gary Betty, president and CEO of number-two dial-up provider EarthLink.

Unlike the UK, where British Telecom has promised to make broadband available to every home that has phone service, no such commitment has been made in the US, neither by the government nor any broadband service. BT also says it will bring Internet capabilities to every phone in the country. The only companies that appear capable or willing of providing high-speed Internet to every home in the US, especially those that can't now get it, would to be the satellite companies. Hmmm. Perhaps that's what Rupert Murdoch has in mind for his Direcway and its Spaceway satellite that is supposed to launch next year. There is also the possibility, however remote, that the electrical utilities will get their act together and offer broadband over their power lines.    Back to Headlines

Dave Burstein's DSL Prime newsletter is a must-read for those who work full-time in broadband. For those who don't, but want a bird's eye view of what he sees, here goes:

- A phone network the size of Verizon is built anew in China every year.

- BellSouth has installed about a million lines of optic fiber cable to the curb, passing about 180,000 homes. But, it has limited the speed of broadband into the home 10 Mbps, about the same as office networks used to be. Burstein assumes that the company did not want its other subscribers to complain about their relative lower speeds. BellSouth says that it will eventually increase the speed from the curb to the home "as bandwidth requirements increase." Burstein says that it's time for BellSouth to step-up by delivering great service to its customers.

- On the telcos' attempts to control what content is delivered over broadband to the home: "Mike Powell knows that BellSouth's limited selection of video isn't what the Internet is about. He has spoken eloquently of 'Freedom to Access Content.' Consumers should have access to their choice of legal content."

- India is forecast to have one million broadband connections by year-end, 20 million by 2010. Dayanidhi Maran, the new Indian Communications Minister, is pushing for conversion to the newer IPv6 that'll provide more Internet addresses, a new fiber optic cable across southern India and lower rates to drive the growth of the Net and broadband access in developing countries.

- Korea Telecom, perhaps the world's most advance telco - remember when that description was applied to America's phone companies? - is using the higher-speed VDSL technology to give its customers 100 Mbps downloads and 30 Mbps uploads. Current broadband speed from American telcos is about 1 Mbps down and 0.5 Mbps up. SBC is installing new gear that will only give its customers 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Verizon is betting some really big bucks to install fiber optic cabling to the home.

- Chile will have about a quarter-million broadband subscribers by year-end.

- HDTV-quality video doubles the amount of speed required to deliver video to the home on the assumption that DVRs become a given in every home. DVRs offer the ability to watch one channel while recording another or recording two channels simultaneously. Even if HDTV is compressed to 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps will be needed to satisfy all those DVR users. Clever engineering and good lobbying cannot overcome the speed requirement.    Back to Headlines

AT&T, which once provided phone service to most American homes, will no longer try to sell service to consumers because it can's compete with the local phone and cable TV companies that offer local phone service in a bundle of other services. "Whether I'd call it is strategic, financial or practical or pragmatic, the fact is we can read," said AT&T chairman and CEO David Dorman. "American households are buying bundles, and these bundles are getting more complex and sophisticated, and we have to face the fact that without a local component, a basic component, were at a disadvantage."

AT&T still has about 35 million consumer customers, but is third behind Verizon and SBC. In June the government reversed its position that forced the regional phone companies to let AT&T and other sellers of local service use their lines at what the regionals called "subsidized" rates. Other local phone service providers have also stopped soliciting new consumer business.

AT&T's revenue for the June quarter dropped 13.2% from $7.6 billion in the year-ago quarter. Corporate sales fell 12.7% and consumer sales dropped 14.6% year-over-year. Profits fell 80% to $108 million.

AT&T once had a monopoly on phone services for businesses in most of America and a near-monopoly in long distance service. It thought it saw a greener field in the computer industry and in a Faustian deal, called "divestiture," gave up its local phone business and long distance monopoly in order to sell the computers it had been making for itself on the open market. IBM and the other computer makers gave AT&T a rude awakening to the world of unregulated commerce. It was forced to buy NCR in order to compete. After bungling up NCR, AT&T sold it off and tried other ventures such as cable TV, where it was also an also-ran, and ended up selling that business off to Comcast. Then it built up a cellular phone business, which it is selling to Cingular. Now AT&T has been forced out of the consumer phone business and has seen its long distance market share decline as well. The regional phone companies, desperate for local phone service revenue, are sure to quickly gobble up AT&T's business.

Businesses AT&T Has Exited

Computers
Cellular phones
Cable TV
Local consumer phone service

The company's move is ironic for another reason. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to give long distance companies like AT&T the right to sell local phone service in exchange for the local phone companies being able to sell long distance. With the government's change in its position on forcing the regionals to provide access, the regionals can still sell long distance service but AT&T and the others who were selling local service can no longer do so. The millions that the regional phone companies spent on lobbying and on electing politicians has proven to be most effective.    Back to Headlines

SBC issued a tartly worded statement on why it believes that AT&T was forced to stop soliciting new consumer local phone business. AT&T has, for years, been at the forefront of lobbying the government agencies and contributing to politicians' election campaigns, always seeking to force the regional phone companies to give it access to their local infrastructure at bargain rates. Although AT&T once owned all of the regional telcos, it no longer has any friends working there.

SBC said:

"Today's announcement underscores the fact AT&T left the traditional consumer business years ago when they decided against investing in their own local facilities and networks in order to compete.

"It also underscores the reality of today's competitive marketplace. Vigorous competition is flourishing and will only intensify as wireline, cable, wireless, satellite and VoIP companies slug it out. Consumers today have more choices than ever before and that will not change, especially if AT&T is serious about pursuing new technologies like voice-over-IP.

"AT&T is correct in noting that the consumer market is about bundling voice, data, wireless and video services. Those companies that have invested in their networks and facilities to meet those customer demands will be positioned to succeed in the highly competitive consumer marketplace."

'Nuff said.    Back to Headlines

Consumer spending on broadband won't end at paying for a basic service anymore than it did for cable TV or business broadband. Businesses already spend an extra $2.3 billion a year worldwide for value-added service such as security, broadband applications like remote backup and customer relationship management plus virtual private networks according to Point Topic. The company divides up the world's spend on broadband like this:

Broadband Billions

 Service                                            Billions of $'s

Basic broadband for businesses                         13.0
Value-added broadband
services for businesses                                       2.3
Basic broadband for consumers                          32.0
Value-added broadband
services for consumers                                        3.3

The numbers for Internet telephony (VoIP) and entertainment, which promise to be huge revenue generators, barely make a dent in Point Topic's numbers because they are so new to the market. In fact, the last Internet telephony projection we saw was so rosy that it predicted that all phone calls, excepting cellular calls, would be made over the Internet in a decade.    Back to Headlines

Loudeye may be having a busy summer trying to absorb its acquisition of European digital music distributor OD2, but it still has time to build up the anti-piracy business it got when it bought the Overpeer start-up in March.

The company claims to have 16 new customer contracts for its Overpeer services, estimated to be worth several million dollars over the life of the deals. Reportedly silenced by NDAs, Loudeye can't name any of its piracy-protection customers, but claims they're major content owners across the music, film/video, game and software industries.

Overpeer provides content owners with digital media asset protection and promotion. In anticipation of a growing business, Loudeye over the past few months has enhanced the capabilities and reach of the piracy-protection solutions to include:

- Support for the most popular P2P protocols. Overpeer now covers more than 90% of the traffic on the main P2P networks worldwide.

- Triple the infrastructure support to provide the highest level of protection.

- Guaranteed anti-piracy performance, including Overpeer Titanium, an anti-piracy SLA guaranteed to be 99% effective.

- Expanded marketing information and data mining on password-protected customer extranets.

- Geographic targeting and language services for non-English titles.

"There are billions of illicit transactions occurring every month on peer-to-peer networks around the world and this number is growing weekly," Loudeye president and CEO Jeff Cavins said. "That translates into billions of dollars of lost revenue and signals a critical demand for content owners to take immediate action to protect their content."    Back to Headlines

AT&T Wireless, the third largest US cell phone service, the one Cingular is acquiring, has launched a high-speed Internet service for mobile devices that uses UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) technology. Such a service, called 3G, makes it possible to use cell phones as digital media devices that can download music, pictures and video and handle office functions such as e-mail.

AT&T Wireless claims that its 3G network offers speeds of about 220 Kbps-320 Kbps - three times as fast as its current cell phone network and four times as fast as dial-up Internet services. "In a few short years, we've increased wireless data speeds more than tenfold across the country," AT&T Wireless chairman and CEO John Zeglis said. This new network, he added, "enables our customers to access information, video and audio on their wireless device faster than most people do from their wired computer at home."

The company is initially offering the service in San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix and Detroit. Plans include launching it in San Diego and Dallas by the end of the year. Consumers will have to shell out $25 a month for unlimited access to the network; corporate customers will have to pay 80 bucks a month. It offers continuous, high-speed wireless connections using a handset, PDA or laptop.

Cingular previously announced plans for its own UMTS deployment that includes trials in Atlanta starting this summer with the official rollout starting in 2005. When the Cingular-AT&T Wireless merger is closed, the combined company will be well positioned for a national 3G network.

The Need for Speed

                              Kbps                      Mbps

Dial-up                      56                        .056
AT&T Wireless      220-320               .220 to .320
Verizon Wireless   300-500               .300 to .500
DSL                      500-1,200            .500 to 1.200
Cable Modem     1,000 to 6,000       1.000 to 6.000


Verizon Wireless, the largest US mobile provider, sells fast data services with speeds up to 300 Kbps-500 Kbps in two US markets.

Currently only about 7% of mobile phone users access the Internet with cell phones. However, operators worldwide are spending billions to upgrade their networks for higher-speed transmissions. They hope to compete with the cable TV and phone services' broadband products. The US phone companies, which will own 85% of the US cellular market once Cingular finally buys AT&T Wireless, are counting on their cell phone interests to replace their declining local phone services.

Because 3G is so new, especially in the states, AT&T Wireless currently offers only two phones that support it - the Motorola A845 and Nokia 6651. It's also selling a UMTS model developed by Lucent and Novatel.   Back to Headlines

Danger Inc, which makes the hiptop cell phone-cum-media player, has released rev 1.3 of the software that runs the thing. The new spin adds a Catalog feature designed to make downloading content and applications easier. Hiptop users can now download to the device "over the air" by simply accepting the updates when they get a system message. Danger now offers real music ringtones from Sony Music Entertainment Canada too.

The hiptop is offered exclusively through Canadian wireless communications provider Microcell Solutions, which markets its services under the Fido ("I am faithful") brand. The gizmo is an all-in-one device that combines a full-featured mobile phone with a Web browser, text and instant messaging, e-mail, organizer, games, a camera attachment and other features viewable on a large 65,000-color display with a full QWERTY keyboard for data entry.

Danger and Fido also announced a "world-ready" version of the hiptop that's supposed to take its picture-messaging and data capabilities to the 50 countries where Fido offers GPRS roaming.

Existing hiptop customers can upgrade to the new software for free and get point-and-click content and application downloads; cut-and-paste text editing, profile management, repeat alerts, submenus for navigation, AOL instant messenger enhancements and a choice of French or English.    Back to Headlines

Mobile content publisher Sorrent Inc and ShoPro Entertainment, which provides animation entertainment and merchandise licensing, have struck a multi-year partnership that will let Sorrent develop and publish content based on "Inuyasha," the popular Japanese animation program and graphic novel series.

US-based fans of Inuyasha, the number-one series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block of entertainment, will soon have access to Sorrent-produced Inuyasha messaging, wallpaper and games directly from their mobile phones. They can even sign up for e-mail or text-message alerts about the upcoming Inuyasha mobile products at www.sorrent.com.

Sorrent's content is compatible with more than 100 Java- and BREW-enabled handsets.    Back to Headlines

Webdate, a new fast-growing online dating service, is going mobile.

The company, which claims 1.25 million registered users, is launching a mobile version of its webdating service through US Cellular's easyedge service and in select Western Wireless markets. Western Wireless sells its services under the Cellular One moniker.

Webdate Mobile is powered by the mCE flexible software engine from Trilibis Inc, which is supposed to extend the connectivity and content of online communities to virtually any wireless device.

Mobile users can now get "anytime, anywhere" access to the Webdate services including complete profiles with photos, searches, profile browsing and anonymous e-mail messaging with other members. Members can also chat in a private group of friends.

The service costs $2.99 a month and will be available through other US and international wireless carriers in the coming months.    Back to Headlines

Wireless new media company Versaly Entertainment has signed an agreement with NBC Universal Television Distribution and the Spanish-language Telemundo Network Group to create, produce, sell and distribute music, images and other content from various Telemundo TV shows.

The Telemundo-branded mobile content will include voices, music, images and logos from popular novellas, variety and talk shows and specials. Versaly will distribute the content through its major wireless carrier partners and its own Web portal at www.ForFones.com.

Versaly, which offered the first Spanish-voice ringtones in the US through Sprint PCS, will deliver the Telemundo content to Spanish speakers in both the US and Latin America.    Back to Headlines

by Charles Hall

iMesh, the Israel-based P2P network now renamed Bridgemar Services, will pay the RIAA $4.7 million to settle a lawsuit that charged the company was aiding and abetting copyright infringement on a massive scale.

For no apparent reason, the RIAA has treated iMesh differently than the other P2P networks it sued. For example, iMesh was not included in the same Los Angeles court case in which the RIAA sued Sharman Networks, StreamCast (nee Morpheus) and Grokster. iMesh started at about the same time as Napster, but the RIAA didn't file suit against it back when it brought the first case against the old Napster. In fact, it didn't even sue iMesh until last September.

The accusations, however, were the same as those the RIAA made against the other file sharing networks - that it knowingly contributed to enormous quantities of copyright infringement.

The iMesh software has been downloaded 76 million times from CNET's Download.com site and about 100 million times overall. While there's no official count of the number of songs that were downloaded on the iMesh network, there's little doubt that it's into the tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. By that count, iMesh got off easy, no doubt because the RIAA's long-term priority is to close down P2P networks that permit file swapping rather than trying to squeeze out a few more hundred thousand dollars. iMesh typically had about 700,000 to 800,000 users at any point in time, making it the fourth most popular P2P network.

As part of the deal, iMesh said it would move to a business model that "abides by US copyright laws." "Peer-to-peer technologies hold real promise," said RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol. "This settlement with iMesh is an opportunity to demonstrate that promise in the legitimate marketplace."

iMesh didn't provide many details as to how it plans to become a legitimate online music service except to say that it would still be based on P2P technology and would be at least partially free. A company spokesperson said that iMesh would continue to operate as it has been with no shut down until the new technology platform is put in place. iMesh currently uses an older version of the same FastTrack P2P network, as Sharman's Kazaa, Grokster and StreamCast.

There are only a few possible strategies that we see iMesh considering.

The New iMesh

- Faster delivery
- No spoofs (also known as "the right string, baby, but the wrong yo-yo")
- A peer-to-peer environment
- Lots of content will be free, but not all
- Access to certain content and services will be on a fee basis
- iMesh will license content from copyright owners
- Users of the new iMesh will not be subject to being sued

One possibility is that iMesh could use P2P networking to make non-copyrighted tracks available. MP3.com tried that method without much commercial success and has closed down. A second possibility is that iMesh would become another legit online music service offering subscription-based customized streaming à la Rhapsody and/or purchased downloads à la iTunes. The third possibility is that the company would offer a hybrid of both, as is suggested on its Web page. The site promises faster searches, speedier delivery and the elimination of spoofs. In order to eliminate spoofs - files with the right names but the wrong content - iMesh will have to control the tracks available on its service rather than let others post tracks. It says that searches will be made in the same way that they are done now. Most significantly, the company promises that users of the new iMesh "will be able to find content… without fear of being sued."

The company fully expects that the changeover to the new legit service will be made this year.

Below is a summary of how iMesh describes in nebulous detail what its new service will be like.

iMesh has been an innovator in the past. It was the first to allow users to download from multiple sources simultaneously and its "resume" feature allowed users to download movies over a period of days, back in the dial-up days.

"Entering into this agreement with key players within the entertainment industry to put the lawsuit behind us will allow us the opportunity to migrate to a business model that will continue to provide users with the P2P experience that they have come to expect from iMesh," said iMesh COO Ofer Shabtai.

The RIAA's strategy of suing the P2P networks has faltered lately. The judge in the LA case ruled that Grokster and StreamCast could not be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users - a ruling that the RIAA has appealed. Since then, the RIAA has taken two new tracks to protect its interests:

Suing individuals who make copyrighted tracks available for others to copy

Pressing Congress for legislation more directly aimed at making the P2P networks responsible for their users' actions. An RIAA-backed bill will be get a Congressional subcommittee hearing this week.

Back in June 2002 the RIAA settled with P2P company Audiogalaxy, which subsequently signed up to resell RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. Audiogalaxy agreed to filter copyrighted song titles from its P2P network and to pay a "substantial" but undisclosed sum based on its assets to the recording industry.   Back to Headlines

The European Union has approved without conditions the 50/50 merger of Japan's Sony Music and Germany's Bertelsmann's BMG music operations into a new company that will be called Sony BMG. The consolidation will give the merged company about a 25% share of the world's recording market- about the same as Vivendi's Universal Music Group. Those two companies plus Warner Music, now owned an Edgar Bronfman-led consortium, and EMI will have about 80% of the global recorded music market. The US Justice Department is still reviewing the deal for antitrust violations but approval is expected in a few days. The EU's original concern was that the merger and resulting industry consolidation would cause CD prices to increase and could inhibit the growth of the new legit online music services.

The Internet, through the file sharing that takes place illegally on such as Sharman Networks' Kazaa and the legal downloading on newer legit online music services such as Apple's iTunes, has kept a lid on CD prices. Most CD albums are available for $9.99 from the online services. In response to such pricing pressures - few other industries suffer from having their own product being given away for free - Universal Music Group some months ago started a trend to lower CD prices in retail stores. Rumors of possible price increases of tracks on the online music services were met with howls of protests and the rumors abated.

Smaller labels opposed the deal, led by an umbrella group of about 2,000 independent labels that claimed the merger would make it harder for them to get exposure for their artists. There have been repeated accusations that the consolidation of the major labels into what was previously "the big five" coupled with the consolidation in the radio industry has made it difficult for artists who are not affiliated with the major labels to get air time. Radio, at least until the emergence of the Web, was pretty much the recording industry's sole promotion vehicle. The labels hire promotional outfits that pay the large companies, which own hundreds of radio stations, indirectly for playing specific songs that the labels want to promote. Smaller labels don't have the financial clout to compete with the tie-in that has been established between the big labels and the big radio corporations such as Clear Channel.

Mario Monti, the EU's competition commissioner, had originally opposed the deal. He changed his position after two days of private meetings in June with the companies, independent labels and companies involved in the emerging legal market for online music downloading. His change of mind perhaps shows that the online music market is becoming big enough to count as a factor in distributing and promoting music.

After reviewing the matter, the EU said that it did not have sufficient evidence of collusion (of CD pricing) or of future harm to consumers (hampering the growth of online music services).

After the EU approved the merger, BMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the company had no plans whatever to gradually withdraw from the recorded music business. Speculation to the contrary was "wrong," he said. Bertelsmann's other businesses are mainly in television and publishing.

The bad news in the merger is for the 2,000 or so employees who will be lose their jobs, according to the Financial Times. That amounts to about 25% of the two operations' head count. The merger gives Sony and Bertelsmann, the two owners, a PR justification for the terminations. The cuts are expected to save the merged company about $300 million a year.    Back to Headlines

A case that was swept aside unceremoniously in Europe, with the record labels rounding on Napster investors Hummer Winblad and Bertelsmann, has managed to get past first base in the US.

The case is that by investing in Napster, the two defendants were keeping it alive beyond its natural life, and aiding it in breaching copyright laws.

Private equity group Hummer Winblad and Bertelsmann had asked for the US case to also be dismissed, but a US judge in San Francisco has denied the motion.

Now it appears that the US record labels will have their day in court, chasing the supposed $17 billion they say they have lost due to Napster.

US District Judge Marilyn Patel has said that the case can now go to discovery, and potentially on to trial where the labels will have to prove that the defendants deliberately kept the company open, were in full control and meant it to harm their competitor's businesses. A tall order.

If the discovery process goes badly for the labels, it is likely that they will be forced to drop the case.

This story appeared in our sister publication Faultline, published by Rethink Research. E-mail rhett@riderresearch.com for subscription information and rates.    Back to Headlines

In his introduction to the recording industry's 2004 "Commercial Piracy Report," Jay Berman, chairman and CEO of music industry trade body IFPI, notes that, "Commercial piracy, contrary to what commentators mistakenly think, is just as important a problem for the music industry today as Internet piracy. And in several of the music industry's very largest markets - countries with low rates of broadband penetration such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia - piracy of physical discs still dwarfs its Internet equivalent."

Berman's comments are followed by the report finding that illegal music sales hit a whopping $4.5 billion last year, when a record 1.1 billion pirated music discs were sold. Some 35% of all music discs - CDs and DVDs - sold worldwide are illegal copies; add in cassette tapes and pirated music products account for 40% the market.

The top 10 countries trafficking in fake CDs are Brazil, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and the Ukraine. According to the report, all of them fail to protect and enforce IP rights and aren't doing enough to tackle "unacceptable levels of piracy." China's pirated music market is the biggest, coming in at just under $600 million.

According to Berman, commercial music piracy "is also destroying - indeed in large parts of the world has destroyed - local music cultures, local record companies and the careers of local musicians. This is particularly true of the developing world where, because of the failure to enforce intellectual property rights, countries that once bred international stars now find it hard to develop successful artists even at a local level."    Back to Headlines

Roxio's Napster online music division has added six new colleges and universities to the list of schools providing students with free campus-specific versions of the Napster subscription service.

After inking deals with the University of Rochester and Penn State last year, Napster has signed up Cornell University, The George Washington University, Middlebury College, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California and Wright State University. The students will get unlimited access to Napster's subscription service and its 800,000-track digital music library with hard-drive downloading and streaming, as well as access to commercial-free Internet radio stations, six decades of Billboard's chart information and an online magazine. The kids can also be part of an online community, sending tracks to friends, sharing playlists and looking at other members' music collections in a safe, legal environment. They have the option of buying songs that can be burned to a CD or transferred to any of 75 compatible portable music devices. Songs are 99 cents each; complete albums start at $9.99.

The schools bought in to combat P2P music piracy, conserve their network bandwidth and protect intellectual property. They all worked with the Campus Action Network (CAN), an initiative led by Sony Music Entertainment and some other record companies dedicated to creating safe, legitimate digital music services for campuses.

Napster worked individually with each school to create a unique program for it and its student body. Specific set-ups vary from campus to campus and may include the so-called "Super Peer" application created by Napster and IBM to reduce external bandwidth use, deliver music instantly on-demand, optimize university network resources and reduce system vulnerability. Super Peer caches Napster's most popular content on on-site IBM servers that Napster remotely manages.

Penn State, which launched its version of Napster last year at select campus locations, has seen students download as many as 100,000 songs a day. (Ah, if only they paid this kind of attention to their class work.) Because of the level of interest, Penn is going to expand the offering this fall so kids at all 23 of its campuses can participate.

The rollout across the six additional schools and Penn State locations will provide Napster access to more than 150,000 undergrad and graduate students. Most of the schools plan to offer it to all students, whether they live on- or off-campus. Some are even thinking of launching a separate program for alumni, parents, faculty and staff.    Back to Headlines

With radio stations arm wrestling one another to get the most pop hits on the air, what's a rock band from the 70s to do to show the world that it does indeed have at least one more album's worth of songs to put out?

In the case of Heart, led by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, the idea is to make friends with those rare birds, the peer-to-peer networks that actually respect copyright.

"Jupiter's Darling," Heart's new release from the Sovereign Artists label, is now available for download through Morpheus and TrustyFiles.

For StreamCast, which owns the Morpheus network, "Jupiter's Darling" marks the first time Morpheus has sold music to its users via P2P distribution.

A Morpheus user who buys any of the tracks from the album can redistribute them to other P2P users - and get paid for it. The payment scheme works on a multi-scale level: 20% for direct sales, 10% for sales at the secondary level and so forth. By turning users into authorized distributors, Morpheus figures it "ensures efficiency and incentives for each user who participates in the effort."

Online music distributor Weedshare is handling the commercial side of the transactions. Heart is releasing "Love Hurts" as an exclusive track in the Weed format.

"By using Morpheus as a distribution channel, Sovereign Artists will benefit from Morpheus' multiple P2P network connectivity to Gnutella, G2, FastTrack, eDonkey and the soon-to-be-launched NEOnet P2P networks," StreamCast CEO Michael Weiss said.

Half of the proceeds from each track Morpheus sells goes to the rights holders. The tracks are all formatted in Windows Media Audio and include Microsoft's digital rights management technology. Before buying a track, the user can download it and play it three times for free, essentially previewing a song before deciding to buy it. When songs are shared, the new user can do the same thing.

Besides Morpheus, the album is also available through newcomer TrustyFiles, a multi-network file-sharing system from start-up RazorPop that searches across all major P2P file-sharing networks.

TrustyFiles offers three levels of sharing - Personal file sharing limits sharing to "friends;" private file sharing designates files that can't be shared and public file sharing makes files available to several million users of Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus, LimeWire, Bearshare, Shareaza and other FastTrack and Gnutella clients.

Heart's music is directly promoted to TrustyFiles users on the network's P2P Files channel. The tracks available through TrustyFiles are packaged as Weed files, which give new users five free Heart songs.

According to RazorPop CEO Marc Freedman, "When a legendary band like Heart embraces file sharing, you know it's become mainstream." Freedman also said that "Heart is only the first of many big name bands and other content providers that will discover the value and profit in reaching 100 million file sharers across the world. RazorPop and its partners help both new artists seeking free promotion and established bands adding a new sales channel."

"Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have always been an innovative force in music," said Sovereign director of Internet marketing Paul Angles. "Their first concern is reaching out to the fans they love. That's why they made 'Jupiter's Darling' and that's why we're distributing over P2P, where they can reach the most people."    Back to Headlines

"Do you hear what I hear?" Music-based radio stations face the same kind of competition from the Internet that the music industry has. The spread of handheld music players such as the iPod and the increasing popularity of customizable online streaming music services are attracting music lovers away from commercial-cluttered music radio stations.

An indication of the trend is that US radio station conglomerate Clear Channel said this week that it plans to substantially reduce the number of commercials its stations play. The purpose of the move, the company said, is to "make radio more competitive, compelling, effective and valuable." Clear Channel said that some of its 110 million listeners would hear up to 50% fewer commercials starting in January 2005. While not all of the company's stations have a music-only format, music is the dominant content for radio. The changes will cut the number of commercial minutes from 16-26 minutes down to 12-16 minutes per hour, an enormous reduction. The company said it urged other radio station companies to do the same.

Traditional radio stations are feeling the competitive fire of the Internet just as other industries have. Streaming music services such as RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Musicmatch are impossible for radio stations to match because listeners can customize them at will to match their listening preferences. They are also commercial free and offer hundreds of thousands of songs to select from. MusicNet@AOL offers unlimited listening to 600,000 songs for $8.95 a month, for example. The streaming music services are limited to a stationary listener until the cell phone operators fully ramp up the speed of their networks to accommodate streaming music for the person on the go. iPods and other brands of portable music players are replacing products like Sony's Walkman and portable radios. They are also expanding the market by enticing consumers who had not previously considered carrying a music-playing device with them.

Over-the-air radio also increasingly faces non-Internet competition from satellite radio such as XM and Sirius.

The radio as a preferred source for instant news and information has also declined as people increasingly use their PCs to access news sources on the Net. Consider a sports fan wanting to check a game score. If there's an Internet-connected PC nearby, a fan will check a site like ESPN.com for the latest score rather than turn on the radio or TV and wait for a score. The same is true for hard news where people check the Internet first for everything from the latest happenings in a corporate corruption case to the weather.    Back to Headlines

Further evidence of the Internet's impact on the music industry is an unconfirmed report from the New York Post that Clear Channel, the largest owner of radio stations in the US, is considering its own record label, either by developing one or possibly acquiring the UK's EMI. The Post says that the company, which this week said that it would reduce the number of minutes of commercials per hour, has been considering it the move for months. Clear Channel already has one toe in the recording label through its concert business by offering CDs of the live performance within minutes of its conclusion. The company is concerned by the impact such a move would have on the record labels on which it depends for cooperation and funding. Both the labels and antitrust regulators also might look askance at such a move because of the company's dominant market share in radio stations and concert bookings.

Clear Channel already holds a strong position in two of the music industry's most lucrative fields. Its Entertainment Division is the world's largest concert promoter with contracts to book about 130 of the largest concert venues in the world, including roughly 100 in North America. Clear Channel owns 1,182 domestic radio stations, which gives it enormous power to determine which songs are played on radio. The labels have been forced to pay large upfront fees to get music played with the resulting music mix being a limited number of artists and only those that the major labels have contracts with.

The Internet, beginning with the advent of Napster and the development of the MP3 media player, is disrupting the cozy and once highly profitable world that the labels and the large radio corporations had. The Web gives artists and small labels direct access to music consumers. Every major label has restructured in order to reduce costs and eliminate inefficiencies and waste. Labels are being driven to merge - see the Sony-BMG merger - in order to eliminate duplicate jobs and other costs. Clear Channel, recognizing the disruption, wants to make moves that will protect its interests and enlarge its opportunities. On the other hand, perhaps the music industry's dislocations will prompt the labels to participate in other industry profit centers such as concerts, something that Clear Channel would obviously not want to see.   Back to Headlines

A month after the service launched, Apple finally added content from some major European independent record labels to its European iTunes Music Stores catalog. Three of the largest Euro indies - Beggars Group, Sanctuary Records and V2 - are the first to sign up, adding "tens of thousands" of tracks from leading artists such as Basement, The Crystal Method, Morrissey and Prodigy to the iTunes library.

In an interesting turn of events, Apple got all of the five major labels on board for the iTunes European launch, but had difficulties negotiating with the indies, who complained that the terms they were offered were less favorable than those offered the majors.

The UK labels turned to their mouthpiece, the Association of Independent Music (AIM), which took up the negotiations and helped pave the way for new terms that "address the independents' concerns."

The new contract reportedly offers terms on par with what the major labels agreed to. iTunes now supposedly has a standard independent template contract for UK and European indie labels.

Since iTunes is proving to be wildly popular with European consumers - they downloaded 800,000 tunes in the first week - it makes sense that the indies got the terms quickly ironed out. Now that the first few have cut a deal, several hundred additional labels are expected to line up to sign on the dotted line.    Back to Headlines

Weblisten.com, a Madrid-based music download site, crows that it served five million downloads in Q1, up 78% year-over-year. The site, which offers licensed downloads in both MP3 and WMA formats, said that MP3 is the undisputed favorite format and accounted for 95% of the downloads.

Although Weblisten is open to international users, some 40% of its users are in Spain. Germans and Dutch are its most common foreign users. The entire Web site is available in Spanish and English, with special sections in Dutch, German, French and Greek.

Overall, Weblisten claims more than half-a-million registered users with access to its free preview and streaming services. More than 25% have bought vouchers or subscriptions for the download service.

The Weblisten site features some 140,000 songs from top artists and labels.    Back to Headlines

CD creation - Four companies, after the Sony Music-BMG merger, will have about an 80% market share. Time Warner recently sold off its declining Warner Music to independent financers.

CD production - Labels are outsourcing the operation, which may decline in the future as Internet delivery grows. Time Warner recently sold off its CD/DVD production operation.

Retail stores - Stores are under financial pressure to reduce costs and convert themselves to more than music stores as Virgin did recently in San Francisco. Faced with the Internet threat, several of the larger chains tried to create their own online music service but failed.

Online music services - The labels first tried and failed with their own proprietary and purposely limited services. iTunes, only marginally profitable, has led the way with the second generation of legit download services but is still only a miniscule part of music distribution.

Radio stations - Clear Channel, the largest owner of radio stations, will slash the number of commercial minutes per hour in order to make radio "more competitive" and "compelling" as listeners opt for the Internet's streaming music and downloaded tracks played on handheld music players.

TV music channels - Music videos such as those played on MTV have become one of the industry's best promotional tools and have become profit centers in their own right.    Back to Headlines

The worldwide use of P2P networks for swapping music, movie, game and software files keeps on rolling. Here are the latest numbers from the webzine Slyck.com as of July 20 at 10PM

Network               Users

FastTrack           2,425,627
EDonkey            1,987,515
Overnet              1,261,568
iMesh                   803,420
Warez                  440,289
Gnutella                389,670
MP2P                   267,215
DirectConnect        218,763
Filetopia                   3,728

Source: Slyck

* Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus use the FastTrack network.

Note: The numbers represent the number of people who were downloading or uploading files as of July 20 at 10PM EDT. They are not the total number of people who have downloaded and installed the software. They are also not the number of people who have used the P2P networks over a period of time, only those actively connected at that point of time. The total number of people who have P2P networking software installed and the number of people who have used the networks are many times larger.    Back to Headlines

Consumers around the world are expressing far greater interest in mobile data services than they were a year ago as advanced multimedia phones become more popular. However, according to a recent Mobinet study from global management consulting firm AT Kearney and Cambridge University's Judge Institute of Management, mobile users are also more concerned about security and privacy, pricing and slow network speeds. Operators need to address these apprehensions before the increased interest in data services translates into significant revenue growth.

According to the study, 41% of global wireless phone users expect to be regular or heavy users of data services by 2005. Mobinet, which surveyed 4,500 mobile users in 13 countries, includes mobile e-mail, games, music downloads, photo messaging and news updates in its definition of "data services." The expected surge in user demand represents a fourfold increase over the past year and, according to the study, shows that these new services have reached a "tipping point" in terms of mass market levels of customer interest and acceptance.

The Mobinet's study found two factors driving the increase:

- Some 49% of global wireless users now have multimedia phones.

- Adoption of key data services has moved past the experimentation stage to achieve penetration rates of above 25% among target customer segments.

"We are seeing huge growth and customer acceptance of wireless data services, particularly in Asia and among users under age 25," said study leader and AT Kearney VP Mark Page. "People have experimented with these services, find they like and value them, and are planning to use them more in the future."

But Page also pointed out that although the market is excited about mobile data services, the industry still faces challenges "with respect to peoples' comfort level with using the technology more and paying higher bills."

When asked why they don't use mobile data services more frequently today, 35% of the respondents cited cost and 18% said slow network access, roughly the same percentages as in last year's study. One glaring change is the growing concern over security and privacy, which has risen from 10% a year ago to 22%.

The fledgling mobile payments market may suffer from the rising consumer security fears, just as interest in the technology is starting to take off. Some 10% of users said they regularly buy services via their mobile phone bill, up from a mere 3% who did so last year.

Among the wireless data services with the fastest growth worldwide are:

- Photo messaging. More than 20% of users globally have a camera phone and 53% of them say they use it at least once a month to send or receive photo messages. Overall, consumer use of photo messaging has tripled in the last year.

- Entertainment. The number of multimedia phone users downloading and playing music on their gadgets has nearly tripled in the last year to 21%. Some popular entertainment services such as game and music downloads are already being used by a third of the users under 25.

- Information services. The number of wireless subscribers using their phones for news, weather, sports and stock quotes jumped from 6% in 2003 to 25% this year.

Japan leads the world in overall mobile data use, followed by South Korea and Australia. Germany leads Europe in mobile data users.   Back to Headlines

Global sales of MP3 players will double to more than 20 million units this year, according to Informa Media Group, and continue to grow at nearly 45% a year for the next six years. By 2010, total sales of the gadgets will have passed an impressive 194 million units.

Informa's recent study, "The Future of Portable Music," suggests that in the first decade of the 21st century, the portable music market will be dominated by the transition away from "removable media" such as cassette tapes and CDs as more and more people start using digital audio players. According to Informa the two key factors behind the migration are the ability to store thousands of tracks on a device the size of an audiocassette and its robust features. Nearly all of the flash-memory and hard-disk MP3s out there can also serve as voice recorders and data storage devices, while quite a few offer other features as well.

The amount of free (often illegally copied) music on the Internet, plus the sudden proliferation of legal music downloads have played their part in the development and popularity of these portable players that allow music to be transferred away from the computer.

According to the report, few consumers are likely to use the full capacity of some of the larger hard-drive players, which offer as much as 40GB of space, but as people become more familiar with managing the storage of their music collection, the number of tracks held on the players is likely to grow.    Back to Headlines

In the wake of Apple's report last week that iPod sales exceeded 860,000 in the quarter came speculation that iPod will lead a resurgence in Macintosh sales - the so-called "Trojan horse" effect. Over 90% of iPod users have a Windows-based PC. Several reports said that Apple's PC market share increased slightly for the first time in over a decade. One forecaster figured that iPod sales would exceed 1.2 million in Q4 after Apple announced new models that solve the iPod's battery life problem and lower prices by $100. Charles Wolfe of Needham & Co said that even with the new lower priced models, iPods still have the highest prices. He also noted that iPod dominates the category with over a 50% market share and "No one is even close to them." Unlike iTunes, which at best is only slightly profitable, iPods have good margins.   Back to Headlines

Wireless "hotspots," similar to those found in airports, parks and many downtown areas, are now on all Holland America ships for guests traveling with personal laptop computers with wireless capability. Wireless Internet access aboard Holland America ships was previously only available in the Internet Cafe, which also provides guests with the use of desktop computers, printers and traditional Internet access.    Back to Headlines

MPee3.com launched a free MP3 search engine that has indexed "million" of free MP3 files. The site also has information about digital media software, portable MP3 players, Web radio and online shopping sites. A $20 premium subscription gives members access to a forum, a newsletter and the ability to add songs to the index.    Back to Headlines

Ask Jeeves, the Internet search service, will be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade - can't show the Net's acceptance into pop culture much better than that. Its float will be a huge balloon in the shape of the butler that is the company's icon.    Back to Headlines

Every PC or other device connected to the Web needs a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. With two-thirds of the current numbers already assigned, the scheme will soon run out of possible numbers, particularly as the gazillions of cell phones come to be Internet connected. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that oversees the allocation of Web addresses, says new technology makes it possible for every person, printer, computer and other Net-connected device to have its own Internet address. Reuters quoted Vinton Cerf of ICANN as saying, "This is a big, big step." With the new technology, called Internet Protocol Version 6, the number of available numbers is multiplied "25,000 trillion times," Cerf said. That should be enough for everyone to connect even all their home appliances.    Back to Headlines

Dell says that 20% of the calls to its consumer help lines are related to spyware and viruses. This publication has repeatedly said that unless those two nemeses and spam are controlled, the evolution of the digital home will falter. People do not want to reboot their networked stereo, get spam on their Internet-connected TV, have viruses attack their libraries of digital music and movies or find that hackers have obtained personal information.    Back to Headlines

An EarthLink study found that two out of three people wish the public Internet had been around years ago so they could have watched Web coverage of the first men walking on the moon, the Kennedy assassination and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Almost 70% of those under the age of 30 say the Internet has replaced letter writing and 68% of men and women who have never been married have used the Internet for dating help. All of the wild and crazy predictions once made for the Internet and then pooh-poohed when the Internet bubble burst are now being fulfilled.    Back to Headlines

It's not the same as mailing out gazillions of floppies or CDs, but AOL for Broadband is targeting Cleveland this week with a series of events including a glimpse at the digital household of tomorrow, brought to life through Kitchen, Entertainment and Kid's Rooms. The exhibits will appear in several public areas such as the zoo, baseball field and shopping centers. 

An Exhibit is Worth a Thousand CDs

   Back to Headlines

"Patriotic reporting will rage against government and monopoly waste that weakens our countries, not stand against the tide." - Dave Burstein in DSL Prime. We would add "government and corporate corruption" to Dave's list.    Back to Headlines

Twenty million Americans spend a billion dollars a year playing fantasy football on the Net. The typical fantasy player has a college degree and checks his team's standing seven times a month, usually from the office..