Realizing that little was being accomplished via the Russian government, the IFPI took the clever step of striking AllofMP3 at its financial revenue source - credit card payments. According to Ars Technica, the IFPI lobbied Visa to reject payments from AllofMP3.com. The plan worked, and according to an IFPI spokesperson, the plug was pulled in early September.

“IFPI drew to Visa’s attention the fact that allofmp3.com was not licensed by its members,” the spokesman told Ars Technica. “Visa has a policy position of not supporting such sites and had its facilities removed accordingly. In fact, the facility was removed in early September.”

If this is the case, AllofMP3.com has remained quiet on the issue. Only since Wednesday has news of Visa’s cutoff surfaced. And today, AllofMP3.com has resumed its public relations blitz, claiming Visa and MasterCard’s decision to discontinue its relationship has no legal justification.

The AllofMP3 operation is becoming a major bone of contention between the US and Russia in negotiations to secure Russia a place in the World Trade Organisation.

“Visa and MasterCard should immediately re-qualify AllofMP3,” said Vadim Mamotin, director general at the company. “There is no valid reason and absolutely no legal basis for the action.”

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1313

Hardware manufacturers Asus, Planex and QNap are to embed file-sharing software BitTorrent into their product ranges which include wireless routers, media servers and network storage devices.

Two of the devices made by Asus can be configured to download digital files via BitTorrent without the use of a PC, according to Cnet News.

“These are the places where people will store their media in the future,” said BitTorrent’s co-founder Ashwin Navin. “People don’t want files to clutter their home PCs. Our technology working with these devices allows an entire family to share a jukebox.”

http://news.com.com/

Do not pay for file sharing software! Most of the people selling these “file sharing subscriptions” or programs are ripping you off. They usually charge you more than their website might say or simply charge you more than once. On top of that, the file sharing software they sell is usually not made by them, but freeware programs that are to be distributed for free only.

Don’t let yourself be misled, refunds are usually ignored.

Allofmp3 has for months been a p[ain in the rear of the RIAA. The on-line Shop sells current albums in the MP3-Format at only a fraction of the price compaired to others. Individual Songs are approximately 15 cent - with the competition, customers usually pay a euro for it. Hardly amazingly that the Russian on-line Shop is very popular also in other countries. The reason for the off-peak rates.

The Russian music store acquired no rights to the songs, which it sells on-line. Allofmp3 however still stresses to its users not to act illegaly. They point out to loop holes in the law, which would permit the selling of music also without the possession of appropriate licenses. In September a forced change of Russian copyright laws could change this as the music industry has already complained. But so far Allofmp3 continues operating.

According to an internal study P2P file sharing - depending upon time of day - has a portion between 50 and 80 per cent of the overall traffic arising in the Internet and thereby occupied more range than all other applications. Performance losses and increased communication costs are the result.
http://www.itseccity.de/

American universities are to proceed more strongly against the illegal exchange of in copyright matters protected contents in their nets. Representatives of the US federation of the music industry (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) demanded that of yesterday with a hearing of the congress sub-committee “competitive ability for 21 Century ” to possible measures against file sharing on the Campuses, which is the industry already a thorn in the eye. “The technology is there”, said MPAA boss Dan Glickman. But many universities did not use it. Modern filter systems are in the best way suitable, in order to filter in copyright matters protected contents from university nets, explained RIAA president Cary Sherman before the delegates.

For instance the suppression of the entrance to freely available contents could be excluded in such a way. The industrial representatives referred once more to the economic damage, which they calculated for their industries by the “illegal Downloads”. Pirating is the largest economical obstacle for the film industry, deplored Glickman. According to a study the US film industry lost world-wide 6.1 billion US dollar in the past year by Piraterie. From the losses on the US market went according to Glickman approximately 500 million US dollar or 44 per cent on the cap of American college students. Daily 400,000 films were illegaly downloaded.

Each Filesharer knows the problem: Despite having a 6Mbit line, downloading and getting your files out of Emule or Limewire can be difficult as the uploader simply might not have the bandwidth. Worst yet is that you completed 99.9% of the file and that 100kb is being elusive. P2P can be a bitch!

ProxyShare is a bit more interesting! What it does is rather straight forward. It uses the “Cache Servers” of you ISP to store the files. ProxyShare cuts the file you are uploading and leaves these chunks of data on the ISP server. The next person looking to download that chunk from you, will not download it from you but from the cache server of your ISP. This would be at fullspeed! This would be the reverse of what True Move was doing in Thailand, where they too cached chunks of data from the P2P networks.

We would all like to always reach our computers despite it changing IP addresses, in Windows Vista this problem might now be solvd. P2P in Windows Vista is easy as an “InterNet name” can be generated for the computer, this make the computer name unique on the internet.

In his Blog Microsoft developer Noah Horton describes the function in Windows Vista here, with which a P2P-Technologie is used named PNRP (Peer name resolution Protocol). So far one must know the IP address of a computer, in order to be able to connect to it.  With each new connection to the InterNet the computer keeps being assigned a new IP address from the provider. Now with the new Vista, you will be able to reach your computer without the need to worry about a dynamic IP address.

Be careful though as the only people who have escaped the RIAA lawsuit fiasco has been people who could rely on the defence that the IP address could not be used as evidence as they are dynamic. With this new Vista technology, that defence will become moot!

http://blogs.msdn.com/noahh/archive/2006/08/23/715894.aspx

The members of the British Association OF Independent Music (AIM) can drive their music out in the future over the P2P-Network. GNAB operated by the Bertelsmann daughter Arvato.

The AIM members decided on an Opt in basis whether they will take part. Beside music, downloads, subscriptions and video downloads are planned. Thus the umbrella federation of more than 900 independent music labels is the first organization, which agreed upon a collective Lizenzierung with P2P. AIM director Alison Wenham and Richard Elections, vice-president with Arvato, appeared contently, when it admits the agreement yesterday on the music fair Popkomm in Berlin gave “with this agreement the AIM proved its innovative handling digital music again. Licensed file sharing and on-line offers will provide more consumers for better entrance to more varied music and at the same time the AIM members to new incomes help “, expressed themselves Richard elections.

http://www.irights.info/

The scholarly consensus is not unanimous, however. Michel notes that Oberholzer and Strumpf (2004) found no correlation between file-sharing and P2P use in 2002, and a more recent paper by a Harvard student found that file-sharing benefited more obscure artists.

The dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult. Michel points out, for instance, that his data would be better if it focused only on broadband users—but such data was not available for the time period he wanted. And then, of course, having a broadband connection is not the same as using it extensively, or even for using it at all for P2P. And of course it would be nice to know exactly how many copyrighted songs each particular household downloaded using such software, but this number too is almost impossible to get.

Despite the sophisticated regression analyses and economic modeling done by these authors, the initial data points are not ideal starting places for this sort of analysis. And academic papers are unlikely to sway those who have either made up their minds on the issue or simply want to justify behavior they think think should be legal.

As far as Malaysia is concerned, the culprit that is causing the slowdown in international links to the Internet cloud may have been determined.

A group of ISP customers around Kuala Lumpur gathered together September 15 to formalize a TM Net User Group for the Klang valley.

Senior management staff, led by TM Net CEO Michael Lai, turned up in full force to lend support to the meeting and a dialogue of sorts became an opportune moment to address the issue of international links..

Of late, broadband customers have been complaining of severe latency and speed lethargy connecting to international links.

In response, TM Net showed some stats to illustrate that the Internet pipeline linking Malaysia to the global world now totalled 17Gbps, with major links hooked to the center of Internet world, the US.
Read more »

YouTube pays nearly $1 million per month in bandwidth fees, a 7 figure deterrent to some interested in the business. A digital movie seller may only break even, as per-download bandwidth scrapes away at profit margins. There is a growing camp, though, that believes peer-to-peer (p2p) technology can address these barrier

The panel agreed that with video on the Net, bandwidth was the key issue, especially in regard to high definition video. Utilization of p2p may be a solution, but there still remains the question of how to monetize it.

Weiss mentioned YouTube’s colossal bandwidth bills before, like someone with new windows brags about their heating bill, noted that p2p dropped the costs of bandwidth at StreamCast to just $7,000 per month.

“For a $15 movie, the cost of downloading is only a buck or two,” added Cohen. “However, for the retailer that is pretty much your profit being blown away. For lower cost content like TV shows that sell for a lower price, it is only possible to deliver via peer to peer from a cost standpoint.”

Great, p2p is much cheaper. Now, how do we monetize it?

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/von/

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) has indirectly invested US$900,000 in Darling Digital Technology, the operator of Taiwan on-line music platform ezPeer+, for an 11.25% stake, according to CHT.

Starting operations in July of this year, ezPeer+ provides PC-based P2P (peer to peer) on-line music transfers as well as DRM (digital rights management)-compliant music for download onto portable multimedia devices such as MP3 players, Darling indicated, adding that P2P services cost NT$149 a month while the download service costs NT$249 a month. The platform currently has about 500,000 members, Darling noted.

CHT’s indirect investment through a subsidiary in ezPeer+ was motivated by the boost from on-line music services to its ADSL (HiNet) and 3G/3.5G business operations, according to industry sources. CHT’s HiNet subscriber accounts have been integrated with ezPeer+ member accounts, enabling HiNet subscribers to directly use ezPeer+ services, Darling indicated. The integration will be extended to CHT 3G subscribers, Darling added.

http://www.digitimes.com/telecom/a20060914AA055.html

The watermark technology makes slight changes to the data in sound files, such as a higher volume intensity in a tiny part of a song, that are undetectable by even the best-trained ears, according to Fraunhofer researchers. However, if unauthorised copies of a download turn up on, for example, P2P (peer-to-peer) filesharing networks, the watermark allows Akuma to identify the purchaser of a file and take action against them.

“Around 40 percent of the labels we offer are embedded with watermarks,” said Sascha Hottes, a managing director of H2 Media Factory, which launched Akuma. “This is the compromise we’ve reached with labels that are willing to release their titles in the MP3 format and not in Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format with its DRM technology.”

As part of its service, Akuma monitors songs embedded with a watermark against illegal distribution on P2P services, according to Hottes. “We monitor P2P networks on a random basis,” he said.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsid=7088

Taiwan online music file-sharing network Kuro has agreed to shut down its file swapping service and pay undisclosed damages to settle a recording industry lawsuit, the industry group behind the conflict said.

The settlement comes a year after a separate case produced a landmark criminal conviction against executives at Kuro’s operators, Fashionow, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which filed the civil action, said in a statement released late on Thursday.

Under settlement of the civil case, Fashionow would stop distributing its peer-to-peer (P2P) swapping software immediately and will ensure closure of the copyright-infringing service by Oct. 15, the federation said.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6116047.html