First they argue about if they can have some pie, now over the slice size...
NEW YORK -
NBC Universal has told Apple Inc. that it would not allow its television content to be sold on iTunes following a dispute over pricing.
NBC Universal-controlled television programming accounts for an estimated 40 percent of the video downloads on iTunes.
The company's contract to sell more than 1,500 hours of news, sports and entertainment programming on iTunes expires at the end of December. NBC was required to inform Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) by Friday if the contract would not renewed, said Amy Zelvin, spokeswoman for NBC Universal Digital.
Apple was not immediately available for comment Friday.
The companies are expected to continue negotiations. But NBC Universal's hardball tactics, reported Friday in The New York Times, illustrates unrest among content providers concerning Apple's pricing policies.
iTunes offers songs for download at 99 cents and video for $1.99. Media companies want more say in pricing and, in NBC Universal's case, is anxious to offer different packages by bundling programs together at different prices.
Availability of Web-popular programs like USA's "Psych," NBC's "30 Rock" and Sci Fi's "Battlestar Gallactica" would all be affected.
NBC Universal also wants iTunes to stiffen anti-piracy provisions so computer users would not have easy access to illegal downloads.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
RIP: Sony's Proprietary Audio Format
Sony Ditching Connect Music Service
By MATT MOORE 08.30.07, 11:19 AM ET
FRANKFURT, Germany -
Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. said Thursday it plans to shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
The moves were announced Thursday at a Berlin consumer electronics trade fair as the Japanese electronics pioneer unveiled a pair of new digital Walkmans that can play the Windows Media Audio, MP3 and AAC audio formats.
Like rivals' players, including Apple Inc. (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people )'s iPods, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people )'s NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 can also play video and display photographs. Sony's models include an FM tuner, too.
Sony said it would phase out operations of its struggling Connect online retailer, which sold songs in the company's proprietary ATRAC format.
"This gives customers greater flexibility in their music software approach," the company said in a statement. "As a result, Sony will be phasing out the Connect Music Services based on Sony's ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe."
In an e-mail sent to Connect users, the service said it would not close before March 2008, but it did not set a more specific date. The company's Connect e-book service for the Sony Reader is not affected.
In June, Sony Connect Inc. said it was eliminating some positions as part of a restructuring plan to shift resources to other online services, but had denied reports it was related to a planned shutdown.
Instead, the company said it was shifting its emphasis other network services, specifically one for users of the PlayStation video game console, the company said.
Sony Connect launched in 2004, but like other online music services, it has had a tough time competing against Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, which is tied to the market-leading iPod portable player.
The new Walkman video players store up to 1,850 average-length MP3 songs on the eight gigabyte models, 925 songs on the four gigabyte models, and 440 songs on the two gigabyte models. Prices range from $120 to $230.
Additionally, a third line, the NWZ-B100, will play audio only (MP3s, AAC and Windows Media formats), and cost $80 for a two-gigabyte model and $60 for a one-gigabyte model.
Sony said that the new Walkman video players will ship with Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s Windows Media Player 11 to manage digital libraries.
"With this initiative, Sony is debuting an important option for digital media players as it opens new doors for a rich digital experience," said Dave Wascha, director of Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft Corp.
By MATT MOORE 08.30.07, 11:19 AM ET
FRANKFURT, Germany -
Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. said Thursday it plans to shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
The moves were announced Thursday at a Berlin consumer electronics trade fair as the Japanese electronics pioneer unveiled a pair of new digital Walkmans that can play the Windows Media Audio, MP3 and AAC audio formats.
Like rivals' players, including Apple Inc. (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people )'s iPods, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people )'s NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 can also play video and display photographs. Sony's models include an FM tuner, too.
Sony said it would phase out operations of its struggling Connect online retailer, which sold songs in the company's proprietary ATRAC format.
"This gives customers greater flexibility in their music software approach," the company said in a statement. "As a result, Sony will be phasing out the Connect Music Services based on Sony's ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe."
In an e-mail sent to Connect users, the service said it would not close before March 2008, but it did not set a more specific date. The company's Connect e-book service for the Sony Reader is not affected.
In June, Sony Connect Inc. said it was eliminating some positions as part of a restructuring plan to shift resources to other online services, but had denied reports it was related to a planned shutdown.
Instead, the company said it was shifting its emphasis other network services, specifically one for users of the PlayStation video game console, the company said.
Sony Connect launched in 2004, but like other online music services, it has had a tough time competing against Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, which is tied to the market-leading iPod portable player.
The new Walkman video players store up to 1,850 average-length MP3 songs on the eight gigabyte models, 925 songs on the four gigabyte models, and 440 songs on the two gigabyte models. Prices range from $120 to $230.
Additionally, a third line, the NWZ-B100, will play audio only (MP3s, AAC and Windows Media formats), and cost $80 for a two-gigabyte model and $60 for a one-gigabyte model.
Sony said that the new Walkman video players will ship with Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s Windows Media Player 11 to manage digital libraries.
"With this initiative, Sony is debuting an important option for digital media players as it opens new doors for a rich digital experience," said Dave Wascha, director of Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft Corp.
Something AT&T Forgot in their Ads...
AT&T willing to spy for NSA, MPAA, and RIAA
By Nate Anderson Published: June 13, 2007 - 10:13AM CT
In a move that has executives from movie studios and record labels grinning from ear to ear, AT&T has announced that it will develop and deploy technology that will attempt to keep pirated content off its network. The move is spurred in part by the company's decision to offer IPTV television service as part of its U-Verse package, AT&T senior VP James W. Cicconi told the Los Angeles Times.
The first step for AT&T is coming up with a technological solution that works: something that can effectively filter out illicit traffic while protecting its users' privacy. That's a tall—if not impossible—order. YouTube hasn't managed to do it even for video yet, and that's when customers are sending them entire files which they can scan at their leisure. Monitoring all the files sent through BitTorrent—which splits them into tiny pieces—could be even more difficult; doing it in real-time sounds both expensive and impossible.
Without human intervention, it's also tough to tell if copyrighted content is even "piracy." Fair use carves out exceptions for news reporting, criticism, and commentary (among other things) which is nearly impossible for a machine to understand in context.
Despite the major technical problems inherent in such a program, AT&T is moving ahead. By making themselves into the arbiters of copyright law, the company risks being drawn into a costly "arms race" with programmers who don't like the idea of a massive corporation (and one which appears to have turned over information to the NSA) peeking into their packets and deciding which ones go through.
This is exactly the situation that Dr. Greg Jackson, CIO of the University of Chicago, warned Congress about last week. "The only successful, robust way to address problems that involve personal responsibility and behavior is with social rather than technological tools," he said in a hearing. "If we instead try and restrict behavior technologically... the only result will be an arms race that nobody wins."
There's a certain creepiness to having one of the country's largest IP networks doing deep packet inspection and monitoring, but consumers who value their privacy can always go somewhere else, right? Not necessarily. In addition to running a massive network of its own, AT&T runs a good chunk of the backbone infrastructure in the US. It's a rare bit of traffic that can make it to its destination without passing on to an AT&T-owned network. If the company deploys its anti-piracy technology to all data passing through its networks, AT&T's "solution" could affect most US Internet users. In addition, many US residents have limited broadband choices.
The company says it will target only repeat offenders and that it will not violate user privacy or FCC directives on network openness. Who knows how this is all supposed to work, especially as legal, unencrypted files flow across the Internet from sites like iTunes and eMusic, along with thousands of smaller sites that serve as promotional vehicles for independent bands and filmmakers? We suspect that AT&T will start small, deploying some sort of P2P solution that looks for the transfer of unencrypted Hollywood blockbusters and major-label bands in complete form.
The most likely scenario is the deployment of new traffic-shaping hardware that can tell what protocol is being used by watching packets (but without doing deep inspection). Only those using BitTorrent, FTP, or other targeted protocols would receive deeper scrutiny; e-mail and web requests should remain private in such a system. Given AT&T's size, though, even in an almost-perfect system could cause problems. Assuming (and this is a big assumption) that whatever solution they roll out works with 99.5 percent accuracy, then AT&T will still have a 0.5 percent false positive rate. That's pretty good, but 0.5 percent of a gazillion users is still plenty of users.
The company's focus on "repeat offenders" may be a way of avoiding this problem by only flagging users who share illicit files multiple times and are unlikely to be falsely flagged in every case.
All of this appears to be in the talking stages for the moment, though, so we'll have to wait awhile to find out exactly how Big Brother-ish it turns out to be. What it does indicate is that AT&T, once just a network provider, has recognized the importance of content to its own business. "We do recognize that a lot of our future business depends on exciting and interesting content," Cicconi told the Times.
By Nate Anderson Published: June 13, 2007 - 10:13AM CT
In a move that has executives from movie studios and record labels grinning from ear to ear, AT&T has announced that it will develop and deploy technology that will attempt to keep pirated content off its network. The move is spurred in part by the company's decision to offer IPTV television service as part of its U-Verse package, AT&T senior VP James W. Cicconi told the Los Angeles Times.
The first step for AT&T is coming up with a technological solution that works: something that can effectively filter out illicit traffic while protecting its users' privacy. That's a tall—if not impossible—order. YouTube hasn't managed to do it even for video yet, and that's when customers are sending them entire files which they can scan at their leisure. Monitoring all the files sent through BitTorrent—which splits them into tiny pieces—could be even more difficult; doing it in real-time sounds both expensive and impossible.
Without human intervention, it's also tough to tell if copyrighted content is even "piracy." Fair use carves out exceptions for news reporting, criticism, and commentary (among other things) which is nearly impossible for a machine to understand in context.
Despite the major technical problems inherent in such a program, AT&T is moving ahead. By making themselves into the arbiters of copyright law, the company risks being drawn into a costly "arms race" with programmers who don't like the idea of a massive corporation (and one which appears to have turned over information to the NSA) peeking into their packets and deciding which ones go through.
This is exactly the situation that Dr. Greg Jackson, CIO of the University of Chicago, warned Congress about last week. "The only successful, robust way to address problems that involve personal responsibility and behavior is with social rather than technological tools," he said in a hearing. "If we instead try and restrict behavior technologically... the only result will be an arms race that nobody wins."
There's a certain creepiness to having one of the country's largest IP networks doing deep packet inspection and monitoring, but consumers who value their privacy can always go somewhere else, right? Not necessarily. In addition to running a massive network of its own, AT&T runs a good chunk of the backbone infrastructure in the US. It's a rare bit of traffic that can make it to its destination without passing on to an AT&T-owned network. If the company deploys its anti-piracy technology to all data passing through its networks, AT&T's "solution" could affect most US Internet users. In addition, many US residents have limited broadband choices.
The company says it will target only repeat offenders and that it will not violate user privacy or FCC directives on network openness. Who knows how this is all supposed to work, especially as legal, unencrypted files flow across the Internet from sites like iTunes and eMusic, along with thousands of smaller sites that serve as promotional vehicles for independent bands and filmmakers? We suspect that AT&T will start small, deploying some sort of P2P solution that looks for the transfer of unencrypted Hollywood blockbusters and major-label bands in complete form.
The most likely scenario is the deployment of new traffic-shaping hardware that can tell what protocol is being used by watching packets (but without doing deep inspection). Only those using BitTorrent, FTP, or other targeted protocols would receive deeper scrutiny; e-mail and web requests should remain private in such a system. Given AT&T's size, though, even in an almost-perfect system could cause problems. Assuming (and this is a big assumption) that whatever solution they roll out works with 99.5 percent accuracy, then AT&T will still have a 0.5 percent false positive rate. That's pretty good, but 0.5 percent of a gazillion users is still plenty of users.
The company's focus on "repeat offenders" may be a way of avoiding this problem by only flagging users who share illicit files multiple times and are unlikely to be falsely flagged in every case.
All of this appears to be in the talking stages for the moment, though, so we'll have to wait awhile to find out exactly how Big Brother-ish it turns out to be. What it does indicate is that AT&T, once just a network provider, has recognized the importance of content to its own business. "We do recognize that a lot of our future business depends on exciting and interesting content," Cicconi told the Times.
Stanford's Content Pirating Policy
Stanford to hit P2P users in the wallet with reconnection fees
By Eric Bangeman Published: May 16, 2007 - 11:41PM CT
Reactions of universities named in the RIAA and MPAA's top 25 list of pirate schools have run the gamut from embarrassed to seemingly indifferent. Color Stanford red-faced, as a copy of the school's revised DMCA Complaint Policy received by file-sharing litigation attorney Ray Beckerman demonstrates.
Citing the costs involved with keeping up with the number of file-sharing complaints received by the school, Stanford will continue to disconnect students from the campus network upon the receipt of "DMCA complaints" and other notices such as the infamous prelitigation settlement letters from the RIAA but will now charge students a hefty fee to be reconnected. Stanford administration says that it takes almost three full-time employees to stay on top of the number of complaints. Stanford is justifying the reconnection fees by calling the money spent on copyright-enforcement-related activities "an irresponsible waste of Stanford's resources."
Upon the receipt of the first DMCA complaint, the school's Information Security Office (ISO) will forward a copy to the student along with a message directing him or her to remove the infringing content. If the student fails respond to the ISO and does not remove the infringing material within 48 hours, he or she will be disconnected from the school network and assessed a $100 reconnection charge. Students can provide a counter-notice to the ISO if they believe they received the complaint in error.
Further offenses will result in immediate disconnection from the network. Two-time offenders will have to pay a $500 reconnection fee, while three-time losers will have their network privileges terminated. In order for a three-time offender to regain access, he or she will need to indemnify the university against any further copyright violations and pay a $1,000 fee for a new account on the school network. The offending student will also be referred to Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action.
Stanford's new policy is perhaps the harshest to be enacted by a US college or university in the wake of the MPAA and RIAA publicizing their top 25 lists. Ohio University responded to being fingered as a top pirate school by banning P2P traffic; other schools have decided to take a wait-and-see attitude. Others, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are requiring the RIAA to follow the letter of the law, refusing to forward settlement letters or turn over student information unless served with a valid subpoena.
By Eric Bangeman Published: May 16, 2007 - 11:41PM CT
Reactions of universities named in the RIAA and MPAA's top 25 list of pirate schools have run the gamut from embarrassed to seemingly indifferent. Color Stanford red-faced, as a copy of the school's revised DMCA Complaint Policy received by file-sharing litigation attorney Ray Beckerman demonstrates.
Citing the costs involved with keeping up with the number of file-sharing complaints received by the school, Stanford will continue to disconnect students from the campus network upon the receipt of "DMCA complaints" and other notices such as the infamous prelitigation settlement letters from the RIAA but will now charge students a hefty fee to be reconnected. Stanford administration says that it takes almost three full-time employees to stay on top of the number of complaints. Stanford is justifying the reconnection fees by calling the money spent on copyright-enforcement-related activities "an irresponsible waste of Stanford's resources."
Upon the receipt of the first DMCA complaint, the school's Information Security Office (ISO) will forward a copy to the student along with a message directing him or her to remove the infringing content. If the student fails respond to the ISO and does not remove the infringing material within 48 hours, he or she will be disconnected from the school network and assessed a $100 reconnection charge. Students can provide a counter-notice to the ISO if they believe they received the complaint in error.
Further offenses will result in immediate disconnection from the network. Two-time offenders will have to pay a $500 reconnection fee, while three-time losers will have their network privileges terminated. In order for a three-time offender to regain access, he or she will need to indemnify the university against any further copyright violations and pay a $1,000 fee for a new account on the school network. The offending student will also be referred to Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action.
Stanford's new policy is perhaps the harshest to be enacted by a US college or university in the wake of the MPAA and RIAA publicizing their top 25 lists. Ohio University responded to being fingered as a top pirate school by banning P2P traffic; other schools have decided to take a wait-and-see attitude. Others, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are requiring the RIAA to follow the letter of the law, refusing to forward settlement letters or turn over student information unless served with a valid subpoena.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Earthlink WiFi Initiative Tanking
As the rollout of municipal Wi-Fi is hitting some speedbumps in recent months, Earthlink is laying off 900 staff members, or almost half of its workforce.
Earthlink had been trying to build Wi-Fi networks in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and three California cities including, most famously, San Francisco (where it partnered with Google to beat out five other bidders for a city contract).
But the well-publicized San Francisco rollout stalled earlier this year when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors delayed a vote on the project -- reportedly after EarthLink didn't respond to requests for changes to the contract, including increasing the speed of the line and offering new privacy controls.
With EarthLink in retrenchment mode, it's not clear what will happen to municipal Wi-Fi where the company had planned to create networks. It's also not clear that there's still the same demand for municipal Wi-Fi as when those projects were conceived several years ago.
Consider, many more users are on broadband lines at home now than two years ago, when municipal Wi-Fi was just getting underway. Pew recently reported that 70% of home Web users now connect via broadband lines, while almost half of all homes now have high-speed Internet access. Additionally, many Web users in urban areas are finding ways to tap into existing Wi-Fi networks. These developments indicate that many Web users already have the bandwidth they need, at least at the moment.
Earthlink had been trying to build Wi-Fi networks in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and three California cities including, most famously, San Francisco (where it partnered with Google to beat out five other bidders for a city contract).
But the well-publicized San Francisco rollout stalled earlier this year when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors delayed a vote on the project -- reportedly after EarthLink didn't respond to requests for changes to the contract, including increasing the speed of the line and offering new privacy controls.
With EarthLink in retrenchment mode, it's not clear what will happen to municipal Wi-Fi where the company had planned to create networks. It's also not clear that there's still the same demand for municipal Wi-Fi as when those projects were conceived several years ago.
Consider, many more users are on broadband lines at home now than two years ago, when municipal Wi-Fi was just getting underway. Pew recently reported that 70% of home Web users now connect via broadband lines, while almost half of all homes now have high-speed Internet access. Additionally, many Web users in urban areas are finding ways to tap into existing Wi-Fi networks. These developments indicate that many Web users already have the bandwidth they need, at least at the moment.
No More Time of Day for California
Time of day calling it quits at AT&T
August 29, 2007
It's the end of time, at least as far as AT&T is concerned.The brief note in customers' bills hardly does justice to the momentousness of the decision. "Service withdrawal," it blandly declares. "Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued."
What that means is that people throughout Southern California will no longer be able to call 853-1212 to hear a woman's recorded voice state that "at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . ." with the recording automatically updating at 10-second intervals."Times change," said John Britton, an AT&T spokesman. "In today's world, there are just too many other ways to get this information. You can look at your cellphone or your computer. You no longer have to pick up the telephone."Indeed, time already has stopped in 48 other states, he said. California and Nevada are the two remaining holdouts.In Northern California, the prefix for calling time is 767, or P-O-P on a telephone keypad. For decades, locals up there have dialed POPCORN any time they have had to reset their watches or reprogram electronic gadgets after a power failure."In California, our equipment has gotten old," Britton said. "It's reached the end of its life span."Time's up statewide Sept. 19. Britton said Nevada service would live on borrowed time for an unspecified period, until the equipment in that state similarly starts breaking down.
One upside: AT&T says doing away with time would enable the creation of about 300,000 new phone numbers in California beginning with the 853 or 767 prefixes. (No such numbers have been issued to date because, when coupled with any four other digits, you get time.)To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteelera, when we all had time to share."It was always there," said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell's (and subsequently SBC's) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. "Everybody knew the number."Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell Labs in the early 1960s. He described the devices as large drums about 2 feet in diameter, with as many as 100 album-like audio tracks on the exterior. Whenever someone called time, the drums would start turning and a message would begin, with different tracks mixed together on the fly."The people who worked on it took it very seriously," Frenkiel, 64, recalled. "They took a lot of pride in it."
In a twist of historical irony, Frenkiel went on to play a leading role in development of the technology that makes cellphones possible -- the very device that's now instrumental in killing time.Phone companies have been providing the time to callers since the 1920s. In the early days, live operators read the time off clocks on the wall.In the 1930s, an Atlanta company called Audichron devised a system for the time to be provided automatically. Audichron leased its technology to phone companies nationwide, often with sponsorship from local businesses.
August 29, 2007
It's the end of time, at least as far as AT&T is concerned.The brief note in customers' bills hardly does justice to the momentousness of the decision. "Service withdrawal," it blandly declares. "Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued."
What that means is that people throughout Southern California will no longer be able to call 853-1212 to hear a woman's recorded voice state that "at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . ." with the recording automatically updating at 10-second intervals."Times change," said John Britton, an AT&T spokesman. "In today's world, there are just too many other ways to get this information. You can look at your cellphone or your computer. You no longer have to pick up the telephone."Indeed, time already has stopped in 48 other states, he said. California and Nevada are the two remaining holdouts.In Northern California, the prefix for calling time is 767, or P-O-P on a telephone keypad. For decades, locals up there have dialed POPCORN any time they have had to reset their watches or reprogram electronic gadgets after a power failure."In California, our equipment has gotten old," Britton said. "It's reached the end of its life span."Time's up statewide Sept. 19. Britton said Nevada service would live on borrowed time for an unspecified period, until the equipment in that state similarly starts breaking down.
One upside: AT&T says doing away with time would enable the creation of about 300,000 new phone numbers in California beginning with the 853 or 767 prefixes. (No such numbers have been issued to date because, when coupled with any four other digits, you get time.)To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteelera, when we all had time to share."It was always there," said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell's (and subsequently SBC's) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. "Everybody knew the number."Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell Labs in the early 1960s. He described the devices as large drums about 2 feet in diameter, with as many as 100 album-like audio tracks on the exterior. Whenever someone called time, the drums would start turning and a message would begin, with different tracks mixed together on the fly."The people who worked on it took it very seriously," Frenkiel, 64, recalled. "They took a lot of pride in it."
In a twist of historical irony, Frenkiel went on to play a leading role in development of the technology that makes cellphones possible -- the very device that's now instrumental in killing time.Phone companies have been providing the time to callers since the 1920s. In the early days, live operators read the time off clocks on the wall.In the 1930s, an Atlanta company called Audichron devised a system for the time to be provided automatically. Audichron leased its technology to phone companies nationwide, often with sponsorship from local businesses.
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