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ISPs home free

The Supreme Court of Canada gave the recording industry another bonk on the head last week when they ruled 9-0 against a lawsuit against Internet Services Providers that would require them to pay royalties on music downloaded through their services.

The Supreme Court of Canada gave the recording industry another bonk on the head last week when they ruled 9-0 against a lawsuit against Internet Services Providers that would require them to pay royalties on music downloaded through their services.

The court said it was impractical and unfair to expect ISPs to monitor their clients and apply fees on downloads of copyrighted materials. They also noted that such a law would be inconsistent with the rest of the world.

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers decided to go after the ISPs believing that it would be more efficient to go after a handful of companies for royalties than millions of individual users.

The ruling means that SOCAN will have to continue to sue individuals for copyright infringements, which will be difficult after a Federal Court judge ruled earlier this year that it wasn’t illegal to upload or download copyrighted materials from the Web. That’s on top of an even earlier ruling that it wasn’t illegal to download copyrighted materials, just illegal to make those materials available.

SOCAN has been looking for some form of Internet-based protection of copyrighted materials since 1995.

Sony brings back Walkman

Twenty-five years ago this week Sony released the very first Walkman, creating a whole new market for portable entertainment with a line of personal tape players so small you could fit one in a large back pocket. I remember that the batteries would last a whole two hours.

On the anniversary of the Walkman, Sony is hoping to create another revolution with the announced release of its new Network Walkman HD1 this fall, which comes equipped with a 20 gig hard drive. It’s expected to be slightly cheaper with longer battery life than iPod, and will be compatible with Sony’s popular online music store.

Right now the Apple iPod has about 50 per cent of the market for portable players, and is preparing to release a model with a 60 gig hard drive.

Apple lets Tiger out of the cage

Apple CEO Steve Jobbs let the cat out of the bag last week regarding the widely anticipated release of Apple OSX Tiger, the next update to the company’s proprietary operating system. Expected to hit stores before summer of 2005, Tiger is already being hailed as the next benchmark for operating systems.

Of course Microsoft is hoping that the new Longhorn update to XP will be the new benchmark, and both systems do offer an eerily similar range of applications and capabilities to users so it should be an interesting year for PR.

There are more than 150 new features for Tiger including: Spotlight, a new internal search engine that makes it easier to find files; Dashboard, a program that allows you to manage smaller applications; Automator, a faster, more streamlined scripting language; and enhanced iChat AV video conferencing and messaging. It will also work more fluidly with 64-bit processors, which are only currently available on the top-of-the-line PowerMac G5 systems.

There are also rumours that there will be a server version of Tiger that will be able to function as a joint Weblog server and an iChat server for companies that want to keep communications internal.

Blu-ray recorders to hit market

Thanks a lot, Panasonic. Within a month my DVD player and writer will officially be on the road to obsolescence thanks to Panasonic’s release of the first combination Blu-ray disc / DVD recorder.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected. For years the industry has been going on and on about the next generation of recording medium and the use of blue light lasers that can pack up to 27 gigs of information on a single disk. By way of comparison a typical DVD can only hold about 4.7 gigs.

As a result the Panasonic recorder can record up to 4.5 hours of digital high-definition programming or 63 hours of regular analog programming.

How long will it take before Blu-ray becomes an industry standard? It’s hard to say. The initial systems will be expensive and of limited appeal to the usual first-in tech geeks. Computer storage will likely be the primary application for these systems at the start.

Then there’s the whole high definition television craze. While all new televisions are required to be HDTV ready since 2003, there are only a handful of HDTV channels available to satellite and digital cable subscribers. The industry itself needs to do a lot of upgrading before companies can reliably start to record, broadcast and receive HDTV.

Still, technology is moving fast these days so it’s hard to predict exactly when to head to A&B Sound. I’d be surprised if it took three years.

Safety in numbers

Microsoft can be justifiably proud of its Internet Explorer Web browser. It’s estimated that about 95 per cent of the computers in the world use Explorer to connect to the Web. It’s free, it’s powerful, it allows for dozens of plug-ins to enhance Web content, and it’s been frequently updated to keep pace with new technologies.

The last week has been a difficult one for Microsoft with a pair of serious virus attacks that take advantage of a security flaw within Internet Explorer. Virtually every IE user was vulnerable to an attack until Microsoft stepped forward with patches to reduce the risk. If you haven’t already done so, get patched up at www.microsoft.com.

This was the first time that viruses have spread through Web browsers. Typically viruses are spread through e-mail and download services, and had to be invited into your system.

The first virus was designed to steal valuable information from users, such as passwords and credit card numbers, by monitoring key strokes. The second virus, which was transmitted via pop-up ads, was also designed to steal passwords.

Various computer experts have called on people to think seriously about using alternative browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox and Opera to surf the Web. The fact that 95 per cent of all computers are currently using IE makes the program an obvious target for hackers and virus programmers.

It also doesn’t help that IE was designed to be incredibly flexible when it comes to running third-party programs, such as multimedia software. The same architecture that makes it such a powerful program is what makes it vulnerable.

You can get a copy of Mozilla’s Firefox at www.mozilla.org and Opera Web Browser at www.opera.com.