Archive for January 2005
LokiTorrent Fights Back at MPAA
"The latest peer-to-peer site to come into the legal crosshairs of the motion-picture industry promised this week to fight, and put out a virtual hat to finance its legal fund.
"LokiTorrent, a Web site and index of files available through a peer-to-peer technology known as BitTorrent, posted a letter from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on its site on Tuesday. The letter states that the MPAA has filed suit in district court in Texas against the site and demands that Loki Torrent cease linking to video files that could infringe on studios’ copyrights.
"LokiTorrent is the latest file-sharing site to run into the legal guns of the motion picture industry. Several peer-to-peer sites disappeared from the Internet earlier this month, after the MPAA filed suits against them."
Robert Lemos. LokiTorrent Fights MPAA Legal Attack. News.com. Dec. 30, 2004.
See also:
Jim Wagner. BitTorrent Operator Bites Back at MPAA. InternetNews.com. Dec. 30, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.
EMI, Sony BMG Partner for New Music Formats
"In a bold move to pave the way for more widespread licensing of music publishing rights, EMI Music Publishing and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have entered an umbrella agreement that sets working guidelines for clearing rights to new digital music delivery opportunities on phones, PCs, digital cable systems and emerging physical configurations.
The pact, announced Dec. 17, which pairs the world’s top publishing house and the second-largest record company globally, promises to drive the clearance of thousands of copyrighted works for new distribution formats.
"The deal covers North American rights for master ring tones and ringbacks; DualDisc, the new two-sided music format that combines CD and DVD functionality; digital video distribution, including video-on-demand services and video downloads; multi-session audio discs like copy-protected CDs; and ‘locked’ content for hard drives and storage media that consumers may ‘unlock’ by purchasing the tracks or albums online."
Reuters. EMI, Sony BMG Ink Digital Music Pact. News.com. Dec. 20, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
GuruNet Launches Answers.com
"GuruNet–a reference service that bypasses search engines to yield succinct information on terms in any document–launched a new Web site Monday that it insists will not compete with Google.
"GuruNet, a New York-based, publicly traded company with a research and development unit in Jerusalem, gained attention in 1999 for its desktop application that made any word in a document searchable with a single click.
"Now, after an unsuccessful foray into the enterprise search market, the company has returned to its consumer roots by retiring its subscription service in favor of an ad-supported revenue model and launching Answers.com, a Web site that will allow people to access its information warehouse without downloading the GuruNet application."
Paul Festa. GuruNet Launches New Search Service. News.com. Jan. 3, 2005.
See also:
Gary Price. GuruNet Becomes Answers.com and Is Now Available Free!. Search Engine Watch. Jan. 3, 2005.
Walter S. Mossberg. GuruNet as a Reference Tool Goes Beyond Search Engines. WSJ.com. March 6, 2003.
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
TiVo Unveils Mobile Transfer Service
"TiVo Inc. pioneered digital video recording as a new way of watching television – when you want it. Now it could be TV where you want it, too. The long-awaited service feature called TiVoToGo, set to launch Monday, will give users their first taste of TiVo untethered.
"No longer confined to TiVo digital video recorders in the living room or bedroom, subscribers will be able to transfer their recorded shows to PCs or laptops and take them on the road – as long as the shows are not specially tagged with copy restrictions. That’s also the case for pay-per-view or on-demand movies, and some premium paid programming.
"Users also will be able to copy shows onto a DVD – soon after but not immediately at the service launch, company officials said."
May Wong. TiVo Unveils Portable Transfer Service. WashingtonPost.com. Jan. 3, 2005.
See also:
Benny Evangelista. Electronics Industry to Showcase Technologies That Let Consumers Watch TV Anywhere, Anytime. SanFrancisco Chronicle. Jan. 3, 2005.
(Editor�s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper�s fee-based Archives.)
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
2004 Search Engine Trends
"So, 2004 turned out to be a very exciting search engine year, after all. For a moment, one could believe that we were moving into an era with a virtual Google monopoly, and monopolies are seldom good for innovation.
"Instead there has grown up new alternatives. Competition is as fierce as ever, and given that both users and stockmarkets reward innovation, there has been a large number of refinements, new services and new products."
No author. Search Engine Trends in 2004. Pandia. Dec. 31, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.
Microsoft’s New Year’s Resolutions
"Directions on Microsoft has released a list of what it considers the top 10 challenges for the software giant in 2005.
"’Left unattended, each (challenge) could ultimately interrupt Microsoft’s 25-plus-year run of growth and profits and leave the door open for younger, smaller and more nimble competitors,’ the analyst house said in its end-of-year research note Wednesday."
Tony Hallett. New Year’s Resolutions for Microsoft. News.com. Dec. 23, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
The Management & Logistics of Digitization Projects
"Susan Wojcicki’s grandmother, a librarian for more than 30 years, ran the Slavic department at the Library of Congress. Now Wojcicki is overseeing Google Inc.’s ambitious plan to digitize the collections of five top libraries: Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library.
"The project eventually will allow any Internet user anywhere in the world to search inside millions of volumes, seeing the pages exactly as they appear in the originals, complete with illustrations, charts and photos.
"The logistics involved are staggering."
Carolyn Said. Digitizing Books: A Mountainous Task for Google. SeattlePI.com. Dec. 24, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.
COPYCENSE 
