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Main Stories
o File-Sharing Networks, Entertainment Firms Back in Court on Tuesday
o Germany's Bertelsmann Flouts "Baseless" $260 Million Fine
o Major Label EMI Licenses Songs to Wippit Legit P2P Service
o TiVo Announces $50 Price Cut on Digital Video Recorders  
o IT Companies Worst Software Pirates in U.K., Report Says

o Briefly Noted: Open Mobile Alliance, MultiMediaCard Association, European Commission - 3G soccer video clips, Chaoticom - Eurotel, XM Satellite Radio - General Motors, Movielink - MultiPlay, Sega - Verizon Wireless, Fonix - PlayStation 2, Electronic Gaming Monthly - "2003 Gamers' Choice Awards," Reprise Records - Secret Machines - digital album

Pasadena, Calif. -- Operators of file-sharing networks Grokster and Morpheus will return to court Tuesday to face an appeal of the landmark ruling that said the companies and their software are not liable for copyright infringement. The April 2003 ruling, from U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson, prompted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to begin its legal campaign against individual file-swappers, which has so far targeted 914 individuals. Over 20 movie studios, record labels, music publishers and others have challenged Wilson's ruling with an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif. "The services are profiting to the tune of millions of dollars from music that is written by songwriters who are not getting a dime from the use of their music on these services. We believe that the (lower court's) conclusion is fundamentally unjust," said National Music Publishers Association attorney Cary Ramos. "[This case] is about whether copyright owners have the right to veto new technologies and stifle innovation," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann, who is representing Morpheus operator Streamcast Networks. "Innovators have a great deal at stake in the conflict over peer-to-peer (P2P) software." Judges will hear 30-minute arguments from both sides on Tuesday, but are not expected to deliver a ruling for several months.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/20040130_eff_pr.php
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62112,00.html
http://www.riaa.com 
http://www.grokster.com
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o Germany's Bertelsmann Flouts "Baseless" $260 Million Fine

Berlin -- Bertelsmann on Monday responded defiantly to a U.S. court's recent decision that the media group must pay two former executives 209 million euro ($260 million). A California court awarded Jan Henric Buettner and Andreas von Blottnitz more than 104 million euro ($130 million) apiece for having helped set up AOL Europe. Their lawyers argued that the pair had received a fair share for their stake in the online provider, which Bertelsmann sold in 2000 for nearly $7 billion. Bertelsmann legal director Ulrich Koch characterized the decision as "baseless" and "built on lies" and vowed to challenge it.
http://www.bertelsmann.com/news/press/press_item.cfm?id=9132
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o Major Label EMI Licenses Songs to Wippit Legit P2P Service

Cannes, France -- Wippit, a U.K.-based peer-to-peer file-sharing service that licenses songs from record labels before making them available to users, has licensed major record label EMI's recordings for the service, the Associated Press reported. Wippit CEO Paul Myers told AP that most of EMI's catalog will debut on Wippit in February, joining songs that the file-sharing service has licensed from over 200 independent record labels. For an annual fee of about $50, Wippit allows users to download songs that have been licensed to the service from one another's computers. Additionally, Myers told AP, Wippit is in talks with the four other major labels, and hopes two of them will provide licenses to Wippit in February.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2F861647 
http://www.emigroup.com 
http://www.wippit.com
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o TiVo Announces $50 Price Cut on Digital Video Recorders

San Jose, Calif. -- TiVo, a maker of digital video recorders and provider of associated services, announced on Monday a $50 price cut for its devices that will lower the cost of its Series 2 DVRs to $199 for a 40-hour model and $299 for an 80-hour model. Separately, the company said that the "wardrobe malfunction" incident at the conclusion of the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday evening accounted for "the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured," as "viewership spiked up to 180 percent as hundreds of thousands of households used TiVo … to view the incident again and again."
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040202/sfm039_1.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040202/sfm104_1.html 
http://www.tivo.com
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o IT Companies Worst Software Pirates in U.K., Report Says

London -- According to a new study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), IT companies are ironically England's worst offenders when it comes to software piracy. The BSA said that out of the 50 settlements made with the group last year, 12 were made by IT firms, nearly a quarter of the total. The BSA's Northern Europe manager Siobhan Carroll said that the alliance was "particularly unhappy to see the lack of diligence within the IT sector", adding that, of all sectors, the IT sector should realise the "effect of piracy on software innovation and the development of the IT sector as a whole".
http://www.bsa.org/uk 
http://www.justasksam.co.uk

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(Beverly, Hills, Calif.) The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), a trade group promoting interoperability between mobile devices, has released its latest specification aimed at protecting audio and video content that is distributed wirelessly. The group said its OMA Digital Rights Management 2.0 Enabler Release enables the protection of premium content such as music tracks, video clips and games with enhanced security and improved support to preview and share content, among other new features. "As trust and security improves, the industry will benefit from significant revenue enhancement opportunities through offering rich content through pervasive mobile access," said Willms Buhse, vice chair of OMA's DRM Working Group.
http://www.openmobilealliance.org/docs/DRMPressReleaseFinal020104.doc
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5151719.html 
http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5151260.html

(Cupertino, Calif.) The MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA), a standards organization devoted to promoting the portable storage media format, on Monday introduced its Version 4.0 of the MultiMediaCard specification, for use in digital cameras and cell phones. Offering the fastest data transfer rate of all available flash memory cards, the new specification was jointly developed by firms including Nokia, HP, Renesas Technology, Samsung, Infineon, Micron Technology and SanDisk.
http://www.mmca.org

(Brussels) The European Commission announced on Monday that it will launch an investigation into the sale of soccer broadcast rights to 3G mobile companies and Internet service providers (ISPs). Although 3 is the only 3G company in Europe with a soccer video clip deal to date, many other rivals are currently in the process of negotiating similar deals, and the European Union is determined to ensure that "access to sports rights remains open and non-discriminatory", the Commission said in a statement. Nearly 40 3G networks are scheduled to be launched across Europe by year's end.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R10C62547

(Andover, Mass.) Chaoticom, a developer of wireless media distribution technology, announced on Monday the launch of its service that allows owners of Windows Mobile-powered devices to download full-length songs to their cell phones. The company partnered with Czech wireless network operator Eurotel to launch the service in the Czech Republic, which will feature content from labels including Warner Music International and BMG Czech Republic. The company said its service also supports the Symbian Operating System, used by phone makers including Nokia.
http://www.eurotel.cz 
http://www.chaoticom.com

(Washington) XM Satellite Radio, a provider of satellite-delivered digital radio programming, said on Monday that General Motors will increase the number of vehicles with XM availability to more than 50 cars and trucks in the 2005 model year, up from 42 in model year 2004. GM also announced it will produce its one-millionth XM-equipped vehicle this month. Washington-based XM on Monday also launched commercial-free versions of all of its 68 music channels; previously, only about half of these streams were free of ads.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040202/dcm017_1.html 
http://www.xmradio.com

(Santa Monica, Calif.) Movielink, an Internet video-on-demand joint venture between a number of Hollywood movie studios, announced on Monday a new feature called "MultiPlay," that allows Movielink customers to download selected movies and view them repeatedly at reduced rental rates for additional days. Examples of initial pricing for MultiPlay are $3.99 for an initial rental and $.99 for each additional 24-hour viewing period for "Hulk," and $2.99 for the initial rental and $1.99 for each additional viewing period of "Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan."
http://www.movielink.com

(San Francisco) Sega of America announced that it has launched wireless versions of a number of its games for the 36 million subscribers to Verizon Wireless' Get It Now service. "Sega Snowboarding," "Sega Pengo," "Sega Flicky" and "Sega Fast Lane" will be available for between $4.99 and $7.99. Sega also offers a number of its titles through wireless network operators Sprint PCS (23 games), Qwest (22), Bell Mobility (12), AT&T Wireless (8), T-Mobile U.S.A. (6) and Alltel (4).
http://www.sega.com/corporate/corporate.php?item=corporate_pr

(Salt Lake City, Utah) Fonix, a developer of voice command technology for video games and other sectors, announced on Monday that it has joined the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) Tools & Middleware Program, and will integrate its Fonix voice command interface with Sony's PlayStaion 2. Salt Lake City-based Fonix anticipates selling its voice command solution for PlayStation 2 to global game developers early in 2004.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040202/25245_1.html 
http://www.fonix.com

(San Francisco) Publisher Ziff Davis' Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine on Monday announced its editor-selected "2003 Gamers' Choice Awards," which will be published in the March 2004 issue of the magazine. The title of "Game of the Year" went to publisher and developer Ubisoft's "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time;" "Multiplatform Game of the Year" was awarded to Namco's "Soul Calibur II," and the title of PlayStation 2 game of the year was bestowed on Insomniac's "Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando."
http://www.egmmag.com

(Burbank, Calif.) Reprise Records, a label owned by Warner Bros., announced on Monday that it will begin selling a digital version of the new album from its artists Secret Machines three months prior to the physical album's street release date. "Traditionally, when we begin a new media campaign months before an album release, there is nothing for the fans to purchase," said Robin Bechtel, vice president of Warner Bros./Reprise Records New Media. "By making the Secret Machines album available digitally now, once someone discovers the band on the web, they can buy the music rather than looking for it on file trading networks or not at all." The digital album will also come bundled with a six-song sampler EP featuring new songs from The Von Bondies, The Walkmen, The Sun, Head Automatica and Jonathan Rice.
http://www.repriserecords.com 
http://thesecretmachines.com

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