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DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE -- December 5, 2002
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To Subscribe For Free: http://www.digitalmediawire.com
o Report: 60 Million Americans Have Downloaded Online Music
o President Bush Signs Small Webcaster Amendments Act Into Law
o Adobe Systems, Elcomsoft ISP Employees Testify In E-Book Copyright Trial
o CinemaNow Launches Worldwide Online Video-on-Demand Network
o Report: Western European Mobile Games Revenue to Hit $3 Billion in 2005
o Cable Modem Shipments Rise Sharply In Third Quarter
> DMW Publications: Special Rates for DMW Subscribers
> Featured Section
o Briefly Noted: Tower Records - Electro Source, Nas - album release
advance, Palm Digital Media - library e-books, Overture - CNN, TVN
Entertainment - Sony Pictures Television International, Microsoft -
Unicast, AOL Broadband - NTL, Allin Corp. - cruise ship VOD, Game Show
Network - Interactive TV programming
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> Jobs:
> Events: Eventeurs
> Marketplace: Homeland Security Directory, Interest-Based Navigation
Full Classifieds located beneath "Briefly Noted" section below.
To post a Classified Ad:
http://www.digitalmediawire.com/mainpostingpage.html
or contact Tinzar Than at tinzar@digitalmediawire.com
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o Report: 60 Million Americans Have Downloaded Online Music
Minneapolis, Minn. -- Sixty-million Americans -- or 28 percent of the U.S.
population -- report having downloaded a music or MP3 file off of the
Internet, up from 26 percent in June and 24 percent in April, according to
Minnesota-based research firm Ipsos-Reid's quarterly TEMPO consumer
survey. About half of the U.S. population aged 12 and over report they
have listened to a pre-recorded music CD on a PC, translating to over 100
million Americans, while nearly one-third report having listened to
digital music files that were stored on their PC's hard drive. The report
also found that Americans are becoming increasingly more willing to pay
for online music, as 31 percent reported having paid to download music in
September, compared with 27 percent in June. "This may indicate that
downloaders are becoming more realistic in their approach to online music
acquisition, and perhaps realizing that access to online music is a
valuable service, and as such, is worth paying for," said Ipsos-Reid
director Matt Kleinschmitt.
http://www.ipsos-reid.com/redirect/pr/1685.cfm
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o President Bush Signs Small Webcaster Amendments Act Into Law
Washington -- President Bush on Wednesday signed the Small Webcaster
Amendments Act (SWAA), sparing those webcasters who qualify as "small"
under its guidelines from paying the same royalty rates for streaming
music online as will their larger counterparts like AOL and MSN. Instead,
under the new law small webcasters will be able to negotiate their own
rates with SoundExchange, the recording industry entity set up to collect
and distribute the royalty payments to record labels and artists. The bill
also includes a six-month stay of royalty payments for noncommercial
webcasters. SoundExchange also offered a brief moratorium on royalties for
small webcasters following Congress' passage of the SWAA, which is due to
expire on Dec. 15.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.5469.EAS:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13631-2002Dec5.html
http://www.soundexchange.com
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o Adobe Systems, Elcomsoft ISP Employees Testify In E-Book Copyright Trial
San Jose, Calif. -- The criminal trial of Elcomsoft, a Russian software
firm accused of criminal violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA) for its software that can break the security on Adobe e-books,
continued on Wednesday with a number of witnesses testifying for U.S.
prosecutors. A former Adobe Systems piracy investigator testified he
thought it impractical to expect a foreign firm to comply with U.S. laws
like the DMCA, Wired News reported. "I probably would not have sent, to an
overseas location such as Russia, a citation of U.S. code," said former
Adobe investigator Daryl Spano. "My thought is they would just balk at
it." An employee at Elcomsoft's ISP also testified about discussions he
had with Elcomsoft about complying with Adobe's request to stop
distributing the software. CNET News.com reported that another Adobe
employee testified that his company had been unable to track down a single
illegally-cracked Adobe e-book created using Elcomsoft's software.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56720,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-976121.html?tag=cd_mh
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o CinemaNow Launches Worldwide Online Video-on-Demand Network
Marina del Rey, Calif. -- CinemaNow, a provider of Internet-based
video-on-demand programming and delivery technology, announced on Thursday
the creation of its CinemaNow Worldwide Network, a global consortium of
websites set up in conjunction with telecommunication companies, Internet
service providers and media companies to provide localized video-on-demand
services in specified territories throughout the world. The company
announced new partnerships with British Telecom and Freeserve in the U.K.,
GOL Philippines, NextGentTel in Norway, Purocine in Latin America and TV2
Interaktiv in Norway to distribute the service. Previously announced
partners Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan and Walker Asia in Singapore will also
be part of the network. CinemaNow will provide its partners with content
that is available for a particular territory, and has territorial rights
protection technology that can ensure that only users in that territory
may access that content. Marina del Rey, Calif.-based is majority-owned by
Lion's Gate Films.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/021205/50056_1.html
http://www.cinemanow.com
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o Report: Western European Mobile Games Revenue to Hit $3 Billion in 2005
Cambridge, England -- Downloadable games will replace ringtones as the
service that drives Western Europe's growth in mobile content and
entertainment service revenue over the next three years, according to a
new report released this week by U.K.-based research firm Analysys. The
firm predicts that revenue for wireless games in Western Europe will grow
from $255 million in 2002 to over $3 billion in 2005, a tenfold increase.
Ringtones, logos and other personalization services are expected to bring
a total of $1.2 billion across Western Europe in 2002. The growing
adoption of color-screen and Java-enabled phones will aid in wireless
games' growth, as Analysys forecasts 60 percent of all handsets in
circulation in Western Europe will be Java-enabled by the end of 2005. The
firm points to lack of interoperability, and the absence of a common
standard for digital rights management as two of the biggest factors
currently constraining growth of wireless entertainment.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?day0/223392132&ticker=
http://www.analysys.com
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o Cable Modem Shipments Rise Sharply In Third Quarter
Stamford, Conn. -- With computer users thirsting for ever-faster services
and greater bandwidth, the worldwide cable modem market experienced a 19.4
percent increase in shipments in the third quarter, according to
Connecticut-based technology research and consulting firm Gartner. More
than 3 million units were shipped in the third quarter of 2002 compared
with 2.5 million units in the third quarter of 2001. "North America
continues to see strong demand for cable broadband access services,"
Gartner said in its report.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/021205/52087_1.html
http://www.gartner.com
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==========================================
DMW Publications: Special Rates for DMW Subscribers
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FEATURED SECTION
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Featured Section posting at:
http://www.digitalmediawire.com/featuredpostingpage.htm
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Briefly Noted:
(West Sacramento, Calif.) Music and movie retailer Tower Records announced
that it has partnered with Vernon, Calif.-based Electro Source, a
distributor of video game hardware and software, to expand the video game
offering in its retail stores. Electro Source will immediately begin
providing Tower with category management in 40 of its stores, expanding to
75 locations through the first quarter of 2003.
http://www.towerrecords.com
http://www.esigames.com
(New York) Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music, said on Thursday
that rapper Nas will advance the release date of his upcoming album by
four days, citing "Internet piracy of the album's tracks" and "'burned CD'
counterfeit copies" already hitting the street. "It's important to me that
the fans hear my album the way I intended," said Nas. When you buy a
bootleg or pirate a download off the net, you don't get the real thing.
The sound sucks, the sequencing is wrong, you're probably missing some
tracks, and you don't even get the artwork and CD bonuses." Several other
artists, including Eminem, have of late pushed up album release dates,
citing similar reasons, and causing some to question whether the moves are
more a tactic to spur album sales.
http://www.columbiarecords.com
(New York) Palm Digital Media on Thursday announced a new version of its
e-book server software that will allow libraries to loan out Palm Reader
eBooks to their patrons. The server assigns a hardware identification
number to a specific handheld or desktop computer, and uses this ID to
lock an e-book to the device and assign an expiration date to the e-book,
beyond which the user will not be able to open it. Cleveland-based
OverDrive will add the new technology to its Digital Library Reserve
service for public, academic and corporate libraries.
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com
http://www.overdrive.com
(Pasadena, Calif.) Overture, a provider of pay-for-performance search
engine listings, announced on Thursday that news provider CNN, a division
of AOL Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, will feature its listings under
the heading of "Sponsored Results" on CNN.com, CNNsi.com and CNNMoney.com.
Pasadena, Calif.-based Overture's search listings are generated by its
base of 73,000 advertisers who bid for placement on keywords relevant to
their businesses.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/021205/50076_1.html
http://www.overture.com
http://www.cnn.com
(Burbank, Calif.) TVN Entertainment, a provider of video-on-demand
programming and delivery technology to cable TV operators, announced on
Thursday that it has signed a long-term agreement with Sony Pictures
Television International. Under the terms, Burbank, Calif.-based TVN will
have the rights to offer new and library Sony titles including "Men In
Black II," "Spider-Man," "Tootsie" and "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind" to its customers on a video-on-demand and pay-per-view basis. TVN
provides its services to cable companies including Adelphia, Charter,
ATT/Comcast, Insight and Mediacom.
http://www.tvn.com
(Redmond, Wash.) Microsoft announced it will use rich media advertising
delivery technology from New York-based Unicast on its MSN portal.
Microsoft will offer Unicast's "in-between-page" ads, "over-page" floating
ads and "in-page" banner and skyscrapers ads to MSN advertisers. Microsoft
also began offering rich media advertising formats from Eyeblaster and
PointRoll in September.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/021204/sfw048_1.html
http://advantage.msn.com/adproducts/3rdpartyrichmedia.asp
http://www.unicast.com
(London) America Online said on Thursday that it has signed a contract
with U.K. broadband provider NTL that will allow AOL to begin offering its
broadband service next spring to the 7.2 million homes covered by NTL's
network. The contract is worth 85 million pounds ($133.4 million) over the
next four years. Currently, AOL's U.K. broadband service is only available
on BT's ADSL network.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/28440.html
(Pittsburgh) Allin Corporation announced on Thursday that it has
contracted with Royal Caribbean Cruises to install interactive television
systems on three additional cruise ships, bringing the total number of
ships it has equipped to thirty-one. Pittsburgh-based Allin's systems
allow guests to preview and make reservations for shore excursions, watch
on-demand movies and informational videos, order room service and
reviewing their folio accounts and shipboard activities.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/021205/phth007_1.html
http://www.allin.com
(Anaheim, Calif.) Cable TV channel Game Show Network said on Thursday
that, with the launch of new interactive TV features for its "Wintuition"
program, the network now offers 55 hours of interactive programming each
week. Additionally, the company launched a new shockwave, multiplayer game
for its Chuck Woolery-hosted game show, "Lingo." The Wintuition
interactive programming was produced by Los Angeles-based GoldPocket
Interactive, while the shockwave game was created by Huntington Beach,
Calif.-based Zeek Interactive.
http://www.gameshownetwork.com
http://www.goldpocket.com
http://www.zeek.com
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================================================
CLASSIFIEDS - HOLIDAY GIFT IDEAS & RED HOT DEALS
================================================
To Post Holiday Specials:
http://www.digitalmediawire.com/marketplacepostingpage.htm
Digital Media Wire's Gift Suggestions for the Holidays:
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Other Great Gift Ideas:
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-Road Runner Sports - World's Largest Collection of Running Shoes
http://clickserve.cc-dt.com/link/click?lid=41000000000556083
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-Jos. A Bank - Quality Men's Apparel.
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HOLIDAY PERSONAL SHOPPER
I can help anyone in any department with any gift buying needs... or offer
suggestions... be it jewelry, home, accessories, mens or ladies clothing,
etc..and can be reached at 310-550-5900 ext 2007. GEMMI
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Rock & Roll One Of A Kinds!
Hipsters Franky & Minx (www.frankyandminx.com) are getting attention with
their tattoo-designed products. There are only a few pieces left of their
hand made cami tops and undies -- which have been featured everywhere from
InStyle to Revolver. Inquiries: Christina Ward [oranjegift@yahoo.com] or
call (414) 294-4709 for availability. To purchase, go to
http://www.oranje.us
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CLASSIFIEDS - JOBS
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To Post Jobs: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/jobpostingpage.htm
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====================
CLASSIFIEDS - EVENTS
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To Post Events: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/eventpostingpage.htm
HOLIDAY CATERING...The best staff and food in town!
Eventeurs uses the top chefs and most attractive staff in the business. We
can do an amazing holiday party for you and work within your budget.
Please call Alan Dunn at 323.466.1835 or go to http://www.eventeurs.net
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CLASSIFIEDS - MARKETPLACE
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To Post Marketplace:
http://www.digitalmediawire.com/marketplacepostingpage.htm
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Digital Media Wire, Inc. leverages its integrated media network to provide
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Copyright 2002 Digital Media Wire, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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