Article Summary: 'Music labels want ISPs to pay extra for illegal filesharers' By Bobbie Johnson

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 13th July 2006, Media Guardian) are:

• Britain's independent music labels say they want internet service providers to pay for the illegal filesharing that happens on their networks.
• The announcement, made by a broad alliance of indie music organisations, comes after recent attempts to pressurise internet companies over the actions of their users.
• The group said ISPs and other companies act as "intermediaries" in the process of filesharing, but have gained business value from promoting music services in the knowledge that many customers would download illegally.
• Internet companies already pay their full dues to artists and labels via the legal services they run.
• Could also impact on mobile phone companies and communication technologies like Bluetooth, which can be used to send music tracks from one handset to another.
• Internet Service providers said they should not be punished for the actions of users who are not under their control.
• ISPs bear no liability for illegal filesharing as the content is not hosted on their servers. Although such files may be transmitted across an ISP's network, they are mere conduits of information.
• Earlier this week the British Phonographic Industry lobbied two internet providers to shut down the accounts of customers it said were among the country's biggest filesharers. One of the ISPs in question, Tiscali, said it had not been presented with enough evidence.

Article Summary: 'Record labels turn up heat on illegal downloaders' By Dominic Timms

The key points of this article (published on Friday 4th March 2005, Media Guardian) are:

• UK record labels have forced 23 internet users to pay fines worth a total of more than £50,000 after they admitted to illegally downloading music.
• The British Phonographic Industry said it was bringing 31 new actions against other "illegal" filesharers as it accelerated a campaign to clamp down on copyright infringements.
• The BPI refused to confirm that children were among those fined, but admitted that some of the downloaders were parents and said it was "highly likely that they settled on behalf of their children".
• They descirbe the downloads as 'online theft'.
• The BPI said the 23 users had downloaded between a few hundred to "many thousands" of tracks with two of the heaviest downloaders each agreeing to pay more than £4,000.
• The BPI said it would go to the high court today in a bid to unearth the identities of 31 other individuals and widen its search to other sites.
• The move comes less than a month before users of the most popular peer-to-peer networks - so called because they route music and other downloads between individual computers rather than relying on a central server - plan a week of direct action urging people not to buy any CDs.
• Most releases are 'format' productions where talent, passion and creativity come after profits and greed," says a message on the organisers' website. "Most of us feel that they should look into wider availability and more affordable pricing instead of claiming higher moral ground as an excuse to prop up an outdated and failing business model."

Article Summary: 'iPods and Macs lift Apple profits'

The key points of this article (published on Wednesday 25th April 2007, BBC News) are:

• Apple sold more than 10.5 million iPods in the first three months of 2007, helping the US technology firm to record an 88% increase in profits.
• Profits rose to $770m (£384m) from $410m for the same period last year.
• Apple's sales to soar from $4.3bn to $5.2bn.
• Demand for iPods is up 24% on the same time last year while sales of Macintosh computers rose by 36%, with more than one and half million sold.

Test Out Your Case Study

1. Write a list of general terms related to NMTs.

• technology
• institutions
• audience
• issues
• the future
• innovation
• technophile
• technophobe
• push technology
• pull technology
• hot media
• cold media
• global village
• convergence
• personalisation
• interactivity
• democratisation
• exploitation
• consumption

2. Write a list of key terminology related to your chosen technology.

• production
• content
• performance
• reception
• developments
• music distribution
• record labels
• digital auteurs
• revenue
• software
• multimedia
• stereo
• soundtrack
• anti-social technology
• piracy revolution

3. From your blog, select 10 statements (stats, quotations) that you have found during your research which relate to debates on audiences' changing experiences, institutions response to technology, the future etc.

• The new indiestore service, in partnership with web music firm 7digital, allows bands to upload and sell four tracks, with the band keeping 70% of the revenue. Bands can upgrade to a "pro" service to sell up to 20 tracks and keep 80% of the revenue. 'Bebo Opens Music Store' By Jemima Kiss (published on Wednesday 28th March 2007, mediaguardian.co.uk).
• The music business estimates that it lost £2.6bn worldwide to online and offline piracy in 2002 and, to many, making a success of legal download services is their last chance to stem the tide. 'Catch Them If You Can' By Owen Gibson (published Monday 2nd June 2003, The Guardian).
• Record companies' digital sales jumped to $2bn (£1bn) in 2006 from $1.1bn a year earlier and continued to take market share (according to the global industry group IFPI,) yet the market is still in decline. Mobiles and broadband access may reverse trend. 'Still Waiting: Record Labels Long For Digital to Rescue Dwindling Sales' By Katie Allen (published Thursday 18th Jnuary 2007, The Guardian).
• The pace of decline has now slowed but the latest figures still show global trade values down 4% in the first half of 2006 to $8.4bn. 'Still Waiting: Record Labels Long For Digital to Rescue Dwindling Sales' By Katie Allen (published Thursday 18th Jnuary 2007, The Guardian).
• EMI's latest results showed digital revenues had jumped by 68% to £74m in the first half of 2006. They represented a growing share of total revenues at 8.5% but that is still lower than for the music market as a whole, where a tenth of global sales are digital. 'New Digital Recruit is Upbeat About Reshaping EMI's Future With Downloads' By Katie Allen (published on Wednesday 24th January 2007, The Guardian).
• The RIAA began legal actions against US citizens in June 2003, and its current strategy of targeting college campuses has created a wave of new headlines - most of them negative. 'Can Filesharers Be Made to Pay?' By Adam Webb (published on Thursday 22nd March 2007, The Guardian).
• The first of these cases, in January last year, resulted in a landmark legal ruling, with two men ordered to pay £5,000 and £1,500 respectively for copyright infringement. Additional costs and damages were estimated at up to £20,000. 'Can Filesharers Be Made to Pay?' By Adam Webb (published on Thursday 22nd March 2007, The Guardian).
• Record labels are trying to woo younger audience by offering back catalogues on downloads. Faced with declining CD sales, record labels are increasingly hoping to market rock's biggest names to younger listeners via the web. 'The Doors lead way as big names of rock go digital' (published on Monday 26th March 2007, The Guardian).
• Apple sold more than 10.5 million iPods in the first three months of 2007, helping the US technology firm to record an 88% increase in profits. Profits rose to $770m (£384m) from $410m for the same period last year. 'iPods and Macs lift Apple profits' (published on Wednesday 25th April 2007, BBC News).
• Music sales had amounted to $14.5bn (£7bn) in 1999 but were down to $12.2bn in 2005. 'US music companies target colleges in crackdown on illegal downloads' By Ewen MacAskill and Conor Clarke (published on Thursday 22nd February 2007, The Guardian).

Exam Questions: 11th June 2004

1. a) Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo
b) - "Hardcore PC gamers have been taking part in online contests over local networks and the Internet for years"
- "Sony's EverQuest and Electronic Art's Ultima Online attract around 450,000 and 275,000 users respectively, paying between £6-8 per month"
- "Final Fantasy 11 attracted 120,000 online subscribers paying £7 a month in three months"
c) Sony and Microsoft are talking to continental broadband suppliers. Broadband offers speed, international dimension, it's always on, it's reliable, multi-player potential (rather than compete with one friend in your living room, you can now - on some PC games - compete against up to 80 people worldwide.)

2. a) 'Gain dominance of a market' means that one company will become the biggest in a particular area and thus, control it, making it more profitable. Online gamers will use it to play games over the Internet. They want to gain a competitive advantage by offering a better version of what other companies are offering. Eg. Microsoft.
b) Music is available all over the Internet to download as well as publish. It allows people to do things with music they couldn't previously have done such as publish the music they make without going near a record deal.
Television is available on demand, eg. 4OD and Sky Anytime. 4OD allows users to watch a programme they missed whenever they want up to a week after it was aired on Channel 4.
Internet users are able to watch films, music videos, documentaries and sketches on the Internet. Could television become a thing of the past? Unlikely.
Television shows and music artists also have their own websites and information pages so they can keep fans interested and gain a strong following.
Newspapers and magazines to publish articles. Some stories are exclusive to the Internet.
Blogs allow anyone to write and publish anything they want, whether it be a diary or journalism of news. Blogs can be very personal. Any Internet user can read it and post a comment.
Broadband has democratised the media world and gives consumers greater choice on what they can do, which has worried industries as they are loosing control over their once passive audience and becoming less profitable.

General Information: Film Technology

What are the advantages of digital projection for the consumers?
The big advantage of digital projection is the picture quality. With film, every imperfection gets shown as the 35 mm print passes through the projector, including scratches, fluff, blotches and so forth. With a digital projector linked to a server there are no more stray hairs, scratches or dust - just a crystal clear picture.

Why has there been a slow take-up?
It's been a consensus building process, which started in 1999 and since then the industry has had five years of testing the technology, building a consensus and agreeing the business models and technology to be used, and this took longer than most people expected.

Why is 'Hollywood' driving this technological change?
The Hollywood studios are driving this transition because they stand to make enormous savings, which they can pass on to the cinemas themselves. The most obvious saving is in distribution costs. Encoding it and delivering a hard drive to the cinema works out at a fraction of the £700 it cost to print an average length feature film. In future, the possibility of delivering the movie by satellite or over the net has got the bean counters salivating. Distributing movies digitally means they can be encrypted before they even leave the studios, and then unlocked by software at the cinemas themselves, which will prevent piracy, which Hollywood claims has cost it $6bn (£3.2bn).

What does digital projection offer in the way of the "future" for cinemas?
Digital movies can be streamed from the server to different screens at the same time; or alternatively a variety of movies can be shown on the same screen throughout the course of a day. With a digital projector you can input virtually anything into it - they can screen a DVD, a clip downloaded from YouTube, gaming from a digital projector with multiple players on the screen at the same time, a live feed from satellite, cable or whatever!!

How is digital distribution changing the way we consume other media?
With technology available to recreate old classics, as well as show sporting events, in 3D there is a real feeling that 3D is finally coming of age.

Big Issue - EMI and DRM

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2048507,00.html
-iTunes to offer EMI music to all

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2048195,00.html
- EMI and Apple in DRM deal

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2048900,00.html
- "Big step forward in music revolution" hailed as EMI drops copy protection

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2049994,00.html
- EMI releases its first album without copy protection

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2055410,00.html
- Beatles-EMI dispute settled

Article summaries coming soon...

General Information: Gaming - PS3 and 'Home'

1. What is a 'MySpace phenomenon'? MySpace is an example of a new online phenomenon, which is more appropriately called "online social networking." In online social networking environments, users register and establish a profile that provides personal information and photos. Then the user makes connections or links with other users who share interests or connections. Users engage in a variety of forms of communication and information sharing, which can include personal Web pages, blogs, and discussion groups. MySpace is currently the most popular of several dozen online social networking communities.
2. What is an MMO style chat room? MMO stands for 'Massively Multiplayer Online.' Home is like an MMO-style chat room because there are avatars running around, speech bubbles popping up and emotes being liberally flung every which way.
3. What is Sony's Game 3.0 philosophy? Sony's Game 3.0 philosophy is all about social interactions, community, customization, emergent entertainment, with the audience members at the center of the entertainment experience. Games 1.0 = disconnected consoles. 2.0 games are connected, but with static content on the disc.
4. What is an emote? An emote is a symbol or phrase, used in chat or in online games, such as the common *glee* or /slap, that represents an action or emotion. In some MMORPG's, emotes correspond to scripted animations of the character.
5. What are the key advantages/functionality for the users? The key advantages are that your own character in Playstation Home can be customised at any time and can interact with fellow users to display emotions in theatrical manners.
6. What social issues does this raise? It could lead to people having less 'real' social lives, which means that they don't meet many people face to face on a one-to-one basis because this interactive world is so realistic that it offers everything real life does and more. People may seem to have more friends, but never actually meet them and not actually know who they are - they could be anyone!!!
7. What is the potential for Sony and other games developers? It offers a huge potential for in-game advertising, including video bill boards with high definition game trailers. This is an excellent advertising outlet.

Article Summary: 'Universal sues MySpace' By Mark Sweney

The key points of this article (published on Monday 20th November 2006, mediaguardian.co.uk) and this article (published on Friday 17th November 2006, BBC News) are:

• Universal Music has filed a lawsuit against MySpace and claim that the social networking website is encouraging copyright infringement.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, Universal filed the lawsuit after a breakdown in licensing negotiations with News Corporation.
• Universal alleges that much of the material on MySpace is stolen from copyright holders.
• Universal have previously sued video sharing websites bolt.com and Sony-owned Grouper over copyright infringement.
• MySpace and Universal have been negotiating toward a deal in which News Corporation would pay a licensing fee for Universal content.
• Universal are hoping for maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each infringement.
• Universal chairman, Doug Morris, made a licensing deal with YouTube shortly before it was acquired by Google.
• MySpace said it acted legally and dismissed the "meritless litigation" and that its procedures for removing illegal downloads were good and that it fully complied with copyright laws.
• MySpace last month unveiled technology to block users from uploading music to their pages for which they do not hold the copyright.
• It will use a file-filtering application to scan old and new content to weed out any unauthorised material.

Products - evidence of convergence & the future

http://www.apple.com/iphone/
http://www.apple.com/uk/ipod/ipod.html
http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Article Summary: 'Finding the Music Format of the Future' By Jack Schofield

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 12th April 2007, The Guardian) are:

• Quality, copy protection and the threat of billion-dollar lawsuits are all factors when choosing encoding systems.
• The vast majority of songs on filesharing systems have been in the MP3 file format since Napster propelled the idea of digital music into the mass market in 1999.
• Files encoded in the newer and better AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format could become more popular. because it is now possible for people to share unprotected songs bought from Apple's market-leading iTunes Music Store.
• The market was opened up earlier this month when EMI said it would continue to sell music with DRM (digital rights management) copy protection, but that better-quality files would also be offered without DRM for a small extra charge. (See previous article summary.)
• This should make AAC files more popular to an extent that could even rival MP3's popularity.
• Music stores are free to choose the encoding and the quality.
• iTunes has most of the legal online music market, so most files bought online are and probably will be in the future use AAC encoding.
• Apple was the first company to bring the format to the mass market with the iPod in 2003, but AAC files now play on a growing number of devices. This is an example of companies having to change their products to meet the audience's requirements and desires.
• An example of the audience and market moving forwards is the fact that music stores will use best audio practice prior to encoding files, whereas audio that's played on the radio has had dynamic range compression applied to it, and some radio stations don't apply best audio practice, so a track on iTunes should sound better than it would on the radio. This makes it very unlikely that the audience will go back to 'taping songs off the radio.'
• AAC is heavily patent protected and companies must pay high fees to license the patents.
• An example of conflict between institutions is the fact that most music stores would probably have continued to use MP3 if the music labels had not insisted on copy protection, because MP3 doesn't include DRM.
• The future of Microsoft's WMA would look bleak in a DRM-free world.

Article Summary: 'Bebo Opens Music Store' By Jemima Kiss

The key points of this article (published on Wednesday 28th March 2007, mediaguardian.co.uk) are:

• Social networking website Bebo is introducing a music download service allowing bands to sell music.
• Prior to this, bands have been able to upload their own tracks.
• The new indiestore service, in partnership with web music firm 7digital, allows bands to upload and sell four tracks, with the band keeping 70% of the revenue.
• Bands can upgrade to a "pro" service to sell up to 20 tracks and keep 80% of the revenue.
• Unlike MySpace, Bebo only allows selected companies to supply widgets or plug-in services to the site but indiestore is the only music widget for the site.
• MySpace introduced a music-buying service in September 2006 in partnership with Snocap, but the service has not yet been extended to the UK.
• The 7digital managing director, Ben Drury, said "We don't believe that people are comfortable entering credit card details in a widget" - this is an example of a drwaback of the new media technology and how the audience want to enjoy the pros of it but are aware and cautious of the cons.
• As a result, the institutions have to adapt their products, so Bebo users can also buy tracks with PayPal, through BT Click and Buy and by text message.
• Bebo currently has 450,000 registered bands.
• MySpace has 6.5m registered bands.
• This is a great example of how the audience are being given more control and choice - a CD shop (a real one on the highstreet that is) would never be able to hold 6.5m artists in one location, but the internet and MySpace allows this to be done quite easily with a few clicks of a button.
• Web monitoring firm comScore last week ranked Bebo as the third most popular UK website in terms of visits during February, and the 15th most popular site in unique users.

Article Summary: 'Catch Them If You Can' By Owen Gibson

This is an interesting old article from 2003. It shows how the music industry's state of mind was just 4 short years ago and shows how we've got to the situation we have nowadays.

The key points of this article (published Monday 2nd June 2003, The Guardian) are:

• A series of court cases, launches and announcements have raised awareness of the issue of illegal downloads and piracy and has force the topic back to the top of the agenda for label bosses and artists alike.
• The catalyst was the unexpected early success of Apple's iTunes, which in the US has got record labels all hot under the collar about the possibility that online music might be a viable revenue stream after all - this is a very interesting contrast to nowadays where record companies have practically admitted defeat and are changing their ways to meet changing audience practices. Nowadays it isn't even queried if online music is a source of viable revenue.
• The music business estimates that it lost £2.6bn worldwide to online and offline piracy last year (2002) and, to many, making a success of legal download services is their last chance to stem the tide - if we compare this to nowadays we can see that the promotion of legal downloads has saved the record industries for the short term, but it is still unclear whether they will be saved in the long term. We also know that legal downloads have now completely saved the record industry and artists are always saying 'you don't make as much money from records nowadays - it's all in the touring.' But how long will it be until touring becomes unprofitable due to Internet streaming of concerts taking off? Or will that not be successful due to the atmosphere not being able to be streamed?
• Most of the songs downloaded from iTunes in the States were as complete albums, soothing fears that online music would lead to the death of the album.
• Sony plans to drop the tarnished PressPlay brand and use it as the backbone for the relaunch of Napster, the one-time scourge of the record industry.
• When you get Sony, who have traditionally guarded their rights zealously, giving a third party the right to do anything with their catalogue, that's a significant change in attitude.
• There are signs, though, that the slumbering giants of the record industry are waking up to the potential of the web as a medium through which to sell music as well as promote it - this is a big contrast to nowadays where the Internet is probably the main medium to sell and promote music.
• EMI has announced that it will put 90% of its live catalogue on the web, but progress remains too slow for many, who point out that the company's live catalogue represents a tiny percentage of its output.
• EMI chairman Alain Levy admitted recently that the industry had a lot to do to catch up with the pirates.
• Ben Drury, the head of BT's Dotmusic on Demand download service, which offers music from all five major labels, believes that the success of Apple's service will act as a Trojan horse for other sites and that "the trend is that the illegal services are getting worse, more congested and slower while the legal services are getting better" - compared to nowadays, it doesn't seem to be the case because while legal downloads are improving, so are the illegal ones with websites such as Limewire.
• The major record companies have finally woken up to the fact that the online music genie is out of the bottle and the cork won't be forced back in by any amount of legal action. Comapred to today, this statement rings true but shows that it has taken them a long time to make any significant progress with legal action.

Article Summary: 'Still Waiting: Record Labels Long For Digital to Rescue Dwindling Sales' By Katie Allen

The key points of this article (published Thursday 18th Jnuary 2007, The Guardian) are:

• Record companies' digital sales jumped to $2bn (£1bn) in 2006 from $1.1bn a year earlier and continued to take market share (according to the global industry group IFPI,) yet the market is still in decline.
• Mobiles and broadband access may reverse trend.
• Downloads to mobile phones, computers and music players now make up a tenth of global music sales but as sales of physical formats such as CDs continue to fall, digital has not come to the rescue.
• In Japan, where mobile phone downloads are widespread, they have reached a turning point where sales are starting to increase again.
• Digital was within a whisker of offsetting falling CD sales in Britain and the United States.
• The music industry has been battling falling sales since 2000 when the market came up against the rise of illegal downloading sites such as Napster and Grokster.
• The lack of a coordinated response from the record industry compounded the problems and saw sales drop by as much as 7% in both 2002 and 2003. - This is highlighted in an article above from 2003, called "Catch Them If You Can."
• The pace of decline has now slowed but the latest figures still show global trade values down 4% in the first half of 2006 to $8.4bn.
• Universal's chief executive, Doug Morris, recently predicted the world's number-one music company would have its best year ever in 2007. Personally, I think this was probably just a positive and uplifting thing he decided to say at a press conference rather than what he truly believes based on fact. I feel it will take many years (and courtcases against filesharers) before record companies are happy with their sales and profits again.
• Globally, there are now as many downloads to phones as via the web and the mobile subscriptions rose by more than a tenth to 2bn last year.
• Recent research by the UK mobile operator 3 suggested that three-quarters of 16-24 year-olds wanted a track they liked as soon as they heard it.
• Rising access to broadband could also help, with connections up a third globally last year. The music industry touts 2006 as the year when it got wise to the potential of broadband to make digital albums replicate and even outdo the experience of unpacking a fresh CD or vinyl album.
• Warner Music Group doubled online album sales in 2006 by adding lyric sheets, video and photos. Further incentives included priority concert tickets for those who pre-ordered the Red Hot Chili Peppers "bundle".
• The consultancy Entertainment Media Research found in a 2006 survey that 72% of music consumers agreed CDs "are worth more than digital downloads" - a figure unchanged from 2005.
• A large proportion also worry about being able to copy their purchases between devices.
• Digital downloads will not compensate until two things happen; firstly - digital prices decline to below prevailing CD retail prices - at the moment, a digital album is generally more expensive, secondly - the perceived quality of downloads increases.

Article Summary: 'New Digital Recruit is Upbeat About Reshaping EMI's Future With Downloads' By Katie Allen

The key points of this article (published on Wednesday 24th January 2007, The Guardian) are:

• EMI's global head of digital, Barney Wragg, believes EMI has huge potential to harness a rapidly growing market for music downloads.
• He says "Over the next three to six months, you're definitely going to see a change in EMI's profile in the digital music market" and "the future is very bright for EMI."
• It i s predicted that growthof digital downloads is likely to slow this year and that it will be some time before downloads can make up for softer overall music sales, which have been declining for years.
• Analysts say EMI will have to outperform the rest of the market if it wants digital to pick up the slack for slower CD sales any time soon.
• Times have been tough for EMI in recent months, and in the past three weeks its share price has fallen more than 20p.
• It suffered poor sales over the crucial Christmas period.
• Less than a fortnight into the new year, the group axed the head of its music division, Alain Levy, who declared last year that "the CD as it is right now is dead", but was criticised because he had done little to fill the gap left by falling physical sales with digital downloads.
• EMI's latest results showed digital revenues had jumped by 68% to £74m in the first half. They represented a growing share of total revenues at 8.5% but that is still lower than for the music market as a whole, where a tenth of global sales are digital.
• Analysts say that a lack of detail has made it hard to predict how much new revenue streams from digital will compensate for softer CD sales.

Article Summary: 'Online Sales Force BBC Out Of Pop Chart Groove' By Owen Gibson

The keypoints of this article (published on Friday 26th January 2007, The Guardian) are:

• Shifting record buying habits and new chart rules have caused BBC radio stations to radically overhaul their playlists, ditching their decades-old policy of playing tracks in advance of them hitting the shops and looking instead to potential internet sales.
• The chart rules changed this month to allow downloads without an accompanying physical release to count towards the charts.
• The chart rule changes have led to unsigned acts making the top 40 and back catalogue tracks hitting the charts.
• In some cases, songs will have stopped being played on the radio by the time they hit the shops.
• A spokesperson for Radio 2 said "We will no longer defer to physical release dates which may mean a track which also has a physical release date some weeks after its download date may be taken off the playlist before the physical release date."
• Radio 1 has told record labels that DJs will now refer to when tracks are "available to buy digitally" rather than telling listeners when they will be in the shops.
• Music industry experts expect the changes to also benefit unsigned acts, who under the new rules can now make the charts through online sales provided they have built up a large enough fanbase.
• Record labels are banking on the rules to revitalise the singles charts and give tracks a longer life but they have already led to oddities.

Article Summary: 'US music companies target colleges in crackdown on illegal downloads' By Ewen MacAskill and Conor Clarke

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 22nd February 2007) are:

• The US recording industry has started a new crackdown on illegal music downloading on university campuses throughout America.
• The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents 90% of music companies, has drawn up a list of the universities with the worst student offenders and bombarded the university authorities with 15,000+ complaints.
• The RIAA can identify individual computers on campuses from which the music is being downloaded for free, but not the students.
• Universities are expected to take action ranging from revoking the rights of students to use campus computers to forcing them to watch eight-minute education videos about piracy.
• Music sales had amounted to $14.5bn (£7bn) in 1999 but were down to $12.2bn in 2005, not entirely down to piracy, but piracy is a primary reason for the decline.
• Some critics claim the RIAA acts as a cartel that pays only a tiny percentage of profits to the artists. They also argue that downloading increases the artists' exposure and, as a result, increases legitimate sales.
• Others argue that downloads should be free and that artists and companies could make money through advertising on the sites.

Artciel Summary: 'Can Filesharers Be Made to Pay?' By Adam Webb

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 22nd March 2007, The Guardian) are:

• The music industry is beginning to understand that lawsuits don't deter pirates and that it must find ways to make money from P2P sharing.
• P2Plawsuits.com is a website allowing American college students accused of uploading copyrighted music to peer-to-peer networks the opportunity to settle upfront and out of court.
• It's the latest initiative by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its fight against online piracy.
• The RIAA began legal actions against US citizens in June 2003, and its current strategy of targeting college campuses has created a wave of new headlines - most of them negative.
• At the time that the RIAA started making noises about suing individuals, the British Phonogrpahic Industry (BPI) waited until the law was clear and a legitimate download business was in place.
• The first of these cases, in January last year, resulted in a landmark legal ruling, with two men ordered to pay £5,000 and £1,500 respectively for copyright infringement. Additional costs and damages were estimated at up to £20,000.
• According to Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, a media analysis company that specialises in monitoring P2P traffic, around 1bn tracks are traded illegally each month.
• However, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reckons that about 20bn tracks were illegally shared last year.
• The likelihood of you being caught of filesharing is very similar to that of being hit by an asteroid.
• The BPI's chief executive, Geoff Taylor says, "we never expected these actions to wipe out illegal filesharing on their own, but they've done much to raise awareness about the illegality of distributing music over the internet using P2P networks, and have been effective in changing many consumers' behaviour."
• It is "likely" that legal actions will continue this year.
• The music industry is pressing ISPs to cut off people it identifies as filesharers. That has met with a distinctively cool reaction from ISPs, who do not see it as their job to do the BPI's enforcement.
• Traditional P2P networks such as Limewire and Morpheus are still operational, but an increasing volume of song swapping now takes place via closed social networks or MP3 blogs.
• Behavioural traits synonymous with P2P - such as sharing, discovery and interaction - have now been appropriated and are the bedrock of a whole raft of Web 2.0 businesses, from MySpace and YouTube to Last.FM and Pandora.
• Hundreds of millions of consumers have evolved their behaviour and are consuming media in a much different and more legitimate way when they used to.
• The music industry is adapting to these evolving consumption models and signing content deals often based on a cut of advertising. It has to - the revenue hole from falling CD sales is not being plugged by iTunes downloads.
• Yet-to-be-launched "legal" P2P networks (ie users will be able to swap DRM-encoded tracks) QTrax and Mashboxx have all signed deals with major labels.

Article Summary: 'The Doors lead way as big names of rock go digital'

The key points of this article (published on Monday 26th March 2007, The Guardian) are:

• Record labels woo younger audience by offering back catalogues on downloads.
• Faced with declining CD sales, record labels are increasingly hoping to market rock's biggest names to younger listeners via the web.
• 'The Doors' are leading the charge to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of their classic debut album.
• All will be made available for digital download for the first time, as record companies turn to their back catalogues to boost online sales.
• Incentives to buy include new material from the original sessions by the band and engineer Bruce Botnick.
• Elton John will also today make his entire back catalogue available for digital download for the first time, initially via Apple's iTunes.
• Like the Doors, he will also make tracks available as ringtones for the first time. The Beatles are also expected to finally join the digital download fray this year after settling a long running trademark dispute with Apple Computer.
• With archive tracks now eligible for the charts, they are expected to dominate the top 10.

Article Summaries: 'What is DRM and How Does it Affect Me?' By Guardian Unlimited & 'Label Leads Way With DRM-free Summary' By Bobbie Johnson

The key points of this article (published on Monday 2nd April 2007, Guardian Unlimited) are:

• DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. In terms of music, it allows digital music files to be protected so that once that a song is available on the internet, its use can be controlled by the copyright holders.
• For example, when a song is purchased through the iTunes store, it can only be copied onto five different computers and up to two iPods.
• EMI became the first of the "big four" record labels to announce that music available from its label via iTunes would soon be DRM free.
• From May, DRM-free tracks will be available at a cost of 99p, 20p more than normal tracks.
• The DRM-free tracks will also be doubly encoded, making them of superior quality then the 79p tracks.
• DRM was almost universally unpopular with users since it was first adopted because it makes the business of downloading cumbersome and overcomplicated.
• EMI has suffered continual losses since 2001.
• All CDs are DRM free and can easily be copied - it also doesn't protect profits.
• This heralds an industry-wide recognition that changes will have to be made to accommodate the consumer so that the digital music you purchase will be less restrictive.
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggested that as many as 2.5 million tracks would be available through iTunes DRM-free by the end of the year, which extends way beyond EMI's catalogue.
• It was also suggested by Jobs that in time, DRM-free music would be the only kind of music available from iTunes.

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 5th April 2007, The Guardian) are:

• EMI's move to release its catalogue without music protection has been welcomed, but critics claim Apple still has a lock-in.
• At first glance, it seems like a situation where everybody wins: the record label can sell to customers without worrying about interoperability; iPod owners can buy from new outlets; Apple can sell to non-iPod users; other retailers can offer downloads from a big label. And, crucially, customers can (hopefully) stop worrying about interoperability.
• The DRM-free tracks on iTunes are in AAC format, which isn't supported by the majority of digital music players.
• Apple has dropped the proprietary DRM but still have the customer lock-in due to AAC.
• Although AAC might not have the ubiquity of MP3, it is far from being exclusive to Apple. The iTunes store was the first system to popularise the format, but other adopters include Sony, Nokia, Microsoft and Real.
• An independent survey by Canada's Communications Research Centre showed that AAC was higher quality than most of its rivals, even when encoded at the same bitrate.
• If entire catalogues from big labels begin to go DRM-free, some of the hidden costs of restricting rights could also disappear - time spent doing multiple encoding, working on new rights schemes.
• The deal also covers music videos, which will be opened up in the same way, showing how video and audio are coming closer together. And it puts a premium on albums, too, offering bulk purchases at a lower wholesale price.
• Not every record company is going to simply fall behind the idea, and not every customer is going to get exactly what they want. But nearly all observers agree it is a step in the right direction.

Article Summary: 'Stars Compose New Ways To Use Music' By Hamish Mackintosh

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 29th March 2007, 'The Guardian') are:

• The Who guitarist Pete Townshend announced the launch of Lifehouse Method.
• This is music creation software.
• Enables the user to input certain data in order to turn it into music.
• Townshend states that "widely shared software tends to evolve through its use (or abuse) by the end user" and uses Google as an example.
• Townshend also says "I like the idea of gathering data in new ways, of merging compositions with one another, but all guided by the Method community."
• Technology evolution is based on consumerism and how people work with the technology offered.
• Peter Gabriel is taking further steps into software with his involvement in The Filter, an intelligent playlist generator for the 'shuffle generation.'
• It a free download that works with Apple's iTunes and Nokia mobile phones and claims to get us to hear more of the often neglected music files that are in our ever-expanding digital archives.
• Nine Inch Nails musician Trent Reznor has released tracks from his forthcoming album in files in which audiences can edit and remix how they choose.

Hypothesis

I expect that due to more households having access to Broadband Internet, both legal and illegal downloading of music over the internet would have increased in recent years. This will also be due to the new technologies available to the consumer being easy to access and use. The new technologies will also incorporate what were once seperate technologies and bring them together (convergence). Some new technologies will even allow the consumer to have more control over what they listen to and how they listen to it than they did before by giving them new methods of interaction, eg. editing music tracks.

Article Summary: 'Writers Who Work For Nothing: It's a Licence to Print Money' By John Naughton

The key points of this article (published on Sunday 11th March 2007, 'The Observer') are:

• An example of user-generated content: a passenger of a derailed train took a picture from inside the carriage to the BBC!!!
• The London bombings on 7th July 2005 marked the first time we had seen such content impact on traditional news media in Britain.
• In the chaos of the situations, due to the authorities restricting access, networks found themselves unable to cope and were desperate for any footage and imagery.
• A lot of it was striking , moving and informative, but some was tasteless and even ghoulish.
• Last year, enough digital information was generated to fill a dozen stacks of hardback books stretching from the earth to the sun.
• The world's total digital content last year amounted to 161 billion gigabytes - enough to fill 161 billion iPod Shuffles!
• Researchers predict that by 2010 more than 70 per cent of all the digital content in the world will have been created by consumers.
• Optimists see it as a great release of human creativity.
• Cynics see user-generated content movement as just vanity publishing on steroids.
• Sceptics ask: "who is going to pay for the bandwidth needed to host video streams and blogs?"
• Media moguls see that all that remains is to devise a way of 'monetising it.

• Personally, I predict that the first step towards this will be in the form of advertising. The most downloaded blogs or videos will have businesses advertising on them.
• I also predict that the second step towards this will be that blogs will contain some free information, but then users will have to pay to see the whole of the blog and more stories. Eg, a news blog showing the headline and standfirst for free, but readers have to pay to see the whole article.

Article Summary: 'We're All Reporters in the Digital Democracy' By Emily Bell

The key points of this article (published on Monday 20th March 2006, The Guardian) are:

• Media consumers are now making themselves heard in a rapid move towards the democratisation of media.
• This is made possible by the Internet, broadband delivery and digitised media.
• The Internet came into its own as a news communication medium when the September 11th terrorist attacks occurred.
• The recording of mobile phone calls and pictures and videos of the event brought the moment of dreadfulness to life.
• If it were to happen nowadays though, the reporting of the event would be very different as there would be thousands of picture sand videos from the public.
• It is now almost second nature for citizens caught up in a news event to record it on increasingly handy digital equipment.
• This phenomenon was started by local papers, who got locals to send news stories to them.
• This is seen as a sensible move by newspapers, but causes controversy when done by national newspapers and raises questions about risks and brand.
• The mainstream media has a job to do in not just incorporating these eyewitness testimonies into its own work but also aggregating these communities of potential contributors.
• The author of this article - Emily Bell - thinks that this is not a cynical exploitation of free material and while the nature of the relationship is essentially participatory at the moment, it won't be long until citizen journalists ask for payment for their best exclusive material.
• The idea that what the professional journalists can provide will always - in all circumstances - be qualitatively better than a citizen journalist is not true anymore.

Article Summary: 'The Age of Permenant Net Revolution' By John Naughton

The key points of this article (published on Sunday 5th March 2006, The Observer) are:

• 1993 was when the world wide web took off.
• The Internet is a publication medium that contains more than 3,000 billion pages, which have been created in less than a decade.
• It is expected to be growing by 25,000+ pages an hour.
• Computer scientist John Seely calls new technologies as replacing new ones, "endism."
• Cultural critic Neil Postman proposed the notion of media ecology due to the interactions between new and old media being complex.
• The dominant organism is this system - grabbing most of the resources, revenue and attention - was broadcast TV.
• This transmitted content to billions of essentially passive viewers and listeners.
• However, the audience was fragmented, which led to broadcast TV being eaten away from within, by narrowcast digital television.
• The next stage is Internet Protocol TV (IPtv). This is television on demand, delivered via the Internet.
• However, broadcast TV will continue to exist for the simple reason that some things are best covered using a few-to-many technology, eg. a World Cup Final.
• The net and the web are NOT synonymous - the web is part of the net - the web is enormous, but is only one kind of traffic that runs on the Internet's tracks and signalling.
• Peer-to-peer network traffic now exceeds web traffic by a factor of between two and ten.
• Broadcast TV is a 'push' medium: it is created and then pushed down analogue or digital channels at audiences which are assumed to consist of essentially passive recipients.
• The web is a 'pull' medium: nothing comes to you unless you click on it and pull it down on to your computer.
• The switch from push to pull is a radical increase in consumer sovereignty.
• The emergence of a truly sovereign, informed consumer is thus one of the implications of an Internet-centric world.
• The underlying assumption of the old broadcast model was that audiences were passive and uncreative.
• This passivity may have been more due to the absence of tools and publication opportunities than to intrinsic defects in human nature.
• Many web pages (especially blogs) are merely vanity publishing with no discernible literary or intellectual merit.
• Blogging software gives every thoughtful, articulate and well-informed person the platform they need to express themselves.
• Flickr.com allows people to upload their photographs on to the Internet and allow the whole world to see them, allowing beautiful pictures that would have previously just ended up in a photo album or shoebox to be published.
• A recent report from the media regulator 'Ofcom' revealed that the number of people watching television has fallen recently - the first decline in popularity for almost a century.
• Ofcom also found that broadband connections rose to more than 10 million at the end of 2005.
• The prize for a company to have market dominance over on-demand Internet television will be huge, therefore many companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Sony are all fighting it out to develop the best product.