APRIL 2004

Welcome to the Rockbridge Global Village, Inc. Newsletter. We have selectively found information and articles that may be of interest to our customers.  We hope that you find information and topics within this newsletter interesting and useful.

Topics in this newsletter:

Lawmakers Push Prison for Online Pirates
Google to offer Free E-mail
The Promise of a Broader Superhighway
Voice Operated Web Browser in the Works
Bush Wants Cheap Internet Access for All by 2007
Cameraphone Sales Surge!

Lawmakers Push Prison for Online Pirates
March 31, 2004
By David McGuire, Washington Post Staff Writer

People who illegally trade large amounts of copyrighted music online could face up to three years in jail under a bill approved today by a congressional panel.

A House Judiciary subcommittee unanimously approved the "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004," which would be the first law to punish Internet music pirates with jail time if it were signed into law.

The bill targets people who trade more than 1,000 songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like Kazaa and Morpheus, as well as people who make and sell bootlegged copies of films still in cinematic release. It also calls on the FBI to create a piracy deterrence program and would require the Justice Department to launch an anti-piracy education program. Furthermore, the bill would authorize $15 million for the department to spend in 2005 to prosecute copyright infringement cases.

"We have a paucity of criminal copyright prosecutions," said Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas). "It's become clear that law enforcers need additional authority."

Citing illegal downloading as a major cause of declining sales, the music industry is pursuing a legal offensive against people who illegally share copyrighted music online.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued more than 1,000 people, and reached hundreds of settlements worth thousands of dollars each.

"This is a common sense bill that ensures that federal prosecutors have the tools and expertise they need to fully enforce the laws on the books," said RIAA chief executive Mitch Bainwol in a prepared statement. "There is also a role for the federal government to help educate the public about theft of copyrighted works on the Internet."

"I don't think this is going to result in hundreds of cases, but even if it results in some number, it sends a message that criminal copyright infringement, even on peer-to-peer networks, will result in prosecutions," said David Green, a vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America.

The RIAA blames file sharing for taking a major bite out of CD sales, which fell from a high of $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, a period that matches the growth of online music piracy services. File sharing advocates counter that the flagging economy and rising CD prices are more to blame for driving down sales.

Nobody has yet faced jail time because existing copyright law makes it difficult to prove that a file swapper is guilty of a criminal offense, experts said. For criminal penalties, prosecutors must prove that a music pirate acted "willfully," either sharing for financial gain or distributing music with a total retail value higher than $1,000.

Most file sharers say that there is nothing wrong with downloading free music as long as it is for personal use, according to a Harris Interactive survey conducted in January.

That would change under the bill, which says that anyone who knowingly makes 1,000 or more copyrighted works available in their "shared" folder on a file-sharing network would be guilty of criminal copyright infringement.

At that threshold, many file swappers could face criminal penalties. The average college student has 1,100 illegally copied music files on his/or her computer, according to a survey of more than 1,000 students published this month by Ruckus Network, a Boston-based company that offers legal downloads.

Critics of the bill warned that it could be a dangerous move for Congress to make during an election year.

"Congress needs to think real carefully about whether it wants 12-year olds hauled away in handcuffs for making files available over peer to peer networks," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based civil liberties group. Sohn added that there was "much to be commended in the bill, including the subcommittee's willingness to protect fair-use rights of consumers to use copyrighted material."

The RIAA itself became the target of public outrage when its legal blitz snared underage school children and grandparents suspected of trading copyrighted files online.

Adam Eisgrau, the executive director of P2P United, a lobbying group for file-sharing networks, said he will fight against the bill.

"P2P United has limited resources, particularly compared to the armies successfully deployed by copyright industries, [but] if the public makes itself heard, we are optimistic that the tide can be turned," Eisgrau said.

The bill still must be approved by the Judiciary Committee and the full House of Representatives before going to the Senate.

Voice Operated Web Browser in the Works
March 24, 2004
By CNN.com Technology

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Opera Software is developing a new Internet browser that allows users to talk to their computer, the company announced Tuesday.

The new browser incorporates IBM's ViaVoice technology, enabling the computer to ask what the user wants and "listen" to the request. Opera declined to give a launch date.

The browser is at its developmental stage. At a demonstration, a pizza order form was promptly displayed when the tester told the computer, "Order pizza." But the browser misinterpreted an order for "a pizza" as "eight pizzas."

"We feel we are on the verge of moving the Web a little bit," said Christen Krogh, head of Opera's software development.

"Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate," Krogh said. "In the years to come, it will greatly facilitate how we interact with technology."

The computer learns to recognize its users voice, accent and inflections by having them read a list of words into a microphone.

"Hi. I am your browser. What can I do for you?," asked a laptop with the demonstration versions of the browser. The message can easily be changed to suit users, such as greeting them by name.

The demonstration version, so far only in English, is still far from normal casual conversation. Users have to learn to listen to the computer's question, and then wait for a tiny beep before stating their request, a bit like communicating by pressing the transmit key on a simplex radio.

"I would like a medium pizza with extra cheese, mushrooms and salami," a tester told the machine.

The machine checked off the appropriate boxes on the form, but interpreted "a pizza" as "eight pizzas." Then it asked if the order was correct, and fixed the number when told the order was for one pizza.

"Voice has been seen as the next step for years, but there were always problems," Krogh said.

The browser corresponds to simple commands. For example, say "Get AP" and it would go to The Associated Press Internet page.

By embedding IBM's voice technology into Opera's browser, a user can talk to the computer, which will understand and translate into normal code for the Net, Krogh said. The could open up the Internet to users who had been excluded because, for example, they were physically unable to use a keyboard, he added.

Opera is the third-largest browser on the Web, although it is tiny compared to Internet Explorer and Netscape. It has been gaining ground as the browser of choice for hand-held devices, such as mobile telephones and personal data assistants, because it is known as being fast and needing little memory.

IBM's director of embedded speech, Igor Jablokov, said "the new offering will allow us to interact with the content on the Web in a more natural way, first on PCs and in the near future on devices such as cell phones and PDAs."

Opera plans to first launch an English version of the voice browser for Windows, to be followed by versions for other operating systems, including Linux and Symbians.

Oslo-based Opera was founded in 1995 by two former developers for the Norwegian telecommunications group Telenor as an offshoot of a company project.

Bush Wants Cheap High-Speed Internet Access for All by 2007
March 26, 2004
By CNN.com Technology

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) -- President Bush on Friday urged that affordable high-speed Internet access known as broadband be available to all Americans by 2007.

"We ought to have universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," Bush said in a speech focusing mostly on homeownership. "And then we ought to make sure that as soon as possible thereafter consumers have plenty of choices..."

Telephone and cable television companies like Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. have been competing fiercely to sign up customers to high-speed Internet service, which is seen as a lucrative market.

There is already a fund that subsidizes telephone service in rural areas and for those who cannot afford it. Policymakers have debated whether the Universal Service Fund should also subsidize Internet access to American homes.

They have also been debating what regulations should apply to broadband services. Telephone companies that dominate a market have to share their networks with rivals for telephone service and there have been extensive debates about whether those rules should apply to broadband.

Cable companies do not presently have to share their networks with rivals but some allow subscribers to have an alternative Internet service provider.

There were about 20.6 million homes and small businesses that subscribe to high-speed Internet as of June 2003, the latest data available from the Federal Communications Commission.

More consumers have signed up for the broadband from cable companies, with about 13.7 million lines compared to 7.7 million using telephone companies' digital subscriber line services.

Cameraphone Sales Surge - Sales up by nearly 500%
March 29, 2004
By CNN.com Money

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - One in six mobile phones sold last year had a digital camera in it, an almost five-fold increase over 2002, with Asian vendors leading the way, a survey showed Monday.

U.S.-based market research group Strategy Analytics said 84 million camera phones were sold, or 16 percent of the total handset market, compared with 18 million in 2002.

The cameraphone market overtook the digital compact camera market, which amounted to 49 million units worldwide.

Pictures taken with a mobile phone are of much lower quality than those snapped with digital cameras, in part due to less advanced light sensor chips.

Mobile phones are also too small to contain lenses that can zoom and focus, although phones with such lenses could be on the market in the next few years.

Japan's NEC, which does not even show up in the overall top six of global handset vendors, topped the camera phone table with 13.1 million units shipped.

Finland's Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, came in second at 11 million units.

Samsung Electronics sold 10 million during the year. This is in line with the South Korean company's status as the world's overall number three handset maker.

Japan's Matsushita-owned Panasonic ended fourth with 9.2 million camera phones shipped. Like NEC, Panasonic is absent from the list of top six overall mobile phones vendors.

Japanese-Swedish Sony Ericsson sold 8.2 million units to distributors, its number five position slightly better than its performance as the world's number six seller of mobile phones behind South Korea's LG Electronics.

U.S.-based Motorola and Germany's Siemens were the handset manufacturers replaced by Japanese vendors NEC and Panasonic. Motorola and Siemens are the respective numbers two and four in the overall handset table. The market shares changed during the year, with Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson making up the top three of camera phone makers by the fourth quarter, benefiting from their brand names, scale and strong distribution channels with operators.

Investment bank UBS forecasts camera phone sales will rise to 44 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2004.

Research group Gartner says global handset sales could grow to 580 million units in 2004. 

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