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Analysis: $1.92 million fine in music piracy case could hurt RIAA

The massive $1.9 million fine imposed by a federal jury yesterday in the retrial of a Minnesota woman accused of pirating 24 songs may could end up hurting the Recording Industry Association of America’s anti-piracy campaign more than anything else, a leading copyright lawyer said.

That’s because the sheer size of the verdict hammers home just how unreasonable the RIAA’s damages theory for copyright infringement is, said Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who has represented clients facing piracy lawsuits.

“Oddly, this gigantic verdict may do more to hurt than help the RIAA, because it offers a vivid demonstration of how out of synch the RIAA’s damages theory is with decades of case law about the reasonableness requirement for copyright statutory damages,” Beckerman said.

The size of the award also goes against a century of case law “deeming punitive awards unconstitutional if they are unreasonably disproportionate to the actual damages sustained,” he said. He said he has “no doubt” the verdict will be set aside by the trial judge.

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Jury orders music swapper to pay $1.92 million

A woman who won a retrial after a $220,000 verdict against her for sharing music files has now been ordered to pay $1.92 million by a jury in Minnesota.

In 2007, when she lost the original suit, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was one of the first people to receive a guilty verdict in a case backed by the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed more than 20,000 lawsuits against people in a bid to stop online music trading and copyright infringement.

On Thursday, a jury ordered her to pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she is accused of illegally trading over the Kazaa Internet service. The jury could have ordered her to pay between $750 and $150,000 per song.

In a statement, the RIAA said it was pleased that the jury found the defendant liable and that it continues to be willing to settle the case.

Thomas’ case has been closely followed, in part because she was a single parent of two children and did not appear to be trading massive volumes of music.

After her case went to court, the recording industry late last year said it would no longer pursue individuals who trade in small numbers of songs. Instead it pledged to first notify ISPs of people who trade large volumes of songs and ask for the ISPs’ help in shutting down the activity.

Feed your iPhone/iPod touch free iTunes content

If you follow this blog, you’re aware that the iTunes Store offers the Free on iTunes section where you can browse the week’s (or, in some cases, month’s) free music and video offerings. You may also be aware that, thanks to the iPhone/iPod touch 3.0 software, you can now download the Store’s video content to these portable devices. Wouldn’t it be great if you could combine these two features—easily locate free content and download it to your iPhone or iPod touch?

Regrettably, the mobile version of the iTunes Store doesn’t allow this. There’s no section in the handheld Store that displays free content (and no, entering the link I posted above in Mobile Safari earns a reaction no more helpful than “Huh!?” from the iTunes app). But there’s a way.

That way is to fire up Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch and make haste for the Free iTunes Downloads website. This is a site that publishes links to the iTunes Store’s free content. Tap one of these links on your iPhone or iPod touch and the iTunes app opens and takes you to the screen where you can download the associated song or video.

Feeding your iPhone/iPod touch.

But let’s make it even easier. When you get to Free iTunes Downloads with your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the Subscribe to our RSS/Atom feed link. This gives you a handy, pared-down page with these same links. Tap a link and you see a description of the item—a plot summary for a TV show or artist’s bio for a song—followed by a Download For Free! link that, when tapped, opens the iTunes app and takes you to that item's page for downloading.

Tap the Plus button at the bottom of the Safari screen and you can save this RSS feed as a bookmark. I’ve taken the extra step of tapping Add to Home Screen so I can easily maneuver to this feed when I want to quickly scan the Store’s free offerings. I expect this will be a useful thing to have when I’m stranded in an airport waiting area and looking for fresh (and free) content.

Is the iPhone's iPod feature perfect?

There’s been a great amount of both hoop as well as la in the last couple of weeks in regard to the iPhone 3G S and the iPhone 3.0 software. Yet very little of the noise generated by either focuses on the iPhone’s iPod capabilities. Not that Apple hasn't made improvements. Fact is, a couple of them could save your life.

With an iPhone 3G S, for example, you can order your phone to play particular songs, albums, or playlists and demand that it play songs similar to the one currently playing, using your commanding voice only. If you’re one of those people who fiddles with the phone while driving to find the perfect song, album, podcast, audiobook, or playlist, this will allow you to keep your eyes on the damned road from now on.

Similarly, if a song comes along that you loathe, put the 3.0 software’s Shake to Shuffle feature to good use. Just as with the 4G iPod nano, all you need do is give the device a firm rattle and you’ve skipped off to a different track in the currently playing playlist.

Not quite as life-saving but useful for parents is the ability to keep those using the iPhone or iPod touch from downloading media from the iTunes Store that is explicit (in the case of music and podcasts) or rated as more mature than the sensibilities of the viewer (in the case of movies and TV shows).

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FCC: DTV transition sparked calls but no major outages

The U.S. switch from analog to digital television broadcasts on Friday caused no “widespread” disruptions of over-the-air service, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said.

The long-planned transition, which opened up valuable frequencies for mobile data services, had been rescheduled from the original deadline of Feb. 17. Hawaii stations went all-digital on Jan. 15, and 158 stations across the U.S. were scheduled to shut down analog broadcasts before the June 12 deadline, according to the FCC.

More than 317,000 U.S. residents called the FCC’s toll-free help line on Friday, bringing the total number of calls to nearly 700,000 between June 8 and Friday, the FCC said. About 30 percent of the calls concerned the operation of digital converter boxes that many viewers of over-the-air broadcasts needed to connect to their TV sets.

Most of those calls were resolved when help-line agents instructed TV viewers to “re-scan” their converter boxes in order to find the new digital TV signals, the FCC said.

“I am pleased with the way our FCC team responded to the technical challenges that arose throughout the course of the day,” acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said in a statement. “But our job is far from over. This transition is not a one-day affair. We have known about re-scanning and reception issues for some time and have been doing our best to get the word out. We will continue to work with every consumer who needs assistance in making this important and necessary transition.”

The TV markets generating the most phone calls to the FCC help line were Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The average wait time on the help line was 4.6 minutes, according to the FCC. About 4,000 people staffed the phone lines.

Verizon Wireless and some other mobile operators, which acquired licenses for the former TV frequencies last year in a nearly $20 billion auction, objected to the delayed transition at first but later agreed to the postponed date. Verizon plans to launch commercial high-speed mobile data services using an LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network in its 700MHz spectrum early next year.

Friday’s transition was expected to bring TV for cell phones to 15 more markets, according to Qualcomm, which operates the Flo TV network through its MediaFlo subsidiary. The service had already gone live in 69 other markets through earlier acquisitions of TV channels. The new markets include San Francisco, Boston, Houston and Miami.

Flo TV can deliver as many as 20 channels of simulcast and time-shifted programming to cell phones and is offered by both Verizon Wireless and AT&T. It shows original content as well as shows from CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and other content providers. It is scheduled to become available in 24 more locations by the end of this year, reaching more than 200 million potential subscribers.

Virgin Media, Universal launch 'unlimited' music service

A new music download service to be launched by Virgin Media and Universal Music will let U.K. customers stream and download as many music tracks as they want for a single monthly subscription, the companies announced Monday.

The downloaded music will not expire and will be available on any MP3-compatible device owned by customers, said Virgin Media, a provider of broadband, television, phone and mobile services in the U.K. The service will also have an entry level subscription for customers who don't want an unlimited service, the company said in a press release.

The two companies will also work on education campaigns about online piracy and legal alternatives, but Virgin Media will also suspend Internet access as a last resort for persistent offenders, it said. No customers will be permanently disconnected, it said.

Virgin Media will not “depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic” to identify copyright abusers, the company said.

Virgin Media is negotiating with other major and independent music labels and publishers in the U.K. in an effort to offer a large music catalog by the time the service launches later this year.

Virgin Media and Universal Music will also work together to protect Universal Music’s intellectual property and reduce unauthorized distribution of its music across Virgin Media's broadband network, Virgin Media said.

DTV transition: Some viewers losing signals

For marketing consultant Richard Kelleher, a transition from analog to digital television in the U.S. hasn’t gone smoothly.

Kelleher, who lives in the Phoenix area, is one of millions of U.S. residents who have purchased converter boxes so that their television sets can receive digital broadcasts. U.S. televisions will stop broadcasting analog signals on Friday.

Kelleher received about 10 analog stations, and after hooking up the converter box, he receives only three stations, two of them Spanish-language stations, he said. “With the conversion, the government must be enforcing an agenda of teaching me Spanish,” said Kelleher, who calls himself a marketing sociologist. “I live in northeast Phoenix, where there is a mountain range between my home and the [TV] station towers.”

Most people receiving over-the-air broadcasts will need to purchase converter boxes to continue to receive TV signals after analog signals go dark Friday. The U.S. government continues to offer coupons to help with the cost of the $50 to $80 converter boxes. Television sets hooked up to cable or satellite service will not need converter boxes.

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Ripping and burning CDs with iTunes

Earlier this week, contributing colleague, Kirk McElhearn, provided hints for ripping CDs better and faster. Today, I’d like to piggy-back on Kirk’s fine work to provide an overview of just what you can do with CDs within iTunes.

Rip ’em

Of course, you can pull the contents from CDs and put the results in your iTunes library. By default, when you insert an audio CD, iTunes launches, displays the CD under the Devices heading in iTunes’ Source list, queries the Internet for the CD’s title and track listings, and then tosses up a dialog box that reads “Would you like to import the CD “name of CD” into your iTunes library?” If you click Yes, the contents of the CD are imported using the Import Settings found in iTunes’ General preference.

If you have a lot of CDs that you’d like to rip—when you’re ripping your massive collection of Grateful Dead discs, for example—you should travel to that General preference, locate the When You Insert a CD pop-up menu, and choose Import and Eject CD. (Other options in this menu include Show CD, Begin Playing, Ask to Import CD, and Import CD.) Choosing Import and Eject CD means iTunes will go about its ripping business without bothering you for anything other than the next disc you’d like to rip.

Before asking iTunes to rip your CD you should consider whether you want tracks imported individually or ganged together into a single track. For example, you might like all the tracks on an audiobook CD to be combined into a single “Disc 1” track, making it easier to navigate the audiobook on an iPod or iPhone. Or, to ensure that a shuffling iPod plays an entire classical work instead of a single movement, combine that work’s component parts into a single unit.

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Review: Dexim AV Dock Station with Remote Control

Today’s clickwheel iPods, iPod touch, and iPhone are capable of displaying video not only on their displays but also on tethered televisions. You can make such a TV connection using one of Apple’s AV cables—the Apple Composite AV Cable or Apple Component AV Cable. But, at $49 each, these cables aren’t cheap, plus they don’t give you the flexibility that comes with a remote control. If you want to navigate through the iPod or iPhone’s music and video files, you have to get up off the couch and twiddle with that device’s controls.

To solve this problem you could continue further along the Apple path and purchase Apple’s Universal Dock for yet another $49. But while that Dock includes Apple’s Remote Control, it doesn’t also bundle the Apple USB Power Adapter (a $29 doohickey). Add it all up and you’ve paid $127 for the works. If you’re willing to forgo computer syncing you could have all this for $80 by purchasing Dexim’s AV Dock Station with Remote Control.

The AV Dock Station is an attractive, not-terribly-large dock that includes an IR remote, composite AV cable, AC adapter, and eight inserts that accommodate all iPhones and iPod touches, the third- and fourth-generation iPod nanos, the iPod classic, and the fifth-generation iPod (the dock is also compatible with the second-generation iPod nano, but doesn't include a dock insert for it). The remote includes Menu, OK, Volume Up, Volume Down, Play/Pause, Previous/Rewind, Next/Fast-Forward, Up, and Down buttons. To connect the Dock to a TV or stereo you use the AV-out port on the back of the dock in league with the included (and solid-feeling) AV cable. The dock will operate perfectly well without being plugged into a power outlet. The AC adapter is necessary only for charging an attached iPod or iPhone.

Dexim's AV Dock Station with Remote Control.

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Rip CDs better and faster

While many people get music from digital sources—the iTunes Store, eMusic, Amazon.com and other on-line vendors—a lot of us still buy CDs. In addition, many people have never gotten around to ripping their CD collections. Ripping CDs can be a chore, and ideally you want to rip as fast as possible, but it’s not always easy to do so. Here are some tips for ripping CDs, and a way to get faster ripping speeds for your discs.

What affects ripping speed

There are two main variables when ripping CDs: your optical drive and your processor(s). The speed of the former has the greatest effect on CD ripping. I recently downgraded from a Mac Pro to a Mac mini, and the only lament I have is the speed of the internal SuperDrive in the mini, which reads CDs at up to 24x. With the Mac Pro’s ability to hold a second optical drive, I had added a 52x CD drive, and ripping CDs in iTunes was very quick: I would get up to 40x, compared to a maximum of 20x on the Mac mini.

Ripping speed is shown in iTunes, at the top of the window, as an “x” speed. (1x is about 150 KB per second, or the speed at which data is read when listening to an audio CD.) I see figures from about 5x to 20x on my Mac mini, and these numbers increase as ripping progresses. This is not because iTunes gets better as it goes on, but simply because of the way CDs and drives work. When you copy data from them, CDs spin at a constant speed, or “constant angular velocity.” Unlike LPs, which are read from the outside in, CDs are read from the center to the edge. Since the speed is constant, less data is read at the beginning of the CD than at the end, hence the increase in data throughput during the ripping process.

iTunes shows you the speed at which it is converting audio data: here, it is ripping at 11x, or 11 times the speed at which data is read when playing back an audio CD. The “Time Remaining” is the amount of time estimated to rip the current track.

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