New MP3 Copy Protection, A Slamming Cease/Desist, and Other Sights and Sounds of Cyberspace

The MP3 format is undergoing a little reconstructive surgery - aimed at giving it a new way to block unauthorized copying. Thomson and Fraunhofer, who license and own the MP3 patents, are working up a new digital rights management add-on for the music file format that is so popular with peer-to-peer swapping. The companies say they want in deeper into the "legitimate" online music downloading world, like Apple, Microsoft, and RealNetworks, all of whom use incompatible proprietary technology.

"Eventually, digital distribution will be a significant mass market," Thomson technology director Rocky Caldwell told CNET News. "We think it will be served well by (digital rights management) that is based on standards. No one else seems to be proposing that."

Thomson and Fraunhofer say they'll base their DRM on open standards now being adopted by the MPEG group and the Open Mobile Alliance, and the two companies will provide free use of the protection technology for anyone licensing the MP3 format. Caldwell expects to see devices and services supporting the newly protected MP3 by the end of the year...

Mercury Marketing has been blocked from billing local businesses for fictional services, now that an Ingham County (Michigan) Circuit Court judge has told Mercury to knock it off. The case began, according to Lansing State Journal columnist John Schneider, when two area attorneys saw their monthly phone bills including something they didn't expect: "Mercury Internet Service Monthly Fee," to the tune of $32.65 on Thomas Walsh's bill and $63.49 on Robert Reifor's bill. "This was for services they couldn't possibly use...their office computers were't wired for Internet service," Schneider wrote...

British publisher Emap won't be wiring Internet Magazine anymore - the publisher says they're closing the journal, their only computing publication, after 10 years, citing the rise in Web-based news as a major factor in the magazine's readership decline. "People know how to use the Internet for news now," associate editor Scott Parker told dotJournalism, "so there is just a smaller and smaller market." Emap had closed their online publications division, Emap Digital, in September 2001. Internet Magazine's extensive archive isn't planned for republication, either...

Canada's telecommunications emperors are following what they consider a big threat to their empires: rivals offering Voice-over Internet Protocol, or Internet telephony. "Their entry," says the New York Times, "has ignited a vigorous debate over the future regulation of Canada's telecommunications services. The crux of the discussion is whether the upstarts in VoIP will be regulated at all, while the two closely regulated market behemoths clamor to be set free." Canada's Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, which oversees Canada's telecoms, is reviewing its Internet telephony policy, while telecom executives like Bell Canada's Michael J. Sabia are pushing for "common public policy treatment" for traditional and cybertelecom companies alike...

Qwest Communications has another beef with Internet telephony of the AT&T variety - they've sued AT&T in the wake of a federal regulatory ruling that AT&T improperly called some long-distance calls carried over the Net as local calls, paying local companies smaller than normal fees and violating Qwest lawful tariffs and defrauding Qwest out of tens of millions, according to the lawsuit. SBC Communications filed a similar suit in April...

Speaking of the tens of millions, leave it to Microsoft to find a way to fight spam on the one hand and make money from its solutions. They've adopted an e-mail whitelist program made by IronPort in which legitimate marketers can get past the thickening wall of spam filters protecting Hotmail and MSN e-mail services. Called Bonded Sender, the IronPort program will require marketers to pony up some dollars if they want to make sure their messages aren't tabbed as unwanted spam. "It's the exact opposite of blocking," said IronPort vice president for (what else) marketing Tom Gillis. "It says, 'Hey, you're a good guy, I'm not going to run you through the metal detectors'."...

From the alleged black hat to a confirmed red hat, Red Hat picked London to launch its new Linux software chock full of security and management features, targeted at organizations who want to upgrade personal computers but don't want something as loaded as Windows, according to Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik. "These organizations now, for the very first time, have an alternative to the historical Microsoft-desktop paradigm," he told a London news briefing. The new package will "exploit its back-end security and management services," like Red Hat Network Proxy Server or Red Hat Satellite Server...

What would you say if you saw a headline, "Microsoft Patents Apple?" You might be tempted to think Microsoft was starting a war with Apple, and you'd be wrong - but they did patent an apple tree, apparently by error. U.S. Plant Patent 14,757 has been assigned to the software empire and covers a new type of tree discovered in the early 1990s in the Wenatchee, Washington area, a major apple-growing territory. It's called the Burchinal Red Delicious, it's noted for producing deep red-colored apples, more so than others, and is sold as (we didn't make this up) the Adam's Apple. We're waiting for the Serpent to return our calls for comment.