Bytes: Music piracy; <br></br>Loudeye; <br></br>Future Power; <br></br>Nvidia

A TEAM of researchers from Princeton and Rice universities and Xerox went to court in Washington last week to establish its right to publish details of how it cracked technology aimed at preventing the pirating of digital music files. Professor Edward Felton filed the case after his intention to publish the team's research, undertaken as part of a challenge issued by the Secured Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), was met with the threat of a lawsuit from the companies sponsoring the competition.

Professor Felton said that legal action was necessary to prevent the music industry from interfering with established scientific procedures and the freedom of academics to discuss their work. He added that the public also has the right to know how effective anti-piracy software is.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), along with the SDMI, sent Felton a letter in April saying he could face legal action if he published. Later, after he failed to deliver a paper, they said they would not sue and reiterated the position last week. The lawyer who drafted the original letter said SDMI and RIAA were only trying to protect trade secrets and never intended to sue. Free speech activists accused them of using bullying tactics and said the case needed to go ahead to establish a precedent.

"[The entertainment industry] needs to pledge not to interfere with this paper and future papers as well," said Cindy Cohn, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "They need to pledge to stop interfering with the scientific process."

NAPSTER SIGNED a deal with Loudeye last week to provide technology aimed at helping it to block the illegal trade in copyrighted material across its service. Loudeye's technology allows digitally encoded songs to be identified by cross-referencing "digital fingerprints" in files based on a software analysis of the music's characteristics with a database of copyright ownership.

The system will help Napster to identify the songs that are being downloaded, regardless of the file names employed by Napster users.

In part, the technology will help Napster to comply with a court ruling that it must filter named music tracks out of its system. It will also play a major role in Napster's proposed reinvention of itself as a subscription-based service that is working under licence in cooperation with major record labels.

FUTURE POWER and Apple Computer settled out of court last week in the long-running "trade dress" dispute over whether Future Power's Windows-based iMac lookalikes infringed illegally on Apple design work. Full details of the settlement were not disclosed. Apple has rigorously defended its rights to a unique design in court. Last year it forced settlements with Emachines and Daewoo over alleged copying of designs. In the settlement with Future Power, the preliminary injunction issued in November 1999 against it selling its translucent blue and white E-Power machines with built-in 15in monitors, will remain in force until February 2004.

Both companies agreed that Future Power could market its new machine (pictured left) ­ an all-in-one Windows PC with a 17in monitor and a translucent coloured case. Although the new machine will be called the AIO ­ a name used in 1998 by Apple for a series of all-in-one Power Macs ­ Future Power said all litigation with Apple had been resolved.

MICROSOFT SAID last week that it is enhancing and expanding the capabilities of its instant messaging (IM) software, Windows Messenger, to be integrated with its forthcoming Windows XP operating system from October. The new software will allow chat, video, audio and telephone functions to share the current text-only features of IM. It will also make easy the sharing of files and documents across the internet and allow remote access to PCs.

The tactic of embracing a technology, optimising it for Windows and then building it into the system is what happened in the battle of the browsers between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. That led to the anti-trust trial in the US courts, the appeal decision to which is expected shortly, that found Microsoft guilty of uncompetitive behaviour.

This time round, Netscape's parent company, AOL Time Warner, enjoys a jealously guarded monopoly in the IM market with AIM and ICQ. Talks between Microsoft and AOL about the inclusion of AOL in Windows XP recently broke down but resumed last week.

GRAPHICS CHIP manufacturer Nvidia said last week that it was expanding its presence on the PC motherboard with the release of its nForce chipset ­ integrated chips designed to control graphics and memory-handling. The chipset, based on technology developed for Microsoft's Xbox console, offers high-performance multimedia processing at up to eight times the speed of existing Intel and AMD chipsets.

Due to appear in production by the autumn, the chipset will initially be used only to support central processing units from AMD. Although the chipset works with Intel chips in the Xbox, Nvidia has yet to get a licence from Intel for supplying the manufacturers of its motherboards.