Recommend this article...

Recommend this article...

Wippit, a UK-based P2P service that sold music through subscription packages, has finally shut its doors. A company spokesperson told the Distorted Loop blog that Wippit "succumbed to tough market conditions" and eventually became a victim of its own vision and optimism.

I'd suspect that the absence of a clear value proposition for end users might have something to do with the failure as well. Wippit originally marketed itself as a legal alternative to file sharing networks like Napster, but always had a far to little catalog to compete.

It tried to change this by moving more towards the model of a centralized download store, even selling music from EMI, but those tracks were DRM-protected and couldn't be swapped. It also experimented with home-made ringtones and apparently even had a limited number of video downloads. I reviewed the service early on, but found it confusing and too limited.

Add to that the fact that Wippit used anti-P2P sentiment to market its own service, taking cheap shots at companies that advertised on P2P sites, and you begin to understand why not enough people were sharing Wippit's vision and optmism, said greig from the public speech site .

Recommend this article...

German rights holders have proposed new sanctions against file sharers that are supposed to allow a more direct cooperation with ISPs while stopping short of cutting users' Internet access. Instead, German users will just see their Internet speed drop if they get caught sharing files.

The German anti-piracy organization GVU is adapting a proposal from French and British rights holders also known as the three strikes approach. Under that plan, rights holders would send the IP addresses of suspected file sharers to ISPs, which in turn would send a series of warning letters to the customers in question. Customers choosing to ignore these warning letters would get banned permanently from the Internet after the third incident of copyright infringement.

These ideas have drawn lots of criticism from politicians and civil liberties groups alike, but one argument against the practice hasn't been publicized too much: Millions of Europeans are using VOIP for their land line phones these days, and oftentimes they get their VOIP services from the same company as their Internet connection. Cut of the Internet, and you'll take away those peoples' phone service as well.

Combined packages of VOIP, phone and in some cases cable TV are particularly popular in Germany, which is why German rights holders apparently realized that the traditional three strikes approach won't work in their country. Their alternative idea is to make ISPs throttle the lines of infringers.

This idea might actually get some sympathy from ISPs looking to save on bandwidth costs, but it doesn't go over well with German Internet activists. Says one blogger: "This is an attempt to privatize law enforcement."

Recommend this article...

A German court has ruled that the administrator of an Edonkey server can not be held liable for infringing downloads facilitated through the server if he takes reasonable steps to prevent such downloads. The court ruled against Warner Music Germany, which had sued the administrator last summer after they discovered songs of a Warner Music artist indexed by the server. Warner initially prevailed in court, but the admin appealed the ruling and was now able to defeat the major label, according to heise.de.

Warner Music initially contacted the Edonkey server admin through their lawyer to stop the trading of an individual CD. The admin in question complied, putting keyword filters in place to make sure that the songs in question wouldn't get indexed again. Warner however discovered soon after that a different CD by the same artist was still available through the server and sued.

The court now decided that the admin didn't participate directly in the infringement because his server did not actually host the audio files. It also ruled that there was no intentional facilitation of infringement because Warner's lawyers couldn't prove that the Edonkey network wasn't at its core a neutral network. The court finally decided that a keyword-based filtering system was enough to stop infringement and that the server admin wasn't required to proactively stop future infringements of titles that were not part of the original complaint.

This decision is a pretty substantial defeat, and the fact that it happened in an appeals court adds some additional weight to it. One should however remember that Germany and most other European countries don't share the US concept of common law, meaning that this isn't necessarily a legal precedence for other court cases.

Recommend this article...

After roughly a decade at the top of the home console industry, Sony decided to tackle the portable system market--one heavily fortified by Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and DS. Sony sought to take down Nintendo by adopting the tactic that made the PlayStation 2 such a runaway success: by offering sophisticated, graphically intensive games and a heavy dose of multimedia functionality. The device is called the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and in addition to playing games of PS2 graphical quality, it can play music and movies (downloaded or via disc) and surf the Web. It may not be the best handheld media product on the market, and the games lack the innovation of ones on Nintendo's portables, but as an all-in-one device, the Sony PSP is king of the hill.

From an aesthetic perspective, the Sony PSP is a gorgeous device. It's one of those gadgets you immediately want to get your hands on but vigilantly want to protect once you set it down. Weighing essentially the same as the Nintendo DS (6.2 ounces, including removable battery) and measuring 6.7 by 2.9 by 0.9 inches (WHD), the body feels well built and solid in your hand. Although not a lightweight, it's by no means a brick, nor, we suspect, would it be especially durable in a fall; you'll want to treat the PSP just as gingerly as an iPod or a Palm-style PDA.

The centerpiece of the handheld is its especially impressive 4.3-inch wide-screen display (480x272 pixels, 16.77 million colors). The screen is flanked by controls that will be immediately recognizable to fans of past PlayStations: the directional keypad is to the left of the screen, and the familiar square, triangle, circle, and X buttons are to the right. We dug how Sony managed to include an analog "joystick" below the directional keypad. The stick isn't raised like the analog controls on a PS2 or an Xbox, but it conveys that multidirectional element that gives it a joysticklike feel.

In lieu of the PS2 controller's four total shoulder buttons, the PSP has two: one per shoulder. Ergonomically, the device is OK but not great; as with most handheld gaming devices, you'll have to do a little finger stretching every 15 minutes or so to keep from cramping up.

The PSP uses Sony's recently created "cross media bar" interface. You use the directional keypad to horizontally navigate through Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game, and Internet icons, and each section has other icons attached to it on a vertical axis. All in all, it's a simple and elegant way to access the PSP's many features.

Games and officially licensed movies come on Sony's proprietary UMD (Universal Media Disc) media, which are housed in protective cartridges. The UMD drive is grafted to the back of the unit; you load it and snap it shut just as you would a camcorder. The top edge also sports infrared and a USB 2.0 port that you can use to link the device to your PC or Mac, though no USB connection cable is included.

The headphone jack is at the bottom left of the unit; Sony's official earbud-style headphones sport an in-line remote to control basic playback. The nice thing about the remote is that you can use other headphones with it, not just the provided 'buds. Like Apple, Sony has chosen to go with white headphones. We're not sure why, since the PSP is black (though an iPod-white version is available in Japan).

One gripe: Since the device has a glossy finish--and is mostly black--it's a fingerprint magnet. A static-free cloth should always be at the ready when using your PSP, and the Value Pack had one bundled. Sony's official carrying case is a padded soft case, but a variety of third-party versions are also available (see our list of PSP accessories for more information).
The folks at Sony tout the PSP as, first and foremost, a gaming device. But in the next breath, they claim that it can do so much more, billing it as "the first truly integrated portable entertainment system." Both statements are, in fact, true, and suffice it to say that as a portable gaming device, particularly from a graphics standpoint, the PSP is unparalleled. You're getting a miniaturized PS2 gaming experience--or close to it, anyway--and Sony has amassed a decent selection of titles from various game developers to show off its handheld's gaming chops.

Beyond gaming, the PSP's video prowess may be its most impressive trait. As we previously noted, the display is a 4.3-inch TFT LCD with a 480x272-pixel resolution and 16.77 million colors; by comparison, each of the Nintendo DS's two screens has 256x192 pixels with 260,000 colors. The picture quality from a UMD movie such as Spider-Man 2 is superior to what you'll see on most portable DVD players, though the majority of DVD players have significantly larger screens.

The only problem with video playback--and it's a big one--is that it's currently hard to watch anything but UMD videos on the PSP. Unlike Sony's MiniDisc, UMD is not a recordable storage format, so you'll have to store any video or music and images on a Memory Stick Duo card. The lack of affordable and recordable UMDs has put the format in dire straits. Sony is hoping to give the format a boost by bundling UMDs with its DVDs and creating an accessory that can transfer the video to TV, but it remains highly unlikely that the many studios and retailers that have jumped ship will come back.

Thankfully, getting media onto a PSP is much less of a hassle than it used to be. The Sony Media Manager software lets you transfer photos, music, and videos from a PC to your PSP with relative ease. It also lets you back up your saved games and manipulate podcast feeds. It's a worthwhile alternative to the bare-bones media management options with which the PSP originally shipped in March 2005, but it will cost you about $25--it's not bundled with the PSP. Fortunately, there are also a wide variety of third-party and freeware software titles available, many of which focus on converting existing video files to PSP-friendly formats (see our "How to put video on your PSP" tutorial for one example). Unfortunately, "home brewed" videos are limited to scaled-down resolutions that fail to completely exploit the PSP's native 480x272 screen. The exception: live, streaming video from Sony's LocationFree TV accessory. This Slingbox-like device lets you watch live TV on your PSP while in range of any Wi-Fi hot spot. Still, it's a shame that the only way to take full advantage of video on your PSP is to buy UMD-format movies or expensive networking accessories.

What about music? Well, the good news is the PSP plays many types of audio files without your having to convert them to Sony's proprietary ATRAC format first--a common problem with the company's earlier MP3 devices. You simply drag your audio files into the music folder on your Memory Stick Duo card, and they'll show up on the PSP. Firmware-updated PSPs can play MP3s, ATRACs, WMAs, WAVs, and AAC-encoded song files, though not the copy-protected versions from Apple's iTunes Music Store. The device supports M3U playlists, but if you have your playlists in another format, you'll need to find and download a converter. However, as basic as the PSP's music player is (read: iPod Shuffle with a screen and no autosyncing capabilities), it will be adequate for many people, in accordance with nintendo wii game review site.

Those interested in replacing their iPod with the PSP will have to deal with the lack of on-the-go playlist functionality and, most important, the DIY storage. You can get a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo card for about $50, while double the capacity will cost you about three times as much. Sony announced 4GB and 8GB Memory Sticks at E3 2006 but no pricing. Player controls can be initially tricky--the in-line remote is handy--but we like the speedy precision of the fast-forward/rewind functions as well as the undulating background graphics. The PSP can also display album art when it's available.

The image viewer is also basic, with simple slide-show functionality. But again, it's easy to drag JPEG files--or TIFFs, PNGs, GIFs, and BMPs, if you have version 2.0--onto a memory card, rotate them (if needed), and show off your shots to anybody who might want to see them. In addition, you can set a photo as your PSP's background wallpaper, replacing the colorful splash screen behind the home menu. Unfortunately, you can't view photos and listen to music simultaneously.

Recommend this article...