Web Round-Up – W/E 01/05/98

The big-wigs who guard the coffers of the big money music industry are currently in a panic over the disappearance of their profits down illegal websites that are distributing their wares via the internet for free. With the development of what is called MP3 technology (stemming from MPEG 1 Layer 3) CD recordings can now be converted into a PC -friendly format, highly compressed and then fired out across the web. The implication of this is that entire albums and back-catalogues will potentially be available for nothing (or very little) from benevolent, anti-consumerist cyber-punks.

Have a look at http://www.mp3.com/ for an example of MP3 distribution. Whilst some MP3 distributors provide legal, owner-agreed distributions of music, many ‘underground’ fans and groups are distributing copyrighted material at will. Record companies, not surprisingly, are reacting. The battle is liable to be hard-fought and will be perhaps the first real litmus test for corporate versus ‘anarchic’ use of the internet.

…A UK company called RadioScape has developed PC software which will allow PCs to receive digital radio – or Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). The software replaces most of the specific hardware requirements of a DAB receiver (which would be needed by anyone wishing to receive digital radio) and makes possible the volume production of low-cost PC cards. Computers will then be able to receive all of digital radio’s high quality audio, picture and text broadcasts.

…The argument that the death of the printed book is an inevitable consequence of the onslaught of electronic media was further fuelled last week with the announcement that scientists had developed an electronic ‘book’ which can hold the text of thousands of titles in one volume.

The book uses ‘electronic ink’ to display the text of your chosen title in what apparently will appear like traditional text. The actual unit is the size and shape of an average book and holds around 200 pages of ‘digital paper’. Inevitably, the book will be designed so that titles can be downloaded from the internet, as well as from libraries. The book then stores all of the titles loaded into its memory and allows the user to select them at will.

To the NetBites:

• In a rather brave move, Microsoft has opened an Office WishLine to allow users of its Office software to suggest areas of improvement and/or complain about problems they’ve had with the package. The site is at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/wishline/
• A new survey by computer networks company Novell, has claimed that junk email – or spam as it is known – is currently costing business £5 billion a year. Recipients of ‘spammed’ messages are spending substantial amounts of time reading and deleting the messages. Most junk email is sent by companies trying to sell products.