Napster promised the court Friday to work throughout the weekend to set up measures to block the trade of copyrighted files. According to ZDNet News, however, "on just one of Napster's dozens of servers, about 9,000 users were swapping about 2.5 million songs at any given time on Sunday morning." As of this morning, RAIN was able to access the service and trade files as always, indicating that the company had missed its self-imposed deadline.

Judge Marilyn Patel said she would rewrite the injunction that would suspend the operation of Napster in anticipation of the record industry's copyright suit against the company coming to trial.

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BY PAUL MALONEY
Could television signals be used to put Internet radio into your car?

It's largely acknowledged that the wireless revolution won't truly "arrive" without overcoming the technology's low data speed. High data content on PDAs, and of course the "promised land" of Internet radio in the car, are simply beyond our reach now because of the low ceiling on wireless data transfer.

There are other solutions to Internet traffic congestion being used today, like satellites that beam fat content to "edge" servers with the idea of getting the data as close to end users as possible (wireless connections such as DirecPC and EchoStar Communications' DISH Network). But a few companies are developing the technology (and business models) to use actual broadcast television frequencies to make data transfers.

According to an article in CNet News (here), these new technologies are the "television industry's attempt to reinvent themselves in the Internet age. They're seeing their revenues being drained away as viewers increasingly go to satellite and cable television networks, and want a way to tap into the benefits of data distribution. The digital TV rules produced by federal regulators have given them a large chunk of the airwaves to do just that."

In November, Streamingmedia.com published a story (here) on a company called Dotcast. The company is building the "Dotcast Digital Network," which the company claims will transfer up to 4.5 Mb of information..."100x faster then most DSL connections (4.5Mb/s as compared to 300kb/s)."

The signal is carried in unused space in the analog television signal, and doesn't impair the quality of that signal. With digital television broadcasts, which should be becoming more prevalent as time goes on, the capacity to carry the extra data more than double, to about 10 Mb per second! The bulk of the system will be used for downloads (software, or content to be used later, like music or video), but streaming audio and video is also possible.

The Dotcast system requires the use of a box, connected to your PC, which houses a 100 gigabyte hard drive for storage. The company, which counts Disney, GE Equity, Quantum, and Intel amongst its investors, hopes to have its system up and running late this year.

A company called iBlast has themselves begun testing of these types of services at five television stations in California, Arizona, and Florida. The company claims to have assembled a nationwide network of 246 stations in 154 markets in the U.S., which will effectively cover 93 percent of the population.

The network itself will use digital broadcast signals, and will be free, as long as you own an antenna and a DTV receiver card -- about 100 bucks, expected to drop below $50 by the end of this year. Some content will be free, some "pay-per-use," or subscription-based. Customers will have access to music, games, movie trailers, computer software and other applications...plus local content, like news, weather and community information.

But beyond these implications is the possibility that, with such high data transfer rates over a wireless mechanism, streaming audio in automobiles will be made possible.

Interesting though -- that the bottlenecks of the New Media may end up being uncorked by an older medium, and we may listen "radio" which is really coming to us from a television station!

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From Kagan.com: "Investors pushed shares of Napster’s commercial rivals including MP3.com (NASDAQ- MPPP) and Liquid Audio (NASDAQ- LQID) higher (Friday), ahead of a ruling that many expect will shut down the file-swapping service.

"MPPP shares gained 16% from yesterday’s close to $3.18 by midday, while LQID shares were boosted 15% higher to $3.16"

Read this story here.

As of this morning, MP3 remains at $3.18, and Liquid has begun to slide back down below $3. EMusic was up over 46% last Friday before Napster's announced plan to block a number illegally swapped files from its system.

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Reprinted from Friday's issue...

BY PAUL MALONEY
Both satellite radio providers made major announcements in the past few days regarding new funding and product shipments.

New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio on Wednesday announced that they've closed on $230 million dollars in financing through a common stock offering. The offering, underwritten by Lehman Brothers, was for 11.5 million shares at $21 each, according to the company press release.

The next day, XM Satellite Radio announced that they themselves had priced a public offering of 7.5 million shares of stock, for a price of just over $10.18. This, in addition to $125 million in 7.75% "Convertible Subordinated Notes" due in 2006 (which will be convertible into shares of Class A common stock at a conversion price of approximately $12.22 per share, according to the company), raised a total of $201.4 million. Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. managed the offering.

Both companies also announced that products compatible with their services were now commercially available to the public.

Sirius, and main component producer Kenwood, announced last week that the manufacturer had begun monthly shipments of nine different models of car radios to retail outlets. Kenwood plans on shipping "tens of thousands" of the products to retailers including Circuit City.

XM-ready radios produced by Pioneer are also now available for sale at Circuit City, as well as Best Buy, Sears, RadioShack stores. The tuner modules for the Washington DC-based satellite radio company, according to a March 1st announcement, will also be compatible with head units sold by Alpine and Pioneer during the coming car stereo selling season of spring and summer.

Pioneer has announced that its XM tuner module is backward-compatible with more than 3 million Pioneer head units previously sold.

March 6, 2001	The Digital Download: Washington, D.C.
May 3-4, 2001	Streaming Media Asia 2001: Hong Kong