Digital Media

The same day a new antipiracy law went into effect in Sweden, Internet traffic took a dive and five audio book publishers went after an alleged illegal file sharer in court.

The so-called IPRED law, which went into effect Wednesday, requires Internet service providers to reveal subscribers' Internet Protocol addresses to copyright holders in cases where a court finds ample evidence of illegal activity.

As of 2 p.m. local time Wednesday in Sweden, Internet traffic was down about 30 percent from the day before, according to Computer Sweden (in Swedish). The average traffic over Netnod, a company that measures most of the Internet traffic access points between Swedish and international networks, was 80Gbps Wednesday compared to Tuesday's 120Gbps. Traffic had been steady the previous week.

A similar effect occurred after The Pirate Bay raid three years ago. Then traffic dropped from 30Gbps to 22Gbps, according to Computer Sweden. However, Netnod declined make the connection between the new IPRED law and the drop in Internet traffic.

Also on Wednesday, Earbooks, Storyside, Piratforlaget, Bonniers, and Norstedts took advantage of the legislation, bringing their grievances to a district court in the Stockholm suburb of Solna in an attempt to reveal the identity of the person behind a particular IP address.

Among the authors with works published by those companies are noted crime novelists Henning Mankell, Hakan Nesser, and the estate of deceased crime novelist Stieg Larsson.

The Swedish Publishers' Association, which supports the audio book publishers' action, claims the alleged pirate had up to 2,000 audio books stored on a server.

The illegal file sharing of audio books has increased over the past year, according to the organization. "It has hit writers, publishers, and Internet book retailers financially, and there is a longer-term risk that publication will decline," Kjell Bohlund, chairman of the Swedish Publishers' Association, said in a statement.

The case will likely serve as precedent; the record industry confirmed Wednesday that it is preparing its own first case.

"It will be interesting to see what the court determines to be sufficient proof," Lars Gustafsson, CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, told Swedish news agency TT. "We are naturally examining their evidence and comparing it with ours."

An estimated 1 in 10 people engage in file sharing in Sweden. The country is also home to the world's largest BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay.

In response to the IPRED law, the fast-growing Pirate Party, which lobbies for more "balanced" copyright laws in Sweden, urged its members to stop encrypting their Wi-Fi networks. This free, open, and anonymous network, for which the name "Ipredia" has been suggested, will make it impossible to sentence a person for illegal file sharing, based on a precedent in Denmark, the Pirate Party claims.

In a statement, the Pirate Party said citizens must be responsible for building a knowledgeable society, since, according to the party, politicians don't see that the Internet is a revolution on a par with writing and conventional publishing.

"Politicians have failed to keep the Internet open, free, and anonymous," said Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party.

But Swedish police are not happy about open anonymous Wi-Fi networks due to concerns about the spread of child pornography and the like.

Executives at the Authors Guild say the text-to-speech feature in Amazon's Kindle 2 could hurt sales of audio books. Not all of the experts agree, including the guild's.

Andy Aaron, an IBM text-to-speech expert, says synthetic voices don't know when to add emphasis or inflection when reading.

(Credit: Andy Aaron)

Andy Aaron, an expert on text-to-speech technology, recently commented in an interview about how much such systems have advanced. In an op-ed piece published Tuesday in the The New York Times titled "The Kindle Swindle?" Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, used Aaron's quotes to support his argument that the Kindle's voice feature could threaten the future of audio books.

But when asked to elaborate, Aaron told CNET News on Wednesday that the audio-book market has little to fear from "synthetic voices."

"I'm a big believer in (text-to-speech) and a booster of it," said Aaron, who is with IBM's Watson Research Center. "But I don't think at this point, or for the foreseeable future, it's going to compete meaningfully with a professional book reader...Am I going to sit down and put my feet up and listen to text-to-speech read 'War And Peace' or Harry Potter for six to eight hours? For someone who has the choice, I think they would rather get an audio book."

Amazon appears headed towards a showdown with the Authors Guild over text-to-speech technology. This enables computers to read text in a lifelike voice. Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, a trade group representing 9,000 authors, argues that Amazon isn't compensating authors for Kindle's text-to-speech feature. He claims authors' copyrights are being violated.

Amazon representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Aiken generated a lot of attention when he first raised concerns about the Kindle following the debut earlier this month of the e-book reader. On Wednesday, Aiken said Amazon never informed the guild--or book publishers for that matter--of the retailer's plan to include the feature.

In the weeks since the Kindle debut, the guild has had discussions with Amazon and the online retailer is taking a "hard-line position," Aiken said. All this doesn't bode well for finding an amicable resolution.

Aiken wouldn't say what the guild's plans are but confirmed that guild administrators won't rule out filing a lawsuit.

"Anytime you have a new means of accessing content," said Aiken, "there's always some sort of aggregator that wants to control it and keep the value for themselves."

As for Aaron's assertions that text-to-speech systems won't threaten audio books for a long time, Aiken says nobody knows the future.

"Things move quickly," Aiken said. "I think the technology has made a generational leap in just the last few years."

To prove the point, the guild has posted demonstrations of text-to-speech technologies offered by Apple four years ago (the video posted above). The voice is monotone and unintelligible in places. It sounds like it was lifted from a bad sci-fi film.

The next clip is a recording of Kindle's text-to-speech offering. (At right, I've included a humorous demonstration of Kindle text-to-speech function posted to YouTube by a user called Kindlejunkie). The differences are sharp. The Kindle's voice pronounces words clearly and sounds far more lifelike. There is however, no inflection or emphasis. The thing drones on.

It's not that the technology can't create dramatic effects. Aaron says the technology has advanced to a point where synthetic voices can be made to sound happy or apologetic. The major roadblock for these systems, however, is that they don't know when to insert these effects or choose the effect that is most appropriate.

What's missing in computers is the ability to understand what they're reading, said Aaron.

"Even a mediocre human reader is interacting with the text and understands every word that he or she is reading," Aaron said. "Text-to-speech doesn't. It can be really good. It can be really smooth. It can sound very lifelike. But it doesn't understand what it's reading. Do you want to listen to a reader that doesn't understand what they're reading?"

The obvious question here is if text-to-speech systems can read something with a specific emotional tone, couldn't a publisher go into a digital book and mark where they want to insert a specific effect?

They could, says Aaron, but that would take an enormous of amount of time and expense. At that point it's easier to hire a human reader and create an audio book.

Here's a little bit about how they create a voice for text-to-speech. First, a professional reader is hired to read text created for its "phonemic diversity." The sentences are designed to cover a wide range of word sounds. The process takes more than 60 hours to complete, Aaron said.

Algorithms are used to help figure out how to manipulate the sounds correctly.

Aiken concedes that text-to-speech systems can't provide many of the dramatic effects that a human can. But he does think they're good enough to erode sales of audio books.

One thing to remember is that the potential to compete with audio books is only one part of the guild's complaint. Aiken argues that Kindle's voice feature should be considered a separate derivative and authors should share in its revenues.

What's for certain is guild managers don't believe Amazon should give text-to-speech away for free just to help market Kindles.

"This should be considered a legitimate new market for publishers and authors," Aiken said. "It's a technology that should be used for incremental revenue. With all the squeezing that's going on in publishing, you just can't let this one go."

Google's radio advertising business has become the newest project that didn't pass muster in Google's new financially rigorous era, and up to 40 employees will lose jobs as a result, the company said Thursday. However, the company isn't completely withdrawing from the market, saying it's begun exploring ads for streaming audio instead.

"While we've devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven't had the impact we hoped for. So we have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and focus our efforts in online streaming audio," said Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of product management, in a blog post Thursday. "We will phase out the existing Google Audio Ads and AdSense for Audio products and plan to sell the Google Radio Automation business, the software that automates broadcast radio programming."

And cuts will come: "We hope to find other roles for the majority of the people concerned and will work to make that happen over the next couple of months. However, given that we are exiting the broadcast radio ad business and selling the Radio Automation business, we expect that up to 40 people may not be able to find other roles at Google."

Google said employees will have about two months to apply for new jobs within the company. The service itself will shut down May 31.

The search giant has more than 20,000 employees, so losing 40 isn't very many in the scheme of things. However, it's bigger than the full staff of a lot of start-ups, and the cut is notable given Google's willingness for years to tackle an immense spectrum of projects.

Google already said it's cancelling its print-ad service, which like radio is a step away from the Internet domain where Google has the home-field advantage over some rivals. The company will continue to invest in its TV ad business, though, Wojcicki said.

Ten years ago, Charlie Ayers met Larry Page at a bike shop in Palo Alto, Calif., to interview for a chef position at an Internet search start-up called Google. He was hired soon after as employee number 53. Ayers spent the next seven years redefining the idea of the corporate food environment, growing the Google cafe from a kitchen that served 50 people a day into a legendary network of cafeterias inside the Googleplex that serves thousands of meals daily, with organic ingredients sourced largely from local farmers.

In January 2009, after spending a few years traveling the world exploring how other cultures eat, Ayers has returned to open Calafia Cafe and Market a Go Go in the Town and Country Village in Palo Alto.

Listen as I sit down with Charlie Ayers, the chef whose food fueled the minds at one of the most ubiquitous companies in the world and redefined corporate cooking.

Personalized Web radio service Pandora has added 15-second audio advertisements that will occasionally play between songs.

The company's official Twitter feed first announced the inclusion of ads, saying Pandora will be "extremely respectful of your listening experience" while promising "to be prudent."

So far, the ads have been used sparingly. Pandora's founder and chief strategy officer, Tim Westergren, told PressDemocrat.com in an interview that the average user will hear an ad only once every two hours, but the company is experimenting to see what works.

Pandora has experimented with audio advertising in the past. In early 2007, the service placed a 9-second McDonald's ad between songs the first time users changed stations. Each user heard the ad just once per day.

Asking for reaction, Pandora's chief technical officer, Tom Conrad, announced in a blog post on the company's site that users were generally upset with their decision to deploy audio ads.

"The reactions ran the gamut, from muted concern to strong condemnation," Conrad wrote. "Other listeners left comments on our blog, or contributed to posts discussing the ad on other blogs. The reactions in these other forums also expressed a variety of perspectives on the issue. Generally, though, there was fear that Pandora could become overwhelmed with intrusive audio advertising."

Subsequent to that experiment, Pandora removed all audio advertising from the site.

Now that audio ads are back, Pandora said in another Twitter update that those who wish to not hear any audio advertisements can sign up for Pandora's premium membership for $36 per year.

Turns out that the top recording companies aren't responsible for silencing YouTube's music videos.

Here's what YouTube said on the company's blog: people who post clips with unauthorized music to the site can choose to mute the audio rather than have YouTube remove the entire video.

YouTube has for a while given those who post videos that include unauthorized copyright music an option of swapping that music for songs that have been pre-cleared. If they don't like that option then YouTube gives them a second choice between having the video removed or turning off the sound, the company said.

"This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders," says a note from YouTube posted to a video with no sound. "The audio has been disabled."

Representatives from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group declined to comment.

YouTube's muting policy has been in place for a while. The only reason it's coming to light now is because of the spat between YouTube and Warner Music.

YouTube had licensing deals in place with all four of the major labels. Last month, talks to re-negotiate Warner's deal with YouTube broke down and Warner has pulled out of YouTube. Most of the music being silenced now belongs to Warner.

There's no word yet on when that stalemate might end. At the same time, YouTube is trying to renegotiate deals with the other three labels.

If YouTube can't cut new agreements with the other record companies, YouTube could bring back a new era in silent pictures.

Neil Young says the tech industry doesn't care as much about music quality as it should.

Perhaps that's because the average iPod-toting iTunes customer doesn't give a second thought to whether the digital file of the latest single they just bought is uncompressed or lossless.

Young told a bunch of tech luminaries gathered for an industry conference as much on Wednesday: "People's understanding has been skewed by MP3s and convenience. It's important to get music out there...but not at the expense of quality."

He's not the only one who feels that way. Grammy-award-winning producer T-Bone Burnett (who says audio nowadays is so degraded it's akin to viewing "a Xerox of a Polaroid of a photograph of a painting") is spearheading CODE, a new high-definition audio format distributed on a DVD.

CODE gives the music consumer options, by including many different formats, including 24-bit/96-kHz WAV files, uncompressed 16-bit/44.1kHz files, AAC, and MP3 on a single disc. What Burnett has done is show consumers that there are options, more than perhaps they are aware.

Young and Burnett are certainly vocal, but aren't the only people dissatisfied with the listening experience offered by today's cheap, one-off music downloads. So we checked in with our own resident audiophile, Steve Guttenberg, who writes at CNET Blog Network's Audiophiliac. Here are his suggestions for hearing music the way it's meant to be heard.

*Listen. Well, sure, that's the point right? But Guttenberg means really listen, as in, don't have it playing in the background while you're filling in spreadsheets at work, or scrubbing your shower. Once you do, you'll actually notice how much is missing from a compressed MP3 file.

"People who actually put on music and listen--whatever form it's in--they hear more because they're giving it their undivided attention," he said. "Once people really listen, they care about (sound quality) more. Whether you're listening to an iPod or $20,000 turntable, it doesn't really matter. But that's sort of the beginning of everything."

(Credit: CNET)

*Download quality file formats. Now that you can get music players with 160GB of storage, file size isn't really a huge issue anymore. MP3 files are generally regarded as the lowest-quality music file since the audio uses a lossy compression process to make the files smaller, meaning some of the data is left out, like higher frequencies.

Luckily there are alternatives: Apple lossless for iPods compresses the files, but losslessly (which means it sounds exactly like uncompressed, but is actually compressed, Guttenberg says); AAC, which is a lossy compression encoding process, but is generally accepted as better than MP3; or OGG (no, no relation to me), which is another lossy compressed file format, but is open source and is known for its higher fidelity. And then there are WAV files, which are completely uncompressed and sound exactly how they're "supposed to," according to Guttenberg.

*Buy used CDs. Though CDs probably aren't Neil Young-approved, it's a vastly better quality experience than MP3s. Plus, it's kind of a deal, Guttenberg says. "It's cheaper than buying iTunes (songs) and certainly sounds a million times better."

*Think outside the iPod. Though there's nothing wrong with Apple's portable music player, it's not the only device out there. Besides other brands of players, you could get super pro and go with a set of turntables. And you don't have to spend a ton. There are USB-equipped turntables that go for around $100--cheaper than most iPods.

*Listen to it live. If the other options still aren't getting it done, you can always go see your favorite act in person. But Rule No. 1 still applies: Actually listen. A lot of people "talk because they're used to music being in the background, they don't just shut up and listen to it."