When it comes to hard-drive MP3 players, there’s the Apple iPod — with 5.7 million of them in consumers’ hands as of September — and then, trailing badly, there are the rest. The iPod has about 90.9 per cent of the hard-drive MP3 player market in the United States, Rio has 2.8 per cent, Creative has 2.6 per cent and iRiver has 1.5 per cent. Here’s a guide to the most popular hard-drive based models, which are bound to be among the most-wanted items this Christmas:
   Apple iPod
Price: In its various forms including the 20 and 40 gigabyte models ($429 and $559, respectively); the highly popular four gigabyte Mini ($349); the 20-gigabyte U2 special edition ($499) and the latest in the line, the 40-gigabyte Photo model ($679).
These are all designed to work with Apple’s iTunes program that runs on both Windows PCs and on Macs and it’s likely that, — other than the eye candy of its superb design — much of the appeal of the iPod is a result of how easy it is to move music from the computer to the iPod and from there to those sometimes painful little earbuds you see so many people sporting these days. Another attraction soon to be discovered by Canadians is the integration of iTunes, and therefore the iPod, with Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music store. Oh, and the iPod is the only player that can handle Apple’s proprietary AAC format, which gives you better quality sound than MP3s.
   Rio Carbon
Price: 5 gigabyte drive, $350
Designed to compete with the four-gigabyte iPod Mini, the Carbon can pack an extra 200 songs on its hard drive for the same price as you would pay for the Mini. And it weighs a tad less and is slightly smaller — always a consideration for those toting their music from place to place. As well, the Carbon has a battery that lasts 20 hours (the Mini’s is about eight hours) and is compatible with Windows media and the secure WMA music format downloads that you find on some services. The backlit 1.25-inch display provides readable information and, oh yes, you can use a built-in microphone to record voice memos, if that’s something you need.
   Creative Zen Touch
Price: 20 gigabytes, $500
Aimed at the basic iPod model, the Zen Touch is priced higher than the equivalent Apple offering, which starts it at a disadvantage in a market as tough as this one, especially when for another $49 you can get a 40 gigabyte iPod. However, it does have a touch sensitive scroll pad (hence the name, naturally) that allows for easy navigation (it also has alphabetical find feature that allows for quick searching for songs and artists) and it will handle not just MP3 files, but also WMA and WAV files. You can use the bundled MediaSource software for organizing your music, burning tracks and transferring tunes to the Touch or you can use the Windows Media Player to do the same thing.
   RCA Lyra 2854
Price: 40 gigabyte drive, $500
Here’s another competitor with the basic iPod, although again priced slightly higher in Canada. The Lyra has good sound and will play MP3, and Windows Media files. It also sports a built-in FM radio, which might, for some people, make up for the price difference between it and the iPod. As well, you can record the FM radio broadcasts as MP3 files.
   Sony NWHD1 Network
   Walkman
Price: 20 gigabyte drive, $500
Here we go again, another iPod rival with a higher price than what you pay for the 20-gigabyte Apple music player. With this tiny model that weighs less than four ounces (the claim is that it’s the smallest hard drive-based MP3 player in the world) Sony forgets about its obsession with the MiniDisc. However, the NWHD1 does use the Sony proprietary ATRAC3 format to play back music, so that MP3, WMA and WAV files are converted as they’re ported to the player. As well the NWHD1 only works with the bundled SonicStage software Perhaps its most compelling feature is that it has a 30-hour battery life, which blows all its other competitors out of the water.
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Game makers eye iTunes success against pirating

BY PETER WILSON VANCOUVER SUN

DOWNLOADS I Last week, Vancouver art director Tavis Dunn used a new program called Steam to download PC gaming’s most anticipated title of the year, Half-Life 2, to his computer’s hard drive.
   This was a week before the official release date of the game which, ironically, had been delayed for year because the first version of its code had been pirated and posted to the Internet.
   So is Dunn, who works for Greedy Productions — producers of such popular gamer-oriented TV shows as Electric Playground — just another over-eager downloader of pirated games?
   Well, no. Steam — unlike Kazaa, Limewire, eDonkey 2000, BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer programs — is a creation of the game’s own developer, Seattle-based Valve Corp.
   And Steam, which allows for complete game downloads and seamless invisible updates, could just be the first sign that an industry that loses some $3 billion US each year to piracy is considering operating its own legal download sites, just like the music industry.
   Greedy Productions’ executive producer Victor Lucas — who noted that two hugely popular games Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were recently pirated to the Net — sees the arrival of Steam as the beginning of a change brought about by peer-to-peer networks.
   “People in any kind of content development are looking at the success of iTunes and Apple’s dominance of the music-playing sector and questioning what the implications are for future media delivery,” said Lucas.
   He said that just as filmmakers are looking at an iTunes-style delivery system, he “wouldn’t doubt that somewhere down the road an iteration of a game service will be out there.”
   Because distributors of the physical version of Half-Life 2 objected to any Net-based pre-release of the game, Dunn had to wait a full week after his download completed, to play it.
   The game was unlocked by Steam at midnight Monday.
   Even so, Dunn likes the convenience of it all.
   “I don’t have the hassle of going to the store and picking up the box,” said Dunn. “It saves on all the packaging and that kind of thing.”
   No wonder games producers might be thinking about their own download systems.
   The piracy loss figures — in a substantial part attributable to peer-to-peer downloading — put forward by various content providers is staggering, even though some of the figures are considered by analysts to be highly speculative.
   According to a U.S. Justice Department report, the music and movie industries lose $250 billion US annually and the software industry has put its losses for 2003 at $29 billion.
   Whatever the real numbers are, there’s no doubt that there’s a ton of downloading of pirated content going on out there.
   The most recent figures for Canada — released by Ipsos-Reid in May before a controversial court ruling that peer-to-peer music downloading is legal in Canada — showed that 32 per cent of Canadians adults had downloaded at least one song from the Net.
   And just 15 per cent of those were from fee-paying sites, which means by far the vast majority of music downloads are of pirated content. And the survey didn’t cover teens, who are the most likely to use peer-to-peer systems to download.
   The arrival of pay sites and systems has changed the outlook somewhat, at least in the United States. There some 20 million have paid for songs in the past six months, a rise of 120 per cent.
   However, the survey shows that, again, teens are not among them, possibly because they lack money and have no credit cards.
   So far, most surveys have concentrated on music, but if you look at most peer-to-peer programs, they carry a wide variety of software and games and, increasingly full length movies.
   A quick search of Limewire, for example, showed that more than a dozen alleged copies of the current hit The Polar Express were said to be available for download. However, without downloading, it would be impossible to know whether these are, in fact, full-length versions and what their quality is.
   Another search, for the software favourite Photoshop CS, turned up more than 250 listings of everything from the full program to serial numbers to activation workarounds.
   In other words, if you build a peer-to-peer system, the pirates will come, bearing software, music and movies.
   The legal situation on this is somewhat confused. In Canada, the Copyright Review Board has said that downloading music and movies from peer-to-peer networks is legal. And that’s because this country tacks on a levy up to $25 on such devices as MP3 players, with the money to go to content creators to make up for their losses.
   As well there is a levy on blank tapes, CDs and DVDs.
   In the U.S., the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles has ruled that peer-to-peer software developers aren’t liable for any copyright infringement by downloaders if they have no way to stop them from doing it.
   This means that peer-to-peer software developers and distributors are free to continue selling their products. However, file sharing itself has been ruled in lower courts as being against U.S. copyright laws.
   The music industry in the U.S. has already moved legally against downloaders.
   In October, the Recording Industry Association of America filed 762 new lawsuits against alleged file traders using peer-to-peer sharing services.
   Since September of 2003 the RIAA has filed more than 5,500 lawsuits.
   And now the movie industry through the Motion Picture Association of America, has also entered the legal battleground.
   The MPAA said in November that it would track down people who distribute movies on peer-topeer networks by identifying them through their Internet Protocol addresses .
   And this week it sued individuals in the U.S. — 200 according to some news reports although the MPAA isn’t saying exactly how many — who were identified only by their IP addresses.
   Among the movies alleged to have been on offer in September and October were Troy, Spider-Man 2, White Chicks and The Manchurian Candidate.
   Unlike the music industry, which went after people who offered hundreds of songs, the MPAA is taking on those who may have offered a single movie.
   They face as much as $150,000 in damages.
   John Malcolm, the association’s director of worldwide anti-piracy operations said one copy could easily become tens of thousands of copies available round the world.
   “We do not believe that any amount of illegal use is sanctioned,” said Malcolm.
   One of the more interesting side effects of peer-to-peer downloading, largely a result of programs like Kazaa, is the number of spyware and adware programs — and possibly viruses — that are clogging up PCs around the world.
   The largest such company, Claria, made $35 million US in 2003 for the inclusion of adware in peer-topeer and other free programs offered on the Net.
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GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN Game maker Valve Corp. created Steam to allow legal downloads of its much-anticipated Half-Life 2.