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To: Maya who wrote (42584)	7/4/1999 12:40:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Bugs in the Box???????????????? Internet Viruses Bug Set-Top Boxes By Jim Barthold Aunt Edna is watching the latest video-on-demand movie on her state-of-the-art digital set-top that she bought at Circuit City when the message light suddenly flashes: There's e-mail from "Sally and the kids." She clicks the response button and "GOTCHA!" explodes onto the screen, followed by a rainbow of colors, then snow. Aunt Edna has lost her movie, and, she quickly finds out, all her other set-top functions, thanks to a virus-infected e-mail. more..................... cableworld.com

To: Maya who wrote (42584)	7/5/1999 2:14:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Hollywood/OEMs drop the price of VCD disks to compete with pirates............................ invest.insidechina.com June 15, 1999 China Video Markets Begin To Adjust To VCD Pirates Western entertainment companies and local video CD makers are drastically lowering prices in China in the face of rampant piracy, according to industry sources. "Western content providers are finding that you can't make any money here because of all the pirating, while lowering prices is the only way to establish a market presence," Jeffrey Cheen, of the Hong Kong-based Asia Vision entertainment company, told AFP. Companies like Asia Vision are now selling the distribution rights for western music and film content to Chinese audio visual companies at a fraction of the price charged in the US and Europe, and with little regard for royalties or percentages on sales volume, Cheen said. Chinese compact disc manufacturers are also lowering their prices in an effort to compete with a glut of pirated products including music CDs, CD-ROMs and VCDs, he said. Jiangsu Culture and Art Audiovisual Publishing Company last month flooded the legitimate VCD market with a series of recent US films that are selling for 20 yuan ($2.20), only five yuan more than is being asked for pirated products. Warner Brothers and Sony titles include Chinese-dubbed versions of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Babe, Pig In the City," as well as subtitled versions of "You've Got Mail," "Top Gun 2" and other 1998 films. Similar VCDs had previously been selling for between 55 and 75 yuan in legitimate Chinese stores. "These VCDs are selling well because they are new films, they are cheap and we guarantee the quality," said Chen Xiaomei, a seller at a CD shop in Beijing's Haidian district. "There are still a lot of bad quality pirated VCDs and if you are buying them on the street then it is really difficult to return them, so people are becoming more aware of the importance of buying legitimate products." Sellers of pirated VCDs continue to do brisk street business at Beijing subway stations and other crowded shopping venues, but their product mix is increasingly including what appear to be legitimate products. "Lower prices could affect how the manufacturers of pirated products do business. I am now getting legitimate Hong Kong and Taiwanese films from the same source that I get the pirated discs," a street seller named Wang said. However, Wang would only say his products came from southern China and would not reveal whether manufacturers were producing both pirated and legitimate products. Following a landmark intellectual property rights agreement with the US in 1996, the Chinese government has moved to shut down some large pirates while also allowing Western content providers to market their products in China's tightly-controlled and often censored cultural markets. Meanwhile, rampant pirating of music CDs, computer CD-ROMS and VCDs has gone on unabated. While pirated products tend to be limited to street hawkers in Beijing, they are being sold openly elsewhere in China, alongside legitimate products in department stores and smaller music, video and computer stores. Industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some western and Hong Kong content providers are now seeking to sell their products directly to the pirates for a one-off lump sum price. "By going through this 'gray area' of China's economy, a lot more content that would not get approval if done through proper channels is getting through," one content provider said. ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)