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7C STRICTLY BUSINESS/®|ie Cjwrlflttt $iult Thursday, February 5, 2004 Internet companies legitimize file-sharing for music Continued from page 8C Kazaa’s parent company, Sharman Networks Ltd. Among companies trying to convince the music indus try that P2P doesn’t have to be all about piracy is Wippit, a Britain-based music sub scription service. For about $50 a year, sub scribers can download any of Wippit’s tunes using P2P and save them in as many places they like — an idea that makes many big record ing companies nervous. Other services limit copying. Most of the 200 recording companies that have signed on to Wippit are indepen dent, and there are huge gaps in what music is avail able. But EMI, whose artists range from the Rolling Stones to Coldplay, is set to debut most of its catalogue on Wippit in February, said Wippit’s chief executive, Paul Myers. Myers says he’s in talks with the four other major labels, and he hopes that two of them will join his service next month, though the deals aren’t finalized. ‘With the majors, there’s a fear within those companies of the word 'peer-to-peer’,” Myers said. “There’s still a fear it’s out of control.” PlayLouder, an Internet service provider for music lovers that’s set to debut in Britain later this year, also will offer file-sharing. One of its investors is the influen tial indie label Beggars Group. Mark Mulligan, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research in London, doubts that Wippit and PlayLouder can ever become main stream because major labels are too worried that people wUl use them to make unlimited copies. But “I think they’re both major parts of the puzzle,” he said. On the Internet, “one size does not fit all. Online consumers want to have dif ferent options.” Another file-sharing option may come from a German company, 4FriendsOnly.com, which teamed with the Fraunhofer Institute, the German research center that developed that MP3 music format, which is wide ly used for file-sharing. Their service isn’t avail able yet, but the idea is that fans should get a commis sion if they pass on tunes to fnends who buy them. Fans who get a recommendation could listen a few times before access to the song ends - unless it is purchased. Chief executive Jurgen Nutzel, who was showing the technology at Cannes, said people who might be less tempted to bum extra copies of songs for fnends if they could get a commission instead. Factories’ production sizzle in December, but jobs are still elusive Continued from page 8C three years of declines. In December, 26,000 manufac turing jobs were lost. Analysts will look for signs of improvement in the January payrolls report, due Friday. Most of the 2.4 miUion jobs lost over the past three years have been in manufacturing. “The economy is going to accelerate in some areas and decelerate in others and the labor market is going to be the one that keeps getting squeezed,” said Lehman Brothers economist Drew Matus. Historically low levels of inventories have contributed to the surge in output in recent months. “The factory sector is in direct drive — when the new order comes, there’s not enough stuff on the shelves to fill it, so they have to ramp up production,” said Northern Trust Chief Economist Paul Kasriel. Inflation under wraps A separate report on Monday showed one of the pillars of the economy, con struction spending, notched a fresh record high in December for the sixth month in a row. Overall construction spending rose 0.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted $933.2 billion, the Commerce Department said, as low mortgage rates fueled a strong housing market. Meanwhile, personal spending rose 0.4 percent in December, the department said, slightly below forecasts of a 0.5 percent gain and down fi-om 0.5 percent the previous month. Adjusted for inflation, spending rose just 0.2 percent, with much of the increased spending on autos. The report said personal income rose 0.2 percent, in line with expectations. But that included a disappoint ing decline of 0.3 percent in wages and salaries because of the soft labor market, which could weigh on future spending. “If job growth doesn’t pick up soon, we could be rethink ing the strength of the econ omy,” said Kasriel. A key reading of inflation in the spending report, which is closely watched by the Federal Reserve, dipped to just 0.7 percent in the year to December. That measure, the core personal consump tion expenditures index, or PCE, has declined sharply. It fell from a 1.7 percent Law partnerships eluding women of color Continued from page 8C ception,” says Dennis Archer, referring to the need for find ings that go beyond anec dotes. Archer, the first Afiican-American elected as president of the bar associa tion, is chair of his law firm, Dickinson Wright, in Detroit. ‘’Let’s deal with real ity and the facts. That’s how we deal with things as a pro fession.” The first time the bar asso ciation examined issues con cerning women of color was in the late 1980s. At the time, Archer was heading a bar commission on minori ties and the-then first lady of Arkansas Hillary Rodham Clinton was heading the bar association’s commission on women. They both concluded that women of color were ‘’falling through the cracks,” Archer says. They formed a committee that held two meetings to hear what the issues were for women of color. The situation of female lawyers, as a whole, has changed substantially since that era. Yet, despite the fact that women have entered the profession in droves since the 1970s and are usu ally welcomed as associates in the lucrative large law firms, they are still under represented in the ranks of law firm partners, that is those with ownership inter ests in the firms. Women of color, however, are still vastly underrepre sented in law firms — from entering young lawyers to partners — according to the women’s commission. Instead, women of color attorneys tend to cluster in the public sector, as state prosecutors, public defend ers and U.S. attorneys. Sheila Thomas, one of the commissioners and the study’s co-chair, says women of color find work in the pub lic sector more in line with their interests and their community. They also find the environment more hos pitable because of the pres ence of more women of color. ‘’It’s seen as a place where you may have a greater opportunity to flourish as an attorney,” says Thomas, who left a small firm to work for herself in Oakland. Enter Online to Win Win a trip to LA to visit the set of an MGM film. Plus, win other great prizes. Go to www.popeyes.com or visit a Popeyes restaurant for your chance to WIN! annual rate at the start of 2003, illustrating the Fed’s worries last year about the risk of falling prices, which has since faded. Economists believe December could mark the low point for underlying inflation before a gradual increase this year to around 1 percent. That should not present any worries for the central bank, which is more concerned about soft labor markets and excess produc tion capacity in factories. “I suspect that December could prove to be the low point for the year-over-year advance (in core PCE) because the early 2003 read ings were extremely weak,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. 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