Darknet

Recording industry loses infringement suit

The Inquirer (via Shelly Palmer): The recording industry lost a major ruling in Atlantic v. Brennan when a federal judge in Connecticut ruled that merely making music available to other users is not evidence of copyright infringement. The judge also found that no proof of infringement was supplied by the record companies that brought the suit. With two of three findings going to the defendant, the case was thrown out.

A rare victory for common sense.

More teens ignore CDs in buying their tunes

San Jose Mercury News: More teens ignore CDs in buying their tunes.

Why is Universal Music selling unlocked songs?

From the December issue of Wired magazine: The angry mogul. Universal's CEO Once Called iPod Users Thieves. Now He's Giving Songs Away. The most interesting part comes near the end:

When I suggest to Morris that the labels gave Jobs license to create what was in effect an Apple Walkman that played only Apple cassettes, it's Caraeff who answers. "Looking back, the best thing we could have done would have been to mandate one format," he says. So why didn't that happen? Morris is happy to field this one. "It never crossed anyone's mind!" he exclaims. "We were just grateful that someone was selling online. The problem is, he became a gatekeeper. We make a lot of money from him, and suddenly you're wearing golden handcuffs. We would hate to give up that income."

Those cuffs get tighter every day. This year, 22 percent of all music sold in the US will move through iTunes. "If iTunes gets up to 40 or 50 percent, they'll have too much power for anyone else to enter the business," says James McQuivey, who analyzes the digital music industry for Forrester Research. If the labels want out, they have two choices: Find a way to unseat the iPod or allow iTunes' competitors to sell unprotected files that can play on Apple's ubiquitous device.

The future of the music industry

Forgot to blog this, from the November issue of Wired magazine: Free Music Now! Lala.com's Plan to Give Songs Away Could Upend the Industry. Excerpt:

Nguyen's complaint with the way music is sold online — whether it's CD purchases or downloads — is that there's no easy, legal way to listen to a song before you buy it. A 30-second snippet on Amazon.com or iTunes is rarely enough to form a good impression and certainly not enough to get a tune stuck in your head. Nguyen's solution: Give the music away. Later this year, his new company, Lala, will begin streaming any track or album the user selects, for free, betting that the chance to explore the sonic landscape will get listeners excited. As they take in artists and genres they might otherwise never hear, music fans are going to want to own the songs, Nguyen says — and Lala will be right there to make that possible, via whatever channel and format the customer prefers: downloading tracks, trading discs, or even (gasp) buying the CDs. It's a model he believes will revive the music industry.

MP3 Unplugged: Rethinking the Digital Music Future

Information Week: MP3 Unplugged: Rethinking The Digital Music Future. "We have to rethink how we sell music, throw the rule book out the window, and open ourselves up to entirely new possibilities," says media analyst Paul Verna.

Yahoo in talks for DRM-free music service

Associated Press: Yahoo in early talks with major labels over possible MP3-based music service.

Yahoo Inc., is in early discussions with major record labels over offering unprotected MP3s either for sale or for free as part of an ad-supported service, two record company executives familiar with the talks said. ...

RIAA: It's a crime to copy your CD's songs onto your PC

Marc Fisher in the Washington Post: Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use. The recording industry  now says it's a crime for you to copy songs from your own CDs onto your own personal computer.

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing. ...

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. ...

I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation." ...

New technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," Beckerman says. "Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started."

$40,000 to fill an iPod?

Ars Technica: $40,000 to fill an iPod? One third of PCs use LimeWire instead.

CNET blogs: One-third of the people reading this are thieves.

Record labels' bigger issue is replacing CD sales

San Jose Mercury News: Record labels' bigger issue is replacing CD sales.

Snocap melts down

Just heard about this. Snocap, the digital music marketplace service founded by Shawn Fanning, has laid off more than half its staff and is putting itself up for sale.

Motley Fool: Snocap melts down

News.com: Shawn Fanning's Snocap lays off 60 percent of workforce.

Bands cutting out the middleman

Terry Heaton: Big doings in the music world:

Last week, popular rock band Radiohead announced that they would be by-passing the recording industry and taking their new album directly to their fans. Moreover, they shocked everybody by announcing that fans could actually name their own price. Holy mother-of-RIAA!

Now comes an even more devastating announcement from long-standing rock powerhouse Nine Inch Nails. In a post on their website yesterday, NIN announced their freedom from record companies, saying that they, too, would deal directly with their fans. There’s a ton of resentment in a statement by Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor:

I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as i see fit and appropriate.

Technology may be the enabler (or redeemer), but the energy for this comes from the people that the industry is in place to serve — both the record makers and the record buyers.

I think this is huge and has cultural ramifications far beyond music. If you are in any middleman position in the information and entertainment worlds (aggregator exception noted), your future livelihood is in jeopardy.

Gizmodo (nine inch) nails it:

If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it–that the old way of doing business is broken–why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now.

The digital writing on the wall literally shouts to all media to get onboard the Cluetrain and acknowledge that an empowered citizenry is not a passive citizenry, and that J.D. Lasica’s personal media revolution is a real revolution, against the power grid that controls our lives for their profit. As I’ve written in the past, the public never wanted quality bundled with crap, which is the formula for profit from the whole copyright cartel. The cable industry, for example, will lose the bundled programming argument for the same reason, because ultimately, people will be able to pick and choose what they want.

This will be fascinating to watch. I assumed these kind of announcements, with major bands cutting out the music label middleman, were still a few years away from happening. But the revolution is on!

Labels win suit against song shares

Shameful. NY Times: Labels Win Suit Against Song Sharer. The jury found the defendant, a Minnesota woman, liable for $222,000 in damages. That's $9,250 in damages for each of the 24 songs involved in the trial.

Yes, this woman deserves to have her life ruined financially because she may have shared a few songs online. EFF Deep Links: RIAA Convinces Jury to Impose Fines for Filesharing.

New AIM software lets users share tunes

Associated Press: New AIM software lets users share tunes.

Now you can listen to the music your friends enjoy while chatting away online.

The new version of AOL's instant-messaging software, AIM 6.5, offers a plug-in that lets users listen to songs their buddies have on their playlists. AIM Tunes does not require a separate media player. Copy-protected songs such as those bought on Apple Inc.'s iTunes won't play, however. ...

The free software, from Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, works with Windows-based computers only.

Amazon digital music store goes online

Associated Press: Amazon Digital Music Store Goes Online.

Amazon.com introduced its widely anticipated digital music store on Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.

The store, Amazon MP3, will allow shoppers to buy and download individual songs or entire albums. The tracks can be copied to several computers, burned onto compact discs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including the Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune.

Songs cost 89 cents to 99 cents each and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.

Two major labels, Universal and EMI, have signed on to sell their music on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. ...

Although digital rights management helps to stem illegal copying, it can frustrate listeners by limiting the types of devices or the number of computers on which they can play music. Copy-protected songs sold through iTunes will generally not play on devices other than the iPod, and iPods will not play copy-protected songs bought at rival music stores.

Amazon’s vice president for digital music, Bill Carr, said it would be up to customers to use the music they buy legally.

To help stop music piracy, Mr. Carr said, some record labels add a digital watermark to MP3 files that indicate what company sold the song, and Amazon adds its own name and the item number of the song for customer service purposes. He added that no details about the buyer or the transaction are added to the downloaded music file. ...

Finally, finally, finally, after all these years. Soon, the two remaining music company holdouts will surely follow. I'm checking out Amazon MP3 right now. (But where's the friendly url? They gotta be kidding: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011)

What ever happend to pearLyrics?

I was looking for pearLyrics -- a way-cool program that hunted down the lyrics to any song in your iTunes library -- the other day (an old bookmark) and didn't find it. But I did find this explanation:

What ever happend to pearLyrics?

2006-12-06: Today it's exactly one year ago that I had to take a hard decision. Due to a legal threat I had to remove an application from my download page that, judging from the feedback I got (and still get), made a lot of people very happy. pearLyrics. A simple tool that automatically looked for lyrics for the song playing in iTunes. What made it different from the rest, and so popular, was that it actually did find a lot of lyrics due to it's unique search algorithm.

Finally it got too successful. Warner-Chappell had concerns that it was infringing their copyrights.

After an incredible amount of media coverage and an open letter of EFFs Fred von Lohmann it probably turned into too negative publicity for Warner Chappell, so finally, the unthinkable happened: the CEO of Warner-Chappel called me and said that he was sorry for the way they approached this issue. We even concluded that we should work together to bring lyrics to music fans all over the place.

Wow, so what an adventure, what a promise. Big times ahead. A highly idealistic goal and a big company promising their support. Critical voices already brought up the theory that this might just be a PR action on behalf of Warner-Chappel to get rid of the negative press - and honestly, that was also my thought. But hey, let's stay open minded and see what the future will bring. Well, fast forward one year and a couple of phone calls and emails. Presumably Warner-Chappel signed a deal with Gracenote (hey, good news, expect lyrics support in iTunes soon) and therefore doesn't want to deal with a little developer anymore. After all, pearLyrics and it's negative publicity for Warner-Chappel is long gone (well, ok, speculation on my part).

So what's up, where is pearLyrics? Well, sad to say, but I guess this is the final good bye to a piece of software I've put a lot of passion and hope into, that made a lot of people very happy and one or two a bit angry. It's not only Warner-Chappel, but also the rest of the music industry. No one out there could guarantee me that I was on the safe side if I released it again.

For me as a little freeware developer this whole experience was stunning and frustrating at the same time. On the one hand it feels a bit strange if your freeware app is shared on filesharing networks (of course, this is perfectly fine for me), that an application so small and unimportant captures so much interest. On the other hand it's a sad world, where money decides who is on the right side of the law. There is simply no way I could risk a law suit, even if I'm absolutely sure that I'm doing the right thing. I'm a software developer, not a law expert after all. This incident made me think twice before releasing any new software. ...

Universal Music will sell songs without copy protection

NY Times: Universal Music Will Sell Songs Without Copy Protection.

Nice. I'll definitely be checking out their catalog to see what's available for purchase.

AP: Video-Sharing Site Veoh Sues Universal Music.

Cover yourself: A radical approach to copyright

David Battino of O'Reilly Digital Media has an audio interview with Webjay founder Lucas Gonze.

All Lucas Gonze wanted to do was upload some cover songs to his blog. But he quickly realized that digital copyright law would make that impossibly expensive, if not illegal. Fired up to share music fairly, this open source enthusiast dug deeper and deeper into history until he finally came across the mother lode of public domain songs.

Listen as the creative programmer behind the Webjay playlist service explains how he waltzed around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and why he thinks these heavy-handed restrictions on art could doom our culture.

Webcasters, labels in talks

San Jose Mercury News: Tomorrow "is no longer D-Day," as Webcasters and the music labels continue talks to come to compromise on the outrageous fee hikes due to go into effect tomorrow, retroactive for 18 months.

Performers seek royalties on airplay from radio

Associated Press: Performers seek royalties on airplay from radio.

A coalition of recording artists, music companies and industry groups said Thursday it will push for compensation of performers whose music is played on the radio.

The musicFirst Coalition, which counts recording artists Don Henley, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera and Wyclef Jean among its members, intends to lobby Congress for new laws requiring the payments by broadcasters.

The group said U.S. performers, from superstar vocalists to background singers, deserve to be paid when their work is aired on AM or FM radio.

"The artists and the musicians and the community in general have come together to say now is really time to make sure that when music is played on the radio, that people who perform that music are paid fairly to do it," Mark Kadish, the coalition's executive director, said during a conference call with reporters.

Under current law, only songwriters are paid royalties when songs are played on AM or FM radio.

Previous attempts by the recording industry to gain royalty rights for performers have failed. The group said it was too early to say how much money performers should be paid.

The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents more than 8,000 radio and television stations, vowed to fight the campaign, saying royalties for performers amount to a tax on U.S. radio stations.

"Congress has long recognized that radio airplay of music generates millions of dollars in revenue for record labels and artists," Dennis Wharton, the broadcasters group's executive vice president, said in a statement.

"Were it not for radio's free promotional airplay of music on stations all over America, most successful recording artists would still be playing in a garage," he said. ...

True. This is exactly the opposite of what Congress ought to be enacting -- a rollback of the exorbitant rates paid to the recording industry that will put thousands of Webcasters out of business.

Home stereo systems an endangered breed

Much to the chagrin of my friends in the music industry, this seems to be the new reality:

Associated Press:  Home stereo systems an endangered breed. Many listeners prefer small size over big sound. 

EMI to sell unprotected songs on iTunes

Digital Media Wire: EMI to Sell Higher-Quality, Unprotected Songs on iTunes for $1.29.

European official pressures Apple

San Jose Mercury News: European official pressures Apple.

Apple should let people listen to songs downloaded from its iTunes store on devices that compete with the iPod, Europe's top consumer regulator said, increasing pressure on the Cupertino company to loosen its grip on online music sales.

"Do you find it right that a CD works in all CD players while an iTunes song only works on an iPod? I don't," European Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva told German magazine Focus in an interview published Monday. "Something has to change."

Kuneva echoed calls from consumer groups and regulators in Norway, Sweden, France and Germany for Apple to remove its restrictions on music from iTunes. They want the company to allow downloaded music to be played on any MP3 player.

I know my Libertarian friends will disagree, but this sounds perfectly reasonable. Who wants to live in a world where gas only works in certain cars, or phone calls can be made only with a certain brand of phones? Interoperability is a must.

Gilberto Gil hears the future, some rights reserved

NY Times: Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved.

On Wednesday the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is scheduled to speak about intellectual property rights, digital media and related topics at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Two nights later the singer, songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil begins a three-week North American concert tour.

Rarely do the worlds of politics and the arts converge as unconventionally as in the person of Mr. Gil, whose itinerary includes a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20. More than 40 years after he first picked up a guitar and sang in public, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira is an anomaly: He doesn’t just make music, he also makes policy.

And as the music, film and publishing industries struggle to adapt to the challenge of content proliferating on the Internet, Mr. Gil has emerged as a central player in the global search for more flexible forms of distributing artistic works. In the process his twin roles have sometimes generated competing priorities that he has sought to harmonize.

As a creator of music, he is interested in protecting copyrights. But as a government official in a developing country celebrated for the creative pulse of its people, Mr. Gil also wants Brazilians to have unfettered access to new technologies to make and disseminate art, without having to surrender their rights to the large companies that dominate the culture industry.

“I think we are moving rapidly toward the obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a single traditional model and its replacement by others that are hybrids,” Mr. Gil said in a February interview at his home here in northeast Brazil, one day before the start of Carnival. “My personal view is that digital culture brings with it a new idea of intellectual property, and that this new culture of sharing can and should inform government policies.” ...

One of Mr. Gil’s first actions after becoming culture minister in 2003 was to form an alliance between Brazil and the nascent Creative Commons movement. Founded in 2001, Creative Commons is meant to offer an alternative to the traditional copyright system of “all rights reserved,” which the movement’s adherents — from scientists and artists to lawyers and consumers — believe has impeded creativity and the sharing of knowledge in the Internet age.

In its place Creative Commons has devised a more flexible structure that allows artists to decide what part of their copyright they wish to retain and what part they are willing to share with the public. With input from Mr. Gil and many others, the organization has created licenses that permit creators and consumers to copy, remix or sample a digital work of art, so long as the originator is properly credited.

More than 145 million works have been registered with Creative Commons licenses, including videos, photographs, written texts, blogs and of course music. Because Brazil is “a country that has music in its genetic code,” to use Mr. Barlow’s phrase, and because Brazilian music has become a global force, the idea of loosening the automatic control of artistic works by a handful of conglomerates headquartered a hemisphere away has resonated strongly here.

“Look at remixing on music sites, which has become a core of creativity on the Internet and produced a huge archive of legally usable music,” said Lawrence Lessig, the author of “Free Culture” and founder of Creative Commons. “That has allowed a whole bunch of people to display themselves as artists and be picked up by record labels and Web sites, and all of that began because Gil got us to think about what kind of freedom was necessary for music.” ...

Another call for a celestial jukebox

Don Tapscott, co-author of "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything," in today's San Jose Merc: It's time to treat music as a service rather than a good.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off a debate last week on whether the digital songs his company sells online should continue to be encased in technology to prevent endless copying. The issue is a red herring. What the music industry should discuss, instead, is how to move toward a smarter business model that offers music for rent rather than purchase.

In a restructured Internet-friendly music industry, consumers would no longer download songs at a fixed price per tune, but would instead pay a moderate amount each month to listen to an unlimited number of tunes streamed to them over the Internet. I'd happily pay a few dollars per month to get access anytime, on any device, anywhere, to any music ever recorded.

Provocative proposal, but I don't think we're close to being there yet.

Jobs calls for end to music copy protection

NY Times: Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection

Cracking down on mixtape CDs

NY Times: Cracking Down on Mixtape CDs. Excerpt:

Last week, local authorities, working with the recording industry’s trade association, stunned fans and music executives alike by raiding DJ Drama’s studio in Atlanta and arresting him and a fellow D.J., Don Cannon, on racketeering charges. Investigators seized more than 81,000 allegedly pirated CDs and say the pair were producing unlicensed recordings and selling them without permission.

The raid sparked an outcry among many rap fans. But it also threatens to throw into public view the recording industry’s awkward relationship with mixtapes, long an integral element of rap culture and now commonly for sale on street corners, Web sites, many independent record shops and occasionally big chains.

Even as industry-financed antipiracy squads hunt for unauthorized recordings, senior executives at the major record labels privately say that they have courted — and often paid — top D.J.’s to create and distribute mixtapes featuring the labels’ rappers as part of efforts to generate buzz. ...

 

Ode to the RIAA

At the NY Times, David Pogue offers an Ode to the RIAA.

Music labels change tune about MP3

San Jose Mercury News: Music labels change tune about MP3 format.

Zune, Creative Commons don't mix

Wired News: Zune, Creative Commons Don't Mix. Microsoft's efforts to loosen up access to closely held music owned by record labels has an unintended consequence: It punishes artists who want to share.

20 billion illegal music downloads

From today's San Jose Mercury News:

20 billion: Estimated number of songs that were illegally distributed, swapped or downloaded off the Internet in 2005, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Zune and the labels' idea of music sharing

Steve Levy in the Nov. 27 Newsweek: Zune Should Go Beyond 'Squirting.' How cool would it be to take a break at the gym and check out the contents of nearby music players?

The catch is that the squirt is fast-drying—in three days it goes away. Or, if the recipient plays it three times within that period, it evaporates after the third spin. This is because Microsoft cut a lousy deal with the record labels, which still regard innovative digital schemes as potential piracy threats, as opposed to potential sales boosters. My guess is that people will be turned off that the songs expire so quickly.

MySpace will review uploaded music on site

San Jose Mercury News: MySpace.com will use ``audio fingerprinting'' technology to block users from uploading copyrighted music to the social networking site, the company said.

Recording industry files 8,000 new lawsuits

Reuters Register UK: Recording Industry Files 8,000 New File-Sharing Lawsuits in 17 countries. (IFPI press release.)

Microsoft music player offers song sharing

NY Times: Music Player From Microsoft Offers Wireless Song-Sharing

While the army of silent people wearing white iPod earbuds may indicate otherwise, Microsoft is declaring that a portable music player can be a decidedly social experience.

Microsoft said yesterday that its Zune player, which it plans to release in time for the holiday season, will include wireless technology to allow Zune owners to share their favorite songs and playlists with one another easily. The company hopes the Zune will help it upstage Apple Computer in the digital music market.

“With Zune, we are not simply delivering a portable device,” said J Allard, vice president for design and development at Microsoft. “We are introducing a new platform that helps bring artists closer to their audiences and helps people find new music and develop new social connections.” ...

Nothing in the article that I could see about the legality of this. Presumably it's OK because there's no permanent copy of the song shared with friends.

Challenge to iTunes

NY Times: Universal Music Group and an Online Site Plan a Joint Venture to Challenge iTunes.

A new online music company said yesterday that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free.

The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from illegal downloads and pirate music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees.

SpiralFrog is the latest to offer a challenge to Apple Computer’s hugely successful iTunes service ...

Music industry targets ... guitarists

NY Times: Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing.

The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster. Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

The battle shares many similarities with the war between Napster and the music recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service like alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature, where amateur musicians trade “tabs” — music notation especially for guitar — for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books. ...

Who needs the record labels?

Fortune magazine: Big musicians flex their muscle with record labels. Talent agency The Firm encourages its musicians to cut out the middle man, make more money for themselves.

Weblogs Inc: Who needs the record labels?

France approves law requiring music format compatibility

Associated Press: France approves law requiring music format compatibility.

Bad news for Apple. But good news for the public.

France to ease bill criticized by Apple

Associated Press: France to ease bill criticized by Apple. Mandate to force the sharing of iTunes technology to be softened.

Lawsuits won't win digital music war

Mark Glaser at PBS's Media Shift blog: Lawsuits Will Not Win Digital Music War.

Don't let Congress shackle digital music

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a disturbing bit of news about a bill introduced by my senator, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.:

Dianne Feinstein's "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act" would permanently hobble your ability to record off the radio and force webcasters to use DRM formats.

If passed, future satellite and digital radio receivers would be limited by law to what the bill calls "reasonable recording." To the RIAA, this means that all consumers will be banned from choosing and playing back selections based on song title, artist, or genre. According to the Consumer
Electronics Retailers Coalition, even the transmission of a recording from room to room inside a house would be restricted by mandatory blocks and controls.

PERFORM would also mess with streaming Internet radio stations. Right now, MP3 or open format Internet radio can take advantage of statutory copyright licensing to remunerate rights holders and artists. After PERFORM, all streaming music that uses statutory licensing will be required to be in a DRM-encumbered format that forbids interoperability or user-editing. Wave goodbye to MP3 streaming and to moving recorded webcasts to the portable player of your choice.

PERFORM is yet another petulant scrawl by the RIAA on the statute books, placing their short term interests over the freedom to innovate and the future freedoms of America's musicians and customers. Tell your representative not to co-sponsor or vote for PERFORM in the Senate or its
companion bill in the House.

Take action now.

Details and full text of the bill here.

EFF's summary of the bill's implications.

This is not only a terrible misuse of government power but also poor public policy, potentially pushing legions of digital-savvy users into the Darknet.

Feds query labels about online music prices

MSNBC.com: Feds query labels about online music prices. The U.S. Justice Department has launched an inquiry into possible price fixing in the burgeoning online music industry.

Bust Big Radio payola

FreePress.net:

Ever wonder why commercial radio has become a mind-numbing repetition of the same songs by Jessica Simpson and Celine Dion? It's not just you. Corporate radio in every town has become a wasteland. And in many cases, it's a crime.

An investigation airing tonight on ABC News "Primetime" exposes illegal payola across the radio dial. Radio conglomerates that control hundreds of local stations are taking bribes to endlessly spin major label acts, keeping independent artists off the air.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adlestein calls big radio payola "potentially the most widespread and flagrant violation of FCC rules in the history of American broadcasting." But the FCC's Republican leadership remains reluctant to crack down against the corporate radio giants that have sold off our airwaves.

This new age of payola is the product of consolidated radio ownership. Several of the largest radio conglomerates in America -- including Clear Channel, Viacom/CBS radio and Cumulus -- are among those now under subpoena in a criminal investigation by the New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Tell the FCC to bust corporate radio payola.

Cease and desist for bootleg site

Sounds like Get Your Bootleg On has received a cease and desist order, from what I can make of this posting in Dutch at the Mashculture site.

Digital music biz isn't booming

Wired News: Joanna Glasner says the digital music business doesn't add up.