Please feel free to contribute news links folks! Shmoo (aka "independentmusician") can't find all of the stuff that needs to be here by himself!

Try to avoid "chit-chat" and keep your posts in this thread as brief as possible for ease of use.

No spam!

They say this is the entire process...
Inside the music industry's piracy battle

Took it to the front page 4 ya pepe.

unanimous Supreme Court decision that denied LG Electronics's attempt to evade the first-sale doctrine by use of "business method" patents.

The decision (PDF) notes how easily patents can be written up as "business methods" to nullify the first-sale doctrine ("exhaustion") and to give the patent owner perpetual control downstream. Aire Libre adds, "That reasoning bodes well for copyright freedom as well, in light of the growing number of copyright holders who seek to nullify the Copyright Act's limitation on the distribution right by claiming the goods are 'licensed, not sold,' or subject to some restrictive EULA."

Anyone remember this?

http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

Metallica doesn't want bloggers to blog about new album.

-------

The take-down of the blogs smells like hype to me. --Shmoo

Some retailers give vinyl records a spin

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats.

The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.

Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer sound — though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.

Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well.

But it's not just about the sound. Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience — the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.

"Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well."

Good point.

Thanks Shmoo!

"According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats"

Lets see. That means albums increase by about 0.34 Million (340,000) but CD's decreased by about 105 million. Yep, the resurgence of Vinyl is gonna save the music industry!!

It won't save the music industry, but it could save the phonograph industry.

Here it is, Canada's long awaited new copyright bill.This bill would essentially shut down p2p filesharing of copyright material, but with such a measly fine of $500.00, it would just benefit the lawyers, again, as usual.

It bothers me that this would make use of isp's policing the net.

I suspect the opposition will sit on this bill forever until it just dies in the house once again...as perhaps it should.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080612.wgtcopyright0612/BNStory/Technology/home

So, is it too late to add my Beatles tune somewhere?

Strawberry Fields Forever

Upload it to your Hayden's Wall DMusic page and give leflaw a note that it is there. I, myself will give it a listen on Tuesday when I get home to a computer with sound.

======================

U2 manager slams Radiohead for online album, claiming it backfired on the band. Meanwhile, U2 still receives less than 10 cents royalties per album

Google to make a Net Neutrality detector.

...arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs.

Peter Gabriel talks about his "Filter"

Q: Are the kind of musicians you typically support, most of whom are not household names, benefiting from the digital revolution in music?

A: Not as much as I would like yet, and as a lot of the artists are losing one of the central sources of their income, i.e. record sales, they need to become smarter in building their own database as a means of accessing their own fans and learning and getting the feedback from their fans.

That's a channel through which they can sell other stuff. We do need to democratize the process of discovery.

Q: Another negative aspect of the Internet you identified is the poor quality of downloaded music many people listen to?

A: The iPod, for example, does have the capacity to hold ... what they call 'Apple Lossless' files, so it's built in and available, but very few people use it and an MP3 has become the sort of new standard and it's a giant step backwards. Whereas in television now most of us are getting used to wide screen or high definition, and that's gone forwards in terms of quality, music has certainly gone back.

To get as small a number of digits taken up as possible something has to be sacrificed and it's unfortunately the music.

... As good as CD, which I think should be the starting point. We're just trying that out with B&W (Bowers & Wilkins) and we have a small number of acts (to record the albums) but it would be great if a few more musicians would get involved and try and put stuff out in formats other than MP3.

Musicians union sues `American Idol' producers

A musicians union has filed a federal lawsuit against the producers of "American Idol," claiming musicians were underpaid because the show's live music was re-recorded for reruns.

German media group Bertelsmann is seeking $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion to pull out of its Sony-BMG music joint venture with Sony Corp

So, they want out?

Nevermind personal privacy of filthy citizens, BUSINESS secrets are at stake with laptop searches.

Notice Peter Gabriel said: "The Filter (www.thefilter.com) aims to produce a blueprint of an individual's taste in music, movies, news and views by analyzing what the person buys online."
Peter speaks favorably about such a process.

Then, the interviewer did NOT follow that up by asking if Peter thought customers' rights to privacy might be impinged upon for corporate benefit of amassing data for such "blueprints".

I am still amazed at the way high-profile people (entertainers, politicians, etc.) are often given a pass, or at least handled with kid gloves, by interviewers. Having once participated significantly in a news-gathering business myself decades ago, I personally believe the main reason lies in the tendency for some interviewers to keep from asking tough questions that might negatively impact obtaining future opportunity to interview the person again, not to mention wanting to avoid a risk of having an interview to be cut short.

There's no valid need for a news-hound to sacrifice impartiality by bending over backwards that way. Doing so often indicates where their true interests lie (self-serving)! Unfortunately, though, John Q. Public is typically not discerning or analytical enough to think beyond superficiality, so I sincerely doubt that many readers or viewers are aware that they are being short-changed.

That article was little more than a press release/ad for theFilter.com anyways. Whachya expect but kid gloves?

:meh:

Hollywood wants to infect ALL next-gen video with DRM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann sez, "The LA Times' Jon Healey does a brilliant job explaining why the MPAA's petition at the FCC to enable SOC ('selectable output control,' i.e. turning off your cable box analog video connections, leaving you with only DRM-restricted digital connections) is really a trojan horse aimed at DRMing the future of all next-gen video."

Re: "That article was little more than a press release/ad for theFilter.com anyways. Whachya expect but kid gloves?"

Interviews done with kid-glove format is the equivalent of acting as if going fishing but without really trying to catch anything at all. I think that can be called a sham, something that utilizes a credible form but without genuine substance or (at worst) misleading.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/06/11

Judge Shoots Down Universal's Bogus Infringement Allegations

Hurray! First-sale doctrine now officially applies (as it should).

on to another topic of interest . . .


"You May Already Be a Criminal!"
(What MySpace Suicide Case Could Mean for You)

ABC News
by LESLIE HARRIS
May 22, 2008

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges in Los Angeles against Lori Drew, the suburban St. Louis woman at the center of the widely reported MySpace suicide case. Not surprisingly, many people have voiced support for the indictment and relief that Drew is finally having to face justice for her allegedly cruel and reckless behavior.

It's hard to justify any sympathy for Drew, who reportedly created a false profile on MySpace, posing as a teenage boy, to engage a 13-year-old neighborhood girl, Megan Meier, in conversation.

Drew's twisted scheme was to "gather intelligence," SHE CLAIMS, regarding what was being said at school about her own teenage daughter. But Drew's conversations with Meier were apparently cruel and harassing, and finally unbearable; Meier hanged herself, turning every parent's nightmare into a real-life horror.

But, beyond the heartbreak and emotion of the moment, there is a potentially dangerous scenario developing in the margin of this tragic story, and anyone who uses the Internet should be extremely wary. [story continued below]

Related story:
MySpace Mom says 20-Year Prison Term Not Enough

Privacy vs. Safety: Age Verification Online

WATCH: The MySpace Suicide video clip

[news story continued]
The Justice Department may have blundered in this case. By reaching for the same statute used to prosecute computer hackers, this indictment turns the law into a blunt legal instrument that views violations of a website's TOS (terms of service) as a potential federal crime.

Usually, a case like Drew's would be handled under state or local law, but Missouri did not, at the time, have a criminal statute that would punish Drew's conduct, unlike many other states that have criminal statutes against intentional infliction of mental distress or other personal harm.

So, into this murky legal gap wades the Justice Department. Finding nothing appropriate in federal statutes to charge Drew with, the Justice Department decides to utilize a federal computer hacking law and charge her with breaching the MySpace's terms-of-service agreement and conditions, on the grounds that she accessed a protected network without proper authorization for the purpose of causing harassment of a user.

The indictment cheapens a tragic circumstance with its legal sideshow. If the allegations are true, Drew could certainly face civil liability for her actions, and -- at least under many states' laws -- she could have faced state criminal liability as well. But the wrongness of Drew's alleged actions, however, does not and should not make this a "federal case."

. . . . . . . [snip] . . . . . . .

I personally am going to watch the development of this case for its possible adverse peripheral effect.

Microsoft Abandons Internet Explorer 8 Development for Firefox 3

What?

This can't be true.

Hearst sues over use of Cosmopolitan name

Hearst Corp filed a $500,000 trademark infringement lawsuit on Monday against the developers of a $3 billion Las Vegas resort and casino using the same name as the publisher's well-known Cosmopolitan women's magazine.

DRM infection spreading in high-def video - Blu-Ray recording, but at a price: a fee plus DRM that limits copying recordings from television. I hope Japan is not setting a model for the rest.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/japan-plans-copyright-fees-blu-ray/story.aspx?guid=%7B8EFF0A50%2DDE8B%2D4B84%2D819F%2DAB09239D0891%7D

Re: Hearst Corporation suing for a company (unrelated to publishing) using the name cosmopolitan.

I guess if I want to start a diet for obese people and call it "Diet for a Blimpie", then I could be sure a submarine sandwich company will come after me.

The word cosmopolitan is like suburban or coast or such -- a common English term that should not be limited to a designation used by only one company on this planet, wtf. It would almost be as if the word "light" was declared copyrightable and could only be used by one beer company; wouldn't that be ludicrous?

Our nation is litigation-fanatic, thanks to trial lawyers, and I don't see any nearby relief from the madness!
(How fascinating -- not -- to live in the crazy old U.S.A.)

The Tables Have Turned: Rock Stars - Not Record Labels - Cashing In On Digital Revolution

This story has so many interesting quotes, I didn't know where to stop and start laughing..example;

"Around the world in 2006, an estimated five billion songs, equating to 38,000 years in music were swapped on peer-to-peer websites....38,000 years???? Never really heard it put like that before.

....while the piracy numbers are overwhelming, it points to the fact that some users are gorging on illegal music rather than listening to it...

Right, people are just downloading to "tick" the music industry off!

But it is true that artists are better off without the labels.. and we've known that awhile now

"The Justice Department may have blundered in this case. By reaching for the same statute used to prosecute computer hackers, this indictment turns the law into a blunt legal instrument that views violations of a website's TOS (terms of service) as a potential federal crime. "

there is nothing I'd like to see more. go ahead and set that precedent. then when the next round of lawsuits comes out, the riaa will be in court for violating those Terms of Service.

they have blatantly used various p2p apps to collect personal data on the people they are suing. I can't think of any kind of justice that would be more poetic that to have that crime used against them in the harshest manner possible.

First Look at Peter Gabriel's The Filter: A Discovery Engine for All Things

...according to Jerry Weinstein, writing at the Huffington Post.

George has a few new articles posted at AzOz

...go check 'em out!

MPAA sez no proof needed in copyright infringement cases.

I would like to know how people this stupid get jobs.

And it wouldn't surprise me if CodeWarrior goes ballistic on his website (concerning that crap spouted by the MPAA).

The folks from Open Source Cinema have reedited their "Copyright Criminals" video to feature Canadian Member of Parliament Charlie Angus and a host of Canadians who don't want Bill C-61, the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to pass.

Canadian Parliment Shoutfest over DRM (at YouTube)

Canadian DMCA criminalizes e-mailing your kids' school photos to grandma

Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up (.mp3)

You have to listen to this -- in it, the Minister lies, dodges, weaves and ducks around plain, simple questions like, "If the guy at my corner shop unlocks my phone, is he breaking the law?" and "If my grandfather breaks the DRM on his jazz CDs to put them on his iPod, does that break the law?" and the biggie, "All the 'freedoms' your law guarantees us can be overriden by DRM, right?" (Prentice's answer to this last one, "The market will take care of it," is absolutely priceless.)

A group of 10 copyright law professors has filed an amicus curiae ('friend of the court') brief on the side of the defendant in Capitol v. Thomas, agreeing with the judge's recent decision that the $222,000 verdict won by the RIAA appears to be tainted by a 'manifest error of law.

From the article:

When fans can use their favorite songs to make their amateur films without fear of losing their comparatively miniscule cookie jars, then the new age of promotional video will be here at last.

Re:
Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA

Of course, DMCA supporters have to lie (or from their viewpoint, preferably withhold the truth) about a negatively impacting law for consumers -- they know in their black hearts it's a crock of shit that hardly anyone wants once they know the facts.

Rocking Russkies!

http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3114&Itemid=76

Prepare yourself for this one - maybe with a Stoli martini or two.

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Red Army had an official choir composed of male soldiers and musicians. It still exists. The Red Army Choir performs throughout Russia to this day.

Now consider the Finnish rock band called The Leningrad Cowboys. A little while ago, they held a concert in Russia, in which - to the screaming applause of Russkie teen-agers - they got the Red Army Choir to join them on stage for a performance of "Sweet Home Alabama." In English. You couldn't make this up.

We're talking seriously off the wall here. Better have that Stoli ready when you watch it:

Shmoo, or the powers that be, you may want to front page this one..seeing is believing.

Sweet Home Alabama? I would have thought "Georgia's always on ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mind."

Could someone please front page this submission: http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/31691

Thanks!

-Dave