The repackaging of the history of recorded music in the CD era has had the great side benefit of resurrecting forgotten or underappreciated work and some of the musicians who made them. Do you remember this story from last year? James Carter recorded a version of “Po Lazarus” for rambling …

At least regarding digital distribution of music. Admitting a problem is the first step toward solving it, or just blowing it off: That’s the lesson industry insiders are drawing from the surprise decision by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group (UMG) to sell their service, Pressplay, to Roxio. “The …

T&A from Playboy via RealNetwork’s OpenPass paid video service. The girls will also be popping up via video clips and photos on cell phones in Europe and Asia on Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchinson Whampoa’s cellular phone service: Playboy Enterprises last week began offering a $25-a-month “Playboy TV Club” subscription as …

Computer scientists construct supercompuer from game consoles: The resulting system, with components purchased at retail prices, cost a little more than $50,000. The center’s researchers believe the system may be capable of a half trillion operations a second, well within the definition of supercomputer, although it may not rank among …

Microsoft, quietly seething at the success of Apple’s iTunes Music Store, is working to enable subscription services to transfer music to portable music players: Microsoft is betting that new security enhancements planned for later this year could make renting music, rather than owning it, more attractive to consumers. ….These services …

Jack Valenti, the 81-year-old president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966, in on a mission: to deny you have any fair use rights at all. He’s been pretty successful so far: Valenti is considered one of Washington’s top lobbyists to Capitol Hill on behalf …

We regularly document here the evils of the DMCA, the Digital Milliennium Copyright Act, whose greatest crime is to prevent consumers from legally making backup copies of their own DVDs or copy-protected CDs. As bad as the federal DMCA is, some states have even worse laws, as Hanah Metchis of …

The Bear is the coolest, always pushing, prodding and making the blogosphere a better and more interesting place. His Blog Ecosystem was the first of its kind, lighting the way for the many blog indexes that have followed. I remember his first Ecosystem, there were about 200 blogs and I …

Atlantic Records is pumping sales of Jewel’s forthcoming (June 3) album 0304 by offering two bonus tracks during the first week of release only: FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED: JEWEL BONUS TRACKS AVAILABLE FOR ONE WEEK ONLY; NEW ALBUM, “0304,” TO INCLUDE SPECIAL DOWNLOAD CARD As a special bonus for Jewel …

Is your spam flood a mere trickle? Do you get at least 100 pieces of spam per day like I do? Want to bump up your spam quotient? Try these tips: Put an E-mail address on a high-traffic Web site. Post (or reply to a post) on Usenet. Post (or …