Culture and Society

There is no question the idea of turning music into a service rather than a commodity has achieved critical mass, getting prominent placement in America’s “newspaper of record,” the NY Times, in the last week alone. Of course EVERYONE is talking about the future of music now that the RIAA …

If you read (and you read this), your input is sought: Hello, I’m an author working on a book about the importance of reading. I’m trying to gather information about reading people’s reading habits and and how it impacts our lives for use in the book. I’ve posted a short …

Now an Internet tax for file sharing has broached the pages of the NY Times – the meme is in the air. Do you doubt it will be the answer? Others fear that, as the futility of technological fixes becomes clearer, the response may be onerous legal restrictions on the …

Beatles take Jobs & Co. to court – again: Applecorps has filed a lawsuit in London against the computer firm over a 22-year-old agreement that Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) use the Apple name only for computer products–not music-related enterprises. Apparently Applecorp looks upon the digital …

Our pal Scott Matthews, the mad coder behind the Andromeda player that supports Radio Free Blogcritics writes in Salon that file sharing is tres suck. He makes many of the same points as our own bhw, although the particular target of Scott’s ire is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, more friends …

Artists respnd to the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign: “They’re protecting an archaic industry,” said the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. “They should turn their attention to new models.” “This is not rocket science,” said David Draiman of Disturbed, a hard-rock band with a platinum debut album on the charts. “Instead of spending …

It’s a different year and a different feeling, much more reflective and introspective than last year’s first anniversary of September 11 which seemed to be an outpouring, a psychic shotgun blast getting it all out in the hope that something would connect and/or stick. None of which means we should …

Orrin Hatch, the songwriting senator from the great foreign country – I mean state – of Utah who recently suggested that the computers of copyright violators should be remotely sabotaged with some kind of death ray, has suddenly made an about-face and crawled out of his own ass, at least …

There are two points of view regarding the PR aspects of the RIAA’s aggressive legal assault on file sharers: one side holds that the RIAA knows its image with the public is on par with refried shit, doesn’t care, and this campaign is to intimidate, alter downloading-uploading behavior, impress upon …

The RIAA, which apparently knows no shame in its pursuit of bludgeoning the nation into submission – 12-year-old Brianna Lahara’s family has already settled for $2000 – is attempting to poison the P2P well further by conflating it with child pornography: On Tuesday, one day after filing the landmark series …