Culture and Society

Another roundup of the current legal status of file sharing, the RIAA’s Campaign Against Humanity, and advice on how to not get sued: if you have already been subpoenaed, erase copyright infringing files from your computer; if you haven’t, stop file sharing. Hmm, brilliant advice. When I explained the situation …

Is there ANYONE outside of the copyright cartel who thinks the RIAA’s current sue-your-customer’s-pants-off-then-sue-their-butthairs approach to “marketing” is wise, imaginative, conducive to a healthy business atmosphere, or anything other than self-defeating and vengeful? I’m waiting… Newsweek’s Steven Levy doesn’t get the joke either: Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, and …

An editorial by Thomas Keane Jr. on why CDs and the music industry in general are on their way out – nothing terribly new to Blogcritics readers, but a great line makes it worthwhile: Still, the RIAA fundamentally believes that its customers – largely the young – are pirates; given …

The way this is working is the RIAA – as a very well funded institution with lawyers out the ass – has about zero per unit cost to subpoena all of these file sharers, while for the targets, the cost in real and potential cost in money, time and emotional …

A not particularly large, but notably skanky spam operation appears to be run by a 21-year-old right here in Northeast Ohio, according to an excellent article by Plain Dealer tech writer Chris Seper: Every month hundreds of thousands of e-mails chug through the computers at Isolate Networks, offering aphrodisiacs, erotic …

It sounds like they’re trying to do it right: By Christmas this year, Napster’s enigmatic cat logo will again lure consumers into downloading music. But this time it will discard its file-sharing heritage and be entirely legal, with a wealth of new capabilities. Chris Gorog, chairman and CEO of Napster’s …

Two former Radio Free Blogcritics featured artists, Scott Andrew LePera and Shannon Campbell got together virtually to make some impromptu music for the Blogathon this past weekend – cool results are here. Congrats to all who participated!

Last week the ARIA relased the results of a survey that claimed file sharing is killing the Australiam music industry. There were questions: Music industry analyst Phil Tripp sent in a long list of queries last week, most of which I thought merited answers. I sent most of them across …

BuyMusic.com? MusicMatch Jukebox 8? The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro says, um, hell no: After years of chances for developers to get this stuff right, digital music on the PC remains a “yes, but” proposition. Yes, Microsoft provides free music software — but its Windows Media Player can’t save your CDs …

Billboard thinks the digital music market is ready to go mainstream: What a difference a year makes to the maturation of the digital music market. In the past 12 months, the major labels have opened the content floodgates, authorizing hundreds of thousands of tracks for Internet distribution. Apple Computer has …