Culture and Society

Though I have learned to wait for the other shoe to drop regarding these negotiations, this deal sounds very reasonable: College radio stations have reached an agreement with the recording industry to reduce the fees the stations must pay when they play music online. The agreement, reached Friday, supplants a …

As you probably know, we are affiliated with Amazon for purchase of CDs, books, DVDs, games, electronics, etc. that we review and/or discuss (buy lots, NOW), proceeds of which help fund Blogcritics (we don’t ask for handouts). It looks like we may be offering the Apple Music Store pretty soon …

“Hello MTV,” the name of new mobile phone service: Music video channel MTV is to venture into the world of mobile phone service provision in Sweden. Beginning this month, MTV Europe is to offer pre-paid mobile services in the Scandinavian country as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) over Telia …

Nullsoft leader Justin Frankel, now owned by AOL, released a new program last week, “Waste,” that makes it easy for groups of about 50 people to set up secure and private file-sharing networks – it also includes an instant messaging feature. AOL was not amused: Mr. Frankel, 24, went to …

Steve Lohr has interesting analysis in the NY Times: The future involves using the Internet to deliver commercial program content, mainly movies and music, to consumers who are equipped with a growing array of digital devices to receive it, from personal computers to digital televisions to smart cellphones. And the …

For $750 mil, AOL TW decides Microsoft is tits and Netscape is history: Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, and Steve Case, the newly unemployed former chairman of AOL Time Warner, were at the same cocktail party this week in North San Diego when AOL officially surrendered in the Browser …

Cal Coastline photo project captures Streisand estate – she sues: Barbra Streisand has filed a $10-million lawsuit against a multi-millionaire who posted a high-resolution photograph of her Malibu estate on an Internet Web site documenting erosion along the California coast. The lawsuit, alleging violations of the diva’s right to privacy …

I don’t mean “politically correct“: A legal dispute that threatened to derail Gateway Inc.’s groundbreaking plan to load music on its computers has been quietly resolved amid growing interest in such offerings by rival PC makers, executives and analysts said on Thursday. Months after announcing a first-of-its-kind deal in December …

Not an indictment under the DMCA, but an indictment OF the DMCA by Jay Sulzberger of New Yorkers for Fair Use: Computers today are printing presses — and it’s shocking! I have certain conservative tendencies; I am also sympathetic to the socialists. But the idea that everybody who’s a member …

Listen.com reduces online song price to $.79: Listen.com, which offers Internet radio broadcasts and other programming for $9.95 a month, is lowering the price for burning digital music onto compact discs to 79 cents per song, the company said Wednesday. The move comes just one month after Apple Computer Inc. …