Pandora Internet Radio Can't Take Royalty Rates, Will Likely Close the Box

Pandora, the internet radio station built around your tastes, will probably be going out of business soon. After getting slapped by the CRB with exorbitantly high royalty rates to continue playing music, founder Tim Westergren says the company is facing a "pull-the-plug" situation. There's one congressman trying to help Pandora and it's million plus users, but the service is bleeding money in the meantime and its future looks grim. I'll be very sad to see it go, since being reintroduced to it recently through their excellent iPhone app. What great idea do you have for us next, CRB? [ReadWriteWeb]

DRM-free iTunes, the RIAA Boycott, and You

So… holy crap. EMI is releasing their music on iTunes without DRM. This is great news! And not only that, but they're offering it at twice the quality of the DRM'd equivalent. This is a huge step forward for the online music marketplace. More »

EMI Update: Catalog Will Be DRM-Free on iTunes

While this is coming from the WSJ and therefore probably credible, the announcement was still technically made on April 1st, so if doesn't pan out, don't blame us. But word 'round the campfire is that EMI, along with his Steveness, is going to announce at 8 a.m. EST that most of their catalog is going to be offered DRM-free on iTunes. There may be no Beatles, but who needs them when you have DRM-free music? On iTunes. More »

RIAA Lawsuit Decision Matrix

This chart is a joke, but it actually seems kind of accurate. I mean, I've actually seen the RIAA chiefs in person, and they all have very twirlable moustaches and are prone to using 1920's jargon. Leaked document or accurate joke? You decide. –Adam Frucci More »

RIAA Coming to Arizona State to Intimidate in Person

You might say that the RIAA sues first and asks questions later, but it looks like tomorrow at Arizona State it will be more accurately described as suing first and taking questions later. That's because the RIAA wants to have an "open dialogue" with the young defendants of America, so is coming to the campus as part of their Security Awareness Week. More »

RIAA Sues 10-year-old Girl with a Disabled Mom; Puppy Next

The RIAA, a company that apparently thrives on getting bad press, is suing a 10-year-old girl for alleged copyright infringement made when she was 7. Oh, and did we mention that her mom's only income comes from Social Security disability assistance? Because it does. More »

Music Publishers Sue XM Radio

The RIAA isn't the only company pissing us off this month. The National Music Publishers Association has slapped a "last resort" lawsuit on XM. The lawsuit is regarding a particular service called XM + MP3 that allows XM subscribers to save and store songs on portable players as long as they remain XM subscribers. The royalties that XM pays does not cover the ability to save and store songs, according to the NMPA. More »

U of Nebraska Bills the RIAA for Wasted Time

The University of Nebraska isn't scared by the RIAA and their army of undead, soulless lawyers. No, they're refusing to hand over student data to the bullies, but what makes them even cooler is the fact that they're billing the RIAA for the time they've wasted. Hot damn, that takes balls. More »

RIAA Boycott Tip: Buy Used CDs

You haven't forgotten about the boycott, have you? I should hope not. If you're having trouble not going out and buying discs from artists you like, why not save yourself some money and fulfill your little consumery desires at the same time? Buy used CDs. More »

Poll: Are We Doing this RIAA Thing All Wrong?

Reader Rob writes in, and he makes some interesting points:

For starters, the RIAA is incredibly stupid, but they are not evil. Like it or not, they actually do represent and help to pay the salaries of the artists whose music you wish to "share."

More »

Professional Pirate: P2P is Killing Piracy

Tony, a professional pirate, is pissed at P2P for taking away his business. While it used to be that pros (the guys that sell pirated CDs and DVDs) would have had an easy time getting customers, people are now unwilling to pay for illegal material they can get for free online.

"File-sharing, P2P—call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn't buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was 'BitTorrent this, LimeWire that'. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don't think those days are coming back."

People seem willing to pay for legal music, however, proving that people know that there's value in paying for music online if they know the money will get to the people who deserve it. People like Tony get no sympathy. More »

Faces of the RIAA: Look Into the Eyes of the Enemy

The Consumerist (swoooon) has done us all a service by profiling some of the biggest wigs at the RIAA, complete with photographs, for all of our benefit. Now if you're walking down the street and you happen to bump into Doug Morris, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, you'll know who he is and therefore will be able to hit him in the face with an egg/pie/paintball. More »

David Byrne: Labels Should Ditch DRM, Accept Music Sales as a Loss Leader

David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads and pretty much the coolest geek on the face of the planet, spoke out against DRM and big record labels this week at South by Southwest. He predicted that online sales would surpass CD sales by 2012, forcing labels to choose between accepting music sales as a loss leader for tours and merch, focusing more on marketing for many artists, or only shooting for mega-stars like Britney Spears. More »

A Heart-Warming Message from the RIAA

Alright, you college student pirate assholes, LISTEN UP. Cary Sherman and Mitch Bainwol, the president and CEO of the RIAA, respectively, have a message for you in an op/ed on Inside Higher Ed. Suing all of you is "necessary" because what you're doing is costing "billions of dollars in lost revenue, millions of dollars in lost taxes, thousands of lost jobs." That's right, people are losing their JOBS. Thousands of them. I'm not sure who or what they did, but this is probably because now they're unemployed, thanks to you. More »

University of Michigan Giving Up Students to the RIAA

Bad news for students at the University of Michigan. At least twelve of you are in the process of being identified to the RIAA, according to Paul Howell, Chief Information Technology Security Officer of the University. Why's Paul giving you up? Read the letter after the jump. More »

File Sharing, Like Drugs and Dissent, Supports Terrorism

A 2006 report by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called "Filesharing Programs and Technological Features to Induce Users to Share" was just released to the general public yesterday, and it contains some interesting governmental observations as to the dangers of digital piracy. More »

NPR Says F$%! the RIAA, Albeit in an Erudite, Strongly Worded Letter After Some Tea

NPR isn't taking too kindly to the Sound Exchange-drafted royalty rate hike for internet radio stations. The burn? The new rates are "at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past" and treats public radio "as if [it] were commercial radio," though it's unable to bring in extra revenue to meet higher costs. More »

RIAA Tires of Suing Babies and Elderly; Moves on to Paralyzed Stroke Victims

John Paladuk, a retired railroad employee whose left side was completely paralyzed by a stroke last year and uses the resulting disability check as his sole means of income, is being sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement. Also, he lived in Florida during the time period the RIAA is accusing him of engaging in nefarious acts of piracy. In Michigan. More »

I Bet it is Filled with DRM-enabled Music Anyway...

This mod can be done with iPod Wizard. More »

RIAA Boycott Roundup

We're nearing the half-way point of our little experiment in activist bloggery, and we want to make sure you guys haven't missed any of our Pulitzer-worthy work that's gone up thus far. So without further ado, here's a rundown of the tips and new items that we've posted to celebrate our boycott of the RIAA. More »

RIAA Boycott Tip: Use RIAA Radar Bookmarklet

Have you installed the RIAA Radar bookmarklet yet? No? What the hell are you waiting for? If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me fill you in. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Add the RIAA Radar bookmarklet to your bookmarks/favorites list. (A bookmarklet is a piece of JavaScript stored inside a bookmark. You use it just like any other bookmark.) To add it to your bookmark list, right-click on either of the links below, and select "Add to Favorites..." (You can also simply drag the link to your Links toolbar.)

More »

RIAA to Mississippi: It's On

It looks like the RIAA is really trying to take it up a notch this spring and alienate more potential customers then they ever have before. Not content to just harass and extort money from college students, they apparently now going after the state of Mississippi as well. If you live in the southern state, watch out: they've tossed out eight lawsuits in Jackson and Aberdeen in the past week. More »

Rep. Berman: College Students Are Criminals

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) hates college students. He knows that colleges and universities are hotbeds of illegal downloading, and he is looking to get some legislation rolling that will remove some of the privacy protection that students enjoy right now.

"Indeed, the statistics demonstrate that students engage in rampant piracy, and while Congress has given universities many exemptions from copyright liability it might be time to condition some of those exemptions on action taken by universities to address the piracy problem."

Gee, I wonder if he's from Hollywood and I wonder if he receives campaign donations from the MPAA and RIAA? I can't wait 'til the generation of college students that are currently getting harassed become the policymakers, having learned lessons in privacy by being lorded over by a bunch of out-of-touch codgers with their hands in too many moneypots. –Adam Frucci More »

RIAA Boycott: eMusic's Top 10 Albums

Hey guys. How's the boycott going? Are you holding out all right? I want to make sure we're still in it together! If you're having a hard time not buying any music, don't worry. There's plenty of great stuff out there that you can buy without any of your money going to the RIAA! More »

RIAA Boycott Tip: Write a Letter to the Editor

The problem with our fight against the RIAA is that while we know lots about it and you, our attractive readers, know lots about it, regular folks who aren't as tech-savvy don't really understand what the big deal is. The biggest goal of our boycott, besides keeping money out of the bank accounts of the RIAA, is spreading the word on this topic, and for that we need your help. More »

Even FoxTrot Thinks the RIAA Sucks

Anti-RIAA rhetoric has officially made it to the mainstream. Fans of the funnypages probably noticed that FoxTrot's humor was both topical and nerdy this week, which makes it one bad pun away from the newspaper comic trifecta. But hey, we love seeing the RIAA getting taken down a peg in front of people who don't follow this sort of thing on their own. –Adam Frucci

RIAA Boycott Tip: Donate to the EFF

Now that you've gotten used to not buying albums released by RIAA labels, it's time to do something a bit more proactive. Why not take the $17 you were planning on spending on that Toby Keith record and donate it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation? More »

Yet Another Reason to Boycott the RIAA

The Copyright Royalty Board has decided to accept the "per play" royalty rates proposed for internet radio channels by the RIAA's digital music extortion fee collection organization, Sound Exchange, despite protests by webcasters. More »

NIN Year Zero: Too Much for the RIAA

In light of our anti-RIAA campaign, it's interesting to look at artists who are trying to operate outside of DRM-infested distribution schemes, actually taking advantage of the internet to get their stuff out. I don't know how many of you have been following it, but Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero campaign, on top of a fairly sophisticated ARG, has been distributing tracks from the upcoming album on USB flash drives at concerts. The first two were found in bathroom stalls (ick) and then another taped to the barricade at a show. More »

OLPC and Free Culture Team Up To Give Free Music to Poor Kids

As if providing affordable computers for millions of children wasn't enough, the OLPC team is working with Freeculture.org to give them free music as well. The new endeavor, the Free Music Project, is going to "collect and record" music for children, which will be distrubted for free to kids along with the OLPC laptop itself. More »

RIAA Boycott: Worst Company in America?

Consumerist's Worst Company in America poll is still going on, and they've got a "company" up there that we've been covering lately. We think you know which one. So head over there and make yourself heard. More »

RIAA Boycott: "Hey Music Bloggers, Enough with the Free Publicity Already!"

The way I see it, music blogs are a 21st century update to FM radio just as much as satellite radio or podcasts. How so? Well, when I was a kid, I listened to the radio to discover new bands and songs and hear the DJs tell me about them. To me, DJs were tastemakers, guys that knew a ton about new artists and filtered through the garbage to get me quality tunes. Sure, that might not have been entirely accurate back then and it certainly isn't now, but I don't think that notion is too far out in left field. More »

RIAA Boycott: Kicking Things Off

Well, today is officially the first day of our RIAA boycott. How do you all feel? Well rested? You eat a hearty breakfast? Good. In case you missed it, our Anti-RIAA Manifesto is a great place to read up on the facts of the issue and get prepped for the month ahead. More »

RIAA Boycott: "Fair Use" Bill Falls Short of Sweeping Digital Rights Reform

Yesterday we told you about this FAIR USE bill that's been introduced in Congress, and we were pretty happy to hear about it. Now that people have had the time to really get into the guts of the bill, it looks like it might not be the savior we were hoping for. The experts at Ars Technica took a long, hard look at the bill, and they left less than impressed.

"The problem is that, unlike previous versions of the legislation, Boucher's new bill offers no legal protections for the developers of software like Handbrake. As a result, the tools required to exercise fair use are difficult to find, not as user-friendly as they could be, and not supported by major software companies like Apple and Microsoft. Perhaps worst of all, the law makes it impossible for legitimate software firms (in the United States, at least) to develop new software to make innovative uses of content obtained from DVDs, iTunes, or other DRM-encumbered formats."

So the bill looks to be a lot of talk without the teeth that it would need to have real, long-lasting effects on the current state of digital media. Bummer, dudes. Looks like we still have a lot of work to do. –Adam Frucci More »

RIAA Boycott, Day 1: Dealzmodo on 'Music Theft' Settlements Offered by Record Industry

Here we are in Day 1 of our RIAA boycott, and what do you know? The RIAA says it's going to offer a special deal to certain college students, letting them off easy instead of suing them for hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegally downloading music. The recording industry Gestapo said letters were going out offering "discounted settlements" to 400 students at 13 universities across the United States. More »

RIAA Boycott: Congress Introduces "Fair Use" Bill; They're Totally With Us

Wait a minute… could this be… good news on the DRM front? Really? Somebody pinch me. More »