Music Industry Wants Royalties From iTunes 30 Second Samples

Dear music industry: go fuck yourself. More »

Second Degree Murder and Six Other Crimes Cheaper than Pirating Music

I'm outraged that the Obama administration is supporting the RIAA on the case against Jammie Thomas, a single mother of four who has to pay them $1.92 million for downloading songs. That's more expensive than murder and six other crimes: More »

Ahoy! Cloned Pirate Bay Site Sets Sail

Remember that Pirate Bay user who archived the site's entire torrent index earlier this week? It's available for all to download, but he's now used it to create a full replica site. You can check it out at BTArena.net. [TorrentFreak] More »

Get The Pirate Bay's Torrent Archive With One Massive 21.3GB Download

With the Pirate Bay set to close in the next few days, one anonymous user has put together a single massive archive of all 873,671 torrent files hosted on its servers. More »

Greg Kot: The Music Industry Caused Piracy, and iTunes Isn't the Way Out

Greg Kot, music critic for the Chicago Tribune and others, wrote a book called Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music. In a recent podcast interview, he enumerates the precise downfall of record labels and why iTunes isn't their savior. More »

Student Forced to Pay $675,000 to RIAA for Sharing 30 Songs

Joel Tenenbaum admitted to sharing 30 songs with Kazaa back in 2004 (Kazaa! So quaint!) and was originally fined $150,000 per song. He worked that down to "only" $22,500 per song, but that's still $675,000 in total. More »

RIAA Member Settles Suit After Defendant Proves She Did Even Not Own a Computer

RIAA member Universal Music Group was forced to settle a piracy suit it had brought against Mavis Roy after suffering a bit of a setback in their prosecution: Mavis Roy did not own a computer when UMG first brought suit. More »

Court Orders File-Sharer to Pay $80,000 Per Song to RIAA

A delusional Minnesota court has ordered Jammie Thomas, wanton criminal Kazaa user, to pay a total of $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs. As my own little protest, I'm going to illegally download Metallica's entire discography. And I hate Metallica. More »

Blockquote: "Suing your customers is a bad idea"

Irving Azoff, CEO of Ticketmaster: "They were afraid of Napster, they were afraid of iTunes; The business resists change...Basically the record industry sat around and tried to protect an old model; Yeah, suing your customer is a bad idea." [All Things D] More »

This About Sums Up the Entertainment Industry's Pirate Bay 'Victory'

Enjoy feeling like you're making progress while you can, suits. It won't last too long. [alt1040]

Your ISP Hates You: They're Probably Working With RIAA

Remember how the RIAA was getting ISPs to help battle copyright infringers after they gave up lawsuits, and AT&T was all "no comment"? Now AT&T confirms they're working with the RIAA. UPDATED. More »

RIAA Layoffs 'Bloodbath' May Be the Beginning of the End for the Evil Organization

The RIAA is currently laying off dozens of employees in what's been described as a "bloodbath" at the lawsuit-happy organization. Could this be the end of the RIAA? More »

Steve Jobs Bullied Record Execs Into iTunes Deal on Christmas Eve

While Steve Jobs wasn't personally at Macworld to reveal that iTunes was going DRM-free and OTA downloadable, he's the one who made it happen—he bullied Sony Music's chairman over the phone on Christmas Eve. More »

AT&T and Comcast Agree to Do the RIAA's Dirty Work

Sure, the RIAA has given up on lawsuits, but it's got an even better trick: ISPs will do their dirty work for them. Not surprisingly, AT&T and Comcast stepped right up, says CNET. UPDATED. More »

RIAA File Sharing Hearing to Be Webcast Live

If you're too sexually repressed to watch Pornhub on your lunch break like a normal person, now you can watch a streaming court session involving the RIAA right on your computer. More »

The Inside Story of How the RIAA Killed Muxtape

Muxtape, the simple, awesome and insanely popular online mix tape creator went offline last month with a brief explanation: "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." Since then, we haven't heard anything about it. Until now. Justin, the creator of Muxtape, just posted a long, detailed account of what exactly happened and what the future of the site holds. It's a pretty great inside look at just how stupid and confused the music industry is right now. More »

Muxtape Getting Eaten By RIAA?

We all know about Pandora's troubles paying their ever-increasing rent to the RIAA Copyright Royalty Board, but now another one of our favorite internet music spots could be succumbing to corporate pressure as well. Muxtape, the site that allowed users to make 12-song playlists of their music and share them online has been (temporarily?) shut down. Their page is left with the simple message "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." And once again, the RIAA does its job to ensure that no one anywhere gets excited about music. [Muxtape via OhGizmo] More »

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]

The RIAA May Be Forcing Laptop Manufactuers to Disable Stereo Mix Recording

After a frustrating few months of searching for a solution to the audio problems he encountered while ripping on-screen video with his Dell laptop, a ripten editor discovered that others were experiencing the same issue—and that the problem was not confined to Dell laptops. Apparently, the lack of a sound card Stereo Mix recording option is to blame—and numerous forum threads have suggested that the RIAA has put pressure on laptop manufacturers like Dell, Gateway and Pac Bell to remove it. More »

Average Teen Stores 842 Stolen Tracks on Their iPod

In a recent study by British Music Rights, 14- to 24-year-olds were polled as to how much stolen music they carried around on a daily basis. The finding was that almost half of said music was never purchased. 842 of the 1,770 tracks held on the average digital music player were reported as stolen—that's 48 percent. More »

XM and EMI Settle Portable Recording Radio Lawsuit

XM Satellite Radio and EMI Music have settled the lawsuit over the recording of digital songs by XM users. Nobody knows the terms of the deal, but it probably involves virgins and kittens' blood. [Reuters]

Nine Inch Nails Releases Free Album In High Definition Audio

Tren Reznor is not only breaking the old distribution model, he's even breaking the newest, like Radiohead's pay-what-you-want: Nine Inch Nails' latest album—The Slip—is 100% free, no payment required in any case, not even when you download the whooping 1.2GB version—which includes high definition WAVE 24/96 files (better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHz audio.) You can also choose from high-quality MP3s, FLAC lossless and M4A lossless. Note to record labels: drop dead. [NIN]

Single Mother Gets RIAA Suit Dismissed, Sues Them Right Back

Now here's something we love to see: Tanya Andersen, a 45-year-old single mother, is taking on the RIAA for their sleazy tactics and appears to be winning. After being sued for piracy and having the case dismissed, she decided to go ahead and sue the RIAA for conspiracy. She argues that the way the RIAA snoops around looking for people to sue is in violation of the law, as is the way they try to extort settlements out of people without going to trial. BusinessWeek has a whole profile of Andersen and her battle against the RIAA, and it's well worth the read. Go check it out; it's not like you've got other stuff to do. [BusinessWeek via CrunchGear]

EMI Says You Can't Backup Your Music Online

Cloud computing is supposed to be the next big tech revolution. One of the basic ideas, for the uninitiated, is that all of your apps and files (docs, pictures, music) are stored online in a digital locker, and you can access them from anywhere, no matter what computer you're using, thus heralding the end of the localized desktop, Windows, etc. MP3Tunes provides a digital locker for backing up music files—it's not a covert file-sharing thing, you can't share a locker with someone, so it's really only for personal backup/place-shifting. The record label EMI says it's illegal and is suing them to turn over all the music stored by the site's users. More »

Europe Says Net Banning Is a Violation of "Civil Liberties and Human Rights"

The European Parliament voted on anti-piracy bill that would boot persistent "file-sharers" off of the net, at the last minute shooting down that particular measure. More importantly, it added an amendment that said the European Union and its member countries should "avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access." The vote royally pissed off the EU's RIAA-equivalent, the IFPI. Even still, the vote itself may not result in any kind of safe haven for, uh, P2P "enthusiasts": More »

95% of Kids Aged 18-24 Are Pirating Music

According to a University of Hertfordshire survey of 1,158 kids aged 18-24 in the UK, 95% of them have "pirated" music before. The other 5%? According or our estimates, they're either technologically illiterate or they don't like music. [Guardian]

Judge Rules Making Files 'Available' Doesn't Constitute Copyright Violation

A Boston judge has just followed up on the previous NY judge ruling that just making files available isn't enough to constitute copyright infringement. According to the EFF, it's the most "extensive analysis yet of the recording industry's 'making available' argument", but doesn't actually make things better for people who are being sued by the RIAA. The same judge ruled that even though the "offer to distribute" won't be enough to decide a case, it is enough to permit a lawsuit to move forward. On the other hand, another NY judge has ruled in the opposite manner, that making an "offer to distribute" could violate copyright, even if nobody downloaded whatever you put up. [EFF via Boing Boing]

Warner Music Pushes for Mandatory Music Tax on Your Internet Bill

If iTunes music subscriptions don't happen, it's not because the industry lacks interest. Universal's already got a sub plan; Sony BMG is forging ahead with their own; and now Warner Music is investing serious resources and effort into pushing for a monthly music tax. They want $5 a month tacked onto everybody's internet bill, and in return, everyone would have unlimited access to basically all known music. It's not as generous as it sounds. More »

Leaked RIAA Training Video: Find Pirates, Find Crack-Dealing Terrorist Murderers Too!

This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers! More »

Most Ridiculous (or Brilliant) Music Industry Plan Yet: Hear the Album First, Pay a Lot More

The music industry did take something away from Radiohead's experiment, though it's not exactly what most of us were hoping for. A senior Universal VP dropped this inspired business idea at Mobile World Congress:

"If an artist has just delivered an album from [the] studio, we could potentially deliver it to a limited number of users for a higher price. It's something we're quite keen to develop; for example, through our own B2C channels—artists' Web sites."

This is the dumbest idea ever. More »

RIAA Wants Your Anti-Virus Software to Screen Your Downloads for Pirated Content

Content filter version one: A massive, network-wide dragnet. Not really feeling that Big Bro deal, even though RIAA chief Cary Sherman says it "doesn't give rise...to any privacy concerns because it can operate automatically and anonymously"? It's cool, there's a better approach: A locally installed filter on your computer. More »

RIAA Wants to Cut Artist Royalties to 9%, Apple Wants Them at 4%, Artists Just Want to Eat

The RIAA always claims that its looking out for the livelihood of artists when it sues the hell out of alleged pirates, but in reality it's really fighting to keep record industry executives rich by defending an outdated and unsustainable business model. While before the PR team at least made an attempt to make it seem like artists were priority #1, they seem to have given up: the RIAA is now trying to cut down artist's royalties on digital downloads. More »

Italian Parliament Legalizes P2P Music Downloads?

In what appears to be an embarrassing error, the Italian parliament may have accidentally legalized P2P music downloads. The new law allows Italians to legally share music over the internet, just as long as it is done for non-commercial gain and the music is degraded. The controversy arises from the definition of the word "degraded." More »

RIAA Wants to Increase Filesharing Damages to $1.5 Million an Album, Just for Laughs

The amount that the RIAA gets in statutory damages in filesharing lawsuits is already completely bananas, but they still aren't happy. The problem? Compilation CDs. A rascally pirate could rip 10 tracks from 10 CDs, say they came from a compilation and then only be culpable for one album. That's not right! The RIAA would then be cheated out of money they could use to polish the rubies on the ends of their walking sticks! More »