2005 will be the key year for digital media. The reason is because the Supreme Court has announced it will take up the Grokster case on appeal from the record and movie industries. The decision from that case will define the parameters of copyright, fair use and the culpability of technology for many years to come. 2004 seemed to be a perfect lead up as more people than ever both trade online for free and purchase digital music files from the likes of iTunes and Napster. More digital music portables were sold last year too, culminating in a 4 million unit Christmas for the iPod. |  The 20GB Archos Gmini 400 Digital Audio/Video Jukebox is available on Amazon |
The good news for the record industry is that sales have gone up this year despite the fact that more people are file trading today than they were last year (and by a significant margin). For others the year was more of a push. For example, KaZaa lost half of its audience to eDonkey, which surpassed KaZaa as the number one P2P app. Stll, KaZaa has over 2 million people on its network at any given moment so you can’t call them a loser either. The jury is also still out on Napster and Real. The same for Ogg Vorbis who were on lasts year’s loser list, but have extended their presence in video gaming and may have a new opportunity thanks to recent trouble regarding the WMA format.<P>Read the Complete Story @ MP3 News Wire
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