Napster’s tab: $100 million and climbing
News.com is reporting that Napster has been a bad monkey of late, spending much of parent company BMG’s not-so-hard earned millions. “That money, sources close to both companies say, is coming from Bertelsmann’s pockets. Add to that the near-$60 million original loan the media company gave Napster last year, as well as a second loan [...]
File swapping reaches new high
geek.com is reporting that file swapping has hit a new all-time high, 3.05 Billion files traded in Augest. Napster during its peak in feburary only had 2.79 Billion files trading. They are also reporting that there is increased traffic in porn, pirated movies, and they expect use of these services to continue growing as college [...]
Universal plans protection for all CDs
A Reuters report on how “Universal Music Group plans to start issuing CDs in October with software that prevents music from being digitally copied into computer files.” These guys will never learn. Someone, somewhere, doesn’t care about money, and doesn’t particulary like large corporations that are all about money. Someone, somewhere, will crack this not [...]
BBC States Online Paid Music Outlook is Poor
In a statement that really comes as a shock to no one, Cosmiverse.com reports that a BBC study of the online music world showed that 62% of people download music for free and show no signs of stopping. According to one statement in the article, “Free MP3s will never go away.”
Michael Jackson’s New Music Won’t Play On Your PC
Following on from This story I thought I’d have a quick look to see if the song in question was up there in filesharing land,sure enough,within 3 minutes it was sitting on my hard drive(courtesy of Morpheus)It’s just a shame I can’t stand Michael Jackson….
Alberg Announces Hive 1.0® Standard Personal Edition
HIVE 1.0 ® is Alberg software’s Enterprise P2P Application for collaborative work spaces based on the JXTA platform.
Recently released Hive 1.0 BETA has made much buzz in P2P space. The latest release of HIVE 1.0® Standard Personal Edition comes with many enhancements and additions 1. Enhanced User Interface
2. 75 [...]
Napster Signs Major Music Deal
Reported by News.com: “Music-swapping company Napster announced a major deal with music publishers Monday, settling part of its outstanding lawsuit and helping clear the way for its planned subscription service.” IMHO, this is bull$h1t. Just another excuse to charge us $9.95/mo. As a great comedian once said, “Homey don’t play that”
Hotline dead?
Rumor has it that Hotline Communications has thrown in the towel and laid off all of its staff. Will people continue to use the existing software, or is it destined to fade into extinction? If that’s the case, I’m sure gonna miss it…
Hack the Instant Messaging Planet!
Wired.com reports that “Hackers say it’s easy to take over AIM accounts and pose as the user whose account has been commandeered, using several hacking programs that are in wide circulation on the Internet. Hackers who are familiar with the program said that hundreds of AIM accounts have been ’stolen,’ and claim that America Online [...]
EFF Action Alert: Defeat the SSSCA
We reported on this a while ago, but it is getting more attention now, namely from the EFF: “Widespread public outcry has resulted from the circulation of draft legislation titled ‘Security Systems Standards and Certification Act’ (SSSCA) that would require that all future digital technologies include federally-mandated ‘digital rights management’ (DRM) technologies that will enable [...]
