“The record industry is a mess because of it. Record labels are losing so much money due to downloading that many of the more interesting bands are being dropped or ignored and only ‘sure things’ are getting signed,” says Wes. “Basically people don’t understand that every cent that an artist takes from a label has [...]

An interesting take on the file-sharing issue by the Science Fiction Author Orson Scott Card can be found Here Here’s a snipit: “In other words, the people complaining about all the internet “thieves” are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people’s work.”

EFF Review Of May 20 Report On Total Information Awareness: “Even without TIA, we’ve had hints of the problems. One example: an FBI database, the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (VGTOF), is expanding. In 1995 VGTOF was mainly used to track violent urban street gangs; today, it includes categories like “anarchists,” “militia,” “white supremacist,” [...]

Kansas senator introduced legislation Tuesday that could deal a blow to the music industry in its ongoing battle with file-sharing fans. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) introduced the Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management Awareness Act of 2003, a bill that addresses two hot topics in the digital realm: privacy and digital rights management. The [...]

(Source: Reuters) – Europe’s Internet downloaders are avid music fans who own multiple gadgets and are as likely to buy a compact disc as anyone else, according to new research released on Wednesday. The image belies the notion of the slacker teenager trawling the Internet for free music to hoard. They are regular shoppers in [...]

BearShare 4.3.0 Beta 141 is released! BearShare is a file sharing program that lets you, your friends, and everyone in the world share files. Built on Gnutella technology, it provides a simple, easy to use interface combined with a powerful connection and search engine that puts thousands of different files in easy reach. It is [...]

Samsung Electronics and Napster are forging a technology and marketing partnership to improve the experience of consumers using digital music. The partnership – announced today at Samsung’s DigitALL Inspiration 2003 Showcase by Eric Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Marketing Operations and Digital Solution Center for Samsung Electronics, and Chris Gorog, Chairman and [...]

Sharman Networks, distributor of the world’s most popular file-sharing software, Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD), today announced an exclusive digital promotion with Australian independent recording label 301 Records. Through Sharman’s affiliate partner Altnet (the first peer-to-peer network created to give consumers easy access to secure original content from content owners), local Australian band The Honey Palace [...]

“The US music industry’s legal clampdown on online music piracy could soon be supplemented by technical measures that will make it harder to make unauthorised copies of digital files.” “A new set of programming standards, released by a consortium of the world’s largest software and hardware companies on Tuesday, specify methods for developing software for [...]

MIT’s Technology Review magazine has chosen Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet, as one of the top 100 innovators of 2003 under the age of 35. Its nice to see Freenet being recognised for something other than its ability to scare the bejesus out of the RIAA.

From Yahoo / AP: Judge John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenged Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald B. Verrilli Jr. on whether computer users downloading music were any different from people who maintain libraries in their homes. Roberts questioned whether the fact that copyrighted files were [...]

New features: – batch downloading – net installer – OLGA chored search – album search – proxy support – lyrics translation – Windows Media Player support Automatically displays lyrics to current song in Winamp, QCD Player, Windows Media Player 9, Foobar2000 and Sonique HomePage

Abstract: A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago. In Canada. “On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the (Canadian) Copyright Act dealing with private copying came into force. [...]

As the recording industry pursues its lawsuits against those it says are digital music pirates, SBC Communications has emerged as the only major Internet service provider that has so far refused to identify computer users whom the industry suspects of copyright infringement. Since early July, major high-speed Internet providers ? including BellSouth, Comcast, EarthLink, Time [...]

Create a personal Peer-to-Peer network that lets you retrieve and update documents or share your files (photos, reports, etc.) with family, friends, and colleagues. FolderShare.com New in this version: *new interface that allows users to queue multiple files *users can now drag multiple .p2p files onto the app to request them *display a tree of [...]

When “Hulk” hit the small screen early, Hollywood hit the roof. Two weeks before this summer’s film adaptation of the angry green giant opened in theaters in June, copies started showing up on file-sharing networks around the world. The film cost Universal $150 million to make and distribute, but anyone with a fast Internet connection, [...]

Some people may well be intimidated by the 261 lawsuits that the music industry has filed against Internet users it says are illegally sharing songs. But hundreds of software developers are racing to create new systems, or modify existing ones, to let people continue to swap music — hidden from the prying eyes of the [...]

From the Denver Post: The best-selling “Chicago” movie soundtrack is available on CD starting at $13.86. The actual movie, with the soundtrack songs included, of course, plus additional goodies ranging from deleted musical numbers to the director’s interview and a “making-of” feature, can be had for precisely $2.12 more. Therein lies the problem for a [...]

Music Firms, DJ Offer to Pay 12-Year-Old’s Fine Thu September 11, 2003 10:42 PM ET By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Several Internet music services and a disc jockey have offered to reimburse a New York woman who paid $2,000 to settle charges that her 12-year-old daughter illegally copied music online. P2P United, a coalition [...]

Source Pirates Vs. Dinosaurs Published: September 14, 2003, 07:05:14 AM PDT The recording industry decided to get tough. So it sent out its lawyers to find a diabolically clever criminal — a 12-year-old. Then it filed a lawsuit against her for stealing music over the Internet. Properly chastised, the pre-teen and her mother (who live [...]