MySpace.com will soon enable members of the popular online social networking hub to sell downloads of their original music directly through MySpace Web pages, company executives said. The initiative, which is still in a test phase, has the potential to turn millions of computer users, many of them independent or aspiring artists already using the [...]

MySpace.com plans to let its 77 million users sell music downloads, another move by corporate parent News Corp. to make the social networking site as profitable as it is popular. Shawn Fanning, whose Napster software upended the music industry in 1999, will provide technology that enables musicians on MySpace to sell songs directly to fans [...]

A few weeks ago I proclaimed that Allofmp3.com would give up it’s current business model by September 1st. Turns out I was wrong – for now, at least. But things are changing in Russia, at least when it comes to the letter of the law. Russia toughened it’s copyright law back in 2004, but a [...]

From Microsoft’s website: Beta 2 is now available for our U.S. customers and includes a new Media Sharing feature, as well as improvements to the Beta 1 release that are based on your feedback. Learn more about Beta 2 updates. Bring a whole new look to your digital entertainment. Breathe new life into your digital music experience. [...]

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS) on Friday said it plans to introduce a line of digital music players and a download service, under an agreement with privately held media provider MusicNet. Terms were not disclosed. MusicNet will power the service and provide the underlying technologies and library of music for Samsung’s new subscription digital music [...]

Almost 80% of those Canadians surveyed recently by the Canadian Private Copying Collective said that they support a tax of up to 40 cents per blank CD-R to compensate musical artists hurt financially by people who use them to burn CDs. The current tax of 21 cents is apparently not enough for music artists otherwise [...]

Defeating DRM is all about awareness. The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Whether it means protesting outside Apple Stores in Hazmat suits or getting HUGE press coverage for announcing the Bono petition (sign it now). Action gets attention, and creates space for debate. And as our friends at Disney recognize, [...]

A web browser has been released that promises total privacy for its users. Browzar, as it is known, automatically deletes all traces of the pages a person has visited, and the terms that they have searched for on the web. Most browsers, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari, allow users to do this manually. [...]

A new law on copyrights, which came into effect in Finland at the beginning of the year, has done little to cut down illegal downloading of music. Only just over ten per cent of respondents to a fresh survey published on Wednesday reported that they had reduced illegal downloading from file sharing networks. About one [...]

Brazilian authorities have given Google Brazil 15 days to turn over user information from websites that promote criminal activity, threatening the company with 23,000 dollars in daily fines if they do not comply. Filed through a district court in Sao Paulo, the judicial order on Thursday noted that Google had so far “unsatisfactorily met” investigators’ [...]

Ratified in July 2004, but apparently not scheduled to take effect until today, September 1st, 2006, new amendments to Russian copyright law now provide the same protection to works published on the internet as those published on paper, CD, or DVD. Violators of the new law are looking at up to 5 years in a [...]