The settlement was negotiated following legal action over controversial copy protection technology.   The virus-like techniques used by the anti-copying system led to a lot of bad publicity for the music maker in 2005.    However, still pending are legal cases mounted by several US states over Sony BMG’s anti-piracy technology.

This week brought the news that legal digital downloads of music are climbing to all-time highs, with the week after Christmas smashing all kinds of records. Now comes news that while legal downloads are way up, so are illegal downloads. New data from BigChampagne says that December saw a large jump in P2P file sharing, [...]

Heres a quick guide to help you understand MPEG, the standardization format, and thereby have a better picture of the technical aspects behind the various video and audio files you encounter.   First of all, MPEG stands for Motion Picture Experts Group. The group was established by the ISO/IEC(International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical [...]

There are a four basic video media formats out there that one will encounter when downloading and burning to disc. The types and coding of the video behind them will not be discussed here, but will be included in a separate codecs(COmpression/DECompression) and video types guide to follow.   To simplify the discussion here, there [...]

The case, which is due for a hearing in an Ohio court today, is said to be the first of its kind.   According to Law.com, Medina County resident George Gillespie sued Mike Marlowe of Alabama and Bob Charpentier of Oregon after the two men began teasing him online.   Reports suggest that the teasing [...]

Quaero is billed as Europe’s answer to Google, but it has a lot to live up to.   The awkward word — which means "to search" in Latin — is unlikely to flash across the continent’s computer screens anytime soon.   So far Quaero is just a scattering of top tech minds in labs across [...]

Q: So what does the rewritten law now say?  The section as amended reads like this: "Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, [...]

The digital song files, which were only uncovered during routine maintenance of the Canada Revenue Agency’s network, ate up more than five gigabytes of space on government computers.   "The possession of MP3 files can potentially cause a storage burden on CRA’s networks as well as the possibility of breaking copyright infringement laws," states the [...]

The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation, say researchers from Leicester, Surrey and York.   It could account for the popularity of shows like the X factor where viewers can watch performers and engage with the programme [...]

Jobs also unveiled remote control with FM radio capabilities for the popular music player. The iPod Radio Remote enables users to skip tracks and adjust the volume of their iPod even when it’s in a pocket or backpack and listen to FM radio stations while displaying station and song information on their iPod screen.   [...]

In the seven-day stretch between Christmas and the new year, millions of consumers armed with new MP3 players (primarily iPods) and stacks of gift cards gobbled up almost 20 million tracks from iTunes and other download retailers, Nielsen SoundScan reports.   In the process, consumers shattered the tracking firm’s one-week record for download sales. For [...]

Time Trax Technologies, whose hardware and software products allow people to easily deaggregate radio broadcasts to timeshift and build free music libraries, announced a new product line at CES today. The Time Trax TraxCatcher is an FM radio dock with an MP3 player that anyone can use to ‘tune and rip.’ Using the TraxCatcher is [...]

A while back I posted an article describing the new program Project Neon and recomended it as an easy method of sharing media files amongst family and friends.   Now I am including an in-depth tutorial to compliment that quick review so that you may take a closer look at the program and its features, and [...]

Switching from film-based to digital projectors in movie houses promises better quality for theatergoers. But it could also help Hollywood studios nab bootleggers. Digital projectors can’t stop people from recording movies, but they can allow studios to trace every illegal copy back to the specific time and theater where it was recorded. This capability is [...]

The Los Angeles Times has sparked an international wave of rumors that Google Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will launch a low-cost PC with a Google-made operating system at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.   But it’s just not true, the search giant said today. Google representatives denied the Times report as [...]

The Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) said that it is tired of being deemed a criminals and terrorists by the system for sharing a few measly files for no financial gain or loss to anyone.   In its manifesto, here, which is in Swedish, the party says that it is against seeing the developing world starve because [...]

Starz Entertainment Group is launching a movie download service that allows consumers to view full-length studio films, concerts and TV shows on portable devices powered by Microsoft Corp. software.   The service will provide the content critical for the success of a number of devices that will be introduced at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, [...]

Cheap PCs, anyone? Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that connects to the Internet. Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft’s Windows, which is one reason [...]