The NIN frontman rails against overpriced music in his band’s latest blog posting. You know I think a band really shows its true character when it comes down to a battle over either profits or creativity. It’s when a band’s back is up against that the wall that their heart and soul really comes out. [...]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is adding an array of Skype phone gear to the electronics section in 1,800 stores, bringing the renegade provider of cheap calling over the Internet to a huge mainstream audience. The dedicated Skype section will feature handsets, headsets and webcams designed to work with Skype, a provider of free and very cheap [...]

Putting a price on art isn’t easy. But $750 for one copy of Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” might be a bit much. Downloaded files of Christina Aguilera’s “What a Girl Wants” and 10 other tunes cost Sisouda Soysouvanh of Seattle $8,250. The Dolencs of Sammamish were hit for $7,500 after being accused of stealing [...]

In part 2 of my series “Sympathy for the labels” (see also part 1) I discussed the concern of labels that selling through eMusic lowers overall profitability by diverting sales away from the iTunes Store and other higher-priced outlets. Note that I’m referring here to labels that are realizing at least some profit from eMusic [...]

An Internet parody of “The Simpsons” has drawn the ire of 20th Century Fox. The studio is pressuring online video hub Broadcaster.com to remove “The O.J. Simpsons,” three animated clips that reimagine the Fox series starring the former football star. After receiving notices from Fox lawyers, Broadcaster Inc. is reviewing their demand but noted Friday [...]

Microsoft on Sunday introduced phones, headsets and other devices that work with its software with the intention of replacing the traditional office phone and delivering e-mails, instant messages and phone calls over the Internet. Microsoft said it worked with nine technology manufacturers including Samsung Electronics and NEC to develop hardware to work with its unified [...]

Paul McCartney’s new album, “Memory Almost Full,” will be his first solo release available for download and streaming on PCs and mobile phones. McCartney also has told Billboard that a deal to finally make the Beatles catalog available for sale online is “virtually settled.” McCartney added, “I don’t want to pre-empt anything, but we’re well [...]

When you’re done loading your iPod with Better than Ezra and Carlos Santana, why not try a little Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams? Recordings of the poets’ works are available for free through PennSound, an online audio archive developed by professors at the University of Pennsylvania. PennSound features about 200 writers and more than [...]

Cyber-warfare on an unprecedented scale has hammered Estonian web sites for the last two weeks in the aftermath of the government’s controversial decision to relocate a Soviet-era war monument from the center of Tallinn to the suburbs. Two days of rioting by ethnic Russians, who saw this as an attack on their heritage and on [...]

Today is the official deadline for compliance with the FCC’s new interpretation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act(CALEA). Cable modem companies, DSL providers, broadband over powerline, satellite internet companies and even some universities all have until the end of today to ensure “…the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by [...]

What do Vista, Flash, RealPlayer, and iTunes have in common? According to Media Rights Technologies (MRT), all of them are infringing products under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and MRT has just sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real, and Apple. “Together these four companies are responsible for 98 percent of the media players in [...]

New academic research suggests that neither social norms nor the threat of lawsuits are enough to keep college students from illegally downloading music. The study, which appeared in the most recent issue of Cyberpsychology & Behavior, provides no answers to a music industry that is desperately seeking ways to put the brakes on file-sharing. It [...]

One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user’s PC. Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to “in-depth analysis”. About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called “drive-by downloads”, sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user’s knowledge. [...]

With introduction of an iPhone, Apple opened our eyes to the possibilities of full screen touch interfaces. But such interfaces have one drawback – there’s a limit how small you can make it. It would be difficult to put such an interface on iPod Nano – with your finger covering a better part of touchscreen, [...]

The “other” BitTorrent client has just released a new stable version that adds a new “resource browser,” sidebar advertisements, and a couple of other new features and changes. The BitComet BitTorrent client makes some interesting new features and updates in its latest stable release, version 0.87. Unfortunately most of them are pretty bad in my [...]

The German music label Peppermint Jam has sent copyright infringement notices to several thousand file-sharers it suspects of using such P2P or file-sharing programs such as eMule, eDonkey, and BitTorrent. Peppermint Jam, the Hanover, Germany-based record label, has sent some 3636 notices of copyright infringement to people informing them that they “have been found guilty [...]

“Come and save me tonight,” pleaded Steven Tyler in an Aerosmith tune so sappy it could have been tapped for maple syrup, but the words could well be the rallying cry for webcasters across the country. Coalitions like SaveNetRadio.org have been petitioning Congress for relief after the Copyright Royalty Board denied an appeal to reconsider [...]

WB says the goal is to combat movie piracy by offering high quality downloads, for a price Movie piracy is a rampant problem, particularly in the Asia Pacific regions of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. To combat piracy one country at a time, Warner Bros. said this week that it will launch a new movie [...]

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the latest stats show that Gmail users skew younger and richer than those on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Gmail opened up to all comers in February, with Gmail’s market share of US visits climbing 17% from February 2007 to April 2007. However, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are still much bigger by comparison, says [...]

Smoking will be a bigger factor in determining film ratings, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday, but critics said the move does not go far enough to discourage teens from taking up the habit. MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said his group’s ratings board, which previously had considered underage smoking in assigning film ratings, [...]