October 31st, 2008
Weird Al Yankovic |MTV Music
I can’t figure this out. This video, from MTV’s video site, has been bleeped by MTV in an effort to hide file sharing system names in Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song.” The original lyrics:
Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law
By downloading MP3s [...]
October 29th, 2008
Go ahead and read this court transcript. It’s a 35-page PDF of the London-Sire Records. Does 1-4 copyright infringement case. It’s the same song and dance you’re all familiar with: RIAA catches someone downloading a song, which entitles it to thousands upon thousands of dollars in remuneration. Only this time, the presiding judge, Nancy Gertner [...]
October 22nd, 2008
How much does it cost to monitor college students’ anti-American P2P activities? A whole lot, and that’s money colleges could be spending on, I don’t know, education.
This chart breaks down the cost of complying with, specifically, the new provisions of the Higher Education Act of 2008. That law, which the RIAA and MPAA were [...]
October 17th, 2008
Gotta have an ominous-looking photo to accompany stories like this
Do you remember how, earlier in the year, New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, set his sights on ISPs that provided Usenet access to their users? Cuomo argued that Usenet is a safe haven for child pornography and that it’s up to ISPs to shut off [...]
September 25th, 2008
Most people who get threatened by the RIAA with a lawsuit opt to settle out of court. Maybe they should go to trial instead. Jammie Thomas of Minnesota did just that. She was found guilty of sharing 24 music files over the Kazaa network and ordered to pay $222,000 – that’s $9,250 per track. The [...]
September 22nd, 2008
SanDisk and the RIAA sure do hope y’all aren’t “finished” with physical media-based music playback. If you are, then this whole slotMusic venture will end up being a waste of everyone’s time.
SlotMusic, actually written slotMusic, is the name of Sandisk’s new line of music-filled microSD cards. The thinking behind slotMusic is that consumers, what with [...]
September 10th, 2008
But not for the US. We’ll have to wait another few months before they make a similar announcement. To showcase all the gloriousness that is the X1, SE will be streaming a live webcast for all to watch on the 15th. The webcast will consist of an in-depth hands-on demo and the world premiere of [...]
August 26th, 2008
The RIAA shut down Muxtape but that doesn’t mean its memory won’t linger on the hearts of those who must share their love of the Hold Steady with the world. Enter OpenTape, an open source package that essentially recreates the Muxtape experience on a personal level. You simply download the application, unpack it on your [...]
August 25th, 2008
Oosah, a photosharing site à la Flickr that plays nicely with the iPhone, has a neat little feature that lets you tap into “the cloud” for all your music needs. After signing up for the site, you then upload any time of media to its servers, here, music files. Then you connect to the site [...]
August 25th, 2008
Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is not your friend when it comes to technology. Well, he could well be your friend, if you’re the RIAA or MPAA.
The vice presidential nominee has sponsored bills over the year that were championed by both the music and movie industry. He was one of the main forces behind [...]
