What the IFPI tries to conceal about its origins in fascist Italy IFPI is the global version of the RIAA
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

Home taping downloading is killing music authorship. The Society of Authors warns that authors will simply stop writing if they aren't compensated for piracy of their work (as unlikely as that seems). Perhaps they should follow the example of Jim Griffin, newly hired at Warner Music to persuade broadband providers to attach a $5 per month surcharge for the benefit of the major labels, in exchange for halting the lawsuits that have thus far been their mainstay weapon against piracy.
posted on Apr 2, 2008 - View this thread

CASH is the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders, a project conceived and initiated by musician Kristin Hersh. CASH is "read-write" — more than consumption; a collaborative online effort — helping make music ownership more of an interactive affair facilitated through Creative Commons licensing.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

The Recording Industry Association of America are seeking damages in a federal case against Jeffrey Howell, who kept a collection of about 2,000 recordings on his PC. The RIAA's lawyer states that the files Howell made on his computer from legally purchased CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
posted on Dec 30, 2007 - View this thread

In the increasingly surreal battle between the RIAA and music listeners, reality and satire can be hard to discern.
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

Dear Rockers. Guilt ridden music lovers get to feel better about themselves.
posted on Nov 26, 2007 - View this thread

Five ways the music industry can prevent its own demise.
posted on Oct 18, 2007 - View this thread

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails plans to join Radiohead in the self-distribution game. Reznor's public feud with Interscope records reached its head recently; the musician was forced to finance the alternate reality game promotion of Year Zero himself and was shocked at the record label's pricing in Australia. With the release of Year Zero Remixed, Reznor will be free to go his own way.
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

[Newsfilter]: Fighting a recording industry lawsuit for file sharing saying "it wasn't me!" is probably a really, really bad idea. Jury awards recording companies $222,000 for willfully infringing the copyright on 24 songs in first-to-trial file sharing lawsuit.
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

Virgin v. Thomas, the first RIAA backed lawsuit to make it to a jury trial looks likely to proceed early in October in Duluth Mn. This comes after a motion for summary adjudication (.pdf), was turned down. The witness list(.pdf) includes the president of the RIAA himself. Plaintiff statement of case : Defendant statement of case. (.pdf both).
posted on Sep 28, 2007 - View this thread

Anti-Piracy agents MediaDefender have 700MiB of juicy internal emails leaked on BitTorrent; are in trouble.
posted on Sep 16, 2007 - View this thread

"I've said all along, we are in this together." John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange - the royalty collecting arm of the RIAA - extends an olive branch through 2008 that will cap the advance payments internet broadcasters will have to cough up at $2500 per year. This comes in the wake of the Day of Silence, (it was June 26, did anyone notice?) spearheaded by Los Angeles-based terrestrial/online radio station KCRW (home of the brilliant Morning Becomes Eclectic) and SaveNetRadio, during which some of the biggest names in online radio - include Live365, NPR and Pandora - went dark for 24 hours, airing a one-hour broadcast twice during that day on the history of flat fees in public broadcasting. [direct .mp3, 38mb] Under the much-maligned changes made by our government's Copyright Royalty Board, the top six internet radio stations would have had to pay 47 percent of their total revenue (anticipated to be around $37.5 mil.) to the RIAA, starting this July. The Internet Radio Equality Act [summary, in its entire pdf glory] has been introduced to the House of Representatives, seeking to permanently reverse this decision.
posted on Jul 3, 2007 - View this thread

The Record Industry's Decline. "The record companies have created this situation themselves," says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. Rosen and others see that 2001-03 period as disastrous for the business. "That's when we lost the users," Rosen says. "Peer-to-peer took hold. That's when we went from music having real value in people's minds to music having no economic value, just emotional value."
posted on Jun 26, 2007 - View this thread

"If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album ... you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want [and] pay $4 through PayPal." Former member of Cleveland's own Exotic Birds and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor flips his lid when he finds out his new album Year Zero is being sold in Australia for $34.99 ($29.10 US). Label responds: "It's because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out — you know, true fans." Then there's the RIAA accusing Reznor of intentionally leaking his own music. Album is available in its entirety on MySpace. The unique internet-based promotion of this album - what's being called an alternate reality game - has also generated quite a bit of buzz.
posted on May 23, 2007 - View this thread

The RIAA wants the radio performance royalties exemption repealed. For decades, radio stations have gotten a free pass for spins of records due to the fact such play sells records. While decreasing in importance, and taking note of the myriad payola scandals in the past, terrestrial radio is still the single largest factor in promotions for the record industry and one of the few remaining things in the industry that still seems to work.
posted on May 21, 2007 - View this thread

Gonzales pushes plan to criminalize copyright infringement, making it punishable by life imprisonment; to increase wiretaps; and to require Homeland Security to notify the RIAA in certain circumstances. "To meet the global challenges of IP crime." I'd comment on this, but I'm afraid that someone might think I was copying someone else. The Intellectual Property Protection Act (official press release) appeared previously in a speech (2005) and as a draft (2006) - now the Justice department is pushing Congress to bring it forward. [newsfilter]
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

An impressive array of anti-RIAA articles, mostly from people within the music industry.
posted on Apr 24, 2007 - View this thread

Nerds, Nine Inch Nails, and numbskulls. It's also an ARG.
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Digital Freedom Campaign believes that new technologies are essential to the creativity and innovation, and that digital technology enables anyone and everyone to be an artist and an innovator. The DFC is dedicated to defending the rights of artists, innovators, creators and consumers to use lawful technology free of unreasonable government restrictions and without fear of costly lawsuits.
posted on Mar 28, 2007 - View this thread

Internet Radio Royalty Rate Announced. Internet radio doomed?
posted on Mar 3, 2007 - View this thread

The RIAA Says CD's Should Have Cost $33.86 in 1996 however, this news article says and shows how their math (and logic) is more than a little skewed.
posted on Feb 3, 2007 - View this thread

Make a mixtape highlighting a young artist, have that artist proclaim his delight about the project on the CD, reignite that artist's career, repeat, then, the RIAA has you arrested for counterfieting. The RIAA continues its vain struggle to understand the new music economy. In the meantime, at least one company gets it, offering DRM-free CD downloads of obscure titles.
posted on Jan 18, 2007 - View this thread

Tube Wars: A new front opens as the IFPI [think global RIAA] threatens imminent legal war with ISP's.
posted on Jan 17, 2007 - View this thread

Permission to Innovate? How the Record Industry Is Like 17th-Century French Buttonmakers A corporate consultant blog makes a weird but compelling argument that the RIAA and MPAA are forcibly imposing a draconian 17th-century business model on the 21st century.
posted on Jan 13, 2007 - View this thread

'Cause 2006 is butt naked. How to Create a Sexy Pop Star, a video clip from the film "Before the Music Dies."
posted on Dec 3, 2006 - View this thread

P2P is a sin [bugmenot]
posted on Oct 10, 2006 - View this thread

"Don't Download This Song." A free, and rather hilarious, download from "Weird Al" Yankovic done in the 'charity gospel' "We are the World" style, including a few gems in the lyrics like "even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong." Direct MP3 link. Music video evidently coming shortly.
posted on Aug 22, 2006 - View this thread

Cory Doctorow visits a Radio Shack. via keswick and MeCha
posted on Jun 5, 2006 - View this thread

RIAA sues family for illegal music file sharing. Wouldn't be new or noteworthy — if the family actually had a computer. Via.
posted on Apr 30, 2006 - View this thread

The RIAA would like to remind you that copying purchased music to your iPod is illegal without first gaining permission from the copyright holder. Thank you.
posted on Feb 16, 2006 - View this thread

Give us your pot smokers, your marriage-seeking gays, your wretched ... file sharers? "A major Canadian record company has taken the unusual step of hiring a defense lawyer for a man accused by the U.S. record industry of downloading hundreds of songs illegally. ... 'Suing music fans is not the solution; it's the problem,' Terry McBride, chief executive of Nettwork, said in a statement this week."
posted on Jan 27, 2006 - View this thread

Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005. In a speech given on November 10th, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales introduced proposed legislation [pdf] that would go one step further in criminalizing copyright infringement. The RIAA thinks its a good idea.
posted on Nov 23, 2005 - View this thread

Now that they're being sued on racketeering grounds, the RIAA says "to hell with appearances" and files suit against a 14-year-old girl. Candy Chan might have succeeded in getting charges against her dismissed, but in claiming victory, she probably didn't have much of an idea that the music cartel would proceed to file suit against her 14-year-old daughter specifically requesting that the court appoint a "legal guardian" for her. Whatever happens in this case, it'll probably be less embarassing than some of their previous cock-ups.
posted on Oct 6, 2005 - View this thread

Recording Industry vs. The People
I just got so aggravated about how threatening they were. I didn't do anything wrong. Why should I pay them? Patricia Santangelo looks to be the first person to take a file-sharing lawsuit to trial instead of settling with the RIAA. Now, with the help of the EFF, her lawyers have started a blog where you can track the case's progress. Is the RIAA making any friends these days?
posted on Aug 28, 2005 - View this thread

If nobody will pay, then there's no more handjobs... On the heels of the tres ridiculous RIAA antipiracy trailers come a few new ones. Explore the hidden world of the very destruction you create: zombies, writers and fluffers explain it all -- if you prick us, do we not bleed? (some movies NSFW)
posted on May 21, 2005 - View this thread

How to Watch the Grammys. The drummer for "Closing Time" Semisonic writes an amusing bit on The Grammy Awards, for those unsophisticated as to watch.
posted on Feb 13, 2005 - View this thread

Suprnova.org is back... with a vengeance?! It was just last week when suprnova.org, the most popular site online for finding BitTorrent downloads, shut down their site. The MPAA and RIAA crowed, but it appears the celebration was a tad premature. Suprnova's new site mentions a special announcement tomorrow at 9 PM GMT on NovaStream.org radio. Rumors suggest that it will introduce Exeem, a decentralized, BitTorrent-driven software client that turns every user into a tracker, removing the requirement for a centralized site such as suprnova, while providing users with easy searchability, the swarming powers of BitTorrent, and a network that is far harder to shut down.
posted on Dec 29, 2004 - View this thread

A small new future. 1999 was the year the RIAA began writing checks the record industry couldn’t cash.
posted on Sep 23, 2004 - View this thread

Peer to Peer Politics Here's an idea the RIAA can get behind: Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law, has launched a peer-to-peer network that allows users to access and share government documents. More than 600 court and government documents, including memos, communications and reports, are available on his OutragedModerates.org site, and can be accessed through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek P2P networks. Among those documents available are the Abu Ghraib prison scandal memos and the Senate Intelligence Committee report on government intelligence leading up to the Iraq War. The concept of using a P2P network to share embarrassing documents is interesting ... considering some in Congress have proposed an outright ban on the P2P file sharing systems that are widely used to trade music, movies and porn. via Politics1.com
posted on Jul 23, 2004 - View this thread

CleverCactus Share Combine the social networking aspect of Orkut and Friendster with the filesharing aspect of programs like Kazaa and WinMX, and you get clevercactus share. Get the RIAA off your back by only sharing file folders with people you actually know. Throw in encrypted transfers and platform-independency as a bonus. General Public release is scheduled for tomorrow, but you can sign up and start today.
posted on Jun 15, 2004 - View this thread

Interview with David Crosby. "The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, 'Yeah? So, your point is?' Because ...they don't care. They're actually sort of proud that they don't care.... Now they're going in the tank, because the world has changed, and they did not change with it...I think the only way to sell records that I know about now that does look really, really, really promising is iTunes."
posted on May 30, 2004 - View this thread

Labels seek end to 99c music per song download
"...the major five labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song." How about free legal downloads for $6 a month. DRM free. The artists get paid.? Will the RIAA ever see the light?
posted on Apr 11, 2004 - View this thread

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales.
posted on Mar 30, 2004 - View this thread

As Attorney General for the State of North Dakota, I am pleased to enclose payment for your claim in the settlement of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation.
Checks have gone out to people who "purchased prerecorded Music Products, consisting of compact discs, cassettes and vinyl albums, from one or more retailers during the period January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000." Mine was for $13.86. I think I'll go buy an indie CD.
posted on Feb 24, 2004 - View this thread

Feds rule that DVD X Copy is now illegal. What will become of other DVD burning software? The MPAA considers a major victory, but are the people who may use it legitimately getting the shaft, or will we see an increase in recovery outfits?
posted on Feb 22, 2004 - View this thread

Fight Back! James Saldana from Southern Illinois University has created a anti-RIAA parody called Fight Back! "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister replaces "I Fought the Law". Go here: http://nmc.siu.edu/~pepsi/ There are also mirrors up, so hopefully it doesn't get shutdown too quickly. Pulled from iPodLounge
posted on Feb 6, 2004 - View this thread

RIAA sues... (again): The RIAA has just issued a new lawsuit against 532 more "illegal filesharers" only this time, they're also using the "john doe" approach meaning that they dont have to have ascertain your name by strongarming ISPs, but by suing your IP address, they let the judicial system take care of that little detail.
posted on Jan 21, 2004 - View this thread

The DC Appeals court has overturned the previous decision that allowed the RIAA to subpoena user's names from internet providers. Could this mark the end of the recording industry's lawsuit assault?
posted on Dec 19, 2003 - View this thread

"What a Crappy Present" [via waxpancake]
posted on Dec 17, 2003 - View this thread

Downloading MP3s via P2P now legal in Canada thanks to an MP3 player tax. Just don't upload anything. In related news, the Supreme Court of Canada began hearing arguments over whether Internet Service Providers (ISPs), both here and abroad, should start paying tariffs for Canadian music downloaded by the public. [macrumors]
posted on Dec 15, 2003 - View this thread