derivative work

Surely some enterprising plaintiff-side attorney can generate a lawsuit from the reasonable expectations of consumers to continue to have access to the music they paid for: Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to [...]

A NYT blog is reporting that Radiohead is making digital copies of its next album available for pick-your-own-price amount — and the best part is they’re DRM-free. Commenters on the post were almost all positive. A few salient points pulled out of comments: * This will generate fans for and interest in its nice physical [...]

Well, Steve Jobs certainly looks prescient, what with EMI dropping DRM for its iTunes sales. Why do I suppose they were already in negotiations when Steve Jobs wrote his editorial? Never mind, it’s still good news. (As is the decision from the Supreme Court on EPA’s responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases, a case that worried [...]

The large corporate music industry has been whining to all the major media outlets that its CD sales are down. Accordingly numerous stories have been written in the last month about the trials and tribulations of the industry, whose dreadful loss of CD sales hasn’t been made up by the sale of individual songs. First [...]

“We’re going to have discounts for consumers to enjoy as they’ve never been seen before in the history of Tower Records,” said Andy Gumaer, president of Great American Group, a Los Angeles-based firm that won the auction …. [LAT 10/7] Yeah, right. Last night I stopped by Tower Records to see if I could pick [...]

David Byrne had a run-in with the RIAA over a playlist that included a bit too much of one artist. Truly artist-unfriendly. [link from boingboing]

Two great tastes that taste great together. Many “Daily Show” fans (well, okay, me) have been concerned about the future of “This Week in God” now that Stephen Colbert is leaving “The Daily Show” for his own spinoff. Today’s NYT (10/12) explains that the segment is going to stay, but with a new correspondent — [...]

Slate just ran an article on cover albums (“Copycats – The cover album makes a comeback” by Franklin Bruno, 2005/6/23), which is interesting timing considering that the Register of Copyrights has proposed to eliminate the compulsory cover license. [Lessig covers (ahem) the issue and responds to commentary from Importance of Being Ernest and Joe Gratz].

well — grokster is out. from the beginning: We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. and from the end: There [...]

Thomas Bartlett’s “Audiofile” [2005/5/5] in Salon.com mentions the “Bootleg Browser” & says this: Bootleg Browser is a new resource that lists links to MP3 downloads of concerts — currently featuring shows from nearly 350 artists. I’m interested to know how readers feel about the ethics of concert bootlegs. Personally, unless an artist has specifically stated [...]

We already knew this, but Chuck D. is pretty cool: LL Cool J has come out in support of the US music industry’s legal threats music downloaders. LL was speaking to a Senate committee investigating whether the industry has been too heavy-handed . “My question is, if a contractor builds a building, should people be [...]

While protesting the airing of “The Tsunami Song”, Asian-American rapper Cobra took shots at the anti-bootlegging “whiners”: Though promoted as an antiracist event, the rally lamented the degraded state of the corporate music industry generally. One of the first performances at the demonstration came from Asian-American rapper Cobra. In front of an audience holding signs [...]

Sigh. Now i know why i was feeling kinda blue today: On Wed, 9/22, Schwarzenegger signed SB1506, the so-called ‘true-name’ bill, which requires anyone putting copyrighted content on a p2p system to include their name and contact information. [Sacramento: Governor signs Internet piracy bill: E-mail address required to share movies, music online by Mark Martin [...]

chortle. ButtUgly: Main_blogentry_210904_1: We lied to you (Inspired by Cory Doctorow’s DRM speech.) Dear Content Producers and Owners: We lied to you. In the golden 80s and 90s we told you micropayments and content protection would work; that you would be able to charge minuscule amounts of money whenever someone listened to your music or [...]