Snocap melts down
Just heard about this. Snocap, the digital music marketplace service founded by Shawn Fanning, has laid off more than half its staff and is putting itself up for sale.
Motley Fool: Snocap melts down
News.com: Shawn Fanning's Snocap lays off 60 percent of workforce.
October 23, 2007 at 12:47 PM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Libraries shun deals to place books on Web
I had lunch today with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, and he was a bit gleeful about today's front-page story in the New York Times: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.
Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.
The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available. Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.
As it should be, and why Brewster and his colleagues are right to feel proud at standing up to the restrictions imposed by the tech giants.
October 22, 2007 at 09:14 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
End of analog TV nearing
Shelly Palmer: The end of analog TV is only a year and a half away -- on February 17, 2009 -- and Washington is beginning to take notice.
October 21, 2007 at 02:22 PM in Television | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
FCC plan would relax ownership limits
A laissez-faire libertarian approach sometimes is the best way to move forward. But certainly not in the mediasphere, where concentrated ownership has choked off a multiplicity of voices out there that are already no longer heard.
Or, to put it a bit plainer, what a jackass idea.
NY Times: The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.
October 20, 2007 at 07:45 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Comcast blocks some Internet traffic
Associated Press: Comcast blocks some Internet traffic.
Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.
The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users. ...
October 19, 2007 at 01:39 PM in Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Bands cutting out the middleman
Terry Heaton: Big doings in the music world:
Last week, popular rock band Radiohead announced that they would be by-passing the recording industry and taking their new album directly to their fans. Moreover, they shocked everybody by announcing that fans could actually name their own price. Holy mother-of-RIAA!
Now comes an even more devastating announcement from long-standing rock powerhouse Nine Inch Nails. In a post on their website yesterday, NIN announced their freedom from record companies, saying that they, too, would deal directly with their fans. There’s a ton of resentment in a statement by Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor:
I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as i see fit and appropriate.
Technology may be the enabler (or redeemer), but the energy for this comes from the people that the industry is in place to serve — both the record makers and the record buyers.
I think this is huge and has cultural ramifications far beyond music. If you are in any middleman position in the information and entertainment worlds (aggregator exception noted), your future livelihood is in jeopardy.
Gizmodo (nine inch) nails it:
If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it–that the old way of doing business is broken–why can’t the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model “of the future” feared by entrenched interests isn’t arriving some time in the horizon. It’s touching down now.
The digital writing on the wall literally shouts to all media to get onboard the Cluetrain and acknowledge that an empowered citizenry is not a passive citizenry, and that J.D. Lasica’s personal media revolution is a real revolution, against the power grid that controls our lives for their profit. As I’ve written in the past, the public never wanted quality bundled with crap, which is the formula for profit from the whole copyright cartel. The cable industry, for example, will lose the bundled programming argument for the same reason, because ultimately, people will be able to pick and choose what they want.
This will be fascinating to watch. I assumed these kind of announcements, with major bands cutting out the music label middleman, were still a few years away from happening. But the revolution is on!
October 11, 2007 at 09:37 PM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Grooveshark: Legal P2P trading
Rev2.org: Grooveshark: Legal P2P Trading, Everybody Gets Paid.
October 6, 2007 at 11:23 PM in File sharing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Labels win suit against song shares
Shameful. NY Times: Labels Win Suit Against Song Sharer. The jury found the defendant, a Minnesota woman, liable for $222,000 in damages. That's $9,250 in damages for each of the 24 songs involved in the trial.
Yes, this woman deserves to have her life ruined financially because she may have shared a few songs online. EFF Deep Links: RIAA Convinces Jury to Impose Fines for Filesharing.
October 4, 2007 at 09:38 PM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
New AIM software lets users share tunes
Associated Press: New AIM software lets users share tunes.
Now you can listen to the music your friends enjoy while chatting away online.
The new version of AOL's instant-messaging software, AIM 6.5, offers a plug-in that lets users listen to songs their buddies have on their playlists. AIM Tunes does not require a separate media player. Copy-protected songs such as those bought on Apple Inc.'s iTunes won't play, however. ...
The free software, from Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, works with Windows-based computers only.
October 4, 2007 at 01:19 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Protecting the university from copyright bullies
Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing points to Wendy Seltzer talking at Cornell on Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies. (RealAudio? Come on, Cornell, get real.)October 3, 2007 at 09:40 PM in Digital rights & copyright | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Does your startup comply with the law?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will be hosting a one-day Compliance Bootcamp on Oct. 10 for people who handle issues arising from users and user-generated content.
Meantime, in 9 Fun Ways Web 2.0 Startups Can Commit Legal Suicide, Rafe Needleman points
out two handfuls of other legal pifalls, including ignoring safe harbor
rules (by not registering as a copyright agent), collecting data from
children, and failing to create a reserve fund for settling trumped-up lawsuits.
Thanks to Nina Kaufman for the pointers.
October 1, 2007 at 03:11 PM in Digital rights & copyright | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Altered iPhones freeze up
Katie Hafner at the NY Times: Altered iPhones freeze up.
Since the iPhone hit the market in June, tech-savvy owners of the phone have been busy messing with its insides, figuring out how to add unauthorized software and even “unlock” it for use on networks other than AT&T’s.
But the Web was filled Friday with complaints from people who had installed the latest iPhone software update, only to see all the fun little programs they had been adding to their iPhones disappear — or, still worse, see their phones freeze up entirely. ...
September 28, 2007 at 09:06 PM in New technologies | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Verizon's reversal on pro-choice messages
DailyKos: Verizon Reverses On Pro-Choice Messages.
"This is right at the heart of the problem," said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan law school, referring to the treatment of text messages. "The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling." ...
"No company should be allowed to censor the message we want to send to people who have asked us to send it to them," Ms. Keenan said. "Regardless of people’s political views, Verizon customers should decide what action to take on their phones. Why does Verizon get to make that choice for them?"
September 28, 2007 at 01:38 AM in Free culture, Washington & public policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Amazon digital music store goes online
Associated Press: Amazon Digital Music Store Goes Online.
Amazon.com introduced its widely anticipated digital music store on Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.
The store, Amazon MP3, will allow shoppers to buy and download individual songs or entire albums. The tracks can be copied to several computers, burned onto compact discs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including the Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune.
Songs cost 89 cents to 99 cents each and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.
Two major labels, Universal and EMI, have signed on to sell their music on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. ...
Although digital rights management helps to stem illegal copying, it can frustrate listeners by limiting the types of devices or the number of computers on which they can play music. Copy-protected songs sold through iTunes will generally not play on devices other than the iPod, and iPods will not play copy-protected songs bought at rival music stores.
Amazon’s vice president for digital music, Bill Carr, said it would be up to customers to use the music they buy legally.
To help stop music piracy, Mr. Carr said, some record labels add a digital watermark to MP3 files that indicate what company sold the song, and Amazon adds its own name and the item number of the song for customer service purposes. He added that no details about the buyer or the transaction are added to the downloaded music file. ...
Finally, finally, finally, after all these years. Soon, the two remaining music company holdouts will surely follow. I'm checking out Amazon MP3 right now. (But where's the friendly url? They gotta be kidding: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011)
September 25, 2007 at 08:54 PM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Downloaded movies can go to DVD soon
Canadian Press: Consumers one step closer to burning digital movies onto DVD.
September 21, 2007 at 10:23 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
