"TellTale Weekly is a new audiobook service selling low-cost (<$1) audiobooks as DRM-free MP3s and Oggs -- and building an audiobook version of the Gutenberg Project by releasing all their titles under a Creative Commons license after 5 years or 100,000 paid downloads, whichever comes first."

"Can e-books be saved from the curse of DRM? Or, perhaps better said, when will book publishers realize that loading their digital products down with rights restrictions is not in their own self interest?"

"Digital media start-up iVast has quietly ceased U.S. operations, highlighting the challenging market for multimedia products based on the emerging MPEG-4 standard."

"The fact that a copyrighted work is valuable in perpetuity does not mean that one has a right to a perpetual government-enforced monopoly over copying it. The governmental legal protection comes with a (fair) price: the protection expires after a reasonable term."

Press release: "The Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) Petty catalog is now available for digital downloading in the most significant and comprehensive artist-specific campaign of its kind for UMe."

"Looked at from a long term perspective, DRM seems an extremely poor choice if all you're interested in is short term benefit. Speed bumps make sense on some streets and parking lots. It doesn't make sense to attach them to your car."

"The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway -- share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer -- without fear of lawsuits."

"In the first case of its kind, a federal court in New York has ruled that one company's snatching of a database from a rival's Web site does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

"The RIAA remains as unimpressed by the latest generation of privacy seekers as with the rest. File swapping is file swapping, no matter how programmers change the way their networks function, the group's attorneys have argued in court."

"It will take some time for address-shielding technology to be adopted, but eventually it will be. And this will be bad news for copyright owners, because it will thwart their current identify-and-sue tactic, which seems to be having some effect."

"Instead of making copyright owners more willing to release their works online in digital formats, they have become even more reluctant to allow consumers access to digital copies unless they can control what consumers do with those copies. [...] In order to ensure that copyright owners can exercise plenary control over consumers' uses of their works, we've already been willing to sacrifice important chunks of our freedom and our privacy."

"The music industry is pushing bitter technology rivals -- most notably Microsoft and Apple -- to shake hands in the interest of promoting digital downloads, Billboard has learned."

"The fallacy is the same one that undergirds many misguided spam solutions: adding another penalty for knavery doesnt, by itself, help you catch the knaves. Every time you stare closely enough at the DMCA, it winds up being either horrific or redundant."

"More than 300 Web sites and blogs staged a 24-hour online protest yesterday over a record company's efforts to stop them from offering downloadable copies of "The Grey Album.""

"The duration of 95 years seems not significantly different from the duration of perpetuity. Hence, 95-year copyright terms seem effectively not time-limited. Thus, such terms might well violate the constitution."

"We need to recognise that the entire information sector - from music to newspapers to telecoms to internet to semiconductors and anything in-between - has become subject to a gigantic market failure in slow motion. A market failure exists when market prices cannot reach a self-sustaining equilibrium."

"As a committee of the House of Representatives approved a bill last month that would make it illegal to reuse data from someone else's database without permission, eight professors who teach intellectual-property law urged the committee's chairman to reject the measure, saying that no one should be able to claim ownership of facts."

"The RIAA has aligned with the quest of the Ashcroft Justice Department’s to attain perfect control over what people see and hear."

"Bizarrely, the law of copyright has made it extraordinarily difficult for a copyright owner voluntarily to give up control. For most of the history of copyright law in the US, there were a million ways to forfeit your copyright. Today, it’s not even clear that it is possible."

"So, the Grey Album and the Grey Tuesday protest have been extensively chronicled. This page is intended to explain some of the basic copyright law principles involved."

"It's bizarre that five years into the digital video-recorder era, you still can't buy a digital VCR for radio. Why has the electronics industry developed so many machines that let us time-shift Dr. Phil and "Saturday Night Live," but so few that do so for Dr. Joy Browne and "Science Friday"?"

"When DJ Danger Mouse decided to combine raps from Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with music from the Beatles' legendary "White Album" to create "The Grey Album," he didn't have permission from either side to do it -- and he didn't care."

"If the infringers took the photo illegally and digitally removed the watermark, Croan says that in itself is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)."

"Craig Barrett, the chief executive officer of Intel, has called for the adoption of a worldwide DRM (digital rights management) system that allows consumers the flexibility to manipulate the content they own in ways of their choosing and has criticized some existing or proposed systems for the restrictions they enforce."

"This decision is an outrageous infringement of fair use rights and a slap in the face of legitimate DVD consumers everywhere. How much longer are we going to allow the music and movie industries to run roughshod over our rights?"

"Napster, the digital song store and subscription service launched by Roxio in late October, said Monday that it passed the 5 million mark in online song sales."

"Any unauthorized distribution, reproduction, public performance, and/or other exploitation of The Grey Album will constitute, among other things, common law copyright infringement/misappropriation, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment rendering you and anyone engaged with you in such acts liable for all of the remedies provided by relevant laws."

"Although Macrovision, Santa Clara, Calif., designed FlexNet Publisher to manage software companies, Macrovision executives said the technology is also beginning to be added as a "secret sauce" to scale hardware functionality, as well. In both cases, the FlexNet software is designed to allow software and hardware companies to charge different fees for different levels of service, including licensing by user, site, company and on an as-needed "utility" basis."

"Technology and civil liberties experts worry that many of the defendants bought smart cards for legitimate purposes and never stole a second of DIRECTV's signal."

"After eight months of deliberation, a San Francisco federal judge has ruled that software company 321 Studios' popular DVD-copying products are illegal."

"TiVo's big eye in the sky lets the company track what's been watched as well as the number of times particular moments get replayed."

"Lawyers representing record labels and those acting for peer-to-peer companies on Friday argued in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney whether a controversial order used by the music industry to obtain information about file-sharing companies should be overturned."

"The European Parliament is set to vote next week on a controversial law that would extend companies' powers to crack down on pirates and song-swappers."

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced a new antipiracy warning label Thursday that will be used on digital music, movies and software, cautioning of legal consequences for people involved in piracy."

"A New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act."

"Video-on-demand service Movielink and chipmaker Intel signed a deal on Tuesday to promote the digital distribution of films to multiple devices in the home."

"Consumers suffered a setback to their digital rights today when a California federal court sided with the major motion picture studios in ruling that a company creating tools people can use to make backup copies of their DVDs is liable under copyright law."

"A federal court has ruled that privately held 321 Studios must stop making software that allows users to copy DVDs, handing Hollywood's major movie studios a victory in their ongoing battle against copyright piracy."

"More than three million music consumers in 40 states will begin receiving refund checks starting Friday from the settlement of a lawsuit against the five major music companies and three music retailers, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday."

"The FBI says it will give the movie, music, and software industries a digital anti-piracy seal, an analog to the FBI's warning displayed at the beginning of videotapes."

"The resulting "Grey Album" -- an unlikely mix of the often explicit lyrics of Jay-Z with samples of music from the Beatles' 1968 classic -- has become an underground hit among hip-hop aficionados. But without permission from either the rapper or the Beatles, this is one album you can't buy in local stores."

"The music industry considers Michele Scimeca a pirate. The Morris County mom has her own term for record executives: Racketeers."

"Free software might help put an end to the Petri dish of poverty and ignorance which is the breeding ground for AIDS. But we can't say that. It offends the sensibilities of corporate lobbyists whose moral compass points at nothing but the bottom line."

"The recording industry sued 531 more computer users Tuesday it said were illegally distributing songs over the Internet in what has become a routine reminder that college students, teenagers and others can face expensive lawsuits for swapping music online."

Randy Jackson of American Idol fame: "I think record companies are so out of touch with the public, and that's why the music business is hurting."

"The final weeks of the European Union's push to enact the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive are heating up with a battle brewing between consumers and the recording industry over the directive's targeting of Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file-sharing software and other non-commercial infringements."

"The purpose of this paper is to recanvass what is surely old and familiar territory about the defenses, if any, that can be made for various forms of intellectual property—and for the purposes of this conference, particularly copyright—as a matter of both natural law and utilitarian theory, broadly conceived."

"No one here addressed consumer issues, in this panel, or any others. Basically, we were discussed as though we are baby birds with our mouths open, happy to take anything big media company gives us."

"A science-fiction writer who sued America Online three years ago after his short stories were widely posted on an Internet news group will finally get his day in court."

Australia: "Librarians have warned that the free trade deal will lead to huge increases in copyright licence fees paid by Australians for use of intellectual property, including novels, poems, films and songs. And a legal expert said it was literally a "Mickey Mouse" deal, as the Disney Corporation had been among its most powerful backers."

"Forget open content on your next-generation mobile device: CMLA is here to make sure you only use Big Content from the corporate media."

"Not satisfied with the broadcast flag existing requirements, Hollywood is calling for even more restrictive standards including requiring that display devices also include DRM."

"WIPO has recognized Jack with a WIPO Medal and a Citation for Distinguished Service. This isn't surprising since, rather than being an international forum simply for IP harmonization, WIPO is an organization promoting copyright maximization worldwide."

"Sales of legal music downloads have reached a new high to become the second most popular singles format in the UK."

"Arguably, it might be appropriate to fast-track some trade agreements, but not this one - which would set in stone a highly controversial domestic law that affects both the First Amendment and fair use. The progress of technology and information, as well as free speech, is at stake, making the inability to amend the FTA particularly troublesome."

"BayTSP is a small company that works for copyright holders, monitoring the contents of P2P networks. Among other things, they query individual computers on the P2P networks, to see what they contain. Are those queries trespasses?"

"In today's New York Times, Jim Motavalli writes about people who tinker with, or replace, the software controlling their car engines. Some people do this to improve engine power or fuel efficiency, and some do it out of curiosity."

"The U.S. Copyright Office has published long-awaited royalty rates for Web music broadcasts, ending a yearlong process marked by legal and financial wrangling, the group named to handle the royalties said on Tuesday."

"And when he was developing the system, he said, widespread copyright infringement was not what he had in mind. Rather, he was intrigued by a problem familiar to many Internet users and felt acutely by friends who were trading music online legally: the excruciating wait while files were being downloaded."

"The Canadian music industry is going to court to seek the identities of 29 online file swappers, in preparation to filing lawsuits similar to those that have targeted hundreds of U.S. computer users."

"The DVD Copy Control Association, a Hollywood-backed technology group, filed suit against software company 321 Studios on Friday for allegedly infringing patent rights on its DVD copy protection."

"According to an article in the Irish Times (registration required) the Joyce estate has informed the Irish government that it intends to sue for copyright infringement if there are any public readings of Joyce's works during the festival commemorating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday this June."

"A film industry group that oversees copy protection technology of movie DVDs filed a patent infringement lawsuit Friday against 321 Studios Inc., the maker of popular DVD-copying programs."

"As news of EMI's demand spilled online this week, music-industry and intellectual-property activists went ballistic. It's a sign of everything that's wrong in the American copyright system, they contend."

"It was an ingenious idea, and one that played so dangerously close to the third rail of copyright law that it was sure to get shut down eventually."

"Now, the media companies are going to have to learn the same hard lessons. Customers just don't want unreliable, DRM-infested products."

"The Canadian Recording Industry Association has kicked off what promises to be a lengthy battle against online music sharing, and the first hurdle may be the most difficult to clear."

"Don't worry about DRM and lock-down computing, says Jim Griffin. Historically they're doomed to fail. The former director of Geffen's technology group believes that wireless networks such as 3G, 4G and WiFi will provide the tipping point at which the entertainment industries come to the table to cut a deal - before political pressure forces a deal upon them."

"Digital video recording service company TiVo announced Tuesday that it received a favorable ruling in a patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by Pause Technology in 2001."

Parody: "When some people hear the word "bootlegging," they think it is a complicated legal term that doesn't apply to them. In fact, bootlegging and piracy have a long and romantic tradition dating back even before mascara-wearing pirates like Johnny Depp roamed the seven seas for Disney, grossed over $200 million and got nominated for Oscars."

"An investigator for a music industry group on Monday formally served papers on Sharman Networks at its headquarters in Vanuatu related to a just-launched Australian copyright infringement case."

"Music and entertainment chain Tower Records on Monday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, burdened by too much debt and hammered by competition from large retailers and by Internet music downloading and piracy."

"The property rights maximalists are the true radicals here. They have defined any challenges to the status quo as a frontal attack on property rights. As political propaganda, this effort may have some success. But the ultimate strength of the Free Culture Movement, or whatever one calls it, lies in this: It is an internal critique of the dominant ideology, not an external challenge to markets like communism."

"No matter what the court decides, Tuesday's argument made it abundantly clear that MGM v. Grokster is not about the end of piracy, but the future of innovation."

"The makers of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing software, challenged the validity of a court order used by the Australian recording industry to raid its offices last week."

"Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington, calls the alliance with Disney "a significant cooperative effort...to help guide the industry," but offers few specifics of what the two companies will do beyond licensing Windows Media DRM."

"The organization best known for bestowing accolades on the music industry at its Grammy Awards will begin airing ads discouraging online music piracy with the awards show's Sunday broadcast."

"CD copy protection company SunnComm Technologies said Wednesday said it has agreed to buy another firm to help move music antipiracy efforts to a new level."

"Under the new model, labels would release music wrapped in digital rights management into peer-to-peer networks, so that people could download authorized versions of songs instead of pirated copies."

"A Microsoft executive said the two companies would be working increasingly close together on topics ranging from high-definition film to digital rights management."

"Napster-owner Roxio more than doubled its net losses year-on-year thanks mainly to increased spending on the relaunch of the music download service, which went live in October."

"The eccentric Calcutta-born yogi who popularized the form of yoga known as "Bikram" is being sued over his claims that he owns the copyright to a 26-posture series used in the practice, which is done in a heated room."

"Bikram Choudhury, the Beverly Hills yoga master to the lithe and sweaty masses, swept into San Francisco on Wednesday for mediation of an intellectual property lawsuit that has more twists and turns than his 26 postures, done twice each in a room heated to over 105 degrees."

"But the pornography industry has been dealing with Internet copyright issues since the 1980's. By comparison, the movie and music businesses are relative newcomers. Mr. Hymes said companies in his industry had come to realize that suing consumers and promoting "draconian laws" were not the answer."

"A recent study by Forrester Research, which examines technology trends, predicts that in five years fully one-third of all music will be delivered through modems, and the CD itself will be passe, if not obsolete, in the years after. This isn't necessarily bad news for the record labels, but it could be lethal for brick-and-mortar stores."

"Here's an amazing Technology Review piece about how kids are writing Harry Potter fanfic and editing one-another's stories in order to become great and prolific writers. [...] The biggest difference between the kids' fanfic of yore and that of today is that back in the old days, kids had no way to readily collaborate with one another on their creations -- nor to expose themselves to copyright infringement liability from overzealous rightsholders who indiscriminately shut down kids' sites with threatening letters."

"Music Industry Piracy Investigations this morning raided the offices of P2P companies Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment, along with the homes of key executives and several ISPs."

"To tell you the truth, while we're amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o' nothing, we're even more amused by the fact that said track contains the usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on any unauthorized systems."

"The price the music industry is paying for pretending the situation would disappear is that a few generations of American youth have large record collections and have never paid for a single song."

"What I discovered was that the RIAA had pressured every CD-manufacturing house from Ottawa, Canada, to Canton, Ohio, into requiring lengthy documents proving that each track a DJ wants to use is licensed – which meant I needed a lot of paperwork (and cash) to complete my 23-track mix that says "Promotional Use Only" on it in big letters."

"If you gotta download, I can understand. I've been broke too. It'd be nice if you paid for it, and I don't support the Recording Industry Association of America knocking on your door like John Ashcroft – that's not cool. But I would encourage you to think about how the system works, and trying, in your copious spare time, to understand the marketplace."

"Once upon a time, Apple's slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn." meant "make as many copies as you want of your legally purchased music." Now it means "make the limited number of copies we deem appropriate." All that's being ripped, mixed, and burned are fair-use laws."

Quoting the appeals judge: "Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language."

Press release: "The 3,700 students living in University of Rochester residence halls will gain free access to Napster’s popular Premium music service later this semester, in the first digital music agreement between Napster, a division of Roxio, and a private university."

"A federal appeals judge questioned whether distributors of online file-sharing software should be held responsible for copyright infringement just because some people use the programs to swap copyright music and movies."

"The bottom line: in the short run, P2P vendors may be able to make a small dent in infringement, but in the long run, users will find a way to distribute the files they want to distribute."

"Lawyers for the entertainment industry told a three-judge panel for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif., that file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus should be ordered to apply software filters that would prevent the online trading and copying of copyrighted songs and films."

"Some Internet companies are turning peer-to-peer file-sharing into a legitimate business -- and at least one major label, EMI Music, is taking the technology seriously."

"Yahoo, rethinking earlier plans, is quietly exploring ways to develop a music download service as archrivals Microsoft and America Online place bigger bets on digital song sales."

"The world is a different place, but arguments in the peer-to-peer file-sharing space are still based on days gone by. The current crop of peer-to-peer file-sharing applications is actually hurting its own cause by purposely not innovating applications. The reason? They are scared they might be told to start filtering."

"StreamCast Networks on Tuesday released Morpheus 4, a update to the peer-to-peer software that's meant to be a hub for wide range of file-sharing networks."

"Lawyers representing the entertainment industry and file-swapping companies will meet in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday as a federal appeals court hears the first arguments in a case likely to shape the future of online file swapping."

"Broadband video-on-demand company Movielink on Monday announced a service that will let its customers extend the time over which they can watch movies they've downloaded."

"The old version was much too broad. The new version is worded more carefully, with exceptions for "multipurpose devices"."

"A federal appeals court is poised to hear arguments in a landmark case that could decide the future of peer-to-peer services, and may affect whether technology companies can be held liable for their customers' behavior."

"While the news media have been filled with stories about what some are calling "Internet music piracy," a large majority of the American public views downloading music for personal use as an innocent act, and thinks the high price of CDs leads to a lot of downloading."

"Some of Las Vegas' biggest hotel-casinos are canceling Super Bowl parties and handing out refunds to thousands of guests after the NFL threatened legal action against those who broadcast the big game on big-screen TVs. Several hotels received letters last week informing them that their parties were 'unauthorized use of NFL intellectual property.'"

"A group of technology heavyweights is expected to take the wraps off a secretive effort to secure music and video on wireless devices, according to sources familiar with the plans."

"How naive must one be, in this day and age, to spend months debating the question of virtual property without once wondering whether the question itself (or at any rate the phenomenon underlying it) wasn't already somebody's intellectual property?"

"Two major movie studios sued an actor and longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who allegedly leaked "screener" copies of movies that were then reproduced and distributed on the Internet."

Quoting Lindows: "If you downloaded a file called LindowsLive-4.5.2xx.iso from a P2P, this is NOT illegal, and federal agents won't be knocking down your door for doing so."

"What the technology allows consumers to do is create their own network, recording shows they want to a hard drive, calling them up when they want, and, of course, whizzing past the commercials. With the machine as middleman, TV turns from an overexuberant effusion of programming into a boutique. Enjoy it now, but know that there will, soon enough, be a price to pay."