Silverwolf's Auditorium

From Techdirt:

It would appear that the recording industry now likes to call any sort of business model it doesn't like "piracy." At least that's the only explanation I can come up with in its latest battle, where it has referred to traditional radio as "a form of piracy." It's almost too bizarre to be true, and that's before we even explain how this involves a (literal) can of herring.

I still just don't understand this kind of thinking.  The recording industry wouldn't even exist if it were not for Radio making it's artists popular.  In fact the status-quo in the past 50 years is for the Record Labels to pay radio stations to play their artists more often in order to make more money selling CD's.

I've created some iPhone ringtones using Garageband for use on my phone.  I've uploaded them to the site in the event that someone else would like to use them.

See them here

From Macworld.com:

Fraunhofer IIS, inventor of the ubiquitous MP3 music format, on Monday made a pitch to audio and computer makers to use its HD-AAC format. HD-AAC is a new digital music encoding format that Fraunhofer says is actually better than audio CDs. What's more, it's already iPod-compatible -- well, sort of.

People have been predicting the demise of the legacy CD and MP3 formats for years.  While technically these new formats may have certain benefits (higher quality at smaller sizes) none of them have caught on.  The reason why is actually quite simple, it's because CD's and MP3's are already good enough for 99.99% of user applications and they already work with everything.

From informationweek:

The Minnesota mother who vowed to fight the Recording Industry Association of America after she was convicted of illegally downloading copyrighted music now has another heavyweight to content with.

The U.S. Justice Department has sided with the RIAA and a jury's $222,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music. The amount breaks down to $9,250 per song. The case, Capitol v. Thomas, was the first file-sharing lawsuit to make it to trial. It gained widespread attention because of that.

Thomas vowed to fight the judgment and appealed. Her lawyer argued that the damages were too steep and that the clause in the Copyright Act violates due process because it's "severe" and out of sync with actual damages. The clause allows fines up to $150,000 per illegally downloaded song.

In a court filing, DOJ argued that the law allows penalties to be steeper than actual damages.

The agency said that the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision didn't violate due process and aren't so severe and oppressive to be disproportionate to the offense or obviously unreasonable.

Justice ?  This isn't justice, it's a freaking disaster.  Talk about swatting a fly with a sledge hammer.  If the bought and paid for DOJ thinks $ 150,000 per song downloaded is reasonable then i'd like to see them explain how.

From Techdirt:

Earlier this year, a court agreed to examine whether or not the fines the RIAA is asking for in its lawsuits against people accused of file sharing is constitutional (that whole "cruel and unusual" bit). The RIAA, in response, has fought hard to keep from revealing any information about how much a download really costs, but a judge isn't having any of that and has ordered the RIAA in the UMG v. Lindor case to turn over the data.

Anyone who is unbiased on these issues will tell you that the numbers the RIAA is seeking (and in one case was awarded) are clearly ridiculous.  Songs sell for 0.99 each on iTunes and any demand for more than three times that is extremely excessive.

Downloading 24 songs from the Internet should be a $72.00 fine, but in this case the RIAA was awarded over $200,000 from a single mother.  Would any unbiased person anywhere say that isn't excessive ?