Sony BMG announced that it would become the fourth and final major label to begin selling digital music on Amazon.com, offering its entire catalog in the MP3 format by the end of the month
Sony BMG Music Entertainment will offer tracks in MP3 format, without DRM, from 15 January in the US and from late January in Canada. The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card’s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears’ Blackout
and Barry Manilow’s The Greatest Songs of the Seventies
An antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on 31 December charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market. The complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format
Warner Music Group is making its music available for US downloads from Amazon in MP3 format without copy protection. Warner had been holding out against using the format because MP3 tracks are easier to share between users and may be freely burned onto CDs
All Australian televisions will have to be digital within five years under the new federal government’s plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he has taken the first firm steps to ensure the switchover to digital TV is completed by the end of 2013
The Organisation for Transformative Works has just launched. It’s a fascinating new proto-nonprofit determined to defend media fandom from the excesses of copyright and to help fanfic writers and vidders maintain control of their remixed works — via Boing Boing
So, I decided to take the RFID passport out for a spin, and now Neibi and I are in Sapporo, Japan, sequestered in a business hotel opposite Hokkaido University. Outside it’s a bracing -6 degrees celsius.
I will now relate to you the tale of day one.
On the first day, December 14th, we flew from Sydney to Narita (Tokyo international airport). We flew JAL and it was pretty good: the flight left late yet arrived early, we got vegetarian food, and the headrest entertainment screens were absorbing. The chick who checked us in was like an angrier Lee Lin Chin, but she got the job done.
I spent my eight and a half hours playing go (on the headrest: victory by resignation), watching movies (Stardust, enjoyable; and Ratatouille, a competent entry), playing Travel Blokus (with Neibi… we tried to play Ingenious Travel Edition but she dropped the pegs), reading Nabokov (short stories), eating (rice crackers), and playing shogi (on the headrest: defeat by checkmate).
When we landed we got into a tiny train (my head touched the roof) which took us to honour systems customs (“I’d like to declare…” “No, just go through.”). From there we took the famous airport limo bus to Haneda (Tokyo domestic).
So, the first day was most spent sitting down, but after checking into our hotel (which was nice) we strolled through the industrial ghetto seeking dinner. We found an extremely Japanese street, which was laid out as follows: curry house, medical clinic, hana-ya, yakitori stand, level crossing, McDonalds, Lawson konbini, karaoke bar, soba restaurant. The soba place had a kana / primary school kanji menu so I thought I had a decent shot at ordering our dinner.
We got ooki yasai soba o futatsu, which for some reason had spam in it (“spam, spam, eggs and spam, tenpura and spam”, etc). The patrons mocked us in a friendly fashion. “Dozo”, they said, gesturing to the counter as I fell over trying to remove my shoes. The proprietor was a fan of Australia and kept mentioning Kingusu Kurossu, which he was keen on.
The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel (an East-West buffet with fruit salad and cold miso), then flew to Sapporo, Hokkaido.
Terry Pratchett, has announced that he has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The OBE-winning author of the Discworld fantasy series made the original announcement on the web site of Discworld illustrator Paul Kidby. Pratchett remains optimistic: I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think — it’s too soon to tell
— via Slashdot
Voters at Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year 2007 poll have chosen w00t
as 2007’s most iconic word. Merriam-Webster says that the word is a gamer’s acronym for we own the other team
, but I’d have to agree with Cory Doctorow that it’s a backronym, a back-formed acronym created to explain a word already in use #&8212; via Boing Boing
The Seven Network is putting its digital house in order with plans to beef up its high-definition channel next week and early testing under way for its TiVo personal video recorder. Seven is expected to start broadcasting at least 50 hours of programming on its high-definition digital channel, Seven HD, from Monday and has advertising booked to begin the following Saturday
This week, Deutsche Grammophon, the classical music recording giant that’s owned by Universal Music Group, launched its own DRM-free online music store
The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and Sony BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant’s lawyers, in UMG v Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA’s attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process — via Slashdot
Hot on the heels of online retail giant Amazon, book chain Dymocks is preparing to launch an electronic book reader in Australia before Christmas. Dymocks chief executive Don Grover said he was in final
negotiations with a European e-book reader manufacturer and planned to make an announcement within the next 10 days. Update: the iLiad has been launched at an obscenely overpriced AU$899
When it comes to internet speeds, we’ve long-since consigned the humble kilobit-class connection to the dustbin, so a mathematics-based breakthrough has us wondering if megabit- and even gigabit-level connections will one day sound as quaintly archaic. Researchers at Japan’s Tohoku University have tweaked existing protocols to enable standard fibre-optic cables to carry data at hundreds of terabits per second. At that speed, full movies could be downloaded almost instantaneously in their hundreds
CNET has branched out from tech news and reviews to launch its own online music service, the snappily titled CNET.com.au Music Centre. So far the site offers over 90,000 free downloads and streams from over 17,000 indy artists
Online book seller and retail chain Dymocks has taken a leap into electronic publishing with the launch of Dymocks Digital, allowing customers to purchase audible and digital forms of the traditional paper book. Taking a lengthy 30 months to complete the project, Dymocks now offers some 13,000 audible and 120,000 readable titles which can be accessed through the company’s Web site or new touch screen kiosks at the main Sydney store
Marvel is putting some of its older comics online Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared. It’s a tentative move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months after they first appear in print
DRM-free music sells at a much higher rate online than protected music, according to UK-based digital music store 7 Digital. In fact, customers buy it four times as often as they do DRMed music. As a result, almost 80 percent of the store’s sales are of DRM-free content. 7 Digital may not sound familiar to some, but it carries over 3 million songs and has many selections from major artists in addition to independent labels
Musician Moby has become the latest artist to give away tracks for free, but not to just anybody… he’s showing some love to independent filmmakers, letting indie, student and non-profit filmmakers use select songs for free
Joss Whedon of Buffy
and Firefly
fame has signed on to do another TV series on Fox starring Eliza Dushku. The series is going to be called Dollhouse
, and the story surrounds a group of people programmed
to do missions out of a sort of high-tech dorm — via Slashdot
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