The University of Oregon has filed a motion to quash the RIAA’s subpoena for information on student identities in what is believed to be the first such motion made by a university with support from the state Attorney General. The motion explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented
Following the bust of the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, most of its 180,000 members are keeping their heads down and trying to stay inconspicuous. However, Trent Reznor, frontman of Nine Inch Nails isn’t worried: I had an account there,
he said. It was like the world’s greatest record store
The BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, is to launch a further 30 channels internationally, as well as a high-definition outlet and an on-demand service in the United States, as part of the next stage of its aggressive expansion plan. The launches, which will be based on four thematic brands — BBC Entertainment, with shows such as Doctor Who; BBC Knowledge, featuring programmes such as Top Gear; BBC Lifestyle, with What Not To Wear; and children’s outlet CBeebies, featuring the Teletubbies — come on top of 21 channels it already plans to launch before the end of this financial year
Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting — the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996 — via Slashdot
After years of trying, Australian power rockers AC/DC have finally obtained acdc.com from a porn company that used the site to redirect many an unwitting fan to sites offering filthy photos of bondage, water sports and other types of kink
Apple plans to drop the price of all iTunes Plus tracks. Currently, each track is US$1.29 while normal
DRMed tracks are 99¢ apiece. That discrepancy will be no longer, as Apple will begin pricing all of its iTunes Plus songs at 99¢ apiece (DRMed tracks will also remain at 99¢)
It’s been a long time, but Led Zeppelin, one of the last superstar acts to refrain from selling its music online, is finally offering its catalogue to digital-music fans. The shift by Led Zeppelin, whose reunion concert in London next month has already incited a frenzy for tickets, highlights the clout of digital sales in the music market as mass merchants reduce the shelf space devoted to compact discs1
Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over. The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced that the group is now free of any recording contract with any label. Representatives from Reznor’s music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment. Oasis and Jamiroquai are also heavily considering jumping aboard the direct-to-audience express
Most current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October next year under onerous mandatory energy requirements recommended in a report commissioned by the Federal Government. The consulting firm Digital CEnergy, which prepared the report for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011
MSNBC.com is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a small but innovative player in what is known as participatory journalism
. It is MSNBC.com’s first acquisition in its 11-year history — via Newsvine
Wallace and Gromit are to return in a half-hour television adventure — the first since 1995’s A Close Shave. Aardman Animations has announced that the cheese-loving inventor and his loyal dog will star in Trouble At Mill
— to screen on BBC One in late 2008
Radiohead has apparently chosen the path less travelled when it comes to the release of their new album. They are offering two very unique methods of purchase for their new music, the ability to name your own price for a digital download or the ability to purchase a special discbox
which will contain the album on CD and vinyl in addition to a horde of goodies. Will be interesting to see how this new model works out for them and what it might do to more traditional methods — via Slashdot
A weapon used to fight spammers is now helping university researchers preserve old books and manuscripts. Carnegie Mellon is using a test to help decipher words in books that machines cannot read by letting sites use them to authenticate log-ins. The test, known as a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart), was originally designed at Carnegie Mellon to help to keep out automated programs known as bots
Travel guide publisher Lonely Planet has been sold to BBC Worldwide for a reported $250 million. The privately owned business was founded in 1972 by Tony and Maureen Wheeler and has operations in Australia, the US and UK. The commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says the deal is part of a plan to increase its operations in Australia and America and build the Lonely Planet franchise around the world
Copyright lawyers from Harvard’s Berkman Center have written an article in the Harvard Crimson excoriating the Harvard Coop bookstore for claiming that its prices are intellectual property
— via Boing Boing
The Sex Pistols returned to the studio recently to re-record Anarchy in the UK
for Neversoft’s upcoming Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Activision announced the Sex Pistol’s re-recording, as the publisher claims it was unable to locate the original multi-tracks
Random House and eMusic have begun to sell DRM-free audiobooks on their site. This is pretty big news, since iTunes has an exclusive deal with Audible for ebooks, and Audible won’t sell non-DRM ebooks (though they have other non-DRM products), even when the author doesn’t want any DRM
Punk legends The Sex Pistols have announced a concert to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of their seminal album Never Mind the Bollocks. Original members John Lydon, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock will play at the Brixton Academy in London on 8 November. The group, who split in 1978, first reformed for a world tour in 1996 and last performed together in 2003
In one of the bolder experiments to date, SpiralFrog.com, a service scheduled to open today, will let Web surfers download songs by U2, Timbaland, Amy Winehouse and other Universal Music Group artists free. The catch: Consumers have to wait 90 seconds for each track to download, and they must answer questions each month about their buying habits. In addition, the songs can’t be played on iPods or burned onto CDs as they can with 99-cent downloads from the dominant online music store, Apple’s iTunes
Quietly over the weekend, Network TEN has joined the Foxtel EPG. It’s been a long running negotation
, but finally Foxtel users, and iQ users in particular, gain the benefit of actually seeing the stations programming in the schedule. So it’s now just Channel Seven still holding out on Foxtel
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