NewsJammie Thomas Trial 2.0 Ends with Even Bigger Damages
Posted 06/19/09 at 10:00:08 AM by Paul Lilly
For the second time, a jury on Thursday found Jammie Thomas liable for willful copyright infringement, this time ordering her to pay fines totaling an eye-popping $1.92 million to the RIAA. The surprise decision breaks down to $80,000 for each of the 24 songs Thomas was found guilty of illegally sharing. According to ArsTechnica, Thomas let out a gasp as the fine was read.
"Good luck trying to get it from me," Thomas said when speaking about the verdict. "It's like squeezing blood from a turnip."
For those who haven't been following, Thomas in 2007 was initially accused of illegally sharing 1,700 songs, but the RIAA dropped that number down to 24. In October of the same year, a jury found her guilty and imposed a $222,000 verdict against her. The decision was later thrown out when U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said he erred when giving his jury instructions that simply making songs available amounted to copyright infringement.
The RIAA, big winners in the retrial, told reporters that they have always been, and still are, willing to settle the case. Thomas' lawyer acknowledged the settlement offer, but said he plans to file numerous motions if Thomas chooses to continue the fight.
NewsVirgin and Universal Announce Unlimited Music Download Service
Posted 06/16/09 at 10:00:06 AM by Paul Lilly
Through a partnership with Universal, Virgin Media said it plans to launch an unlimited music download subscription service. The well timed announcement comes just one day before a British report hits the public eye detailing how the creative and telecom industries should go about bumping up digital sales to cope with lost revenue due to online piracy.
"We listened to our customers, our fans, and our artists and we think that this is an opportunity to bring music to a wider audience," said Lucian Grainge, Universal Music chairman and CEO.
According to Reuters, people familiar with the service said it would cost around $16 to $24 per month. Both sides are describing the service as a world first, which would allow Virgin Media broadband customers to both listen to streaming tracks and download however many tracks and albums they want.
Unlike other unlimited subscription services, the downloadable MP3s won't come with any DRM shackles, which means the tracks can be transferred to and played from any MP3-capable device.
"This is really high stakes, if this can't work then what will," commented Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter.
NewsNapster to Relaunch Again with New Streaming Strategy
Posted 05/18/09 at 09:41:51 AM by Paul Lilly
Let the streaming music wars begin. Just last week Microsoft went on the offensive and attacked Apple's iTunes service over its pricing model compared to the Zune Pass unlimited subscription service, which serves up all-you-can-listen-to tunes plus 10 free tracks for $14.99/month. Looking to leapfrog ahead of them both, Napster, now a Best Buy commodity, is planning to relaunch its subscription music service with a $5 deal that includes 5 free tracks every month.
"There's no need to settle for 30-second clips to decide if you want to buy a song," said Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster. "For five bucks now you can have access to our entire music catalog and get five MP3s to add to your permanent collection."
The new pricing model, which goes into effect tonight, could put Napster in contention with more popular music services and put the one-time P2P pioneer back on top. Napster's catalog sits at over 7 million strong and includes more than 60 commercial-free radio stations, which seems like an obscene amount of content for the same price as a Subway footlong.
Anyone plan on giving Napster a second look? Hit the jump and sound off.
NewsMicrosoft Attacks Apple over iTunes Pricing
Posted 05/12/09 at 01:32:37 PM by Paul Lilly
Oh snap, it's on like Donkey Kong, or at least like an intense level of Galaga. More specifically, Microsoft continues its advertising offensive against Apple with yet another commercial pointing out the cost of being hip, only this one targets iTunes and not MacBooks.
In the latest ad, financial planner (certified, of course) Wes Moss points out it would take $30,000 to fill the latest iPod using iTunes at a buck a pop.
"I don't know about you, but I don't have thirty grand laying around for music," Moss says.
His solution? A subscription service like Zune Pass, of course! "One costs a lot, and one costs a little," Moss adds, referring to the iPod with $30,000 worth of music and Zune Pass's unlimited subscription plan for $14.99/month. For those of you doing the math at home, $30,000 buys almost 167 years of Zune Pass.
There are obvious flaws in Microsoft's latest pitch, but the goal here isn't necessarily to discredit Apple's iPod/iTunes combination as a viable music platform (too late for that) as much as it is to promote Zune Pass. The question is, will it work?
Hit the jump and sound off!
NewsAmazon Follows iTunes' Variable Pricing Lead
Posted 04/08/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly
Say it isn't so, Amazon! Taking a page from iTunes' recently announced (as in yesterday) variable pricing scale, Amazon has decided to follow suit just one day later. Boo, hiss!
Apple's iTunes yesterday introduced a variable pricing model where songs sell for $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29. The move earned Amazon some short-lived praise for staying under a buck, but that all goes out the window today.
To be fair, the blame more than likely goes to the music studios, who may have raised prices in exchange for serving up DRM-free titles. Amazon and Apple aren't alone in switching to variable pricing, as it appears to have also affected Real's Rhapsody store and Lala. Prices are up at Wal-Mart too, with some songs reaching $1.24.
Reactions to what looks like an industry-wide price hike? Hit the jump and sound off.
NewsEmployee Misconduct, Social Networks, and Mobile Media Are Big Three IT Security Risks, Survey Says
Posted 02/11/09 at 05:18:55 PM by Mark Edward Soper
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has just released its sixth annual Global Security Survey (PDF link). Some of the highlights (or lowlights, depending upon your point of view) include:
As in previous surveys, respondents recognize that people are both an organization’s greatest asset as well as its weakest link. But security vigilance is even more important in hard economic times, when the increased stress levels can lead people to behave in atypical ways.
Maybe DTT has cases like these in mind:
- a fired Fannie Mae programmer accused of planting a computer virus that could wipe out 4,000 servers
- a San Francisco computer engineer who held the city's computer network hostage last summer
However, not all the news is bad. For some good news in the threat arena, and your chance to share your biggest security challenges, join us after the jump.
NewsDigital Music Sales on Even Footing – The War Between Apple & Amazon
Posted 01/11/09 at 05:00:03 PM by Justin Kerr
Ever since Amazon launched its music store back in September 2007, everyone assumed its discounted prices and DRM free catalog was a result of the music industries dissatisfaction with Apples dominance. With iTunes being the primary management software for the most popular MP3 player on the planet, Amazon knew it would need an edge to stay competitive. The 10 cent per track discount was a nice touch, but techies and audio enthusiasts alike were eager to switch if it meant we could free our music. Most of us assumed the DRM restrictions on iTunes would remain for the forcible future, but now that this has turned out not to be the case what else wasn’t true?
Well, according to unnamed sources cited by CNET, everybody selling downloadable music is also paying the same wholesale price. Though it has never been confirmed, many believe Apple makes but a few pennies per .99 cent download. If this is indeed true, anything else sold below this price might actually be a loss leader. Now with iTunes discounting its back catalog of tracks to a mere .69 cents, and at comparable bit rates, it’s well positioned to steal back business from Amazon. NPD senior industry analyst Russ Crupnick claims the two services don’t impact each other as much as we might think, but at the very least it certainly makes switching from iTunes to a separate web store much less desirable then it used to be.
Now that iTunes has gone DRM free, and has begun to discount its back catalog of tracks, can Amazon still compete?
NewsMP3 Corruption Bug "Bytes" Users of Leaked Win7 Beta
Posted 01/05/09 at 03:46:52 PM by Mark Edward Soper
When Build 7000 of Windows 7 leaked onto the Internet recently, some bloggers speculated that Microsoft had deliberately leaked Build 7000. If that's the case, Redmond has some 'splainin' to do: numerous users have reported that Windows Media Player 12 (the media player included in Windows 7) corrupts some MP3 files.
According to posters at a Neowin.net forum, WMP 12 removes the first 2 to 3 seconds of MP3s that have large headers (over 16KB) when the "automatically fill in missing metadata using the online service" option is selected. This option is part of the Express setup defaults. According to ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog, the problem seems to be confined to variable bit-rate (VBR) MP3 files.
Microsoft is aware of the bug and is working on a patch, but if you've decided not to wait for an official Beta 1 of Windows 7, what should you do in the meantime to protect your MP3 collection? Join us after the jump to learn how to protect your precious rips and purchased files - and for your chance to tell us if this has happened to you.
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