Category: File Sharing

This is what industry groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (‘RIAA’) are afraid of: exponential and untraceable growth of underground data distribution networks. Analysis suggests that current technologies — in particular, a method of filesharing known as BitTorrent — are indeed capable of large-scale electronic duplication of copyrighted files in relative privacy. Despite… Read more →

The Recording Industry Association of America (‘RIAA’) has sued a further 717 US-based individuals it claims have been distributing music without permission on peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) networks. Among them are 68 university students. The latest bout of legal action brings the total number of individuals sued for filesharing to almost 8500. The RIAA last initiated a… Read more →

In a request filed by six Australian music labels to the Federal Court, access has been granted to documents and computer records of Sharman Networks, including source code and encryption technologies used by the infamous P2P file-sharing application, Kazaa. Universal Music, Festival Mushroom Records, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, and BMG Australia successfully applied… Read more →

Wired brings word of yet another bizarre, technology-inspired urban trend beginning to crop up amongst owners of Apple iPod music devices. Ranking among flash mobbing and playlistism, morning joggers seem to be approaching one another and exchanging headphone jacks (hence the term ‘jack swapping’) in order to gleen a glimpse of the other person’s musical… Read more →

Gympie, Queensland has a new ‘green’ power plant fuelled entirely by the discarded shells of Macadamia nuts, which burn cleaner than other fossil fuels (less CO2 emission). “Mmm… Macamadamia…” In completely unrelated news, C|Net news has an insightful article examining the validity of the RIAA subpoena process and the potential ramifications of the new bill… Read more →

The latest in the recent spate of RIAA subpoenas seems to have been served to a 12 year-old girl from New York, America. Realising the unwanted publicity this could generate, the RIAA quickly settled with the girl’s mother for $2000 (several times less than most suits). The child was allegedly more than 1000 songs using… Read more →

In an insightful article at BBC, Mark Ward describes the true threat to the music industry: street piracy. According to the article: [t]he pirate CD market is now so big, $4.6bn, it is “of greater value than the legitimate music market of every country in the world, except the USA and Japan”. Ken from Ars… Read more →

Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week evinced the first signs of opposition to an RIAA subpoena campaign against file-sharing activity by predominantly college-aged students. Over the past 3 months, the Recording Industry Association of America has issued 871 subpoenas demanding information from several major tertiary institutions about the use of file… Read more →