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Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman made a startling admission when he sat down for a Second Life interview with Reuters: his kids have pirated music. Well, they've probably pirated music—Bronfman doesn't sound too sure. "I'm fairly certain that they have, and I'm fairly certain that they've suffered the consequences," he said, though he later confirmed that he had caught at least one Bronfman child using P2P software. Naturally, his kids were forced to cough up thousands of dollars to the RIAA to keep from getting sued. Right? Of course not; Bronfman told the reporter that he disciplined his child, but...

Perhaps as soon as this week, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the future of file swapping, in one of the most closely watched legal battles of the year. With implications that could ripple from Hollywood studio gates to executive suites of the biggest Silicon Valley companies, the case has drawn an impressive list of participants. Groups ranging from state attorneys general to the Christian Coalition all have weighed in, promising near-apocalyptic consequences if the court ignores their advice. At issue is how much responsibility technology companies have for the actions of customers who use products to break copyright...

College kids looking for free music may have popularized Internet file-trading software, but the technology is now used by everyone from penny-pinching phone callers to polar explorers. Even the recording industry is changing its tune as labels that for years have waged a legal war against peer-to-peer companies are now allowing authorized uses of the technology. "I never thought you'd hear this from me, but the record industry has, mostly, been fairly cooperative," said Wayne Rosso, who is launching an authorized service called Mashboxx while the U.S. Supreme Court considers the entertainment industry's copyright suit against Grokster, his old peer-to-peer...

The Internet appears to be ready for its close-up, but you may want to decline any invitations to join a prerelease party. A file swapper who distributes a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet would face a possible prison sentence of up to three years, if a bill approved this week by Congress becomes law, as expected. Adoption of the bill would represent the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

RealNetworks in a Venture With Comcast he relationship between online music and high-speed Internet access just got a little closer. Comcast Cable, the biggest provider of broadband Internet services, is set to announce today that it will offer the Rhapsody online music service from RealNetworks to its nearly 5 million subscribers. If a large number of Comcast broadband customers become Rhapsody users, it would be an enormous boon to RealNetworks, which has about 250,000 subscribers for its digital music services. The two companies are starting their partnership by offering all Comcast Internet customers seven days of free access to Rhapsody....

<p>The recording industry sued 80 more music fans for copyright infringement on Thursday.</p> <p>It's the second wave of lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America. In September, the music trade group sued 261 people, many of whom said they had no warning that they were targets of legal action for sharing songs on the Internet.</p>

An anonymous California computer user went to court Thursday to challenge the recording industry's file-trading subpoenas, charging that they are unconstitutional and violate her right to privacy. The legal motion, filed in Washington, D.C., federal court by a "Jane Doe" Internet service subscriber, is the first from an individual whose personal information has been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of America in recent months. The RIAA has used court orders to try to identify more than 1,000 computer users it alleges have been offering copyrighted songs on file-trading networks. It plans to use the information gained to file copyright...

DETROIT – Taking a cue from the RIAA campaign against audio file-sharing, lawyers for deceased German wunderkind Johannes Gutenberg today announced a 6.5 billion-count indictment against all of humanity, charging that nearly every man, woman, and child in advanced Western society has illegally benefited in some way from the invention of the printing press over the past five hundred and fifty years without paying a dime to its benefactor. Gutenberg, who testified via séance before a federal grand jury in Detroit, claimed that the unchecked, rampant abuse of literary piracy has “significantly impacted” his quality of rapture in the after-life,...

Coleman launches inquiry into RIAA's piracy crackdown(Washington-AP) -- Senator Norm Coleman has begun an inquiry into the recording industry's copyright lawsuits against online music swappers.Coleman says the recording industry's tactics could ensnare innocent people.The Minnesota Republican chairs the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations. He's asked the Recording Industry Association of America for copies of its subpoenas issued to Internet providers, and description of its safeguards against targeting innocent people. Coleman says the industry has legitimate concerns about copyright infringement. But he says the industry seems to have adopted a ``shotgun'' approach that could hurt people who don't know the rules...

The recording industry has launched a sweeping effort to identify and shut down individual song swappers, making good on recent threats to expand its legal battle against copyright theft. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has now issued more than 911 subpoenas to Internet service providers across the United States, trying to get the names of people still offering music on file-sharing networks such as KaZaA and Grokster. Today, "Tech Live" brings you the RIAA Hit List, the user names of file traders targeted in the recording industry subpoenas. Last month, we brought you the story of Jesse Jordan,...

WASHINGTON - Illegally download copyright music from the Internet once, or even twice, and you get a warning. Do it a third time, and your computer gets destroyed. That's the suggestion made by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) at a Tuesday hearing on copyright abuse, reflecting a growing frustration in Congress over failure of the technology and entertainment industries to protect copyrights in a digital age. The surprise statement by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that he favors developing technology to remotely destroy computers used for illegal downloads represents a dramatic escalation in the increasingly...

File-Swapping Students Fined RIAA reaches settlement in lawsuit, promises vigilance. Carly Suppa, IDG News Service Friday, May 02, 2003 Four university students have reached settlements in music piracy lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America. Advertisement The RIAA sued the four students separately in April. The music industry association accused them of sharing copyright material and operating on-campus, Napster-like file-swapping services designed to search for music on computers connected to school networks. Settlement Reached Under the terms of the settlements this week, the students have agreed to pay fines, the RIAA announced Friday. Two students are at the...

Just under two weeks ago, the RIAA did a deal with a group representing eight of the nation's top computer companies. Included in the deal was a pledge to oppose mandatory anti-copying hardware for personal computers.

The Recording Industry Association of America wants to go after the companies that provide you with your Internet access. Here are some of the printable reactions since RIAA chief Hilary Rosen presented the proposal last weekend, during which she said Internet service providers would soon "be held accountable" for money the music industry has lost due to file-swapping services: It's stupid. Unethical. Illegal. Insane. "Blaming ISPs for giving these hardened criminals the bandwidth for perpetrating their heinous file-sharing acts is akin to blaming the highway department for creating roads that are used by dope smugglers," said security consultant Robert Ferrell....

<p> News Home - Yahoo! - Help Welcome, Guest Personalize News Home Page   -   Sign In Yahoo! News   Wed, Jan 22, 2003 Search    for     Advanced Verizon Must Reveal Internet Song Swapper Tue Jan 21, 6:05 PM ET Add Technology - Internet Report to My Yahoo! By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Recording companies won a victory in their fight against online piracy on Tuesday when a U.S. court ordered Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ - news) to turn over the name of a customer suspected of downloading more than 600 songs in one day over the...

UNIVERSITY PARK - As electronic file-swapping keeps playing its illegal jingle, the recording industry is upping complaints against universities nationwide -- possibly including Penn State. Mike Negra, president of Mike's Video Inc. in State College, said compact-disc sales in college towns in 2002 are "probably down somewhere between 50 and 60 percent" from 1999. "Stores such as mine, and other stores in college markets across the country, were the first to see the potential impact of file-swapping," Negra said. "Business, generally, in that group of stores in the second half of 2000, was down about 40 percent," he said. Writing...

Got unauthorized MP3s? Record labels are launching a multimillion-dollar public interest-style ad campaign to make sure you don't. On Thursday, a coalition of artists and labels will start running print, radio and TV ads featuring dozens of major recording stars who compare file swapping with stealing. The ads, reminiscent of the American Dairy Association's Got Milk or MTV's Rock the Vote campaigns, are designed to shame people out of illegally swapping music. They feature big-name artists such as Madonna, P. Diddy and Sting. One of the ads contains quotes from a variety of singers, including Britney Spears. "Would you go...

Very Interesting...so how are they going to find all of us? How will they know who is file swapping? Will they monitor all of our computers? http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121102,00.html

Dr. Damn cleans house for file-swappers By John Borland Special to ZDNet News April 25, 2002, 4:30 AM PT The record companies had their Napster, and the stream of file-swapping companies that followed. The file-swapping companies now have their "Dr. Damn." For the past several weeks, the pseudonymous programmer, who says he's a male college student and declines to give his real name, has been releasing versions of popular file-swapping programs online with the advertising and user-tracking features stripped out. He's done Grokster and iMesh. And he's not alone. His work, now available through the Grokster and iMesh networks themselves,...