Free Republic

Former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde has always been very outspoken about people's inherent drive to copy things. Last year he paid the ultimate price of sacrificing his freedom for his involvement in TPB, but that hasn't changed his core 'kopimi' values. One of Peter's major frustrations is how the entertainment industries handles the idea of copying. When calculating the losses piracy costs, they often put too much value on pirated copies. This is something Peter knows all too well, as he still owes various movie and music companies millions in damages. However, this hasn't stopped him from continuing to...

Pink Floyd are suing their record label EMI, claiming that it has no right to sell their songs except as part of full albums. According to a 1999 contract, tunes like Money and Another Brick in the Wall cannot be "unbundled" from the albums on which they appear; EMI alleges this does not apply to downloads. "Pink Floyd [are] well-known for performing seamless pieces," said Robert Howe, the band's lawyer, at a High Court hearing yesterday. "Many of the songs blend into each other." To reflect this, Pink Floyd's renegotiated 1999 contract "expressly prohibits" EMI from selling songs out of...

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album often cited as the greatest pop recording in music history, received a thoroughly modern 40th-anniversary salute last week... But off stage, in a sign of the recording industry’s declining fortunes, shareholders of EMI, the music conglomerate that markets “Sgt. Pepper” and a vast trove of other recordings, were weighing a plan to sell the company as its financial performance was weakening. ... Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital...

Oh, OK, I've nothing better to do on a Friday evening than recommend some songs. But these aren't any songs. Oh no! These are 20 songs you've probably never heard of, but are well worth listening to. No reviews follow, as that will subtract from your curiosity 1) Sufjan stevens-Chicago 2) China Crisis-Hampton Beach 3) Arcade Fire –Cold wind 4) Radiohead-Street Spirit 5) Manic Street Preachers- If you tolerate this 6) Simon Dupree-Kites 7) Crowded Houes-Black and White Boy 8) Depeche Mode-Home 9) Gary Bird-The Crown 10) Genesis-The Brazilian 11)Utada Hikaru-Simple and Clean 12) Gypsy Kings-Sin Ella 13)Nine Inch Nails-Something...

I can still purchase and download music, but Media Player won't play it. When I click on the song title, a pop-up tells me to upgrade my DRM components. I click OK, then this error message comes up first:The security upgrade cannot be performed because the server is not available. Try again later.Click again, and this comes up:Windows Media Player is not installed properly. Reinstall the Player.After 3 removals and redownloads, including a trip to MS update, the same errors occur.I contacted the download site, and their tech support tried to walk me through a manual DRM upgrade (delete the...

PARIS, Dec. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- France lower house of parliament on Thursday voted to legalise music and movies download on Internet, running counter to moves in most other Western countries, where such downloads are illegal in order to protect copyright. The measure, introduced as two amendments to a government bill designed to toughen digital copyright protection, deems that downloading copyrighted files is legal as long as it is for private use only and the internet users pays a general fee for royalty payments. The French government has called for a second vote in the National Assembly. French Culture Minister Renaud...

Moscow prosecutors have declined to press criminal charges against a popular Internet site that sells MP3s for just pennies, according to Russian news reports. Record industry groups in the United States and Europe are trying to close the Russian AllofMP3.com, which offers downloads of MP3s--including songs from The Beatles and other groups that have not authorized digital distribution--for just a few cents per song. Late last month, Moscow police completed an investigation of the issue and recommended to prosecutors that the site be charged with copyright violations. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) also submitted a formal complaint...

LOS ANGELES - The owners of the Kazaa file-sharing network are suing the movie and recording industries, claiming that they don't understand the digital age and are monopolizing entertainment. Sharman Networks Ltd. filed its counterclaim Monday in response to a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by several recording labels and movie studios. That lawsuit accuses Sharman of providing free access to copyright music and films to millions of Internet users in the United States. The latest filing came two weeks after U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson dismissed Sharman's claim that it could not be sued in the United States because it...