Wes Phillips

At Waterstone's website, Neil Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett. If that isn't enough to whet your interest, the interview is accompanied by excellent Paul Kidby illustrations.

It has been an action packed week on the judicial copyright battlefield. One June 11, a federal district court upheld the first sale doctrine , ruling in UMG v Troy Augusto that sales of promotional CDs did not constitute a copyright violation.

As the May issue was being put to bed, the Internet was all aflutter over a proposal by digital strategy consultant Jim Griffin to have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) levy a $5 surcharge—a "network licensing model"—on all broadband users. Under this model, Griffin proposes that ISPs collect the fee, which would then be paid into a pool to "compensate music-copyright holders." Griffin says that consumers who do not download digital music files would not be forced to pay the surcharge, but that he anticipates "70–80% would pay" for all the content they could download.

Some musicians are remembered for a single remarkable album; some are remembered for a hit song—Bo Diddley will always be remembered for a beat. That eponymous beat—a rhumba-inflected Bomp a-bomp-a-bomp, bomp, bomp—may well have been "the most plagiarized rhythm in rock," as Rolling Stone claimed in 2005.