LATEST ADDITIONS

On June 11, <I>Recording Industry vs the People</I>, Ray Beckerman's popular blogspot site covering the recording industry's ongoing series of litigations, revealed that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had voluntarily and "without prejudice" filed a motion on May 27 to dismiss its ongoing complaint, <I>Warner v Cassin</I>, which maintained that posting files to a peer-to-peer network was distribution of those files, whether or not actual distribution occurred. This is known in copyright law as "making available."

It has been an action packed week on the judicial copyright battlefield. One June 11, a <A HREF="http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/umg_v_augusto/LA07CV03106SJO-O.pdf">f… district court upheld</A> the <A HREF="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/08/first-sale-why-it-matters-why-were… sale doctrine</A> , ruling in <I>UMG v Troy Augusto</I> that sales of promotional CDs did not constitute a copyright violation.

Even the Onion is reporting on the vinyl revival. CDs are really in trouble now.

Thiel is one of those loudspeaker manufacturers, like Spica and Dahiquist, among others, that pay close attention to detail.

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&mdash;a "network licensing model"&mdash;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&ndash;80% would pay" for all the content they could download.

These days I often have to stop myself and remember again that I need to write about music and not just the incredibly weird situation in which today's music business is both dying and rising from the ashes simultaneously.

Marque sus calendarios, vinyl lovers. While I was at Iris Records on Saturday, I learned of the upcoming Brooklyn Record Riot (!!).