The last week of July was a busy one for music-industry attorneys&mdash;and, by some measures, a successful one. As almost everyone in the world is aware, on Wednesday, July 26, the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America</A> (RIAA) won a round in its fight against <A HREF="http://www.napster.com/">Napster</A&gt;, a San Mateo, California&ndash;based software company that enables the sharing of MP3 music files over the Internet. On that day, in a US Federal court in San Francisco, Judge Marilyn Patel decreed that the widespread sharing of music using Napster was a form of wholesale copyright violation, and ordered the service shut down effective midnight on Friday, July 28. Napster, in turn, appealed and won a stay of execution two days after Judge Patel's ruling that will enable it to remain online and in business until at least mid-September.

In December, after months of conducting listening tests with audio professionals in the US, the <A HREF="http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative</A> (SDMI) choose a watermarking technology from <A HREF="http://www.verance.com/">Verance Corporation</A> for DVD-Audio copyright protection. Test results had indicated that Verance's system was the least detectable of the contenders under consideration.

The recent <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10809/">struggle</A&gt; between the RIAA and Napster may seem like a distant battle rumbling off in some foreign realm, far removed from most audiophiles: about once a week we get e-mails asking why a high-end audio website should even cover such stuff.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.

It is <I>so</I> tempting.