The agreement covers anyone who "purchased, received, or used" CDs containing the flawed DRM after August 2003. Sony has ceased manufacturing CDs with the offending software. The…
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On Monday, May 22, federal judge Naomi Reice Buchwald granted final approval to the settlement of the class action suit brought against Sony BMG for embedding intrusive and crippling digital rights management (DRM) software into its CDs. Not only did the software load secretly onto users' computers, it opened them to malware invasions, in addition to reportedly sending Sony information about consumers' computers.
In a story last week, we covered the efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to prevent portable MP3 players from entering the market without copy-protection measures in place. On August 16, a federal court entered a temporary restraining order (TRO) to enjoin the distribution and sale of Diamond Multimedia's Rio PMP300 portable MP3 recording device.
According to the RIAA, the court granted a motion, filed by the RIAA and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC), seeking a TRO based on the judge's conclusion that the organizations are likely to prevail…
You have to wonder what Sony is thinking. The product copy claims that the new Sony "VAIO Digital Studio" computer is the company's "incredible computing and entertainment hybrid combining television, recording, playback and even music." Oooops. Forget about that music part, especially if you purchase Sony Music's latest Celine Dion CD.
It would appear that the company's right music hand is trying to chop off it's computing left as European consumers are discovering that Dion's new disc has been crippled so that it will not play on a computer's CD drive—or worse. Early reports on…
Singer Sam Moore has won a protracted lawsuit brought against retirement fund trustees of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). The settlement of the nine-year-old case was announced in an Atlanta federal court on Wednesday, December 5.
Moore, the Sam of legendary soul act Sam & Dave, was instrumental in litigation that involved 14 other artists, including the estate of the late singer Mary Wells. The artists and their attorneys agreed to settle for $8.4 million in a case that eventually found union members battling administrators of their own retirement…
Remember how your Uncle Charlie used to hole up in the basement with his ham radio rig? He'd spend hours down there, tweaking his equipment and chatting in an arcane jargon with fellow hobbyists around the world.
The radio hobby---in its early days, closely allied with the audio hobby---has fallen on hard times in recent years. The personalities who might have been attracted to radio have mostly given themselves over to computers. But a new development from Rosetta Laboratories of Melbourne, Australia, may revive amateur radio and simultaneously introduce it to a whole new generation of…
Do offensive lyrics in pop music contribute to violent behavior and teen suicide? Some lawmakers believe so, and think public investment in the entertainment business is immoral.
Keith Olberg, a Republican Assemblyman from the desert community of Victorville, has introduced a bill in California's legislature that would require the state to unload its investment in the entertainment industry. Known as the "California Family Protection Act," Olberg's bill would require California's Public Employees Retirement System, the world's fourth-largest investment fund, to divest itself of an…
A billion-dollar loss for the parent company may be a big gain for performers under contract to Warner Music Group, who will benefit from cross-promotional efforts aimed at millions of America Online subscribers beginning this month.
The campaign is part of a new corporate agenda for recently merged AOL Time Warner, which finalized its union in January after more than a year of review by federal regulators. The old Time Warner tended to operate its divisions as unrelated independent companies, but will now have all of them working together more cohesively, according to press releases…
Last week, InterTrust Technologies, which creates Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and format developer DataPlay announced a partnership intended to create a portable media distribution platform for protected content such as music. Universal Music Group, EMI Recorded Music, and BMG Entertainment have all announced that they are planning to release prerecorded music on the resultant DataPlay digital format for use in a variety of consumer electronic devices.
Taking the MiniDisc concept a step further, DataPlay has developed a small enclosed disc that is less than 1.5" (32mm) in…
Heads up RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America): those music dollars skittering away in all directions probably have very little to do with online file trading. That was the message last week as members of two important trade organizations challenged the conventional RIAA view that blames peer-to-peer networks for the record industry's third dismal year in a row.
In a rousing call to reason, 32-time Grammy nominee John Snyder, who is also president of Artist House Records and a board member of NARAS (National Academy of Recorded Arts and Sciences), issued a lengthy statement…
This will be a huge year for the electronics industry, insiders are saying in the wake of the just-finished 1999 Consumer Electronics Show. This one "surpassed anything we've seen before," said Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association, in a post-Show statement. "Our industry is driving the technologies that will define the digital age."
Overall factory sales are expected to hit $80 billion this year, an increase of more than 5% over 1998's figures, with significant leaps in home information systems, electronic games, and mobile electronics. The…