Barry Willis

In what may be the precursor to a deluge of lawsuits against electronics manufacturers, computer giant <A HREF="http://www.hp.com/">Hewlett-Packard</A&gt; has agreed to pay fees to German music licensing organization <A HREF="http://www.gema.de/eng/index.html">GEMA</A&gt; for revenue supposedly lost to piracy. Hewlett-Packard was targeted by GEMA last May, because the Palo Alto, Calfornia-based company's CD burners dominate the German market, and was originally asked to pay 30 marks ($12.90) for each unit sold in Germany since February, 1998.

When audiophiles speak of "imaging," they may not be using the term metaphorically. Recent research at the University of California at San Diego's School of Medicine indicates that hearing and vision are more closely related than had been previously thought.

Investors have shown an inexplicable willingness to foot the bill for <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A>'s $53.4 million settlement with <A HREF="http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group</A>. In the four days following the announcement of a settlement on Tuesday, November 13, the now fully legitimate Internet music site watched its stock surge to four times the value it had only a month before. Shares of MP3.com closed Friday, November 17 at $9.42 each, triple the per-share price on the morning of the announcement. The stock had sunk to a 52-week low of $2.50 per share on October 11.

For the music industry, copyright and royalty litigation is like an endless war fought on many fronts. During early November, as four of the industry's "Big Five" continued their pursuit of the file-sharing service Napster, a parallel trial in US Federal Court in New York against music archiving-and-accessing site <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A&gt; by <A HREF="http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group</A> entered its penalty phase, that segment of the proceeding in which aggrieved plaintiffs seek to extract money from guilty defendants. Other plaintiffs in the trial&mdash;Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Warner Music, and EMI&mdash;have all settled with the San Diego-based Internet service for an average of $20 million each.

At least one media conglomerate has seen the light. In a surprise move, German giant <A HREF="http://www.bertelsmann.de">Bertelsmann AG</A> broke ranks with the music industry and settled its copyright-infringement lawsuit with embattled <A HREF="http://www.napster.com/">Napster</A&gt;, in effect becoming the startup's tentative partner. The deal, reached on October 31, could mark the real beginning of the music industry's move into the Internet age. Bertelsmann is the parent organization of <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com/">Bertelsmann Music Group</A> (BMG), one of the world's major music labels, as well as online music retailer <A HREF="http://www.cdnow.com/">CDnow</A&gt;.

A group of researchers has claimed success at cracking four digital audio watermarking technologies presented in a challenge by the <A HREF="http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative</A> in September. The claim has been denied by David Leibowitz, chairman of <A HREF="http://www.verance.com/">Verance Corporation</A>, creator of one of the challenged watermarks. SDMI has made no public statement on the claim, and has resolved to remain silent until all 447 submitted hacks are evaluated.

Artists' groups are celebrating what they hope will be more than a symbolic victory over the recording industry in the wake of legislation signed by President Clinton the last week of October. Known as "The Works Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act," the repeal negates a provision that was inserted into last year's "Satellite Home Viewer Act" at the insistence of the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America</A>, designating musical recordings as "works for hire." Such a designation catergorizes a musical recording as a commodity that can be purchased at a fixed price, such as a table built by a furniture craftsman, rather than as a performance subject to syndication and royalty fees.