Wes Phillips

Back in June, we reported on the BBC's "The Beethoven Experience", described as "a bold experiment in whether or not free music stimulates legitimate music sales or suppresses them." Last week, The Independent published a terse 200-word article, reporting that the Beeb had downloaded one million files during the Experience, and stating "The initiative has infuriated the bosses of leading classical record companies, who argue the offer undermines the value of music and that any further offers would be unfair competition."

On July 4, a Brazilian website apparently posted some tools that allowed users of InterVideo's WinDVD to pull copy-protected data off DVD-Audio discs and store it on the user's hard drive rather than simply routing it to a sound card. According to Afterdawn, the tools didn't "do the decryption themselves, [but] instead patched WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card."

On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Metro-Goldwin-Mayer (MGM), agreeing that peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as StreamCast Networks and Grokster could be held responsible (read: be sued) if they encouraged their users to infringe copyrights. This will return the "MGM vs Grokster" case to a lower court, where it will be determined whether or not the P2P companies encouraged their users to violate copyright laws.

Good Morning America: The war for listeners between XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio has seen MLB go to one broadcaster (XM) and Howard Stern to the other. On June 21, Sirius announced an agreement that will put the BBC's popular Radio 1 on a time-shifted broadcast schedule. The time-shift will enable American listeners to hear Radio 1's broadcast day "as it was intended—with Chris Moyles' Breakfast Show in the morning, Scott Mills' show in the afternoon, and kicking off the weekend with Pete Tong's Friday night Essential Selection," according to a press release.