After posting this information on ripten, a Dell representative chimed in to say that the lack of a sound card Stereo Mix option was most likely due to an issue with laptops running XP, and that a driver existed to correct the problem. However, it is still not clear whether the driver works for all Dell computers or why the option was disabled in the first place. Nor does it address the possibility that the problem may not be confined to Dell products alone. Naturally, random forum threads do not confirm RIAA involvement with Stereo Mix as a fact—but it does have that slimy, fishy vibe we have come to expect from them. With that having been said, have you experienced similar problems? [ripten]

In addition, half of this group was happy to share all of their music, though probably more often through BitTorrent than Times Online's "hundreds, or thousands, of songs at any one time" postulation. Another point that's not quite clear is whether or not CD backups were considered to be stolen tracks. If so, these numbers become extremely tough to interpret.

Still, 80% of the music pirates said that they'd pay about £10/month for a subscription service. Now if we could only find a subscription service that offered as many tracks as the entire dark alley of the internet, we'd really have something. [Times Online]

Hughes' argument centers around subscriptions: "(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM...any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead." And he thinks subscription services are where we're headed (or at least the industry hopes so), meaning DRM for all.

But the fact that he's pinning DRM's survival on subscriptions—as opposed to advocating for it on all tracks you buy online—shows that we actually have come a long way, and DRM is dead, at least in one sense. Contrast with the MPAA's rep, whose industry is still in the beginning of the DRM life cycle: "We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us." The RIAA is a veritable Lessigian copyright hippie in comparison. [CNET]

We kind of touched on the stickiness issue when we talked about owning vs. licensing eBooks. The crux of this case is that EMI claims users are giving the files to a third party without their permission, so MP3Tunes is infringing on their copyright.

MP3Tunes, however, argues that "files are not MP3tunes' possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them." And, you're not sharing the files with a million other people. So the usual record label arguments about file-sharing don't quite fit.

Legally, this is kind of a grey, ill-defined area. But cloud computing is coming, so it's going to have to get defined sooner or later, most likely sooner. Personally, I think place-shifting should fall under fair use, but I'm not the one pounding the gavel. [MP3Tunes' Michael Robertson via Consumerist]

Though the European Parliament has plenty of power, this particular legislation seems to be more for advisory purposes. The BBC says:

The vote has no legal force and leaves national governments free to implement their own anti-piracy plans. But, said the Open Rights Group, it does "signify resistance" among European law makers to the strict measures that nations such as France are implementing.

Cases such as the Jammie Thomas case, which resulted in $222,000 worth of penalties, are based on files being made available in a shared folder in a P2P program such as the now-dead Kazaa. In that case, there was no evidence that any transfers ever took place.

However, while the judge stated that merely making files available is not enough as the basis of a lawsuit, he did say that an "offer to distribute" can be good enough. This probably means that the lawsuits will continue, just with adjusted language and arguments. Now we'll just need to wait and see whether or not the courts see keeping files in a shared directory as an "offer to distribute." And the soap opera continues. [CNET via Broadband Reports]

Michael Arrington points out that a $5 tax—besides essentially turning music into a service requiring us to perpetually suck on the industry's teat—would double its size, from $10 billion to $20 billion. So of course the labels are all for it. It's guaranteed revenue that would flood their coffers like never before. Warner's plan calls for the cash stream to flow into a pool that'll be split between copyright holders and artists. But we all know how hard labels want to screw artists.

And as Arrington points out, it would basically freeze innovation in the industry, meaning labels would be able to ream them that much harder. Not to mention, thanks to the fine print, we'd probably no longer own our music. But that's the whole point. [Portfolio via TechCrunch]

The whole video is over 60 minutes long—these are just two of the more outrageous minutes with Jim Dedman, from the NDAA, interviewing Deborah Robinson and Frank Walters from the RIAA about the benefits of going SWAT on music pirates. At one point, Walters says the piracy/drug connection can be so bad that you get asked "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without—the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be."

"If an artist has just delivered an album from [the] studio, we could potentially deliver it to a limited number of users for a higher price. It's something we're quite keen to develop; for example, through our own B2C channels—artists' Web sites."

For one, charging more simply to get first dibs at an album is ludicrous on principle. But more to the point (that maybe they'll heed) this model really presents two choices: Hear it early for an artificially inflated price, or do so for free, probably less than an hour after it goes up. Temporality is not value added, and not all music fans are as eager to pay exorbitant prices for immediate access as some of Radiohead's cabal, so this seems like epic fail waiting to happen. Unless, god forbid, people pay up. In that case, we're all doomed. [Idolator, Moconews]

As a bonus, a local filter would defeat encrypted torrents, since you've gotta decrypt 'em, at which point the filter would kick in. Sherman is a smart cookie though, and knows people aren't just gonna sign up to have their machine lojacked:

"Why would somebody put that on their machine? They wouldn't likely want to do that, they'd do that when it benefits them such as for viruses and so on and so forth...it could be enforced at the modem or put in by the ISP."

Yes, the RIAA doesn't think the record companies are making enough and that musicians are clearly making too much. I mean, they get 13% now. Like they deserve 13% for writing and creating the music that people are paying for. Hogwash! Someone had to, you know, encode it. That's worth at least 40%. And hey, these shoes don't shine themselves! So they're pushing to get that rate cut down to a shameful 9%, giving artists even less of a slice of the pie than before.

Of course, Apple, Napster and other large online retailers make the RIAA look like a charity in comparison, with Apple pushing to cut the royalty rate down to an insulting 4%. Yes, Apple wants artists to get a 4% of wholesale royalty rate. Really looking out for those artists, aren't you Steve?

If there was ever a time for a band to try going completely independent, this is it. Why give over 90% of your income away to greedy sleazebags when you can sell your music online without the middleman? This industry needs to be burned to the ground and built back up again; it's broken and it seems less and less likely that it'll be able to be fixed. [Hollywood Reporter via Slashdot]

Andrea Monti, an Italian copyright attorney, said all music sold on major music download sites is degraded. As such, exchange across P2P networks of these files, and any equivalent type of recordings, would seem to be legal under the new law. The law does restrict the sharing for "educational or scientific" use, but prosecuting offenders will nevertheless be more problematic because of it. The president of the RIAA counterpart in Italy was said to be confident in the restraints of the new ruling, but we imagine he crapped his pants as he said that. [Ars Technica]

So what are they doing? Pushing the PRO-IP Act through Congress that'll increase the statutory damages for compilation albums to a whopping $1.5 million. Yes, if you get busted sharing a soundtrack or compilation album with multiple artists on it, the RIAA wants to count each track as its own album. You know, just for the heck of it.

With statutory damages already so out of the league of the rational and the justifiable, increasing the damages this much might actually happen. I mean, if they could justify $150,000 an album before, is it really such a leap to make that $1.5 million?

The moral of the story? Be careful and don't get busted. [Ars Technica]

Kevin Eustice and Peter Reiher have built and tested a version that works perfectly using playlists stored inside laptops running their software, but since very few (sober) people stroll into a party with one of those tucked under their arm, they're aiming it at Wi-Fi-enabled MP3 players. Since Smart Party can triangulate people's position, it can also deduct their votes when they leave the party, making everything all fair and square. The one stumbling block is DRM, since copying the tracks into the system even temporarily isn't exactly RIAA-friendly activity.

It's a good idea, and it sure would make for a pretty eclectic set to groove away to, but for that one fatal DRM flaw. They're pinning their hopes on a temporary porting of the license, otherwise it would be limited to DRM-free tracks shame. We imagine it wouldn't go down too well at foam parties, either, but you wouldn't be able to hear your fave track from your soaked MP3 player with all that foam in your ear anyway, would you? [New Scientist]

Right now, though, only two labels are watermarking tracks—Universal and Sony BMG. EMI and Warner aren't lacing their files yet, but it's a definite future possibility, and the watermarks could be used in conjunction with a filtering plan like AT&T's, which was recently confirmed by an AT&T exec. Ironically, Microsoft doesn't support network filtering, so we wonder how it would feel about its new, patented digital watermarking tech being used for the cause. [Wired, Digital Home Thoughts]

What's the difference between unauthorized and illegal? Well, when the RIAA says ripped copies of CDs are unauthorized, they're pretty much saying they don't like it but can't stop you from doing it. When they say it's illegal, they're taking your ass to court and trying to ruin your life because you shared a Coldplay CD on Kazaa back in 2002. This isn't to say that the RIAA has improved its standing in our eyes — no, we still think it's the douchiest group of douches around — but even they know that no one will accept that ripping a CD in itself is illegal. [TechDirt]

And danger, music fans, the audio quality of pirated music is "usually atrocious." But don't worry, the industry's "offering cool, innovative ways" to get music like "digital album gift cards" and "Christmas-themed ringtones." Jinkies, that's cutting edge. Are they selling Hanukkah MiniDiscs too? [Live Leak via Slashdot]

It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings on his computer ... Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the ".mp3" format. ... Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife's use.

No wonder labels don't want to deal with iTunes, this kind of deal is pure money: Imeem's paying the labels so that its users can do free promo work for them! Why pay to advertise your artists when someone else can pay you to do it? Hell, users even do all of the uploading work. If you recall, this kind of arrangement's familiar to Universal—they got kickbacks on every Zune sold—and more immediately, they've got a service going with Nokia that intuition says they're not hooked into for charity or a good time on your part.

While this deal's not really making too much headway in their battle against iTunes, it shows they're looking pretty much anywhere and everywhere that'll make 'em a buck while they look for an endrun around Steve. They probably won't get his contract with the devil canceled anytime soon, but it looks like they've found that internet thing they were looking for. Maybe they'll find that "Facebook" thing next. [WSJ]

As part of her appeal, she filed to have the damages ruled unconstitutional in their heft, given that they cost labels about 70 cents a song. The Copyright Act allows for statutory damages up to $150,000 a song, which the RIAA argued (and the DoJ agrees) don't have to be anywhere near actual damages. If you want the legalese it goes like this:

Statutory damages compensate those wronged in areas in which actual damages are hard to quantify in addition to providing deterrence to those inclined to commit a public wrong.

[G]iven the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause; they were not 'so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable.

The damages—again, over $9000 a song—might be not "obviously unreasonable" but that doesn't mean they're not fucking unreasonable. [Ars, Image via Flickr]

That's a lot of MP3s, and it sure would be a better giveaway if more tracks were available. And with Sony rumored to be close to making the plunge, that leaves stodgy old Warner remaining, stubbornly clinging on to a dying technology.

Good plan, Warner! I'm sure that your forward-thinking (in)actions will only make more and more sense with time and eventually everyone will see that things were better in the good old days, dismantle the internet, and all go laugh about it at the local soda fountain. Also, you will be out of business. [Ars Technica

To go all Energizer bunny and keep beating the drum, the only way they're going to right the ship to continuing sailing on oceans of green is take their own CEO's diatribe on the piss-poor state of the industry to heart. His past remarks show he's clearly less clueless than the CEO of the largest record label, and he's managed to keep Warner as the only Big Four label still publicly traded.

On the other hand, for all his acuity, perhaps what he really needs is some common sense and maybe some face-time with us common folk consumers who just wanna be able to buy his product with reasonable terms (no DRM) at decent prices. [Yahoo!/Reuters, Flickr]

EMI is a business just like any other company, and its new owners must have realized that spending $132 million a year to alienate their customers was providing them with a really poor return on investment. I mean, it's just not good business sense. Will any of the other major labels follow suit? Time will tell, but if they do you can pretty much wave goodbye to the era of the RIAA having influence. A bittersweet victory it would be, as I'd need to find something else to bitch and moan about every day, but it'd be worth it in the end. [Ars Technica]

"There's no one in the record industry that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."

The gist of all the suits against YouTube is that, because it doesn't pro-actively take down or automatically block copyrighted content, it effectively doesn't fall under the DMCA's safe harbor provisions. If Universal, Trent's former record label, hosts a site where a fan pulls a Danger Mouse with Year Zero and Prince's 1999, which Universal doesn't own, they think they'll be opening themselves to the same blasts they're pelting YouTube with. Then their lawsuit would be in jeopardy, and you can't have that.

Trent's thoughts:

While I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is consistent with what they have done in the past. So... we are challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other's feet. We have a cool and innovative site ready to launch but we're currently scratching our heads as to how to proceed.

Just in case you weren't sure whether or not the RIAA was completely evil, this pretty much proves it. A letter from a group of university officials has this to say about the bill:

Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid—including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past 14 years and don't own a single Radiohead release, now's your chance to get on board. The first way to buy it is in a set with all seven discs in digipacks with original artwork. That'll set you back £40, or about $83, which isn't much of a discount (thanks mostly to the insane exchange rate).

The next option is to buy all seven albums as digital downloads, all encoded as 320kbps MP3s, along with digital artwork. The price for this is an unforgiving £35, or $73.

The last option is probably the most appealing to Radiohead die-hards, as it comes with a limited-edition USB drive. The 4GB drive will come loaded with the seven albums encoded as uncompressed WAV files as well as digital artwork. The price for this "strictly limited edition" piece of hardware? £80, or $167. Yes, $167 for a thumb drive loaded up with WAV files.

So, how many of these sets do you think EMI will sell? You've got to appreciate the choice of encoding options, but those prices are beyond insane. And the real problem is that only the most devoted of fans would even consider spending this kind of coin on RH materials, and they obviously own all the back catalog already. So, uh, what the hell, EMI? [Product Page]

As Idolator's editor had guessed, the shitty 160kbps files should've been a tipoff something else was in the works besides the $80 feel-good bonus-laden package. Which, had fans known a regular CD release is coming out, would they have dropped that much coin? Some, sure, but all? And what about the poor bastards that paid full price (or more) for the middling quality MP3s?

What makes the move so goddamn dirty is that it was complete subterfuge—had they said they were planning a CD release in the first place it wouldn't be so bad. Instead, they cheated fans and rode a sky-high wave of good press while planning to do the same old, same old the entire time. There's no way I'm buying their album now, in any form. It would've nonetheless made for a more interesting experiment if they'd foregone the traditional channels altogether, a bold break rather than a toe in the water. [Financial Times via Idolator]

The chumps at PRS are suing Kwik-Fit, a car repair chain, for copyright infringement, claiming that they play their music too loudly and that people can hear it. Yep, that's the offense. They claim that if you play music loud enough for others to hear, it counts as "performance." Of course, if Kwik-Fit had a license to play their music, everything would be dandy. The price of said license? A mere $61,000 a year.

Are they insane? Seriously, this blows my mind. By their logic, you would need to pay the labels to listen to music in your car with your windows rolled down at a stop light if you were delivering pizzas or to listen to music at your desk at your office. Those all count as "performances" now, and if you're at a place of business, they'd better pay up. Seriously, will someone burn this industry to the ground and built it anew with people who have souls? [Ars Technica]

I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.