Music industry watch

Interesting things, but little time

There are many interesting things happening right now, but I am working hard to finish off my grant work. And while I am pounding code, blogging carries less interest for me. I guess there is only so much creative output for me in a day.

• New California Law Bans Anonymous Media File Sharing: This law requires California file sharers to make their email address available when they share files. I don't know where to start with this one -- does Arnie really think that is going to work? People will just give a false mail address, or not use the clients that require email addresses. Further, this type of law is exactly the kind of protectionist thinking that I hate so much -- what is the natural response from P2P companies? "Screw the people of California, we're not adding this email feature." And with that the people of California lose out. Just another step in a lot of valuable business leaving the US out of the loop. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
• The anti-bootlegging provision of the copyright act is toast: Larry Lessig says: ... that this regulation violates the Copyright Clause because it doesn’t have a limited term (citing Eldred (sweet justice)) Very nice -- this is an important step forward!
• Virgin enters the downloadable music space: They are using MusicNet's service with a new front-end bolted on it. Same price, DRM included and all that. Yawn. Maybe they should stick to space exploration. :-)

Ok, enough for now -- time to get back to hacking on the new MusicBrainz tagger. Watch for a release later this week!

Posted by Mayhem at September 28, 2004 02:50 PM