RIAA

After the lively discussion on Google’s piracy liabilities, today the company has to deal again with piracy and confront the almighty Recording Industry Association of America, too. This is about Google’s MP3 Music Download Pro app.  This application was designed by the company especially for Android and allows users to download music onto their smartphones. At the moment, the application is rated as the 5th most popular one on the entire Android Market. Of course, the anti-piracy outfit...Read Full Story

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) , which seems totally incapable of understanding that the Internet has completely and irretrievably remade their business , has ended their campaign of suing impoverished college students for downloading mp3s . Since 2003 the RIAA has sued approximately 35,000 people. Most of these lawsuits ended when their lawyers succeeded in extorting a $4000 settlement out of these kids. The reason they often targeted college students , is not just that...Read Full Story

Streaming website Grooveshark has become the latest flashpoint in the cat-and-mouse game between the music industry and music sharing services. But unlike their largely unsuccessful suit against cyber-locker site MP3Tunes earlier this year, the copyright owners this time around appear to be well poised to tear down the “safe harbors” that typically protect such websites. Grooveshark, which claims to have millions of listeners, is popular as an online jukebox stuffed with popular songs added...Read Full Story

Last.fm, the UK based music community, is said to have handed over data to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of American) listing users with illegal pirated tracks. Read full article and vote.Read Full Story

So far, the RIAA has sued over 18,000 individuals for allegedly sharing music over the Internet. But the industry uses slapdash investigative methods to find its targets, and so innocent people as well as guilty ones can find themselves entangled in an expensive and draining process. One recent victim was a woman who didn't even own a computer. Another lawsuit target was deceased. If Ms. Foster is awarded attorney's fees, it will encourage future innocent victims to stand up for themselves in...Read Full Story

Ahoy there feeble music listeners, have you paid your royalties today?  The RIAA is an absurd organization whose sole intent is to steal from the poor to give to the rich.  There mission is to protect the copyrights of music artists: and to screw over the consumer. Recently, the RIAA has begun its crusade against the online radio streams and decided that they were not paying enough to have rights to the music they played.  Rather than treating radio streams on the revenue they earn, the RIAA...Read Full Story

But while downloading the album of an established, world-famous rock star might not take a bite out of the artists’ wallet, the spread of file sharing has begun to impact artists who do not have the luxury of a private jet or a world tour. by Liam Scott, Staff Writer The Arkells | Flickr by Scott Penner A war is ragging in the U.S., one that pits the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against individual file-sharers. Six years in though, the RIAA has spent $64.1 million on...Read Full Story

I've been busily working on finishing my new podcast and will have more to say about it very soon... We'll be launching it on the 23rd so stay tuned. In the mean time, please visit this funny song from David Pogue about the RIAA and its method of curing the world of music piracy (sung to the tune of the ever popular YMCA song by the Village People ). read moreRead Full Story

 NEW YORK - AT&T Inc., the nation's largest Internet service provider, will start sending warnings to its subscribers when music labels and movie studios allege that they are trafficking in pirated material, according to an executive. The phone company thus joins other major ISPs that either go beyond legal requirements or interpret their duties under the law to mean that they have to forward such notices. Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top executive in Washington, confirmed this week that...Read Full Story

The Internet service providers that have agreed to work with the recording industry to battle illegal file sharing are starting to come forward. Joe Waz, a senior vice president at Comcast, the nation's second largest ISP, told a gathering of music industry executives that the company has issued 2 million notices on behalf of copyright owners, according to multiple people who were in attendance Waz made the comments Tuesday while part of a panel at the Leadership Music Digital...Read Full Story