Culture and Society

School librarians side with Verizon in their court case against the RIAA: Academic-library groups have joined 33 other organizations in filing a legal brief in support of Verizon Communications. The company is trying to conceal from the recording industry the names of music fans who have used Verizon telephone lines …

My son has an Xbox – he likes it already, but with this information he may end up REALLY liking it: Microsoft’s strategy of selling the Xbox, its video game console, at a loss has wrought an unforeseen consequence. Some users increasingly view the Xbox as a cheap appliance easily …

Major Media Figure, cool guy, Detroit Free Press tech writer, and Blogcritic Mike Wendland is featuring Blogcritics on his NBC-TV High Tech Talk segment that goes out to all 215 affiliates tomorrow! The segment will be running at various times throughout the week on local newscasts. Here’s part of the …

Broadband usage up 50% in the last year, but cost and availability may slow growth: Roughly 31 million Americans — about 31 percent of whom use the Web at home — access the Internet through cable modems, digital subscriber lines (DSL) or satellite dishes, according to the study, which surveyed …

Chinese government censors chat and persecutes anti-government chatters: The extent of Chinese Government censorship of what its people say in online chat rooms has been exposed by Reporters Without Borders. Messages critical of the Chinese Government either never appear or are purged from popular chat rooms, a study by the …

Michael Page beat the RIAA because he was able to spoonfeed the judge the distinction between centralized and decentralized P2P service: Late last month, however, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson in Los Angeles ruled that Grokster and Streamcast Networks Inc., which distributes Morpheus file-sharing software, didn’t violate the studios’ …

Media and Entertainment Law Online News: Interesting monthly publication for those concerned with legal aspects of media and entertainment (duh) – this month’s issue has features on Assembling an Entertainment Industry Team, the legal status of the RIAA vs. P2P, and the question of Who Controls the Right to Make …

Roxio is close to buying Pressplay: Roxio Inc., a maker of CD-burning software, is close to a deal to buy music subscription service Pressplay for about $30 million in cash and stock, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Pressplay, a joint venture between Sony Corp.’s …

Apparently on break from writing new IP laws for Iraq (actually, no confirmation on that one yet), RIAA chairman Hilary Rosen tosses out a nice little propaganda pie to the readers of Business 2.0: As head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I’ve been the public face for …

Seoul District Court dismisses case against Soribada, a P2P service: “The prosecution’s case did not state why the defendants’ acts qualify as an offence, thus the case is in violation of procedural regulations,” the court said in its ruling. “The prosecution stated that the defendants (brothers only known by their …