Science and Technology

Here is how the Magnatune Internet record label describes itself: We’re a record label. But we’re not evil. We call it “try before you buy.” It’s the shareware model applied to music. Listen to hundreds of MP3’d albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations. If you like …

From the way the RIAA is responding to the current digital challenge, you’d think the recording industry had never faced a threat from technological innovation before. That is hardly the case, as an interesting article in the NY Times today brings up: Since Thomas A. Edison recorded the human voice …

Could you function without email? I hate spam as much as anyone but it takes me only a very small porton of my time and attention to delete it – I don’t even have to open 95% of it to know what it is and that I don’t want/need to …

Rob Walker has an interesting take on file sharing in the NY Times Magazine. First, he dismisses the notion that file sharing represents the first step on a slippery slope toward the degradation of capitalism: For that to be the case, a couple of underlying assumptions must be true. One …

The NY Times reports the RIAA is losing the morality battle among the Youth of Today, or at least this segment thereof. Remember, over time perception IS reality: IT shouldn’t be illegal,” said 14-year-old Sonya Arndt. “It’s not like I’m selling it.” “Isn’t it like recording movies?” asked Korbi Blanchard, …

My friend Stephen is on tour playing music in Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon. He had a hell of a time emailing from Syria – this report comes from Kuwait: I’m now in Kuwait where mercifully the internet is not (as) censored!!! I can’t imagine how much effort those guys go to …

Besides all the political, legal, and cultural machinations driving the need to resolve outstanding digital content and copyright issues, the spread of broadband is also quickening the pulse: The global number of broadband subscribers grew 72 per cent in 2002 to approximately 62 million, according to a report from the …

Okay, it’s a little bit creepy and obsessive, but it’s mostly sweet and touching and another set of uses for the artifacts of our culture – that’s OUR culture, not the songwriters, the singers, the record labels – OURS: Kenneth Roberts is an old man with a broken heart and …

Today is a critical day in the digital entertainment wars: an updated study says copyright needs to be seriously revamped to balance the needs of the public with those of rights holders and creators; one ISP stands firm against the RIAA while another goes back to court to challenge the …

There is no question the idea of turning music into a service rather than a commodity has achieved critical mass, getting prominent placement in America’s “newspaper of record,” the NY Times, in the last week alone. Of course EVERYONE is talking about the future of music now that the RIAA …