Apple iPod Sales Figures

Maine University Helps Students Fight Back RIAA Lawsuits

According to a post on p2pnet.net a small university legal clinic in Maine are taking up the fight in lawsuits being brought against fellow students. Under guidance from the clinic director and University of Maine associate professor Deirdre Smith law students Hannah Ames and Lisa Chmelecki are representing the students being sued.

If successful this move by the legal clinic could pave the way for other university law students to fight back against these actions by the RIAA providing both protection for their students, a low cost method for the universities to get out from under the RIAA threats and provide the students with some real world heavy weight legal experience.

Via winextra. It is obvious the RIAA has no qualms about stepping on students without means to fight back. Nice to hear about someone helping out the other side. The RIAA has the right to fight for their copyright, but using scare tactics and deeper pockets to try and prevent piracy just doesn't work and destroys some people's lives in the process. I'm sure the lawyers get paid, though...

Album Sales Plunged 20% Last Xmas

From ARS Technica:

Variety has the latest music numbers from Nielsen Soundscan on music sales from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. In 2007, 83.9 million albums were sold, down 21.4 million from last year. A 20 percent drop in sales is more than a blip; it's serious trouble.

The recent news suggests that people are turning away from the CD as a Christmas present, due in large part to the rise of online music services like iTunes, eMusic, and the Amazon MP3 shop. Now that non-DRMed music is widely available from many popular artists, giving the gift of digital downloads can be an attractive option for holiday shoppers. Certainly it's becoming more mainstream; even my local supermarket now stocks iTunes gift cards.

Music buying has certainly been migrating online, and the spectacular decline of CD sales is putting extra pressure on labels to move more online copies of the music they publish. This is clearly one of the reasons that Warner, traditionally a staunch DRM defender, agreed to strip DRM from its tracks offered on Amazon; it needed to do something (anything) to shore up flagging sales.

But as albums move online, the "album" is also losing its luster. Download services let consumers pick and choose, and many buyers seem to do just that, snagging the hits and leaving the rest behind. While digital distribution enables this, it's hard to blame digital for the common perception that most top 40 albums contain their share of filler.

DRM and Networked Disks

Samuel Tardieu writes about DRM and Networked Disks:

irst I hoped I had misread the web page. Then I realized I had not.

Networked disks are very useful. At home, they allow you to access your data from any computer on your local network without needing to keep a machine acting as a file server turned on all the time. But wait! You could use a networked disk to store songs and movies that you have illegally downloaded, couldn’t you?

Don’t worry, your networked disk will make sure you comply with the law and much more. (...) Western Digital seems to think that it is best that you do not share it at all, just in case:

Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the following file types cannot be shared by different users using WD Anywhere Access.

If these file types are on a share on the WD My Book World Edition system and another user accesses the share, these file will not be displayed for sharing. Any other file types can be shared using WD Anywhere Access.


...This post could have been titled “how DRM (Digital Rights Management) can hurt the world even when they are not used” or “we assume that you are a criminal”.

This is pretty bad. Just in case someone may be infringing on copyright (i.e. to protect their a$$es from RIAA lawsuits) they hinder the functionality of a product. Sad.

Free our Music

Music should be free. It should be enjoyed with friends and family. It should be a social experience. Music should not be imprisoned in one device. We need to move the focus of music from shiny gadgets to where it belongs: the songs.

This can only be achieved with media that is device-agnostic, and more attractive to users than current options. People don't want pirated music, they want convenience, portability and ease of use.

Projections by Enders Analysis estimate Global music sales, will drop from as much as $45 billion in 1997 to almost half, $23 billion, in 2009. According to the RIAA, revenues from physical music media in the US in 2006 ($9B) were roughly 25% lower than 1996 ($12B). New markets such as legal downloads and mobile music sales combined did not even make up the difference. Why? Because the music industry insists on pushing media burdened with DRM, and that just doesn't work.

We need a solution. Music has value, it doesn't need to be free (as in beer) but it needs to be free (as in speech). Free our Music.