Protecting American Assets from International Thieves
The theft of U.S. music and movies by counterfeiters gets the headlines, but Hollywood millionaires don't get much sympathy from the man in the street. But that man in the street should realize that virtually nothing that Americans make is immune to being ripped off. No software or hardware is safe. And so the news from Washington Thursday is welcome. Legislation has been introduced in the Senate to protect American innovation and address intellectual property rights enforcement. The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 was introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee's ranking minority member. The bill would authorize the Attorney General to enforce civil copyright and intellectual property laws and coordinate federal efforts against counterfeiting and piracy.

[Gary Shapiro rivals Larry Lessig in his zeal to see that creators rights are eviscerated.]
U.S. Consumer Electronics Industry To Reach $173 Billion In 2008, $183 Billion In 2009
The consumer electronics industry will see overall shipment revenues top $173 billion in the United States in 2008, according to new data released today by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The semi-annual U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales and Forecast shows CE shipment revenues will grow by 7.3 percent this year, reaching more than $183 billion by 2009. "The CE industry is a backbone of economic activity in this country," said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. "In a tough economy, consumers turn to CE products for many reasons - from entertaining in the home to telecommuting to save gas. Such factors - and access to global consumers through free trade - help the CE industry to flourish while growth rates of other industries have either stalled or declined. Consumers don't want to live without CE products and continue to crave the latest gadgets and innovations our industry has to offer."

EFF: Yahoo Music Should Compensate Customers
By Greg Sandoval -- Yahoo Music is telling customers that it won't allow users who bought songs from the service to transfer them to new devices or PCs after September 30.  The announcement on Thursday has stunned the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Corynne McSherry, an attorney with EFF called on Yahoo to apologize to customers and either replace their music with open MP3s or issue refunds.

Britain Eyes Download Tax
By Nigel Morris -- Internet users could face an annual charge of up to £30 to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing. Ministers are backing proposals that would enable millions of broadband users to pay an annual levy which would allow them to copy as much—previously illegal—music from the internet as they wanted. The money raised would be channelled back to the rights-holders, with artists responsible for the most popular songs receiving a bigger slice of the cash.

Music Bosses Told: Pump Up The Incentives If You Want to Beat Pirates
By Craig Brown -- Music labels will have to make it worth fans' while to download legally if they want to stop internet piracy, industry experts warned last night. A media analyst yesterday said that if record labels want to avoid alienating the music-buying public, and recoup the lost revenue, they must offer incentives and abandon the role of "middle men" between musicians and fans.

Andersson Framed Madonna's Sample Request Letter
ABBA star Benny Andersson was so pleased that Madonna sampled a line from the Swedish band's 1979 smash Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) on her 2005 song HUNG UP, he framed the letter she wrote to the group to commemorate the occasion. "Her assistant came over to Stockholm with a CD and we played it. And we thought the record was great. But also realising that without the 'Gimme! Gimme!' thing in it, it wouldn't have been so great. So we said, 'Well, fine, of course you can. But we just split the copyright, half-half.'"

Girl Talk's Sample-Mad Album Seeks Refuge Online
By Jake Coyle -- Conflicts over copyrights are commonplace on the Internet. Can the Web be a sanctuary from the law?  The laptop DJ Gregg Gillis, who performs under the name Girl Talk, hopes so. He recently released his fourth album, "Feed the Animals," online in the pay-what-you-want style that Radiohead popularized.  The album is almost custom-made for lawsuits. It was made with samples, a mishmash of more than 200 artists, from Roy Orbison to Lil' Wayne. One song, "Still Here," includes Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Radiohead, Ace of Base, Fergie, Kenny Loggins, Cat Stevens, 50 Cent — and that's not even half of the song's samples.

Rapper Lil Wayne Is Being Sued by the Rolling Stones
According to papers filed in Manhattan yesterday, the Stones people have  accused the rapper, his collaborators and record label of copyright infringement on a track called Playing With Fire. Which is the same name as an old Stones song. And, according to the legal bods, includes a sample of that song. And it shouldn't.  The papers also claim that Lil Wayne has damaged the Stones' reputation with his 'explicit, sexist and offensive language'.

Who Knew? Not 14, but 5 Years Is the Ideal Copyright Term.
By Nancy Prager -- In a move that one ups Larry Lessig's call for a 14 year copyright term, Andrew Dubber, a professor in England, has announced to the world that the ideal copyright term for creative content is 5 years. Like Lessig, Dubber's 5 year term would be renewable if the copyright creator has used the works in some commercial fashion. Otherwise, they slip into the so-called public domain. In Lessig's model there would be a one-time renewal right, in Dubber's case it may be infinite. Neither Lessig nor Dubber provide economic evidence to support their rationale for decreasing the length of term for copyright. Dubber proposes that a work may be renewed if the creator has a commercial interest in it after the first five years without considering that many works do not become commercially viable until after the fifth year. [Or, that in the digital age, recorded works and derivative works are likely to be commercially available in perpetuity.]

Review:  The Public Domain How To Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art, & More

Muze Adds Track Level Data to MuzeMusic 2.0 Media Information Solution
Muze Inc., today announced that it will now provide track-level data as a part of its forthcoming release of MuzeMusic 2.0, the company's next-generation media information solutions portfolio for music product sales, audience development, and social networking applications. MuzeMusic 2.0 Tracks Plus contains essential top-line commercial data -- such as title, artist, label, release date, and product code -- for individual music tracks. Over 20 million new descriptive attributes have been added to MuzeMusic 2.0 product suite, including details such as composers, themes, genres, and styles by track. The integration of these attributes with Muze album and artist metadata greatly improves navigation and refines search results, as well as providing key data elements necessary for generating high-quality recommendations and playlists.

Arena Rock: Has it Left the Building?
By John Soeder -- So what happens when The Boss and other consistently top-grossing road warriors hang up their guitars for good? Will there be enough younger artists to fill the void on the arena circuit -- not to mention all those seats? Some experts think not.

An Amphitheater Bailout?
By Michael Andersen -- Clark County's "world class" concert venue is chronically short of both concerts and concertgoers, and county commissioners are considering an $8.7 million bailout. The Amphitheater at Clark County, built in 2002 for $40 million at no public expense, has lost at least $1 million every year it's been open, according to a consultant's report. The biggest of 11 concerts last year, Rush, drew 10,773 people to the 18,000-seat open-air venue. Of the other 10 acts, only two sold enough to fill its 8,000 reserveable seats.

The Real Story of How Sony Killed Toshiba's HD DVD
By Hilary Lewis -- When Sony's Blu-Ray DVD format overtook Toshiba's HD DVD last winter, it seemed like an act of God: Warner Bros. chose Blu-Ray, Wal-Mart stopped carrying HD DVD, and Toshiba was toast. But of course this didn't "just happen." Sony, panicked by Toshiba's deal with Paramount, schemed until it found a way to kill HD DVD off

High-Stakes Race to Unlock a Wider Web
By Kim Hart -- The nation's top technology companies have spent millions of dollars and nearly two years building devices, poring over laptops and working in federal labs trying to come up with a new way of providing high-speed Internet to bandwidth-hungry cities as well as hard-to-reach rural regions.  Engineers from the technology heavyweights are hoping to prove to the FCC that the unlicensed airwaves between television stations, known as white spaces, could provide a new form of mobile Internet service. Critics say new technology may hinder TV signals.

Copyright Fight Looms over College Textbooks
By Maya T. Prabhu --  The high cost of college textbooks has spawned a new battleground in the fight to keep students from downloading copyright-protected materials over the internet: textbook file sharing. Several web sites allow--and, in some cases, encourage--students to make available scanned copies of textbook pages for others to download free of charge, often using the same peer-to-peer file-sharing technology that is used to swap music and movies online.

Hackers Get Hold of Critical Internet Flaw
By Glenn Chapman -- Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers have caught on to a "critical" flaw that lets them control traffic on the Internet. "We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.  The threat is greatest for business computers handling online traffic or hosting websites, according to security researchers. The flaw is a boon for "phishing" cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as bank or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other information.

SINGAPORE: It's Art, for the Facebook Generation
By Miral Fahmy - - If like many people in our technology-ruled world you can't live without Google, video games, digital media and social networking sites like Facebook, this is your kind of art exhibit. For just over a week from Friday, the "International Symposium on Electronic Art 2008," a leading global media arts event, will showcase 16 artworks that transform the technology we all use on a daily basis into exhibits created to get you thinking about the state of the world we live in.

Internet Endangers Big-City Tradition: The Bike Messenger

Happy SysAdmin Day!
By Patrick Orndorff -- Today is SysAdmin Day, otherwise known System Administrator Appreciation Day. This "holiday" was first celebrated in 2000 and takes place annually on the last Friday in July. The goal, according to the SysAdmin Day website, it to give the guys and gals who maintain your computer network some love... and perhaps some nifty gifties!

Are You Internet Famous?
Use the Wired Celebrity Meter to find out how big a deal you really are. Our algorithm will dig through your personal pages to find out how many fans are following your online exploits.