— A report that the major labels, co-owners of MySpace Music, are not happy with the revenue performance of the service does not come as a surprise. Nor is their patience and confidence in new president Cortney Holt a surprise. MySpace Music, though lagging behind some competitors in features and usability, has a long time frame and is a work in progress. But, for sure, progress is needed. (CNET)
— “Copyright and Wrongs” is a debate about whether copyright laws do more harm than good, at the Economist Web site. Opening remarks were made by Professor William Fisher of Harvard Law School and Professor Justin Hughes of Cardozo Law School. The IFPI’s John Kennedy is today’s featured guest. Some of his claims and anecdotes, such as the downsized indie label, can be explained by the rightsizing of the record business after the boom years of the CD era and the transition to lower-revenue digital products. In other words, a failure of copyright is not the reason people are buying single downloads over CDs. Overall, Kennedy holds to the line that copyright is an enabler of digital growth. An excerpt: “No one pretends that copyright laws today are perfect or that all jurisdictions move quickly enough to keep pace with technology. Exceptions and flexibility are needed to meet consumers’ concerns. But the absence of an adequate legal regime to defend creators’ rights has to be considered unthinkable.” (The Economist)
— Live Nation is now selling MP3s from “100’s of artists,” such as U2, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and Aerosmith, at the Live Nation Superstore and some artist’s MusicToday stores. Given the download site’s unfortunate mix of limited catalog, standard pricing ($9.99 for albums) and basic design, the ingredient to its success will most likely be Live Nation’s ability to bundle downloads with ticket purchases and get a few impulse purchases added in existing shopping carts. (Digital Music News)
— Yesterday there was a hearing on the Informed P2P User Act by the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Here is a sample of the testimony from the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center: “No doubt part of the bill aims to discourage the use of file sharing techniques that may infringe copyright as well as making users vulnerable to certain types of inadvertent file sharing. But there is some risk that the bill would also discourage the use of file sharing techniques that do not raise such concerns. More generally, it appears to be posting a warning sign on a very wide variety of applications that most likely have little to do with the sponsor’s concern.” (Digital Koans)
— The IFPI is going after torrent hosting sites by going after the ISPs with a request to take the sites offline. (Torrentfreak)
— RIAA lawsuits against downloaders continue – just as the trade group said they would. “The RIAA (which coordinates the suits on behalf of the labels) never said it was immediately stopping all suits against individuals. Rather, as the original WSJ report explained, the labels were stopping ‘mass suits,’ and ‘the industry group is reserving the right to sue people who are particularly heavy file sharers, or who ignore repeated warnings.'” (Copyrights and Campaigns)
— Country star Phil Vassar and his songwriter partner Craig Wiseman have escaped a 2007 copyright infringement lawsuit. It seems the very nature of Music Row was to the pair’s benefit. According to the court’s ruling, while there are similarities between the songs, “the experts in this case essentially agree that these similarities are the result of common usage in the industry, and that they are not indicative of copying.” (Bennet Law Office)
