January 3 -- It
may be a new year, but the on-going downsizing trend which has
ripped through the digital music industry continues with Listen.com
reportedly letting go of 42 employees, a 25% reduction of its
current staff.
January 4 -- MusicMaker.com
has announced plans to liquidate itself, citing the limited amount
of investment available to the digital music industry.
Like others in the digital music
industry the company's stock sank over the past 7 months to around
$2.88 a share, from a high of $281.25 on the day of it's initial
public offering in July of 1999.
The company was one of the
first digital music companies to attempt to reach licensing agreements
with the major label recording companies. Its failure to do so
ultimately caused the demise of the company. EMI sold their stake
in the company last month.
January 4 -- SoundScan,
Inc., the company that's been keeping track of sales for the
record industry and several major publications, including Billboard,
since 1991, announced today that Y2K was the biggest year for
sales ever. The previous record was set in 1999, when 784.8 million
units were sold. With 785.1 units sold over the last 12 months,
2000 ekes past to set the new mark. And over 13 million albums
were sold online.
The biggest selling album of
the biggest year in history was *NSync's No Strings Attached
which sold a mind-blowing 9.9 million copies. The album also
set a record for first-week-of-release sales, when over 2.4 million
units sailed from the stores. Furthermore, a staggering 6 albums
broke the million-selling milestone in their first week. Previous
to 2000, a mere 2 albums had pulled that off.
The remainder of SoundScan's
top-10 for sales looks like this:
2. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP {7.92M}
3. Britney Spears: Oops! I Did It Again {7.89M}
4. Creed: Human Clay {6.6M}
5. Santana: Supernatural {5.9M}
6. The Beatles: 1 {5.068M}
7. Nelly: Country Grammar {5.067M}
8. Backstreet Boys: Black & Blue {4.3M}
9. Dr. Dre: Dr. Dre 2001 {4M}
10. Destiny's Child: Writing's On The Wall {3.8M}
A total of 202 albums sold
500,000 or more copies last year, of which 88 sold at least a
million. Of all the year's best-selling albums, The Beatles'
had the biggest month-peak, moving over 5 million copies in the
month of December. It is currently in its 5th week at #1 on Billboard's
Top 200 Albums chart, selling a little under 500,000 more, which
is pretty astonishing for a group that hasn't played a note together
in over 30 years.
As far as the labels go, the
leader was Universal, whose market share was a full 28 percent.
Next in line was BMG with 19.4%, Sony with 15.4%, Warner with
13.5%, and EMI with 8.7%.
Touring numbers were also record-setting
in 2000, as $1.7 billion in ticket sales were tallied. It seems
Tina Turner led the list, pulling in $80.2 million, followed
by *NSync with $76.4 million.
SoundScan's report also noted
the best-selling albums of the past ten years. The list is led
off by Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill {13.7M}, followed
by Shania Twain's Come On Over {13.6M}, Metallica's Metallica
{12.4M}, Backstreet Boys' Millennium {11.6M}, and The Bodyguard
soundtrack (11.6M}.
January 8 -- XM
Satellite Radio has announced that is will launch its first satellite
"XM-1" nicknamed "Roll" from a floating launch
platform near the equator at 6PM EST today. XM Satellite Radio
will then launch a second satellite, the XM-2 nicknamed "Rock"
this coming spring.
January 8 -- MP3.com
has filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office supporting
an RIAA request that the office conduct an inquiry regarding
the application of the Copyright Act to the delivery of music
over the Internet.
January 8 -- The
October 2000 issue of Entertainment Weekly contained an article
titled "Loser Takes All" about Napster's large user
base growth during their court case with the RIAA. If Metallica,
other musicians, and even the RIAA itself had never created such
a fuss over the software to begin with, would Napster be as big
as it is today anyway?
The article also shows a graph
with Napster's registered users rising from one million in February
2000 to nearly five million in July 2000. In the latest Napster.com
newsletter, Shawn Fanning (Napster's creator) said the company
was approaching 50 million registered users with as many as 1.3
million using the service at the same time.
January 9 -- Apple
Computer introduces iTunes.
January 11 -- Napster
and Bertelsmann release a new version of Napster software, which
includes an e-commerce component linking to Bertelsmann-owned
CDNow. The new release
marks the first step the two companies have taken toward generating
money.
January 12 -- EMusic
has announced that it is reducing its overhead operating costs
by reducing its staff by 66 people, around 36% of its current
staff. With the reduction
in staff, EMusic is expecting to save an estimated $16 million
dollars over the next year.
January 14 -- "Pimpshiz,"
also known as the person who allegedly hacked into over 200 websites
last year and changed the sites to promote Napster, has had the
law catch up with him. On Friday, police confirmed that they
have searched the home of the 17-year-old high school student
and confiscated computer equipment.
January 15 -- Culture
Minister Catherine Tasca of France has said the country is considering
to collect taxes on the sale of digital electronic goods that
can record music as a way of compensating the artists.
"A tax on set-top boxes,
advanced video recorders and computers, in other words, any device
that allows such works to be recorded...should be looked into.
Nothing is yet decided," Tasca stated in an interview. "The
emergence of new technologies has led to a real problem in terms
of authors' rights. They have create the myth of free access
on both ends of the production chain," she said.
Tasca also announced that at
the beginning of the month there will be a new levy placed on
digital recording devices (blank CDs and DVDs, MP3 players) which
will go into action on January 22. The recording levy is based
a sliding scale depending on the time or memory capacity of the
device.
January 16 -- Princeton
University computer science professor Edward Felten, who recently
participated in a group which claims to have cracked SMDI (the
Secure Digital Music Initiative), is now being silenced over
fear of litigation.
January 16 -- BMG
announced today that they are substantially increasing the volume
of digital music that they offer online, and will make new releases
simultaneously available online as they hit traditional retail
channels in the future. The company has announced that they are
building up their retail network of digital distribution in a
very impressive manner.
BMG has over 2,900 tracks available
in digital download format, and looks to be the first of the
first major labels adjusting with technology and harnessing its
power rather than attempting to fight it and delay the inevitable.
January 17 -- AOL/Time
Warner has selected Kevin Conroy, a former BMG Entertainment
executive, to head up the music group of AOL. AOLTW will be keeping
the supervision of the Warner Music Group separate from the management
of the AOL Music Group.
AOL had previously acquired
Nullsoft (Winamp, ShoutCast, ect..) and Spinner.
January 22 -- IBM
has stated that they will be releasing a new version of their
anti-music piracy software.
January 22 -- CyberRadio.com
Inc. has announced it's new Cyber Centers Internet Services License
Program, which will put 55 to 75 licensed Cyber Centers across
the United States over the next two years.
Cyber Radio, which currently
has around 15,500 radio stations featured in it's world wide
radio network, will be offering up independently owned and operated
licensed Cyber Centers for around $350,000, increasing based
on region, population and market size.
January 22 -- The
security group Attrition.org announced that hackers have defaced
26 government Web sites in the United States, the United Kingdom
and Australia last week. A
group called Pentaguard took credit for the job and left a message
on the attacked sites stating that their targets were useless
because they did not contain pornography or MP3 files.
January 25 -- TVT
Records (home to Snoop Dogg) announced that they are dropping
their lawsuit against Napster, and will work and promote the
growth of Napster's upcoming subscription service. Steven Gottlieb,
President of TVT Records, stated that they are dropping the lawsuit
and will now support the revolutionary file sharing service under
the strategic alliance it has reached with Bertelsmann.
January 27 -- The
Beatles' 1 continues to outsell all other albums in the U.S.
and numerous countries around the world, despite being taken
from the top in Great Britain after a 9-week run. It again outpaced
Shaggy's Hotshot album in the U.S., 215,000 to 203,000 according
to SoundScan, Inc., and remains in the #1 spot for the 7th consecutive
week (8th overall) on The Billboard 200. Interesting to note that 1 is also the first
album by a British artist to possess the #1 position in the U.S.
for this long since July 1989, when Fine Young Cannibals held
on for 7 weeks with The Raw And The Cooked.
February 4 -- While
the management of digital audio delivery online is something
that Microsoft been aiming to control for sometime since the
inception of Windows Media, it seems Microsoft has been building
some new features into the Windows operating system which further
assist in giving copyright holders security.
The "Secure Audio Path"
technology scrambles the audio output from a PC's soundcard,
thus eliminating the ability to record the audio at that point.
This technology is already present in the "WindowsME"
or Windows Millennium edition of the Windows OS.
February 8 -- Intel
has unleashed a new set of API's (application programming interface)
for their "Peer-to-Peer Trusted Library", allowing
developers to pack in support for peer authentication, encryption,
digital signatures and secure storage of files. Intel hopes to
provide the P2P (peer-to-peer) development community with a method
of securing applications being developed for P2P file exchange.
Thus, allowing the control of content distributed through these
systems.
February 8 -- With
pressure coming from Sony Music, Napster was forced to ban users
from its service for allegedly swapping unreleased music from
the upcoming Manic Street Preachers album.
February 11 -- The
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is ready to rule on a lower
court's injunction against Napster. This has created an MP3 downloading
frenzy. Yesterday, almost
10,000 Napster users logged on to just one of Napster's computer
servers sharing nearly two million MP3 files. (Napster's servers
normally accommodate about 6,000 users at a time.) Even through
what some people see as impending doom, Napster is remaining
hopeful. "We have great confidence in our legal position,"
said the company in a statement.
February 12 -- RIAA
has hired Bob Dole so that he may act as a strategic advisor
with their lobbying arm.
February 12 -- The
9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Napster may be held liable
for contributory copyright infringement. Stocks on Wall Street
for digital music companies soared.
EMusic.com (EMUS) has seen
its stock fall as low as $0.25 in the past year, but with today's
Napster ruling the stock jumped an astounding 69.23%, to $0.68.
This is good news for the company because if the stock hadn't
shown signs of life, NASDAQ officials were threatening to drop
it from the market.
Gene Hoffman, President and
CEO of EMusic.com, issued a statement, saying: "We are pleased
that the district court will be issuing a new injunction against
Napster that will effectively block the unauthorized distribution
of music files. This should establish a clear foundation for
the growth of legitimate music download services on the Internet
-- where artists, labels and consumers all have a voice in how
digital music is enjoyed."
MP3.com's MPPP also had a substantial
gain. The stock jumped to $4.59, up 8.09%. With a 52-week high
of $33.50 MPPP still has a long way to go, but the increase is
a welcome boost for investors.
Among others in MP3's space,
Launch Media (LAUN) is unchanged at $1.72 and Artistdirect (ARTD)
is rallying 20% to $0.75 cents.
February 20 -- Napster
has offered to pay record companies $1 billion over the course
of five years in exchange for allowing the trading of copywritten
music on the service.
February 26 -- According
to data released by the RIAA, shipments of CD singles sank by
39 percent last year. Obviously it is Napster's fault.
"Napster hurt record sales,"
said RIAA president Hilary Rosen, particularly pointing out the
drop in the sales of singles.
On the other hand, Napster
chief executive Hank Barry said the association is twisting the
data to support the recording industry's claim that they have
suffered "irreparable harm" at the hands of Napster
users. "In order to argue we've done irreparable harm, it
would be great if there were some irreparable harm to show. We
haven't seen a credible survey yet that suggests Napster is hurting
CD sales," said Barry.
February 27 -- The
RIAA announced that former Montana Governor, Marc Racicot, will
be added to its consulting team that already includes Sen. Bob
Dole. The move comes less than a week away before a California
judge will decide if Napster Inc.
"This debate over intellectual
property has wide-ranging implications beyond just what is going
on in the recording industry. This is a fundamental property
right, and it has been for two centuries. Without the protection
of private property for the last 200 years, we wouldn't have
the progress in this country that we've had," said Racicot
during a media briefing with Hilary Rosen.
March 2 -- As
a last attempt, Napster decides to filter out a million copyrighted
songs.
March 2 -- Napster
CEO Hank Barry announced that it will unveil a system to screen
out copyrighted content some time "this weekend."
The recording industry sent Napster
a list of filenames and artist/title information. Based on this
list Napster must come up with some way of making sure that those
songs do not appear when users run a search.
Contrary to what Napster previously
asserted in court, they are now claiming that they do have the
ability to enforce such a proposal. Napster is now confessing
that there are technical means that can block clearly identifiable
copyrighted materials. Judge Patel said that not all of the weight
should fall on Napster. There is to be a "shared burden"
between the recording labels and Napster.
"Independent artist concerns
are different than those represented by the labels," said
the attorney representing non-label artists. Any proposal that
filters copyrighted songs based on song title could potentially
block files that artists want to be released. Simply because
songs have the same name, doesn't mean that they are the same
song. Frackman argued that despite that, the burden must be on
Napster to decide the differences.
After the two and a half hour
hearing, Hilary Rosen, spokesperson for the RIAA responded to
concerns around the litigation. The $1 billion settlement offer
by Napster would elicit "no industry response." Such
agreements would have to be made with individual labels and artists.
March 7 -- Independent
label TVT Records (home to Nine Inch Nails) recently came out
victorious with its legal win against MP3.com. U.S. District
Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted TVT a partial summary judgment, affirming
the label's musical copyrights were willfully infringed by MP3's
digital music locker service, My.MP3.com. The judge added that mp3.com cannot be held liable
for statutory damages on TVT copyrights that were not registered
with the U.S. Copyright Office until after they were used on
My.MP3.
March 8 -- EMusic
files a copyright infringement suit against Napster accusing
it of unfair business practices. EMusic
bills itself as "the premier source for legitimate MP3s"
and pays artists for each music download off its subscription-based
web site. EMusic is accusing Napster of unfair competition because
Napster's business is based upon illegitimate use of copyrighted
material.
March 9 -- The
new Dave Mathews CD tops the charts in its first week, with sales
of more than 750,000 copies, making it the biggest debut for
an album so far in 2001. And "I Did It" has been freely
available on Napster for almost a month.
March 12 -- Napster
just isn't moving fast enough for the RIAA, which is giving the
company until Wednesday to block the free exchange of MP3s. Amy
Weiss, spokeswoman for the RIAA, said that a list of 135,000
copyrighted songs would be sent to Napster Inc. to be "filtered
out" of downloading capabilities.
March 13 -- Napster
announced a partnership with Gracenote, a technology company
specializing in music recognition, content delivery, and database
management. Gracenote has been compiling a music database since
1995 for online information access and software applications.
Napster will be allowed to leave Gracenote's licensed music on
its service.
March 14 -- Napster
sent out a court document stating that the filters they have
put in place are working, and that they are still improving the
filtering. Although many
files are being blocked, common mispelled names are getting through,
but there is currently a group of people working on that. While
spelling 'Metalika' will give you some results, spelling changes
will be slowly weeded out...
While many of the songs presented
to the court didn't follow the guidelines for blocking which
would make them invalid, over 45 000 have, and Hank Barry, Chief
Executive of Napster, says that two thirds of the songs will
be blocked by Wednesday evening...
March 21 -- Last
Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein delivered a decision
that allows MP3Board to sue the RIAA for damages resulting from
a ten day shutdown caused by an RIAA copyright infringement claim.
The claim, filed in June of last
year, accused the search engine web site of violating copyright
law because it was linking to illegitimate files.
The decision paves the way
for search engines to retain their freedom to link to any material
without a severe threat of legal action. The trial is currently
scheduled for May 23. This is the first time that a web site
has been allowed to take a case for shutdown damages to trial.
April 4 -- Despite
the immense gains in Gnutella usage over the past several months,
Gnutella usage is still not seen as a threat to the recording
industry. RIAA anti-piracy
expert Frank Creighton stated that Gnutella is not enough of
a problem to warrant devoting manpower to stop it. The industry
association is currently focusing its efforts against Napster
and its clones.
April 9 -- Recent
developments in MP3.com's ongoing troubled court cases have a
judge ordering the music mega-site to pay $300,000 in damages
to an independent record label for copyright infringement. Privately
owned Tee Vee Toons Records claimed that MP3.com's Instant Listening
service violated TVT copyrights by making TVT songs available
to Net surfers for listening online.
MP3.com's Greg Wilfahrt said
TVT had been asking for over $8 million in damages to begin with,
and the $300,000 award showed the jury was unconvinced by TVT's
argument.
April 9 -- Jurors
who ordered the MP3.com site to pay $300,000 to Tee Vee Toons
Records have reevaluated their math and discovered what they
really meant was $3 million.
April 12 -- Microsoft
Corp. and RealNetworks Inc. are working to together in order
to steer music lovers away from the very popular MP3 format.
Instead, the companies are encouraging users to use proprietary
software formats. Microsoft and RealNetworks say that the audio
sound will be significantly better but will also make it harder
to share copyright-protected songs.
April 20 -- Napster
announced it licensed privately held Relatable's acoustic fingerprinting
technology to help filter songs in compliance with their injunction.
April 25 -- In
September of 1999, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
held a $10,000 contest challenging computer pros to hack into
copyright protection technologies. Professor Edward Felten and
his academic hacking group from Princeton University were the
ones who answered SDMI's challenge and now they have been threatened
with legal action if they go through with plans to reveal how
they cracked the anti-piracy codes. The group had planned to
reveal the results of their efforts later this week at the Fourth
International Information-Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
but now those plans are on hold.
Earlier this month, Felten
received a letter from SDMI and the RIAA urging him to refrain
from discussing his findings or face potential legal action.
"Any disclosure of information gained from participating
in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities
permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research
team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."
stated the letter.
SDMI had hoped their challenge
was a way to foolproof their anti-piracy efforts before adopting
it as an industry wide standard.
April 25 -- According
to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 37 million Americans
have downloaded free music from the Internet since last summer,
a 40 increase. The study went on to find that twenty-nine percent
of American adults say they have downloaded music online. That
figure jumped seven percent from late July 2000, when the recording
industry was at war with Napster in U.S. District Court.
The surveys polled a total of
4,205 adults and 754 children.
April 27 -- Napster
reports problem stems from their filtering efforts. Their most
recent efforts to comply with a judge's order to remove copyrighted
songs has the service blocking common words in the English language.
This includes taking material that no one has asked to have removed,
like indie music, concert recordings, etc.
April 28 -- Judge
Marilyn Patel issued a memorandum stating that the music industry,
not Napster, is responsible for tracking down specific file names
used to identify copyrighted songs.
May 8 -- EMusic
has announced that it's subscription service has grown to a respectable
170,000 tracks available, packing in the works of over 8,000
artists.
May 15 -- Users
of the retail version of Windows XP will be required to contact
Microsoft when first installing the OS, and on subsequent installations.
This is designed as an anti-piracy feature, as it will limit
the number of times the software can be installed on different
hardware. Microsoft is
refusing to tell customers what that cut off point is. Duncan
Reid, product services group manager at Microsoft, defended the
company's decision, and told silicon.com: "We are not being
explicit on details because we don't want to make life easy for
unscrupulous hackers."
May 20 -- Vivendi
Universal has offered to acquire mp3.com for $5 per share of
stock, roughly $372 million in cash and stock.
Vivendi Universal stated that
they aim to create multiple revenue streams to enhance Vivendi
Universal's current online strategy, but will allow MP3.com to
remain a "Independent Distributor of Music Content for All
Record Labels and Independent Artists".
June 1 -- Live365
has announced the availability of a new service, On-Demand Audio,
enabling on-line broadcasters the ability to upload various audio
files, and then have them available for playback on demand.
Live365 is offering this service
to broadcasters on a subscription basis, with a sticker price
estimated at $150.00 per month. While certainly not free, these
streaming services do provide organizations and broadcasters
an option which previously did not exist in a easy to deploy
system such as Live365's system enables.
June 26 -- The
federal appeals court has set out that Napster must continue
to block the swapping of copyrighted music.
June 29 -- Yahoo!
will expand its online music library with its agreement to acquire
Launch Media, Inc. for $12 million dollars.
July 3 -- Napster suspends all file sharing
Aug. 6 -- A discussion of the Music
Online Competition Act, sponsored by Rep. Rick Boucher (VA) and
Rep. Chris Cannon (UT). Hilary Rosen came out to complain about
this bill before it was even complete.
September 10 -- With
the help of Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the powerful chairman of
the Senate Commerce committee, the RIAA hopes to embed copy-protection
controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. All
types of digital content, including music, video and e-books,
are covered. This means radios, televisions, cell phones, basically
anything with a microchip inside. Hard drives, CD-ROMs, floppies,
you name it. We're not just talking CD recorders, but anything
that receives or uses an electronic signal. TIVO, Satellite TV,
Cable.
September 25 -- Internal
email from RIAA Chairman and CEO Hilary Rosen to industry executives:
Subject: Peer to Peer Services
Sent: 9/25/01 5:53 PM
Importance: Normal
Dear all:
It is time to get coordinated
and aggressive with the new round of peer to peer services. The
amount of music being downloaded is, as you know, reaching unprecedented
levels. Since college started last week Morpheus traffic was
up to 19 million downloads per day. AND THAT'S JUST MORPHEUS.
With the imminent launch of legitimate subscription services
we have to get our customers back.
I know you want your new businesses
to be successful. So do I. Given the overwhelming volume of these
alternative services, RIAA can't handle all of the enforcement
alone. If they are not controlled more effectively and consumers
redirected to legitimate offerings, there won't be new businesses.
That's obvious.
You are all competitors, but
you have common interests in enforcement. Help me help you. I'd
like to have a meeting at the RIAA in October as soon as possible.
If you agree to participate, I will have my assistant try and
work with schedules to get a date that works.
I want to keep the meeting
small to start (we can expand participation to other companies
later).
We need to discuss:
1. Spoofing and/or interdiction
methods for existing peer to peers - (perhaps by adding promotional
messages about the launch of various new systems)
2. A PR campaign
3. We will share the latest
legal strategies and RIAA's thinking on options
Please plan on attending. I
am cautious about sending alternates because we need people who
have the ability to make decisions and commit to spending.
Best regards,
Hilary
November 7
-- Rosen explained
that her industry's focus has traditionally relied on promoting
music to the buyers for record store chains, not listeners. The
Web, she said, has changed all that, and is causing a shift in
its approach to one that is more consumer-oriented.
"Building a legitimate
business model from scratch -- one that involves literally hundreds
of millions of copyrights and interlocking creative rights, navigating
incompatible DRM's and players and building customer service
and ease of use that music fans have always enjoyed -- isn't
quite as easy as people might think," she said. "It
is clear that record companies haven't been as quick as some
have hoped to get online. Maybe that encouraged piracy -- not
excused it, to be sure, - - but encouraged it by not filling
the vacuum of consumer demand."
Rosen explained that the interests
of recording artists are threatened by P2P technology. "This
is an industry of advances, not royalties," she said. "A
record company executive once said to me: 'If an artist of mine
gets a royalty, I haven't done my job at negotiation time."
Reflecting on the music industry's
hodgepodge of mostly stillborn attempts at making their assets
available over the Internet, Rosen admitted that the industry
had made some critical errors along the way.
"If we had it to do over,
I think the recording industry would do it differently. Technology
development and innovation might not have been left to the consumer
electronics and IT industries as it was by the recording industry
in the 80's, leaving our companies less than fully operational
on that level when the wave of new opportunities hit again in
the early 90's. But it is clear -- our member companies see an
enormous opportunity here and now and are working diligently
with technology partners to seize it."
Rosen said she feels there
is "too much music available for the current distribution
model" and looks forward to the potential for new "legitimate
business models" in the future.
"Obviously, in a free
market, our approach isn't the only one, nor, for that matter
is peer-to-peer. What we seek -- and what I hope you'll embrace
-- is an open market in which everyone competes with mutual respect
on the value of his or her creations." But she also assured
the audience that the RIAA has no intention of halting its current
legislative efforts. "We have no choice but to continue
them as long as copyrights are being infringed," she explained.
"But we also know legal efforts won't get music online.
Legitimate business models will. Consumer demand will. Technology
will. I want to get the lawyers out and the innovators in."
Rosen finished her speech with
traditional promises of new services and technologies on the
horizon: "New subscription services are being launched in
the coming days and months. Virtually all RIAA member companies
are participating in launches of these multiple services. I think
the initial offerings will be very good. But they will get better
as technology develops and the desired consumer experience has
better definition. A lot of progress is being made and more will
be done."
O'Reilly and Associates President
Tim O'Reilly asked Hilary to explain the math a bit behind the
Recording Industry's cost model. Rosen commented that such figures
were hard to nail down, due to the many possible variations of
recording and marketing agreements. "There's no single model.
There's no single way," she said. (Note: the RIAA's Cost
of a CD document and Market Data newsletter offer a bit more
specifics on the numbers involved.)
November 28 -- Bill
Evans warns that "[The RIAA] want to search your computer,
without a warrant. But while there they will be able to access
any other information, private, personal, work, banking, where
you've been visiting on the internet, anything! Without cause,
without reason. These are rights we don't even extend to the
Federal Government without a search warrant."
The RIAA denied they wanted
to hack your computer.
December 10 -- Many
major label artists are preparing cease and desist orders for
their labels to prevent the use of their music on the label's
effort, MusicNet and PressPlay, without their permission.
December 20 -- Several
major label artists are reportedly organizing their efforts collectively
to raise money for The Recording Artists Coalition's legislative
fight against the recording industry.
