MySpace today announced the launch of Take Down Stay Down, a new feature for copyright holders that prevents users from re-posting video content in the MySpace community after that content has been removed at the request of the copyright owner. “We have created this new feature to solve a problem that has long frustrated copyright [...]

Nearly 30 years after it aired on television, episodes of WKRP, a television show about the antics of a Cincinatti radio station, are being made available on DVD. Unfortunately for fans, the series, which prominently featured Dr. Johnny Fever (played by Howard Hesseman) playing popular music of the day, has been “butchered”, removing the music [...]

The National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents music publishers, is suing XM Satellite Radio.¬† Their suit, filed in federal court in New York last Thursday, claims that XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. violates copyright laws by providing a service which lets users store and replay music on certain devices. The music publishers argue that this [...]

On March 22, podcasters from across the globe are planning to take a song from indie band Black Lab to No. 1 on the iTunes sales chart. The project, Bumrush The Charts, aims to encourage listeners, through blogs, indie labels and artists, to buy one song by one band on that particular day. The song [...]

On Friday, the United States Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for webcasts, effective from 2006 to 2010. The new rates force webcasters to pay for each traditionally copyrighted song streamed to each user, and increase over the next few years as follows: 2006: $0.0008 to stream one song to one listener 2007: $.0011 [...]

Gizmodo is calling for a boycott on the RIAA in March: Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. [...]

The RIAA is increasing the pressure it puts on colleges and universities to restrict activities on school networks, sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year. A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall. For [...]

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the RIAA and other music industry organizations. The study, The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman [...]

The RIAA has sent out a letter to ISP’s (PDF), updating them on the RIAA’s prelitigation policies, and asking them to provide the information that the RIAA needs to sue alleged copyright violators. In the letter, the RIAA discusses: Enlisting ISP’s to encourage customers to settle, instead of going to court; Only offering new settlement [...]

While Steve Jobs call for the record labels to end DRM has been warmly received around the world, his remarks’ reception from competitors and the labels themselves has been downright chilly. Executives at the major labels dismiss Jobs’ challenge, saying that eliminating DRM isn’t going to happen. The marketing director for Microsoft’s struggling Zune portable [...]