Sonos are well-known for their innovative audio products which integrate together to build highly controllable wireless hi-fi systems. Simplistically, you can start with one or two units and build-up over time until you can play music in any room in the…
Monster show tonight with a Ton of stories, I only cover the upcoming iPhone announcements ever briefly as most of you will get the details early tomorrow morning. I want to welcome all of the new Google+ Listeners as those…
Rhapsody is countering the Spotify surge by acquiring Napster from Best Buy. Will that make the difference?
Digital Rights Management (DRM)is a tool that doesn't reflect the general preference of legal music downloaders. Before you read on, hoping that I will advocate for the free distribution of music, let me warn you: I'm a strong supporter of copyright and the protection of intellectual property; I want artists and distributors to make a decent living, but I'm frustrated by the current misuse of digital technology that attempts to thwart illegal distribution. In practice, DRM makes creates compatibility problems that make it excessively difficult, and in most cases, impossible, to listen to music that has been purchased online.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported this week that 36 million Americans, 27 percent of internet users, report having downloaded music or video files. Half of this group have skirted the traditional peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and commercial online distribution services (i.e. Napster, iTunes). This is a significant number of digital media users whose sharing of digital media is untraceable by the recording industry and copyright holders.
Must everything eventually be available for free on the Internet? Steve Lohr argues that all public digital data will eventually be free on the Internet, because it's too difficult to protect the intellectual property (IP) rights of the authors. However, making all creative work freely available disregards our resonsiblity to raise a well-intentioned and civil next generation.