***
SSRN paper shows that revenues decrease with increasing levels of DRM.
***

TV Advertising is dead. Long live product placement. So if the real value of TV shows is cultural currency, why are we sacrificing our freedoms in a vain attempt to protect the profits of the copyright holders?

Microsoft persues more patents. Satisfied customers still elude them.

EFF on the IICA (née INDUCE Act).

Lessig on a substantial noninfringing use--one which just happens to fight the IICA.

Alternatives to RIAA music proliferate. With the miniscule chances of striking it rich as an artist and the tiny cost of producing an album digitally, it's about time this happened. All the money for most musicians is in ticket sales anyway.

A writer argues for the unimpeded progress of technology, even as he bemoans what it has done to music appreciation and hopes for even better technology in the future: "Its advantages were many, mostly unforseen. Actors learned their lines by Walkman on the bus into rehearsal. Splenetic executives used it for lunchtime meditation. I once heard Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on a vertical Alpine train as a thunderstorm crashed all around. In unforgettable settings, music acquired unsuspected dimensions."

Big five down to big four.

--Ari