In China in 2006, one-fifth of searches on baidu.com was for unlicensed MP3’s. Baidu.com is China’s leading search engine with 50 percent of online searches conducted through its website.
Source: Clive Thompson, ” Google in China: The Big Disconnect,” New York Times Magazine, April 23, 2006.
Reuters reports on the huge upfront license fees paid by online music distributors to record labels.
From Yahoo News:
The last 18 months have seen the major music labels accept new technological and business models — such as dropping digital rights management and allowing ad-supported free music — that have given rise to a [...]
Three music labels have signed deals with MySpace in an attempt to reduce piracy and create new revenue streams.
From the Washington Post:
MySpace, the nation’s largest online social network, announced today that it is joining with the nation’s top three music labels to create a service offering free music streams and paid downloads for its millions [...]
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey stated on Friday that sales of counterfeit goods and piracy are funding terrorist groups around the world.
From the AP:
Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Friday that the huge profits generated from piracy and counterfeiting are increasingly flowing into the coffers of terrorist groups.
In remarks to Silicon Valley executives at the Tech [...]
From the Guardian’s Victor Keegan’s “Why piracy isn’t such a bad thing for music”:
The industry claims there are 20 illegal downloads for every legal one, yet it is clearly not affecting the real world on that scale. If a teenager downloads 20,000 tracks, what does he or she do with them? Sell them to others, [...]
The Washington Post reported on the how online music community imeen.com went from being labeled a pirate organization to a marketing tool for Warner Music.
From the Washington Post:
For many music-oriented Web start-ups, a copyright lawsuit can be a death sentence. But for Imeem, getting sued by one of the biggest record labels played a pivotal [...]
From the AP:
Swedish courts will soon be able to force the country’s Internet providers to produce information on suspected file-sharers in a move to crackdown on piracy, the culture and justice ministers said Friday.
File-sharing can be traced by tracking the IP addresses of the computers that download or distribute a file.
Sweden is home to file [...]
Illegal downloaders in Japan will be cut off from the Internet from their ISP providers according to a new plan being developed.
From AFP:
Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world’s toughest measures against online piracy, a report said Saturday.Faced with mounting complaints from [...]
While conducting research on another issue, our researchers came across an article in Forbes Magazine from July 11, 1997 about music piracy. What stands out to us is the fact that the RIAA has not changed its tactics for over ten years.
First, the problem back in 1997, from the article Song Pirates:
RIAA estimates that record [...]
The Times of London is reporting on proposed legislation set to be introduced next week to banned illegal downloaders from the Internet.
People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.
Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action [...]