piracy

Entertainment retailer Hastings reported a 0.2% slip in revenue in Q2 2008 (press release). Total revenue was $125.7 million versus $125.9 million in Q2 2007. Comp store music revenue, which comes from CD sales, fell 11.7%.

The powers permitted to Government ought to be few and well defined. So believed James Madison. Nowhere is this more true than in the area of “police power”.

A University of Hertfordshire has found the iPod of the average UK teen or student has 842 illegal tracks. The average number of songs on each digital music player is 1,770, meaning each player has 52% legally acquired songs.

• EMI has added Cory Ondrejka, a co-founder of the online virtual reality world Second Life, to its digital team. The guy has purchased a whole of five albums in the last eight and a half years and has an excuse for every day of the week.

Paul McGuinness, long time manager of U2, spoke at the Music Matters conference in Hong Kong a few days ago and again attacked ISPs and telecom companies for the profiting off the hard work of music companies, musicians and songwriters.

From Tom Humphrey:

Two Washington, D.C., attorneys criticized another provision of the bill that would change the language in Tennessee law for taxation of downloaded books, movies and music.

• Pirates seize French commecial yacht off Somalia, French navy prepares for action. The French probably won't mess around with this - piracy in the region is a real problem, and as the story points out, the US Navy has fired on pirates, too.

The music industry has for a few months been attacking ISPs from all angles. Check out this article TorrentFreak (which cites this article at Ireland.com) about legal proceedings that have just began in Ireland against an Irish ISP.

Here's a blurb from the Ireland.com article:

Lately I've noticed something we'll call The Fairness Principle. Fairness is a recurring theme in music news. Much of the record industry acts as if the most fair business model is also the best business model. This is a problem because the "fairest" business model may not necessarily be the best model, and a concept of fairness has shaped everything from licensing deals to squabbles over royalties to determined adherence to DRM.