I Own My Music

Yahoo! music will close the doors on its music-download store on September 30, taking its DRM keys with it. This means that any music downloads bought from Yahoo! won’t be able to be played on any other computer than the one they were downloaded to.

Yahoo! has come up with the odd solution of burning the files to CD and then ripping them back onto your computer.

This is certainly a roundabout way of getting your value for money on music downloads bought from Yahoo! It’s similar to when Microsoft rolled out its Zune and shut down its own store for music downloads.

This is a clear indication of how sucky DRM music is. Hopefully DRM will soon be a thing of the past as it is nothing but a headache for the end user. For all the time and money spent creating DRM files, it appears to have largely been a waste of resources.

One filesharing user being sued by the RIAA has turned the system on its head by admitting to the charges presented, only to then challenge those very same laws that have led to her being charged.

Denise Barker stands accused of sharing the unholy sum of eight songs on filesharing network Kazaa. If found guilty, she could be fined up to $1.2 million. We hope they are good songs to warrant such a high price tag.

Denise took the huge risk of not settling out of court, admitting to the charges and then standing up against those charges and the excessive fine she may be slapped with.

Her lawyer is arguing that each track is worth about $3.50 and therefore Denise should only face a fine of $252 going by the 9-to-1 rule. If this all stands up in court, it could go some way to outlining the cost of fines in the future. People typically settle out of court for a few thousand dollars. If they can go to court and only be fined a few hundred, it makes it a whole different ball game.

More filesharing news related to the Dark Knight today. Warner Bros somehow managed to keep the Dark Knight off filesharing networks for 38 hours after the movie’s release. Though that may not seem like a huge amount of time, Warner Bros says it was enough to protect ticket sales on the first week of the movie’s launch.

With the movie doing so well over its opening weekend, you have to think there’s some truth to this. By delaying the movie being leaked onto filesharing networks, Warner Bros stopped bootleggers from logging on to make dodgy copies of the movie to sell around the world.

Those 38 hours were the result of a six-month anti-piracy plan with the sole aim of keeping the movie off of filesharing networks. This plan included keeping the reel from movie theaters until the last minute. The Dark Knight looks set to break the $300 million mark soon.

Following on from Virgin teaming up with the BPI to bother its subscribers with letters warning them for using filesharing services to get illegal music downloads, six more ISPs have joined up with the UK government and will send 1,000 letter a week to filesharing subscribers.

The ISPs will also help to develop and promote legal music downloads. There’s no word on exactly what these letters will say and what implications receiving one might have.

It may be that this is the first step towards the three-strikes-and-your-out approach, which would see repeated filesharing violators cut off from the Internet after a third offense.

Virgin and BT have already begun threatening to cut users off from the Net, but ISPs aren’t known for being fond of this resource- and fund-consuming approach. Regardless, the UK’s ISPs are all set to begin tackling the issue of filesharing in accordance with the government’s vision.

If nothing else, this is clearly a step at educating the general public, but is it too little to late?

Anyone heard of BuckCherry? We certainly haven’t. Despite having a really rubbish name for a band, BuckCherry are apparently quite popular, so much so a track from their latest album recently leaked onto BitTorrent.

That’s one track, not even the whole album. BuckCherry are so distraught that one of their tracks has been released to millions of people that they’ve issued a press release through their record company. The track “Too Drunk…” from their forthcoming album Black Butterfly was leaked before its September release.

This would normally be a great thing for an unknown band such as BlackBerry, or whatever they’re called. The press release said, “Honestly, we hate it when this s*** happens, because we want our FANS to have any new songs first.”

Nice use of caps there. So, ChuckCheesy think that their fans don’t use BitTorrent and that they actually have fans in the first place. Way to go, guys. We’ll be sure not to buy your album now. Could this all be a ploy to get people to download the song? Maybe. It hasn’t worked though. It’s put us off even listening to the band.

So the Dark Knight has been in movie theaters for a few days now. In the midst of movie companies, as well as record labels, complaining about filesharing destroying the industry, the new Batman movie earned a reported $155.3 million in its first weekend.

Tight security of the movie meant that only one cam version surfaced on filesharing networks – and it wasn’t a very good version at that. What this proves is that filesharing is not killing the movie industry. People will still pay for stuff if it’s good.

The problem comes with the bar being raised so high. People have access to every movie and every album ever released and so they are becoming increasingly picky about what they pay for. It takes a blockbuster smash such as Batman to motivate people to go to the cinema.

With the advent of the Internet, people just don’t bother to watch bad movies or listen to bad music and they certainly won’t pay to do so.

BskyB in the UK recently signed a major deal with Universal Music to launch a new music service. Sky, one of the fastest-growing ISPs in the UK, is one of the first ISPs to really try and make a go of making money from music downloads.

The new deal gives Sky full access to Universal’s back catalog, which is no small archive. Sky has got quite a deal out of the music giant, with the two companies joining together to bring something new in the form of a subscription-based music service that comes with a set number of DRM-free downloads.

It sounds very cool, right? It will be interesting to see how this pans out. The other three of the Big 4 have yet to jump on board, but this is a bold move by an ISP.

There is still no word on whether Universal will send letter to Sky subscribers to “educate” them about why filesharing is a bad way to get free music downloads, as Virgin recently started doing.

The price and launch date for the new service have yet to be revealed.

The self-proclaimed “music industry champion”, the UK culture secretary Andy Burnham, recently said that he is determined to bring results to the creative industries. What this means is that Burnham is putting his foot down on a number of issues, including filesharing.

Filesharing is under the spotlight in the UK with ISPs and record labels trying to iron out a way to deal with filesharing and the sharing of copyrighted material. Burnham said that a voluntary solution to the issue of filesharing would be the ideal solution.

From the sounds of it, there are some serious talks going on with regards to filesharing and some decisions look set to be made in the very near future. This isn’t good news for UK filesharing fans.

Burnham added that he is in a rush to deal with such issues as filesharing because of the number of other issues on the table. The real winners here will likely be the record companies.

A while ago, we heard that Apple had planned to cut the cost of legal music downloads through its iTunes store. Well, so much for that, as Apple has cancelled those plans already.

Music downloads bought by UK music fans were set to have their prices slashed to even up the playing fields with what people pay for iTunes music around Europe. The British public was understandably very excited by this news. However, Apple has now come out and said that the music downloads will stay at 79p per file.

Steve Jobs was very vocal about how important it was to level out the cost of legal music downloads across Europe. The trouble is that the value of the euro is rising against the trusty British pound and so there isn’t all that much difference in the cost of a tune from an iTunes Euro store and the UK store anymore.

It’s no longer necessary to cut the cost of the UK’s legal music downloads. It’s a shame for UK music fans, but based on the reasons why the change was to occur in the first place, it’s understandable that the plans have been scrapped.

According to Microsoft, school children are the UK’s worst filesharing offenders for downloading copyrighted material such as free music. A new study by Microsoft of 270 kids and 1,200 adults reveals that 54% of children from 11 to 16 years old partake in filesharing. This compares with only 15% of adults.

While we don’t want to discredit Microsoft’s survey, 15% is clearly nowhere near the real figure. Microsoft also said that 61% of kids have bought illegal goods online, while about a quarter of the kids are keen on fake items.

The real kicker is that 60% of the kids said that regular music and movies are too expensive. When you’re young a carefree and can easily get away with downloading copyrighted material, what’s to stop you when companies all around are touting the latest MP3 players, DVD burners and whatnot? The kids are just doing what seems natural to them.