Blackmoor Vituperative

Amazon is really putting some effort into making DRM-free MP3s commercially viable. They have a “Five for five Friday” deal where five albums are $5 each. That’s not bad at all. You might consider checking them out.

I am a little late with this, but the last few months have been very busy. Even so, it brightened my day to read about it.

On 24 October a district court in Moscow has confirmed the “no copyright infringement” verdict.

Earlier this year, on 15 August 2007 AllofMP3.com was acquitted of all charges brought up by IFPI. Consequently the Federation filed a protest on behalf of the labels. This protest was declined last week. This time IFPI promised to go as far as the Supreme Court.

This was yet another victory for AllofMP3.com in court.

(from Court confirms legality of AllofMP3.com ,AllofMP3.com)

Warning: shareaza.com has been suborned by scammers. For Shareaza updates, always go to http://shareaza.sourceforge.net.

In case you needed more reasons to hate the media robber barons, the Digital Rights Mafia, and their government shills, here’s an article from Crave.

Denis Kvasov, former head of the Russian download site AllofMP3.com (now MP3Sparks), has escaped damages sought against him by the international music industry. The Associated Press writes that a Moscow judge threw the case out on Wednesday, observing that while the Russian government passed laws aimed at the site last September, Kvasov ended his association with the company in December of 2005.

The case was filed by EMI, the Warner Music Group and the Universal Music Group, who together asked for $587,000 from Kvasov. The labels accused the executive of selling their artists’ music without permission, as well as reproducing it, the latter act indeed being illegal while Kvasov was in charge. Both arguments were rejected.

(from Electronista, AllofMP3 case thrown out of court)

The Digital Rights Mafia just doesn’t give up, do they? Regardless of the law, regardless of the ethics, regardless of the manifest failure of their outmoded business model, they just keep brandishing that buggy whip. As corrupt and demented as the media robber barons are, you have to admire their commitment.

Diamond Dave will be appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien Thursday July 13th, 2006. The performance will be in support of the Van Halen tribute album, Strummin’ With The Devil – The Southern Side of Van Halen. Dave will be performing “Jamie’s Cryin’” with his bluegrass friends.

For more information: http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O’Brien/

It’s been a really bad week for freedom. AllOfMP3, MP3Sparks, and AllTunes have gone under, and now this.

Happy Independence Day.

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN -news) said on Wednesday the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection technology that limits where consumers can play their music.

(from Yahoo! News, Amazon to sell digital music free of copy curbs)

Way to go, Amazon. Great move.

The outstanding digital music retailer AllOfMP3.com has been under seige by the media robbers barons and their quislings for a couple of years now. The most successful ploy has been an attempt to cut off methods through which consumers pay for this completely legal service.

Well, have no fear. When peaceful, law-abiding citizens are oppressed, there will always be those who stand up and fight for what’s right. In this case, those are the fine people at http://www.alltunesvouchers.com/ and http://www.allofmp3-vouchers.com/.

Eat that, RIAA.

Okay, just for the record, I haven’t actually used either of these services. So this isn’t really an endorsement, so much as it is a gesture of support for people who, in my eyes, are legally and peacefully fighting against an overt abuse of power. Still, caveat emptor, okay?

Last week Warner got very displeased with an online store which tried to sell Warner albums without DRM. The site offers albums in MP3 format at a discount compared to a physical CD. Customers get MP3 files plus a CD could be shipped later as an option.

According to Reuters “Warner Music Group on Thursday demanded that online retailer AnywhereCD remove its digital albums from the site, saying the start-up had violated their agreement by selling Warner’s music without copy protection software.”

It’s OK by Warner if the store helps customers to rip the CDs into MP3s but it’s not OK if those MP3s are without DRM. This way of selling music “flagrantly violates” the agreement between the label and the store.

Earlier this year Warner Music Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman had expressed his views on DRM. “There is no reason to conclude that music is the one content category that should not or cannot be protected, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product available in the physical world,” he said.

The service founder on the contrary claims that his store helps to boost the falling album sales as consumers have been lately choosing only individual songs for downloads form the stores like iTunes not the whole albums.

“My thinking was we should give consumers a reason to buy an album,” he said. “If you buy the album then I’ll give MP3 tracks pretty much what you get with CDs anyway.”

Later that week AnywhereCD has taken the matter to court. According to Hypebot “AnywhereCD has filed a court complaint Friday against Warner Music seeking a declaratory judgment that AnywhereCD had not as WMG alleged breached its agreement with and has the rights to sell MP3 albums of Warner Music artists. The company is also seeks damages for business defamation, trade libel and breach of contract.”

The point of the story is not the store breaking contract obligations but Warner Music hoping that it can still prevent the industry change and make users buy DRM-ed albums online at a price equal to or higher than that of a physical CD.

(from allofmp3.blogs, Warner calls sale of music downloads without DRM a ‘flagrant violation’)