RIAA Changing Its Tactics -- An Economic Decision

It was reported by the Wall Street Journal, AP and other news sources today that the RIAA plans to stops its mass lawsuits against consumers.  Instead, the music-industry group is forging agreements with ISP's that will send notices to heavy uploaders asking them to stop.  If they don't stop, then the ISP's will presumably take action, such as slowing down the abuser's connection or possibly

A Seemingly Successful Experiment in Paid Social Media

This is a really interesting article about a recent social media campaign undertaken by Kmart. In short, Kmart gave a $500 gift card to each of 6 influential bloggers and told them to go shopping at Kmart and then write about their experience. There was no censorship or editing, and the bloggers each disclosed the arrangement in their blog entries.According to independent metrics, the campaign

Satriani v. Coldplay - A Battle Worth Winning

Interesting news on Joe Satriani filing an action against Coldplay for copyright infringement.  He claims that the Coldplay hit single, Viva la Vida, infringes on his 2004 release, If I Could Fly.  I'm no musicologist (although I did graduate from Musicians Institute's guitar program), but I listened to both tracks and I can definitely see his point.  I anticipate there will be a settlement on

Prop 8 - The Musical Shows The Power of New Media

It's been only a day, and Marc Shaiman's creative musical take on Prop 8 (the California anti-gay marriage initiative which was voted into law last month) is today's "next big thing" on the Net.  In less than 24 hours, the 3 minute video featured on funnyordie.com has already been seen almost 1.3 million times.  Those are pretty  impressive numbers when you consider the marketing budget is

Mobile DTV Takes Another Step

A more technical (and very insightful) take from Greg Tarr on the importance of this week's technical developments in the Mobile DTV area:Mobile DTV Takes Another Step: " A seemingly minor yet important item came out of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) this week in regard to the forthcoming Mobile DTV..."

Mobile DTV

This article from Broadcasting and Cable discusses how the technical hurdles have been cleared to allow digital television to be broadcast to mobile devices.  This allows manufacturers to start building the hardware that will put television in everyone's pocket.  This is a significant development for the media industry.It marks another major milestone in giving consumers the content they want