I don’t know why it happened, I don’t know how I found it, but the hyperlinks to some of my noise files were broken, and are now fixed. Enjoy. If you can.

Landmark ruling from Ninth Circuit finding that P2P software developers are not liable for contributary and vicarious copyright infringement. The EFF covers most of it. In particular, the most significant part of the judgement for the future of this type of technology is one which the blogosphere has been reiterating time and time again:

From the advent of the player piano, every new means of reproducing sound has struck a dissonant chord with musical copyright owners, often resulting in federal litigation. This appeal is the latest reprise of that recurring conflict, and one of a continuing series of lawsuits between the recording industry and distributors of file-sharing computer software.

[…]

Further, as we have observed, we live in a quicksilver technological environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of internet innovation. AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland, 216 F.3d 871, 876 (9th Cir. 1999). The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through wellestablished distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player. Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude.

I’ve just added another synthetic feed, new releases from Chaos Music.

A few weeks ago, I heard a well known Sydney rock muso and an apparently credible 2JJJ DJ, so credible in fact that I’ve forgotten their names, rant on and on ad nauseum about some extremely rare funk album by the Skull Snaps that few people have heard of from 1973, and how it was subsequently sampled by a whole load of recent musos who need to rip off other artists instead of write their own music (my words :-). Anyway, they kept on and on about how rare this album was, then played the classic “It’s a new day.” Well, not only is this extremely rare album available from Amazon, but today I found three copies in the $2 bargain bin at HMV Chatswood. I didn’t buy them. Good on ya Triple J, keep up the cred. Yes this record is important, but it is also extremely easy to find. more on skull snaps…