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After a spate of bad publicity over winning a Goliath-versus-David lawsuit, Eric Clapton’s management has announced it does not intend to collect the money owed by a German woman who was sued for putting a bootleg CD of a 1980s Clapton concert up for sale on eBay.The woman had been ordered to pay approximately $4,000 after a judge ruled she had infringed Clapton’s copyright by trying to sell the more than 30-year-old CD, which her late husband had purchased at a department store, for 9.95 euros, or roughly $11.20. The illicit disc was removed from the site after a day...

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory... only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique. After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Congress criminalizing boot-leg recordings of music performers is constitutional and does not conflict with copyright laws, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday in a decision that reopened charges against a New York record store owner. The U.S. Second Circuit of Appeals disagreed with a lower court judge who dismissed the case against the store owner, Jean Martignon, after the government charged he sold unauthorized recordings of concerts. In 2004 U.S. District Judge Harold Baer ruled that the statute banning boot-legging was unconstitutional because it says that copyrights on live performances are protected forever. This...

The back cover of “Southern Smoke 27” also says something about the current status of mixtapes. It’s chock-a-block with corporate logos: BET, MTV and Geffen Records (Field Mob’s label) are all represented, and there are advertisements for DJ Smallz’s syndicated radio shows (on both satellite — Sirius — and terrestrial radio). “Southern Smoke 27” is a corporate-sponsored CD, even though you can’t legally buy it, which means that it’s probably also an endangered species; the era of major-label bootlegs can’t last forever. But then, mixtapes aren’t supposed to last forever. Like magazines, which they resemble in both price and energy,...

Music industry to sue Yahoo China The music industry is to sue Yahoo China for allegedly providing links to pirated tracks. "We've started the process and as far as we're concerned we're on a track to litigation," John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, told Bloomberg.com. Yahoo China is the second largest search engine in the country, and is 40% owned by Yahoo Inc. Mr Kennedy told Bloomberg he hoped that negotiation could still prevent legal proceedings from starting. Last year the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, whose members include EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music, sued Baidu, the most...

The U.S. government has joined forces with the entertainment industry to stop the freewheeling global bazaar in pirated movies and music, pressuring foreign governments to crack down or risk incurring trade barriers. Last year, for instance, the movie industry lobby suggested that Sweden change its laws to make it a crime to swap copyrighted movies and music for free over the Internet. Shortly after, the Swedish government complied.Last month, Swedish authorities briefly shut down an illegal file-sharing Web site after receiving a briefing on the site's activities from U.S. officials in April in Washington. The raid incited political and popular...

Rome The Latin expression caveat emptor - buyers beware - has taken on a whole new meaning in Italy, where authorities are cracking down on counterfeiting by imposing fines on the customers who buy from street sellers. The hundreds of thousands of tourists in the country have not been told about a law that went into effect in May, which makes them liable to pay a fine of euro 3333 ($5397.57) with no appeal for buying counterfeit goods. Unless paid within two months, the fine rises to euro 10,000 ($16194.33). The first foreigner to fall afoul of the law was...

LONDON (Reuters) - The final chapter of the Star Wars saga has gone over to the Internet's dark side. "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" has been leaked onto a major file-sharing network just hours after opening in theaters, at a time when Hollywood is increasingly concerned about online piracy. At least two copies of the film, which was first shown in theaters in the early hours of Thursday, have been posted to the BitTorrent file-sharing network -- a new and increasingly popular technology that allows users to download large video files much more quickly than in...

QUEEN - THE TOP 100 BOOTLEGS Queen are one of the most widely pirated bands in the world. A large number of their live performances (over 700 in all) exist in unauthorised recordings - from the earliest college gigs in 1971, to the final open air spectacular at Knebworth Park in 1986. In response to public demand, large numbers of ‘bootleg’ LPs, tapes, CDs, videos and now DVDs, proliferated. There is a HUGE mass of bootlegs to choose from – an overwhelming volume. Only a tiny fraction of these are worth seeking out, as most are poor-quality, shoddily conceived packages...

Millions of holidaymakers going to Greece this summer have been warned they could be jailed for buying pirated CDs after a buyer was imprisoned. A man was jailed for three months by an Athens court for buying illegal CDs in the country's first case of its kind. He had been arrested as he bought two CDs from a vendor in Athens last week, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). The group gave a clear warning it would target buyers of counterfeit CDs. IFPI spokesman Ion Stamboulis said: "This is not a symbolic measure. We are determined to...

Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read "RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo. The Recording Industry Association of America is taking it to the streets. Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on people making and selling illegal CDs in...

Ohio has passed a law that lets police arrest people for videotaping movies in theaters. Governor Taft signed the bill last month and it takes effect in March. The film industry is trying to prevent piracy and they have several methods to fight it, including bag searches for people entering movie houses. But some say Hollywood's tactics could backfire. A recent study found that three out of every four movies leaked on the Internet came from industry insiders. That led the Motion Picture Academy of America to temporarily stop sending ``screener'' tapes and DVDs to Oscar voters.

Concert CDs sold on the spot by a radio giant New York Times News Service Clear Channel Communications, the radio broadcasting and concert promotion giant, plans to introduce on Monday a venture that will sell live recordings on compact disc within five minutes of a show's conclusion. The venture, Instant Live, will enable a band's still-sweating fans to leave with a musical souvenir instead of, say, a pricey T-shirt or a glossy program. Although initially modest, involving only small-audience clubs and theaters in the Boston area, the venture could eventually extend beyond radio and concerts into music distribution. And that...

Pearl Jam doesn't play the corporate game. Or so the hugely successful Seattle-based rock music group would have you believe. The band's origins are in that city's anti-corporate, grunge rock movement. Fronted by singer-songwriter Eddie Vedder, the band's street credibility was reinforced by a lengthy, late 1990s feud with Ticketmaster, which the band boycotted in an effort to keep ticket prices down for its fans. But last week, a Delray Beach, Fla., music entrepreneur, Shep Alster, challenged Pearl Jam's populist image in Palm Beach Circuit Court. He is suing the band and its business consultant, Peter McQuaid, contending that they...

Lawyer Arrested for Wearing a 'Peace' T-Shirt — NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall. According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany. "I was in the food court with my son when I was...

Arrests urged to foil Web piracy on campus By ANGEL WILSON COX NEWS SERVICE WASHINGTON -- Colleges need to monitor campus Internet activity more closely and possibly arrest students who download copyrighted material for free, members of a congressional panel said yesterday. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., said students who download music and movies from file-sharing Web sites are clearly breaking copyright laws. "It's electronic theft, plain and simple," said Wexler, a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on courts, the Internet, and intellectual property. Lesser-known artists are being forced to find other lines of work because they are not being...

[LatelineNews: 2003-2-22] TAIPEI - Taiwan's outspoken justice minister, under pressure at home for his crackdown on CD piracy, has aimed a rare diplomatic kick at the politically isolated island's most powerful ally, the United States. Chen Ding-nan, a former shoe salesman, has accused the United States of bullying the island over its efforts to combat CD piracy, a global issue that American firms claim costs the U.S. economy around $20 billion a year. "The U.S. side knows we're working very hard. But as long as piracy exists, no matter how well we do, they always have something negative to say,"...

CNN: NBC lifted fire footage Broadcasting & Cable2/24/2003 10:00:00 AM   Cable News Network Friday accused NBC of lifting its feed without permission when covering the devastating fire in Providence, R.I. NBC acknowledged using a few seconds of the CNN feed, but said it was done as a "fair use" under copyright doctrine.Footage from CBS and CNN Newsource affiliate WPRI-TV was actually shot inside the inferno from a cameraman shooting a story on nightclub safety.

HILARY ROSEN -- Jack Valenti's RIAA female clone -- has now gone on record saying that as part of the fight against music piracy, ISPs should be held accountable for the actions of their users and charged a fee for giving their customer's access to services such as Kazaa or Morpheus. The result of holding ISPs liable for the ways their customers use them would be catastrophic. Should ISPs be held accountable for the actions of pedophiles? How about members of racist groups? How about groups that are legal but we wish weren't, like the KKK, Aryan Nation, and the...

ARTS ONLINE They Buy all the Albums, but Trade Concert Bootlegs By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL Marc Daniel added 1,400 albums to his compact disc collection last year. But he is not waging a campaign to reverse the music industry's declining sales. Almost all the titles he acquired, by groups like the Grateful Dead and U2, were live concert recordings that were never officially released. Nor did he buy them in record shops. Instead, he used the Internet to trade for them, swapping copies of his discs for recordings he desired. He said his CD trading with its questionable legality and exhilarating...