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<p>LONDON, Feb 13 — The recording industry directed its anti-piracy campaign at large companies in the United States, Europe and Asia on Thursday, warning them that employees are illegally downloading music on company time.</p> <p>The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade group representing the major music labels, said it had begun issuing brochures to thousands of companies spelling out the legal and technological dangers of giving employees access to online file-sharing networks.</p>

Filed at 6:30 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- Hilary Rosen, the U.S. recording industry's head lobbyist who waged a high-profile battle against Napster and music piracy, is resigning at the end of the year. In a statement, Rosen cited personal reasons for leaving the Recording Industry Association of America, where she has served as chief executive since 1998. ``During my tenure here, the recording industry has undergone dramatic challenges and it is well positioned for future success. I have been extremely proud to be a part of this industry transition,'' Rosen said. ``But I have young children and I...

Despite efforts by record executives to stanch declining CD sales by releasing a cavalcade of big-name artists during the critical Christmas shopping season, early sales figures show an already struggling industry may now be in even worse shape. In the five weeks since mid-November, when the record labels began their biggest holiday blitz in recent memory, compact disc sales were down 12.9 percent compared to the period in 2001, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales. That poor performance comes even as new CDs from artists like Shania Twain, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney have sold...

Culminating a months-long probe by the Motion Picture Association of America, during which investigators purchased pirated movies online, the MPAA on Tuesday filed federal civil lawsuits against what it claimed were bootleg film operators in eight states. The lawsuits, charging copyright infringement, were the first aimed at sales of movies over the Internet, most of them allegedly conducted over the eBay auction website. Previous suits had been aimed at producers of illegally copied DVDs, VCDs, and videocassettes sold on the streets or by mail order. The BBC reported Tuesday that some 12,000 fake DVDs were sold on the auction site...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The Naval Academy has seized more than 90 computers in an investigation into whether midshipmen illegally downloaded music, movies and software from the Internet. Cmdr. Bill Spann, an academy spokesman, confirmed Monday that an investigation into what material is on the computers was under way. He would not give any other details. Punishment for illegally possessing copyrighted material ranges from restrictions such as loss of leave to expulsion from the academy, Spann said. The raid on dormitory rooms took place Thursday while midshipmen were in class, according to The (Annapolis) Capital, which reported the seizure on...

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft. The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down. They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy. Doomed disksThe paper was prepared for a workshop on Digital Rights Management, (DRM), at...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Compact disc music sales decreased 7 percent during the first half of the year, a further indication that online music sharing sites are hurting the recording industry, a trade group said Monday. The decline cost the industry $284 million in lost sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The decline, measured by PricewaterhouseCoopers, compares with a 5.3 percent drop in CD shipments in the first half of 2001. The RIAA said the industry uses just-in-time delivery, so CD shipments are reliably indicative of actual sales. Also Monday, the RIAA released a separate survey of...

ASPEN, Colo.--The president of media giant News Corp. warns that the Internet has become a "moral-free zone," with the medium's future threatened by pornography, spam and rampant piracy. Speaking Tuesday at an annual conference organized by the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Peter Chernin decried the "enormous amount" of worthless content online. He also predicted that without new laws to stave off illicit copying, News Corp.'s vast library of movies may never be made available in digital form. "The vast potential of broadband has so far benefited nobody as clearly as it's benefited downloaders of pornography and pirates of digital content,"...

In a sign of digital piracy reaching the masses, illegal DVD copies of recently released movies are showing up in legitimate marketplaces such as online auction house EBay Inc. Bootlegged versions of "Men in Black II," "Reign of Fire" and "Lilo & Stitch" have been sold on the auction site in recent days. Unlike digital movie copies downloaded from the Internet, the DVDs require no special equipment or expertise to obtain or watch. All that is needed is a free EBay account and a DVD player. "EBay creates a much larger arena for pirates to sell their goods than historically...

<p>LONDON, May 20 — Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker.</p> <p>Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying "hi-tech" copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store.</p>

The writing could be on the wall for computer buffs who copy music CDs for their friends. Sony Music has planted a "poisoned pellet" of software in Celine Dion's latest CD, A New Day Has Come, that is capable of crashing, and in cases permanently freezing, the optical drives of personal computers into which the discs are inserted. Michael Speck, of the Australian Record Industry Association, confirmed yesterday that the anti-piracy software trials were under way but said "spiked" CDs had not so far been distributed in Australia, but it was inevitable. The music companies were "simply protecting their property",...