A federal jury in California has ordered Microsoft to pay $1.52 billion to Lucent for MP3 patent infringements in Windows Media Player. This is the largest patent ruling in history.

An interesting article claims the RIAA have begun new tactics to threaten downloaders. Now instead of engaging in costly legal battles they're circumventing the legal system and going straight to the ISP, even though it's common knowledge that ISPs get things wrong.

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A study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sales of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Country star Keith Urban is suing a painter unlucky enough to share his name.

Submitted by splat out path

A new article was recently published on the behavior of fake RIAA and MPAA trackers which says that the organizations have "no proof that you actually tried to share infringing content. Even worse, it is extremely easy for someone to make it look like you shared an infringing file, even if you’ve never used a filesharing application."

This is a formal retraction of the "rumor" posted earlier that referenced this VelvetRope (not affiliated with AP.net or its members in any way) forum post in regards to Victory Records. The rumor is 100% untrue. Let me reiterate that: The rumor from the message board posting that did not occur on AP.net is not true.

Now, there are a few other things to address and I hope some of you bear with me.

1) AP.net was...[read more]

An Augusta, Maine man has been sued by the RIAA for downloading five songs.

Due to threatened legal action (see the replies), the original thread about Jeremy's myspace bulletin discussing his exit from My American Heart has been deleted. Due to the racist comments made by Jeremy and the ensuing threats made by the band's proxy toward us: the third-party (disregarding read more]

The 19 year-old responsible for spreading a virus on MySpace has been prosecuted.

Robert Santangelo, the 16-year-old who is currently being sued by five record companies who have accused him of online music piracy, has filed a countersuit accusing the recording industry of antitrust law violation, conspiracy to defraud the courts and extortion.

Only because it's been sent in a million times: Did Timbaland rip off some beat in a Nelly Furtado song? Check the replies for the video.

MySpace is, apparently, going to cave to the pressure of attorneys and offer parents (or crafty stalkers?) a chance to monitor what their children are doing on the site.

mtvU has agreed to purchase the Internet’s largest listing of college professor ratings, RateMyProfessors.com.

DJ Drama and DJ Cannon were recently arrested for "making and selling 'illegal CDs.'"

To get around international copyright laws, a Swedish file-sharing website (The Pirate Bay), is planning on buying their own country.

Submitted by bung

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

Sony BMG is being accused of racial discrimination, and will likely face multiple lawsuits on the matter from dismissed employees.

Cloned meat and milk has been deemed "safe" by the FDA.

AllofMP3.com has issued a statement regarding the RIAA's 1.65 trillion dollar lawsuit filed earlier this week.

Statement

AllofMP3 understands that several US record label companies filed a lawsuit against Mediaservices in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3.com does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish,...[read more]

A Texas judge has ruled that, if a copyright owner objects to the linking of content from another web site, that link must be taken down.

Relevance: The implications it could potentially have on AP.net's message board community.

The final FBI documents on John Lennon have finally been released.

Linking to mp3s (or other illegal material) has been declared illegal in Australia.

The RIAA is giving up its lawsuit against Patti Santangelo, a mother of five who became the best-known defendant in the industry's battle against music piracy. However, they are still suing her two children.

Wolfgang's Vault (a website that offers streams of live bootlegs) is being sued by members of The Doors and Led Zeppelin, along with Grateful Dead Productions and Carlos Santana.

Yoko Ono's personal driver has been arrested in New York City for allegedly trying to extort the widow of John Lennon.

Catherine Lewan, a former Kazaa user who was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) during the organization's attempt to crack down on file sharing, has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sharman Networks, the company which created the Kazaa file sharing program.

Submitted by GQMike of TSPR

Evel Knievel is suing Kanye West over his video for "Touch the Sky."

Major labels have begun demanding a cut of concert earnings or T-shirt, ring tone and merchandise revenue from new artists seeking record contracts.

As a follow on from the news earlier today, it sounds like EMI is going to start releasing more songs in unrestricted mp3 format to gauge interest in non-DRMed music media files.

Gracenote, the company whose software locates album and song titles when you import a CD into your iTunes library, has just finalized deals with EMI Music Publishing and Warner/Chappell for its new Gracenote Lyrics service. The goal is to bring "legal lyrics" to the consumer.