The buyer, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X, said it recognised that The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest file-sharing websites, must comply with international copyright laws.

Global Gaming said the website needs a new business model which “satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.”

Hans Pandeya, chief executive, said: “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”

The Pirate Bay’s founders said the site was being sold for a “great bit underneath its value” but the sale is essential to secure the website’s future.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The music industry would be in better shape now if it had engaged with Napster rather than fought it.

So says Geoff Taylor, head of music industry body BPI, in a column written for the BBC.

In the column, Mr Taylor expressed “regret” that the music industry did not move faster to work out how to use the net to promote and sell records.

Source: BBC News

The Newspaper Licensing Agency has announced it is to begin regulating its customers’ use of hyperlinks to newspaper articles on the web.

The agency, which controls reproduction of newspaper clippings by news monitoring services and public relations agencies, will introduce an extension to its licences later this year.

According to a circular sent to members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, and seen by Press Gazette, the NLA will be introducing a new form of licence from 1 September to regulate “web aggregator services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity”.

From January 2010, the licence charges will also apply to PR practitioners and “other organisations forwarding links to newspaper websites as part of their commercial activity”.

Source: Press Gazette
via: Techdirt

Internet users should pay an annual fee to support print media, a special committee has advised Dutch media minister Ronald Plasterk.

A fee of several euros per year per internet connection should be made available to boost innovations by print media, according to a committee under the chairmanship of former politician Elco Brinkman that published its findings on Tuesday.

Source: NRC Handelsblad

The Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled in favor of German collecting society GEMA, which had requested that the court issue an order prohibiting file-hosting service rapidshare.com from making around 5,000 music tracks available on the Internet.

“The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks,” it was stated in a declaration issued by GEMA.

The court also ruled that the precautions allegedly taken by rapidshare.com and other file-hosting sites were not sufficient to effectively prevent the copyright breaches caused by the service.

Source: Billboard.biz

Spain’s cultural industry has accepted that the proposed disconnection of Internet users who ignore warnings not to download illegally is no longer an option. The about-turn by the Coalition of Creators and Content Industries follows indications that the government will refuse to implement any kind of “three-strikes” scheme.

But the Coalition, which includes sections of the music, film and software sectors including 88-member labels body Promusicae, as well as collecting societies such as the 95,000-member authors and publishers society SGAE, still thinks a reduction in Internet access speed is feasible against offenders.

In his first public appearance as Coalition president, Aldo Olcese acknowledged that users are “our current and future clientele,” and that punitive measures were out of the question. “We have no desire to criminalize Internet users who download illegally,” he said.

Source: Billboard.biz

French independent labels collecting society SPPF has filed a lawsuit against YouTube for alleged copyright infringement.

In a statement, the producers’ body said that more than 100 music videos of its catalog, which had been taken down by YouTube in 2008 following SPPF’s request, were again available on the service in some form. SPPF is claiming €10 million [$13.9 million] in damages.

Google-owned YouTube responded by pointing out that SPPF has not signed up to its Content ID technical measures to identify any infringement.

Source: Billboard.biz
via: Techdirt

The rise of illegal downloading has been good for the music scene, helping to create a generation of exciting new acts, according to US band Fleet Foxes.

File-sharing has been the scourge of record labels for the past decade.

But singer Robin Pecknold said it had made it easier for musicians, including him, to discover lots of classic music that has influenced and inspired them.

Source: BBC News
via: Techdirt

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has called for bids to undertake a three-month research project that will develop a sound business case to persuade organisations to invest in proactive privacy protection.

Post-completion, the research project -The business case for investing in proactive privacy protection- will help organisations identify the implications of not having proper data protection and privacy safeguards in place. It will enable organisations to place a monetary value on information as an asset, quantify the risks of holding information, and pinpoint the financial and reputational costs should problems occur.

Source: Information World Review

File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they’ve posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music. As such, they argue it’s worth analyzing the deeper question of whether file sharing is putting a damper on music creation. Their conclusion is that this is a much more complicated question, but the answer seems to be “probably not.”

Source: ars technica