The digital music landscape is evolving continuously. Just two years ago RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol defended the use of DRM on digital music because customers would benefit from it.

“DRM serves all sorts of pro-consumer purposes,” he said at the time, without going into detail about the alleged benefits.

However, in the year that followed the numbers of consumers calling for DRM-free music increased and more labels and music services started to offer music without digital restrictions. Still, the RIAA was not convinced that there could be a future without it, and predicted a comeback for DRM last year.

Quite the opposite happened. Although DRM is still present in the majority of the legal music stores, most of the big players have decided to ditch it. Most importantly Apple announced in early 2009 that all music sold via the iTunes store would be free of DRM. This time even the RIAA doesn’t believe that it can be resurrected.

Jonathan Lamy, chief spokesperson for the RIAA declared DRM dead, when he was asked about the RIAA’s view on DRM for an upcoming SCMagazine article. “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Lamy said, referring to the DRM-less iTunes store and other online outfits that now offer music without restrictions.

When the most vocal forefighters of DRM say so, it must be for real. Although this is the first time that the RIAA have actually said on record that DRM is dead, other players in the music industry have seen the light before them. Most notable IFPI, who said earlier this year that stripping DRM would “significantly boost download sales.”

In this we have to agree with them. All DRM has ever done is annoy consumers who actually paid for their music. No single piece of DRM has ever stopped anyone from pirating music, it’s quite the opposite as the music industry now realizes.

via TorrentFreak

As you enter the Eastern Distributor tunnel heading north from Sydney's Anzac Parade, a yellow neon sign over the entrance announces 'Crossing a continuous white line is illegal.' So you have to stay in the right hand lane. But you want to leave the tunnel for the City and the adjoining Cross City tunnel by the next exit on the left.

Can you legally make this move? Nah! The continuous white line continues until adjacent with the exit. You'd have to stop your car and then turn left to make it. But even that move is impossible because there's a continuous white line on the other side! So we would like the legal regulators to change the neon message immediately. 'Leaving this tunnel for the city is illegal'. . . read more

According to the data available from Whirlpool, 57.7% of Australians share files using P2P.

The Australian government originally owned the majority of Telstra's shares and has been selling off chunks since 1997.

Telstra claims they have 5,507,000 subscribers of Australia's 7,228,000 internet users.

Therefore it follows that Telstra is the Carriage Service Provider (CSP) that enables the highest level of P2P file sharing.

According to a government assessment of the ownership of Telstra:

ABS ASSESSMENT
In considering the issue as to whether and when Telstra moved from a public sector unit to a private sector unit the ABS notes the following: the T3 sale has effectively reduced the Australian Government's shareholding in Telstra to 17% - this is not sufficient to give it control in terms of determining general corporate policy through the appointment of the majority of directors; the installment nature of the T3 sale means that while investors will have beneficial ownership of the shares in terms of rights to dividend and instructing the trustee how to vote at meetings of shareholders, the shares will be held in trust until payment of the final installment in May 2008; from a statistical perspective the ABS has concluded that the trust is a private sector unit, reflecting the trustees' obligation to act in the beneficiaries' interests; for statistical purposes the trustee, Telstra Sale Company Ltd, is a Commonwealth owned company and should be classified for ABS statistical purposes as a public financial corporation; until the Australian Government transfers the balance of its Telstra shares to the Future Fund it retains some element of control through its legislative powers.
[Source]

In other words, the government owns 17% of a corporation that last year posted revenues of $2,441,287,000 where a substantial amount of that sum must be directly attributable to payments from persons acting in a manner contrary to the Copyright Act under the auspices of the government's own enacted Safe Harbour Provisions.

But who's going to notice a lousy (US$) 2 and a half billion?

Well, here's the conundrum. If a court of law actually found Telstra guilty of breaking the law by being on the wrong side of the Safe-Harbour Provisions of the Act, and demanded that its self-incubated start-up had to comply with industry take-down notices, in accordance with the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, it would have to forfeit all the loot from the Future Fund and bank it into  the Victims of Crime Fund!

 So nothing really achieved because basically, both funds are used mainly for paying public servant salaries.

 Damn. For a moment, I though I was onto something there ...

 Actually, I wonder if I can start a government? Seems like a good wicket.

You pass legislation making something illegal; satisfy the lobbyists and the WIPO treaty co-signatories; then ignore what's happening in your back yard by selling off big chunks of the law-breaking asset to the public and hope no-one will notice you're making money from breaking the law you created in the first place!

 Pity the poor ISP that's stuck with fighting for his very existence right now in a law suit brought by AFACTS.

 IInet has been chosen as the lucky representative of the Australian ISP Industry that AFACTS has identified as the initial ‘Target of Precedent Creating Law' to enforce compliance with the provisions of the Safe Harbour amendments of the Copyright Act..

Why IInet? Well, AFACTS can't sue Telstra, can it? That would be like suing the government and it'd be bad form to sue the government.

But there is a solution. The government could admit P2P is now practised by the ‘moral majority' and therefore remove all compliance obligations from the safe harbour provisions of the act.

It could also inform the copyright industries they're on their own in this battle.

After all, the government is never wrong. It's the Government, voted for by the moral majority - of whom 57% are file sharers.

Tom Koltai is an economist in Sydney Australia. He's been online for 26 years, has run several ISPs and, "lobbied governments in four countries to prevent Internet restrictive usage legislation from being enacted". He says he's a strong believer in P2P, "as being a technological requirement to fully exploit the convergence of telephony with computers and remove the last barriers to human communication and interaction". . . read more

And so he should be. He is the architect of the legal framework around Guantanamo Bay; the lawman who believes that some of the articles in the Geneva Convention are 'obselete' and 'quaint' and should not apply to enemies of the U.S.; the chief law officer who sacked prosecuters for political rather than professional reasons.

Good night and good luck! . . read more

Obviously, there are parallels here: the piracy located in another country, the cheap music deals, the stupid reaction of music's governing bodies, and the consumer caught in the middle. The takeaway here is this: Et tu, Canada? Just because you hadn't invented Triumph, Loverboy, and Rush yet doesn't mean you had the right to steal our music! For shame.

It should also be noted that on the same page as this article is another story about a park policeman named Dooladdy watching a snake fight a bird. The Newspaper of Record, indeed.

Music Pirates In Canada [NYT; HT: Lizzyville] Via Idolator

The current battle over the Tasmanian $2bn Tamar Valley Pulp Mill where the Federal Court has dismissed a legal challenge from environmentalists opposing its building is a case in point. Legal minutiae are blanketing the real issue which is sorting out the ethics relating to how we want to live.

The very notion that ethical results are dependent on such mind numbing judgments made by the Court reveals how pathetic we are as a nation at handling the ‘big issues’. Where are the leaders who are going to help us rise above the left-brained idiocy of the law? . . read more