Sorry for the influx of RIAA stories recently; not much is occuring in the p2p world, other than Qtrax, which you can read about over at the digital music blog I now run; I don't want to do the same blogposts on two blogs if possible, so I'll just link people over occasionally.

Anyway, the RIAA have been foreced to bay 107,834 dollars in legal fees to Tanya Andersen, who was challenged for 2 years in court because she allegedly downloaded a few songs. At least the RIAA are finally being forced do to the right thing!

The Pirate Bay once more laughs at the demands the MPAA are making of them. After being told they are to give the organization $15million for the downloads of 3 properties, a staff member of TPB told a local news site "These are very well-developed fantasies. They have a good sense of imagination"

It's great to see that TPB are still standing strong, and are continuing the big 2 finger salute to those who are trying to kill p2p.

Torrentspy, once giant of torrent searchs everywhere, has fallen once more. After the initial blocking of US traffic, then the final shutdown, there has been yet another kick in the teeth for the owners of the site; a $110 million judgement against them from the MPAA. The amount is idiotic; how can they be expected to have $110million, and how can such a judgement be made against a site that had nothing to do with the USA?

Torrentspy are, as expected, appealing the judgement.

More as I know it.

Nine Inch Nails, who earlier this year released Ghosts, a collection of instrumental tracks in an experimental online distribution system, have done themselves one better, and released their new album for free. By free, I mean really free, none of this drmed lowbitrate mp3s which you can sort of use for free, but full blown, FLAC, even ABOVE FLAC (DVD-Audio Wave files) files, with absolutely no drm. All distributed for via NINs very own torrent tracker, it's bloody brilliant.

Download it now, tell your friends, then if you like it, support Trent and go out and buy a CD in the summer.

Via nin.com

The RIAA's attempt to make putting files into a folder like that of KaZaA's My Shared Folder the same as full blown piracy has thankfully; failed. The judge stated "Merely making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work available to the public does not violate a copyright holder's exclusive right of distribution".

This is fantastic news as in my opinion, putting a file in a folder does not make piracy in any way!

Radiohead, "pioneers" of the free music distribution system which has recieved so much press recently have now done a bit of a U-turn, with frontman Yorke telling people that there will be no more free albums from them. It's slightly sad to see this return to a more traditional distribution system, where a label will take a lionshare of the profits once more, but if it's what they want to do, it's what they do.... perhaps the label method will improve their music, it may just be me, but I wasn't too impressed with In Rainbows, despite the freeness

Metallica, a band famously anti-p2p since being the ones who effectively damned Napster, have now come out saying that fans should be expecting the new album to have full internet use....after they have been watching artists' such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have large amounts of success with their slightly non conformist styles of release. All of their back catalogue is now for sale...and they are just on to embrace the net!

Good on them, I say.