Q+A with Lessig and Matt Oppenheim from the RIAA about music copyright law. Unfortunately many of the answers do not apply to Australia as we don't have the same fair-use rights as the US. It's technically illegal in Australia to rip my new Radiohead album so it will play in my car but it's never enforced. Unless the CD was software... which makes the case recently of Warner Bros trying to get DVD movies classed as software (so they could control how it was sold and rented) very amusing.

From yesterday's Beat magazine (Issue 863 - 11/Jun/2003) (paraphrased and commented on): Jan to March 2003 CD sales figures in Aus are showing 12.6 million units vs. same time last year (11.9m). CD albums jumped by 5.64% sales. Music DVDs and Videos sold 851,430 units vs. 289,544 units last year. DVD albums (DVDA?) sold 18,000 vs. 10,000 last year. Vinyl, Cassettes and CD singles continued to bomb. ARIA only release half yearly figures... these quarterly figures may not tell us the full story. Last year sales dropped 4.4% volume and 8.9% in sales revenue (in line with rest of the world) but 2001 our sales were up (10%) against world trends [that's the Napster year]. Apparently we've been lucky this year with strong selling albums from Emimem, Avril, Norah Jones, Silverchair + Deltra Goodrem.

WiredEntertainment starts digital delivery of songs to radio stations. I heard about this idea two years ago but couldn't really say anything. Nice to see it up and running. Will the radio stations use it?