The RIAA and its international counterpart released their latest sales figures today, of course taking the opportunity to whine about flie-sharing and blame piracy for all their industry's woes. The IFPI says, though, digital music sales shot up 259% in the first half of 2005 over last year, with much of that coming from things like mobile phone ringtones. While the music industry pats itself on the back for initiatives like implementing copy protection that just annoys buyers and its continued aggressive legal strategy, it's really doubtful that file-sharing is on the wane. Every time the RIAA gets one site or service shut down, users just move on. So although the groups scream loudest about a slight overall decline in music sales, the fact of the matter is that digital music sales are increasing in spite of piracy, and thanks to sales of non-traditional content like phone ringtones. Now imagine what would happen to the music business if labels embraced this kind of innovation and proactively changed their business models, rather than just stumbling upon it.

Hundreds of people are being wrongly sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally trading music online, legal experts say.

Attorneys representing some of the 14,000 people targeted for illegal music trading say their clients are being bullied into settling as the cheapest way to get out of trouble. Collection agencies posing as "settlement centers" are harassing their clients to pay thousands of dollars for claims about which they know nothing, they say.

In the court report (.pdf), Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff wrote: "Chan opposed the motion and asserted that the plaintiffs used a 'shotgun' approach to pursue this action, threatening to sue all of Chan's children and engaging in abusive behavior to attempt to utilize the court as a collection agency."

"Prior to retaining lawyers, when (defendants) talk to the settlement support center, they are threatened with criminal prosecution, ruin of their credit, publication of their names," he said.

Tim Bray, the director of Web technologies at Sun, said at the OpenOffice.org conference in Slovenia late last week that the file format developed by standards body OASIS has the potential to transform the world as much as the World Wide Web did.

The OpenDocument format has already been embraced by the commonwealth of Massachusetts and is being considered by some European governments, including Denmark and Norway; by Japan; and by other U.S. state governments. Microsoft has said it will not support the OpenDocument format.

"For many years before the Web there were many different ways of publishing information. There were many different ways of doing hypertext. There were many different ways of doing online information retrieval and search, and navigation," said Bray.

"But then in the early '90s everyone agreed on one data format--HTML. HTML is not the world's greatest data format, but the power that came when everybody agreed to standardize on one data format--it changed the world. The whole world of online information exploded. It turned the world inside out," he said.

This is the case peer-to-peer file sharers have been waiting for. Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices.

For a number of years, a group of large, multinational, multi-billion dollar record companies, including these plaintiffs, have been abusing the federal court judicial system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities. As part of this campaign, these record companies retained MediaSentry to invade private home computers and collect personal information. Based on private information allegedly extracted from these personal home computers, the record companies have reportedly filed lawsuits against more than 13,500 anonymous "John Does."

This Saturday, it will become legal to use force on an attacker without first trying to escape the confrontation. The new law seals the existing right of residents to protect their homes by shooting intruders - known as the "castle doctrine" - but now also extends that right to public places if people feel threatened with death or bodily harm.

Supporters say the new law, which they dubbed "Stand Your Ground," allows citizens to protect themselves by meeting force with force.

Opponents, who call it the "Shoot First Law," warn it could hand itchy trigger fingers a license to kill.

Championed by the National Rifle Association, the law also makes it legal for someone to use deadly force against anyone who unlawfully or forcefully enters their home or car - even if they are not being attacked.

Marion Hammer, president of Unified Sportsmen of Florida and a former NRA president, said critics are off-base. Pointing out the castle doctrine dates to the 1400s, she said the new law codifies the right of people to use any manner of force to protect their home and its inhabitants.

"No law-abiding citizen should be forced to retreat from an attacker ... in their homes or any place they have a legal right to be," Hammer said.

The US has refused to hand over control of the main computers that control the Internet to the UN.

Ambassador David Gross, the US coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department said that the US will not allow the UN to take over the management of the net.

He said that although some countries want that the US thinks that's unacceptable. Gross said that the US had been clear that it was not even going to negotiate on this issue. He had a pop at the EU which is starting to move towards agreeing some sort of compromise saying he was "deeply disappointed" with them.

Some countries were hoping that the US would reach some sort of compromise deal on the Internet, as some countries were getting increasingly concerned about the amount of control the US has. They are also concerned that at a stroke the US government could force ICANN to make any web site it liked unreachable.

Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests.

The illegal downloading has cost retail music stores more than half a billion dollars in lost sales since 1999, a study by Pollara for the recording industry estimates.

Canadians between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more willing than other age groups to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or even shoplift, an Environics poll suggests.

Of those asked, 6 per cent of younger Canadians said they would leave a store without paying for a piece of clothing, compared with 2 per cent of the population at large.

Recently, the two industry lobbying groups have adopted the strategy of running to Capitol Hill and begging for legislation to achieve their goal of maintaining absolute control over their content after it has passed from their hands into the consumer's. They must be overjoyed with comments made yesterday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) at a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Referring to the failure of the recent MGM v. Grokster ruling to significantly curtail peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic, she said that Congress may eventually try to legislate them out of existence.

At this time, there are no bills on the table or even in the pipeline, and Sen. Feinstein wasn't ready to offer specifics on possible legislation. However, her comments indicate that Congress is starting to think about intervening in an area that has so far been confined to the US legal system.

A law outlawing peer-to-peer file sharing services is a possibility at some point; more remote is legislation barring the access of such networks. Sen. Feinstein said that her intent is not to go after every high schooler that logs on to eDonkey. However, it is apparent that Congress will be very closely watching developments in the world of file-sharing in the aftermath of MGM v. Grokster. Some of the networks are: Limewire plans to implement safeguards that would keep unlicensed content from being shared and downloaded over the network. Chances are other networks will take similar steps. Is the possible combination of federal legislation and networks barring content enough to stamp out file sharing, or will it just be driven deeper underground?

Vending machines selling chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks will be banned under moves to outlaw junk food in schools, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has announced.

Headteachers condemned the proposed ban, warning that many parents would simply send their children to school with junk food in their lunch boxes instead.

From September 2006, tougher new rules will be brought in limiting the amount of sugar, fat and salt in school meals.

Once the law is changed, vending machines will have to stock items such as milk, bottled water and fresh fruit instead of sweets and crisps.

In a court case where the RIAA tried suing the mother of a 13 year old when her daughter shared music over a file-sharing network, the court forced the RIAA to dismiss the case. In order for the RIAA to sue the child, a Guardian Ad Litem (guardian appointed by a court to represent a minor) must be appointed to protect the interests of the child. While the mother had no experience or knowledge with computers, the RIAA claimed that she was indirectly liable for allowing her daughter to use her computer to illegally share music online.

Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgement in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied this RIAA's request.

Well, at least it is nice to see the RIAA finally lose a case for trying to sue an adult or child when a minor ends up sharing music online. However, this does not stop them from issuing further lawsuits against children with guardians to present the minors.