Ares Connect

Jammie Thomas, the world’s most famous filesharer, is in the news once again this week, but it’s not good news for the single mother who the RIAA successfully sued for $220,000 in damages.

The US Department of Justice has sided with the RIAA in the constitutionality of the case. Jammie Thomas was stung for sharing 24 songs using P2P filesharing software – that’s $9,250 per song.

Jammie Thomas had appealed the ruling on the grounds that $220,000 was constitutionally excessive. The US Department of Justice, however, doesn’t see it that way. In a brief about the case, the department stated:

Statutory damages compensate those wronged in areas in which actual damages are hard to quantify in addition to providing deterrence to those inclined to commit a public wrong.

Even though each track is worth only about 70 cents a piece, the idea here is that the damage of sharing a song could be significantly higher – about 10,000 times higher in this case.

Icon Digital Entertainment, the company that owns the brands and rights to Blockbuster and Sounds Music in New Zealand has gone into voluntary liquidation. The reason? Illegal music downloads, apparently. Never mind failed business models or management problems – the easy route is to blame music downloads.

Critics have lashed out at ICD for making excuses for the failure of its business. The problem with ICD is that it’s actually cheaper to buy CDs online or even to have them shipped over from the US.

Illegal music downloads are not the cause of ICD’s liquidation, but rather the company’s inability to move with the times has resulted in it going bust. The fact of the matter is that other companies are still thriving off music sales, so why couldn’t ICD?

Let this be a wake up call to music stores around the world: filesharing and music downloads are not the source of your problems – it’s your inability to see changing trends in the market.

Illegal music downloads aren’t the root of all evil. No doubt the RIAA will be all over this one.

A new anti-piracy law passed in France has put the spotlight on users who frequently download music illegally. Anyone who uses filesharing software like Ares or Limewire risks having their Internet access cut.

The agreement would mean that Internet service providers have the power to issue warning messages before suspending or else terminating Internet accounts. Ignoring the messages isn’t an option because the service providers can freeze accounts at the flick of a switch.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy is apparently behind the move, saying, “We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture.

“The Internet must not become a high-tech Far West, a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs,” he said.

This latest attempt to curb filesharing is groundbreaking and terrifying at the same time. Consumer groups have lashed out at the campaign, calling it “very tough”.

Looks like an infringement on Internet freedom. We can only hope that it doesn’t catch on around the world.

Always outspoken, never outdone, Lily Allen has come out and slammed Radiohead for offering their seventh studio album for free music download, saying that the band made a mistake when they asked fans to chose what they think the album is worth.

Attention-seeking Allen went on to call Radiohead “arrogant” – all this coming from the singer who made it big on MySpace.

Allen said, “It’s arrogant for them to give their music away for free – they’ve got millions of pounds. It sends a weird message to younger bands who haven’t done as well.”

Music downloads are here to stay, so who is Lily Allen to stand in the way of being creative about the whole process? Maybe she’s jealous that Radiohead are big enough to do such a thing and she isn’t.

Lily even compared music to eggs, saying, “You don’t choose how to pay for eggs, why should it be different for music?”

If someone offered eggs for free download where you could chose to pay as little as you liked, it would probably be the best thing ever.

Move along Lily Allen!

Proving that the brand is about more than just burgers and fries, Wendy’s has decided to get involved with the music download craze by offering 100 million free downloads to customers.

Until the end of this year, every time a customer buys a medium or large combo meal, they will receive a free music download from Rhapsody. This latest, bold move to tempt Americans to eat fast food is set to go down a storm.

Customers will also be able to enter the Combo Up To Download contest, where they will have the chance to win either a bundle of 50 music downloads or one of 100 SanDisk Sansa e280R Rhapsody players.

The music downloads can be redeemed by customers at Wendys.com for a song of their choice. With 100 million combo meals set to fly off the grills, music fans in the US are likely to gain a bit of wait this coming holiday season.

Kudos to Wendy’s for seeing the potential in catering to currents trends with music downloads. Could filesharing become fast-food sharing?

Proving that the brand is about more than just coffee, Starbucks has become one of the first stores in US in which customers can download the music they are listening to straight to iTunes.

Starbucks is known for encouraging people to take their laptops to coffee shops to make use of wireless Internet connections while sipping on cappuccinos, but now, patrons will be able to identify the music they are listening to in the store and download it on MP3 straight to their computers.

Users with an Apple iPhone or iTunes running on their computers will be able to see the last 10 songs played and download them for 99 cents. With music downloads proving so popular this year, Starbucks is one of the first brands to recognize that music fans want a real music experience, said Ken Lombard, Starbucks Entertainment president.

Starbucks looks set to become a powerful player in the music-download market with its large base of walk-in customers. The move has been implemented in 350 Bay Areas stores, with more to follow around the US.

A hapless music lover in the UK ended up in hot water this week after selling on Ebay copies of music he had downloaded from the Internet. Clive Kinsey downloaded his music and then sold it on for £4 a CD.

Cardiff Crown Court heard that Mr Kinsey was doing it out of love for music. “He actually enjoyed what he was doing,” said Mr Kinsey’s barrister. “He didn’t need to do it for the money.”

The money in question came to £13,600 (about $27,200) in an 18-month period. Trading standards investigators raided Mr Kinsey’s house and found 10,787 tracks that had been downloaded onto a computer.

Most of us at least know of someone who has downloaded that many tracks, if not more, but Mr Kinsey slipped it because he tried to profit from his free downloads.

Mr Kinsey was handed a suspended four-month jail sentence and ordered to complete 120 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay back the money he made from his music downloads.

There haven’t been many great albums recently. Aside from Britney Spears doing her thing and Radiohead releasing their album on the Internet, there has been very little of interest in the music world. Timbaland is one of the few artists making great pop music in the current climate. Could Timbaland be the savior of contemporary pop music?

Timbaland’s album Shock Value is groundbreaking on so many levels. Here is an artist respected as a hip hop producer, defying all genre boundaries and throwing in shades of electro, hip hop, RnB, house, rock, indie – everything.

Timbaland is unique in that his music appeals to a wide range of people. You’ve got hop hop joints like “The Way I Are” sat next to the beautiful ballad “Apologize”. The real telling sign of how great Timbaland is will come if and when he releases his next album, but if it’s anything like the stuff he has been working on over the past three years, we’ll know Timbaland is here to stay.

Always at the center of one story or another, Britney Spears is hitting out against the possibility of her new album, Blackout, doing the rounds on Ares P2P filesharing services before its official release date.

Originally slated to hit stores November 13, Britney’s record label, Jive, pushed the release forward a full two weeks because snippets and demos of the album had begun popping up on numerous filesharing sites.

Jive authorized MTV’s preview site, The Leak, to stream the new album in its entirety. Jive has also filed a lawsuit against gossip-mongerer Perez Hilton who presented unfinished material on his blog as if it were the finished Britney album.

Although Britney’s album is protected on The Leak, there is some doubt as to whether the move will help record sales. Furthermore, when albums hit the filesharing sites before they’re supposed to, the release dates are usually pushed back. Jive have made a bold move to beat Internet users who would otherwise have downloaded the album for free.

The world waits for what could be one of the biggest albums of the year. The hype has already begun.