In the USA new research is suggesting that the music industry’s tactics of launching lawsuits against individuals (including children) might be having some effect:

“The percentage of Americans who downloaded music from the Internet fell to 14 percent over the four weeks ended Dec. 14, from 29 percent in a 30-day sample conducted in March, April and May, according to a telephone survey of 1,358 Internet users conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “

Well it seems the predictions by the music industry of devastation caused by ‘illegal’ burning of songs onto CD have come to naught. Research suggests that tens of millions of home made CDs were given as gifts to Australians in 2003. Yet record sales are hardly showing a blip. “In Australia CD sales through stores rebounded 5 per cent in the first half of 2003. “

And in the USA, one of the loudest prophets of music industry annihilation Stan Liebowitz has recanted. The industry loved Stan when he proclaimed “large-scale unauthorised copying could soon make it obsolete”.

Stan now says “given the enormity of the whole MP3 download enterprise it should be easy to recognise its impact on album sales if the impact is large”.

The Australian newspaper reported yesterday that:

“A computer glitch has caused thousands of Westpac accounts to be wrongly debited, leaving some of the bank’s customers out of pocket by thousands of dollars over the Christmas period.

The bank admitted yesterday ‘thousands’ of deit and credit card transactions had been charged twice, sending many accounts wrongly into debit and leaving the bank’s customers without access to their own funds – some for more than 10 days.”

I went to try and find the story online and my Google search immediately came back with:

Computer glitch strips millions from Westpac accounts

Except that’s a story from September 2003, where it seems Westpac had exactly the same problem:

“Westpac customers had millions of dollars removed from their accounts during the weekend because of a computer glitch.

Angry customers started ringing the bank on Friday night, after finding it had deducted twice as much as it should have from their accounts for automatic withdrawals such as mortgage and utility bill payments. “

But hey, if you can muck it up twice, you can do it three times:

Westpac computer glitch delays $8lm in welfare payments

“About 20,000 people missed out on receiving $8 million in welfare payments this morning following a computer glitch at Westpac Banking Corp Ltd.

Westpac spokesman David Lording said a “technical glitch” involving computer information about the Centrelink and pension payments had prevented money from being put in customers’ accounts across the country today. “

Clearly Westpac is a little unlucky to have two major incidents in the space of a few months, but it’s all little solace to the people affected. In fairness I should point out that the banking sector is rife with stories like this from all around the world, it’s not just Westpac. What would be interesting it to know a little more about the computer ‘glitch’ – was it human error, software bugs, Act of God….?

When will the music companies get the message? Yahoo has released a list of its top 10 searches for 2003. And no Paris Hilton is not number one, nor is Britney Spears or Harry Potter. It’s Kazaa, the music download and peer to peer file exchange service.

Sure Kazaa has been moving towards hosting ‘legitimate’ music exchange, and recently announced the availability of movies (albeit only a couple so far); but by far its biggest marketplace is what the music companies would call illegal music swapping.

You’d think that being the number one most sought after thing on Yahoo might give the music companies something to ponder for the New Year. As a piece of market research – something they live and die for normally – the Yahoo rankings pretty much sum up the issue.

Despite a massive media campaign, issuing law suits against teenagers in the USA, and even securing criminal convictions against three university students in Australia, and generally endeavouring to scare the bejesus out of people, it’s clearly not having much effect. What people want is to swap music, and track down tracks.

There has to be a business case in there somewhere for the music companies, and not just the obvious like iTunes and the other pay per download music purchase web sites.

It’s official, the new anti-spam legislation in Australia comes into effect on 11 April 2004.

Businesses which persist in sending spam will face penalties of up to $1.1 million for a single day of infringements.

The Act prohibits sending unsolicited commercial electronic messages that have an Australian link. This means commercial spam, sent by mobile phone or email, cannot originate from Australia and is not allowed to be sent to Australian addresses, no matter the point of origin.

Communications Minister ‘Rowdy’ Williams (rowdy because he’s so quiet), has apparently just discovered the government a few years ago devolved the authority to issue a fourth TV network licence to the Australian Broadcasting Authority – that’s the statutory body charged with regulating and managing broadcast licences. The new licence would come available after 2006.

Except Rowdy doesn’t trust them – they might actually issue the licence, which of course would make all sorts of very rich and powerful people (eg Kerry and Kerry) upset.

And the Australian says “Seven, Nine and Ten are expected to argue their obligations to broadcast Australian drama and children’s TV programs should be reduced if they have new competition. “

They don’t miss a beat – a statement like that achieves two objectives for the channels – continue to campaign to reduce their expenditure on (expensive) local content and substitute cheap American imports; and scare the government that they might do such a thing, and thus give the government grounds to yet again avoid shaking up the cosy relationships with the media magnates.

In the meantime the community loses out – we continue to have a reduced choice; competition is stiffled; and the existing main players pursue their ‘cheap programming/high revenue’ business model.

Just had a circular come round by email, calling for papers for a conference. With 1054 people in the CC field. When oh when will people learn how to use the BCC field.

I like this from CED Magazine, it sums up the attitude I think we have with the subscription publications I’m involved with:

“the interactive future needs three important legs: compelling content that the consumer is excited about; an efficient marketing and distribution system to make consumers aware of their options; and an underlying platform that delivers on the promise. And all of these need to come together at a price point that rewards the participants for their contributions, and that the consumer is willing to pay.”

Well I’m not sure the tide is turning, but the music industry has had a couple of losses. In the USA a court has refused the industry the right to force ISPs to cough up the names of customers; and a Dutch court has ruled that Kazaa can’t be held liable for copyright infringements of the service’s peer-to-peer music swapping customers.

The State of New York has launched action against three companies, including one run by Scott Richter, a man they say is the third most prolific spammer in the world. Microsoft has also joined the fray, saying it will also launch actions, because the spammers sent thousands of messages to Hotmail. The spams were relayed via unsecured servers overseas. The New York attorney general reckons his goal is to make sure the three companies are put out of business.

As might be expected the three companies are all saying it wasn’t them. At least one already seems out of business, with one of its owners filing for bankcruptcy protection.