DeskMod is reporting that inside sources at Nullsoft claim Winamp 3.0 alpha will be released tomorrow. Do not expect any
news on their main page as they are simply going to pass along the URL to it on their message board, as they just want experienced users to
test out this first public release. As you may or may not know, Winamp 3.x supports a free-formed skinning format which may be scripted
TVT Records, a large independent record label has dropped its $1.5 million dollar lawsuit against Napster. TVT executives say that they dropped
the lawsuit because of Napsters evolving business model with Bertelsmann. The new model has rumors of the service shutting down and
switching over within two weeks, I doubt it'll happen that soon but I suppose eventually Napster will have to charge for it's service. More here.
The common club DJ may be replaced with a computer AI program that is programmed to mimic a DJ. "The prototype software was created by Dave Cliff, an artificial intelligence researcher at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol. It can sequence and seamlessly mix a full set of tracks, as long as they are provided in a digital format." Read the rest here. I wonder what my homie Jooz would have to say about this!
The DeCSS court saga continues with the latest ruling in favor of the defendants. CNET wrote "The California Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ordered a lower court to show why defendant Matthew Pavlovich should remain in the case even though he is not a California resident." The DVD Copy Control Association which represents the movie industry has sued 21 different parties in the case, 18 of which reside outside of California.
The following story in The Standard as well as this follow-on at Gigalaw announce RIAA's intention of controlling the royalties of all downloadeble music on the Internet. These are the same people suing Napster and MP3.com. Stand up now for true copyright protection as afforded under the U.S. constitution or risk giving it up forever to global monopolies such as this.
If there's on thing that's universally clear from the RIAA's attack on Napster, it's that a) there's something out there called Napster, and b) I can get free music on it. What am I blathering about, you ask? Nothing other than the stellar advertising job for Napster on the part of the RIAA--so stellar in fact that Napster use in September was at an all-time high. Some 1.39 billions songs were supposedly downloaded in September (of which a surprising number were likely not to be anything decent).
Yes! You can find us on IRC as well -- on Relic.net -- that's ircd.relic.net. So if you'd like to "meet" up with some of us, do drop by for a chat. So go now and join #hackinthebox on ircd.relic.net. See you guys there.
