Last week ATT admitted muting Pearl Jam’s political lyrics during its exclusive webcast of the band’s Lollapalooza show on Aug. 5. ATT rightly apologized, said the silencing was a mistake by a content monitor, and claimed that the company “does not censor or edit performances.” ATT spokeswoman Tiffany Nels also told the Los Angeles Times that it uses the content monitors to block “excessive profanity.” read more

Kevin Martin is god-darn angry. The FCC chairman has lashed out over a ruling this week by a New York Appeals Court that overturned his agency’s citing of several major networks for on-air expletives uttered by Nicole Richie, Cher, a contestant on "Survivor," and others. Interestingly, his own statement is laced with expletives.

The court rebuked the FCC Commission for being "divorced from reality." It’s not hard to see why: the commission ruled the mere utterance of certain words like "shit" or "fuck" implied that certain obscene excretory or sexual acts were carried out. Of course — in reality — these words are often used as simple exclamations. read more

Webcasting

Major Webcasters to face billions in new fees? The CEOs of the four leading internet radio broadcasters, RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora, and Live365, say the new annual $500/channel administrative fee would force their companies alone to pay $1 billion per year to SoundExchange ­ without including actual royalty payments.
by Anne Broache, CNET, June 7, 2007 read more

DRM

Apple Debuts Unprotected Songs Online
Apple begins selling DRM-free songs from EMI on Itunes; songs downloaded from iTunes will play on other digital music players for the first time.
by May Wong, Associated Press, May 31, 2007

Amazon Store to Sell Music Free of Copy Protection
Amazon.com plans to launch a digital music store later this year. Their MP3-only strategy, says founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, "means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device."
Billboard.biz, May 16, 2007 read more