In any case, there is another service that’s opening in Europe. Bigwig Hewlett-Packard is joining the fray and is opening up a music service in some European countries. Dubbed the MusicStation, this will be preloaded on some of HP’s personal computers. They will be released in the following countries:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Britain
• Italy
• France
• Germany
• The Netherlands
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland

More from Reuters:

The service has been developed and is managed by British digital music firm Omnifone. HP runs a similar service in United States with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody.

Such new subscription services helped to lift sales of digital music 12 percent last year to $4.2 billion, industry trade body IFPI said last week.

“As the world’s biggest PC vendor, HP has huge opportunity to create a viable competitor to iTunes due to its scale,” said Rob Lewis, chief executive of Omnifone. Apple’s iTunes — with a pay-per-download business model — is the leading digital music distributor.

How much is this going to cost? 10 euros for a month for unlimited access. Not too bad.

The international community has been quick to do what it could to help out but it seems that there can never be enough help doled out. The infrastructure of the capital was torn down by the strong quake and a lot of Haitians are not being reached quick enough. Worse, there is a lack of medicine, water, food, and other basic necessities.

While many have already given what they can, we can still help in other ways. One of these ways is by downloading the music from the recently concluded production Hope For Haiti Now. I don’t know if you got to watch the telethon but I did and it was very touching how it was all put together.

I have to admit, the musical performances were one of the main reasons I watched it and they were all great! The songs were perfect for the theme and the artists gave their best when performing. It really is worth getting that music. Even better, when you buy the album, you will be giving directly to Haiti.

Hope For Haiti Now can be downloaded from Amazon at 0.99 cents per song. You may opt to get music song by song or download the whole album. The latter option will save you a bit of money.

Spotify for the iPhone
Spotify has already captured the hearts of countless music lovers. It has been dubbed the ultimate music app for the iPhone. You can sync music – offline playlists – through WiFi among other things. Downloading the software is free, but in order to make full use of the Spotify service (listen-all-you-can), you have to pay for a subscription. It is well worth the fee, trust me.

Doom Classic
Younger kids may not have recollections of this game – which was mind blowing way back then – but everyone will enjoy playing Doom. The game play is very similar to the original and the controls very easy. More so, if you have the same WiFi connection, you and your friends can play together via the network!

Photoshop
The iPhone is not known for taking ultra nice pictures, but who needs excellent shots when you have Photoshop to “prettify” them for you? With this iPhone version, you can do a lot with those pictures – and you get free storage (2GB) at Photoshop.com as well.

Music, games, and photo editing – you’ve got all you need to keep you busy!

Jamie Cullum, a jazz-pop sensation from the UK shares the same sentiments. In a recent interview, he admitted to downloading music illegally. He said that he would oftentimes use P2P sharing when he cannot immediately get his hands on an album. He added, though, that he would still buy the album when it came out, or when he found it.

While the idea of illegal downloading doesn’t sit well with me, I understand his point of view. There are times when you just want to listen to the music and release dates and other matters like that make it impossible to do so immediately. That’s when P2P comes in handy. And it’s not like you are taking revenue away from the musicians and the record labels – not if you buy the album anyway, right?

The problem is that not everyone will do this. Many people would probably stop at downloading illegally and not obtain the album legally afterwards. Jamie Cullum thinks that the solution is to come up with services “so sophisticated and so comprehensive that people don’t need to download stuff¬ for free.”

I agree. Now how do we do that?

That’s why I think a utility like USB Safely Remove is such an indispensable tool. It helps manage USB devices by actually indicating what it is and removing devices is as simple as clicking on it. The cool thing is that if there is a conflict, the utility will tell you what application is causing the problem.

I think everyone should have this device.

Naturally, this move has met a lot of resistance. Even musicians could not agree on a single stand. However, recent developments in that sector point to everyone giving their support to the government’s proposal. The Guardian has the story:

The music industry moved last night to heal a rift over illegal filesharing as artists including Lily Allen, George Michael and Sandie Shaw voted to support a “three-strikes” rule that would see online pirates have their broadband connections constrained.

After a three-hour meeting in London, the Featured Artists Coalition, which emerged as a breakaway lobby group in the summer, backed the government’s proposed introduction of “technical measures” to combat the rising tide of copyright theft. If they ignore two warning letters, persistent illegal filesharers should have their broadband connections throttled “to a level which would render filesharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access”, according to a statement after the meeting.

I know I’ll probably make myself the target of hatred, but the proposal looks fair enough to me. After all, people get two warnings before they get “punished.” And as for the punishment, it is not even total termination, plus, it could be only temporary.

What do you think about this proposal?

Photo courtesy of The Guardian

Big words for a relatively unknown artist, don’t you think? Anyhow, I am writing about it not to support her statement, obviously, but to rant about how an artist can even think of such a thing! I mean, okay, there are some artists who would not mind people downloading their music for free. After all, true blue artists just want to get their work out there, never mind not getting rich. But to actually encourage people to rip off fellow artists?

Yeah, it is true that there is rubbish – even a lot of it – being aired on the radio and being sold in music stores, but that does not mean that you should tell people to do something illegal! Oh well, this one is sure to bite her in her behind.

As a matter of fact, this is what Jonathan G. Koomey, Christopher L. Weber, and H. Scott Matthews shared in a study they released just last week. Their conclusion was this:

“…despite the increased energy and emissions associated with Internet data flows, purchasing music digitally reduces the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with delivering music to customers by between 40 and 80 percent from the best-case physical CD delivery, depending on whether a customer then burns the files to CD or not. This reduction is due to the elimination of CDs, CD packaging, and the physical delivery of CDs to the household. Based on our assumptions, online delivery is clearly superior from an energy and CO2 perspective when compared to traditional CD distribution.”

And just like that, we have proven the title of this post to be incorrect. Or have we, really?

The authors were quick to point out that this entire scenario is not always applicable. They made assumptions; assumptions that are not always true. We have to take into consideration other factors such as end-user behavior (yes that’s us!).

What if you walk to the music store to buy CDs instead of driving? What if you had to buy blank CDs or DVDs to burn your downloaded files? What if you printed CD/DVD covers to print your downloaded album art? Taking these factors into consideration, you might not be helping the environment all that much if you downloaded music rather than bought them at the store.

Bottom line: you have to consider ALL players of the game before you go around declaring that by downloading, you are helping the earth. Oh, and there is that issue of where and how you download you content. That’s another story altogether, isn’t it?

So it is justifiable in a case like this?

According to Gallinger, the question is not of legality but of ethics. He writes:

What follows is a comment on the ethics of what you propose to do – not the legality. Canadian copyright laws are under review and the legality of particular P2P (peer-to-peer) operations depends on whom you talk to. Read Michael Geist’s article at thestar.com/ sciencetech/article/647038.

But, ethically, after much debate with people who know more about this than me, I’m prepared to render a verdict on your case.
So there’s nothing wrong (ethically, not technically) with P2P per se, unless it’s used for a nefarious activity. And you can’t steal what you already own.

It would be less controversial to buy the software, plug the old turntable into your computer and do the digital conversion yourself. But if you can’t, my opinion is that it’s okay to use P2P, so long as you just download songs you already own and don’t pass on the copies to anyone else.

I totally understand his “verdict,” and I do agree that it would be much less controversial and much less of a hassle to find some means to convert the tapes and LPs. What do you think?

ESPN reporter Erin Andrew is a familiar sight to many sports enthusiasts. And I am pretty sure that there is more than one guy out there who has had not so clean thoughts about her. After all, she is really attractive, isn’t she?

Anyway, a video of her had surfaced on the Internet. Yeah, a video of her walking around in a hotel room. In her birthday clothes. Naked. Nude.

Naturally, this video quickly spread, and people from all over the world have been downloading it. So why would I say don’t download it?

Lisa Bloom, legal analyst for CBS News says that downloading the video is actually illegal. Bloom says that “it’s like buying or selling stolen property. If you know you are buying something that was stolen… you could be liable criminally and civilly.”

One reason is that the video was taken without the consent of Erin Andrew, just as it was spread without her consent. In fact, the video was apparently taken through a peephole, which is in itself a crime.

While you might not be sued, arrested, or anything like that for downloading the video, you just never know what might happen. More so, you might get a different kind of surprise – like a Trojan or some other malware that can bring you more trouble than it’s worth.