DeWitt Clinton

Tune Recycler, a new effort from the guys who bring you Downhill Battle, seeks to help independent artists by capitalizing on all of the unused downloads from Pepsi’s 100 million song givaway at Apple’s iTunes Music Store. In general, they have been critical of iTunes, particularly in that only pennies on the dollar go to [...]

P2PNet made a great find in noticing that buried in a long list at HotJobs’s “security/enforcement” section was this brilliant posting by the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPPA is looking to fill the $75K position in Encino, CA with someone that can “oversee Internet anti-piracy operations worldwide,” “examine new piracy methods & protocols,” [...]

Channel 9 News is reporting that the people of San Antonio, TX took to the streets in protest today as the Federal Communications Commission came to town. The demonstrators carried signs and shouted slogans hoping to raise awareness of how Clear Channel Communication and other media conglomerates have a near monopoly hold on television and [...]

You may have noticed the new advertisements running along the right hand column of the Breakdown homepage. If not, please take a look. No, further down. Scroll a little. There you go. Rather sharp, right?
After watching writers such as Peter Rojas, Jen Chung, and Lester Bangs grow fat off of lucrative sponsorship deals, the Board [...]

Based on the information in their first Online Music Report of 2004, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is happy with the progress made thus far in educating the public on the illegality of breaking copyright law. From their (motivationally suspect but well documented) surveys, “an average of 66% of people across [Germany, France, [...]

The BBC reports on the likelihood of the adoption of RIAA-like tactics by the British Phonographic Industry, which recently stated it was "increasingly likely" that legal action would be taken against mp3 sharers. This announcement comes in the face of rising album sales in the UK (which reached a record high in 2003), going against [...]

Breakdown previously discussed the possibiliy that the Recording Industry Association of America would start filing “Jane Doe” lawsuits against potential file traders based on their IP addresses alone. After the courts declared the RIAA’s subpoena tactics to be illegal, the organization responded by saying they would therefore no longer attempt to contact individuals prior to [...]

In a refreshing bit of news seen at Slashdot, Internet.com is running an article about how Internet Service Providers are now ignoring the Recording Industry Association of America’s requests to voluntarily cooperate in targeting individual users. The RIAA’s tactic last year involved getting a court clerk to sign a subpoena order to force ISPs to [...]

At one point in time, EMusic.com was easily the best source for legal independent music available on the internet. However, when the company was sold off by Vivendi to a private equity firm, the service went through a rough six months of transition. The unparalleled unlimited download pricing model was suddenly abandoned, the message boards [...]

In the latest installment of a growing series of reviews of legal online music stores, Breakdown takes a look at the high-end offerings of Audio Lunchbox. Launched in 2003, this site shares the same philosophy as Breakdown — that quality music need not be co-opted by major labels nor encumbered by restrictive digital rights management [...]