[H]ardNews 9th Edition

File Swapping Tools = Legal:

Today’s ruling in favor of Grokster and Morpheus has got to just boil the RIAA’s blood. There will definitely be an appeal filed, millions and millions of dollars spent until all legal avenues are exhausted or they get a ruling in their favor. Thanks Wayne.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has handed a stunning court victory to file-swapping services Streamcast Networks and Grokster, dismissing much of the record industry and movie studios' lawsuit against the two companies. "Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

The Business Of Music:

This story is a great follow up to the one posted above just because it shines a light on how screwed up the music industry is right now. It gets more complicated by the day.

Those in charge of music copyrights don't mince words when it comes to music file sharing. ''You mean theft?'' said David Basskin, president of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd., a group that collects royalties for songwriters in Canada.

Pretty soon, if someone is playing a song to loud, and you didn’t pay for the right to listen to it…the RIAA will sue you for overhearing it. This is getting out of hand, and the only people really being hurt through all of this is the ARTIST and the CONSUMER. Artist deserve to be paid for their work, we just need to find a more efficient way to get the money directly to the people who make it so maybe they can earn more than $1 a CD.

Mods & Ends:

Enermax Case Review @ Gruntville - Antec Sonata @ Ars Technica - CoolerMaster Aero 7 Lite - Mitron Fan Controller @ SystemCooling - 3R Landrover Server Case @ PC-Max