Category: Stories
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‘Fucked’ record companies in ‘cataclysmic’ meltdown – Tim Clark
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Andrew Orlowski
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As some of the biggest figures in the music business weighed in on the future of music this week, there were very mixed views on its future. “If Ford’s revenues were down 40 per cent, the shareholders would be revolting,” said Tim Clark, former Island Records MD and co-founder of management company IE Music, whose…
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Psion: The story of the Last Computer
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Andrew Orlowski
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This long (40-page) history of Britain’s last computer company, Psion, was written over four days. It’s the longest piece The Register has ever run, we made it available as a PDF (for a small fee). Included are full transcripts of interviews with David Potter, Martin Riddiford, Mark Gretton, David Tupman and Nick Healey. (Charles Davies…
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Parliament must listen to the blogger in his pyjamas
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Andrew Orlowski
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Parliament may soon be debating whether to legalise incest, reclassify insomnia as a mental illness, microchip all children at birth … or give pantomime actor Richard Griffiths a Knighthood. That’s if opposition leader David Cameron has his way. A Conservative Party task force examining democratic participation proposes that online petitions should help set the parliamentary…
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Rob Lewis on MusicStation
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Andrew Orlowski
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MusicStation, the service that aims to give unlimited mobile access to music worldwide for a small weekly fee, finally went live today. The success of the venture, from British start-up Omnifone, will tell us a lot about whether punters are prepared to pay for digital music, rather than scoop it up for free. MusicStation is…
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Public jeers at Ofcom’s Nathan Barley quango
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Andrew Orlowski
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Ofcom has published the public consultation responses to its PSP concept. And they don’t make comfortable reading for the regulator. The PSP, or Public Service Publisher, is a new quango that would cost taxpayers between £100m than £150m a year – handing out money to new media types for interactive websites, and other “user generated…
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Google at CISAC
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Andrew Orlowski
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Google gave a keynote speech to the biggest global gathering of authors’ societies today. The internet advertising giant is embroiled in several areas of copyright litigation. Publishers and authors object to its mass scanning project, Google Books. News agencies and publishers have sued it over its use of links and excerpts in Google News. And…