An analyst report calls La La a savvy new music site for helping people swap CDs via the U.S. Postal Service. But, the report notes, the company is also a highly effective way to pirate music. La La allows music lovers to find used CDs on the company’s Web site and then order them from their owners, other La La …

France’s controversial copyright law, which had threatened to mandate interoperability between Apple Computer and rival online music players’ digital rights management, has been dealt a major setback as sections of the legislation are being ruled unconstitutional. The Dadvsi law, which had initially been intended to free digital music lovers from proprietary DRM, now could be doing the opposite. Changes to …

When we reviewed the Sony RDR-HX725 hard drive/DVD recorder earlier this month, we whinged about the absence of two key features. The RDR-HX725 didn’t have an integrated Freeview tuner or an HDMI output, which didn’t make us happy. We’re smiling now though — Sony has just announced the RDR-HXD860, which fixes both those problems. Like its predecessor, the RDR-HXD860 has a …