The recording industry is testing technology that would prevent consumers from making copies of CD “burns,” a piracy defense that could put some significant new restrictions on legally purchased music. News.context What’s new: Record labels say CD sales have plummeted as a result of copies–and copies of copies. Now the labels are testing technology that would limit the number of …

Audible Magic, a content-filtering company, announced on Friday a wide-ranging agreement with Sony Music, aimed in part at improving tools to combat peer-to-peer piracy. The record label will provide digital “fingerprints” to Audible Magic, which creates technology that identifies and blocks songs as they are transferred online through file-swapping applications or other tools. Sony will also license Audible Magic’s song-identification …

Several proposals to collect money from Internet service subscribers to pay for online music swapping are bubbling to public attention in the United States and Canada. A trade group representing Canadian songwriters and music publishers argued in front of that country’s Supreme Court on Wednesday that ISPs should pay into a nationwide pool–similar to a tax now imposed on blank …