Facing criticism from thousands of fans, the Grateful Dead appears to have backtracked on recent moves to deter people from trading free copies of concert recordings over the Internet. After consulting with the legendary jam band, a nonprofit group that distributes the group’s music online had restored the audience recordings for downloading and streaming on …

Change is in the wind for some prominent open-source software, with a reworking of the license covering Linux and a makeover for the Firefox browser. Overhauling the Linux license Rules governing use of free software programs to be revised for the first time in 15 years, beginning Wednesday.The New York Times November 30, 2005 Mozilla takes wraps off Firefox 1.5 …

Illegal downloads are still beating legal online music in Europe, analysts say. According to a new report from analyst house JupiterResearch, consumers are three times more likely to get their digital music from illegal file-sharing networks than pay to download the tracks from online song shops such as iTunes and Napster, with 15 percent of consumers using P2P sites and …

Lest there be any doubt, the recording industry is quite serious about cracking down on what it perceives to be illegal file-sharing, in the United States and other countries as well. To prove the point, the industry has just initiated more than 2,100 new legal cases against individuals in Europe, Asia and South America. According to the International Federation for …

Napster and XM Satellite Radio on Monday unveiled a beta version of a joint music offering. The new service is designed to let satellite radio subscribers access, purchase and download broadcasts on about 70 music channels available over XM, the companies said. In addition, users can access Napster’s music catalog and buy tracks from it. The XM + Napster service …

Apple Computer’s iTunes music store now sells more music than Tower Records or Borders, according to analyst firm the NPD Group. The research company tracks downloads from digital music stores, as well as people’s purchasing habits at offline retail stores. During the past three months, iTunes made it to the U.S. Top 10 sales list for the first time, NPD …

Though Sony BMG Music Entertainment faces a torrent of criticism and lawsuits stemming from copy-protection software on some of its CDs, the so-called rootkit controversy has not yet had much of an impact on sales, according to market trackers. Certainly, the pressure on Sony is mounting. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott charged that the entertainment giant violated Texas’ …

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The EMI Group record label said music from its copy-protected CDs will soon play on Apple Computer’s iPod digital music players, but the iPod maker disagrees. For more than a year, the anti-copying technology loaded on some major label compact discs has been compatible only with Windows-based computers. Those CDs have allowed listeners to move digital files onto the computers, …

A file-swapping network that let college students download movies and music at blazing speeds on the Internet2 research network has closed its doors, the latest casualty of entertainment industry legal pressure. The i2Hub network emerged in early 2004, taking advantage of the supercharged network that connects college campuses to let students trade files at speeds far faster than is possible …