In looking at the response of the critics to the new PROTECT IP bill I couldn't help but recall the title of the old Altman/Lawrence song "All or Nothing at All". These critics want a perfect solution to piracy or no solution at all.

They all do lip service to...

"We can now estimate the cost of everything while understanding the value of nothing."

This maxim is an apt description of the criticism being lodged against AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA. Merger critics argue that reducing the number of broadband service providers could allow the remaining service providers to increase...

Today, the hacker group known as 'Anonymous' launched a denial of service attack on the website of Broadcast Music Inc. For those who don't know, BMI is a songwriter organization dedicated to ensuring that composers receive the royalties they earn through public performances of their music. For example, when a...

After their world tour in 1966, The Beatles quit touring as a group.

The interviews have stated that they were tired of trying to perform when they couldn't hear themselves over the screaming audience and were increasingly interested in producing more progressive and experimental music in the recording studio.

The...

In the recent end of the decade issue of Time magazine entitled "What Really Happened" there is an article entitled "The Men Who Stole the World". The article recounts the exploits of four young men who each found a new way to use technology to empower hundreds of millions of...

The press and the Internet are awash in stories and commentary about WikiLeaks. Everyone, it seems, has something to say about freedom of speech versus national security. Everyone, that is, except the public interest groups that are concerned about 'free speech' only as it relates to their anti-copyright agenda.

The jury in the latest trial of illegal file sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset has awarded the plantiffs, Capitol records et al., an award of 1.5 million dollars.

This is the third time that jurors have issued large awards in this same case. The first judgment was for $222,000, the second for...

Yes, it can get worse.

Two weeks ago, I told you how a small, ideologically rigid group was "swift boating" their fellow Democrats and sucking all of the oxygen out of meaningful tech policy solutions in Washington over an issue few Americans are even paying attention to.

By Rick Carnes

As a longtime Democrat, it concerns me greatly when our side of the aisle starts
sounding just like the Tea Party. Democrats are supposed to be the party of jobs.
On technology issues, we're supposed to be working constructively with labor, with
...

Randy Newman, singer/songwriter and film composer extraordinaire, when asked what one might do to attain to something near his level of artistic ability replied, "Don't play video games. You'll wake up one day a 35 year old who can't do anything else." I wonder what he would say now about...

Rick Carnes, President, Songwriters Guild of America

As President of the Songwriters Guild I am often asked to teach workshops and seminars on professional songwriting.

The first thing I tell my students is that if they want to be professional songwriters they have to 'own' the idea...

It happened while I was listening, on Rhapsody, to "Gene's Lament," recorded live at the Blue Note by Gene Harris in 1985. About half way through his solo I burst out laughing, and so did a number of the people in the recorded audience that night. I've seen this happen...

The proponents of Net Neutrality have long claimed that the FCC needs to lay down some rules insuring freedom of speech on the internet.

As a songwriter I have a problem wrapping my mind around the concept that the FCC is going out of the censorship business and into the...

In the course of a lifetime of fighting music piracy, I have repeatedly marveled at the capacity of intelligent people to convince themselves of the most absurd things to justify the illegal act of taking someone else's music.

When we do or say something that might not square with our...

A recent column by David Kravets regarding the LimeWire copyright infringement decision contained this quote by LimeWire COO Zeeshan Zaidi, "The biggest challenge right now is changing the behavior of a generation of internet users to get them to pay for music."

The statement is correct, but entirely...

As songwriters we all face a common enemy; the blank page.

Nothing is more terrifying.

Each new day we sit down and try to invent our future through words and music. Most days we fail, and fail badly. If we get one song in a hundred recorded we are on...

Freedom of speech is alive and well in the United States, but it does occasionally take a bizarre turn. Witness this example from the MAY 2010 issue of PC World Magazine warning illegal downloaders:

"The next people who bust you for illegally swapping music and movies could be the folks...

Thank you for being a fan!
March 26th, 2010

Webster's Dictionary (the actual book, not some online version) defines the word 'fan' as, "an enthusiastic devotee of some particular diversion." Ask any recording artist and they will tell you -- true fans are the lifeblood of music.

A great...

In a recent article in The Hill Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn questioned why I have taken a position on Net Neutrality "so at odds with individual artists and so in line with Big Media".

I would simply reply that my record in fighting for songwriters and artists...

Art, thou doth protest too much methinks. If anyone is being disingenuous it's the folks you defend at Free Press, who are for nothing of the sort.

The fact is that Free Press and its founder Bob McChensney have been long and consistent advocates for...