MySpace.com, one of the leading sites for musicians and music fans, has launched it's own record label.

They will be releasing an album that will contain a mix of tracks using major-label, independent-label and unsigned acts, including Weezer, the All-American Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, AFI, Against Me, Plain White T's, New Year's Day and Hollywood Undead.

MySpace has over 35 million members and has artist and band pages totalling 550,000. That's a lot of music! Even major labels have seen the value of promoting their acts on MySpace... Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, the Black Eyed Peas and Death Cab for Cutie, and others have used MySpace to promote their recent albums.

Click Here to read the article over at CNet.com.

New York-based company, iMesh, has launched a new, legal P2P music downloading service with access to over 2 million tracks from record labels.

Users can pay .99 cents a song or $6.95 a month for acess to their entire catalog. More than 150,000 users have downloaded the software since last Tuesday making it number 4 at Download.com.

The software utilizes Microsoft's Digital Rights Management technology to keep users in check. This allows users to see the over 15 million files available on the Gnutella network, but makes you pay if you want to download.

According to an article over at CNet.com, iMesh's content filters are Messing Up a bit. But, I'm sure they'll work out all the kinks as things move forward.

Click Here to read the article over at Wired.com.

Click Here to download the iMesh software.

CNet has an excellent article on setting up a Wi-Fi network for your home or office. What is great about the article is that it isn't your run-of-the-mill quick-shot tutorial that leaves you with the most basic setup.

This article actually gives you an outline of the necessary steps to securing your network. First, it tells you the obvious: change the wireless router's default password.

But, then it goes on to discuss changing the name of your network using SSID and enabling data encryption using Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) or Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption.

It even discusses MAC address filtering which allows you to limit access to your network to only specific network adapters. Sweet!

Click Here to read the article over at CNet.com.

Not wanting to limit it's lawsuits to little old ladys and Girl Scouts, the MPAA is suing a Grandfather whos grandson downloaded four movies. Three of which the family already owned.

The MPAA is suing because Grandpa refused to submit to their blackmail of $4,000. They are seeking damages in upwards of $600,000!!!

Once again they trotted out the sob-story about how much money they're loosing to "illegal" movie downloads. How is it illegal to download a movie you already own on DVD?

I wonder when they'll come up with a formula for determining the per-video-frame value of a movie?

Hmmm, let's see...

30 frames per second. An average movie these days is about an hour and forty-five minutes long or one-hundred and five minutes. That equals 6,300 seconds. At 30 frames per second, that's 189,000 frames. Multiply that times four (the kid downloaded four movies): 756,000 frames total. Divide that by $600,000 and you get about $0.79 per frame or about $150,000 per movie. Good thing the kid didn't download Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy!

DAMN! I never realized how much of a deal I was getting when I buy those $5 DVDs at Walmart! In light of this, I wonder how much I can get for them on e-Bay?

Click here to read the Associated Press article.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is technology that serves to restrict how you can access digital content on your PC or other electronic device. In this case, the digital content I'm talking about would be music or video.

It is basically a form of copy protection. It is what keeps you from burning a CD of a song you downloaded from iTunes. It can help you create a DVD that you can play only once. It can allow you to play a presentation on your PC but not your laptop. It boils down to basically one thing... M O N E Y.

I'm all for artists making money off their work. I'm all for the labels that record them making money too. But, at some point, we have to realize that music and media want to be free... want to be seen... want to be heard. It is a natural thing. A story wants to be told and has a life unto itself.

In an increasingly digital age of media, we are fast approaching a time when you will have to pay multiple times for the same content.

Want to listen to the song on your PC? Screw you, Pay Me!

Want to listen to it in your car? Screw you, Pay Me!

Want to listen to it on your mobile phone? Screw you, Pay Me!

Want to burn it to a CD and take it with you? Uh, no. Go to hell. (Or pay me a monthly licensing fee.)

I can invision a day when we are simply billed a few pennies for every song or video we're "tuned into" and you'll get a "content statement" along with your telecom bill. I'm sure they'll even come up with a way to partially bill you if you decide to partake of something else halfway through.

We're on the preverbial slippery slope here, folks.

Conductor, Skitch Henderson, passed away Tuesday of natural causes at the age of 87. Henderson was the founder of New York Pops and was the first "Tonight Show" bandleader.

He was born in England and moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. He barely made a living as a pianist playing vaudeville and movie houses. Skitch got his big break when he filled in for a sick pianist who was touring with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in 1937.

He later went on to work with Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and many other with MGM Studios.

Uncle Sam popped him in 1975 for tax evasion and threw him in jail for 6 months. His lawyer blamed the snafu on bad advice from an accountant.

As a veteran pilot during World War II, the man shouldn't have had to pay any damn taxes in the first place.

Godspeed, Mr. Henderson, as you journey to your Grand Finale.

Click here to read more about Skitch Henderson at FoxNews.com.

I've had to remove the ability for non-registered users to enter comments on articles.

See, the problem are the jerks who insist on posting links to casinos, porn sites, etc. They have no shame, no morals, you name it. First, they started spamming my guestbook, now they're spamming the comments section of specific articles.

It really is despicable. This is obviously not an appropriate place for their spam-links. It isn't enough that they suck up our e-mail bandwidth and clog our inboxes with their useless crap... they have to come to independent websites like this - I'm just a guy in a freaking garage - and make me waste my time deleting their inappropriate garbage.

So, spammers, if you can even read english - go peddle your bullshit somewhere else. Assholes.

In another Orwellian move, the RIAA has introduced a bill that - if passed - would basically make your current video digitizing setup illegal.

They want all video digitizing systems to either have all of the device's "outputs" approved by Hollywood Studios or the system must be designed in such a way so as to be tamper-proof. It also must be proprietary and "closed-source". For you non-geeks, that means the underlying machine code cannot be released to the public for any reason.

The implications are that you will have to have permission (digitally) to record an MPEG. This can certainly adversely affect devices like TIVO. Time-shifting can be disabled (forcing you to watch commercials! ) and you can be easily prevented from even recording your favorite TV show if the producers so desire.

I'm telling you... if the movie and record industry has it's way, we'll all be paying every single time you watch a video (even 30 seconds of it) or listen to a song (ditto).

Unbelievable G R E E D.

Click here to read the article at BoingBoing.net.