A lesson in US lawmaker's call for P2P ban

Whether or not even feasible, a call in Congress for a ban on P2P file-sharing by government workers is very instructive for households where kids share a lot of music. The main takeaway: A lot more than music can get shared. But let's back up. The story is that Rep. Edolphus Towns (D) of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is calling for the ban because of "an embarrassing security breach [that] revealed details of dozens of ethics investigations," the Washington Post reports. "The information came from a committee document that a junior staffer had exposed on her home computer, which was using peer-to-peer technology. A non-congressional source with no connection to the committee accessed the document and gave a copy to The Post." Clearly the file-sharing software on her computer wasn't configured to share only music files. And clearly a huge mistake. But if not at the federal level, the solution at the household level is simple: With any file-sharers at your house, look at the preferences and see how they're configured. See which folders on the computer are designated for sharing files – hopefully not income tax files, household budget files, family correspondence, medical files. Personal security breaches have been known to happen. See "P2P's risks: New study" and "FTC on P2P."

MySpace & iLike get together

Now, this makes perfect sense - MySpace is acquiring iLike, a little music-sharing app very popular on many social network sites - given MySpace's growing focus on participatory music (see "MySpace's metamorphosis?"). "The [acquisition] strengthens MySpace’s grip on the music market – iLike is second only to MySpace Music in popularity [with 55 million users] – and extends the reach of the social network, which has lost serious traffic in recent months to Facebook," the Christian Science Monitor reports. The creators of iLike says it's "the dominant music application" on Facebook, Google's Orkut, Hi5, and Bebo, and Business Week reports it won't leave those sites when it belongs to MySpace. Here's a 2007 interview USATODAY did with iLike CEO Ali Partovi in which he explains how it works. [Also related is "'Beatles: RockBand' & participatory music."]

Online music lessons taking off

Some 800,000 people have watched YouTube videos of musicians teaching them how to play Colbie Caillat's 2007 hit 'Bubbly' on guitar," USATODAY reports; Sting teaches "Roxanne" himself in Apple's GarageBand software, one of many music lessons in the application's latest version; "Edison Mellor-Goldman, 17, a Los Angeles-area high school student, likes to go home from school and make video tutorials using his iMac computer's built-in webcam.... He's made 33 videos. His most popular - how to play Jason Mraz's 'I'm Yours' - has been viewed 200,000 times on YouTube"; and UK musician Justin Sandercoe gives video lessons in his own site, Justinguitar.com, which "attracts 600,000 viewers a month," according to USATODAY. Sandercoe's "lesson on how to play Guns 'N Roses' 'Sweet Child o' Mine' has picked up more than 2 million views." Through all these digital resources, music learning is getting a big boost. Joe Lamond, president of the National Association of Music Merchants, a trade group for music stores (where most guitar lessons are held), says the growth of online video lessons has paid off with more-attentive students." He credits the Internet and videogames like Guitar Hero for the fact that guitar sales are up 3%, he told USATODAY.

Bad pirates to good pirates

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" is reportedly the music industry's new modus operandi, and it's music pirates it was never quite able to beat. Though it certainly tried, with thousands of lawsuits and settlements out of court with file-sharers. "After years of futile efforts to stop digital pirates from copying its music, the music business has started to copy the pirates," the New York Times reports. "Free" music services offering millions of songs online and on phones are "set to proliferate" this year, it adds, bringing stiff competition to iTunes, whose music-sales growth ended last year. Customers' costs will be buried in mobile or Internet-service contracts. These music services are also different from file-sharing services like Limewire or eDonkey in that they're legal and provide revenue to the music companies. Two examples of the "free services": 1) Nokia's Comes With Music, which "lets users download as many songs as they want, from a catalog of more than five million tracks, when they buy certain Nokia phones" and 2) and the Isle of Man government's plan to require broadband Internet users to "pay a nominal monthly license fee" and thereby "legally download music from any source, even peer-to-peer services that are outlawed currently." At a music industry conference in Cannes, a Research in Motion executive predicted that "the music industry will be unrecognizable in a couple of years time," Reuters reports. Here's some background on the music industry in the Financial Times. Meanwhile, LimeWire - which has 70 million unique users and gets more than 5 billion queries a month - just added social-networking features to its service, CNET reports.

For kids, gaming over music

A new study by market researcher NPD Group found that 85% of children aged 2-14 use game consoles, and 82% of 2-to-5-year-olds play games on one or more devices, while 60% use digital music players, Gamasutra reports. NPD's Kids & Digital Content III report, which surveyed more than 3,500 kids who use electronic devices, also found that a third of the 2-to-14-year-olds watch videos such as movies and online video clips on laptops or other electronic devices, and 22% download ringtones on their cellphones. Here's more on the NPD report from Gamespy. Meanwhile, in a keynote speech at CES, Mike Griffith, CEO of Guitar Hero maker Activision, "proclaimed that video games are 'poised to eclipse all other forms of entertainment in the decade ahead'," the BBC reports. "He quoted US market statistics which showed that between 2003 and 2007 sales of movie tickets fell by 6%; the number of hours of TV watched dropped by 6%, sales of recorded music slumped 12% and purchases of DVDs remained flat.