Stories about: BMG

Record companies are scrambling to find new ways to distribute music in the face of declining music sales. The latest is slotMusic, a microSD card containing music in MP3 format without DRM (digital rights management), playable on pocket devices such as mobile phones.

Security researchers have developed a new type of malicious rootkit software that hides itself in an obscure part of a computer's microprocessor, hidden from current antivirus products.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.

Swedish police are expected to decide later this week whether a criminal case is warranted against 10 major music and movie companies over their alleged efforts to disrupt the Pirate Bay, one of the largest file-sharing search engines.

A second line of USB drives sold by Sony Electronics that uses rootkit tactics to hide files has been identified, and the devices' software remains on the Web, a researcher said Thursday.

The cofounder of a Web site that offers free streamed music from top artists said he's determined to operate his service legally despite menacing overtures from Universal Music Group.

Late at night, a system administrator performed a routine check of a crashed server, one of 48 systems comprising a major online infrastructure that generated about US$4 million per month in revenue. He was a bit surprised that the system had gone down, as it had been humming for months without any indication of being prone to crashing. The check uncovered three encrypted files. The administrator called on MANDIANT to analyse them.

Security researcher Joanna Rutkowska has demonstrated several methods that sophisticated rootkits can use to hide from even the most reliable detection method currently available -- hardware-based products that read a system's RAM.

Consumers in Europe have another group looking out for their digital rights with the opening of a Brussels office by the U.S. nonprofit group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

More than two years after a security researcher first called attention to Sony BMG's use of a stealth program to enforce digital rights management on its music CDs, the company reached a deal with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the incident, the FTC announced on Tuesday.

Just hours before Google announced a US$1.6 billion acquisition of YouTube on Monday, both companies separately revealed agreements with major music labels for offering music videos on their respective sites. The deals, especially those between YouTube and the record companies, take on new significance since the acquisition, says one leading industry analyst.