Politico reports that the music industry is in an uproar about the approval of a new “.music” domain last month by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Internet addressing system). The fear is that a proliferation of such domain names will facilitate piracy by giving the appearance of legitimacy. For example, www.toriamos.com is the official website for Tori Amos. An unaffiliated entity could register www.toriamos.music, either holding the URL hostage for a big payoff or offering illegal downloads. This is already something of a problem with permutations of .com, .org, .net, etc., but specifically linking the domain name to the category “music” exacerbates the problem.
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Tags: Internet music by Jon O
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Independent music source CD Baby recently posted a blog article, “Has the Internet Really Destroyed the Music Business?”, citing negative comments from John Mellencamp and Stevie Nicks as the latest salvos about the current state of music in the digital age. After pointing out that these stars made a lot of money under the old music business model (which were never golden days, to be sure), CD Baby does some cheerleading for the new, egalitarian model where “there’s at least a spot on the couch” for everybody. 
