In the News

Pirates losing ground to digital music sales

The 2005 Digital Music Report, published in January by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), brought cheering statistics for the music industry, which had seen CD sales fall in recent years as it struggled against digital piracy of epic proportions:

* legal, paid-for music downloads increased more than tenfold in US and Europe to over 200 million tracks;

* repertoire of legal services doubled to 1 million tracks;

* analyst Jupiter estimated that the digital music market was worth US$330 million in 2004 (about 1.5 percent of record company revenues); with some analysts predicting that digital sales could reach 25 percent of revenues within five years;

* infringing music files on Peer to Peer (P2P) networks worldwide dropped by an estimated 240 million since April 2003.

Innovative business models such as Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes digital Music Store helped to buck the trend, turning the threat into an opportunity. The number of online services selling music legally quadrupled in 2004 to more than 230 worldwide, offering consumers ever wider choice. Global revenue from (mobile phone) ring tones sales exceeded US$3 billion by the end of the year, offering a rapidly expanding new market for music licensing. Meanwhile, the 7,000 legal actions to date brought by record companies against bulk uploaders in Europe and the United States of America drove up consumer awareness of the potential penalties for piracy.

The United Kingdom has the most extensive legal digital market in Europe. Consumer awareness is relatively high, with well-known songwriters taking the anti-piracy message into schools as part of an education campaign backed by British Music Rights. But here too the music industry still has some way to go to win the hearts, minds and money of an often skeptical youth market. IFPI chairman John Kennedy comments: "The biggest challenge for the digital music business has always been to make music easier to buy than to steal. At the start of 2005, as the legitimate digital music business moves into the mainstream of consumer life, that ambition is turning into reality."

Fighting for orange

The color orange is at the heart of a dispute between two weighty trademark owners.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou is the founder of...