radiohead respond to in rainbows rumors. sort of.

As you probably know by now, Radiohead released their 7th studio album (In Rainbows) online only early last month. What's more, these DRM free mp3s are available for download at whatever price listeners think is fair. And - yes - that includes free. This has led to much industry speculation: did people really pay for it? if so, how many people? how much money did the band make? are record labels dead?

Unfortunately, Radiohead has remained very tight lipped about the results of their ongoing experiment -- so there's not a lot of good information out there.

The following article from gigwise.com came out soon after the album's release, announcing that the album had sold for an average of $8 per download, and that 1.2 million copies had been downloaded from the site.

http://www.gigwise.com/news/37720/radiohead-net-48million-pounds-from-in-rainbows

Then, earlier this week, web traffic tracking behemoth comscore printed this press release with far more detailed statistics. According to comscore:

38 percent of global downloaders of the album willingly paid to do so, with the remaining 62 percent choosing to pay nothing.

moreover, comScore reports, the average price paid by the willing money-payers was only $4 -- not the $8 average suggested by gigwise's earlier reports.

Today, Radiohead responded to comScore's assertions: http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/11/08/radiohead-comscore-totally-inaccurate/

In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that… it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales.

However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”

Apparently, comScore's sample consisted of only 100 people. Oops. So maybe the band did make more that comScore suggests. But how much more? Until Radiohead truly breaks their silence, the world may never know.

email privacy gets challenged on nov 8

the 4th amendment of the united states protects us from illegal search and seizure. this has historically applied to our mail and phone conversations. in the 1970s, the supreme court heard a case to decide whether or not our privacy rights extended to public pay telephones. the court decided that pay phone conversations are, in fact, protected by the 4th amendment. it went even further in stating that the government could only violate our privacy rights when the following conditions are met:

1. there is no reasonable expectation of privacy
2. there is a legitimate reason to listen in

of course, we all assume that our emails are at least somewhat protected by privacy law. i mean, we have usernames and passwords that exist for the sole purpose of preventing anyone but us from accessing this information. but apparently some people in washington don't agree. on november 8th, the supreme court is going to hear a new 4th amendment case.. in this case, the us government argues that since EULAs state that our ISPs may periodically monitor our online activities and communications (including emails and IMs) to make sure we don't violate their their terms of service, and since we have agreed to these EULAs, we can no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy in our online communications. in other words, by saying "yes, comcast, you can check what i'm doing now and again if you really need to," you have waived all rights to your privacy with respect to your internet activites. and therefore the government does not need to get a warrant to tap any and all of your online communications and activities.

i pray to god this is struck down by the supreme court. if not, it's a huge step towards a police state. and it scares the crap out of me.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/04/4th-amendment_email_privacy/