The RIAA, the PRS, BUMA/STEMRA – all organisations claiming to exist for the benefit of musicians (who never see the money collected) are now showing – yet again – how self serving they are: The STEMRA decided they wanted to grant a pan-European musical license to beatport.com, so they wouldn’t have to go through each individual country. The PRS (British RIAA) went ballistic and sued STEMRA. Higher courts have denied the STEMRA. So instead of being able to easily pay for the rights of the artists so that they could be heard all over Europe on the web, the PRS has shot its’ artists in the foot and told them NO WAY do they want people to listen to them all over Europe… Unless, of course, the PRS gets some of the action. Instead of the artists, through another organisation.

Does that sound like mafia to you?

Emerce – Business nieuws: Voorlopig geen Pan-Europese muzieklicentie.

The Italians will sue your sorry arse for things you never did, didn’t know of and tried to fix as soon as you did know of them!

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes who left the company in 2008. The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

via Official Google Blog: Serious threat to the web in Italy.