The Cattle-Branding Approach to Releasing Music

Frequent Reason contributor Mike Riggs has an interesting article in the Washington City Paper about one of the ways record labels try to keep reviewers from leaking music onto the Internet before an album is formally released. The story isn't about intellectual property law so much as it's about an effort to enforce a boundary by private means, and whether the method is doing more to help the companies or to hurt them. (If you want to have an interesting argument about IP history, though, Google up "common law right before publication" and start arguing from there.)

In related news, a (rumored!) advance quote (full context unknown!) from an interview in SCMagazine has a spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America saying that digital rights management is dead. Make of that what you will.