With all the pressure on students for filesharing, more and more campuses are encouraging their students to use Ruckus, a music-download service that offers fast downloads for students.

Despite this attempt to stop students filesharing, the reasons why Ruckus isn’t cool are the reasons why filesharing is so popular. Students want to download music that they can then play on MP3 players or burn to CD, as they can do with Limewire, Ares et al.

There are still those outraged that students partake in filesharing activities, but really, when they can use PS3s for free, why would they choose to go with Super Nintendos instead? Although Ruckus has more than one million users, students have to pay if they want to use their music downloads for burning CDs or playing on iPods.

It’s clear that Ruckus isn’t any type of solution to the apparent “problem” of filesharing. Filesharing will continue on campuses across America.

Peter Gabriel’s ad-supported online music store, We7, has earned the support of Sony BMG. Sony has pledged to allow its entire back cat to be made available for free, streaming music on the website. This is great news for fans of free music.

It comes at the same time as 24-7 Entertainment is preparing to launch unlimited mobile music downloads for a Nordic provider. 24-7 Entertainment is also in talks with several UK phone providers.

To top all that, mobile provider 02 has announced a partnership with music download giant Napster, who are also in talks with Vodafone. The ways we get free, legal music are fast evolving and increasing in number.

Users of the 24-7 Entertainment service will be able to download unlimited legal music without paying an extra fee on top of their mobile bills. The DRM-protected tracks can be used on a customer’s phone or computer for as long as that customer remains signed up, although the tracks cannot be copied to CD or played on an MP3 player.

There is some concern that all this free music will affect the sales of legal music downloads. Whatever, this is fantastic for music fans around the world.

Over one million views of the video and over one hundred thousand iPhone downloads of the full file. No, not the latest Britney Spears/Child/Drugs/Hair/Craziness debacle but the announcement by Apple of a beta of the iPhone download and SDK (software development kit). This kit assists programmers who want to write code for the device.
Such was the demand of the free iPhone SDK with download that Apple’s servers simply couldn’t handle the bandwidth. If 404 errors are still cropping up then may we suggest the torrent file that is flitting around that contains the iPhone SDK download. Alternatively a short wait until the hyper active fans have their fill would be useful.When all this is in a downloadable format, the iPhone is selling like hot cake.
While this isn’t the official release of the full version the industry reaction to the free iPhone download SDK has been almost as enthusiastic as the fans’. PopCap and Capcom have plans for hit games like Pac-man, Galaga, Bejeweled, Zuma and Peggle. Expect these to be making Apple more money any time soon.

A point of interest for music fans around the world has been the ongoing wait for the back catalog of the Beatles to be made available as a legal music download on iTunes. Fans of the Beatles can, of course, get their free music downloads from filesharing programs, but the wait for the file to become available on iTunes is interesting because it’s weird that songs by the greatest band of all time aren’t available from the world’s biggest online music store.

Some have said that the legal music downloads will be available by the end of the year, but it’s anybody’s guess what the reality is. In February 2007, Apple settled a litigation with Apple Corps, who manage the Beatles’ back cat, over Apple’s use of its own brand name. Since then, the arrival of the back cat on iTunes has been “imminent”.

Despite press reports, the label involved, EMI/Capitol, has refused to comment, although Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and all involved are said to be eager to get the tunes available for fans to buy. With filesharing so rampant, it’s surprising that a deal hasn’t been worked out sooner.

We’ll have to wait and see.

The benefits of home based business are becoming clear to many in the U.S. and across the world as more and more people set up to work from home. Statistics collected in 2006 estimate that legitimate home based businesses account for an annual revenue, in the U.S., of more than $100 billion dollars. This is quite a considerable sum and it’s clear that people are starting to realize the multitude of advantages offered by this method of working.

Why start a home based business? Money is the obvious first reason: some people simply cannot – or do not want to – make ends meet with just the income from one job. These people find that starting their own business will help them in their goal of financial independence. Other advantages that make home based business a solid idea have to be the lack of commenting, the lack of a boss, and the lack of an office in which people make office politics their sole aim of the day.

The battle between BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple became a whole lot more interesting with the announcement that RIM is to start exploring the world of legal music downloads. Apple already makes billions with music downloads through iTunes — and now Puretracks, an online music store, will start selling legal music downloads to users of BlackBerry devices.

The wireless music download service is expected to be ready in April. As well as having one of the coolest gadgets on the market, BlackBerry users will now have a world of music downloads open to them.

Compressed DRM-free AAC/AAC+ file will be made available, although there has been no announcement as to how much these legal music downloads will cost users. The Puretracks Mobile music service has been developed specifically for BlackBerry.

Although the music downloads will be of a lower quality than those offered by iTunes, this is big news in the mobile download industry. The smaller files will be relatively fast to download.

Another one bit the dust recently as AllPeers, Firefox’s filesharing extension, shut down and ceased operations. The extension was popular for allowing users to create filesharing networks to share files with friends.

Although it was at one time considered an essential Firefox addon, the filesharing app was apparently not used very much. While it had something of a cult following, AllPeers failed to attract wider attention. It’s a bit of a sad loss for filesharing.

AllPeers didn’t achieve the kind of growth that its developers had hoped for and so they pulled the plug. They basically ran out of money and decided to call it a day, which is fair enough.

The good news is that the filesharing app was open source and will be available on a host in the near future. There is a slim chance then that another party may pick up the addon and bring it back to life. The AllPeers blog will carry on as usual.

Popular movie “The Secret” introduced millions of people to the possibilities offered by home based business. The major players in this market – names such as Lifepath Unlimited and Wealth Masters – are flourishing, but where have they appeared from? Read on.

The last 50 years has seen numerous revolutions in the home business industry; the major changed moved the industry from peripheral view to the mainstream. Amway led the way to start: customers purchased products at a reduced cost and made money on products purchased by people that you referred. Clearly this is Multi-Level Marketing at its simplest.

People started to make good money but it was not the easy goldmine that it was billed to be: for everyone making a decent wage were hundreds lacking the necessary drive and commitment that had fallen by the wayside.

In the 90’s the paradigm shifted to bring the direct sales model of network marketing into focus – this meant higher margins and no sharing of profits with those above you in the MLM tiers. Big money was possible and people were again making serious money.

In the 2000s Liberty League International and Wealth Masters International began capitalizing on the internet growth spurt. Now LifePath Unlimited leads the way in taking home based business mainstream by bringing it’s powerful line of personal development products to the home business arena.

Liberty League International has been well known – for good and for bad – in the direct sales industry. Being one of the most successful top-tier direct sales organizations in the mid 2000’s, Liberty League International forged the way forward for other companies. Being a trail blazer in this way meant that others were able to learn from their mistakes and this is why others should be thankful to this initial innovator for the opportunities that it provided.

If you search the web today for Liberty League International it would be easy to come to the quick conclusion that the whole setup was simply a scam. This is not the case at all and the founders clearly had good intentions from the start. Disgruntled entrepreneurs (and some disgruntled competitors) have helped to propagate the ill-feeling towards this organization that started off so very well.

Ironically one of the next generation of organizations whose arrival is the beginning of the decline for Liberty League International has been the one that has learned the most from its successes: LifePath Unlimited. Lifepath Unlimited is an exceptional personal development company that is forging new territory in the direct sales home based business industry. Their products features outstanding teachers, mentors and coaches in the personal development, prosperity arena.

For a complete review of this company go to Citizens Corps.

Dependent label boss (that’s a label named Dependent, not a typo, all right?) Stefan Herwig has issued an open challenge to people who are pro-filesharing, inviting them to meet him face to face in a hotel lobby, restaurant or hotel room. No, it’s for not some sort of red-light rendezvous, but rather, Stefan wants filesharing folk to put forward their arguments as to why filesharing is OK.

Obiously a little agitated, Stefan said, “Real arguments here are rare, but a couple of attention whores seem to find it remarkably funny to show up with nicknames like ‘i stole ur muzak’, etc. Its all fun and games on a forum, but does anyone of you cool file sharing people really have some ‘real life’ arguments to backup your evil deeds and justify file sharing?”

Just for you, Stefan, here are some of our arguments to backup our “evil deeds”:

Firstly, why shouldn’t we be allowed to use filesharing programs like Limewire? We have been copying tapes, recording radio shows, burning each other’s CDs and much more for years. No-one came out and told us this was wrong or would bring down the music industry until the process of sharing music was fully integrated into modern society.

Likewise, for those people caught filesharing, where are the police raids searching for home-recorded tapes and CDs? Furthermore, tell us how you are going to regulate filesharing when so many people have been doing it for so long? Until some real solution can be put forward, there isn’t even an argument.

The music industry’s response to filesharing has been so slow and confusing that the general public no longer cares about whether it’s right or wrong — we just want music.

Also, Stefan Herwig, the arguments against filesharing are heavily based on appealing to people’s morals with regards to the wellbeing of large, corporate entities. The general public have no reason to care about whether businesses survive or not because all people want is music.

It’s unfair to expect the general public to think one way with regards to big businesses, when at the same time, it’s those big businesses who are selling us MP3 players, music software, ways to burn our own CDs, right back to tape-to-tape recording devices.

It was far too late into the game before the general public was told about why music copyright is important. Why would Sony make blank tapes and minidiscs unless they wanted us to copy music?

Even before filesharing came about, there were websites from which MP3s could be downloaded. I do not remember a fuss being made in the public eye about these websites. What do you expect the public to think if the arguments aren’t in the public eye until it is at the music industry’s convenience?

We’ve got a whole bunch more arguments about filesharing, so if you would like to meet us, Stefan Herwig, we’d be more than happy.