IS COMMERCE NECESSARY? The temporary blackout of the Union Recordings website, down since March 29 2003, due to a deal with an irreputable ISP, has outsiders questioning its viability. Sadie Newbanks-Dreyfuss looks for answers.

THE ENEMY GATHERS ITS HOST. The oligopoly that is the RIAA has begun abusing its trust power and demanding payment for file-swapping through threat of litigation. Fortunately, some are fighting back and others are offering strategy. Union Recordings believes that copyrights are evil, but should be respected and that file trading of such copyrighted material is in violation of current law. If the music market and its pricing were not controlled by a few powerful companies, perhaps not nearly as many people would not resort to stealing. Universal Music Group seems to agree. Of course the lucre lovers are using download data to sell more records, all the while crying foul. Get your free, tradeable, digital tunes right here, amigos.

CAN YOU TRUST YOUR COMPUTER? "Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else." Richard Stallman sounds the alert on an industry initiative that may impact the first amendment. It is the opinion of Union Recordings that the computing environment under which we currently operate and interact will in all likelihood be illegal someday soon. Content oligopolies are lobbying fast and hard to control the distribution of electronic media. Expect more on this topic in the near future.

UNION RECORDINGS SECURES $18.5 MILLION. Who would guess that financial salvation could come through email?

FREE BOOKS: A SNEAKY SUCCESS. "Two years ago, the idea of a free book -- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet -- was largely unknown and untested." While 'success' is a subjective term, the author details some of the short history of free books on the internet. As noted ad nauseam, Union Recordings embraces free media.

REVIEW: DEVIL'S COURTHOUSE. Zeus McCloskey spins the latest release from ol' Buzzshackler and lives to tell.

A NATION OF THIEVES? "Maybe we should stop calling this 'art', or even 'entertainment' 4 that matter -- 4 what is so entertaining about being involved in a collective hallucination? Maybe we should start calling it what it really is, i.e. unfettered MANIPULATION." The man, the myth, the legend, Prince, or The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, takes a good hard look at our nemesis. We've talked about fettering our foes before, haven't we?

UNION GOES OGG! Union Recordings is proud to present its first volume produced completely with open source software. Its pure, clean HTML should look good in any browser, and with the change comes a new audio format, ogg. The chief proponent of the movement makes the announcement.

OGG VORBIS TUNES INTO HARDWARE. "Many manufacturers have said they are playing it safe and are waiting for Ogg Vorbis to develop a large following before they devote any development work to the format." One of the reasons Union Recordings hesitated to offer oggs was their lack of hardware support compared to mp3s. Realizing the error of our logic, we commence to building a following here and now, hopefully overcoming the "which comes first, the chicken or the ogg?" (apologies) conundrum.

COMMUNITY-BASED RECORDING STUDIOS: A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE. "A proposal to build free recording studios within communities as a way to increase the Public Domain and circumvent the recording industry." The abstract simply could not be in greater agreement with our own mission statement.

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