It happens now and again. XM Satellite Radio has agreed to pay Universal Music Group fees for the recording of songs on its portable devices such as the Pioneer Inno. Payments will cover use of UMG music from the beginning of the devices' market introductions. The major labels had sued XM to force it to pay a downloading license for these devices as Sirius had agreed to do. XM executives said they didn't need to pay. Now they've changed their tune.

Attorney Mark Grossman isn't entirely sure why so many intelligent people seem to believe copyright doesn't apply online, but he has some good guesses. In a blog posting, however, he makes sure people understand it does, and then tries his best to outline the parameters of fair use. Worth a read.

Guest blog by Richard Cotton, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for NBC Universal and Chairman of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP).

A group of accomplished songwriters are writing songs and donating the copyrights to charity, so that the charities will receive 100% of the royalties for the life of the copyrights. The program is called CompassionArt; I hope those copyrights last a very long time indeed.

That's what the Copyright Alliance was doing yesterday with its first academic symposium, "Copyright and the University."  The half-day event was by all accounts a big success. We had a couple of changes in the line-up; Ric Keller and Cheryl Elzy both found themselves unable to get into town, so Marybeth Peters did the keynote Warren Arbogast filled in for Cheryl. Marybeth was great, and both panels were really animated, but in a constructive, respectful way.

How many times in recent years have we heard that "information wants to be free"? Not just free as in no cost, but free as in no restrictions. In other words, once it's ones and zeroes, if I can access it, I can have it, even if I have to do a little hacking. This is the principle behind defenses of unauthorized file-sharing, it is the concept that leads to groups like Digital Freedom to argue that possessing something for one purpose should permit you to do multiple other purposes, it is the ethos that drives the anti-copyright crowd.