Throwing Music Pirates Off The Net: The law that will tackle music piracy was voted overwhelmingly by the French Senate. Net firms will be enrolled as watchdogs that will keep an eye on consumers indulging in casual piracy and companies will be encouraged to install firewalls blocking content sharing by employees. Read the entire article here.

Bleak 2008 Christmas Season: As reported last week, Circuit City will close down 155 retails stores and slash its work force. Of course this is another blow to the music business as Circuit City bolstered CD sales. Music retailer Wal-Mart offers more damaging news as it is rapidly downsizing shelf space for music CDs while increasing availability of Blu-ray, video games and electronics.

“As packaged media continues to fade, Wal-Mart is focused on acquiring exclusive rights to music content, which enables it to sell multiple products to a consumer at one time; not just an $11.99 CD,” Greenfield wrote. He said Wal-Mart’s scaled-back interest in music coupled with the potential bankruptcy of Circuit City Stores, a top music CD retailer, portends a bleak 2008 holiday season for the music industry.

Hollywood is looking to cash in on uploaded videos to the internet. Viacom plans to pair advertising with video clips that MySpace users upload to the site, whether they have permission or not. This is similar to that of YouTube, which launched a system that offers copyright holders a choice of removing material or letting YouTube place ads in exchange for a piece of the revenue.

These media companies like MTV cannot make money even though they are embracing the consumer led digital revolution. In fact, MTV plans to cancel their big annual Christmas party and plan to fire a slew of employees according to sources. How much is Hollywood looking to cash in on viral videos watched by millions? I certainly hope their expectations are low.

The founding member of The Descendents, Frank Navetta, passed away on October 31, 2008 after becoming ill over the course of a few days.