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John Atkinson and I recently spent a few hours talking to cable manufacturer Tributaries&#039">http://www.tributariescable.com/">Tributaries' president and founder, Joe Perfito. Perfito had come to NYC to meet the press and introduce his company's newest cable families, the high-end Series 7 and the higher-end Series 9. "The Series 9 cables are the best cables we know how to make," Perfito told us. "The interconnects are hand-made of 20AWF solid OFHC signal conductor and a 1.25% silver-plated 46-strand 20AWG OFHC return conductor. We use an LDPE dielectric and an OFHC copper-braided shield and a double-sided copper foil secondary shield for 100% freedom from interference. The conductors are double-soldered to the solid brass connectors, then pressure welded—they will not let go of one another."

Olive">http://www.olive.us">Olive Media Products, manufacturers of audiophile-quality Olive music servers, has partnered with MusicGiantshttp://www.musicgiants.com">MusicGiants;, the leading site for CD-quality music downloads. Olive's well-received Opus line of digital players now allows users to download, store, manage, and play large collections of CD-quality music directly from MusicGiants without needing to buy or rip CDs, select track by track, or use a computer. (You can find John Atkinson's positive review of the Olive Symphony herehttp://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/406olive/">here;.)

When we last heard from NBC Universal's CEO Jeff Zucker, he'd refused to renew the network's yearly contract with Apple's iTunes Store, leading Apple to">http://stereophile.com/news/090307nbc/">to immediately pull NBC shows from the store rather than have them yanked midseason. In addition, Apple managed to control the story so that NBC came off looking clueless and greedy. You'd think Zucker would have learned to keep his mouth shut from that media drubbing.

The invitation looked intriguing: "We are happy to welcome you to The Netherlands in September for the offical introduction of the Siltech Pantheon Loudspeaker." Siltech introducing a loudspeaker? I was well familiar with the Dutch company, celebrating its 25^th anniversary next year, as a cable manufacturer. Indeed, some of the first high-end cables I had found to sound better than what I had been used to were Siltechs, back in the mid-1980s. Paul Bolin had been impressed by his auditioning of more recent G5 models in 2004. And Siltech's founder, Edwin van der Kley, is married to the irrepressible Gabi van der Kley, principal of Crystal Cable with whom I had had a rather intense breakfast meeting with during last May's Home Entertainment 2007. (All conversations with Gabi are intense.) But loudspeakers?

A consortium of media and Internet companies announced a set of guidelines to protect copyrights online on October 19. Among the group, which has been negotiating for nine months, were Walt Disney Co.; Microsoft; NBC Universal; Viacom, Inc.; CBS Corp.; News Corp.'s MySpace and Fox constituents; Veoh Networks, Inc.; and Dailymotion S.A. Noticeable for its absence was Google, including YouTube, which has recently been sued for $1 billion for infringement by Viacom.

Jazz fans rejoice! Not only is Music">http://blog.stereophile.com/cedia2007/090707bluenote/">Music Matters releasing new 45rpm double LP reissues of classic Blue Note titles, but so is Analogue Productions.

Jammie Thomas Appeal: Just weeks after having been found liable for $220,000">http://stereophile.com/news/100807jammie/">$220,000 in damages for allegedly offering 24 music tracks on her KaZaa account, Jammie Thomas has filed a notice of remittitur with the US District Court for the District of Minnesota, asking the judge to slash the jury's damage award, contending that she should receive a retrial that assesses the damages based on the actual damages suffered by the labels resulting from her making the files available.