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It has been an action packed week on the judicial copyright battlefield. One June 11, a federal">http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/umg_v_augusto/LA07CV03106SJO-O.pdf">f… district court upheld the first">http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/08/first-sale-why-it-matters-why-were… sale doctrine , ruling in UMG v Troy Augusto that sales of promotional CDs did not constitute a copyright violation.

Some musicians are remembered for a single remarkable album; some are remembered for a hit song—Bo Diddley will always be remembered for a beat. That eponymous beat—a rhumba-inflected Bomp a-bomp-a-bomp, bomp, bomp—may well have been "the most plagiarized rhythm in rock," as Rolling Stone claimed in 2005.

Sometimes, wonderful things go unnoticed. Thus did Stereophile miss that, in June 2007, at its 31st annual conference, in London, UK, the International Audio Engineering Society issued two Awards of Excellence in the category of Professional Engineering. One, which we learned about from a Minnetonka Audio press release, went to Dorian Records (see the May 2008 issue of Stereophile, pp.14–15). The other went to AIX">http://www.aixrecords.com">AIX Records of Southern California. The award is for John Gorka's The Gypsy Life, one of more than 50 high-resolution recordings available from AIX in DVD-Audio/Video surround sound and on two-channel CD. Most interesting is that both AES awards were for DVD-Audio projects.

We have written about HDTracks.com previouslyhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/032308hdtracks/">previously;, but that was before the site went public. This morning David Chesky notified Stereophile that it is offering, for a limited time, a free "HDTracks">https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=register">"HDTracks Ultimate Download Experience."

After a four-year hiatus, the Vacuum">http://www.vsac2008.com">Vacuum State of the Art Conference and Show has been resurrected. Scheduled for next weekend, May 24–26, at the Hilton Hotel in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, Oregon, VSAC owes its renewal to audio enthusiasts and software company owners Carolyn S. and Michael Kilfoil, who have taken over from founders Dan and Eileen Schmalle.

At 9am on May 14, Meridian Audio announced that Walter Schofield will be assuming the position of President of Meridian America at the company's Atlanta office on June 1. Jeff Dean will run Meridian's newly established Hollywood office.

Has the Linn">http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1103linn/">Linn Sondek LP12 turntable really been around for 35 years? Yes, Ivor">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor/">Ivor Tiefenbrun MBE, founder and Chairman of Linn Products, asserts. Moreover, Tiefenbrun asserts, the revolutionary aspect of that 'table was not simply that it worked "simply better," but that it was designed to be "modular, upgradeable, and expandable in accordance with our continuous improvement philosophy. That is what 'simply better' means. It is not an assertive statement of superiority but an aspirational motto defining our objective as simplifying and improving everything that we do."