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The consumer-electronics industry is riding the wave of a still-booming economy, according to most mid-year reports. Although the generally rosy picture is marred by a few glitches, both equipment makers and retailers say that sales continue to soar.

The good news keeps coming. According to the lastest figures from the Consumer">http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the month of May echoed previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10773/">previous months' continuous increase in audio product sales, with monthly revenues up 11% and year-to-date revenues up 12%, to $3.1 billion.

The last week of July was a busy one for music-industry attorneys—and, by some measures, a successful one. As almost everyone in the world is aware, on Wednesday, July 26, the Recording">http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won a round in its fight against Napsterhttp://www.napster.com/">Napster;, a San Mateo, California–based software company that enables the sharing of MP3 music files over the Internet. On that day, in a US Federal court in San Francisco, Judge Marilyn Patel decreed that the widespread sharing of music using Napster was a form of wholesale copyright violation, and ordered the service shut down effective midnight on Friday, July 28. Napster, in turn, appealed and won a stay of execution two days after Judge Patel's ruling that will enable it to remain online and in business until at least mid-September.