Musicians accuse other musicians of stealing their work all the time and I have no idea if this case has more or less merit than any other one. But I couldn’t resist relaying this story: Guns N’ Roses, which made a point of stringing up people who pirated the band’s last album, is now being accused of pirating songs on its last album.
Viacom has been rummaging through Google and YouTube records for more than a year as part of its $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Did it get what it was looking for? Maybe.
Earlier this year, Gawker Media’s Nick Denton announced that he was going to start paying for salacious clips, tips and other submissions, but that he hadn’t worked out the details. Looks like he figured it out: Denton says he paid the source who provided his blog network with the so-called “McSteamy” sex tapes that have earned him both a lot of traffic and a lawsuit.
Just how big a deal was a federal judge’s ruling Monday in the copyright-infringement fight between Veoh and Universal Music Group? Depends on who you ask, of course.
It’s a not-quite-annual tradition: Something unexpected (but perhaps not unplanned) happens at MTV’s Video Music Awards and the Internet can’t stop talking about it. But Viacom’s copyright lawsuit means that you’ll have work a bit if you want to see for yourself on YouTube.
Remember how the rascals at file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, chastened by the Swedish courts, were going to straighten up and go legit? Going to have to keep waiting on that one. Here’s the latest reminder: Yet another thumb in the eye to the big music labels.
If a ruling from a judge in eastern Texas sticks, Microsoft will have to give up selling its Word franchise in 60 days. But that’s a very big if. In other news: Look at this cool ad for Microsoft Germany!
Everyone knows that one of the iPhone’s best selling points is the amazing array of apps developers make for the handset. But if you still need convincing, check out this “Daily Show” clip, which highlights some of the phone’s most popular programs.
Don’t want to pay $1 for a song on iTunes? Try $80,000 a pop. That’s what a federal jury in Minneapolis has told a woman to pay the music industry for illegally downloading 24 songs, bringing her total bill to $1.92 million. Her response: “Good luck trying to get it, because you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”
When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”
Digital music start-ups seem to come in two flavors these days: Those being sued by the major music labels and those with expensive licensing deals they can’t afford.
But for some reason, plucky Grooveshark, which runs a very nice, free streaming music service, has stayed out of both of those buckets until now. I’ve confirmed that EMI Music Group is suing the site–whose motto is “Play any song in the world, for free!”–for copyright violation.
On the Internet, as the joke goes, nobody knows you’re a dog. And on Twitter, nobody knows if you’re a “real” celebrity who’s decided to start using the service, or an impostor. That could turn out to be a business opportunity for the Twitter guys, but right now it’s a problem, in the form of a lawsuit filed by St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa
The music industry’s online forays have always inspired head-scratching, but this one is odd even by those standards: Project Playlist, the online music service currently being sued by Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, is bolstering its tech staff by buying the assets of… a music service owned by Universal Music Group. But the lawsuits have yet to be resolved. Confusing? Of course.
It’s now conventional wisdom to expect advertising declines of 20 percent or more as the big media companies deliver this season’s earnings reports. But the giant ad holding companies that make and place those ads aren’t getting beaten up quite as badly. In fact, they’re all delivering remarkably similar results.
Video site Veoh, one of the biggest players in the “who will be the next YouTube” competition, is restructuring the company, laying off a good chunk of its staff and replacing CEO Steve Mitgang with founder Dmitry Shapiro. Shapiro says the company, which has been primarily focused on playing video and selling ads on its own site, will now be concentrating on a new “Video Compass” player that users will have to download onto their Web browsers in order to use.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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