Search Results for: Refused

Britney Spears plays “an innocent girl with a lot of aspirations” in her big-screen debut, according to one of her “What Are Friends For” co-stars. The film, due out early next year, finds Spears’ character, Lucy, on a cross-country adventure seeking musical fame, said Justin Long, who plays her best friend from high school. “It’s like a road trip buddy movie for girls,” said Long, who appeared in “Galaxy Quest” but is best known as Warren Cheswick on the NBC comedy “Ed.” “[Britney] plays a very wide-eyed girl. She’s a great actress. People are going to be surprised.” So how… Read more »

Music publishers and songwriters said Tuesday they had joined the growing list of media companies suing file-sharing company Aimster for copyright infringement, saying that the service is trying to fill the void left by Napster. The lawsuit was filed last week in a Manhattan Federal Court by a group including legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who penned “Jailhouse Rock” and music publishers Criterion Music, Famous Music, and The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. “We are extremely disappointed that before the ink was even dry on Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinion concluding that Napster was engaging in massive copyright… Read more »

Aimster won two small victories in its ongoing battles with the Recording Industry Association of America when a federal judge heard the opening salvos in the file-swapping company’s suit confronting the RIAA and seeking a declaratory judgment that it does not violate recording copyrights. First, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn on Friday refused the RIAA’s motion that the suit be dismissed. The RIAA, on behalf of itself and 17 of its member labels, had argued that Aimster filed suit as a pre-emptive strike against itself being sued. Kahn disagreed, ruling that Aimster’s action fit the Declaratory Judgment Act’s purpose of… Read more »

Flamboyant pop legend Elton John has failed in a multimillion-dollar legal challenge to reopen a case against his accountants over touring costs. High Court Judge Justice Ferris, who earlier this year threw out the 54-year-old singer’s $19.5 million claim against his accountants, on Wednesday refused leave for an appeal against the decision. The star’s legal bill in the case is estimated to run into millions of dollars. The singer and pianist, a tireless performer whose first album hit the charts in 1970, had earlier sued PricewaterhouseCoopers and his management company for charging him for overseas tour expenses. His legal team… Read more »

Controversy and online music seem to go hand-in-hand and the next big showdown may be in Washington, where the recording industry’s online tactics could come under fire from Congress and top-level regulators, experts said on Monday. In a sign of how quickly the industry has shifted to embrace the Web, Vivendi Universal on Sunday said it would buy its one-time legal foe Web music company MP3.com for $372 million to bolster its online business. But having waged a legal battle against MP3.com and other online start-ups for more than a year, the recording industry may now stand accused of having… Read more »

French media giant Vivendi Universal said on Sunday it will buy its one-time legal foe MP3.com Inc. for about $372 million in hopes of bolstering its online music business. MP3.com, which operates a music download Web site and a series of other music services, represents one possible springboard for the distribution of music over the Internet for Vivendi Universal, which owns the world’s largest record company, Universal Music Group. Major record companies have been looking for a way to replace the embattled Napster song swapping service, with services of their own. Vivendi said MP3.com could become an integral part of… Read more »

Bowing to a threatened recording industry lawsuit, a Princeton University computer scientist decided against revealing Thursday how he and other researchers thwarted security measures meant to protect copyright digital music. Edward Felten, an associate professor whose team included Rice University and Xerox-PARC researchers, had been silent for days on whether he would present his findings at the International Information Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh. On Thursday, a frustrated Felten said he decided against releasing the information because of the potential for lawsuits against the researchers, their schools and conference organizers. He did not say what he would do next. “Litigation is… Read more »

Guitar jangle, electronic effects and strings meet again on rock band’s 12th album. Edging as close to the conventional pop realm as they have in their 20-plus years, R.E.M. will release Reveal, an evocative tapestry of reflective, expertly crafted songs, in May. “We’re really interested in finding the beauty of music these days,” said bassist Mike Mills, who clarified that the rock band’s 12th studio album isn’t quite as subdued as it may seem. “Taking a song and seeing how you can find something really lovely inside it, I think that might tend to make it sound a little more… Read more »

Anyone hoping that the music industry’s infatuation with youth was just a passing fad got a big wake-up call when 21-year-old Lance Bass announced he was opening a management company last year. A member of pop group ‘NSYNC, Bass sent a message to all of the jaded industryites who refused to take young superstars seriously: they’re here, they’re hot, and they ain’t going away. That Bass’ first client would be 16-year-old country singer Meredith Edwards (she turned 17 in early March) therefore seemed somehow appropriate. Bass obviously knows something about launching teen acts; as for entering the world of Nashville,… Read more »

The Irish government moved on Tuesday to fast-track new regulations on the licensing of outdoor rock concerts after tickets for a gig by Irish band U2 sold out in record time, to the anger of disappointed fans. Tickets for the concert, to be held outside Dublin on August 25, were snapped up in 45 minutes at the weekend resulting in furious scenes and a police presence as thwarted fans, many of whom had queued overnight, refused to disperse. Promoters want to stage a second U2 concert at the same venue – in the grounds of Slane Castle in County Meath… Read more »