Search Results for: AVOID

The MTV Movie Awards are raunchy and irreverent, and while they have a reputation for being outrageous, they’re also quite canned. When Tom Cruise’s publicist was spotted nervously pacing outside the Shrine Auditorium, gossip fans knew the 2001 Movie Awards would be rich with fodder. It was more than an hour into the show, and the star still hadn’t appeared.   When Cruise finally showed up in a chauffeur-driven SUV, he was dateless and slumped in the passenger seat, looking glum and listless. When he got out, his publicist Pat Kingsley gave him a long, affectionate hug. “How are you,… Read more »

Alanis Morissette has returned to the jagged little sound that made her famous. The Canadian singer debuted eight new songs during a show Friday night, providing a generous preview of her next album, which is sitting in limbo while she fights a contract dispute with Maverick Records. Much of the new material harked back to the edgier pop-rock of Morissette’s 1995 smash, Jagged Little Pill, and steered away from the moody, Eastern-influenced sound of its follow-up, 1998’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Accordingly, the two-hour performance – the first of two consecutive nights at Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre – was… Read more »

Pamela Anderson has settled a lawsuit over another sex tape she made with an ’80s rocker, her lawyer said Wednesday. The porn company Internet Entertainment Group agreed to pay the actress and Bret Michaels, lead singer of the band Poison, a seven-figure sum and destroy all copies it acquired of a homemade sex video featuring the couple. The Seattle-based company previously settled out of court with Anderson over a similar video it distributed showing her having sex with her ex-husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. The video became a best seller that continues to spread through the Internet. Unlike that… Read more »

Two words of advice to struggling musicians who can’t get a record contract: Don’t bother. Or rather, take a page from the book of Uncle Kracker, the 26-year-old pop singer whose debut record hit the top 10 on U.S. album charts even though he calls himself “probably the least ambitious person you’ll meet.” Many budding rock stars dream of great power and wealth in the music business. Uncle Kracker – real name Matt Shafer – dreams of a life changing tires, fishing and gardening. For the time being, though, he is playing a bemused accidental rock star and is on… Read more »

Bob Dylan, who gave voice to the youth revolt of the 1960s and revolutionized rock ‘n’ roll in the process, turns 60 on Thursday with many arguing that he was the most influential musician of the second half of the century. With his entry into the world of senior citizens, one thing remains certain: Dylan’s inner core and personality remain as elusive today as nearly 40 years ago when he burst onto the folk music scene in New York City’s Greenwich Village. “What he achieved was a reinvention of popular music – a maturation of postwar popular music,” said David… Read more »

If you’ve noticed that it’s getting increasingly hard to find just about anything on Napster lately, the file-sharing service has an explanation: it’s called “overblocking.” Napster has been incrementally improving its filtering process since March, when a judge ordered it to remove copyrighted songs cited by labels, artists and publishers. But the service’s most recent improvements seem to be blocking large chunks of the English language, taking down indie-label music, concert recordings and other material that no one has asked to be removed. In a statement posted Thursday on Napster’s Web site, the company blamed the problem on its efforts… Read more »

The academic cracker crew led by Princeton University Computer Science Professor Edward Felten, which answered the HackSDMI public challenge of last September with ‘unqualified’ results, has received veiled threats of criminal prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from the SDMI Foundation in hopes that the team will be cowed into withholding what it’s learned from an upcoming computer science conference. “Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge….could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” SDMI Foundation mouthpiece Matthew Oppenheim warns in a letter to the Felten team.… Read more »

Eminem avoided jail time when a judge sentenced him on Tuesday to two years’ probation for carrying a concealed weapon. But the rapper must refrain from excessive alcohol or drug use for those two years, undergo counseling, avoid “assaultive behavior” and can’t own or possess firearms or other weapons. Macomb County Circuit Judge Antonio P. Viviano also told Eminem he must get the court’s permission if he wants to leave the continental United States during that period. Prosecutors had sought a jail sentence of four to six months after Eminem pleaded guilty to the felony in February in a plea-bargain… Read more »

As chatter abounds regarding the urgency of digital distribution, major music conglomerates are moving quickly to demonstrate their eagerness to make their content available online. Further evidence comes with this week’s pact between media giants AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI and digital behemoth RealNetworks to create MusicNet, a platform for downloadable and streaming services. MusicNet will provide a pool of licensed music from the participating rights holders, with a technology infrastructure by Real. The label groups collectively have a 60% stake in the venture, while Real has 40%. Once the platform is established, any digital music provider satisfying the… Read more »

Like concertgoers reluctantly heading home as the lights come up, many Napster users are heading for greener pastures as the company’s court mandated filters block more than a million copyrighted music files from the service. According to data from entertainment research firm Webnoize, the number of Napster users on the system at any given time has dropped from 1.5 million in mid-March to 1.1 million as of Friday a one-week decline of more than 25%. At the same time, however, Webnoize found that the average number of files shared by any one user, which had tumbled by 60% after Napster… Read more »