Search Results for: Full Collapse

Michael Jackson is a “disturbing individual” with a love of multi-million-dollar shopping sprees and a desire to live forever, according to a journalist granted unrivalled access to the pop star. Martin Bashir, who spent eight months making a documentary on the normally reclusive singer, said 44-year-old Jackson truly is the Peter Pan of pop who is obsessed by the idea of childhood being frozen in time. Plastic surgery, child abuse allegations and his father’s cruelty all feature in a warts-and-all British television documentary being aired in Britain Monday evening. The ITV program is the result of the unprecedented access Jackson… Read more »

Faced with adverse publicity to copy protection on CDs, a year ago Bertelsmann Music Group bravely gave in and promised to replace a clutch of Natalie Imbruglia CDs which were protected by Midbar’s Cactus Data Shield. But a year is a long time, BMG is at it again, this time apparently set on applying copy protection to all its music products. Not, of course, that this should be surprising. The music companies are absolutely intent on copy-proofing their products, and although they’ll maybe retreat a little when irate consumers pelt them with ordure, they’ll be right back just as soon… Read more »

Some popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys. Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion. The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow – in part because… Read more »

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a “well-mannered marketplace” where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood’s tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its… Read more »

Swedish experimental extreme metal band Meshuggah have been praised by the mainstream music press and metal mags alike, and have cultivated a loyal underground following since their first LP, Contradictions Collapse, was released in 1991. But even the largest crowds at a European metal festival pale in comparison to the millions that heard Meshuggah on “The Osbournes” when Jack, in an effort to piss off the family’s obnoxious neighbors, blasted “Future Breed Machine” from the band’s 1995 album, Destroy, Erase, Improve. The young metal powerbroker also recruited the band to play the second stage of this year’s Ozzfest, and the… Read more »

Few albums have been as closely guarded as Eminem’s The Eminem Show. No one at Interscope Records has a personal copy, and journalists who want to review it have to go to special listening sessions where representatives from the rapper’s management deliver the disc, sit through the sessions and then take the record back to keep it out of enemy hands. Despite such precautions, all 20 songs were leaked to the Internet by May 11, a full three weeks before the disc’s release date. The tracks are available on various file-sharing services. Plus, bootleg vendors began selling the CD on… Read more »

Imagine one of the biggest hip-hop outings in history taking shape this summer. It would be dubbed the Triple Threat Tour and feature multiplatinum acts Ja Rule, Jay-Z and P. Diddy. To top it off, each would bring with him his musical family. Representing with Ja Rule would be Ashanti and the rest of Murder Inc. Jay would “Roc the Mic” with his boys Beanie Sigel, Cam’ron and Memphis Bleek. And Diddy and his Bad Boy crew would do their thing. Keep imagining; although it was almost a reality, the tour has been called off. Last week, while promoting her… Read more »

A new lawsuit filed against MP3.com seeks to hold the San Diego music-locker service liable not only for songs it improperly copied and distributed, but also for every bootleg track exchanged through Napster and other underground file-swapping services. The suit, filed on behalf of 52 independent songwriters and music publishers, accuses MP3.com of “viral” infringement. It contends that MP3.com’s technology set the stage for widespread music piracy, enabling bootlegged songs to pass from computer to computer faster than you can say “Oops, I Did It Again.” The argument goes like this: MP3.com made compressed copies of about 900,000 songs, which… Read more »

Bertelsmann AG Chief Executive Thomas Middelhoff said in an interview published on Saturday that the company’s music division Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) would not be put up for sale. “There will be no sale of BMG,” Middelhoff said in an interview with German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The comments come after the collapse of a planned merger of BMG and Britain’s EMI Group earlier this week as the two groups failed to crack regulatory concerns. Last July, Middelhoff said the sale of BMG could be possible under certain conditions but told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the situation had changed after his company’s… Read more »