Search Results for: against the current

French telecommunications and entertainment conglomerate Vivendi Universal reported a narrower loss for the first half of the year and its chairman said he hopes to complete the planned sale of its U.S. entertainment assets to General Electric Co.’s NBC division in the second half of next year. Vivendi reported Wednesday it lost €632 million ($723 million) in the January-June period in contrast to a loss of €12.31 billion in the first half of 2002. The company has been selling assets to trim its staggering debt. Vivendi’s operating profit dropped 27 percent in the first half to €1.68 billion ($1.92 billion)… Read more »

The week the music industry brought suit against 261 users of Internet file-sharing services, Donald L. McCabe was in St. Louis to talk about a different form of digital copying. Mr. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, has made a career of studying the cheating of American high school and college students. His most recent study found that cheating was spreading almost like file-sharing. Of more than 18,000 students surveyed, 38 percent said they had lifted material from the Internet for use in papers in the last year. More striking to Mr. McCabe, 44 percent said they considered this sampling no… Read more »

A federal court Wednesday blocked controversial new Federal Communications Commission media ownership rules pending a full judicial review in a major blow to large media companies. In a loss for the Republican-led FCC, the three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia granted a stay order that prevented the new rules from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday. Critics argued that the FCC rules would concentrate too much power in the hands of media moguls. The new rules were backed by media giants including Viacom Inc.’s CBS, General Electric Co.’s NBC and News Corp. Ltd’s Fox… Read more »

Hollywood will win the war against illegal downloading but the battlefield will be littered with casualties, including the DVD and CD formats as physical means of distributing video and audio, according to a Forrester Research study released Tuesday. The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading. Part of that stems from the continued proliferation of illegal file trading, which has caused an estimated $700 million of lost CD sales since 1999. But… Read more »

The Recording Industry Association of America says it will not go after small violators when it sues people who illegally share songs on the Internet. The assurance came in a written response to questions by Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Coleman plans to hold hearings on the RIAA’s campaign, which he has labeled “excessive.” “RIAA is in no way targeting ‘de minimis’ users,” wrote Cary Sherman, the group’s president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. “RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally… Read more »

Original Doors members Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger have something special in mind for their Aug. 24 performance at Jones Beach in Wantagh, N.Y. The group, touring under the name Doors 21st Century with Cult vocalist Ian Astbury, will perform the Doors’ 1971 Elektra album “L.A. Woman” for the first time in its entirety. Original frontman Jim Morrison died shortly before the album’s release. The New York concert will be filmed for a DVD due for release in early 2004. The band will also play “L.A. Woman” at a Dec. 9 concert at the Zenith in Paris to commemorate what… Read more »

The Recording Industry Association of America, the trade organization that represents recording artists, labels, manufacturers and distributors, announced yesterday that Mitch Bainwol would replace Hilary Rosen as chairman and CEO of the organization. Bainwol, a former chief of staff to current Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, will assume his new duty on September 1st. Bainwol has no prior experience working in the music industry and will have his work cut out for him. The recording industry has been mired in a monstrous three-year sales slump, and in late June the RIAA announced that it would be targeting individual computer users… Read more »

In a move likely designed to appeal to fans disappointed by indie punk band Rancid’s switch to Warner Bros., the group’s new album will not carry any mention of the label’s name. The veteran act has left its long-time home of Hellcat/Epitaph Records for the release of its forthcoming album, “Indestructible,” due Aug. 26. A spokesperson for the band says Rancid will continue to be aligned with Hellcat, the label co-run by frontman Tim Armstrong and Epitaph founder/Bad Religion member Brett Gurewitz. “It’s a unique deal that doesn’t play by the traditional record biz rules,” says the spokesperson. “It’s Rancid… Read more »

The following message appears on the Treble Charger website: “Thanks to all you fans who support artists by buying music!” Their latest album, Detox, recently achieved Gold status in Canada – no small feat given the file-sharing climate of today’s music industry. “I think there’s a lot of people who justify it by saying that guys in bands are all rich and they don’t really care if people download their music,” hypothesizes Treble Charger drummer Trevor MacGregor. “Really, that’s not the case.” “Trevor and I both live in rat-bag apartments in Toronto,” agrees guitarist Bill Priddle. “I think there’s a… Read more »

Disturbed may have learned something from their previous missteps. After their first two clips from Believewere fraught with adversity and caused controversy, the band took a rather clear-cut approach when conceptualizing the video for “Liberate.” Directed by Nathan “Karma” Cox (Linkin Park, Chevelle) and Hank Lena, the video merges backstage and on-the-road clips shot during Disturbed’s Music as a Weapon 2 Tour with performance footage taken from the trek’s finale, in the band’s hometown of Chicago. While it’s a pretty common concept as far as video treatments go, like most of the band’s themes, it’s anything but ordinary. “It’s encouraging… Read more »