Search Results for: system of a down

Just when it seemed all systems were go, it now appears that Lance Bass’ trip into space may be off – though his team insists otherwise. When Bass returned to Moscow over the weekend following a weeklong crash course at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Russian space officials didn’t welcome the singer with open arms. The sticky issue of payment had not been resolved by the last Russian deadline of Friday (August 30), and on Tuesday (September 3), the Russian Space Agency pulled Bass off his training regiment in Star City. To make matters seem more dire, spokespeople for… Read more »

Oops! Montreal’s radio pranksters did it again. Canadian comics posing as singer Celine Dion persuaded Britney Spears to sing a duet with golfer Tiger Woods called “Let’s Make a Hole in One” for a bogus charity event. Montreal comic Marc Audette, deftly imitating the voice of French-Canadian diva Dion, chatted with Spears on the telephone about each woman’s charity foundations. After a few minutes of mutual admiration, Audette got down to business and invited Spears to come to Montreal and visit “her club” – in reality, a popular Montreal strip joint. “We certainly won’t be distracted there,” Audette said. “Of… Read more »

The world’s largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site. Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as UMG Recordings, a unit of Vivendi Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, a unit… Read more »

In order to go into space, Lance Bass first has to go to sea. As part of his rigorous cosmonaut training, which the pop star finally started last week in Star City near Moscow, Bass will be dropped into the Black Sea in an emergency-splashdown test and left to fend for himself in a Russian forest without food or supplies. Though the Russian Space Agency has yet to confirm that Bass will be their candidate for a third seat open in a fall rocket mission, which is set to launch October 22, Bass started his preliminary training on July 4,… Read more »

All things must pass-including criminal sentences-and that has the family of the late George Harrison ticked off. The rocker’s wife and son are angrily objecting to the release last week of the deranged fan who broke into the ex-Beatle’s mansion in December 1999 and nearly killed him in a knife attack. An independent panel in England comprising a judge, a psychiatrist and a British citizen determined 36-year-old Michael Abram, a former drug addict who suffers from schizophrenia, was well enough to be released back into the community and set him free on July 4 from the Scott Clinic, a psychiatric… Read more »

The government seemed to side with Internet broadcasters when establishing a royalty rate Thursday, and although the new fees were lower than a proposal rejected last month, the costs may force several independent Net radio stations out of business. The U.S. Copyright Office settled on a rate of 0.07 cent per listener per song for both Internet-only stations and conventional stations that simulcast their programming on the Web, according to a government spokesperson. The rate is exactly half of what the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), a three-member board appointed by the Copyright Office, suggested in February that Internet-only stations… Read more »

The recording and music publishing industries extended their legal pursuit of online music swapping firms Friday, suing Audiogalaxy for copyright infringement. The Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers Association accused the Austin, Texas, firm of “willfully and intentionally” encouraging and facilitating millions of users to copy and distribute copyright work of artists, ranging from Dave Mathews and Celine Dion to Alicia Keyes and the Beatles. The two industry groups claim that Audiogalaxy, with more than 15 million registered users, uses a system that is even more egregious than Napster, which the music industry effectively shut down… 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 »

Radio Free Virgin, a leading digital broadcast company, and Vividon, Inc., the provider of Internet infrastructure devices that radically improve the economics of streaming media delivery(TM), today announced the installation of the Vividon(TM) SDA(TM) streaming appliance into the Radio Free Virgin Internet broadcast network to provide the highest quality streaming experience while ensuring scalable, economic growth. “Measurecast reported a 99 percent increase in Internet radio listening in just the first three months of 2002 and also ranked Radio Free Virgin as one of the top three Internet radio networks with 3.3 million listening hours in April,” said Brendon Cassidy, Vice-President,… Read more »

In addition to audio and video files, peer-to-peer Web sites may be sharing the problems of increased legal liabilities and bandwidth drains for businesses allowing employee access to these types of sites from corporate networks. Websense Inc., the worldwide leader of employee Internet management (EIM) solutions, reports that the number of peer-to-peer file sharing and file transfer Web sites has spiked more than 535 percent in the last 12 months, now totaling nearly 38,000 Web pages. In fact, 30 percent of products listed on CNET’s “Most Popular” software download list are P2P applications. While most P2P applications and MP3 files… Read more »