Search Results for: system of a down

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 »

With the Hollywood-Washington war expected to be reignited today, Motion Picture Assn. of America prexy-CEO Jack Valenti on Monday warned lawmakers in no uncertain terms to back off. “May God save the First Amendment,” Valenti said during a keynote speech before the National Assn. of Broadcasters, which is meeting here for its annual confab. Valenti, like his counterparts in the music biz, was gearing up for the release this morning of a Federal Trade Commission report that will chart how well the entertainment biz has done in stopping the marketing of violent or suggestive fare to kids. The FTC reportedly… Read more »

Their embraceable debut (1997’s Middle of Nowhere, featuring the Number One single “MMMBop”) sold millions of copies and established Hanson as TRL’s preeminent poster-teens. The grittier follow-up (2000’s This Time Around) alienated bubblegum-dependent younger fans and has yet to go platinum in the states. Now the brothers Hanson – Isaac, Taylor and Zac – are hard at work on a record they hope will marry the success of one to the punchy feel of the other and in the process show the world what they’ve know all along: Hanson are a hard-working, musically gifted and educated rock band. Sessions for… Read more »

Napster’s legal troubles could be about to get a whole lot worse, as thousands of music publishers could enter into a class-action suit against the file-trading company. Independent musicians, however, are still shut out of the litigation. As part of a copyright infringement case against Napster in federal district court on Tuesday, Judge Marilyn Hall said that 27,000 music publishers would likely be allowed the opportunity to consolidate their cases into one class-action suit. While issuing no formal ruling, Patel said she expected to create a “limited class” of plaintiffs by determining a specific time frame during which publishers from… Read more »

A federal judge leveled sharp criticism at Napster’s attempts to block trades of copyrighted works Tuesday, calling the company’s existing filters “disgraceful.” Presented with evidence from record companies and publishers that thousands of works ostensibly included in the file-swapping service’s filters were still available, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said something needed to change. “I think this is disgraceful,” she said, noting that if a song can be found by people on your service, Napster ought to be able to block it. If Napster can’t block copyrighted songs, she added, “maybe the system needs to be closed down.” Patel… 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 »

Consumers are still downloading more songs through Napster according to recent research findings. Although many pundits expect users to abandon Napster now that it is blocking the transfer of thousands of titles, consumers are still downloading more songs through Napster according to recent research findings by Webnoize. The number of downloads using the Napster system rose to a total of 593 million songs during the last week of March, 25 percent more than the 473 million files downloaded during the previous week. According to Napster, more than 275,000 tracks were being blocked from the company’s file sharing system by month’s… Read more »

Napster CEO Hank Barry issued a response to Tuesday’s (March 27) U.S. District Court non-compliance report filing by the Recording Industry Association of America, calling the complaint “unsurprising.” “The RIAA’s call for a fundamental change in Napster’s technology is unsurprising: It is an attempt to change the subject rather than cooperate with Napster as the injunction specifies,” said Barry in the statement, released late Tuesday night. In Tuesday’s filing, the RIAA accused Napster of not complying with a March 5 injunction ordering Napster to immediately begin the process of removing requested copyrighted material from its file-swapping service. The filing also… Read more »

The U.S. recording industry accused Napster of willfully ignoring a federal judge’s order to block copyrighted material, saying the Internet song-swap service was still facilitating the trade of millions of illegal music files. In papers filed at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which this month instructed Napster to stop trading copyrighted material, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said it saw no evidence of compliance. “There is no effective filtering out of copyrighted works operating now within Napster. We believe it is willful,” RIAA President Hilary Rosen told a telephone news conference. Napster President and CEO Hank… Read more »

File-swapping company Napster has filed its second compliance report with a federal court and claims to have filtered out more than 1.3 million file names of copyrighted songs. But the Recording Industry Association of America maintains that Napster is falling short of its responsibilities and plans to file a reply to Napster’s report with the federal court Tuesday, a spokeswoman said. In the compliance report, which Napster filed this week, the company said it has filtered out 228,569 artist-song title pairs from its system and more than 1.3 million file names. Napster’s filtering actions come as a result of U.S.… Read more »