Preceding the much anticipated September 27th release of the record Neighborhoods from last decade’s potty-mouthed punk rockers Blink-182 is a legal claim from the band’s former roadie.  Former guitar tech David Palm alleges that he came up with title of the hit 2001 album Take Off Your Pants And Jacket.  With help from an IP [...]

Rapper 50 Cent, also known as Curtis Jackson, is out of court today and back in da club after a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a copyright suit brought against him. Shadrach Winstead of Newark had claimed that his 2008 autobiography, “Preacher’s Son – But the Streets Turned Me Into A Gangster,” provided much [...]

The always creative and outlandish Nicki Minaj seems to have gotten herself into some hot water during New York’s fashion week. Minaj apparently wore a “flagrant rip-off of another designer’s work.”  That designer, Jessica Rogers, claims to have sent photos of her designs to Minaj’s people. Rogers also claims to have coined the term “puff [...]

Treasury Secretary Geithner says that China is stealing intellectual property from the United States.  “We’re seeing China continue to be very, very aggressive in a strategy they started several decades ago, which goes like this: you want to sell to our country, we want you to come produce here … if you want to come [...]

From The Wall Street Journal: “Samsung Electronics Co. plans to open up its homegrown mobile software platform to outside developers and device makers next year in a bid to kick-start growth in the operating system and reduce its reliance on GoogleInc.’s Android in the increasingly litigious smartphone and tablet computer business. Samsung ‘is planning to [...]

The DEA has indicted James Rosemond, a rap music manager with Czar Entertainment, on 18 felony charges for drug trafficking. Rosemond, who was the manager of Los Angeles rapper The Game, used road cases to ship cocaine and cash in the guise of stage-show equipment from Interscope Records in Los Angeles to a recording studio [...]

Thirty-three years later, a look back at 1978 shows the pop-music industry in fine form.  Something for everyone?  Check.  Nineteen seventy-eight saw the debut of Prince, and The Cars’ first album.  The Rolling Stones released Some Girls.  There were albums by both Parliament and Funkadelic.  Willie Nelson made Stardust.  Most of all, the year now [...]

Next time you do a “torrent” or “zip” search, you might want to think about this Boston University student’s debt load. In the first case of its kind, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a $675,000 fine for downloading music illegally.  The defendant is a graduate student who admitted to [...]

The New York Times reports on the new White House plan called the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.” Basically, it is like a driver’s license for the Internet that will enable people to have an easier way to prove who they are online.  The current disagreement is whether these Internet IDs would heighten [...]

Well, so much for just making the service more expensive. Today Netflix announced that its DVD-only package will no longer be named Netflix, and will instead be called Qwikster. Netflix’s streaming service, however, will continue to be known as Netflix. On Netflix’s blog, CEO Reed Hastings explained the change saying that “streaming and DVD by [...]