industry

The end of Lime Wire as it has existed for years appears to be at hand.

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction today against the company that operates the long popular file-sharing software LimeWire and orders managers there to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading...and/or all functionality" of the LimeWire software, Lime Wire announced.

In May, Wood, who serves the Southern District of New York, granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry's claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright … Read more

When it comes to fighting online piracy, some music and film industry executives think Google could be doing more to help.

At a time when Google is negotiating with television, movie, and music producers for the recently launched GoogleTV and an upcoming digital music service, the company has been sending mixed messages about how much help it will provide in removing links to pirated songs from its search index.

Last month, executives from two music-industry trade groups, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), asked Google if it could provide a … Read more

Chrysler is taking its act on the road--10 vehicles, 10 weeks, 50 stops.

The marketing tour is to reach out to the 22,000 employees who work for Chrysler Group affiliate companies and suppliers such as Case New Holland, Comau, 3M, Union Pacific Railroad and Mohawk Industries.

The mobile showroom will feature the 2011 models of Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, Dodge Caliber, Ram 1500, and 2011 Ram 2500. And the 2010 models of the Chrysler 300S, Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Journey, Dodge Challenger, and Dodge Viper ACR.

The cross-country tour launched last week and will continue through … Read more

If you asked the average moviegoer to name George Lucas' biggest influence on the film industry, they'd probably say "Star Wars." But while there's no arguing with the massive cultural and artistic impact of that film and its five sequels, a better answer might well be Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.

To be sure, "Star Wars" and ILM are not unrelated--Lucas started ILM to create the visual effects for his groundbreaking movie. But the visual effects house has gone on to do a great deal more, and today is probably responsible for the look … Read more

This summer's concert season has been brutal for the music industry, with cancellations and discounting galore. Blame the economy, blame the lack of marketable big-name artists on tour, but whatever the reason, concert ticketing giant Ticketmaster (which is owned by concert promoter and venue owner Live Nation) is responding.

In the inaugural post of Ticketology, the new Ticketmaster blog, the company has announced the end of a longstanding annoyance: service charges that get tacked on to the ticket price late in the buying process. Now, when you select a ticket on Ticketmaster's Web site, service fees are included … Read more

This month's U.K. edition of GQ Magazine contains a fairly substantial article from U2 manager Paul McGuinness in which he blames Internet service providers and technology companies directly for the falling sales of recorded music. As he notes in the article, he made a speech on this subject about two years ago and was roundly criticized by various "anonymous bloggers." I've never been anonymous, but I did point out some of the factual inaccuracies and weird assumptions in his speech at the time.

I can't speak for anonymous bloggers everywhere, but I've never … Read more

When Vevo launched in December, I wasn't very impressed. I wondered why the site needed to exist when it was mainly serving as a distribution point for the ever-popular YouTube.

Despite my skepticism, it has quickly become one of the most popular video properties in the United States, thanks to its large store of exclusive content. And artists and copyright owners, at least, are getting some money when their videos are distributed through Vevo, which often wasn't the case before.

Vevo on Wednesday launched its free iPhone app, which gives iPhone and iPod Touch users access to 20,… Read more

A federal judge has rejected a request by the music industry to freeze assets belonging to Lime Wire and founder Mark Gorton.

In March, U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood ruled that Lime Wire, parent company Lime Group, and founder Mark Gorton are liable for copyright infringement by enabling and "inducing" users of the file-sharing software LimeWire to pirate music.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which filed a copyright complaint against Gorton and Lime Wire in 2007, wanted to make sure that Gorton or his companies don't do anything with their money before the court … Read more

Are you fed up with the antics of the big-time concert industry? The continually rising prices? The huge service charges? (Not that this is entirely the fault of the ticket sellers--a percentage is usually kicked back to the artist.) The quick "sell-outs" of all decent seats, followed by the mysterious appearance of marked-up tickets on scalper sites?

Then here's some good news. In June, The Pixies teamed up with digital-music marketing agency Topspin Media to perform an interesting experiment in London. The Pixies--who didn't have an e-mail list before they started working with Topspin--sent an e-mail … Read more