For the third time this election season, a band has asked the Republican party to not use one of its songs to introduce the party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Much like Bruce Springsteen, who in 1984 asked Ronald Reagan to stop using "Born in the USA" on his reelection campaign trail, the artists say their politics don't jibe with those of the GOP candidates.
After the jump, the artists and the songs over which they've asserted control.
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Ne-Yo is $700,000 richer, and he has R. Kelly's egotistical grand-standing to thank. Rumor has it, R. Kelly kicked Ne-Yo off of his tour last year because the ladies were screaming a bit louder during the younger R&B singer's set than they were during his. That's blasphemy in Mr. Kelly's world!
'A college student who says she was kicked out of a central Kentucky mall for wearing a short dress has filed suit over comments posted about her on a newspaper's Web site. Kymberly Clem claims she was escorted by security from the Richmond Mall on Aug. 9 over a dispute about a dress she was wearing. The 20-year-old woman is an Eastern Kentucky University student. Clem's attorney says an anonymous posting four days later alleged that Clem had exposed herself to a woman and two children. The comment was posted on a forum on the Richmond Register newspaper's Web site.' [LC-J]
When Angelina Jolie headed to Nice, France, to unload her two kids, it wasn't because the doctors there were any better than the U.S. It's because the privacy laws there forbid photographers from taking publishing her picture, or that of her newborns, without her permission. Knowing those photos would fetch a hefty sum — $14 million, it turns out — she set up camp among the French until she blew.
In the United Kingdom, there's a similar phenomenon going on: "libel tourism," where lawsuits get filed in British courts over news reports that celebrities and other plaintiffs couldn't even get on a court docket in their own countries.
That's because the U.K. has some of the strictest libel laws in the world, if you discount North Korea's tendency to make anybody who says something questionable disappear.
Plenty of publishers around the world aren't happy with the British way of doing things, especially because the Internet and global distribution of many publications put their works inside U.K. jurisdiction, opening them up to lawsuits.
But now there's a tiny organization who's on their side. Perhaps you heard of it?
The United Nations. CONTINUED »
'Worldwide Entertainment Group, the company behind [National Lampoon's Pledge This! ], is suing [Paris Hilton]for $75,000 because they claim she did not fulfill the "reasonable promotion and publicity" part of her agreement.' [OK!]
Ron Perelman, the Revlon chairman who is less wealthy than an entire other 86 people in the world, is trying to settle a little legal matter over Marvel Entertainment Group, a company he once helmed before it sank into bankruptcy. Not that it hurt Perelman much: He and other toppers stood accused of fleecing the company, directing its dollars to his own companies before Marvel went under. So he's offering shareholders $80 million to settle the matter, while admitting no wrongdoing. This is, of course, a mere 4X more than he paid to have his ex-wife's name stamped on a building at UPenn, and $473.5 million less than he stands accused of stealing.
Great news for lazy television viewers and soap opera addicts: Recording shows on your DVR is not a violation of copyright law! The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York even said so, dismissing claims from evil networks like Turner Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC, which, back in 2006 when DVRs were just an ugly acronym, considered the technology an affront on their God-given right to make you watch terrible ads for local car dealerships and LavaLife.com. The television networks now have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, instead of accepting the challenge of DVRs and producing better programming. [Photo: Chris Madden]
A federal judge did not dismiss the lawsuit against Nancy Grace that accuses the CNN talker of driving a woman to suicide, allowing the case to move forward. You remember the situation: When Melinda Duckett's son went missing, she went on Grace's show only to get grilled by the over-eager host about all the suspicious facts surrounding his disappearance, and then killed herself before the interview aired. CNN and Grace wanted the wrongful death suit dropped because any ruling against them would "severely chill" coverage of missing persons. Maybe. At the very least it might get the hosts of these shows to chill the hell out.
What's with everybody and trying to protect their copyrights? On the heels of RedLasso caving to NBC and Fox's infringement lawsuit comes word two other major cases are making their way to the courts. The first involves the MPAA, a literally a four-letter word for movie pirates, which wants the websites FOMDB.com and MovieRumor.com shut down for persistently posting information on how to download movies illegally. The second involves litigation magnet YouTube, which is being sued by Italy's prime minister. CONTINUED »
Every time Tim Gunn uttered the words "make it work" during the first season of Project Runway, he was paid precisely this amount: $0. And during the second season? Just $2,500 per episode. That's according to his testimony in New York State Supreme Court, where proceedings are underway between NBC Universal and The Weinstein Company, which ripped Runway away from NBC's Bravo for Lifetime. Other tidbits from the ongoing trial? NBC chief Jeff Zucker has instructed Bravo to air marathon repeats of Runway during the same timeslot Lifetime will air new episodes of the show's sixth season. Did we mention Zucker is BFF's with Harvey Weinstein?
Halle Berry is suing the paparazzo who snapped pictures of her four-month-old daughter recently. The photo captions said that mother and daughter were “out and about,” but they were actually in Berry’s garden. Berry is accusing the photog of trespassing on her property in order to get the shots; in California, that’s a criminal offense.
I wonder if Lil’ Kim knows that after Simon & Schuster gave her a $40,000 advance to write an novel in 2003, they turned around in 2005 and gave Foxy Brown, of all people, $75,000 for a memoir called Broken Silence, which I’m going to take a wild guess was meant to be about her sudden hearing loss.
Former in-house attorney for General Electric, Adriana Koeck, hasn't been accused of keeping a blog while working for the business giant. But she does stand accused of leaking sensitive — and, um, legally confidential — documents to a reporter. The New York Times' David Cay Johnston, who retired April 11 and now writes for Tax Notes International, is said to have benefitted from Koeck's information generosity, publishing a story for his new employer about an alleged tax fraud scheme at a GE subsidiary in Brazil. Naturally, GE isn't very pleased about the article's allegations — which have been picked up in Brazil but not very much in the U.S. — or how it came to be. CONTINUED »
Two big judgments out of the United Kingdom that, in all likelihood, won't affect us Americans one bit. But since we've all been on the Facebook and engaged in a Nazi orgy once or twice, they're worth schooling you on so you don't run into the same fate as a pair of gentlemen who had to sue to restore their good names. (Well, one of the guys who sued probably only soiled his name more.) CONTINUED »
Rather than tuck her boobies inside a bikini top, bitter actress Sienna Miller is suing Big Pictures, the photo agency responsible for exposing her bits, and News International's News of the World and Sun, which printed the pics.
Though, Miller might be less upset about having her breasts printed in the tabloids than she is about the exposure of her her relationship with married Brothers & Sisters actor Balthazar Getty, who was forced into acknowledging a separation from his wife when the photos surfaced.
In December, Miller successfully scored a $75k judgment against those same two papers when they printed pictures of her filming a nude scene for a movie. And if she secures a similar award this time around, she'll have the budget to support her lifestyle and continue making art house films, steering clear of any cineplex we'd ever visit.
Editorial Director
