Entertainment

It is the end of an era. One of the last cases in which the Recording Industry Association of America sued an individual for illegal song sharing has reached the end of its road in a federal court in Massachusetts. There, the jury upheld a $675,000 damages award against Joel Tenenbaum following the ...

Consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to being able to consume online content at the time they want and on the device they want -- and that device now includes the television set, according to a new study by NPD. It found that while desktop PCs and laptops are still the primary source for v...

Major changes may be in store for Hulu that will loosen up the exclusivity of content on the online video site and pour more ads into the mix, according to a confidential internal memo obtained by Variety. The document discusses the possibility that in September, Hulu owners Comcast, News Corp. and...

The fixes Sony made to its PlayStation Network last year after its system was hacked may not have made it impenetrable: Reports are circulating that the hacktivist group Anonymous has breached the network again. The rumors started with a tweet posted to the group's account that has since been taken ...

Last week, Google started selling a very high-speed Internet and television service in Kansas City. This service stands a good chance of blowing customers' minds and changing expectations. The question is, will Google get into this business and compete with cable television and phone companies? Or i...

For years, pay-TV services were the dominant means of delivering premium content to consumers. Today almost 900 million homes worldwide subscribe to pay-TV services, but new delivery technologies, with smart TVs at the forefront, have created new opportunities and new potential competition. The numb...

Wall Street took Netflix at its word, and then some, when the company said in its earnings report that it probably would sign up fewer new subscribers this year than it had expected. That, coupled with a 91 percent year-over-year drop in net income, caused shares of the company to promptly drop by 2...

DirecTV subscribers will soon be able to get their MTV, as well as their daily fix of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, plus Nickelodeon and the 14 channels owned by Viacom, under a new agreement the two companies announced on Friday. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, it appears that Via...

AMC will stream the first episode in the upcoming fifth season of "Breaking Bad" for Dish customers at a site that greets visitors with the welcoming words, "Dish dropped AMC, so we're offering a special live stream of the premiere for Dish customers, right here." Viewers are invited to begin regist...

On Thursday a federal judge in New York denied a request by several broadcasters including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to shut down startup Aereo's streaming video platform, which utilizes arrays of dime-sized antennas to receive free, over-the-air programming and then streams the content online and even ...

A months-long disagreement over the fees DirecTV should pay to Viacom for some of its most popular programming has turned into steely-eyed brinkmanship between the two companies -- and DirecTV's customers caught in the middle. Viacom proposed increasing the fees DirecTV pays for programming offered ...

Vizio has announced the release of its Co-Star Stream Player set-top box, which includes Google TV and the OnLive gaming service. The company known for affordable televisions first revealed the device at this year's CES in January. While this is Vizio's first foray into set-top box territory, it cou...

With every passing week, reports on box-office receipts come with the same anxiety as industry watchers, film companies, content owners and theater managers assess if the current year will meet or exceed the previous one. Successes like "The Hunger Games" are tempered by disappointments like "John C...

YouTube's attorneys have sent a cease-and-desist letter to YouTube-mp3 demanding that it stop allowing users to extract audio clips from YouTube videos in order to copy them onto personal devices. YouTube-mp3 is a highly user-friendly service. All a user must do is enter a video's URL, and the audio...

The Department of Justice reportedly is investigating whether cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner are violating antitrust rules through practices that limit their broadband customers' access to online video. The Justice Department apparently has questioned these companies, as well as oth...