Entertainment

The Motion Picture Association of America has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Los Angeles seeking a restraining order against RealNetworks. RealDVD, which became available on Tuesday, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the MPAA maintains. It is hardly surprising that the ...

The weekend media spotlight was on the heated Congressional negotiations that produced a financial bailout bill, which promptly went nowhere. But hidden somewhere in the static of dealmaking, rhetoric and counteroffers was a strong signal of support for Internet radio. The Webcaster Settlement Act o...

She wasn't the first person to be sued by the music industry for illegally sharing digital music files, but Jammie Thomas was the first to go to court in the ongoing battle over copyrights, consumers and charges of piracy. The 30-year-old single mother from Minnesota lost the first round last Octobe...

Online movie rental company Netflix has signed distribution deals with two heavy hitters from the TV world -- the CBS Television Network and the Disney-ABC Television Group. Netflix will soon have a stable of new and syndicated television shows that its users can stream over the Internet -- "CSI," "...

What do Metallica and SanDisk have in common? For both, the memory remains. The metal band was singing about faded rock stars trapped in their glory days. The data storage company, however, is hoping that music-filled 1GB microSD memory cards will lure in consumers who fondly remember when their fav...

A battle is brewing over a secretive intellectual property agreement being negotiated by the U.S. and several other nations. Leaked documents indicate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement would allow multiple countries to enforce each others' intellectual property laws. That, some fear, could pos...

In the age of online entertainment, consumers get virtually unlimited choice of content and unlimited means to entertain themselves. They can stream their favorite episode of "Lost" from ABC.com, watch full-length movies on Hulu or even download episodes of shows like the "The Office" from NBCDirect...

It reads like another Hollywood sequel. In fact, please try to imagine the late, great movie trailer voice-over artist Don LaFontaine intoning the following copy: In a world gone digital, now comes another tale of big companies joining forces to take on media pirates and a giant named Apple. From so...

Best Buy has announced it will acquire troubled online music store Napster for $121 million. The deal includes $67 million of cash on Napster's balance sheet and values the Los Angeles-based Internet music store at roughly twice its Sept. 12 closing stock price. "It's an interesting move and looks d...

Google and NBC Universal have inked a multiyear agreement under which Google will distribute ads through its Google TV Ads service for placement on some NBC cable channels. Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller are among the channels covered by the deal, which will go into effect later thi...

It's only fitting that Jerry Seinfeld's first Microsoft ad is -- well, about nothing. The 90-second spot, which debuted during Thursday night's NFL game, shows Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates meeting in a shopping mall shoe store. Seinfeld casually saunters in, munching on a churro, and g...

Internet radio station operators are concerned that skyrocketing royalty fees could zap an industry that's still in its infancy. However, technology may be bringing some solutions to the vexing problem of paying artists a royalty fee each time a listener hears a song. It just may take some time -- a...

No one can say what 27-year-old Kevin Cogill expected when he apparently posted nine songs from an unreleased and long-awaited Guns N' Roses album called "Chinese Democracy" to his Web site earlier this summer. It could have been anything from monetary gain to a desire to be the first to distribute ...

A federal judge in San Jose, Calif., has thrown out a copyright infringement lawsuit launched by Io Group against Veoh Networks. Io Group, which also does business under the name Titan Media, produces adult video content. Veoh is a site similar to YouTube where users can upload and watch user-genera...

Chipmaker Broadcom has agreed to acquire Advanced Micro Devices' digital television chip business for $192.8 million. About 530 AMD employees will join Irvine, Calif.-based Broadcom after the transaction closes, which is expected to take place sometime during the fiscal quarter ending Dec. 31. AMD i...