Amy Winehouse Treated for Exhaustion

Amy Winehouse was hospitalized in London Wednesday for "severe exhaustion," a Universal Music spokeswoman said.

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Morris: YouTube, MySpace Abuse Copyright

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, contends the wildly popular Web sites YouTube and MySpace are violating copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content involving Universal artists.

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Atlantic Records executive Michael Kyser and Universal Music Group honcho Shawn Costner took Jay-Z and his entourage out to M2 in Chelsea in February and racked up a $1,500 tab.      

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Heart's publishers -- Universal Music and Sony BMG -- sent the Grand Old Party a cease-and-desist notice, marking the third time in as many months the GOP has been accused of hijacking copyrighted works as it jockeys for the White House.

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Australian trio Wolfmother have announced that they have split up.

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Buzznet, which recently acquired the music blogs Idolator and Stereogum, recently received a $25 million investment of its own. As it turns out, some or all of that money came from an unlikely source: Universal Music Group.

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Social media site Buzznet confirmed rumors that Universal Music Group is a new investor in the company. The two revealed today that UMG has taken an equity stake in the growing site in return for providing content and access to artists.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hip hop mogul 50 Cent, Universal Music Group and several of its record labels were sued on Wednesday for promoting a "gangsta lifestyle" by a 14-year-old boy who says friends of the rapper assaulted him.

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Internet video service Veoh has gone to a southern California federal district court to seek protection from a possible lawsuit from Universal Music Group, according to Reuters.

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A bouncing YouTube baby has be-bopped his way right into the legal cross-hairs of the pop star Prince, sparking a lawsuit that could test the boundaries of U.S. copyright law.

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When it comes to DRM free music — that is, music not encumbered by copyright restrictions — the pitchers are still throwing their warm-up pitches. Nevertheless, there is a lot of excitement leading up to the game.

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Watermarking has been in the news twice in the last week. First, Wired's Elliot Buskirk revealed that Universal will insert watermarks in the DRM-free files it's distributing through Rhapsody, Amazon.com, and other online stores.

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Universal Music Group's Latest Ploy

Thursday, August 9, 2007 Universal Music Group (UMG) announced that they will eschew Digital Rights Management (DRM) on "some" of their existing catalogue during a limited experiment. More info regarding the announcement can be found here.

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Vivendi's Universal Music has said it is to test the digital sale of songs from artists without the customary copy-protection technology.

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Universal Music -- who are usually the most extreme piracyphobes in the music industry -- have announced that they're going to try selling much of their catalog without DRM from now until January. What caused them to change positions? Fear of an iPod Planet.

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Signaling another departure from the music industry's longtime antipiracy strategy, the Universal Music Group will sell a significant portion of its catalog without the customary copy protection software for at least the next few months, the company announced yesterday.

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Universal Music Group has refused to renew a long-term contract to sell its songs on Apple's iTunes. Alternatively, Universal will market music to Apple at will. Is Universal acting like the tantrum-throwing toddler in the middle of the check-out line?

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America's biggest media companies have accused Google of knowingly encouraging copyright theft by suggesting to illegal movie download sites that they place adverts to appear in response to search terms such as "pirated" and "bootleg".

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Morris: Well, let's get right down to it. I'm sure you heard, together with our friends at Microsoft we created a really interesting arrangement for their "Zune". What it is, is that for each hardware unit Microsoft sells, Universal gets a small fee. A nominal fee.

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China's leading web search engine has been cleared of copyright infringement by a Beijing court. Baidu.com faced a lawsuit from music companies after posting links to sites offering illegal music downloads.

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Universal Music Group, the world's biggest record company, is stepping up pressure against popular online sites YouTube and MySpace, accusing them of infringing the copyrights of its artists' music videos.

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The royalty-free ride exploited by YouTubes clip culture," MySpaces friends and other Web 2.0 free-to-consumer entertainment destinations, may soon become a tolls only entertainment thoroughfare.

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SpiralFrog, a new online music service, on Tuesday said it reached an agreement with Universal Music Group to offer free downloads of its songs and is trying to reach similar deals with other record labels.

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Chalk it up to a corporate merger, limited promotion or maybe just a record that was too different from her first -- whatever the reason, Nelly Furtado's last record tanked.

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Aston "Familyman" Barrett, the bass player for Bob Marley and the Wailers, has lost a 60 million pound lawsuit over royalties and song-writing credits that pitted him against Island Records and the Marley family.

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