Media Maverick

I've got 99 problems but a glitch ain't one.

Right now, that's more than Apple can say. The company is trying to fix a glitch that has resulted in iTunes Match filtering out explicit lyrics from what appears to be a small number of rap songs, according to the blog Cult of Mac.

Instead of hearing Kanye West's "Power" or Jay-Z's "Can I Live" the way they were originally recorded, the iTunes Match streaming service will only deliver profanity-free sanitized versions.

While parents might appreciate this kind of malfunction, there are … Read more

Kim DotCom, the colorful and controversial founder of cyberlocker service MegaUpload, must remain in police custody for at least three more weeks, a New Zealand court decided today.

DotCom, 38, and a half dozen of MegaUpload's managers are accused in the United States of criminal copyright violations, money laundering, and racketeering. According to the indictment filed against them in Virginia, the government alleges that MegaUpload was a criminal enterprise that banked more than $175 million by helping the masses pirate films, music, software, and videogames.

At the request of the FBI, DotCom and three other MegaUpload employees were arrested … Read more

Kim DotCom, the flamboyant founder of cyberlocker service MegaUpload, said in a New Zealand court today that he had been the victim of police brutality, according to published reports.

DotCom was arrested on January 19 at his home near Auckland, New Zealand, by more than 70 police officers who swooped in by helicopter and began pounding on the door. DotCom is allegedly the mastermind behind a criminal piracy operation that caused more than $500 million in damages to copyright owners. They assert that MegaUpload's managers pocketed more than $175 million by enabling people across the globe to store and … Read more

You'll have to keep dusting off those stacks and shelves of DVDs for the foreseeable future--and maybe forever.

Kaleidescape, a company that has long sought to help consumers create copies of their DVDs and store the digital files to a media server, has lost another legal battle.

In 2004, the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) sued Kaleidescape. That group, which includes all the major Hollywood studios and some consumer electronics companies, licenses the anticopying protections on DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

The DVD CCA accused Kaleidescape of violating the terms of the CCA license when it began releasing servers … Read more

Contrary to recent media reports, the FBI did not arrest MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom after being pressured by managers at the four major record companies, who supposedly feared DotCom would launch an unlicensed music service, sources close to the investigation told CNET.

Numerous film and music industry sources have discussed some of the events that preceded the January 19 raid in New Zealand on DotCom's home. What becomes clear is that two years ago, when the FBI began investigating the cyberlocker service, the film studios were far more intent on taking down MegaUpload than their counterparts at the music … Read more

Kim DotCom and MegaUpload helped fill out the cyberlocker's video library in 2006 by snatching videos from the then-fledgling YouTube, the U.S. government alleges.

The U.S. Justice Department is trying to extradite DotCom and three other MegaUpload managers from New Zealand and have accused them of piracy, money laundering, and racketeering.

Buried in the January 5 indictment against MegaUpload, DotCom, and six other employees of the cyberlocker service, are e-mail communications between two managers, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, from April 2006.

"Do we have a server available to continue downloading of the Youtube'… Read more

One of the most curious aspects of the U.S. government's case against MegaUpload is the large number of the company's internal communications acquired by the FBI.

In one exchange, MegaUpload managers fretted via Skype IM chat in 2007 that founder Kim Dotcom wasn't "safe with his money" and "the current situation is a bit risky," according to documents U.S. authorities filed with a New Zealand court this month as part of their criminal pursuit of the embattled cyberlocker service.

While it's still not clear how federal investigators gained access to … Read more

MegaUpload users can rest easy about the fate of the digital files they stored at the cyberlocker service.

With MegaUpload disabled by the feds and accused of widespread piracy, and many of its top managers in jail or out on bail, there has been no way for the company to pay Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications, the services that host its data. For a while, it looked like those companies would begin deleting user data as early as Thursday.

But managers at both firms have agreed to preserve the material a minimum of two weeks, according to Ira Rothken, MegaUpload'… Read more

In a recent interview, mixed-martial arts chief Dana White suggested that members of the hacktivist group Anonymous were "cowards" and "terrorists."

White, who helped found the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the nation's largest promoter of mixed-martial arts fights, then engaged alleged members of Anonymous in a debate via Twitter about his support for the controversial and now seemingly defunct Stop Online Piracy Act and the morality of hacking sites as a political statement.

According to a CNN report, Anonymous got the final word. Shortly after the debate, someone posted to the Internet White's social security … Read more