Music streaming service Grooveshark has pulled its German web page offline on its own, stating it is forced to pay "unreasonably high" operating costs. These costs mainly involve licensing fees for music by GEMA. The statement on the site continued, stating it hopes to come back one day.
EMI Music Publishing appears to be the latest content owner to file a lawsuit against the online music company Grooveshark. Although the music label has a licensing agreement with Grooveshark, the latter company is accused of not making "a single royalty payment" or providing any accounting statements.
Sony Music and Warner Music have now joined the copyright infringement lawsuit Universal Music started against online music service Grooveshark. The lawsuit was first filed in November and alleges that Grooveshark execs uploaded copies of songs to which they didn't have rights and thus broke the DMCA. The lawsuit was also amended with a detail that claims Grooveshark knew it needed a license for the material it offers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this month, the record company Universal Music filed a lawsuit against the parent company of Grooveshark alleging the music service had infringed upon Universal's copyrights, and its managers had illegally uploaded musical content. The complaint and Universal's exhibits have now been made public. Included in these were internal Grooveshark emails which detail the company's intent of creating a stronger negotiating position for itself with the record companies by first trying to building a strong online audience without actually paying for it.
Barnes & Noble is planning to drop its claims of focusing only on reading and attack the tablet market more directly, a slew of leaks confirmed to Android Central late Thursday. Its November 7 event will see it roll out the Nook Tablet, the rumored high-end model. Although it will still have the Nook Color's heavily customized Android interface, it will carry a much faster dual-core, 1.2GHz TI OMAP processor with 1GB of RAM, similar to Motorola's Xoom 2, and 16GB of storage with a microSDHC slot.
Grooveshark has released an unofficial Android app, sidestepping Google's recent move to ban the utility from the Android Market. The new release provides the same basic functionality as the version that was pulled from the store, enabling users to search for songs, listen to recommended content, or play tracks through an instant on-demand system.
Google has quietly dropped Grooveshark's mobile app from Android Market. Insiders said Wednesday that music labels had pushed Google into action under claims that the search-and-play service was breaking copyright law. The company issued a non-response to CNET that said it pulled apps that "violated our policies" without directly attaching the claim to Grooveshark or mentioning labels.
Jabra used the advent of CTIA to launch a white version of the Stone and a program to boost mobile developers. Both the earpiece and its unique, namesake charger have flipped over to the new color and carry the same features, such as portable charging from a battery in the charger as well as noise cancellation. AT&T will have an exclusive on the headset and start selling it May 16th for $130.
