This morning in New York, Lil Wayne pled guilty to a 2007 attempted weapon-possession charge stemming from a gun being found on his tour bus in July of that year; he’ll likely receive a prison sentence of a year as a result. Wayne had originally filed a not guilty plea in the case, but prosecutors’ decision to use a somewhat controversial form of DNA testing in order to prove that he’d handled the gun apparently resulted in him changing his plea. [AP] MORE »
POSTS FROM "The Law" CATEGORY
The Law
Lil Wayne Pleads Guilty To Attempted Gun Possession, Will Likely Go To Jail For A Year
The Law
Soulja Boy Gets Told: “YOOOOOOOOUUUUUU Are Under Arrest”
Self-promoting MC Soulja Boy was arrested on Wednesday night after trying to evade the police, who showed up at an abandoned house where he and 40 other people were gathered for a “music video shoot.” He was picked up on a misdemeanor obstruction charge and released shortly after. On the bright side, getting arrested has done nothing to crimp his style: Not 24 hours after he was picked up by the cops, he was making songs for groupies and asking people to rate his Twitter profile picture. That’s what I call spunk! [TMZ] MORE »
The Law
This morning, the Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man—formally known by the name Clifford Smith—turned himself into the Staten Island district attorney’s office because of his failure to pay some $32,799 in back taxes dating to 2004. He’s going to face felony charges of repeated failure to report income tax, which could land him in the pokey for up to four years if he’s convicted. [Staten Island Advance] MORE »
official statements
Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump was arrested in the wee hours of the California morning for driving without a valid license, and shortly after being sprung from the pokey (on $15,000 bail) he had this to say to MTV: “All I really have to say is ignorance of the law isn’t innocence. I didn’t want to give up my Illinois driver’s license and was unaware that was a crime. It is, by the way, in the state of California. Lesson learned. I technically broke a law, so technically I deserve whatever I get. But man, is my mom gonna be pissed.” The charge is a misdemeanor, and the penalties could range from him paying a $1,000 fine to probation to up to six months in the county lockup. Oh, paperwork. [MTV] MORE »
The Law
Simon Cowell Feels Very Let Down By Whoever Leaked Leona Lewis’ New Single
Earlier this week, a demo version of a Timbaland/Timberlake-helmed song performed by 2006 X Factor winner Leona Lewis called “Don’t Let Me Down” leaked. An investigation into who put the track, which is supposed to be Lewis’ “comeback” single, out there has been launched by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Apparently there are hackers involved! MORE »
The Law
Record Industry Would Like To Ban Jammie Thomas From Listening To Any Music, Ever
From the Spectacles That Are Just Making Everyone Look Silly Dept.: As if being put on the hook for $1.92 million wasn’t enough, the music industry wants to take away Jammie Thomas’ access to file-sharing services like KaZaA, too: MORE »
The Law
Pirate Bay Founders Get Twitter-Served
Never let it be said that the music industry is completely clueless about the digital world; the Dutch antipiracy outfit BREIN, perhaps realizing that the medium may be more important than the message a lot of the time these days, has notified the founders of the BitTerrorist haven Pirate Bay that they’re due in court not through a process server, but via Facebook and Twitter. (OK, they also used those sites because TPB’s founders’ exact whereabouts are difficult to pinpoint, but the Web 2.0 angle will surely get this story some extra pickup!) “I have Twitter and Facebook accounts, but I haven’t seen anything about it,” Pirate Bay founder Fredrik Neij told Swedish news agency TT of the message. That could be because BREIN directed their Twitter summons, at least, to Peter “brokep” Sunde: MORE »
The Law
Rapidshare Ordered To Transfer $34 Million To German Record Industry
The file-sharing site Rapidshare has been found guilty of violating German copyright law by The Regional Court of Hamburg, and ordered to pay about €24 million ($34 million) to the country’s royalty-collection agency GEMA. More importantly, though, the court put the burden of figuring out whether or not copyrighted material was on Rapidshare’s servers on the people running the service, and not the infringees; the court also said that the site’s current efforts to figure out whether or not content on its servers infringed copyrights were insufficient. MORE »
The Law
Chris Brown Pleads Out, Gets Probation
Breaking: Chris Brown has pleaded guilty to a felony assault charge in the case of him attacking Rihanna the night before the Grammys. According to TMZ (whose paps were let into the courtroom during the hearing where the agreement was announced), he won’t be going to jail; instead, Brown will have to spend 180 days in his home state of Virginia and five years under supervision of California authorities, with court visits every three months. He’ll also need to attend domestic-violence counseling–and, according to the reporters on the scene, stay far away from Rihanna. [TMZ] MORE »
The Law
Court Orders Jammie Thomas To Pay The Music Industry Lot Of Money
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota resident whose legal tussle with the RIAA has resulted in some hyperbolic news outlets throwing around Joan Of Arc comparisons (oy), has been found guilty of pirating music by a Federal jury and ordered to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $1.92 million–$80,000 for each one of the 24 not-very-good songs that the music-industry lobbying group wanted to nail her for stealing via KaZAA. (Fun fact: That amount of money could buy about 101,000 full-price CDs, before taxes.) In a cruel irony, the money she’ll have to pay is eight times the amount she would have had to shell out had she not decided to appeal the guilty verdict brought against her in October 2007. MORE »
