This story was last updated on Monday, March 20, 2006 at 10:14 hrs. EST.

A federal judge has ordered a stop to all sales of the classic hip hop album Ready To Die after a jury determined that one of its songs contained an illegal sample.

The order from district court judge Todd J. Campbell came late last week, after a federal jury determined that executive producer Sean “Diddy” Combs and his recording label, Bad Boy Entertainment, had not received permission to include a sample of Ohio Players’ “Singing in the Morning” in one of the album’s songs. According to an Associated Press report, the jury in the case awarded $4.2 million in punitive and direct damages on March 19 to Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, the song’s publisher and record company, respectively.

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“A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google Inc. of wrongful conduct, including copyright infringement and defamation, providing the latest court opinion to weigh in on the contentious area of search engines and copyright.

“Some legal experts said the ruling, issued last week in a case brought by Internet publisher Gordon Roy Parker in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, could influence judges in other cases pending against Google, potentially bolstering the Internet company’s legal defenses. Those cases include high-profile suits brought last year by writers and publishers and by the Agence France-Presse news agency alleging that Google’s services violate copyright.

“Mr. Parker’s suit centered on 11 claims against Google, including that Google’s archiving of copyright material he posted on the Usenet community of electronic bulletin boards violated copyright laws. Mr. Parker also alleged that Google’s inclusion of excerpts from his site in its search results infringed copyright.”

Kevin J. Delaney. Google Wins Copyright Battle. WSJ.com. March 17, 2006.

See also:

U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Penna. Gordon Roy Parker v. Google: Memorandum & Order. (.pdf) March 10, 2006.

The Patry Copyright Blog. Parker v. Google. March 17, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“The next mob war on “The Sopranos” may happen off camera.

“When HBO announced last August that the television show would finish with a 20-episode run that would be broken up over the next two years, it was careful to characterize it as a single season. But the concept of a “season,” once quite formal, continues to get fuzzier as TV changes, and HBO’s own idiosyncratic scheduling practices are part of the trend.

“Now, as Time Warner Inc.’s HBO is wrapping production on the first 12 episodes, key supporting-cast members are arguing that the additional eight shows constitute a new season, and they want their contracts renegotiated. James Gandolfini, who stars as Tony Soprano, has recently signed a new deal taking him through next year’s final eight shows that pays him in the neighborhood of $1 million an episode.

Joe Flint. ‘Sopranos’ Actors Take Another Whack At Their Contracts. WSJ Onliine. March 15, 2006.

See also:

The New York Times. Dark Days for Tony Soprano (Editorial). March 19, 2006.

CNNMoney.com ‘Sopranos’ Want An Offer They Can’t Refuse. March 15, 2006.

Bill Carter. Mob Boss Takes Hit; Housewife Implicated. The New York Times. March 15, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“One of the key specs you mustn’t ignore before purchasing an MP3 player is its battery life. This number gives you an estimate of how long your gadget will play tunes on a single charge–in the best-case scenario.

“In the real world, there are plenty of factors that will help drain your battery much quicker than you’d like. Those who belong to subscription services have it worse. Music rented from some services arrive in the WMA DRM 10 format, and it takes extra processing power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them.”

MP3.com. The Truth About Your Battery Life. March 13, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Facing increasing congressional scrutiny, Google Inc. has hired a lobbying firm that includes the son of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

“The Mountain View Internet giant hired Joshua Hastert as part of a team of lobbyists from the firm PodestaMattoon to champion its interests in privacy, compensation and China, among other issues, according to documents filed with the U.S. Senate.

“The hiring is another sign that Google is raising its profile in Washington.”

Verne Kopytoff. Google Hires D.C. Lobbyist With a Friend in High Places. SFGate.com. March 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“For the past several years, as the music and movie industries have gradually consolidated ever more authoritarian control over their copyrights, the fashion industry has been held up as an implicit rebuke to their autocratic ways. Fashion, the story goes, is a similarly creative industry, yet it operates with essentially no prohibition against design copying.

“This laissez-faire idyll may soon be a thing of the past, though. The Council of Fashion Designers of America is meeting with members of Congress tomorrow to gather support for a bill to offer copyrightlike protection to clothing designs.”

Henry Lanman. Copycatfight. Slate. March 13, 2006.

See also:

CopyCense. Lawsuits? Fashion Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Lawsuits. March 1, 2006.

Updates:

Eric Wilson. O.K., Knockoffs, This Is War. The New York Times. March 30, 2006

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.