Since bin Laden came up in the Miss Cleo/al Jazeera story, and I am feeling particularly surly at the moment, allow me to ask a question that has been clinging to my brain like a grapvine: Why can’t we find this asshole???? We have satellites that can do an endoscopy …

I am ever so pleased that the FTC went after Miss Cleo’s Psychic Douchebag Service for simply being a well-financed bunco operation: The operators of Miss Cleo’s psychic hot line agreed Thursday to cancel $500 million in customer bills to settle federal charges that the service fleeced callers while promising …

Our ace digital-service reviewing friend Brad Hill has just sized up Movielink: On Monday, November 11, the Movielink service finally rolled out a working model of its long-awaited Internet rental service. The catalog is so thin as to make this a concept opening, at best. But the service is completely …

As we have been reporting, various licensing deals are making the pay digital music services much more competitive with P2P: A spate of licensing deals this week finally will allow an array of online music companies to offer songs from most or all of the major record labels, setting the …

I can’t believe this is the first I’ve heard of this: Now, however, it appears that the ideal marriage of digital and analog technology has finally been made. When [Josh] Wink arrives at Ruzyne airport for his Friday, Nov. 15 appearance at Abaton, he won’t be waiting for two heavy …

We mentioned last week the formation of a new Webcaster Alliance. The organization has now issued a position paper in the form of a history of HR 5469: As the lame duck legislative session begins today, the webcasting community continues the fight to keep HR 5469 from passing in the …

Is this an emblematic confrontation or what? Broadway’s pit musicians fear that producers are prepared to pull the plug on them and plug in electronic replacements if the musicians’ union refuses to swallow cuts in the size of orchestras. The sides are preparing to negotiate a new contract, and producers …

John Borland writes on EMI’s accomodations to digital distribution of music: Record label EMI Group has significantly loosened the reins on how its music can be distributed on the Internet, striking a set of deals that expand what consumers can legally do with EMI tunes accessed via an online service. …

File-sharing is sucking up the bandwidth at universities. Art Jahnke is against it: a recap. When we last left the embattled recording industry, it had sent a letter to administrators at 2,300 colleges and universities, calling on them to crack down the downloading of copyrighted music and video files and …

As evidenced by his recent 2-Cd set Anthology, there was a time in the ’80s when Rick James could (musically) do no wrong: “You and I,” “Give It to Me Baby,” “Cold Blooded,” and of course “Super Freak” were the essence of melodic funk. But the one-time bandmate of Neil …