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Pink Stink - Kazaa Link - Sick Of Sync

They don’t need no thought control but they could use a few royalty checks. One of the then schoolchildren who sang on the Pink Floyd 1979 single Another Brick In The Wall is suing for unpaid royalties. It seems the children, 23 in all, were prevented from receiving any monetary compensation due to what school officials termed disparaging lyrics.

The pupils, from Islington Green School in North London, were taken by a teacher to record the lyrics without receiving permission from the headmistress. Upon hearing the song, officials forbade the students from appearing on television or video to support the controversial tune. Since there were no formalized contracts, this meant the students had no proof of their involvement in the project. The school later received one thousand British Pounds and a Platinum Record as compensation, the students received nothing.

Royalties expert Peter Rowan has taken on the case and reports have it that the former headmistress is now supporting the former students’ claims for compensation.

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EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal, as well as a number of Australian record companies are suing Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa file-swapping software. The labels claim Kazaa is "an engine of copyright piracy to a degree of magnitude never before seen".

According to the labels’ attorney, 100 million users swap 3 billion files a month and Sharman is both making it easy for them to find illicit music and profiting from it by selling advertisements on its website.

This is the second time Kazaa has been targeted. The company was exonerated last year of liability for copyright infringement in the Netherlands

Meanwhile, critics continue to argue that file sharing can encourage music purchases by allowing people to hear material they could not find on radio.

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A New York based group, HOPE (Horrified Observers of Pedestrian Entertainment), is making an Anti-Ashlee stand.
The organization is offering anyone suffering from Simpson Syndrome, as in still owning an Ashlee Simpson CD, the opportunity to trade it in for one of “higher entertainment quality”.

HOPE began their bashing after Simpson’s lip sync saga on Saturday Night Live. The group also takes a stand on movies and stars…recently demonstrating against Paris Hilton carrying signs that read, "Why are you famous? You can`t buy brain cells".

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