Ericka Lee, who is credited in the liner notes of “Marvin’s Room” as a vocalist under the name “Syren Lyric Muse,” believes she is entitled to a larger share of the song’s royalties. Lee filed her initial claim in July of 2011, and was met by a counterclaim from Cash Money/Universal Records roughly six weeks later. According to Lee’s suit, she believes her “contribution is highly significant to the overall work.”

“Drake allegedly agreed to work with Lee on ‘Marvin’s Room’ and split the proceeds,” writes Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter. “Lee says she was asked to record the song’s ‘hook’ as well as the opening monologue that would serve as the thematic framework for a song about Drake’s yearning for an ex-girlfriend and how his fame interfered with his love life.”

“The details are still sketchy, but I can confirm that he was arrested with a firearm yesterday in the Bronx,” Gunz told MTV News. “They caught him around 2p.m. in the afternoon with a loaded gun in his knapsack.
“It was definitely an illegal search,” Peter added.
Gunz was unable to disclose full details on the incident just yet, but he explained the events leading up to his son’s arrest. “I spoke to the arresting officer, and so far, what I’m hearing from him is that they got a phone call at the station saying they should ‘look out,’ ” Gunz said. “According to [the officer], they didn’t know he was Cory Gunz. They just saw a bunch of kids following him around.
“What I will say is that the officer that arrested Cory actually happened to be a cool dude,” Gunz continued. “After arresting Cory, sitting down with him and talking, he felt bad about the situation.”

“The details are still sketchy, but I can confirm that he was arrested with a firearm yesterday in the Bronx,” explained Peter. “They caught him around 2 p.m. in the afternoon with a loaded gun in his knapsack.

“It was definitely an illegal search,” he added.

“What I will say is that the officer that arrested Cory actually happened to be a cool dude,” explained Peter. “After arresting Cory, sitting down with him and talking, he felt bad about the situation.”

Though this is Cory Gunz’ first charge, his father is worried about New York’s stringent gun laws, the same that put the likes of Lil Wayne, Ja Rule, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, and NFL wide receiver Plaxico Burress in prison.

“To go to a precinct and see your son, your junior, in handcuffs, it’s heartbreaking. Anytime you see your child in jail, in the cell, in handcuffs, it’s very hard. He’s walked down some of the same paths that I walked down, but you never want to see your kids go through what you went through.”

[January 29]

UPDATE: Cory Gunz has spoken out on his arrest over the weekend for criminal possession of a loaded firearm. If convicted, he faces a minimum three-and-a-half years in prison.

“This was a big mistake on my part,” he told The Daily News. “I didn’t have any intentions of harming anyone or committing a criminal activity. So many young people look up to me and I need to fight though this.”

The Young Money rapper joins Nas, Lil Wayne, Swizz Beatz, and many other emcees and producers that have recently come into tax trouble.

Mary J. Blige tweeted her opinion of the selection shortly after The Oscar Nominations were announced and wrote, “I’m so thankful for true fans like you all. It saddens me & feels like the Academy is being mean. 2 only nominate 2 of the 5 slots is…..” The singer was up for her song ‘The Living Proof’ from ‘The Help,’ which earned four nominations, although it was expected to be a stronger contender.

A number of stars were in competition for nomination spots alongside Mary J. Blige including Elton John, will.i.am and Pink, but only Sergio Mendes’ ‘Real In Rio’ from Rio and Bret McKenzie’s ‘Man or Muppet’ from ‘The Muppets’ managed to earn a spot on the award’s show. The range of tunes up for nomination usually ranges between three and 14, but this year 39 songs were eligible.

Although it is not clear why only two songs were selected, the slim competition could indicate that voters were unimpressed with the selection this year according to the Washington Post. Songs receive a score from voters and must have a minimum average in order to obtain a nomination, unless only one song passes the bar and then the next ranking song is selected even if its score is lower than the minimum.

MTV reports that the multi-platinum producer for DMX and Jay-Z is now fighting a major lawsuit against Universal Music Group and his involvement with the popular storage and file sharing website. Last year, Swizz enlisted Diddy, Will.I.Am, Kanye West and a host of other musicians and media personalities to help film a promotional video in support his site, which has come under fire in the past for it application in the music and video piracy.

These artists’ support apparently didn’t sit too well with Universal Music Group. The music conglomerate – which owns Hip Hop powerhouses like Def Jam and Interscope – issued a lawsuit and a YouTube take-down notice against the Megaupload video over the song’s featured artists, whose appearance they didn’t clear. Now, Swizzy and Megaupload are firing back at UMG with a counter-suit.

The video in question can be seen below. We will keep you updated as more information about the suit comes to light.

Contrary to earlier reports, Swizz Beatz is not the CEO of Megaupload and was not named in the shutdown of the company yesterday (Jan. 19th). “To my knowledge, Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way, He was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official,” said Ira Rothken, Megaupload’s attorney.

“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment.

The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited — of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

The Hong Kong-based company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO. Beatz declined to comment through a representative.

The individuals in the criminal enterprise each faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on racketeering charges, five years for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years on money laundering charges and five years on related charges.

Megaupload was led by colorful Australian Kim Dotcom — aka Kim Schmitz, or Kim Tim Jim Vestor. He is a a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand, and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany, who legally changed his last name to “Dotcom.”

The website’s founder and “chief innovation officer” was once convicted of a felony but has repeatedly denied engaging in piracy, according to CNET.com — and he made more than $42 million from the conspiracy in 2010 alone, according to the indictment.

The indictment comes the day after a 24-hour “blackout” of Wikipedia, a protest doodle on the homepage of Google, and numerous other protests across the Internet against proposed anti-piracy legislation that many leading websites — including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others — contend will make it challenging if not impossible for them to operate.

The Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are bills backed by the motion picture and recording industries intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights.

Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Q: What is the purpose of the bill?

A: There are actually two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA, in the House and sister legislation called the Protect IP [Intellectual Property] Act, or PIPA, in the Senate. Both are designed to tackle the problem of foreign-based websites that sell pirated movies, music and other products.
Federal law enforcement has the authority to shut down U.S.-based websites that offer pirated content, but they can’t directly do the same to foreign sites like Pirate Bay. The Motion Picture Association of America, the legislation’s main backer, estimates 13% of American adults have watched illegal copies of movies or TV shows online, and it says the practice has cost media companies billions of dollars.

Q: How do the bills attempt to stop piracy?

A: The basic method is to stop U.S. companies from providing funding, advertising, links or other assistance to the foreign sites. The bills would give Justice Department prosecutors new powers to prevent pirate sites from getting U.S. visitors and funding.

Q: What are the new powers?

A: The Justice Department could seek a court order requiring U.S. Internet providers to block access to foreign pirate websites. Access could be blocked either by making it impossible for users to type a simple web address into an Internet browser to reach the site or by requiring search engines like Google to disable links to the sites.

The attorney general could also seek a court order requiring credit-card processors to stop processing payments to the sites and requiring advertising networks to stop placing ads on the sites or taking ads from the pirated websites for display elsewhere.

In addition, both bills would allow Hollywood studios and other content owners to take private legal action against websites that are alleged to be hosting pirated material.

The legislation would allow content owners to ask a court to require credit-card companies and advertising networks to stop payments to sites allegedly hosting pirated material.

Q: How does this harm free speech? A Wikipedia official said the legislation could allow for “censorship without due process.”

A: Opponents of the legislation worry that the language in the House bill is so broad that it would allow content owners to target U.S. websites that aren’t knowingly hosting pirated content. This has been a particular concern of bill opponents Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter, all of which have sites that depend heavily on content uploaded by users.

In an extreme case, opponents say, media companies could get a court order blocking payments to an innocent site, with the effect of shutting it down and stripping it of its rights to free speech.

Also, they say the legislation would encourage authoritarian countries that have already been trying to block content on the Internet they don’t like.

Q: What about the charge that the legislation could undermine cybersecurity efforts?

A: One of the biggest issues for Google, eBay and other Internet companies is a provision that in some instances would require “DNS blocking.” The domain-name system, or DNS, is an integral part of the Internet, ensuring traffic goes where it’s supposed to when users type in a Web address like www.wsj.com or www.whitehouse.gov. Those addresses are converted into the series of numbers that make up a site’s Internet protocol address.

The original legislation would have required Internet providers to redirect traffic away from pirate websites by blocking the conversion system.

The problem, according to cybersecurity experts, is that such redirection is also sometimes used by hackers to deceive Internet users and commit cybercrimes.

On Saturday, the White House issued a warning that it couldn’t support the legislation if it included DNS blocking because of the possible impact on cybersecurity efforts.

This issue may be resolved. Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) said he would eliminate the DNS blocking provision from the House’s SOPA legislation. In addition, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said he would propose changing the Senate legislation to require more study of the cybersecurity concerns before implementing DNS blocking.

Q: What’s the difference between SOPA and PIPA?

A: The bills are very similar. One major difference is that the House bill includes a provision making it illegal to stream unauthorized copyrighted content.

The provision has been called the “Free Bieber” provision by the legislation’s opponents in honor of teen singer Justin Bieber, who became famous after posting videos of himself performing other singers’ songs on YouTube.

Q: What would have to happen for the bills to become law?

A: The House’s SOPA legislation is awaiting consideration by the House Judiciary Committee, which tried unsuccessfully to complete its review of the bill in December. That effort was derailed after a bipartisan group of House members, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), filed dozens of amendments and used stalling tactics to prevent the bill from being considered before Congress left for the holidays. The bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Smith, said Tuesday he plans to reschedule the hearing in February.

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed the PIPA legislation in May, but it has been awaiting floor action ever since. Forty senators are co-sponsoring the bill. However one opponent, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), has vowed to filibuster the bill if Senate leaders try to move forward. On Jan. 13, six Republican senators sent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a letter asking him to delay floor action until concerns are resolved. However, a procedural vote is still scheduled in the Senate for Jan. 24.

In short, the legislation has several hurdles in both houses of Congress. If both houses pass the bill, President Barack Obama would have to make the choice: To sign or to veto. The White House on Tuesday reiterated that it has concerns about the legislation but agrees with proponents that more needs to be done to stop piracy.

“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

Why Wikipedia went down at midnight

However, users were able to access Wikipedia on some smartphones.

The site and several others went dark at midnight Tuesday; others followed suit later in the day.

The protest is in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through the Congress. A Senate committee approved a similar bill in May called the Protect IP Act, which is now pending before the full Senate.

The controversy over SOPA and PIPA has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of the bills, while tech’s power players are throwing their might into opposing them.

“Both SOPA and PIPA are threats not just to the U.S. economy, and not just to all the jobs that this tech sector creates, but if they had existed, Steve Huffman and I could have never founded Reddit,” said Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded the site. Millions visit Reddit to submit interesting links from websites, discuss them and vote on them, he said, calling it “sort of a democratic front page of the web.” Reddit also went dark Wednesday morning.

One member of Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, who opposes the bills, said the unprecedented blackouts had “turned the tide against a backroom lobbying effort by interests that aren’t used to being told no.”

Issa is pushing for consideration of his own plan, the OPEN act, addressing the matter.
SOPA legislation ‘far too overreaching’
Battle over anti-piracy legislation
Wikipedia founder: SOPA bad for Internet

The blog Boing Boing also blacked out for the day.

“Boing Boing is offline today because the U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would certainly kill us forever. The legislation … would put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement.”

Battle over anti-piracy legislation
Wikipedia founder: SOPA bad for Internet

The blog Boing Boing also blacked out for the day.

“Boing Boing is offline today because the U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would certainly kill us forever. The legislation … would put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement.”

“In the past, the media industry has often gone after particular infringers — people who have downloaded stuff off the Internet and sharing it. And now they’re going after websites that link to these things,” Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing’s managing editor, told CNN on Wednesday. “The bill is supposed to let copyright holders get court orders against them, and there’s all sorts of various measures for getting sites blacklisted or blocked.

“The problem is that the measures are so wide-ranging and so open to abuse that we’re worried that sites like ours could be brought down by frivolous claims,” he said.

While not blacking out its home page, search giant Google joined the cause by covering its famous logo with a black rectangle and urging visitors, “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!”

The popular online classified site Craigslist was also blacked out, with a note asking users to tell members of Congress they oppose the bills.

SOPA explained: What it is and why it matters

“The Internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on the site Wednesday. “We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the Internet.”

If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. Search engines and other providers would have to block rogue sites when ordered to do so by a judge. Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content — and Internet companies are worried they could be held liable for users’ actions.

Boing Boing wrote: “Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.”

Beschizza said the bill could mean that sites like his could ultimately be taken off the Internet, and that users of sites might not be able to publish what they like because of increased liability for both users and the site.

“The problem is, this legislation won’t stop piracy,” he said. “In years of new laws and aggressive litigation, none of it has had the slightest impact on piracy. Even if (bill supporters) get everything they want, there’s no reason to think that pirates won’t find a way around it. If the media industry, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and so on, if they want to find a way to fight piracy, they need to spend less money sending legal threats and more money making new culture and maybe working on their PR a bit.”

SOPA’s supporters — including CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and groups such as the MPAA — say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses because it deprives content creators of income.

The bill’s supporters dismiss accusations of censorship, saying the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn’t adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA critics say the bill’s backers don’t understand the Internet’s architecture, and therefore don’t appreciate the implications of the legislation they’re considering.

“Within our community we’re very strong defenders of copyright. We have very strict rules about obeying copyright and we don’t link to materials that we know to be copyright infringement. That isn’t really the issue,” Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told CNN on Tuesday. “The other side will try to paint this as anybody who’s opposed to this must be making money off of piracy or be in favor of piracy. That isn’t true. The issue here is that this law is very badly written, very broadly overreaching.”

“I’m a big believer that we should be dealing with issues of piracy and we should deal with them in a serious way, but this bill is not the right bill,” Wales said Tuesday night on CNN’s “OutFront.”

Google warned that the impact of such legislation would be far-reaching.

“YouTube would just go dark immediately,” Google public policy director Bob Boorstin said at a conference last month. “It couldn’t function.”

“I don’t think it was fair to expect big sites like Twitter and Google to go down, because they kind of serve a role as a communications medium, as an infrastructure medium , so they can’t really go down,” Beschizza said.

“But sites like ours, which are small sites, which are easily put into all sorts of trouble by frivolous lawsuits, we’re the people who need to worry about this, and I think our readers will understand why we’re doing it.”

Asked how he would change the bill, Beschizza said, “I would kill it, because the whole thing, from the ground up, was designed to interfere with how the Internet works. That’s the current kind of solution that the media is approaching, and it can’t be fixed. When you approach it from that perspective … you’re only going to be one step away from censorship and all the methods that authoritarian regimes use to keep control of the Internet in less pleasant places than the United States.”

“I just wish we had been called to the table when this legislation was written,” said Ohanian. He said the bill “was clearly written by lobbyists and not technologists.”

Last year, he said, $94 million was spent lobbying to get the bills written, although he acknowledged bill opponents have also spent millions fighting it. He criticized Congress for failing to address unemployment or the nation’s deficit, but “as soon as a lobbyist shows up with $94 million, Democrats and Republicans line up to co-sponsor it. Something is wrong there.”

“The world today needs political leaders who are pro-Internet,” Zuckerberg posted Wednesday. “We have been working with many of these folks for months on better alternatives to the current proposals. I encourage you to learn more about these issues and tell your congressmen that you want them to be pro-Internet.”

In November, Google and Facebook, both tech behemoths, lodged a formal complaint in a letter to lawmakers, saying: “We support the bills’ stated goals. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities (and) mandates that would require monitoring of websites.”

And Washington has taken notice.

The growing Internet protest against the online anti-piracy bill moving through Congress is “daunting,” a Senate Democratic aide said Tuesday.

Source: Online protest threatens piracy bill

The aide said the protest may be powerful enough to keep senators from voting to even take up the bill, which until recently commanded rare bipartisan support.

“Before, it looked like it would pass with 80 votes, and now (the online protest) looks like something that will suck the votes away,” the aide said. “We’re at a tipping point. It will either become a huge issue or die down a bit and that will determine the future of this.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee postponed a scheduled hearing Wednesday to examine the impact of portions of the bill on the Internet, after assurances the legislation would not move to the House floor without a consensus, said Issa.

The aide said it was premature to say exactly how it will play out, but acknowledged that because of protest from Internet mainstays such as Google and Wikipedia, “the merits of the bill are getting lost” and “sand is shifting pretty quickly” against it.

At Wikipedia, “we’re not anybody’s paymasters,” Wales said. “We’re a charity devoted to sharing free knowledge. We’re a community that’s come together to build an encyclopedia and give it away for free to everyone. We have absolutely no positive interest in encouraging piracy or we have no way of profiting from piracy.”

“Each case was a little different. He had the same charge, basically, attempting to possess. But the gun wasn’t on his possession either,” says Ja. “I think they got him with the same charge, attempt of possession. But the difference between me and Weezy’s case is his was actually registered. His case was crazy too, because it wasn’t registered to him but it wasn’t on his person but it was a registered gun and he was on a bus with 30 other people. And it wasn’t found in his possession. It was found in a bag.