Marvin Gaye’s family sues Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams over ‘Blurred Lines’

LOS ANGELES | Family of late soul singer Marvin Gaye sued R&B recording artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for copyright infringement on Wednesday, accusing them of stealing from the Motown legend’s musical composition for the hit single “Blurred Lines.”

The suit was filed as a counter-claim to a case brought preemptively by Thicke and Williams in August seeking a court ruling to establish that “Blurred Lines” did not infringe on Gaye’s rights to his 1977 hit, “Got to Give it Up,” as members of his family had said publicly.

The suit by three of Gaye’s children cited excerpts of magazine interviews given by Thicke to support their contention that he had admitted to drawing on “Got to Give it Up” when producing and recording “Blurred Lines.”

Thicke sang the raunchy, percussive R&B song, which topped song charts around the world this year and ranked as the biggest U.S. pop hit of the summer, at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards in a provocative performance featuring pop singer Miley Cyrus.

Gaye’s daughter, Nona Marvisa Gaye, and his sons Frankie Christian Gaye and Marvin Gaye III also said in the suit that Thicke’s 2011 song “Love After War” amounted to “unlawful copying” of Gaye’s 1976 song “After the Dance.”

Their lawsuit also named Thicke’s wife, actress Paula Patton, who collaborated with her husband on “Love After War,” along with Interscope Records, Universal Music Group Recordings and Sony/ATV Music, among others.

The suit further accuses EMI, which also happens to manage the copyrights for Gaye’s music, of breach of contract and trust agreements.

The family is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringement as well as a portion of the profits from the success of “Blurred Lines” and “Love After War.”

source: interaksyon.com

Ex-Viva Hot Babe Asia Agcaoili reveals ties to Megaupload

Former actress, TV host and Viva Hot Babe Asia Agcaoili has revealed her ties to cashiered cyberlocker Megaupload in an article she wrote for the January 2013 issue of FHM Philippines.

Although it was an editor’s comment that named Megaupload, Asia shared details of her life after she left showbiz and stopped writing her popular sex column in FHM — including her long association with the file sharing site whose controversial founder, Kim Dotcom, is married to a Filipina.

“Well, from Manila I moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where I lived for two years,” she said, adding that she got married there and had a son. Her husband, whom she did not name in her article, is Bram van der Kolk — a handsome Dutchman often described as a dead ringer for Matt Damon. Bram is also the chief programmer for Megaupload, which the US government took down last year with a massive copyright infringement indictment.

Now 29, Asia calls herself “a full-time housewife and mother” –except her household is far from ordinary. In 2009, she moved to New Zealand with Bram and their son Xander and lived in Kim Dotcom’s lavish mansion just outside Auckland.

In the early hours of January 20, 2012, that mansion became the scene of an FBI-sponsored commando-style raid that shut down Dotcom’s internet empire, seized all his company’s assets and saw his arrest, along with Bram and several others.

“That day was very traumatic for me,” Asia admitted. Initially, being “woken up by a man in police uniform” appealed to her naughty side.

“I thought my husband [had] hired a male stripper to perform a dance routine, and then realized after a few hours that it was not a joke at all,” she said.

That raid was subsequently declared illegal by a New Zealand court. Dotcom and his co-accused are fighting extradition to the US, where they are charged with racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering.

On Sunday, Dotcom held a grand launch for a new content storage service called Mega, which technology blog Gizmodo has called “maybe the most private, invincible file-sharing service of all time”.

source: interaksyon.com