MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz has finally been granted bail in New Zealand after a third attempt to get out of jail. As previously reported, Schmitz, one of four men arrested in New Zealand last month at the request of US authorities in relation to their involvement in the Mega empire, had previously been refused bail twice because of concerns he would flee the country for home nation Germany, where it would be much harder for America to extradite him.

But yesterday a New Zealand judge accepted the arguments put forward by Schmitz’s lawyer that, with all his client’s bank accounts frozen, the accused wouldn’t have the means to leave the country. Prosecutors had previously expressed concerns Schmitz still had access to other secret sources of cash, but Judge Nevin Dawson yesterday said there was no evidence that was the case.

He also noted that, while it might hard for the US to extradite Schmitz should he manage to get to Germany, he could still be prosecuted through the German courts, meaning a return to his home country wouldn’t necessarily ensure he was out of the reach of the law.

Dawson ruled: “Since [the original bail hearing], all known assets have been seized and are unavailable for Mr Dotcom’s use or disposal. [Meanwhile] no new assets or accounts of any significance have been revealed since his arrest. Mr Dotcom’s submission that he has not concealed any assets or bank accounts has largely been borne out”.

The terms of Schmitz’s bail have not been revealed, though other bailed former Mega execs have been banned from using the internet. Speaking outside the court, the Mega chief told reporters: “I am relieved to go home to see my family, my three little kids and my pregnant wife. And I hope you understand that that is all I want to say right now”.

As previously reported, the three other Mega executives arrested at the same time as Schmitz have already been bailed. All four, and three other men, one arrested in Europe and two still at large, are accused of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering in relation to the now defunct MegaUpload service, and other related websites.

A judge has agreed to remove AEG Live from Joe Jackson’s wrongful-death lawsuit, meaning the late king of pop’s father is now just suing Dr Conrad Murray and a Las Vegas pharmacy he bought prescription drugs from.

Jackson Senior’s original lawsuit specifically targeted Murray, the doctor convicted last year of involuntary manslaughter in relation to Michael Jackson’s 2009 death. But then the singer’s mother chose to sue AEG, promoters of the ill fated ‘This Is It’ show, who were paying Murray’s fees. Katherine Jackson argued that, as Murray’s effective employer, the live firm must accept some liability for her son’s death at the hands of the medic.

Joe Jackson then added AEG as a defendant on his lawsuit too, possibly recognising that even if he won against Murray, the doctor has no money. But AEG’s lawyers argued that if Joe Jackson wanted to sue the company, he should join his wife’s lawsuit, rather than pursuing his own litigation. They also argued that Mr Jackson was not a legitimate heir to his son’s fortune because he was estranged from the singer and excluded from his son’s will.

And, according to the City News Service, the judge overseeing Jackson Senior’s litigation yesterday agreed, dismissing AEG as defendants. The judge particularly agreed with the argument that it was inappropriate for two separate heirs to pursue separate litigation over the same issue. Joe Jackson’s people are yet to respond to the ruling.

In related news, the prosecution in the criminal case against Murray have, unsurprisingly, formally objected to the doctor’s application for bail. As previously reported, Murray last month requested that he serve his jail term out of prison, possibly under house arrest, so that he can better prepare for his appeal.

However, prosecutors yesterday said the prison sentence should be enforced, claiming Murray remained a hazard to society, that he could flee California if let out of jail, and adding that the doctor was still remorseless about his part in Michael Jackson’s death. Prosecutors David Walgren and Deborah Brazil have told the courts: “Based on his failure to accept responsibility for the decisions he made, his complete lack of remorse and lack of insight into the danger of his criminally negligent conduct, he remains a danger to the community”.

The LA courts are due to consider Murray’s bail application on Friday.

Lawyers working for Sugarland have possibly put the country duo in a tricky PR position after filing legal papers that seem to argue that fans injured when that stage collapsed at last year’s Indiana State Fair were in part to blame for their own injuries, for failing “to exercise due care for their own safety”.

As previously reported, seven fans died and 40 more were injured when staging collapsed in freak high-speed winds shortly before Sugarland were due to take to the stage at the State Fair last August. Various legal claims have been made since the incident, with the band themselves being hit with litigation because their contract with the State Fair gave them the right to cancel the show in extreme weather conditions.

Lawyers for some victims have claimed their failure to exercise that clause makes them liable for the deaths and injuries caused by the stage collapse. There have also been allegations that the band knocked back proposals to postpone their performance to let the storm pass, something which might have led to the area near the stage being cleared before the high speed winds hit, though exactly what was discussed back stage before the tragedy isn’t especially clear.

Indeed there were reports it was the band’s tour manager who requested a delay in starting the Sugarland set, a decision which arguably reduced the impact of the staging collapse because fewer fans had moved close to the stage.

Some commentators have expressed surprise that Sugarland’s lawyers would even suggest fans should accept some liability for their own injuries, when it would seem more logical to try to land all the blame with State Fair organisers and the company which put up the staging.

The former have already paid out $5 million in damages to those affected by the incident, which is the most the State is allowed to pay out under Indiana State law, though word has it there are moves to make a one time exception in order to hand over more cash to those still paying medical bills in relation to their injuries. Nevertheless, lawyers for the victims are still looking for other routes to higher compensation.

As criticism emerged online and in the media to Sugarland’s latest legal filing yesterday, the band issued a vague and non-committal statement saying: “Sadly when a tragedy occurs, people want to point fingers and try to sensationalise the disaster. The single most important thing to Sugarland are their fans. Their support and love over the past nine years has been unmatched. For anyone to think otherwise is completely devastating to them.

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from legendary producer Phil Spector’s over his 2009 conviction for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

As previously reported, Spector maintains he is innocent of the death of Lana Clarkson, who died at his Beverley Hills home from a gun shot wound in 2003, but his previous appeals have been denied, most recently by California Court Of Appeal in August last year. Spector’s lawyer Dennis Riordan then took the case to America’s Supreme Court last December, arguing that Judge Larry Paul Fidler’s conduct during the producer’s second trial (the first was declared a mistrial) meant the producer didn’t get a fair hearing.

However, the Supreme Court does not seem convinced by Spector’s arguments, and has refused to hear his appeal. This seemingly ends all routes of appeal for Spector, who is currently serving a nineteen year sentence for Clarkson’s murder.

Danish anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen has seemingly secured an injunction through the country’s courts ordering local internet service provider Three to block access to its customers to Grooveshark, the often controversial streaming music service which claims its legit, but which is currently facing legal action from all four majors.

As previously reported, the Danish rights body accused Grooveshark, which lets users upload music to its catalogue, of infringing copyright last November, and this week a court seems to have agreed with those claims. Three could as yet appeal, but if it doesn’t successfully other Danish ISPs are likely to be served with a similar injunction.

While web blocking injunctions against unlicensed content services are becoming common in some jurisdictions, and are in theory possible in the UK since last year’s Newzbin ruling, injunctions against a service like Grooveshark are possibly even more controversial in that some rights owners have licensed the platform, and its operators claim to be on the right side of copyright law because they operate a takedown system to remove unlicensed tracks if and when made aware of them.

That said, such a takedown system only really assures protection from infringement liability under US copyright law, and even there rights owners – who feel Grooveshark only pays lip service to its takedown obligations – are trying to show that a lot of the unlicensed content available on the streaming service is uploaded by staff not users, so the takedown system does not protect them from infringement claims.

Grooveshark is yet to respond to the reports of a web block being ordered against it in Denmark.

As the British record industry prepares for its big party at The O2 tonight, label chiefs were already celebrating yesterday after scoring a win in the first stage of their legal efforts to force ISPs in the UK to block access to The Pirate Bay.

As previously reported, record label trade body the BPI took aim at The Pirate Bay last year after the landmark ruling in the Newzbin case, in which a British judge, for the first time, ordered an internet service provider to block access to its customers to a file-sharing website, after the operators of that site tried to circumvent an earlier court ruling against them by moving their service outside the jurisdiction of the UK courts.

Following the precedent set in the Newzbin case, the BPI asked various British ISPs to voluntarily block access to The Pirate Bay. When the net firms refused the trade body went legal, and stage one of that litigation asked the question “is The Pirate Bay liable for the infringement it enables, even if the Pirate Bay servers themselves do not host any unlicensed music files?”

And the answer, in the words of High Court judge Ricky Arnold, is: “Yes, it fucking is, man, it fucking is”. Well, I am paraphrasing ever so slightly, but that’s basically what he meant.

If you’d prefer Arnold’s exact words, they went something like this: “In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. Despite their ability to do so, and despite the judicial findings that have been made against them, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] take no steps to prevent infringement. On the contrary … they actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt. I [therefore] conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants (and those they represent) in the UK”.

Welcoming that ruling, BPI boss Geoff Taylor told reporters: “The High Court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal. The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries. We will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm”.

Of course it’s no real surprise that The Pirate Bay has been labelled a copyright infringer by the UK courts, it having lost similar legal cases all across Europe (though it’s true the English law concept of ‘authorising infringement’ is less well tested when it comes to certain file-sharing services), and therefore phase two of this litigation will be more interesting, ie whether the Newzbin principle will be extended forcing ISPs to finally block access to the rogue file-sharing site. A ruling on that matter is now expected in June.

The Pirate Bay, of course, carries on regardless. More committed users of the file-sharing site will almost certainly be able to circumvent any blockades put in place by the ISPs, while the Bay’s previously reported move to listing magnet rather than BitTorrent files reduces the size of the site’s database significantly, enabling users to download and host their own copies of The Pirate Bay website.

And if all those alternatives fail, the filesharing community is already talking up ‘Tribler’, an alternative BitTorrent client that circumvents existing blocks and takedowns by bypassing the need to use a website entirely. So, file-sharing can continue – though, the big rights owners might argue, the pursuit of accessing and sharing illegal free content gets ever more geeky, and that should achieve their objectives of reducing piracy amongst mainstream consumers.

Prosecutors in the US filed new papers with the courts on Friday in the ongoing MegaUpload case, adding some extra charges against the rogue file-transfer and video site’s founder Kim Schmitz, three new copyright and five new wire fraud charges to be precise. Assuming American authorities are able to extradite the Mega man from New Zealand, they are hoping to get him for every crime possible in relation to the Mega empire he ran for five years.

According to Digital Music News, the latest court filings also make a number of claims about the Mega operations. First that the Mega service had 66.6 million registered users rather than the 180 million Team Mega claimed, and that 90% of those with accounts only used them to download content, not upload, suggesting that the vast majority of Mega users were using the service to access unlicensed music and movie files, and not to store, distribute or share their own content.

Some of the remaining 10%, meanwhile, only uploaded, suggesting they might have been part of the network of users rumoured to be incentivised by the Mega company to upload unlicensed files up to both the Mega video and file-transfer platforms, ensuring a steady supply of content for the 90% who only used the service to access free entertainment. Prosecutors also claim that not only were Team Mega downloading official music videos and TV shows from YouTube and uploading them to MegaVideo to bolster their content catalogues, they also nabbed user generated content from the Google-owned video service, so to give the impression Mega users were using the site to post their own UGC too.

Mega’s lawyers are yet to respond to the latest allegations against the company’s management. Four key execs, of course, are awaiting an extradition hearing in New Zealand. One more Mega operative has been arrested in Europe, while two other wanted former execs are still evading the authorities.

Well, it’s like I’m always saying, you can’t have too many Michael Jackson lawsuits, so thank God the late king of pop’s estate has initiated another one.

The estate is suing Thome R Thome, the business advisor who was Jackson’s quasi-manager in the last eighteen months of his life. Thome reckons he is owed fees from work he did for the pop star prior to his untimely demise in June 2009, and that he might be due a cut of money generated by the estate since the singer’s death too. He last surfaced in 2010 demanding access to confidential contracts entered into by the estate, so he could work out whether he was due any commissions.

The estate seemingly concedes that Jackson did enter into various agreements with Thome in the last year of his life, in relation to the advisor’s role in refinancing the then under threat Neverland ranch and negotiating the deal for the ill-fated ‘This Is It’ residency in London. But, the estate’s executors argue, those contracts were “self-serving and unconscionable”.

The estate’s lawsuit wants those agreements declared void, Thome’s claims to a share of estate revenues dismissed, and the return of various items belonging to the singer which the estate claims the former advisor is hanging on to.

Thome is yet to respond to the estate’s claims, though it is thought he is already busying preparing his own lawsuit after over a year of negotiations with Jackson’s executors failed to reach a conclusion, and the estate’s own litigation is something of a pre-emptive strike.

MP3 resale website ReDigi – which is caught up in a legal battle with EMI, of course – is reportedly pissed off that the major has stepped in to cut off its supply of artwork and music previews.

As previously reported, EMI, and the wider US record industry, reckons ReDigi, which lets people resell MP3s, and supposedly forces the seller to delete their copy of the digital file after sale, is actually a platform that simply enables individuals to profit from copyright infringement. EMI’s Capitol division is suing the digital start-up, though failed to get a summary injunction against the resale site earlier this month. It was confirmed this week that that case will now go properly to court in August.

Meanwhile, according to Wired, ReDigi has had to stop including artwork next to MP3s being sold on its platform, and is now relying on YouTube for preview clips of tracks, after US-based streaming service Rdio pulled out of a partnership with the resale site, allegedly at EMI’s insistence. Obviously Rdio needs to stay on the right side of the major labels to ensure it still has access to their music for its core subscription-based streaming music service.

Wired quote from a letter written by ReDigi’s lawyer Ray Beckerman seemingly filed with the courts, in which he confirmed Rdio had suddenly stopped providing artwork and previews to his clients. He also claims that was as a result of action by EMI, after ReDigi confirmed where it sourced said content from in a previous court submission. Beckerman: “Apparently, having been denied an injunction, they [EMI] have sought to use extrajudicial tactics to accomplish what they were unable to obtain in a court of law”.

Of course, depriving ReDigi of its album cover jpegs and in-platform previews doesn’t actually stop it reselling MP3s, even if its service will replicate iTunes less as a result of the move. EMI, of course, hopes to put the MP3 resale site totally out of business once this case goes to court this summer.

As expected, there was much criticism in the file-sharing community and beyond yesterday about the wording of an official notice posted by the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency at the former domain of music blog RnBXclusive.com, which had been closed down by the authorities amid allegations of copyright infringement and conspiracy to defraud the music industry.

As previously reported, not only did the message tell former RnBXclusive.com readers that the site had been shut down as part of a criminal investigation, it offered the stern warning that “if you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to ten years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law”. The warning was accompanied by a widget that showed the user’s IP address, and an additional message that amounted to saying “we know where you live”.

As noted yesterday, that warning is not really backed up by UK law, because while you could be sued by rights owners for downloading unlicensed content, a criminal prosecution is only likely if you operate a file-sharing service, or upload a significant amount of content to a file-sharing network, and even then a lengthy prison sentence would only be possible if it could be shown you were profiting from your infringement, ie you were running a commercial piracy operation.

In fact, so disconnected from the real law was SOCA’s statement, that some online commentators started to wonder if the message was a hoax, perhaps a joker had somehow managed to take over RnBXclusive.com’s domain after the UK police moved to shut the site down, and had posted an over the top warning to embarrass the authorities. (The slightly amateurish look of the police notice was also noted, though SOCA’s official website does look a bit like it was designed on a night school course, so that probably wasn’t relevant.)

Anyway, it turned out the statement was, indeed, the real deal. As criticism of the way the warning was worded started to spread yesterday, the crime agency took the message down and replaced it with a more simple “SOCA has taken control of this domain name”, though the government body insists that the more controversial statement was always intended to be temporary, presumably to shock and scare the 70,000 users apparently visiting the RnB downloads blog each day.

Commenting on the wider impact of its sudden swoop on RnBXclusive.com and the stern if misleading warning it posted on that domain for 36 hours, SOCA said in a statement yesterday: “Responses to the takedown have included action by three more [unlicensed] music sites. One has taken itself offline voluntarily, one claims to be considering taking itself offline, and another has posted a claim on its home page to now only be dealing in legal music files following the activity”.

The man arrested in relation to RnBXclusive.com has been bailed, and faces charges of conspiracy to defraud. It’s thought the site made money through ad sales, and the profits made on the back of the posting of unlicensed music files will be key to securing a conviction for fraud. It remains to be seen how the criminal prosecution spans out, though in the meantime SOCA hasn’t really aided the anti-piracy cause by opening itself – and the record industry, which many believe (rightly or wrongly) was involved in the SOCA investigation and warning notice – to accusations of deliberately misrepresenting to law to scare web users into submission.

Well, it’s nice to be invited to a party, isn’t it? And EMI has just been invited to the digital royalties dispute party, via a lawsuit from Kenny Rogers. What fun.

As previously reported, the digital royalties dispute currently rocking the US record industry revolves around whether download revenue should be treated as record sales or licensing income (there are arguments for both interpretations). It’s an important distinction, because many pre-internet record contracts, which obviously don’t specifically mention downloads, pay out a considerably higher royalty to artists if revenue comes in from licensing deals rather than record sales.

Record companies have always treated download sales as the digital equivalent to record sales and paid heritage artists the smaller royalty. But many of those artists aren’t happy with that situation. Early efforts to fight that interpretation in the American courts, however, were not successful, but things changed when FBT Productions, who have a stake in the early Eminem recordings, successfully sued Universal Music for the higher pay out on download sales.

Universal insists the ruling in the FBT case only relates to that specific contract, and does not set a more general precedent. But that hasn’t stopped Rob Zombie, Chuck D and the estate of Rick James from suing the major over their old record contracts. Earlier this month Sister Sledge pulled Warner Music into the dispute by suing over their digital pay outs, and now Kenny Rogers wants the courts to force EMI to pay the higher royalty on his download sales. That only leaves Sony Music out of the proceedings, though interestingly it was Sony which successfully fought off some of the earlier lawsuits in this domain, led by the Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick.

Rogers is the first to file his digital royalties lawsuit in the Tennessee Court, which, of course, will be more convenient for those artists whose music industry base is Nashville, should Rogers be successful. Major label lawyers remain confident that – while certain contracts may enable certain artists to get a higher pay out on downloads – there will be no general ruling on this issue, and in most cases their interpretation of what constitutes record sale and licensing income will prevail. But if the heritage artists win, the impact could be huge on the labels, with the Future Of Music Coalition estimating the majors might have to hand over $2 billion in extra royalties if they lose outright.

It’s worth noting that Rogers’ lawsuit isn’t just restricted to a disagreement on digital revenue, with other complaints also included, stemming from a number of royalty disputes that seem to have been rumbling on since 2007.

A British music blog that posted, amongst other things, links to music files, many of them unlicensed, has been shut down by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. People visiting RnBXclusive.com today will see a SOCA statement that says the UK government agency has taken control of the domain, and that the individuals who ran the blog have been “arrested for fraud”.

In a warning to RnBXclusive’s former users, the SOCA statement also notes: “The majority of music files that were available via this site were stolen from the artists. If you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to ten years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law”. It also displays the user’s IP address, along with other details, and informs that this can be used to identify them.

It’s not the first time the UK authorities have taken action against the providers of unlicensed music content of course, though the most high profile action to date – against the operators of the Oink BitTorrent community – wasn’t exactly successful.

While some of those who used the service were successfully prosecuted for copyright infringement, the more important case – against the man who operated the site – failed. Rather than charging Alan Ellis with authorising infringement, the English law equivalent of contributory infringement, the copyright concept used to convict the founders of The Pirate Bay in Sweden, the authorities went with ‘conspiracy to defraud’.

That’s possibly because the ability of the ‘authorising’ principle under English law to make the providers of link services or file-sharing software liable for the infringement of their users is untested in court. It might also be because the penalties for conspiracy to defraud are much higher.

But the problem with the Oink case was that, in order to prove conspiracy to defraud, there needs to be evidence of a deliberate intent to profit at the detriment of another, ie the record companies, which simply couldn’t be proven, given Oink was an organic online community not run for profit. Whether the case for fraud will be stronger against the operators of RnBXclusive remains to be seen.

Meanwhile the file-sharing community is certain to object to the language used by SOCA in its warning statement – especially the threat of ten years in jail for simply downloading unlicensed content. Under the Copyright, Designs And Patent Act 1988 only distributors of unlicensed content themselves are liable for such a long sentence, so it’s not clear what SOCA is basing its claim on here.

And a prison sentence for simply accessing unlicensed content online would be unprecedented, so much so that it’s hard to imagine a court passing such a sentence, or indeed the Crown Prosecution Service ever even pursuing such a case. Perhaps SOCA knows something we don’t, though such bold statements only really help those who argue that current and/or new copyright laws carry penalties disproportionate to the offence.

As Spain gets ready to put its new Sinde Law into action, which will make it easier for rights owners in the country to get injunctions to block access to copyright infringing websites, another civil case on file-sharing has found in favour of the file-sharing service provider, as has been the norm in the Spanish courts.

Cinetube helps web-users navigate film files online and the majority of the movie files it links to are unlicensed. In some jurisdictions just linking to infringing content – if that forms the core of a site’s operations and no efforts are made to filter out or warn against unlicensed music or movies – constitutes pretty straightforward copyright infringement in itself, though in Spain generally the courts have been unwilling to hold such websites liable, especially if they are not run for profit.

The landmark ruling in Spanish law is that involving links service Sharemula which – although distinguished in another more recent Spanish case last April where the operator of a file-sharing links service profited from ad sales and SMS services – was deemed to set the precedent in the latest Cinetube case. So much so, the file-sharing service was able to successfully fight off copyright infringement litigation from the movie industry.

However, that might change if and when the new Sinde Law goes live in March, as Cinetube is known to be high up on the target list of the content industries, who hope the new web-blocking law will circumvent past precedents and enable them to force ISPs to block access to such websites. Though, as previously reported, the new web-blocking system may be delayed somewhat as Spain’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments from the Association Of Web Users which claims the Sinde Law is unconstitutional.

All three of Kim Schmitz’s MegaUpload colleagues who were arrested with him last month for their involvement in the file-transfer and video sharing service have now been let out of jail on bail, though Schmitz himself remains incarcerated.

As previously reported, the New Zealand authorities arrested four men last month at the request of the US, who accuse seven men in total of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering in relation to their involvement with the Mega empire.

Two of the four execs arrested in New Zealand, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato, were officially granted bail more or less immediately after their arrests, though technicalities about where they would stay while on bail meant they were only actually let out of jail in the last week.

The fourth man, Mathias Ortmann, was bailed yesterday. Despite the prosecution expressing concerns about the four men being in close contact while on bail, Ortmann will stay with van der Kolk while awaiting an extradition hearing, while Batato will stay with Schmitz’s wife. All have been banned from accessing the internet while on bail.

As also previously reported, Mega founder Schmitz has been denied bail amid fears he would flee New Zealand to his home country of Germany, where it would be much harder for America to extradite him.

Lady Gaga should possibly take note, Madonna may take it as a compliment when you rip off one of her songs, but will whoever Madonna rips off take it with such good grace? That is to say, if Gaga were to rip of new Madge track ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’, she might find legal reps for Brazilian producer Joao Brasil at her door. Though, that said, Brasil would probably take it as a compliment too. So go ahead Gaga, borrow as many Madonna hooks as you want.

Anyway, the point here really is that label and legal reps for producer and musician Brasil are reportedly considering legal action over ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’, Madonna’s new single (the one with Nicki Minaj and MIA guesting), after various people noted similarities between it and Brasil tune ‘LOVE Banana’. I think it’s mainly the cheerleading bit that is particularly similar, though that may just be the nature of cheerleading, and while in Madge’s new record it’s the pop queen herself being cheered, Brasil’s track – as its title may suggest – celebrates the much more modest banana.

Anyway, whether or not there is a case for claiming Madonna’s track copies ‘LOVE Banana’ in any way, this probably won’t go legal, mainly because Brasil insists he’s too big a Madonna fan to consider suing her. He told Brazil’s Folha da Sao Paulo newspaper: “I still don’t understand what happened. I’m a huge fan of hers. If it’s plagiarism, then even better. She is always at the cutting edge of music, so it’s a good sign about what I do… It’s in their hands, they’re looking at how to proceed and what they can do. But personally I don’t want to do anything. The last thing I need in my life is a fight with Madonna”.

Anyway, if you want to compare and contrast, or just join MIA and Minaj in some champion cheerleading of Madonna, or perhaps chant along as Brasil and his mate Lovefoxx big up the banana, here are the video links…

Former TLC singer T-Boz has had her application for bankruptcy turned down by the US courts. As previously reported, the singer, real name Tionne Watkins, filed for bankruptcy last autumn, after running up debts of $700,000, and struggling to pay off the mortgage on her $1.2 million home.

But, according to TMZ, the US Bankruptcy Court last week ruled that the singer had not put enough effort into negotiating new payment terms with her creditors, and knocked back her bankruptcy application.

She can re-file in July, providing she can show stepped up efforts to settle her debts before then, though in the meantime her creditors can make efforts to seize her assets.

The London coroner who made his unqualified wife a coroner too has been suspended, according to The Sun, while his conduct is investigated by the Judicial Complaints Office. This story has a pop angle, of course, because one of the deaths Suzanne Greenaway oversaw as a coroner, before her lack of qualifications was discovered, was that of Amy Winehouse.

Andrew Reid thought his wife was qualified when he appointed her, believing her legal work in Australia should count, however it then emerged that the rules state a new coroner must have five years experience practising law in the UK, which Greenaway did not. Once this discovery was made, Greenaway resigned, and Reid was subsequently suspended. The Sun says Reid could now face disciplinary action or even the sack for his mistake.

There’s no reason to suspect any of the inquests overseen by Greenaway while in the coroner role – including that of Winehouse – were handled wrongly, but her rulings could be overturned in the high court because she had been incorrectly appointed. Reid has written to all affected families, and earlier this month it was reported Winehouse’s parents were taking legal advice on the matter.

New anti-piracy laws in Spain have hit a setback after the country’s Supreme Court last week agreed to hear an appeal by the Association Of Web Users who claim the so called Sinde Law is unconstitutional.

Spanish copyright laws have been criticised for over a decade after various courts there ruled that the file-sharing of unlicensed content was not illegal, hindering civil legal action even against those who provide software or web services that enable copyright infringement. Under pressure from other countries, and especially the US, Spanish politicians passed the Sinde Law, to crack down on online piracy.

Unlike in the UK and France, where new anti-piracy laws target those who actually access illegal content sources via three-strikes style systems, in Spain web-blocking was prioritised, making it easier for rights owners to force copyright infringing websites offline. Somewhat ironically, the measures in the Sinde Law, which was lobbied for by the US government, have parallels with the SOPA and PIPA proposals in America itself, which politicians there have now rejected (albeit probably only for the time being).

The Association Of Web Users says that the Sinde Law, which allows a government body to issue orders to internet service providers to block access to copyright infringing websites, is unconstitutional because only a court should be able to force a website offline.

Similar claims were successfully made against the Hadopi laws in France (in that case that only a court should be able to suspend an individual file-sharer’s internet connection), though the government there got around that constitutional challenge by adding a judicial stage to their new anti-piracy system, whereby a judge considers and approves any action orders. Presumably Spanish officials could add a similar extra stage to their web-blocking system if the country’s Supreme Court sides with the AOWU.

The Spanish Supreme Court last week confirmed it will consider the AOWU’s claim, while also issuing an injunction that basically stops the Spanish government from putting the anti-piracy system set out in the Sinde Law live pending their hearing, though ministers can appeal that element at any point before the end of the month.

The Texas Medical Board suspended Conrad Murray’s medical licence on Friday, not that he’s been making much use of it of late, given he is currently in jail having been found guilty last November of causing Michael Jackson’s death. A spokesman for the Board noted Murray’s current incarceration as a reason why the body hadn’t rushed to revoke the doctor’s licence.

Murray, the medic hired to care for Jackson in 2009 in the run up to the planned ‘This Is It’ shows in London, had medical licences in three US states – California, Texas and Nevada. He was allowed to continuing practicing in the latter two even after Jackson’s 2009 death and the subsequent charges of negligence, although Texas banned him from administering anaesthetics (the negligent administration of the drug propofol having caused Jackson’s demise).

California formally revoked Murray’s licence last month and Nevada was reportedly doing the same. The Texas Medical Board confirmed it had now likewise acted last week. As previously reported, Murray is currently planning to appeal both his conviction and sentence.

Oh, Charlotte Church, what a superstar. Of all the celebrities that have been pursuing civil actions against News International over allegations journalists or investigators working for the now defunct News Of The World illegally hacked into their voicemails, only Church’s case looks likely to go to court any time soon, after a barrage of out of court settlements were confirmed this week.

With the criminal investigation into phone hacking moving along at the speed of a number 73 bus on the Euston Road in rush hour, and the government’s Leveson Inquiry on the issue so widely defined it’s likely to achieve nothing, many have been hoping one of the civil actions in relation to the scandal would actually get a full court hearing.

But with News International handing there lawyers a multi-million pound pot of cash to buy off the litigious phone hacked celebrities and members of the public one by one (before the newspaper firm had even got round to admitting phone hacking was rife at its former Sunday tabloid), it seemed increasingly likely that the circumstances around the hacking scandal would never be exposed in the civil courts.

Even those c’lebs who insisted they were suing on a point of principle eventually took News International’s dirty cash. Perhaps believing that the criminal justice and political systems now had the scandal covered, since the whole thing blew up big time last July, and maybe nervous about the private lives they were trying so hard to protect being aired in court, not the mention the legal bills that would be run up in the short term, perhaps it’s understandable that even the more angry celebrities would take the easy way out.

But while a string of outstanding celebrity lawsuits were settled this week, legal reps for Charlotte Church and her parents have so far stood fast, and while that might be hardline negotiating tactics for a bigger pay out, you get the sense the Church family just want to see News International in court.

It’s unclear whether the damages any court hearing will deliver will exceed the sums of money the newspaper firm is paying out voluntarily – as some of those settlements have been in the hundreds of thousands, probably not – but a court hearing will likely further tarnish the reputation of News International and, more importantly, it’s parent company News Corp, the Murdoch family which control it, and all the news organisations within that empire.

Certainly News International’s lawyers, having no out of court settlement with the Church family, tried every argument they could this week to have a court hearing delayed, but judge Geoffrey Vos was having none of it, telling the defendants “we’re ready for trial”. Preliminary hearings should begin later this month.

Church is one of the surprisingly few music types to have been pulled into the phone hacking scandal, and to give evidence to the government’s Leveson Inquiry into press ethics, launched after the long simmering hacking story finally blew up last July, resulting in the dramatic closure of the tabloid at the heart of the scandal.

Church’s motivation to hit back at the tabloid press that first hailed her as a child star, and then relished in dishing the dirt on the Church family as her fame grew, is particularly admirable, her key concerns being a string of stories about her parents’ private lives that had a devastating effect on her mother’s mental health. The singer reckons no less than 33 such stories in the News Of The World were based on illegal newsgathering.

News International now has mere weeks to persuade the Church family to settle before the court proceedings begin. Assuming it does go to court, a story which has only involved the music community on the peripheries so far, will become very much a pop courts affair.

Church isn’t the only phone hacked celebrity still negotiating with News International. A handful of the first batch of phone hacking lawsuits are also yet to be settled, but technical issues mean they aren’t ready for court. Meanwhile a whole load of new lawsuits – 50 in recent weeks, including one from James Blunt – have been filed, as the Metropolitan Police slowly alert other individuals seemingly hacked by the News Of The World. Several hundred more people could as yet file legal proceedings.

The majority of those cases will likely be settled out of court, though the conclusion of the Church case – should it be heard in court – would become highly relevant. While high profile litigants are rumoured to have received pay offs of hundreds of thousands from News International – and it’s likely that’s the sort of sum being offered to Church – the majority of lawsuits are being settled for tens of thousands. But if Church was to get six figures from the courts, that could set a precedent that would potentially multiply the cost of settlements for NI by ten.

As we wait to see if the Church case is the one that finally brings this whole scandal to court, the Leveson Inquiry rumbles on with its all-star list of celebrities, editors and journalists giving evidence. CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke recently gave his take on the Inquiry so far on PR website esPResso at this URL.