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PORTLAND, Ore. - A woman who claims the recording industry’s anti-music piracy campaign threatens and intimidates innocent people has filed a new complaint accusing record companies of racketeering, fraud and illegal spying.

Tanya Andersen originally sued the Recording Industry Association of America after RIAA representatives threatened to interrogate her young daughter if she didn’t pay thousands of dollars for music she downloaded from somebody else.

Her amended complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Portland seeks national class-action status for other people allegedly victimized by the industry’s anti-piracy campaign and the company it hired, MediaSentry.

The new lawsuit claims accuses the industry and MediaSentry of spying “by unlicensed, unregistered and uncertified private investigators” who “have illegally entered the hard drives of tens of thousands of private American citizens” in violation of laws “in virtually every state in the country.”

The information was used to file “sham” lawsuits intended only as intimidation to further the anti-piracy campaign, the lawsuit said.

Lory Lybeck, the attorney for the Beaverton woman, said the lawsuit is partly aimed at forcing the industry to reveal how extensive the spying had become.

“We’re very pleased that we’ll finally be able to force the RIAA and MediaSentry to give up secret records they have steadfastly refused to disclose in tens of thousands of cases that they’ve filed,” Lybeck said.

Jonathan Lamy, an industry spokesman, said the new complaint repeats old claims.

“It is unfortunate that this case continues to drag on after the court previously deemed all of Ms. Andersen’s claims inadequate,” Lamy said. “We hope to resolve the case in short order.”

The complaint notes the case began when Andersen, a single mother, was sitting down for dinner with her then 8-year-old daughter at their home in August 2005 and a legal process server knocked on her door with notice of an RIAA lawsuit falsely alleging copyright infringement and demanding penalties.

The lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Ashmanskas and Andersen countersued.

Her complaint is similar to one filed in federal court against the industry by Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers on behalf of the University of Oregon to protect the privacy of university students the RIAA has accused of music piracy.

Stephanie Soden, spokeswoman for Myers, said Friday that the state is monitoring the Andersen lawsuit.

“We’re definitely watching it closely,” she said.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - With its popular Take-Away Shows — on-the-spot live music videos — French music Web site La Blogotheque is becoming an important point of exposure for emerging North American indie bands.

Each shot in one take in an offbeat location, the videos have drawn more than 6 million views on blogotheque.net, YouTube and band Web sites.

The brand has recently expanded to include sites dedicated to local scenes in specific markets, such as One Take New York and One Shot Seattle, giving regional bands exposure on the international indie market. La Blogotheque's English and French versions average 7,000 hits per day.

“La Blogotheque has become as relevant as a radio station like (noncommercial) KEXP (Seattle) or a magazine like Mojo,” Ed Horrox, head of A&R at label 4AD, says.

Helmed by Parisian producers Chryde (aka Christophe Abric) and Vincent Moon (aka Mathieu Saura), Take-Away Shows began in 2006 and quickly evolved to include dozens of artful videos.

Popular clips include Arcade Fire in an elevator in Paris, Vampire Weekend in a tour van in England and various street performances by Beirut, which commissioned La Blogotheque to shoot a live video for every song on its 2007 album, “The Flying Club Cup,” a series that is now available for viewing and for purchase on DVD through La Blogotheque's site and flyingclubcup.com.

“Here's something an artist can do in an afternoon,” says Ben Goldberg, head of Beirut's label Ba Da Bing. “There are no overdubs or trickery, so it benefits any artist who plays well live.”

Profits are to be split 50/50 between La Blogotheque and acts, but La Blogotheque has yet to turn a profit. Most of the videos are distributed free, but Moon and Chryde are looking into licensing content to French labels and are also in talks with Chunnel rail line Eurostar about providing video programming for passengers. The pair pay for the low-budget productions themselves, they say, with outside gigs producing Web videos and blogs; Moon directs traditional music videos for such acts as R.E.M.

“We're being careful about what kind of deals we make because we want to retain editorial control,” Chryde says. “We don't want to damage this trust we have with the artists.”

Reuters/Billboard

San Francisco - Adoption of hosted applications among large companies jumped last year, but many CIOs and IT managers will not consider these SaaS (software-as-a-service) products due to concerns about security, cost, and integration, according to a Forrester Research study.

In a 2007 survey of just over 1,000 IT decision makers, 16 percent said their companies were either already using or piloting SaaS products, a 33 percent increase from 2006.

Those who said they were either interested in or planning to pilot hosted applications remained the same at 46 percent, while those who aren't interested dropped from 41 percent to 37 percent, Forrester said in the report, issued Wednesday.

Respondents who are favorable to SaaS products cite shorter implementation, lower up-front costs, and pay-as-you-go pricing as reasons, wrote analyst Liz Herbert, the report's author.

Interest in SaaS isn't consistent across application categories. Popular applications include those for human resources, collaboration, and customer relationship management. SaaS is less used for enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, and Web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, and RSS.

Respondents who aren't considering SaaS products cited limitations in the ability for hosted applications to be integrated with software they have installed in-house and to be customized. These IT executives also believe that hosted applications that are leased and paid for under a subscription model cost more in the long run than software that is bought and installed on the company's servers. They also mentioned a variety of security concerns, including fear about having the software and data hosted in a third party's data center and concerns about application performance and availability.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California resident Nancy Fiddler has put for sale on eBay a mastodon skeleton that takes up most of her garage. The minimum bid — $115,000.

Her family's relationship with the Ice Age relative of the elephant has run its course.

Fiddler said they need the money an online auction could bring, and her son would prefer to build hot rod cars in the space the creature now occupies.

The Fiddlers also would like to use their sauna, which in the last four years has served as an additional repository for the huge plastic casts containing the animal's bones.

“We needed a safe, dry place,” Fiddler said, explaining why they chose to sacrifice the sauna. “The mastodon takes precedence.”

Mastodons, which stood 10 feet tall with trunks and tusks, migrated to North America about 15 million years ago and ranged all over the continent with saber tooth tigers, giant sloths and American camels. All met their extinction about 10,000 years ago.

A ranch hand discovered a mastodon tooth on the Fiddler ranch in northeastern California in 1997. Excavation revealed a rare, nearly complete mastodon skeleton that included everything but the tusks.

“It's a beautiful specimen,” said paleontological consultant Bruce Hanson, who helped move the skeleton to the Oakland Museum of Natural History, where it was on display for several years.

After the museum made a replica, the Fiddlers moved the mastodon to the tasting room of a California wine bar. Then it found its way to their garage.

One paleontologist said he was skeptical that the Fiddlers would get as much as they want for the mastodon.

“What is it going to do? Sit on someone's mantle?” said Mark Goodwin of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. “I would prefer to see it donated to a museum. This is our fossil heritage.”

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

AUSTIN, Texas - Katy Perry might have gotten dumped by her boyfriend, but the guy is probably having a more difficult time dealing with the aftermath of the breakup since her song about him became the buzz of the Internet.

“Ur So Gay,” in which she pokes fun at her skinny-jean-wearing, guyliner-sporting emo ex, has gotten the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter plenty of attention since it was released last fall. The caustic song contains plenty of zingers, with the refrain, “Ur so gay, and you don’t even like boys.”

“‘Ur So Gay’ was mainly written for a couple of different reasons — mainly because I got dumped, and it was a nice outlet, a way to be like, `OK, you wanna play?’” Perry told The Associated Press after one of her performances at the South by Southwest music festival Friday.

“It also takes a shot at the whole indie scene: The guys who are using the eyeliner, the straight irons, and my ex-boyfriends who would borrow my jeans and never give them back!”

And though it could come across as a politically incorrect taunt, Perry says most everyone understands the humor behind it.

“The reaction is always somewhat positive, and everybody gets the joke,” Perry said, laughing. “Everyone knows what it’s about and all my gay friends know what it’s about too.”

Though she’s garnering plenty of attention these days with her “Ur So Gay” EP, Perry has been working toward her music career about five years, and was signed to two major labels before landing at Capitol Records, which plans to release her CD in June.

“I’ve been in these situations before, with a major label … at each time we’d gear up to do something and it would never happen,” said Perry.

Still, she didn’t let those disappointments dissuade her: “Every door that shut, a bigger door opened and it was always a reason.”

Perry, a Santa Barbara native who moved to Los Angeles seven years ago, has also been a face on the city’s party scene, but she says she’s no longer interested in hitting the bars and staying on the social circuit.

“Now it’s time to take it to the next level,” she said. “I can’t be hungover anymore, I have to be focused. There are too many girls who are (messing) up and they are creating a nice little pathway for those people who really want to own it like myself.”

___

On the Net:

http://www.katyperry.com

AT&T has become the latest wireless carrier to offer enterprise customers the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 from Research In Motion. The svelte sapphire-blue smartphone, which features a built-in Wi-Fi radio, will give subscribers the broadest domestic and international wireless data coverage of any U.S. carrier, AT&T said.

“The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 combines AT&T's leading domestic and international coverage footprint with its position as the world's leading provider of BlackBerry services to create a compelling global solution for business customers,” said AT&T Vice President Michael Woodward.

A Triple Play

Measuring just 4.2×2.4×0.5 inches and tipping the scales at 3.2 ounces, AT&T's Blackberry Pearl is equipped with a 240×260-pixel 65K-color display, a two-megapixel camera/camcorder, a multimedia player, and a microSD/SDHC memory card slot. The Pearl also makes a triple play with EDGE and Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) radios and a Bluetooth 2.0 chipset for wirelessly connecting to compatible stereo headsets, car kits, and other accessories.

The smartphone offers RIM's popular BlackBerry e-mail and messaging capabilities along with the company's SureType word-completion software, a built-in spell checker and a user-customized dictionary. The Pearl also offers support for AT&T's Mobile Music subscription and unlimited Push to Talk services. In addition, the Pearl can deliver simultaneous access to both data and voice calls whenever the user is connected to a public hot spot, corporate wireless network or home Wi-Fi network.

RIM's Pearl, which is available to AT&T's business customers for as low as $199, also keeps overseas travelers connected to e-mail, Internet access and other mobile applications through data services in more than 145 countries, AT&T said. It added that Pearl users will be able to make or receive voice calls in more than 200 nations.

Full Steam Ahead

The Pearl's adoption by carriers in more than 20 countries since March 2007 is a strong indication that the popularity of RIM's smartphone lineup continues. Last month, the handsetmaker told investors that net subscriber accounts in the fourth quarter would be 15 to 20 percent higher than the 1.82 million it predicted in December.

“BlackBerry smartphones proved to be a big hit throughout the holiday selling season and we're pleased to see RIM's business momentum continuing in the new year,” said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

More recently, Handango.com announced that content for RIM's Blackberry Pearl was among the top downloads at its Web site last year, both in terms of revenue and the number of units sold. The mobile-content provider also noted that Blackberry applications achieved 135 percent growth in 2007, when more than 11,000 new offerings were added to its online product lineup.

And the Blackberry's software hits just keep on coming. Oracle has taken the wraps off its new Mobile Sales Assistant — a mobile CRM access and productivity application for RIM's BlackBerry.

“Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant takes a new, consumable approach to delivering CRM on mobile devices with a user interface that works the way sales teams work,” said Oracle Senior Vice President Anthony Lye.

The new CRM offering is compatible with RIM's BlackBerry OS 4.2 software and multiple models from RIM's 8300, 8700, and 8800 handset offerings, Oracle said.

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. met with Yahoo Inc. to discuss the software maker’s unsolicited takeover bid earlier this week, a breakthrough that could be the first step toward a friendly deal between the two rivals.

The meeting occurred Monday near Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters, according to a person familiar with the situation. The person spoke Friday on the condition of not being identified because the preliminary talks haven’t been formally disclosed.

No investments bankers attended Monday’s meeting, nor was there any discussion about whether Microsoft is willing to raise its offer, initially valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share. Yahoo’s board already has rejected that bid, arguing the company’s Internet franchise is worth more.

Although it’s unclear whether Microsoft Chief ExecutiveSteve Ballmer and his Yahoo counterpart, Jerry Yang, attended Monday’s meeting, senior management from both companies were on hand.

The gathering, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, gave Microsoft its first chance to sell Yahoo on the rationale for the proposed marriage since the software maker unveiled its plans six weeks ago.

Since then, Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft. The alternatives have included possible alliances with Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc., News Corp.’s MySpace.com and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL.

Microsoft has held firm with its bid and warned it’s prepared to pursue a hostile takeover if Yahoo continues to resist.

Most industry analysts believe neither side wants to engage in an acrimonious battle and expect Microsoft to resolve the impasse with a slightly higher bid.

Investors aren’t so sure the stakes will be raised. Yahoo shares fell 79 cents to $26.71 Friday while Microsoft shares shed 66 cents to $27.96. At that price, Microsoft’s offer — made partly in Microsoft stock — is worth about $40 billion.

The saga could still take several weeks to play out and may not be resolved until Yahoo releases its first-quarter earnings April 22. With Yahoo mired in a two-year slump, the first-quarter results could sway Microsoft’s next move.

The waiting game works in Google’s favor by distracting two of its biggest rivals while it strives to extend its dominance of the Internet’s lucrative search and advertising market. Google added another layer of muscle this week by completing its $3.24 billion acquisition of online ad service, DoubleClick Inc.

Microsoft believes a combination with Yahoo will pose a more serious threat to Google.

By finally meeting with Microsoft executives, Yahoo could be laying the groundwork for more serious negotiations. Or Yahoo’s board could just be touching base with Microsoft to show shareholders that it heard out its suitor before working out an alternative deal.

Yahoo’s other options have been considered a long shot by most analysts and now there are signs that at least two of its potential partners aren’t interested in getting together.

Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp., downplayed his interest in a Yahoo deal at a conference this week. And AOL’s plan to buy online social network Bebo for $850 million in a deal announced Thursday may make a combination of AOL with Yahoo more complicated.

Google has offered to work with Yahoo, but analysts say antitrust regulations will make it difficult, if not impossible, for those two companies to become business partners.

Yahoo still doesn’t appear to be any rush to resolve the saga, based on how it’s handling a key deadline for nominating candidates to supplant its current board. Microsoft has threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo’s 10 directors if it can’t broker an amicable takeover.

Last week, Yahoo postponed the deadline from Friday to 10 days after the date Yahoo announces its annual meeting.

Yahoo has no plans to disclose the meeting date before April and may not do so until its first-quarter earnings come out, according to a person close to the company. The person wasn’t authorized to be identified publicly.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc. has pegged the final acquisition price of online ad service DoubleClick Inc. at $3.24 billion, slightly above the value when Internet search leader announced the deal 11 months ago.

Mountain View-based Google provided the closing price in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Google took control of New York-based DoubleClick earlier this week after European antitrust regulators concluded the acquisition wouldn’t stifle competition in the rapidly growing online ad market.

Google originally said it would pay $3.1 billion in cash for DoubleClick, which helps place and track display advertising on the Internet.

San Francisco - 1. Eliot Spitzer: High-tech felt his impact and Oliver North ridicules Spitzer, calls on IT to hire war vets: It might not have seemed at first that the saga of almost-former New YorkGovernor Eliot Spitzer had any connection to IT, but when he was attorney general of that state, he targeted the high-tech and networking industries in various investigations, including participating in the RAM price-fixing probe. His alleged penchant for hooking up with high-priced “escorts” from the Emperors Club VIP service, which investigators say was a prostitution ring, was uncovered using an electronic financial transaction system. Suspicious transactions triggered an automatic report to the Internal Revenue Service.

All of this came to light on Monday, leading to Spitzer announcing his resignation on Wednesday. He leaves office Monday. The day before Spitzer resigned, Oliver North, who knows a thing or two about the hot seat, used part of his keynote speech at the Infosec World Conference to mock Spitzer. The disgraced governor “apparently forgot everything he knows about information security,” said North, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel still best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal.

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