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A lawsuit claiming Mariah Carey’s inescapable holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” infringed on a prior song is unfounded and should be dismissed, the star’s lawyer argued Thursday in a California courtroom.

The federal judge overseeing the case said she was “inclined” to side with the Queen of Christmas. The judge also said she was “seriously considering” granting Carey’s related motion for sanctions against plaintiffs Andy Stone and Troy Powers over an alleged “frivolous” filing. Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani...

Netflix has been a big component of the streaming business and has existed even before the streaming era with its DVD rental service back in the day. The competition in the streaming era is high and Netflix is among one of the most accessed and popular platforms on the planet. However, the reputation of the brand is now hit pretty badly by a damning lawsuit.

Netflix is currently accused of allegedly invading the privacy of Facebook users

Documents that were unsealed recently have now revealed sinister activity between Netflix and Facebook. They revealed that the two companies signed a deal that allegedly allowed Netflix to have access to Facebook users’ direct messages, which goes against the company’s policy regarding privacy.

New Court Docs Reveal Horrifying Reality About Netflix’s $100M Deal With Facebook

Meta/ Facebook is denying the accusations of breach of privacy through their deal with Netflix

Netflix...

San Francisco, July 7 (Ians) Alarmed at Instagram Threads’ steep rise, Elon Musk-run Twitter has threatened to sue Meta for allegedly using its trade secrets and poaching its former employees to build the new “copycat” platform that saw over 30 million users in just 24 hours.

Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”, reports Semafor.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote in a letter.

“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta,” the Twitter lawyer added.

A lawyer representing Elon Musk’s X Corp., which owns Twitter, has sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, accusing his company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, of “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in the creation of its new Threads app. The app, which launched Wednesday, is “Instagram’s text-based conversation app”; its Apple App Store description shows images that encourage users to “connect over conversation” and “share your point of view.”

In the letter, first reported on by Semafor, attorney...

San Francisco, Nov 23 (Ians) Meta (formerly Facebook) has denied reports that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is resigning next year amid slow growth and massive layoffs at the social network.

The Leak portal first reported, citing its source privy to plans at Meta, that “Zuckerberg is set to resign next year”.

The report claimed that Zuckerberg has decided to step down himself and it will not “affect metaverse”, his multi-billion dollar project.

Andy Stone, Meta’s Communications Director, refuted the report late on Tuesday, tweeting that “This is false”.

Despite serious concerns raised by investors and industry experts, Zuckerberg is determined to aggressively push his Metaverse dream.

Earlier this month, in one of the worst lay-offs ever in the tech industry, Zuckerberg sacked more than 11,000 employees — about 13 per cent of the global workforce — and extended hiring freeze through Q1 2023.

The company posted another quarterly revenue decline as investors begin...

Mariah Carey is facing a 20 million lawsuit over her holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” as another songwriter who also released a track with that title has sued the singer for copyright infringement.

In the lawsuit filed Friday in a New Orleans federal court, Andy Stone — who wrote, recorded and released a different song titled “All I Want for Christmas Is You” under the name Vince Vance and the Valiants in 1989, five years before Carey’s hit — claims that Carey and her co-writer Walter Afanasieff created a...

One of the most popular holiday songs of all time is being legally challenged by a country music songwriter who claims copyright infringement over “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

Mariah Carey and co-writer Walter Afansieff are named in the lawsuit by songwriter Andy Stone, who claims his “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Vince Vance & the Valiants from 1989 is being infringed. Stone filed his papers in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

While the songs have the same title, there is only a hint of Carey’s melody or lyrics beyond the title call-out.

Carey’s version of the song came out in 1994 and has become a holiday staple on radio, streaming, and the NBA’s annual slate of games on Christmas Day.

Stone claims his song received extensive airplay during the 1993 holiday season. He is asking for 20 million in damages.

The Uvalde gunman reportedly shared three messages on Facebook before shooting his grandmother in the face and then killing 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference Wednesday, May 25.

Abbott said the messages were, at this time, the “only information that was known in advance” about the shooting. Approximately 30 minutes before Salvador Ramos reached Robb Elementary, according to Abbott, he shared a message that effectively read, “I’m going to shoot my grandmother.” The second message stated, “I shot my grandmother.” And the third message,...

San Francisco, Jan 12 (Ians) Facebook, Google and Microsoft have announced that they were freezing political contributions from their political action committees (Pac) in the wake of the January 6 riot in the US Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters.

"Following last week's awful violence in D.C., we are pausing all of our Pac contributions for at least the current quarter, while we review our policies," Xinhua news agency quoted Facebook spokesman Andy Stone as saying in a statement on Monday.

Alphabet Inc's Google said it would pause contributions from its Pac.

"We have frozen all NetPAC political contributions while we review and reassess its policies following last week's deeply troubling events," a Google spokesperson said.

Microsoft said the company is halting its political spending until after it assesses the implications of last week's events.

"The Pac regularly pauses its donations in the first quarter of a new Congress, but it...

Update: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that their explanation for why they blocked access to the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story was “not great.”

“And blocking URL sharing via tweet or Dm with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable,” Dorsey wrote on Twitter, amid the furor over steps that the platform took as questions were raised about the veracity of the claims in the piece.

Twitter clarified that the Post article included images that contained “personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.” It also said that it violated their hacked materials policy, which “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization. We don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.”

The Trump campaign said that Twitter also locked the personal account of Kayleigh McEnany,...

Frank Cullotta, a member of Chicago’s mob the Outfit, died of a variety of ailments including Covid-19 at a Las Vegas hospital, on Thursday, Aug. 20, according to Deadline. He was 81.

Chicago gangster Anthony “Ant” Spilotro brought Cullotta to Las Vegas in 1978 to oversee the legendary robbery crew called the “Hole in the Wall Gang.” Known for bypassing alarm systems by drilling or precision explosives, the crew burglarized between 250 and 300 homes in Las Vegas by 1981. The crew was caught on July 4, 1981, after a botched robbery at Bertha’s home furnishings store on East Sahara Avenue.

After being told there was a contract on his life, Cullotta cooperated with the FBI and Las Vegas police against Spilotro, who was killed along with his brother Michael in 1986. Cullotta served as a technical consultant on Martin Scorsese’s 1995 gangster epic Casino. He was played by veteran actor Frank Vincent as Frank Marino, and...

Frank Cullotta, a veteran mobster who later became a Las Vegas attraction for his in-depth knowledge of organized crime’s history in Sin City, has died. He was 81 and passed from complications caused by Covid-19.

Cullotta was the right-hand man to Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro, portrayed by Joe Pesci in the film Casino. Another of their childhood friends, Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, was the inspiration for Robert De Niro’s Ace Rothstein in the film.

Cullotta arrived in Las Vegas from his Chicago hometown in the 1970s and formed a burglary group known as the Hole in the Wall gang. The name derived for their propensity to bust through buildings to avoid door and window alarms. Cullotta ran the operation and paid cuts to Spilotro, and also performed other tasks, including murders, at his childhood friend’s request.

However, an unsuccessful burglary saw Cullotta arrested. He soon feared that Spilotro was targeting him for a hit,...

Civil rights activists called a Tuesday meeting with Facebook a wash and said they’re unconvinced the social media giant is doing enough to combat hate speech.

“Today we saw little and heard just about nothing,” said Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt during a press conference after a coalition of groups including the Adl, the NAACP, Free Press and Color of Change met virtually with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg COO Sheryl Sandberg and others on the policy team.

The organizations, under the tag #StopHateForProfit, had called on businesses to “hit pause on hate” and pull advertising from Facebook. Hundreds, from Verizon to Coca Cola, Unilever and the North Face, agreed. Facebook executives do not want to appear to be bowing to financial pressure.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez said that #StopHateForProfit “didn’t hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action.”

Facebook’s head...

Twitter and Facebook took down a doctored video posted by President Donald Trump that showed the interaction of two toddlers, one black and one white, after receiving notices that the footage was a copyright violation.

“We received a copyright complaint from the rights holder of this video under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have removed the post,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone.

The video also disappeared from Trump’s Twitter feed, with a notice that “this media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

On Thursday, Twitter labeled the video “manipulated media.” It was edited footage of a video that went viral last year of the two toddlers hugging.

CNN covered the video last year, featuring the two toddlers giving each other hugs. One of the boy’s dads, Michael Cisneros, was quoted as saying, “If it can change someone’s mind, you know,...

Facebook said that is has removed an ad from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that featured an upside down red triangle, a symbol that was once used by Nazis to identify political prisoners.

“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

The ad appeared on the platform and in a post on the Team Trump page, with the message, “Dangerous Mobs of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are destroying our cities and rioting — it’s absolute madness.”

In the Trump campaign posts, the markings were used to attack Antifa, the anti-fascist groups that have been a frequent target of those on the right on claims of stoking unrest.