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Nine years later, round two in court for the purveyor of concert recordings and footage. The NMPA has filed a suit on behalf of 26 music publishing companies against Wolfgang's Vault, an online marketplace which sells live concerts, CDs and vinyl. Peermusic, ABKCO Music, Imagem and Screen Gems are among the publishers supporting the lawsuit, which was filed today in U.S District Court in New York. The complaint alleges that Wolfgang's Vault has infringed on the companies' recording copyrights, through streaming, downloads, and physical sales. The complaint maintains that the sources from which the company acquired its recordings archive, including...

The concert business is supposed to be the music industry's one sure thing. But not this summer. The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates. A wobbling "American Idol" tour has flooded the market with discounted tickets, and the resurrected Lilith Fair tour has called off concerts from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week that they're scrapping some shows. * * * With the continued evaporation of recorded music sales, acts at all levels of the talent pool must lean heavily on their live-performance earnings. That's forcing artists to tour more,...

President Obama has told Franklin Graham, son of 91-year-old evangelist, Billy Graham, that he will "look into" the situation of the U.S. Army rescinding its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham for the upcoming National Day of Prayer at the Pentagon. "Franklin Graham said he and the president spoke briefly about the matter. He says he told President Obama activists with an agenda were trying to pull all religion out of the military. Graham said, 'I wanted to make him aware of that. He said he would look into it.'"

THE world’s largest independent rock and pop music archive, featuring stars from Jimi Hendrix to Elvis Costello and from Janis Joplin to Madonna, is to be opened for the first time. Up to 100,000 songs recorded and filmed between 1966 and 1991 by Bill Graham, the American concert promoter, languished in an underground basement in San Francisco for more than 10 years after his death. Then it was bought by Bill Sagan, a health company executive turned rock entrepreneur, who has now launched negotiations aimed at securing the stars’ permission to release their music. This weekend he was flying to...

SAN FRANCISCO--In 1970, 20-year-old student Bill Sagan had his first real brush with rock and roll history at an early Led Zeppelin concert at Chicago's fabled Aragon Ballroom. Now the entrepreneur owns one of rock's biggest treasure troves of recorded shows by Zeppelin and other history-making bands, and he's beginning to share it freely online. Since 2002, Sagan has owned the full archives of legendary promoter Bill Graham, whose concerts featuring performers such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and others helped define the late 1960s and early '70s. Late last week, Sagan began putting excerpts from...

The question that haunts the federal inquiry into Maher Arar's torture nightmare in Syria is whether Canada was behind it all. Did Canadian officials make it known to the United States that everyone would be better off if Mr. Arar, a citizen of Canada, were dispatched to his Syrian birthplace rather than sent back home to Ottawa? Paul Cellucci, then the U.S. ambassador to Canada, was unequivocal in a letter he wrote to this newspaper, published last Canada Day, correcting what he said was an error in an editorial. "I have never said or implied that 'Canadian security officials gave...

OTTAWA - Canada should work with the United States in the controversial missile defence program for political reasons, not just security concerns, Defence Minister Bill Graham says. "We are talking about the nature of the relationship we want with the United States and that's why I'm a strong proponent," Graham said in an interview. "My view is, on continental defence matters, we should be really accommodating of the Americans and work with them as closely as we possibly can." Both Canadian and U.S. officials have argued the defence shield, costing an estimated $53 billion (U.S.), is needed to protect North...

The story is straightforward: Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photographer of Iranian origin, went home to Iran, took pictures, got arrested, and was beaten to death. So why all the fuss? Iranians get beaten to death every day, and the victims of the regime have included not only talented female photographers, but many of Iran's most gifted writers and artists and thinkers. It is a mere accident that Ms. Kazemi had a Canadian passport, and they had not. Can such a document mean anything? I wish it did, but it doesn't. As long-time Canadian travellers know, if you get into trouble...

TORONTO, Nov 3 (AFP) - Canada's foreign minister said Sunday that he disapproves of a regime change in Iraq, but stressed that getting UN arms inspectors into Iraq and having Baghdad conform to strict UN inspection rules would lead to dynamic change there. Foreign Minister Bill Graham, responding to a question on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's World View program, said: "No, I don't support regime change. "But I do believe that, in fact, if inspectors get in and (Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein is obliged to conform to them, there'll be a form of a change in regime in Iraq...

Foreign minister shies away from explicitly backing military action By John Ward, Canadian Press OTTAWA — Canada supports the U.S. position that action should follow if Saddam Hussein tries to hamper United Nations weapons inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham says. "We can certainly endorse the United States position that there has to be clear consequences for a failure to act," he said following a cabinet meeting today. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said he wants to see a no-nonsense resolution in the UN Security Council on ferreting out Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "We...