When a couple of Bank of America employees sing passionately about their bank merger to the tune of U2’s “One,” people watch and listen. While most of us who saw the video found it embarrassingly funny, the lawyers at Universal Music Group thought it’s leaking to the public was a copyright violation, even if it was meant only for internal purposes. So instead of going after the Bank of America employees, UMG went after Stereogum.com, a site that posted the video. The BofA employees’ rendition of the U2 song has become such a hit that comedians David Cross and Johnny Marr have been performing covers. Here and here.
Many customers of the in-car navigation and location service, OnStar, may hear silence very soon. Due to a 2002 FCC ruling, transmission of analog signals to the OnStar system will be turned off by January 2008. GM, the owners of OnStar, were well aware of this ruling back in 2002 yet still created many more analog systems until 2004. If you want to use it after 2008, you’ll have to go digital and OnStar has information on its site on how to do that.
