Author: Megan Geuss

The copyright dispute between “Blurred Lines” song creators Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, and the family of Marvin Gaye, will continue on to a higher court.

Earlier this year, Gaye’s family said in court that Williams and Thicke stole critical elements from Gaye's 1977 song “Got To Give It Up” for their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines." A jury agreed with Gaye’s family and awarded them $7.4 million, which was later reduced to $5.3 million. Now, Williams and Thicke are looking to appeal (PDF) that decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case was unusual because in a pre-trial hearing, the judge ruled that the applicable 1909 copyright law only covered sheet music, not the song’s actual sound. The judge later reversed his decision, ordering Williams and Thicke’s lawyers to produce an audio recording of “Got To Give It Up” that only included a bass line and keyboard chords underneath some vocals from Gaye. This was the only version of “Got To Give It Up” that the jury was permitted to hear to compare with “Blurred Lines."

One of Yahoo’s best decisions was investing in a large chunk of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba before it went public last year. Alibaba broke records with its initial public offering, and now Yahoo’s 15 percent stake in the company is worth $31 billion, according to the New York Times.

For the past year, CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo’s Board of Directors have been working to make that chunk of their business more valuable for investors, originally planning to spin-off the Alibaba shares into a separate holding company. But according to Nasdaq, in September the US Internal Revenue Service "declined to grant advance approval for the tax-free spin-off” of Alibaba.

This morning, Yahoo’s Board of Directors announced that it would reverse course, instead spinning Yahoo’s core businesses off and leaving the original Yahoo as a holding company for Alibaba shares. Yahoo’s assets and liabilities would form a separate public company, "the stock of which would be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders,” Yahoo wrote in its press release.

According to sources speaking to Variety, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars has been green-lighted for a 10-episode TV adaptation on Spike TV.

Each episode will be an hour long, and J. Michael Straczynski, creator and writer of Babylon 5 and co-creator of Sense8 will serve as Red Mars’ writer, co-executive producer, and showrunner. Vince Gerardis, co-executive producer of Game of Thrones, will also serve as executive producer on Red Mars with Straczynski. Robinson will reportedly be an on-the-set consultant.

The Red Mars project has been on Spike TV’s plate for some time, but the network only just decided to move full-speed ahead with it, according to Variety. The show will go into production this summer and premiere in January 2017.

In the finance world today, everyone is abuzz with the news of a giant buyout—JAB Holding company, which manages the money of one of Germany’s wealthiest families, agreed to buy struggling coffee maker Keurig Green Mountain for $13.9 billion, valuing the company at $92 a share, compared with the $51.70 a share that the company was trading at last Friday afternoon.

When first we heard of Keurig Green Mountain’s Keurig 2.0 coffee maker, news was that the appliance would brew only pods approved by Keurig specifically—no third-party pods allowed.

When the Keruig 2.0 came out, that was exactly the case. The scheme was akin to what we’ve seen from some content distributors in Digital Rights Management (DRM), which makes it harder to, say, move a Kindle book to a non-Kindle tablet. In Keurig’s case, approved pods had special ink markers printed on their lids, and the Keruig 2.0 had a scanner looking for said special marker. If the marker wasn’t there, the Keurig displayed an “Oops!” message and would not continue to brew the coffee.

On Saturday night around 9pm, above the northern California city of Martinez, a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer was flying a helicopter over Highway 4, searching for a stolen car. According to SFGate, speaking to Officer James Andrews, spokesman for the CHP air operations unit, the pilot suddenly saw a red light just in front of the craft’s cabin window.

The pilot veered to the right to avoid a collision with the drone, which was flying at the pilot’s same altitude—between 700 to 800 feet. (Amateur drone operators are generally not permitted to fly higher than 400 feet.) The pilot then circled back, illuminating the drone with a spotlight. The pilot was allegedly able to watch the drone land and gave its coordinates to Martinez police.

According to SFGate, "A Martinez police officer spotted a man carrying a drone into his front yard.” The man’s information was forwarded to the CHP. He was not arrested. According to reporters from CBS San Francisco, the man was an exchange student from China, and he was flying a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone. His name was not released.

Customers of Green Mountain Power (GMP) in Vermont will be the first in the US to have Tesla Powerwall stationary batteries installed in their homes, according to the utility. Tesla’s home battery was announced in late April this year and attracted nearly 38,000 reservations in the first week after it was announced.

GMP says it will receive 500 7kWh Powerwalls in early 2016 with shipments starting in January. It will initially install the daily cycling batteries in the homes of 10 pilot customers, and then the utility will open order and installation to all customers.

Back in September, Tesla said that it would start providing Powerwalls for pilot installations, with power company SunEdison beginning installations in Australia in November. Tesla said 7kWh Powerwalls would be shipped first since those batteries have a chemistry that is made for daily cycling (filling up the battery from solar panels and using that power to run your home at night, for example). The 10kWh Powerwalls will not be shipped until later next year—these larger-capacity batteries will have a chemistry suited for backup use in case of a power failure, rather than daily use. Tesla has been clear that third-party installers will be the intermediary getting Powerwalls to individual consumers. Tesla only directly handles the installation and management of so-called “Powerpacks,” which are built for industrial- and utility-grade customers.

In District Court on Wednesday, Hunter Moore, the notorious operator of a now-deduct revenge porn website called “IsAnybodyUp.com,” was sentenced to 30 months in prison on charges of computer hacking and identity theft.

Moore’s site posted nude and/or embarrassing photos of people without their consent, often along with the subjects’ names and other personal information. The site became known as a “revenge porn” website, as jilted exes submitted photos out of revenge. Earlier this year, Moore also pleaded guilty to paying co-conspirator Charles Evans up to $200 per week to steal nude photos from victims by accessing victims' e-mail accounts through social engineering.

Assistant US Attorney Wendy Wu told Ars in 2014, "Basically, he [Evans] was impersonating these victims' friends and was able to get confidential information that would allow him to access their accounts.”

Dave Chappelle is in the midst of a 13-night run at Thalia Hall in Chicago. The comedian has naturally sold out all shows, and he wants to make sure that only those lucky people with a ticket get to see his best material. To that end, Chappelle has teamed up with San Francisco-based startup Yondr, which makes cloth “socks” for smartphones with a smart lock on them. Cross into the “no phone zone,” and you’ll have to get the sock locked, preventing theater-goers from distracting phone use.

Ars tried Yondr back in October 2014 with mixed results. Some people loved the “olden times” feel of being free of their phones, others resented being told that they can’t take photos and send them to friends as bragging rights. Yondr’s sock design doesn’t seem to have changed much since then. Although the Hollywood Reporter implies that a wireless perimeter locks and unlocks Yondr’s phone pouches, The Chicago Tribune noted that theater-goers had to go through a “check-in process” to get their phones locked, similar to the manual process that Ars experienced a year ago. Yondr did not respond to Ars’ request for clarification.

Reportedly, Chappelle’s impetus for partnering with Yondr is primarily to keep his live material off the Internet. He’s following in the footsteps of comedian Hannibal Buress, who partnered with Yondr for a show in Napa, California after an audience member took a video of Buress talking about Bill Cosby’s sexual assault allegations, creating a social media storm that Buress didn’t exactly care to be a part of.

Outside of a San Fernando Valley neighborhood northwest of Los Angeles, Southern California Gas Company sprung a leak in one of its natural gas wells on October 23.

Just last night at a Los Angeles City Council meeting, the CEO of the private utility said that it could be three to four months before SoCal Gas can plug the underground leak, which has sent tens of thousands of kilograms of methane per hour seeping up into the air.

According to Reuters, SoCal Gas is one of the biggest gas utilities in the country. Its natural gas storage field at Aliso Canyon is the second biggest storage area in the country after a location in Montana.

Uber is partnering with Enterprise to rent cars to potential Uber drivers for $210 a week in a pilot program that’s launching this week in Denver, Colorado.

The ride-share service is targeting potential drivers who either don’t have a car or whose car can’t be used under Uber’s standards—drivers’ cars must be in good condition and under 15 years old.

Uber already has a car leasing program that it runs in partnership with Xchange Leasing in a dozen major markets around the country. But the Enterprise partnership seems to be targeting a more flexible, short-term kind of driver, someone who might only want to drive for Uber for a month rather than six months. The rental, however, can be extended as long as the driver wants (and as long as the driver is in good standing with Uber and Enterprise).