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Business News
The ten most-read news stories on the CMU site in December 2013
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 2 January 2014
The Pirate Bay dominated our most-read news stories in December, taking the top three places in the top ten, as well as another further down.
The sudden rush of news reports about the file-sharing website came as it rapidly changed its top level domain name four times in nine days, before ending up using its .org and .se addresses again. These were the domains the Bay had originally ditched amidst fears they’d be blocked, the move that kicked off the cat-and-mouse game of trying to find a URL immune to interference from rights owners and domain registries.
Elsewhere, there was the sentencing of former Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins for sexual offences against children, which saw him receive a total of 29 years in prison, plus another six on licence. Though sadly, with UK police continuing to investigate allegations against Watkins, and police in Germany and the US now investigating possible crimes by the singer in those countries too, it seems unlikely that the sentencing was the conclusion of this story.
In other artist news, highest on the list were unconfirmed reports that Def Leppard might be preparing litigation against One Direction over similarities between the title track of the boyband’s new album, ‘Midnight Memories’, and the Sheffield rockers’ hit ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’. Also, there was the news that Dappy was denying vehemently that he was bankrupt (it turned out to be his former N-Dubz bandmate Fazer who’d run out of cash), and that the US publisher of Morrissey’s autobiography had cut out references to a homosexual relationship in the book.
On the business side of things, HMV’s confirmation that it was ditching gadgets from its stores gained a lot of interest, as did the launch of Spotify Artists, a site set up by the streaming service in an attempt to placate its detractors.
Our most popular feature this month was the full rundown of our top ten Artists Of The Year for 2013, which you can see here. Coming in behind were individual write ups for Perfume, Yasutaka Nakata, Janelle Monáe, and Arctic Monkeys.
The top ten most-read news stories in full:
01: The Pirate Bay relocates domain to Peru
02: The Pirate Bay returns to Swedish domain name
03: The Pirate Bay shifts domain again, this time Guyana
04: HMV confirms move away from gadgets
05: One Direction accused of ripping off Def Leppard
06: Ian Watkins sentenced to 29 years in prison
07: Spotify launches new resource for artists, hopes to shut up Thom Yorke
08: Dappy not bankrupt, has dough now and always will
09: The Pirate Bay shifts domain again
10: US cuts ‘humasexual’ paras out of Morrissey’s autobiography, as Ja Rule denies gay relationship
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