The FCC has waived its 25 percent cap on foreign equity ownership to approve a deal allowing sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to collectively hold up to 49.5 percent of the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. entity. The agency argued the stakes carry no voting rights and therefore no control, but critics including Free Press and Commissioner Anna Gomez dispute that reasoning.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-18
Oracle announced Saturday that executive chairman Larry Ellison has called off a plan to sell 50 million of his shares, worth roughly $7.5 billion, that had been disclosed in an earlier regulatory filing. The company said no shares were sold under the plan and that Ellison has no other plans to sell Oracle stock, without explaining the reversal.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-13
Larry Ellison has scrapped a 10b5-1 trading plan that would have allowed him to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares, worth about $7.5 billion at current prices. The plan, adopted June 22 and set to expire Oct. 24, had been disclosed in a regulatory filing just a day before its cancellation, and no shares were ever sold under it. Oracle says Ellison has no other plans to divest any of his stock.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-12
Sony Music and Warner have filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company scraped and used their song catalogs without permission to train its models. This follows a similar suit from Universal Music Group in January, meaning all three major music publishers are now pursuing legal action against Anthropic.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-11
Suno released v6, a new generation of AI music-creation models built with backing from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. The update delivers faster, higher-quality, more expressive output along with new controls aimed at both professional musicians and first-time creators. Suno also introduced added safeguards to screen uploaded audio and lyrics for unauthorized use and improve transparency around AI involvement.
suno.com
· 2026-09-11
Warner Bros. purchased the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's, written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack and America's subsequent entry into World War II. The studio rushed it into production during summer 1942, casting Humphrey Bogart, previously known for gangster roles, in the lead alongside Ingrid Bergman. The film premiered in New York that November and went on to win three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
thecollector.com
· 2026-09-10
Suno released version 6 of its AI music generator, the first built using licensed content from Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe alongside user-submitted data. The update ships as three variants—v6, v6-wild, and a free lightweight v6-mini—with notable improvements in recognizing and reproducing musical genres accurately.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-09
Suno introduced its new v6 model family, trained entirely on licensed music data from partners including Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, replacing the data used to build earlier versions. The lineup includes a standard v6 model, an experimental 'wild' version, and a faster 'mini' model for free users, with older models set to be phased out. New editing tools let users tweak lyrics, isolate instruments, and use text, images or video as creative references.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-09
Suno released its v6 family of AI music generators—v6, v6-wild, and v6-mini—marking its first collaboration with major record labels during model training. The flagship v6 focuses on polished, consistent output, while v6-wild targets experimental, brainstorming-style generation, and v6-mini is offered free to non-paying users. New features include natural-language editing of song sections, multi-source mashups, precise sampling, and generation from images, video, or described emotions.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-09
Paramount reportedly enlisted a nonprofit called Neighbors for Strong Communities to send Californians mass text messages urging them to pressure state Attorney General Rob Bonta to drop his antitrust suit against the $111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros deal. The messages warned that blocking the merger could cost thousands of jobs, citing owner Larry Ellison's reported threat to relocate Paramount to Texas.
techdirt.com
· 2026-09-08
Loudoun County, Virginia turned to former AOL infrastructure and empty fiber-optic networks left after the dot-com crash to attract data center investment, led by economic development official Buddy Rizer. The strategy shifted the county's tax base from over 80% residential to just over half commercial revenue, transforming it into a hub handling a large share of global internet traffic.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-02
Google is reportedly courting major studios like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Universal, offering large payments—potentially tens of millions per character and billions overall—for rights to train its AI models on their copyrighted content. According to unnamed sources cited by the Los Angeles Times, no studio has yet signed on, but Google is pushing hard to secure these licensing agreements as it races to strengthen its AI capabilities.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-01