The Gossip Rag: Celebrity life, photos, gossip, and news

Being constantly sued for profiting from photos he has no rights to, Perez Hilton’s site was briefly shut down because his host received complaints about the hosting of copyright images. We don’t agree that what almost all gossip blogs do (which is steal photos) falls under the fair use exception, especially on breaking news, but it’s nice that Perez is standing up for his rights, and the rights of all gossip bloggers.

Perezhilton.com stands by its commitment to protect the freedom of people to transform content on the internet for the purpose of commentary and satire and unquestionably believes that it comports with the fair use exception.

Translation: Perezhilton stands by its commitment to mash up internet content to produce more REVENUE!

I just got the following email from Apple, telling me the 411 on 50’s new album:

Thank you for pre-ordering 50 Cent’s new album “Curtis.” The release of this album, which was originally scheduled for June 26th, has been postponed until later this year. We will notify you via email as soon as the opportunity to pre-order this album is available again.

The new release date is September 4, 2007. The album tracklist so far includes:

• All of Me (featuring Mary J. Blige)
• Amusement Park
• Come & Go (featuring Eminem)
• Fire (featuring Nicole Scherzinger & Young Buck)
• Follow My Lead (featuring Robin Thicke)
• Fully Loaded Clip
• I Get Money
• I’ll Still Kill (featuring Akon)
• Peep Show (featuring Eminem)
• She Want It (featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland)
• Straight to the Bank
• Touch the Sky (featuring Tony Yayo)

This looks a lot better than the recent lame releases from Fabolous (sic), R. Kelly (just ewww), or yesterday’s Mims. 50 doesn’t need to tell us about the diamonds on his damn chain.

So, this lil’ photo of Hayden Panettiere kissing Jack Coleman, the actor who plays her father on TV show Heroes, has me confused. I’m going to chalk it up to strange and affectionate French customs, otherwise a lot of young boys will be crying:

Super-creepy. EEEEEK!

Our favorite imprisoned celebrity Paris Hilton has managed a $1 million deal to get an exclusive interview with NBC. According to the NY POST:

LOS ANGELES – NBC has agreed to pay as much as $1 million for Paris Hilton’s first after-jail interview, which will appear on the “Today” show, The Post has learned. Sources told The Post the sit-down will be conducted by Meredith Vieira the day after the heir-head is sprung some time next week. ABC was the front-runner until NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker personally called Hilton’s father Rick and made the pitch, the sources said. Hilton agreed to the interview, but said she’d only speak with Vieira because of “disparaging” remarks her co-host Matt Lauer made about her.

I mentioned earlier how she can turn any situation into an advantage for herself, making her 40 days in jail worth 500 keys of China white, or 2,000 brand-new iPhones.

I’m being paid to let you guys know there’s a new gossip blog in town. They’ve secured the lucrative and expensive domain CelebrityGossip.com, a Wordpress-powered aggregator site, and pretty pink Google advertisements:

Except for their advertisement at the top, though, the site is quite cleanly layed out and designed. Every story gets a legal, licensed photo to accompany it (take that Perez), a list of “related chatter” ala techmeme (but so much better!), and a community story rating. Currently their hottest item appears to be slow down baby, a new song by Christina Aguilera.

Major criticism? The related chatter is too verbose; it can’t roll up the conversation into small groups, it just displays a massive (a page or two) of links:

Still, they’re clearly trying to innovate, which many other gossip blogs (this one included), do not have a chance to do. Good luck making a name for yourself, Celebrity Gossip!!