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The case is the latest in series of copyright lawsuits in which photographers have accused artists like Shepard Fairey and Mr. Brainwash of appropriating their photos without permission. The most famous of these involved Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster which was based on an AP photograph.

As can be seen in pictures in the court filing below, Mr. Brainwash drew on photos of the late James Marshall to create images like this one of Coltrane:

The suit says Mr. Brainwash, whose real name is Thierry Guetta, sold the images as merchandise. It also says Google wrongfully used the images as backdrops at its Google Music launch party which took place at Guetta’s studio in Los Angeles. (Here is Mashable’s account of the hype and here are an LA radio station’s pictures of the event).

Guetta lost a similar lawsuit last summer over his recreation of a famous Run DMC photo.

The artistic provenance of Guetta himself is in question, and has given rise to a hipper-than-thou debate about whether he is the alter-ego of famed street artist Banksy. Both characters were the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop.

As for Google, its music service which was launched as a rival to iTunes, has reportedly struggled to get traction. The company has since folded Google Music into its multi-media site Google Play.

The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction forbidding the use of the images. Previous such lawsuits have turned on whether the new images are transformative enough to count as fair use in copyright law.

You can see more of the pictures in question here in the lawsuit:

Mr. Brainwash Lawsuit

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It’s really just a straight name change: there are no new partners, products, services or other major changes to announce as far as Google’s relationships with app companies and content companies, said Chris Yerga, director of engineering for Android. But at some time over the next several weeks, Android users around the world will be prompted to replace the familiar “Market” icon on their devices with the “Play Store” icon as the primary vehicle for getting apps onto their devices. Web users of the Android Market will be redirected to play.google.com, where they will see a familiar design with subtle changes highlighting the array of content that Google offers through its storefront.

Google felt that it could improve the way it presented its content stores with the redesign and rebranding, Yerga said. Web surfers weren’t always aware that Google offered an array of content through the “Android” storefront, which is understandable if they weren’t also Android users.  And sometimes the experiences were jarring: for example, you would listen to your music library at Google Music but you would purchase music through the Android Market.

Google Play will remind some of Apple’s iTunes Store in terms of the way Google is presenting all of the digital content that it sells–apps, books, music, and movies–through a single store. But it’s almost like Google is de-emphasizing apps with this rebranding: Android users are pretty familiar with the Android Market as the home for apps, and changing the application store to a brand that doesn’t feature “Android” at all could be confusing for some at first.

This change will be required for any device maker or carrier who wants to offer apps through Google’s stores, and users will be required to sign into Google’s services in order to access the store. That means Kindle Fire users won’t be able to access the Play Store, although of course one of the main reasons Amazon built the Kindle Fire was to promote its own content offerings.

Google will allow its partners to carry links to other content stores and third-party app stores won’t be affected by the change, Yerga said. Android users will have to be using version 2.2 (Froyo) or above in order to access the new store, although those on older versions (now only 10 percent of Android users) will still be able to get apps.

All in all, the change seems designed to remind everyone–especially the millions using Android devices–that Google offers a lot of content. Google hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with its content services, although the company did say Monday that it has 4 million Google Music users.

It’s also hard to miss the fact that the rebranding reinforces a “Google” brand at the heart of the Android experience, which is so often dictated by Google partners.

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I like to review these predictions because they help keep me honest with readers, but also because the exercise reminds me to be humble in my writing for the upcoming year: Mobile technology is moving so quickly I’ll never bat a thousand. Here’s a look back at what I wrote nearly one year ago to the day, along with evaluation of the effort.

iOS and Android

• “I do believe (and have since earlier this year) that a Verizon iPhone will at the very least, be announced in January. And it’s an even money bet that the iPad will gain the rumored cameras required for FaceTime, too.” — These weren’t too difficult to see coming, but I called them correctly.
• “ iOS will likely see improved notifications in iOS version 5.” — Another winner here, and one of the reasons I actually bought an iPhone in 2011 after abandoning my old iPhone 3GS for Android devices. I’ve always preferred the Android notification method, and Apple improved upon it. Android 4.0 brings back parity in this area.
• “Thanks to more robust mobile broadband options, I expect Apple to offer iTunes music streaming in 2011.” — I was close, but not quite right. Apple did move iTunes libraries to the cloud, but mainly to store music files, not to stream your library in the traditional sense.
• “Android phones will come closer to rivaling the user experience of Apple iOS devices, but they’ll still fall short. It won’t matter in terms of platform market share, and more developers will code for both iOS and Android, with a greater emphasis on Google’s platform if pressed to choose just one.” — I’ll call this one partly right, as Android 4.0 does rival iOS, depending on who you ask and their personal preferences. Developers are mainly focusing on iOS and Google, but more are attracted to the better monetization offered by iOS, even though Google is ahead in market share.
• “Google will design one stock Android handset for Verizon’s LTE network.” — This was perhaps my most spot-on prediction: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Verizon is a flagship LTE phone that’s exclusive to the carrier in the U.S. But I’m still happier that I went with an unlocked GSM Galaxy Nexus from overseas: It removes the carrier control from my handset and gives it to me instead.
• “Motorola Mobility will have a solid first year due to Android phones and tablets, but won’t see huge growth until it can gain additional large carrier partners and the backing they provide.” — Motorola didn’t gain a large carrier partner, but it did win serious backing when Google announced intent to purchase the company. Still, I was wrong on this one and didn’t see the Google purchase as a possibility.
• “The iPad will continue to sell in record numbers next year, but the combined sales of Android tablets will be close behind at the end of 2011. Consumers will still pass up Microsoft Windows 7 tablets.” — The iPad still dominates tablet sales, and by most measures, Android isn’t close behind yet. That could change with Android 4.0 tablets, but I thought we’d see them by now. Microsoft Windows 7 tablets are selling as well as prior Windows tablets — as in not very.

Intel, HP, Nokia and Microsoft

• “Intel will finally deliver on its Atom effort and get the chip in a few phones, but none will be blockbuster successes. While Android can be ported to Intel’s x86 chip architecture, few will tackle the effort because of investments in ARM technology.” — It was another year of missed opportunity for Intel, as I was wrong on timing this one. In 2012, Intel expects to enter the smartphone game with new silicon.
• “Intel’s best showing will be in Nokia MeeGo devices (more on that below). Even with a few available products, the gap between Intel- and ARM-powered handsets and tablets will continue to widen.” — When you don’t have much showing, there really can’t be a “best” showing for Intel. And ARM continues to rule the roost when it comes to mobile chip architecture in successful products.
• “HP will debut a half-dozen new webOS products: mostly phones, but at least one tablet too. Even though I expect a compelling interface and feature set, webOS still won’t see a market share higher than 6 percent in 2011 as developer mindshare is focused on Android and iOS.” — The biggest fail on my list as webOS is effectively dead and gone, having been handed down to the open-source community: a damn shame.
• “Microsoft’s Kinect product will keep the Xbox a leading platform and the device will continue to be used for various interface hacks” — The Xbox 360 continued to be the top-selling console month after month this year. And there has been no lack of Kinect-powered interface hacks demonstrated, including robots that use the Kinect for vision.
• “Microsoft will officially support the device in an update to Windows 7, and my son will still not be able to beat me in a Kinect game.” — Microsoft added Windows 7 support for Kinect in June. and my son has yet to beat me in a Kinect game. I’m getting older by the minute though, so I may not be able to replicate this feat in 2012.
• “Nokia’s smartphone market share will stabilize, but not grow beyond 40 percent as cheaper Android phones will flood the market by the second half of the year. The company will continue to tout MeeGo, which will become available in the form of six devices in 2011.” — Even with my own lowered expectations for Nokia, the company — and its smartphone market share — crumbled in 2011, in hopes of rebuilding its future. MeeGo has been abandoned as a strategy, so I blew this one big time.
• “There will be talk of Microsoft buying Nokia, but it won’t happen. Windows Phone 7 on a Nokia device might, however, as a short-term trial strategy for both parties.” — Microsoft hasn’t officially bought Nokia, but it did pay the company more a billion dollars to use Windows Phone going forward.
• “Microsoft will demonstrate a lighter, touch-optimized platform for tablets by mid-2011 and follow up with products near the end of the year. Research In Motion’s PlayBook will gain enterprise customers in 2011, but businesses will adopt the iPad, and possibly even Android tablets, far more heavily.” — Microsoft has demonstrated a Metro interface that will be used tablets, but products aren’t yet available. Businesses are favoring iOS and Android tablets over the PlayBook.

Samsung

• “Samsung will continue to leverage the Galaxy brand and approach with fewer new smartphone models in 2011. Instead, the company will take the lesson learned from 2010: Design one base handset and tweak slightly for carrier customization. The company will sell 17 million or more such handsets as a result. — The Galaxy S II is that phone, and as of September, sold 10 million units. That was prior to the handset arriving on three of the big four U.S. carriers, so I think I did well on the prediction.
• “I expect 5 million Samsung tablets to sell next year, both in 7-inch and 10-inch sizes. And while Apple will continue its digital audio player dominance, Samsung will grab a 5-percent chunk of the market currently held by Apple’s iPod, even more if Google Music is available in dozens of countries.” — Again, it’s difficult to find tablet sales data by manufacturer, but IDC suggests Samsung sold 1 million tablets in the third quarter, so I suspect my figure of 5 million for the year is high, pending holiday sales. Samsung was late to market with its Android-based iPod touch competitors, so I’m considering my 5 percent prediction to be wrong.

Chips, carriers and other tech topics

• “Although phones with dual-core processors will debut in early 2011, more than 25 percent of smartphones sold by the end of the year will use dual-core chips.” — I haven’t seen data specific to smartphone sales by the number of processing cores, but I suspect I got this right. Perhaps I even underestimated the number of dual-core smartphone sales when you look at the models that use them: Apple’s iPhone 4S, Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Motorola’s Razr and many other popular handsets.
• “Smart homes with web-connected automation will slip into mainstream conversation, but near-field communication will still be confusing due to a lack of mobile payment standards.” — Smart home products are gaining momentum but aren’t part of everyday conversation just yet. NFC for mobile payments is still a moving target for the reason I predicted, which is why I took matters into my own hands with Google Wallet.
• “Although U.S. carriers will continue to rely on network offload solutions such as femtocells and more public Wi-Fi zones, at least one carrier will supplement current data plans with a truly metered trial option.” — This prediction was mostly correct until the last phrase, as no U.S. carrier has offered a pay-for-what-you-use data plan.

Overall, I think I fared well, but I’m raising the bar for 2012 because I’d like to have even more accuracy in what to expect. Some of my 2011 predictions may carry over to 2012 because I was off on timing, but I’ll be spending the next day or two focused on my Magic 8 Ball to see what 2012 will bring!

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Quick and easy

Using Apple’s ability to connect to Flickr, as well as its Internet Radio features, you can easily have a stunning backdrop to your holiday events in three easy steps:

1. Choose your music. On your Apple TV, from the “Internet” find the “Radio” sub-section. To find a holiday station, first try looking under the categories “Religious” or “Golden Oldies,” but it’s likely a lot of radio stations are playing holiday tracks right around now.
2. Search Flickr photos. Once music is taken care of, also under the “Internet” section of the Apple TV you’ll find “Flickr.” Perform a search on Flickr for something very descriptive like “Glass Christmas Ornaments” for best results.
3. Start the slide show. After previewing your search results, change the default settings to shuffle images and allow the slide show to repeat itself once it’s shown every image. Be sure to select the “Holiday Mobile” transition theme before starting the slide show for bonus cheer.

A more personal touch

If you’re looking to show off your own photos rather than someone else’s, and you want to play your own music,too, then there’s a little more work involved. With the Apple TV, there are two ways to access your music library: Either via Home Sharing or iTunes Match. Here’s how to use Home Sharing, which is available free to all Apple TV owners:

1. Create a holiday photo album in iPhoto. In iPhoto, create a new album by highlighting the photos you want and choose ”New Album” from the File menu.
2. Create a holiday playlist in iTunes on your Mac. To quickly create a new playlist, highlight the music you want to listen to and select “New Playlist from Selection” from the File menu in iTunes.
3. Enable Home Sharing from your Mac. From the Advanced menu in iTunes, select “Turn on Home Sharing” and enter your iTunes account information to set up Home Sharing in iTunes on your Mac.
4. Add your iPhoto library to your Mac’s Home Sharing. You also need to add your iPhoto library to your Home Share. This is also done from the Advanced menu in iTunes, by picking “Choose Photos to Share…” and selecting iPhoto.
5. Enable Home Sharing on your Apple TV. Now that everything is set up and ready to go on your Mac, you need to be able to access Home Sharing from your Apple TV. Enable Home Sharing on the Apple TV using the same iTunes account information you used to turn it on with your Mac.
6. Play your shared playlist. Navigate to the “Computer” section and select the music library shared from your Mac. Go to the “Playlist” section under “Music” to select the holiday playlist you created on your Mac.
7. Start your shared slide show. Finally from the “Computer“ section on your Apple TV, pick “Photos.” Here you can select the Photo Album you created in iPhoto.

NOTE: To use iTunes Match rather than Home Sharing on your Mac and Apple TV, you just need to enable iTunes Match. Once you sync your iTunes Match library, the holiday playlist you create on your Mac will be available.

Holiday cheer anywhere with AirPlay

This third method requires only that you’re at somewhere with an Apple TV, and have an iPhone capable of AirPlay. From Spotify, to Google Music and Pandora, you can use whatever music source you choose with this method, as well as your own on-device iTunes library.

1. Ensure AirPlay is enabled on your Apple TV. You don’t need to log into your iTunes account on the target Apple TV with this method, but you do need to make sure AirPlay is enabled. Find AirPlay options under “Settings” on your Apple TV’s main menu.
2. Choose your favorite holiday music app. Most popular music apps in the App Store support streaming music over AirPlay. Choose one, and once the music is playing, simply tap on the AirPlay icon (usually located next to playback controls), and choose the Apple TV from the menu that comes up (note that both devices have to be on the same local Wi-Fi network for it to appear).
3. Pick a holiday-themed album from your device’s Photos app. If you haven’t synced any photos from your iTunes library or you don’t have any ready to go, you could just take some around the house of any decorations or trees, create a dedicated album for them, and use that.
4. Start the slide show. From your device’s Photos app, tap the AirPlay icon and choose the same Apple TV you’re using to stream music. You can stream both music and photos from the same iOS device at the same time.

That’s three easy ways to make your Apple TV part of the festive holiday action. Got any more suggestions? Let us know in the comments.

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To see how big of a change this is, it’s worth taking a look at the status quo of the digital music biz. Artists under contract with a major label typically get between $0.08 and $0.14 per $0.99 sold on iTunes, depending on their contract. Indie musicians may make a little more, but still have to share the revenue with their labels, and more often than not, a digital distributor that handles the relations between the label and various download stores.

Self-released indie musicians have had the option to sign up with specialized distributors like Tunecore and CD Baby to receive a higher share. But even these companies have to stay in business somehow, so they’re each taking a cut. CD Baby charges musicians a one-time setup fee of $39 per album and 9 percent of each track sold on top of the 30 percent charged by iTunes. Tunecore charges $50 per album per year.

Those digital distribution models can work out in a band’s favor when compared to the traditional share paid by a label, but it’s still quite a bit of money, especially for musicians who want to leverage a huge back catalog. Google Music, on the other hand, only charges musicians a one-time fee of $25, with no additional charges, after which they receive the full 70 percent share.

I know what you’re going to say: Labels may take a big cut from an artist’s digital download revenue, but they’re also doing a lot to promote a band and help them build an audience. That’s true, and Google Music won’t be able to match this benefit, despite Google putting a big emphasis on curation and discovery during the service’s launch event on Wednesday.

However, the secret weapon for indie artists is Google’s other big music service: YouTube. The video site currently serves more than three billion videos every day, and stats from TubeMogul showed last year that around a third of the views of YouTube’s top 2500 partners were music videos. Indie artists will soon be able to utilize this huge audience to sell their music directly on YouTube, Google revealed yesterday.

In other words: Media-savvy indie musicians now have the option to sell their music directly to fans, without any middle men, and promote it on one of the world’s biggest sites for free music entertainment. That means some musicians may spend a lot more resources on producing interesting and catchy viral videos, and in turn gain some independence from traditional distribution methods.

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The new service was unveiled in Los Angeles (the event is still in progress here) by Jamie Rosenberg, director for digital content on Android, and other Google executives. It’s clearly a take on what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been doing with iTunes and iCloud this year, and represents a step forward for the Music Beta service by allowing users to actually acquire new songs. Thirteen million songs will be available for purchase, but the service will be U.S.-only upon its debut.

EMI, Universal, and Sony (NYSE: SNE) are official partners for Google Music, the company announced, as well as dozens of other smaller independent labels. That leaves Warner as the only holdout among the big four record companies.

Record companies appear to have the ability to set their own prices to a certain extent, as tracks are available in the store for $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29. It’s not clear what bitrates Google is offering for the tracks.

The company will offer exclusive tracks from The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, and Busta Rhymes as part of the new service in an attempt to jump-start demand. Google also hopes that people will share their music purchases through its Google+ social-networking service, allowing friends on Google+ to play the track once for free.

Google will continue to allow people to upload music they have already purchased to Google’s servers. Unlike Apple’s iTunes Match, you’ll have to sit there and watch the slow upload process of those files, but unlike iTunes Match, it won’t cost you anything.

The company also wants to turn Google Music into a tool for smaller bands to promote themselves and their music with a feature called Artist Hub. Bands can set up an artist page for $25, where they can post a biography, pictures, links, and actually sell their songs through Google Music. Google will take a 30 percent cut of those sales.

T-Mobile got a special place in the Google Music event, the one remaining major carrier in the U.S. that isn’t selling Apple’s iPhone. Its customers will be able to pay for songs purchased through Google Music on their monthly phone bills.

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Any purchase is automatically transfered to Google’s cloud music locker, where it can be played via the web browser or Android mobile devices. The store comes with 90-second previews, and purchases consist of 320 kbps MP3s. Tracks will cost between $0.99 and $1.29, and T-Mobile customers will be able to pay for music purchases through their monthly phone bill.

The company said on Wednesday that it has secured content rights for over 13 million songs, 8 million of which are available at launch. However, just as previously reported, Google was only able to sign up three of the four major record labels: Warner Music artists such as Madonna and Green Day won’t be available for the time being. The store does have music from a wide range of indie distributors, including Merlin, IODA and CD Baby.

Speaking of indie bands: Google Music includes a feature called artist hub that makes it possible for musicians to upload their own music and sell them at a price point of their choosing. Artists will keep 70 percent of their revenue, and in the future also be able to sell music directly on YouTube. One of the first artists making use of this hub is dance artist DJ Tiesto.

But the company isn’t relying on small coffee shop bands alone: The launch is accompanied with a bunch of content exclusives, including six concerts from the Rolling Stones, a five-track live EP from Coldplay, as well as additional tracks from Shakira, Busta Rhymes, Pearl Jam and the Dave Mathews Band. Some of this content will be available for free, hinting at Google making some major investments to promote Google Music.

Google launched the first iteration of its music service at its developer conference in May. Google Music Beta, as it was called at the time, only included the option to upload songs to Google’s cloud locker. But Android Director of Digital Content Jamie Rosenberg said that users nonetheless accessed the service a lot, streaming music from their lockers for 2.5 hours on average. Google had also started to give away promotional songs from indie labels for free, and Rosenberg said that users had downloaded more than 100 million tracks.

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That said, people can still listen to music from iTunes Match immediately, rather than waiting for it to download completely on their phones. The only downside is that since it’s stored locally, you’ll only have access to as much music as your phone has storage space: once you fill that up, you’ll have to go through the process of deleting music you don’t want anymore instead of just streaming directly, the way you could using competing services from Google, Spotify or Amazon.

It’s a small distinction, and one that likely won’t affect the majority of iTunes Match users. However, those with massive libraries and a frequent desire to change up the selection of music available to them might find it somewhat aggravating. So why would Apple turn off what many viewed as a welcome feature?

First, there’s the bandwidth requirements of pure streaming vs. play-as-you-download. Streaming content continually, every time you want to access it again (after it’s been purged from the local cache) is extremely data-intensive. That means it’s demanding for Apple’s servers, but more importantly, it asks a lot of user data plans, which are often limited. A service that could lead to Apple customers getting hit with unexpectedly high monthly bills thanks to streaming media data usage probably won’t benefit either Apple customers or the company itself, even if people do get used to it after an adjustment period.

Second, there’s Apple’s emphasis on general usability standards. A service that provides easy access to all of a user’s existing music via simple download is less of a conceptual leap than an all-streaming solution. Once downloaded, music is there on the device. There’s less confusion about when you can and can’t access your content.

For me, it’s far more important that iTunes Match can scan and provide copies of tracks in my library without my needing to upload them first, as opposed to any streaming functions. I like having music locally stored, and I just want it to be easier to get music on and off of my device on the fly, so the removal of streaming (which Apple never promised in the first place) is no big deal. Will this change affect your decision to buy into the service when it goes live this fall?

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Users can upload any music file they own — from iTunes libraries, Windows Media Player, or file folders — to Music. Music stores all the songs, albums and playlists completely in the cloud, so with the Music Android application, a user’s Google music library is automatically synced across all of his or her devices. The app automatically caches the most recently listened-to songs so they can be accessed without an Internet connection.

The app is currently available by invitation only to users in the U.S., Joyce said, and will be free for as long as it’s in beta. The company did not give any further information on any future pricing plans.

Although the Music application stores music and doesn’t sell it, Tuesday’s launch still puts Google more directly into a space currently dominated by Apple. Joyce acknowledged the competition during his keynote presentation with a hint of snark, referring to Google Music’s “Instant Mix” playlist-creating feature as a “truly ingenious” feature– an obvious wink to iTunes’ “Genius” automatic playlist creator.

Update: Android Director of Digital Content Jamie Rosenberg said during a press conference following the keynote that Google wants to eventually sell music through the platform as well. However, negotiations with some of the major labels broke down because of “terms that we felt were unreasonable and unsustainable.” He denied that Google is going to become a target of music industry lawsuits with its locker service. “What we launched today is a completely legal service,” said Rosenberg.

Additional reporting by Janko Roettgers.

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