LOS ANGELES — With more fads than folks at an "American Idol" audition, the past decade has been a difficult time to culturally define. One day, everyone was updating their MySpace profiles while sporting Ugg boots and sipping cosmopolitans. Full Article at Huffington Post

Napster. The free file-sharing service was the "it" way to grab digital tunes at the dawn of the 21st century. Created by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning, the program ignited a legal brouhaha with the recording industry. Full Article at The San Jose Mercury News

"Pokemon." The "pocket monster" franchise was a full-blown craze with kids at the start of the '00s, having already spawned several movies, TV series, video games and toys. Love for Pikachu waned, though, as tots turned into teens. "Pokemon 4Ever," Full Article at MSNBC

Others returned from yesteryear - or space, as in the case of the reinvigorated "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" franchises - to reclaim their pop culture glory. Not every entertainment hallmark was so successful in overcoming revolving taste buds. Full Article at Macleans.ca

The debate over copyright, spawned by the shutdown of music pirate Napster, has been prominent for a decade now. And it’s only become sharper in recent months as content originators clash with distributors. Full Article at livemint.com

Superheroes, disaster movies, reality TV, professional wrestling and a boy wizard named Harry Potter weathered the decade's ever-changing pop culture storm while others rode the aughts like a roller coaster. Full Article at San Francisco Chronicle

FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2000 file photo, Rick Rockwell kisses Darva Conger after the two-hour prime-time reality competition special, "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire." Full Article at San Diego Union-Tribune

Swedish heavy metal band 220 VOLT has issued the following update: "25 years ago we were approached with the idea to record a Christmas song. Full Article at Blabbermouth

For those of you that have been reading for a while (thanks!), it’s no surprise that I am a music fan. Full Article at PaulStamatiou.com

Sean Parker (Founders Fund, Facebook, Plaxo, Napster) and angel investor Ron Conway are doing a little smack talking over who’ll raise the most money for charity. Full Article at TechCrunch

The problem with assessing the cultural evolution of the past 10 years is that, essentially, everything has happened, and usually all at once. Big stars got bigger, yet at the same time became irrelevant. Full Article at Times Online

The next new order, attainable only after disruptive tussles aplenty, will wield justice by definition. After all, did Philadelphia-based Comcast take action when its distribution pipes undermined the area's newspapers? No. Full Article at The Deal: Blogs

Grant McCracken, a Vancouver-born anthropologist who consults with some of the world's biggest companies, argues corporations need a new officer in the executive suite to keep a finger on the pulse of contemporary cultural trends. Full Article at Toronto Star

Many recent articles on file-trading and the P2P community have noted that the Napster phenomenon occurred ten years ago, marking a decade of joy for down-loaders and despair for the big content companies. Full Article at ZeroPaid

Fancy a private tour of Belfast for a grand? ... Duke Special is your man "When Napster came on the scene, it felt like a big wave coming at us, and it appeared futile to try and stop it," says Benji Rogers, founder of London-based Pledge Music. Full Article at The Guardian Music

Apple’s recent acquisition of the online music service Lala has sparked major speculation on that the company is looking to make iTunes available to the web. Full Article at Legit Reviews

There's been a lot of noise over the last few days about Apple's purchase of the online music-streaming service Lala. No one's quite sure what this means for the future of Apple's iTunes music service, or Lala's own service. Full Article at MSNBC

There was Napster, then Kazza and now BitTorrent. BitTorrent, however, is much safer and faster than the file sharing of the past. Full Article at Associated Content

Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. Full Article at Against Monopoly