Feds Charge Anonymous Spokesperson for Sharing Hacked Stratfor Credit Cards

A Dallas grand jury has brought charges against Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown stemming from the 2011 hack of intelligence vendor Stratfor Global Intelligence.

Brown isn’t charged with committing the hack; just with possessing and transmitting credit card numbers that were stolen in the incident.

He has been in prison since he was arrested in dramatic and public fashion three months ago after posting a threatening video to YouTube. Brown was talking with acquaintances during a Sept. 12 TinyChat session when the feds burst in and took him away. The chat session was later posted to the internet.

The Anonymous spokesman was charged the next day with threatening a federal officer.

This time the charges are are related to a different incident: the 2011 Stratfor hack where credit card numbers and internal e-mail messages were stolen.

According to the grand jury indictment, dated Tuesday, Brown posted a link to a zipped version of the documents stolen in the Stratfor hack on Christmas day 2011 — that counts as trafficking in “stolen authentication features,” the indictment claims. He’s also charged with possessing stolen credit card numbers, Card Verification Values, and other information related to those credit card numbers.

Brown, 31, has been in custody since his Sept. 12 arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a press release announcing the 12-count indictment. He could face a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on the most serious of these charges.

The self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman said he was expecting to face fraud charges after his apartment was raided back in March. He mentioned them in a long, rambling video posted to YouTube the day on the same day he was arrested in September. “I bring in no money. I have $25,000 I brought in the last year from this fucking book deal. that’s it.” he said. “A fucking fraud charge for a fucking writer activist who has no fucking money.”

Later in the video, Brown railed against FBI Agent Robert Smith, saying that he was going to “ruin” Smith’s life “and look into his fucking kids.” The Anonymous activist said he was angry that feds were contemplating obstruction of justice charges against his mother.

The indictment is below.

Gov.uscourts.txnd.226354.1.0

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‘Borderlands 2,’ ‘Dishonored’ win at Spike VGAs

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The cartoony post-apocalyptic shoot-’em-up sequel “Borderlands 2″ and the stealthy first-person game “Dishonored” were among the early winners at the Spike Video Game Awards on Friday.

“Borderlands 2″ was picked as best shooter and multiplayer game, while “Dishonored” was awarded with the best action-adventure game trophy at the gaming extravaganza.

The ceremony honors outstanding achievements within the gaming industry over the past year.

“The Avengers” star and shooter fan Samuel L. Jackson hosted the 10th annual ceremony at Sony Pictures Studios — his fourth time as the show’s emcee.

This year’s ceremony was scheduled to screen never-before-seen footage from such upcoming titles as “The Last Us,” ”South Park: The Stick of Truth” and “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.” It will also serve as the launch pad for newly announced game “The Phantom Pain.”

For the first time, the VGAs were streamed on Xbox Live, the online service for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. During the ceremony, online viewers could vote on show components such as what songs and clips would be played during the ceremony.

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Online:

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang

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Justices to Take Up Generic Drug Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would decide whether a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to pay a competitor millions of dollars to keep a generic copy of a best-selling drug off the market.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ralph Neas, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said the case would alter the marketing of new generics.

The case could settle a decade-long battle between federal regulators, who say the deals violate antitrust law, and the pharmaceutical industry, which contends that they are really just settlements of disputes over patents that protect the billions of dollars they pour into research and development.

Three separate federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled over the last decade that the deals were allowable. But in July a federal appeals court in Philadelphia — which covers the territory where many big drug makers are based — said the arrangements were anticompetitive.

Both sides in the case supported the petition for the Supreme Court to decide the case, each arguing that the conflicting appeals court decisions would inject uncertainty into their operations.

By keeping lower-priced generic drugs off the market, drug companies are able to charge higher prices than they otherwise could. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a Senate bill to outlaw those payments would lower drug costs in the United States by $11 billion and would save the federal government $4.8 billion over 10 years.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, which never came to the floor for a vote, praised the decision.

The Federal Trade Commission first filed the suit in question in 2009. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said, “These pay-for-delay deals are win-win for the drug companies, but big losers for U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Generic drug makers say that the payments preserve a system that has saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

“This case could determine how an entire industry does business because it would dramatically affect the economics of each decision to introduce a new generic drug,” Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said in a statement. “The current industry paradigm of challenging patents on branded drugs in order to bring new generics to market as soon as possible has produced $1.06 trillion in savings over the past 10 years.”

The case will review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, which in the spring ruled in favor of the drug makers, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Watson had applied for federal approval to sell a generic version of AndroGel, a testosterone replacement drug made by Solvay.

While courts have long held that paying a competitor to stay off the market creates unfair competition, the pharmaceuticals case is different because it involves patents, whose essential purpose is to prevent competition.

When a generic manufacturer seeks approval to market a copy of a brand-name drug, it also often files a lawsuit challenging a patent that the drug’s originator says prevents competition.

Last year, for the third time since 2003, the 11th Circuit upheld the agreements as long as the allegedly anticompetitive behavior that results — in this case, keeping the generic drug off the market — is the same thing that would take place if the brand-name company’s patent were upheld.

Two other federal circuit courts, the Second Circuit and the Federal Circuit, have ruled similarly. But in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that those arrangements were anticompetitive on their face and violated antitrust law.

The agreements are also affected by a peculiar condition in the law that legalized generic competition for prescription drugs. That law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, gives a 180-day period of exclusivity to the first generic drug maker to file for approval of a generic copy and to file a lawsuit challenging the brand-name drug’s patent.

Brand-name drug companies have taken advantage of that law, finding that they can settle the patent suit by getting the generic company to agree to stay out of the market for a period of time. Because that generic company also has exclusivity rights, no other generic companies can enter the market.

Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, said that while there were provisions in the law under which a generic company could forfeit that exclusivity, “they really are toothless in practice.”

One wild card could still prevent the Supreme Court from definitively settling the question. In granting the petition to hear the case, the Supreme Court said that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself, taking no part in the consideration or decision.

That opens the possibility that a 4-4 decision could result, upholding the lower court case that went against the F.T.C. and in favor of the drug makers. But it would leave the broader question for another day.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals et al, No. 12-416.

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Wealth Matters: Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud This Madoff Day

Left to right: Louis Lanzano/Associated Press; Stephen Chernin/Getty Images; Richard Carson/Reuters

Three men accused of defrauding clients arriving at federal court. From left, Marc Dreier in Manhattan on May 11, 2009; Bernard Madoff in Manhattan on March 12, 2009; and R. Allen Stanford in Houston last Feb. 29.

THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past.

Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud.

These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest).

Protecting yourself against fraud, or simply bad advice, is easier said than done. The most common advice is to make sure your money is held by an independent custodian or firm whose job is to keep your money safe. That wasn’t the case with either the Madoff or Stanford fraud. But that is only one small step.

So what else can investors do to protect themselves, not only from unscrupulous advisers but also from rushing into an investment that is clearly too good to be true?

Marc H. Simon, a lawyer who lost two years of bonuses, his job and months of unreimbursed expenses when Mr. Dreier’s law firm collapsed, said he has thought a lot about what he could have done differently.

Mr. Simon said that six or seven years before the fraud was uncovered, he knew of inconsistencies in the firm’s 401(k) plans. But the big red flag should have been that Mr. Dreier had sole control over every major decision at the law firm. Still, that had been Mr. Dreier’s pitch: work for him and don’t worry about the irksome details partners typically face.

“People like Drier and Madoff were highly intelligent individuals, they were very charismatic and they were giving people what they wanted,” Mr. Simon said. “It is harder to bring into question those who are providing you something you want.”

Randall A. Pulman, a lawyer in San Antonio who represents many victims of Mr. Stanford’s fraud, agreed that the will to believe was what ensnared people.

“For you and me, it’s too good to be true,” he said. “For the guy who has been working in the oil fields, how is he supposed to know?”

Of course, fraud and just plain bad advice are not limited to the poor or unsophisticated. Robert P. Rittereiser, the former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and former chief executive of E. F. Hutton, is working as the receiver for two funds suing J. Ezra Merkin, a former money manager who steered money to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Rittereiser did not think investors in Mr. Merkin’s funds knew that their money was simply being passed on to Mr. Madoff. But even if they did, they may not have seen anything to be concerned about.

“They were investing money and getting appropriate returns for the kind of fund it was,” Mr. Rittereiser said. “Most of them had a relationship of some kind and confidence with Merkin and the people he was dealing with.”

So how do you protect yourself? The first step would seem to be picking an honest adviser. The good news is that only about 7 percent of advisers have disciplinary records, said Nicholas W. Stuller, president and chief executive of AdviceIQ, a company that evaluates advisers. The bad news is that those violations appear only after someone has filed a complaint.

Mr. Stuller’s company, which has now approved some 2,400 advisers, rejects anyone with any type of infraction — from a securities fine to a misdemeanor for getting into a fight. He said this policy might keep some good advisers off the site, but his goal is to search the records of federal and state regulators to find advisers he knows are clean.

“There are advisers who have significant negative disciplinary history with one regulator but appear to be pristine with another regulator,” Mr. Stuller said. “There was a guy in Minnesota who was stealing insurance premiums. In his enforcement record, it says, ‘We’re going to alert Finra,’ but his Finra record is clean,” he said, referring to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “That’s where the regulators don’t talk to each other.”

AdviceIQ’s main competitor, BrightScope, takes a different approach. It notes disciplinary actions taken against advisers but leaves it up to the consumer to go to regulators to determine what the violations were.

“We want the consumer to go to the source data, because there is a lot of liability in publishing that,” said Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive of BrightScope. “Many of these folks are good advisers, and they’ll take care of you. But what if they had one crazy client who put all his money in Internet stocks in 2000 and then sued?”

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Judge may lower Apple's award in Samsung patent case

By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times

December 6, 2012, 8:42 p.m.

SAN JOSE — A federal judge signaled Thursday that she might reduce Apple Inc.'s $1-billion jury award in its patent infringement case with Samsung Electronics Co.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh did not specify by how much she might shave the award, but during a marathon afternoon hearing in federal court in San Jose she said it did appear that the jury had miscalculated damages.

In August, after three days of deliberations in the complex patent case, a jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion.

In the months since the verdict, Samsung has mounted an aggressive campaign to overturn the verdict, raising a host of legal issues including juror misconduct. Apple hotly contested those issues during the hearing Thursday and sought to increase the damage award.

Lawyers for the world's two largest smartphone makers sparred for more than three hours over a bevy of legal issues in the dispute that produced one of the largest damage awards in an intellectual property case. Koh said she would issue rulings in the coming weeks.

Samsung argued that the damage award should be reduced because the jury incorrectly calculated the amount. Apple asked the court to award $535 million more in damages because the jury found that Samsung had willfully infringed Apple's patents.

Both sides seemed to be gearing up for years of legal appeals despite the judge's plea for "global peace." The case is likely to go before the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington court that decides patent disputes, and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.

Apple also asked the judge to ban some Samsung products. The judge did not rule on whether the infringing Samsung products should be taken off store shelves.

The products are older models and would not dent Samsung sales, but the ban would give Apple a win in its high-stakes patent war against the South Korean company that is playing out around the globe.

ALSO:

NASA releases breathtaking images of the Earth at night

Samsung lawyers file copy of Apple patent settlement with HTC

Facebook voters: Everything you need to know to cast your ballot

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 7

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

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Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Comedian Katt Williams a no-show at arraignment

SEATTLE (AP) — Comedian Katt Williams didn’t show up at an arraignment hearing in Seattle to face assault charges stemming from several run-ins with people and police last weekend.

Williams’ attorney, Thomas McAllister, told the judge Thursday that his client was under the impression that he didn’t have to attend the hearing, citing information from a Seattle Times article. McAllister says Williams is back in California.

The Times reports (http://bit.ly/VJzMhX ) that the judge rescheduled the hearing for next week.

Authorities say Williams struck a man over the head with a microphone while performing Friday night, threw chairs at fans, and threatened a bar manager with a pool cue over the weekend.

Authorities say officers had to restrain Williams before he was taken into custody after the bar incident.

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Information from: The Seattle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com

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Oscar Niemeyer dies at 104; modernist Brazilian architect

Oscar Niemeyer, the architect whose soaring buildings form the heart of Brasilia, the instant modernist capital built in the wilds of Brazil in the late 1950s, has died. He was 104.

Niemeyer, who had outlived his contemporaries to become the world's oldest practicing architect of international stature, died Wednesday at a Rio de Janeiro hospital. The cause was a respiratory infection, a hospital spokeswoman told the Associated Press.

During his long and productive life, Niemeyer was revered as well as ridiculed for his daring designs, but the creativity and sheer volume of his works ultimately spoke for him. In 1988, at 80, he shared architecture's biggest prize, the Pritzker.

Niemeyer, a diminutive, soft-spoken man, worked well into his 90s in a Rio de Janeiro penthouse office with a stunning view of Sugar Loaf Mountain and overlooking Copacabana Beach. Hundreds of projects came into being kindled by this view.

Many of his designs began with a quick sketch that embodied his love of the curve — from Einstein's universe, to the sinewy white beach that he gazed at nearly every day, to the voluptuous women he so loved to watch walking along that beach.

These women, he often said, were his inspiration.

"Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple," Niemeyer told the Washington Post in 2002. "I am a Brazilian before I am an architect. I cannot separate the two."

A passionate man, he lived in protest of the right angle "and buildings designed with the ruler and the square." His politics were also those of protest — he became a communist in the 1940s because of his anger over the inequality he saw around him, and he was a longtime friend of Cuba's revolutionary, Fidel Castro. His designs — especially of Brasilia — were partly an attempt to push his country toward egalitarianism, bringing rich and poor together through housing projects and public spaces.

A few years after Brasilia was completed, when a rightist military coup in 1964 not only destroyed Niemeyer's dreams of a just society in Brazil but also took away his sponsors, he fled to Algiers and then Paris. In the city, he had an office on the Champs Elysees and met Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and many other notables and, he later recounted, lived a hedonistic life far away from his wife, Annita. He returned to Rio in the late 1970s.

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida de Niemeyer Soares was a Carioca — a native of Rio — whose heritage was Portuguese, Arab and German. Born Dec. 15, 1907, he was the son of a businessman and his wife who lived in Laranjeiras, a quaint, hilly neighborhood within the city.

While at the National School of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1934, Niemeyer worked with architect and urban planner Lucio Costa, who would lead Niemeyer to projects that would make his name in international architecture.

Costa, the master planner of Brasilia and an early proponent of Brazilian modernism, at first was unimpressed when the young draftsman joined his firm. Before long, they were working with Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier — who was in Brazil as a design consultant to the government — on the defiantly modern design for the Ministry of Education and Health Building in Rio. The building, which incorporated Le Corbusier's signature "brise-soleil" louvers to shield it from Brazil's intense sunlight, became a symbol of the new architecture in Brazil.

Le Corbusier would greatly influence Niemeyer, instilling in him a sense of fluidity, spontaneity and what David Underwood, writing in "Oscar Niemeyer and Brazilian Free-form Modernism" (1994), called jeito — "the lightness of touch, the graceful elegance of form and the movement inherent in the sauntering 'Girl from Ipanema' celebrated in the best of Brazilian modernism."

While Le Corbusier opened doors to creativity, however, Niemeyer saw his work as very distinct from his mentor's. As he told The Times: "He posited the right angle. I posit the curve."

In bringing to life his sensuous designs, he relied on what was then a new and versatile material — reinforced concrete — which he pushed to its limits, especially at load-bearing points, he wrote in a 2003 essay for Deutsches Architektur Museum, "which I wanted to be as delicate as possible so that it would seem as if [they] barely touched the ground."

The first Niemeyer structure built was a maternity clinic in Rio in 1937. His first major project, commissioned in 1940, were buildings for Pampulha, a then-new suburb of the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, including a yacht club, casino and a church so avant-garde in design that church officials refused to consecrate it for 16 years.

With Costa, Niemeyer also designed the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939, and Niemeyer influenced the ultimate design of the United Nations headquarters while serving as Brazil's design consultant in 1947.

In time, his portfolio would include a postwar housing project in Berlin; the universities of Constantine and Algiers in Algeria; the French Communist Party headquarters in Paris; the Cultural Center of Le Havre, France; and the Mondadori headquarters in Milan.

He also designed the Strick House in Santa Monica— thought to be his only residential commission in the United States.

He will perhaps be best remembered for Brasilia, the bold project launched by Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek in 1956 in an effort to unify his vast country and move it forward half a century in a mere five years.

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John McAfee Detained by Guatemala Police

John McAfee was taken into police custody in Guatemala on Wednesday for being in the country illegally, police there have confirmed.

The McAfee Security founder had fled to Guatemala to avoid authorities in neighboring Belize, where he is wanted for questioning in the gunshot murder of his neighbor Greg Faull. McAfee has repeatedly claimed to be innocent. He was first reported detained by Robert King, a Vice photographer he was traveling with, who, oddly, likely contributed to McAfee’s capture.

On Monday, Vice published a story titled “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers” and inadvertently revealed McAfee’s whereabouts in Guatemala via location data embedded in the photo. McAfee and Vice photographer King both claimed the photo had been manipulated to conceal his true location.

McAfee later admitted that was a lie, and King’s Facebook status update claiming the photo was doctored disappeared. Wired emailed Vice’s Alex Detrick to ask if the publication stood by King’s statement, but Vice did not respond. However, on Tuesday, Vice published a new video of McAfee in Guatemala and claimed that he had “just hired the best lawyer in the country.” McAfee announced a press conference, and promised his new attorney the entire world media would show up. He was subsequently taken into custody by the Guatemala National Civil Police and Interpol.

On Wednesday, King reported Mcafee had been detained, which authorities in Guatemala subsequently confirmed. McAfee previously told Wired’s Joshua Davis he had dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache black to avoid detection. This seemed like obvious subterfuge, but appears to be the case based on his appearances on Vice, and in a photo published by the Guatemala National Civil Police following McAfee’s detention.

If you’re worried that McAfee might drop out of public sight now that he’s been captured, don’t be. He’s already jailblogging and plans to go ahead with the press conference.

Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired's Gadget Lab and the co-founder of the Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine.

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Grammys spread the love with 6 top nominees

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Grammy Awards celebrated the diversity of music as six different artists tied for lead nominee — Kanye West, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and fun.

Auerbach received five nominations as a member of the Keys and also is up for producer of the year, earning a spot with the others at the top of the list as the Grammy’s primetime television special came to his hometown Wednesday night.

“We’re speechless,” Auerbach said in a statement to The Associated Press from Germany, where he’s on tour with drummer Patrick Carney.

The rockers little resemble any of the other acts at the top of the list. The nominations for Jay-Z and West, two of hip-hop’s most important figures, is a familiar refrain. Each has routinely been at or near the top of the nominations list for the last several years.

Indie pop band fun., a featured performer during the show, aired live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on CBS, rode the success of its anthemic hit “We Are Young” featuring Janelle Monae to sweep of the major categories, earning nods for best new artist, song and record for “We Are Young” and album of the year for “Some Nights.” The band’s producer Jeff Bhasker is up for four nominations.

“When you call your band fun. with a period at the end of the sentence, you set a very high standard for yourself and for fun itself,” Taylor Swift, the concert’s co-host, said in introducing them. “Fortunately this band from New York has lived up to the name in the best possible way.”

R&B singer Ocean, whose mother was in attendance, made a bold social statement earlier this year when he noted he had a same-sex relationship in the liner notes of his new album “channel ORANGE,” and The Recording Academy rewarded him with the major nominations best new artist, record for “Thinkin Bout You” and album of the year.

And British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, which made an auspicious debut in front of an international audience during the 2011 Grammys, is up for album of the year for “Babel,” one of 2012′s best-selling releases.

Miguel, who helped Ocean shake up the R&B world this year, and jazz great Chick Corea join the Keys with five nominations apiece. Nas and recording engineer Bob Ludwig join Bhasker at four apiece.

There were no major snubs. Most of 2012′s inescapable hits are represented in some way — Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” is up for record of the year and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” garnered a song of the year nod. Drake, Rihanna and Nashville residents Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Jack White and best new artist nominee Hunter Hayes were among 16 nominees with three nods.

In many ways the nominations reflect a singles-driven year when no album rose to the level of acclaim as Adele’s “21″ or West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” which dominated the Grammys last February.

Rock, relegated to second stage in the era of electronic dance music, made something of a comeback, and young bands are peppered in with the nominees we’ve come to expect each year.

The best new artist category is a great example of this year’s diversity. From the minimalist R&B of Ocean, the pop-influenced sounds of fun. and Hayes, the soulful rock of Alabama Shakes and the Americana swing of The Lumineers, there’s little resemblance between the acts.

“I think people listen to a lot of types of music and Spotify has proven that, and iPod has proven that,” Lumineers member Wes Schultz said. “Radio stations don’t prove that. … Every person in that audience tonight, I saw them freaking out about various artists that have no relationship to each other.”

Alabama Shakes drummer Steve Johnson noted the diversity in the category after the show, then made a surprising statement: “If I were on the other side of the fence, I’d vote Frank Ocean personally.”

The members of fun. were “dorking it up” as they learned about their nominations, lead singer Nate Reuss said, and were especially excited to show up in the album of the year category, which also included Ocean’s major label debut, the Keys’ “El Camino,” Mumford’s “Babel” and White’s “Blunderbuss.”

“It’s been an incredible year in music,” guitarist Jack Antonoff said. “It feels like alternative music is back, looking at album of the year, especially those nominations. We couldn’t be more proud to be in there. … I think when we were sitting in our chairs out there, when we saw Jack White up there, that’s when we really pinched ourselves. We felt so honored to be in the same category.”

The 55th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 10 in Los Angeles. Trophies will be handed out in 81 categories.

The 5-year-old nominations show was held outside Los Angeles for the first time and showcased Music City for its growing role in the music industry. The Bridgestone Arena marked the largest venue the show has been held in and it may have been a dress rehearsal for a chance to host the main awards show sometime in the future.

LL Cool J returned as host, sharing duties with Swift, whose hit song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” earned a nod in the jam-packed record of the year category. She was joined by fun., Gotye, Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You),” The Black Keys‘ “Lonely Boy” and Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You.”

Song of the year nominees were Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team,” Miguel’s “Adorn,” Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” and fun.’s “We Are Young.”

Swift and LL Cool J opened the show by putting together a beat-box version of Swift’s hit “Mean.” Hayes displayed his versatility while announcing the best pop vocal album by singing snippets of each star’s hit song. Maroon 5 played headliner, singing three songs mid-show before finishing off the live broadcast. The group stuck around for an hourlong performance afterward for the crowd in attendance.

Assisted by Monae, fun. reimagined “We Are Young” with orchestral strings as the crowd sang along, Ne-Yo, in wine-colored bowler, kicked things up with a cadre of dancers on his new club-infused song “Let Me Love You.” And the show tipped its hat to Nashville with a salute to Johnny Cash by Dierks Bentley and The Band Perry.

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Online:

http://grammy.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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