If you are an Amazon Prime Video user, get ready to see ads on movies and TV shows starting next month.
Prime will include ads beginning on Jan. 29, the company said in an email to U.S. members this week, setting a date for an announcement it made back in September. Prime members who want to keep their movies and TV shows ad-free will have to pay an additional $2.99.
Amazon is also planning to include advertisements in its Prime service in the United Kingdom and other European countries, as well as Canada, Mexico and Australia next year.
The tech giant follows other major streamers –- such as Netflix and Disney –- who have embraced a dual model that allows them to earn revenue from ads and also offer subscribers the option to opt out with a higher fee.
Amazon said in its email that it will "aim to have meaningfully fewer ads" than traditional TV and other streaming providers.
The ads, the company said, "will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time."
Supreme Court declines to hear appeal from singer R. Kelly, convicted of child sex crimes
The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal Monday from the singer R. Kelly, who is now serving 20 years in prison after being convicted of child sex convictions in Chicago.
The Grammy Award-winning R&B singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, was found guilty in 2022 of three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex.
His lawyers argued that a shorter statute of limitations on child sex crime prosecutions should have applied to offenses dating back to the 1990s. Current law permits charges while an accuser is still alive.
The justices did not detail their reasoning in declining to hear the case, as is typical. And none publicly dissented. Lower courts previously rejected his arguments.
Federal prosecutors have said the video showed Kelly abusing a girl. The accuser identified only as Jane testified that she was 14 when the video was taken.
Kelly has also appealed a separate 30-year sentence for federal racketeering and sex trafficking convictions in New York.
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