Google claims that its Book Search settlement will “bring back to life millions of lost books in a way that serves the interest of all.” And if that truly is its goal, the company is going to have to put its own Brobdingnagian self interests second to those of others–if only for a little while. To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing.
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With its speech synthesizers, brain current-operated controls and solar power source, the device described in Monec Holding’s patent–“electronic device, preferably an electronic book”–would seem to have little in common with Apple’s iPhone. Still, it is a “light-weight” electronic device with a “touch-screen” and “a power source.” And these days, that’s enough file suit over…
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A song purchased from iTunes or Amazon is no different from one bought from a brick-and-mortar retail outlet, despite the vast differences in the economies of distribution between the two. That, in a nutshell, was the jury verdict handed down in a case brought by rapper Eminem’s former production company, FBT Productions, against Universal Music Group.
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A two-year-old lawsuit against Universal Music Group over digital music royalties finally landed in court this week and its outcome could have a profound effect on the digital music business. Filed by rapper Eminem’s former production company, FBT Productions, the suit accuses Universal of underpaying artists for sales of their work through online services like iTunes, and seeks about $1.3 million in unpaid royalties.
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Talk about life imitating The Onion … Apparently the recording industry’s institutional memory is about as solid as its crumbling business model. As recently as 2007 it was paying radio stations to play its music. Today, it’s accusing them of pirating it.
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If Bono is U2’s geopolitical pragmatist, the band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, is its neo-Luddite. At the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness slagged broadband Internet service providers, accusing them of aiding and abetting music piracy while CD sales and royalty payments to musicians plunge.
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Seems AOL and Yahoo were a bit off on their estimates of the back royalties they owe music composers, writers and publishers for streaming their work over the Internet. The two companies had proposed paying just $632,879 and $889,402, respectively, in 2006 royalites to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Yesterday, a federal [...]
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Microsoft (MSFT) made a “significant” company announcement this morning, one thankfully unrelated to its bid for the much diminished Yahoo (YHOO) Inc.
But what is there for the software giant to talk about these days other than Yahoo, really? Why that old saw, software interoperability, of course. In a statement issued this morning, the software giant [...]
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The Recording Industry Association of America demands damages of $150,000 per song for file-sharing infringements, yet it pays the artists who create those songs pennies for their work. And now it wants to pay them even less.
The RIAA and its online counterpart, the Digital Media Association, have petitioned the Copyright Royalty Board to slash the [...]
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Note: John Paczkowski is on vacation and won’t be writing or posting videos until he returns Monday. To keep you abreast of tech news while he’s away, we’re compiling a daily digest of 10 must-read tech stories. We’re calling it the Tech 10 and it appears below.
- Music to their ears: SoundExchange, the recording-industry group that has been in a protracted battle with Internet radio companies, has reached a deal with them on royalties. The Associated Press reports that SoundExchange would cap fees at $50,000 a year for Webcasters offering more than 100 channels–down considerably from the much higher per-channel tax it had sought to impose.
- Playing catch-up with YouTube, Yahoo plans to revamp its video portal. Miguel Helft of the New York Times writes that Yahoo will consolidate the Internet site’s somewhat messy video interface into a more interactive one enabling users to view and share videos and compile playlists. Of the plans, Helft quotes Mike Folgner, general manager of Yahoo Video: “We’re going to make it a more cohesive experience. Video is going to be everywhere on Yahoo.”
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Bet that $6-per-handset settlement Broadcom offered Qualcomm back in June is looking pretty good to the chip-maker right now. Yesterday, the Bush administration let stand the International Trade Commission ban on the import of devices using Qualcomm chips found to infringe on Broadcom patents.
“After extensive review, DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has [...]
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Looks like the Day of Silence protest staged by Web radio outlets on June 26 isn’t going to become the daily event many had feared.
At least not yet. Internet broadcasters will not have to start paying sharply higher royalties next week, though the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., yesterday refused to halt the [...]
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