With explanatory language that made it clear its judges didn't particularly favor anyone at all involved in this whole process, the CRB announced this week it will apply royalties to streaming net services based on revenue.

Though the royalty schemes themselves may not be exactly what streaming broadcasters asked for, especially with regard to its phraseology and methodology -- which makes corporate tax law look like an episode of "Sesame Street" by comparison -- the US Copyright Royalty Board published in its weekly news bulletin (dated Monday but released today) its revenue-based royalties schedules for online services that provide streaming music, online music stores that provide downloads, and ringtone services.

Continue reading →

As Facebook groans under a blizzard of forwards for the latest "25 Things You Didn't Know About Me" meme, a savvy observer suspects that we're all doing that project to keep our minds off the economy.

And based on photo evidence and the hideous 94.8% drop in net income, no one today needs a little mental break more than Sony. And so...

Continue reading →

Studio 3 Networks, a joint venture of three major production groups, revealed today that Epix -- the name for which it had filed multiple trademark applications in early December, will be a streaming on demand Web service.

Originally thought to be a premium television channel and companion on demand service, Studio 3 president Mark Greenberg said yesterday that it will actually be the other way around: a Web service with a cable channel planned for the future. Studio 3 is a joint venture of Viacom and Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios and United Artists, and Lionsgate Films.

Continue reading →

According to reports, President Obama has selected Google (and former Yahoo) group product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton as the country's first "Director of Citizen Participation."

Citizen Participation has been a key phrase in Obama's technological policy vernacular since the start of his campaign. From campaign literature: "Barack Obama will use the most current technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and promote citizen participation in government decision-making."

Continue reading →

[Photo credit: i-hacked.com]

PCs get compromised sometimes, and mobile phones, too. But now, in Texas, transportation officials are confirming an exploit against a different type of "device." Instead of proclaiming something like, "Road Closure," a digital sign in Austin was temporarily changed last week to say, "Zombies Ahead."

Continue reading →

It isn't the same measure as US Rep. Peter King's controversial camera phone bill, but Sen. Barbara Mikulski has now proposed other legislation also aimed at using technology to help thwart sexual predators. Specifically, Mikulski has added $50 million to the Economic Stimulus bill for "Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) initiatives.

The senator's plan calls for using federal investigators to "follow the trail of child pornography traffic back through the Internet to rescue children." Meanwhile, Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children (NAPC) -- a group that supports the proposal -- is referring to child rescue as an "economic stimulus" activity. "Law enforcement jobs are as important as bridge builders' jobs," he said in a statement today.

Continue reading →

Although details are evidently still non-existent, Apple has intimated that the next generation of its iPhone smartphone might be known as the iPhone 2.1

A look inside the Apple's iPhone 2.x Firmware has shown developers a clear reference to a hardware model dubbed the "iPhone2.1." The same iPhone 2.x Firmware also describes Apple's original iPhone as the "iPhone1.1" and the current iPhone 3G as the "iPhone1.2."

Continue reading →

With the theft of confidential resume information from the UK's version of Monster.com, Great Britain has now undergone its biggest data theft in history, according to The Times of London.

The data on job seekers stolen by hackers from Monster.co.uk included names, passwords, phone numbers, birth dates, and ethnicity, for example, the Web site admitted earlier this week. Registrations on the job site have soared with the rising layoffs of the economic downturn. In an earlier large data breach in the UK, the British government lost the details on 25 million child-benefit recipients in 2007.

Continue reading →

Although Apple's Macintosh environment has long been touted by its fans as "more secure" than Windows, a Trojan enabling remote control of Mac machines struck a second time this week.

Earlier found only in illegal copies of Apple's iWork Suite, the Trojan has now turned up in pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop for Mac OS X. Actually, the Trojan doesn't even exploit any OS vulnerability. Instead, it disguises itself as part of the installer package for the application, so it is installed along with the application. Once installed, the malware launches a back door program, thereby allowing an attacker to remotely conduct misdeeds such as copying data.

Continue reading →

With the advent of Apple's iPhone 3G, HTC's Android-based G1, and a lot of other smartphones, 2008 might look on the surface like a good year for this particular genre of mobile device. But that's only a half-truth, says a report released today by the ABI Research analyst group.

Smartphones sailed along for the first six months of 2008 with a 14% year-over-year (YOY) growth rate. But in the third quarter -- the months from July through September -- sales slowed to 8%. Then, in the fourth quarter, the statistics sank straight into the red, amounting to a 10% loss YOY.

Continue reading →

DDEX has announced digital music distributor The Orchard has become a charter member, and will deal with marketing and promotion standards in the Web 2.0 sector.

The Digital Data Exchange (DDEX) was formed in 2006 under the "big four" major label record companies Sony, Universal, Warner, and EMI with the purpose of creating a single set of standard XML messages for the digital media trade. By doing this, the information on album and video streams and sales would be easier for participating companies to exchange, simplifying the flow of money among them.

Continue reading →

In a special press conference this morning in Tokyo to update its financial condition, Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda literally looked ill. Associated Press cameras show Oneda physically struggling to present the news that final reports will likely show its net profit plunging as much as 95% annually in the quarter just ended.

"From the second half of September last year, there has been a sudden deterioration in the economy, and with the effects of foreign exchange it has had severe consequences on our business," the AP quotes Oneda as saying. A statement released to reporters at the same time read, "An operating loss was recorded due to factors such as the appreciation of the yen, deterioration of results at equity affiliates, slowdown of the global economy and intensified price competition."

Continue reading →

Ironically enough, ISPs Comcast and AT&T are reportedly supporting the RIAA's new three-strikes plan, a quietly emerging measure to thwart music pirating among US residents by disconnecting pirates from their ISPs.

Like music industry groups in Britain, France, and elsewhere, the US-based RIAA is now starting to abandon its previous policy of suing suspected pirates in favor of severing these users from the Internet.

Continue reading →

Video game giant Nintendo has adjusted its outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, and forecasts a 33% lower profit than previously expected.

Nintendo's financial reports today showed the great impact of large changes in exchange rates. As the Japanese yen sharply climbed in value, sales in the European and American markets dropped in value. This is evidence that even if sales are high, their mitigating effect on profits is substantially lessened by global currency exchange.

Continue reading →

This week, the publishers of U.S. News and World Report announced it's launching a publishing experiment that's been tried before: a weekly edition of its now-biweekly print news service in PDF format, for subscribers willing to pay about $20 per year.

Already, the concept has been given a lot of guff elsewhere on the Web. The prevailing word thus far appears to be that no one wants to pay for news any more, and why should they? Information, after all, "wants to be free."

Continue reading →