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Grey matter shuffle
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are to make lectures by well-known academics available through Apple's iTunes.…
Hollywood gets its wish
RealNetworks has been forced to shut down sales of its DVD copying software, RealDVD, while a California judge decides if it violates US copyright laws.…
Download a book, save a tree
If you’d like to lose yourself in an e-book, but don’t want the expense or inconvenience of a large Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, then hopefully Vodafone's latest idea will keep you reading.…
Buzzword Bingo
Cheer up, EMI investors. The company's "incoming brain" is focussed on "the niches". That's the inspiring message from EMI's new head of digital strategy, Cory Ondrejka.…
Farewell David Pakman
David Pakman, CEO of eMusic, will leave the subscription service at the end of the year. Pakman explained his departure on Monday, and yesterday disclosed that his next destination would be VC firm Venrock.…
El Reg infiltrates the UK's top cultural jaw-jaw
Reader Offer Next Thursday, 9 October at 7pm, our very own Andrew Orlowski will be tackling the perennial issue of digital piracy - live and dangerous at the highbrow Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.…
iTunes shutdown threats no more
Apple's fight against paying songwriters has ended in a stalemate today.…
Comes With Music comes with indies - and a price
Few music business people expect Nokia's unlimited free music giveaway to be repeated, or even last very long. There simply aren't enough large consumer companies prepared to take such an expensive gamble.…
Time's up for timeless UI design
C0mm3nt Shares in United Airlines crashed last month, and trading in the stock was suspended, after a glitch in the Google Matrix.…
Overstock's Byrne vindicated amidst economic meltdown
Two and a half years ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne penned an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, warning that widespread stock manipulation schemes - including abusive naked short selling - were threatening the health of America's financial markets. But it wasn't published.…
Blue sky thinking
ITV is trialling technology to allow advertisers to insert logos within video footage - in empty spaces such as sky, walls or fences.…
Bringing Nothing To The Party: Cleaning up the net, one satirical vigilante page at a time
Book extract As the second dot com boom hove into view, journalist and self-confessed "arrogant little shit" Paul Carr decided he wanted in. Armed with several years of insider knowledge, very little money and a new suit, he and a motley band of believers took a running jump into the internet. Nothing could go wrong. Well, not much.…
Threat to silence iTunes
Remember how the digital music revolution was supposed to tip the balance away from big record companies, and towards the people who actually create the music? A vignette being played out behind closed doors suggests that digital music companies are only too keen to ally with Big Music when it comes to screwing creators.…
DoJ suits out, White House czar in
The US House of Representatives on Sunday passed a bill heavily backed by the recording industry that would create an intellectual property enforcement czar position in the White House as well as significantly increase penalties for IP infringement.…
Allows negotiations until 2009
A law that could save internet radio stations from having to make payouts they claim will cripple them has been approved by the US House of Representatives and is expected to pass into law.…
Big splash for Big Music
MySpace Music, the ambitious new joint venture between the major record labels and News Corporation, has finally gone live. Don't let the name mislead you - the only thing it has in common with the scrappy ethos of the original "MySpace" is the name.…
Why it never went Blu?
Erstwhile HD DVD heavyweight Toshiba has forecast the end of consumer optical media, and is to develop a series of set-top boxes and portable players all fed with digital content sold on SD card instead.…
Judge slams 'oppressive' $220,000 damages award
The judge in Jammie Thomas' challenge to her landmark $220,000 fine for sharing music over KaZaa has declared a mistrial, forcing yet another court case.…
Will this lobby fly?
There's a new lobby group in town - but unusually, this one unites traditional adversaries from tech, telecoms, and media companies. Backers include the American Songwriters Guild representing creators, Microsoft, Cisco, and AT&T, and media companies including Viacom and NBC. Everyone but Google, it seems.…
On demand radio shows
The BBC has confirmed that its radio programmes can now be accessed on-demand through the iPhone and iPod Touch.…
Auto-generated bad taste
Publishers must take responsibility for the suitability of published adverts, even if the ads are chosen by an automated system like Google's AdSense, the advertising regulator has said.…
Six OiNK accused in court today
Cleveland Police, the force that will today bring six people to court for alleged involvement in the OiNK BitTorrent network, does not pay licensing fees to legally play music in its canteens, it has emerged.…
Buy music on preloaded Micro SD
SanDisk has launched a new flavour of storage across Europe and the US: Micro SD cards with DRM-free music already loaded.…
Multiple personality face stealer suspended
Exclusive Web 2.0, the believers say, gives a voice to everyone and their brother. But that's only part of the story. Truth be told, the net's second coming gives a voice to everyone and their brother and all their alter egos.…
Indies call foul at exclusion
Special Report News Corporation and the major record labels are facing antitrust questions about the blockbuster MySpace Music venture - even before the site has launched.…
Not a main configuration, claims Apple
Exclusive Apple has confirmed the existence of a 4GB fourth-generation iPod Nano, following the appearance of mysterious pictures online.…
Charmer
Ahead of the launch of their fourth album next week, bogo-hillbilly, hipster-sensitive, indie-rock brotherhood Kings of Leon have hit out at freetards for failing to repay them for their toil.…
On serfs, fanbois and bandits
British digital music company 7Digital claimed a coup yesterday by becoming the first online music store to carry DRM-free catalog from the "Big Four" major record labels. Calling it a coup is misleading, however. It's really further confirmation that the top of the music business is run along feudal lines: closer to the 12th century than the 21st.…
'We don't need no stinkin' iTunes'
Computer and entertainment companies have announced a plan to standardise video and music files so that they play on any device. The ambitious plan has not been backed by the dominant force in digital downloads, Apple.…
(Show your US ID card at the door)
Internet Movie Database, the popular film and TV reference website owned by Amazon.com, has begun showing free streaming movies and television episodes for users in the United States.…
Obsessives won't get early access
The much-anticipated Warhammer online launches Thursday, with those who pre-ordered the game getting access from Monday. But the true obsessives who bought the Collectors Edition had access from Sunday - as long as they didn't buy it from HMV.…
Retailer fancies 'platform'
Napster's board has unanimously accepted a takeover bid from US retail behemoth Best Buy, worth $120m. Thus ends a bumpy four-year ride as an independent company.…
Baidu versus business
Exclusive Baidu is renowned as China’s glittering internet success story, and as the start-up that gave Google a bloody nose. It dominates the web in the world’s second biggest economy with 70 per cent market share, and on Wall Street carries a market cap of almost $12bn.…
TV and broadband offer eaten by watchdog
Sky today said it had put its planned terrestrial pay TV product "Picnic" on ice, blaming Ofcom's glacial decision-making.…
Flac and MP3 supported
If you prefer Bach to the Beastie Boys and Mozart to Madonna, then you’ll be pleased to hear that an iTunes rival’s been created that panders only to the desires of classical music fans.…
Uploaders to be hauled before the beak, too
Cleveland police have charged Alan Ellis, the former administrator of the defunct BitTorrent tracker site OiNK.cd, with conspiracy to defraud the record industry.…
Bundles music with phones
Sony Ericsson is imitating market leader Nokia and will bundle "free" music with its handsets, the FT claims today.…
Fans suffer as lawyers get rich
Opinion Lala, for those who don't know, is a free streaming music venture. Invested in by Warner Music group to the tune of $20m it streams about five million songs, but also offers 89 cent MP3 sales, and song rentals for 10 cents each. But why is almost nobody using their well-designed, expansive, free streaming service?…
More papers, more ads
Google is redoubling efforts to offer a digital archive of the world's newspapers.…
Ogg-based MXP4 debuts
Parisian technology company Musinaut has introduced what it hopes will be the digital music successor to the MP3 format.…
Music lover floors Oasis guitar-botherer
A fan at the V Festival in Toronto has posted on YouTube entertaining footage of Noel Gallagher taking an unscheduled tumble during a performance of Morning Glory:…
Software to support downloading as well as streaming
Hot on the heels of Nokia’s N96 launch announcement, the BBC has confirmed that it’ll soon offer a purpose-built iPlayer application to N96 users.…
Who does what?
Mostly harmless internet TV start-up Joost has decided to abandon its proprietory P2P application in favour of delivering video to browsers.…
Pakman eats dots, avoids ghosts
The boss of Apple’s iTunes nearest rival eMusic has warned that recent deals struck between the music industry and UK internet providers could threaten the existence of legal sites.…
Comes With Music comes with old 5310
Nokia has said its Comes With Music free song download service is coming to the UK. The only snag: you’ll have to buy a phone that’s more than 12 months old.…
And getting the wrong guy
Exclusive Tiscali threatened to disconnect a customer for illegally downloading a TV show last week, after receiving a copyright infringement notice from a Hollywood studio. The only problem was the customer had quit the ISP months before the alleged transgression was made.…
Kazaa user destroyed evidence
Good grief, people. As things are, we'll never have to pay for recorded music ever again. Getting free music online is as easy as picking up five pound notes in the street (when no one's watching) - and the chances of facing a fine range from minimal to non-existent.…
Court boots Veoh suit, steels DMCA
Much to Google's delight, a federal judge has dismissed a porn infringement suit brought against online video site Veoh.com.…
Olympic delay for iPlayer tweak
BBC engineers have solved a mysterious, long-running bug that has meant iPlayer and live TV streams have frequently prompted the BT Home Hub, UK's most common router, to reset itself.…
Chinese Democracy, American Extremism
The FBI has arrested a 27-year-old American blogger for leaking some unreleased Guns N' Roses tunes to the internet.…