"The whole landscape has been basically sullied by litigators," said Wayne Rosso, former president of Grokster, who has been devising a new authorized online service called Mashboxx. "Most of the companies' resources are put into litigation instead of their core business, which is finding and marketing new fresh talent. Unless they start thinking differently, then I think the decline is going to keep going."

Album Sales Shift Back to a Decline

Satellite operator SES Global said its US division SES Americom has signed an agreement with BellSouth Corp to provide facilities for a trial of internet protocol television.

SES Americom wins order from BellSouth for IPTV trial

Rambus said yesterday that the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices had agreed to pay $75 million over five years to license Rambus technology for increasing the speed at which computer chips communicate with each other.

You'd think AMD would know better...

Rambus Seals $75 Million Licensing Deal

No doubt you've seen the BoingBoing article about Coldplay's incredible DRM-EULA requirements. Some thought it must be satire. Others thought it was just a regional issue, because the individual that posted the insert is in India. But it seems to be more widespread than that, judging from complaints I'm reading online from customers in other countries. So, I got intrigued, and I did a little digging. If you thought Digital Rights Management was just about protecting someone's Most Holy IP, take a look at what I found.

First, while many of you can read the terms from the photograph on Boing Boing, I don't think the blind or sight-impaired can, so here's what the Coldplay insert tells you the consumer must not do and might not be able to do with the CD:

Sheesh...

More DRM Follies - The Coldplay Edition

At this critical moment, the music industry needs to cultivate as many new customers as it can, not drive away potential ones by making the music inconvenient, restricted, or, even worse, invasive. But whatever the major labels continue to do, why do their tactics have to apply to the entire music catalog? Understandably, recorded music executives may be petrified by the free market forces that rule a capitalist economy, especially that it is one's customers that ultimately call the shots that shape any commercial marketplace.

Why DRM Everything?

INTEL is to spend $2 billion (£1.16 billion) on a global advertising campaign in 2006 which will see the technology group dump one of the world’s most famous logos.

The group, which is based in California, says that it needs a new look because it no longer wants to be seen as a business that only makes computer processors.

Intel wants to sell consumer electronics, wireless communications and healthcare. It also wants to create all kinds of chips and software, not just microprocessors.

Intel will spend $2bn on selling new look in 2006

Seagate Technology, the giant digital storage company, has reached a deal to acquire a rival, the Maxtor Corporation, for $1.9 billion in stock, the companies announced today.

Whoa! The consolidation continues. Now we're down to:

Seagate/Maxtor/Quantum/Conner/DEC
Hitachi/IBM
Western Digital
Fujitsu
Toshiba (laptops only, IIRC)
Samsung (a newcomer, I think -- I wonder if their disk business came from an acquisition. All of theirs looks low-end in any event).

Seagate Agrees to Buy Maxtor for $1.9 Billion

oracleOracle has switched to a new method of charging for its software, responding to growing criticism from customers that the sector has been slow to adapt to technologies that are changing the face of corporate computing.

Why don't they just go back to the good old Xerox solution to this: bolt a counter on the side of your server that ticks up the number of queries processed and you pay by the query. Even better: why not just make your server coin-op -- your ops people would have a huge bucket of quarters that they'd feed into it all day long!

Oracle revamps its software pricing

Once again, Apple's iPod is expected to be the hottest gift of the holiday season. That should be great news for the recording industry, right? After all, many of the 10 million or so new iPod owners surely will rush to Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL ) iTunes Music Store to load up on songs.

I think Apple has done far more than anyone else in the last few years to make the whole "content valuation" issue more confused. Not only do I have to pay $0.99 for a track no matter whether I listen to it once or every day but I have to pay $0.99 for it no matter if it was recorded in 1955 or 2005.

Everyone's asking the wrong question: "how can we force people to pay for music?" having missed the bigger, fundamental question: "what's a sensible system for valuing music?"

Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday copy protection issues would delay the Japan launch of the first players supporting its HD DVD format, the latest development in the high-stakes battle for the next generation of video discs.

The electronics industry needs to realize that copy protection breeds FUD spontaneously and it is strangling them.

Toshiba to Delay HD DVD Player Launch