Music legends sue concert video site

A super group of music legends - LedZeppelin, Santana, The Grateful Dead and The Doors - have got their legal sights on Wolfgang's Vault. This is a website that specialises in streaming live concert performances from the 1960s and 70s. The groups are suing the site on the basis that it is has no right to offer the recordings, which are also used to stimulate sales of T-shirts and other memorabilia. ...more

Microsoft guards access to interfaces against Free Software

Microsoft is taking a clever slant on its obligations under the EU ruling. While it is publishing its software interfaces - the information developers need to ensure their products interoperate properly with Microsoft's - it is doing so under a licence that bans the subsequent publishing of that information as Free Software. It is making it even more troublesome for companies that release software under Free Software licences, such as the GNU General Public Licence used for the Linux kernel, by fixing a 'per user' royalty payment within the agreement. ...more

Toshiba launches cost-conscious Pocket PC

Toshiba's 300Mhz Pocket PC e330 comes in at ?349 including VAT For a 64Mb PDA running Intel's new PXA250 chip clocked at 300Mhz and Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002, that's a lot of bangs for your bucks. 64Mb iPaqs typically retail for nearer the ?400 mark. Connectivity comes in the form of an SD slot, infra-red and USB. ...more

Murdoch unveils video plans for MySpace.com

Rupert Murdoch plans to begin selling video downloads through his recently acquired MySpace.com. The News Corp boss told a technology and media conference in Arizona that there will be 'millions of downloads a day probably'. ...more

Axe hangs over Euro copyright levy

The EU is poised to save consumer electronics firms hundreds of millions of Euros by cutting copyright levies on a range of products. The levy was introduced in the 1960s and was designed to compensate copyright holders for the emergence of new devices such as photocopiers and cassette recorders that facilitated widespread private copying for the first time. But according to an internal European Commission document seen by the Financial Times, the EU is concerned that the national collecting societies, which manage the levy, have extended it too far, applying it to devices such as portable music and DVD players. ...more