Here is another movie-related story (or a continuation of the same story) about YouTube rights abuses, with implications for all electronic forms of physical media (including e-books). In a follow-up to yesterday’s story about Universal’s allegedly fraudulent takedown of a Megaupload promotional video, Torrentfreak reports Megaupload has instructed its legal team to file suit against Universal over the matter. (One of my friends noted that, if Universal really did do what Megaupload accuses, it should also be liable for criminal charges of perjury.) It will be interesting to see what happens. Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow’s latest column in the...

Apparently Google has gotten fed up over the failure of the settlement talks in the copyright lawsuits over Google Books, because it has begun to move toward actually litigating the case. An article in TechWorld notes Google has notified Judge Denny Chin that it plans to file a motion to ask that parts of the 2005 copyright infringement lawsuit and a related 2010 lawsuit be dismissed. [Judge Chin] set a deadline of Dec. 23 for Google to file the dismissal motions. The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions, and Google...

This past week, Google launched its new Flipboard-alike Currents app, but Flipboard hasn’t been standing still either. The company launched a scaled-down version of its iPad reader app for the iPhone. (Alas, it requires at least OS 4.0, so it won’t run on my first-generation iPod Touch—not that I’m really surprised.) The app proved to be so popular that the added demand took down Flipboard’s servers for a while after its release. (Something similar happened after the original iPad app was released.) I suspect Flipboard may not have too much to worry about from Currents just yet. Meanwhile, cloud...

About a year ago, I mentioned Google’s decision to stop active development on Google Wave, and the Apache Foundation’s subsequent move to take ownership. More recently, Google announced it will shut Wave down entirely in April 2012. Wired’s Webmonkey column reports that Apache’s efforts with Wave are now available in the form of “Wave in a Box”, a standalone client/server application that replicates the Wave experience. Wave in a Box consists of two parts, a standalone wave server and a web client. The Wave in a Box web client looks a bit different than...

Google today released the complete source code to Android version 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the version that will ship with the Galaxy Nexus. The code includes a build target for compiling the OS for the Galaxy Nexus, and other device configurations will be added later. The code tree includes the source code for Honeycomb, as well, though Google would prefer people to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich now. This release will be helpful for those who want to develop software for the Android, as well as those who would like to port it to various other devices that do...

CNet has a story about a new self-publishing company with an interesting business model. Hyperink is based in San Francisco and funded by a venture capital fund founded by Huffington Post chairman and co-founderKenneth Lerer. It plans to commission and publish books based on obscure, niche-specific topics (such as “How to start a mommy blog”) that currently rank high in Google search results. The company uses freelance journalists as ghostwriters, who interview experts and then write that expert advice up into books. The authors can write a book in less than a month, and keep up to 50% of...

Google seems to be sneaking Google+ into everything lately. A couple of days ago it announced it would be integrating Google+ with Google Reader (which worries me a little bit given how much I use Google Reader to try to track down interesting stories to post about here), and TechCrunch also noticed that some users are seeing “Add to circles” buttons showing up on search results that feature blog posts or news articles. The idea seems to be that if you find an interesting blog post or article, you can add its author to your circles and be notified...

It is not surprising that some of the more popular tablets have also proven to be some of the most restrictive. Jailbreaking the iPad is a popular pastime, of course, and one of the reasons the Nook has sold so well is that it has been so readily rootable, changing it from a relatively restricted color e-reader to a full-fledged, fully-functional Android tablet. Barnes & Noble has been notably hands-off in response to the rooting—unlike Apple, it has not engaged in an arms race to prevent it. And now it looks like Amazon is going to be following in...

I’m not sure I follow this story, but if it’s true it could be important for the burgeoning Android device market. The blog Paris Lemon points to a story that’s been buried under today’s spate of Kindle news: Microsoft just issued a press release concerning a patent portfolio cross-licensing partnership it just signed with Samsung. Included in the press release is the sentence, “Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform.” Paris Lemon points out that this means that of the three major Android OEMs,...

Google is implementing a new “standout” meta tag for use with the US version of Google News. News organizations can use this tag to indicate articles by themselves or others that they feel are especially newsworthy. The idea is that they slip it into the headers of articles they feel are among their best work, and those articles may end up with a “featured” label on Google News. News organizations are asked to use the tag no more than seven times per week on their own content. However, they can use it as many times as they want in...

Sometimes it seems Apple’s 30% royalty rate has become just one of those facts of life. Nobody has had much luck trying to talk Apple out of it; even companies as large as Amazon have ended up having to pull their in-app store links. But a consortium of French publications seem to expect they’ll have better luck. Reuters reports that eight such publications, ostensibly “fierce competitors” under normal circumstances, have put aside their differences and are trying to negotiate with Apple. The papers want a reduction in the 30% commission rate, and also access to customer data,...

The Bookseller reports that three French publishers who had previously sued Google over unauthorized digitization of their books as part of its Google Books plan have failed to file the case by a September 6th deadline. The article speculates that they may be on the verge of reaching an agreement with Google similar to the one Hachette Livre entered into last year. A French publishers’ association and authors’ association also filed suit against Google at the same time as Hachette and fellow publisher La Martinère (which also settled) did, and have not said whether they also plan to drop...