snapshot 5/1/08

Federal judge sets formula for Internet music royalties
A federal court on Wednesday established a formula for determining the Internet royalties owed to thousands of music composers, writers and publishers by three major online services — Yahoo Inc., AOL and RealNetworks Inc. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers hailed the decision, estimating the guidelines could yield as much as $100 million in payments covering a seven-year period ending in 2009.


Apple's iTunes sells movies on DVD release date
Apple Inc (AAPL.O) said on Thursday it would begin selling movie downloads on its iTunes service on the same day as the titles are released in DVD form, under an agreement with top Hollywood studios.


Creative admits it exaggerated MP3 player capacities, pays up in class-action settlement
Couldn't fit those last two Oingo Boingo albums on your Zen when you thought you had enough space? Get ready for payback, because if you own a Creative Labs MP3 player made between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008, you could be entitled to a class-action settlement over this very issue. The settlement -- not the first of its kind -- will force Creative to "make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its hard disc drive MP3 players" and give a 50% discount on a new 1GB player or 20% off any item purchased at Creative's online store.


Apple enables movie purchasing on Apple TV
Following this morning’s announcement that new movies from all the major studios will be made available for purchase on the iTunes Store on the same day as their DVD release, Apple has quietly updated the Apple TV’s movie browsing and renting system to allow for the purchase of movies directly from the device. In addition to the ability to purchase films, a “Top Sellers” category, showing the current most popular movie purchases, has been added to the top of the “Top Movies” menu. Apple has previously shown the ability to make live updates to the Apple TV’s iTunes Store sub-menus without the need for a full system update.