The Beatles’ catalog of music will be soon be offered for download, according to Neil Aspinall, the head of Apple Corps Ltd.

‚ÄúAll 13 core albums, the ones originally released on CD in 1987, have been remastered,” Aspinall FOX News. “At some point they will all be released, probably at the same time.‚Äù

But the film Let It Be remains in DVD purgatory, Aspinall says. “The film was so controversial when it first came out. When we got halfway through restoring it, we looked at the outtakes and realized: this stuff is still controversial. It raised a lot of old issues.”

Many expect that the Beatles will soon be in iTunes.

Apple Inc, formerly Apple Computers, and The Beatles‚Äô company Apple Corps recently announced that they had entered into a new agreement concerning the use of the name ‚ÄúApple‚Äù and apple logos, giving Apple Inc worldwide rights to the “Apple” name.

iPod Mondays are a thing of the past at Des Moines, Iowa’s The Lift bar.

Apple asked The Lift’s iPod Mondays organizer Clint Curtus to stop using the name ‚ÄúiPod Monday‚Äù. For two years, Curtis has organized the weekly event, where iPod fans can get together and be share their music favorites. Curtis also created a site and podcast for the iPod Monday event.

Curtis was notified by Apple’s Pete Alcorn that “Apple has determined that your product name, which incorporates the word ‘iPod’, violates Apple’s trademark guidelines.”

Curtis has posted a farewell letter to fans of the weekly event:

First I’d like to take care of some business for my last post as the Curator of iPod Monday and then maybe tell a quick story. If I were at the Lift right now and each and every one of you were there I would stand up with raised rocks glass (with a pinch of Scotch) and say: Thank you so much, each and every one of you, for attending, for supporting, and even thinking about coming down one day (I know there will be a few out there that say, “Damn! I wish I would have gone when I had the chance.”) But alas, all great things must come to an end.

It’s strange, I had no idea what would happen when I started this thing but I must say I was surprised. I met the greatest people (in my book) and they are, like me, music fanatics. We lovers of notes and melodies and words and sounds and beats are not afraid to speak our mind; to say,“This sucks. Next!” and “Who is this? I like this. Where are these guy’s from?” I think I’ve met the greatest people in Des Moines in the last 2 years (and even a few just traveling through). I remember one guy in particular, this guy who had just up and left his band right in the middle of a tour and somehow ended up at the Lift for a drink or 2 before catching a Greyhound out of town, this great city of ours, in the middle of the Heartland, Des Moines, Iowa, I’d kiss you if it were possible to kiss a city.

And thank you, to you, my dear readers, for putting up with my nonsensical, stream of conscious rants and every once in a while, firing off an angry email to me. Don’t you know a lot of times I’m just trying to rile you up?

While Apple is calling for an end to DRM, and some record labels are considering distributing digital music without DRM, Microsoft is introducing a new DRM technology.

Microsoft PlayReady is designed to enable a broad spectrum of business models such as subscription, rental, pay-per-view, preview and super-distribution, which can be applied to many digital content types and a wide range of audio and video formats. Content types supported include music, video, games, ring tones and images. Audio/video formats supported include Windows Media Audio ( WMA ), AAC/AAC+/HE-AAC, Windows Media Video ( WMV ), and H.264. Microsoft PlayReady is designed to make it easier for people to move content between devices, making DRM’d content less restrictive. This technology will be available in the first half of 2007 for handset and device implementation.

Microsoft may have a hard time selling the new technology, though, given the increase interest in DRM-free media, and the fact that the company dumped support for PlaysForSure DRM technology in its own portable media player, the Zune.

CNET News reports that YouTube has removed videos posted to the site by blogging firm Gawker Media, many of which featured clips from top TV shows that appeared between advertisements for Gawker’s blogs.

More than 50 clips were removed, and the YouTube user account “belowtheradar,” employed by Gawker to post the videos was deactivated sometime over the weekend, according to Lockhart Steele, Gawker Media’s managing editor.

Some copyright owners said that Gawker was using their material without permission. Entertainment lawyers predicted that Gawker would have a hard time justifying the use of copyright material to promote its Web sites. Since October, the company has posted clips from such shows as The Colbert Report and Good Morning America at YouTube. The videos were also embedded on Gawker’s blogs.
Gawker Media is a publisher of several popular gossip blogs, including Valleywag, which covers Silicon Valley,  Gawker, which focuses on New York City gossip, and Fleshbot, a blog about sex and pornography.

Nokia has announced that it is bringing bringing YouTube videos into the hands of Nokia Nseries multimedia computer owners. YouTube videos are accessible with Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map through the new YouTube mobile site to be launched shortly. Also, YouTube video RSS feeds can now be consumed through the new Nokia Video Center application.

“We are thrilled to be giving users easy access to entertaining YouTube videos anytime and anywhere. By partnering with an industry leader like Nokia, we’re able to bring YouTube videos to mobile phone users worldwide,” said Steve Chen, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer for YouTube.

“We are extremely excited to be able to announce YouTube as one of our first global partners in bringing internet videos easily to our Nokia Nseries owners,” said Harri M√§nnist√∂, Director, Multimedia, Nokia. “The addition of the enhanced internet video experience is a logical continuation of the wide range of internet experiences available on Nokia Nseries multimedia computers covering already for example photo and video uploading and sharing, music discovery as well as search and navigation.”

MediaWeek reports that podcasting is poised for a major growth spurt in ad dollars.

That’s according to a report to be released by eMarketer this week, which predicts that spending on podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from $80 million in 2006 to $400 million market in 2011.

eMarketer analyst James Belcher is betting that a familiar Web power player will spark much of that growth: Google. Belcher expects that by 2008, the company will develop a version of AdSense that can be easily adapted to podcasts, making adding advertising to podcasts as easy as incorporating AdSense ads into blogs.

“That should help grow the market,” he said.

Despite a relatively small base of users, podcasting represents an attractive medium, given its targeting, its low cost and its passionate user base, according to the report. “These people constitute an excellent media target,” Belcher said. “It’s a self-selecting medium. These people are into it, and they’re really into it.”

The Canadian fight over whether or not iPod purchases should include a “music tax” is back.

Canadian music industry representatives are re-opening an old debate about MP3 players that could see the average price of the devices climb by as much as $75. The Canadian Private Copying Collective, an association of composers, recording artists, publishers, and record labels is asking the Copyright Board of Canada to re-introduce a controversial extra fee into the sale price of MP3 players in Canada.

David Basskin, a member of the CCPC’s board of directors, said it’s time artists be compensated for the copying of their files onto the digital devices.

“We’d all like lots of things to be free,” said David Basskin, a member of the CCPC’s board of directors. “But those who create the music deserve to be compensated. When you go and buy an iPod, the retailer gets paid. So you can’t say that the people who make the music should get a free ride.”

The effort on the part of the CPCC comes just over two years after the Federal Court of Appeal struck down a similar levy attached to the price of the hard drives of MP3 players. At the time, these didn’t fall into the category of “audio recording media” because, unlike CDs and cassettes, they can’t be separated from the device that plays the sound on them. Under current legislation, the Copyright Board isn’t allowed to place a levy on a playing device like a CD or tape player.

via Canada.com

Lionsgate and Apple today announced that movies from Lionsgate will be available for purchase and download on the iTunes Store starting today. iTunes customers will be able to purchase blockbuster Lionsgate films like Terminator 2, LA Story, Basic Instinct, The Blair Witch Project, Dirty Dancing and more than 150 movies.

“We’re delighted to offer these incredibly popular Lionsgate films on iTunes, and look forward to adding even more films in the future,” said Steve Beeks, president of Lionsgate. “iTunes lets users download these wonderful films to watch on their computer, TV or iPod, so movie fans can take their favorite Lionsgate films with them anywhere.”

Vlogger Nick Gisburne, below, has been banned YouTube for posting a video slide show of quotations from the Qur’an. The censorship of Gisburne’s videos raises issues about what is appropriate content and whether YouTube and other sites will allow open discussion of religion and other topics.

Here’s Gisburne’s explanation of the situation:

via Xooglers

MySpace today announced that it has implemented a pilot program to block videos containing unauthorized copyrighted content from being posted in its community. With the program’s launch, MySpace becomes the largest Internet video site filtering content.

Using digital fingerprinting technology licensed from Audible Magic, MySpace’s filter screens video uploaded by users and blocks any video matching a fingerprint in MySpace’s database.

“MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community,‚Äù said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. ‚ÄúFor MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.‚Äù