As part of a ploy to squeeze more money out of mobile phone companies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law.

ASCAP argues, phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users’ copyright infringement. In an amicus brief filed Wednesday, EFF points out that copyright law does not reach public performances “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage.”

“This is an outlandish argument from ASCAP,” said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann.

“Are the millions of people who have bought ringtones breaking the law if they forget to silence their phones in a restaurant? Under this reasoning from ASCAP, it would be a copyright violation for you to play your car radio with the window down!”

ASCAP has responded by saying that it does not plan to charge mobile phone users, just mobile phone service providers. No doubt that cost would be passed along to mobile phone users.

“Because it is legal for consumers to play music in public, it’s also legal for my mobile phone carrier to sell me a ringtone and a phone to do it,” said von Lohmann. “Otherwise it would be illegal to sell all kinds of technologies that help us enjoy our fair use, first sale, and other copyright privileges.”

The app (short for application) launched earlier in June keeps up an ever-steady stream of status updates that can keep pace with any Facebook-happy teen. The updates are typically political in nature—like “Watch, discuss, and engage with Van Jones of CEQ on Green Jobs,” rather than (fictional) “Obama Eats Cheerios for Breakfast.” But, to get a more personal look at the life of the First Family in the White House, the app provides “Photos” which reveal impromptu shots of Obama jogging down the hall with the First Puppy or tipping his chair back on two legs during a meeting.

Keep up with White House happenings by clicking on the “Events” tabs. A generous stream of commentary is available on the “Notes” tab, and the “Video” box always has something interesting to display. The White House Facebook app is a one-stop-shop for all your White House news.

The app has a friendly feel to it. Not a lot of ranting and raving, although there is room for friendly discourse. So far, the White House has well over 260,000 fans, and more are joining daily. The White House fosters a strong sense of community, as members “like this,” (Facebook’s version of a thumbs-up), others comment on a status update, and more fans give feedback on every topic imaginable. For example, 3,813 people have indicated that they like Obama’s pictures. 934 people have made comments on the photos. Friendly banter like “My dog can beat up your dog” (comment posted on a photo of Bo, the Obama’s dog) lace the comment feed. Other approving remarks like “great team!! Your the best Pres ever!!! luv u Rahmbo” are posted for all the world to see.

Unlike his predecessors, Obama keeps up a rapid stream of popular-level interaction. Admittedly, social media venues were not as available to past presidents as they are today. News, networking, discussion, commentary, and information from this administration can be found on virtually any media outlet today. The new White House App rounds out the following list:

http://www.whitehouse.gov
http://flickr.com/whitehouse
http://twitter.com/whitehouse
http://myspace.com/whitehouse
http://vimeo.com/whitehouse
http://youtube.com/whitehouse
http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive/

Leading social news site, Digg, is aiming to do for advertising what they’ve done for news with the introduction of Digg Ads.

Advertising on Digg will take on a new twist once the latest format is out of the pilot stage. Users of the social news site will be introduced to Digg Ads. The ads take on the guise of user-submitted content, and slot nicely into place without jarring, but are clearly marked as sponsored messages.

The twist is that Digg users can vote on the ads - choosing to Digg or Bury them - as with Digg’s usual content. Not only should this format provide site users with more relevant advertising, it can also provide advertisers with real-time feedback on the performance of their messages.

“With Digg Ads, we have two key objectives: to provide advertisers a more effective way to reach consumers, and to provide the voting community of Digg users with a more dynamic, relevant advertising experience,” wrote Mike Maser, Chief Strategy Officer for Digg, on the company blog.

Advertisers will be charged based on the popularity of the ads. The more an ad is Dugg the less the advertiser is charged and the more an ad is Buried the more the advertiser is charged until priced out of the system, explained Maser.

However, as Zee Cane of London-based marketing agency WeDoCreative points out, Digg may have a few stumbling blocks ahead. “Aside from potential competitors burying ads, they’ll need to deal with Apple fan boys who’ll instinctively bury Microsoft ads, marketing agencies who will simply give up in frustration unable to create ads Digg users are satisfied with and all that aside, each ‘ad’ is likely to have to deal with the masses of typical Digg commentary slating every aspect of it and the company behind it,” he wrote on The Next Web Blog.

As if Twitter weren’t popular enough before, adding the TV element is certain to gain users from a less tech-savvy viewership. What’s next? FTV? Facebook TV? Or perhaps, rather than buying newspapers, Google will start its own television network? With Twitter at the forefront of this new media mixture, only time will tell if others will follow the Twitter vision for television.

Using Twitter in reality TV shows will certainly add a new element of reality. For many people, the Internet is a place to share private things they probably wouldn’t even be willing to mention to coworkers or close friends. Ironically though, those same coworkers are a part of their social network, and through the Internet they know they still sleep with a stuffed animal, used to weigh 30 pounds less, and can find at their fingertips 25 other embarrassing facts that they really never wanted to know about in the first place.

This is what adding Twitter to reality TV will give to the new show. Information you never needed to know about someone you don’t really know, but information that you’re dying to know because you feel like you know this person as well as your own brother. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when the first season opens up. Meanwhile, you can tweet about it, if you want.

The report found that the average American every month watches 153 hours of TV at home. In addition, the 131 million Americans who watch video on the Internet watch on average about 3 hours of video online each month at home or work. The 13.4 million Americans who watch video on mobile phones watch on average about 3.5 hours of mobile video each month.

During the first quarter, the growth of online video was driven by both strong brand marketing and large media events including the Presidential inauguration, the Super Bowl and March Madness.

Teens continue to watch the most mobile video, clocking in with an average of 6.5 hours of video on their mobile phones each month.

With broadband levels increasing in the U.S., online video audiences will continue to grow as consumers begin to upgrade their computers to support increased video consumption.

Growth also depends on how broadband channels promote themselves. As sites continue to heavily market themselves, they’ll increase the levels of growth by creating demand.

Mobile video viewing has increased 52 percent in Q1 2009 from the previous year, up to 13 million Americans. The most popular categories are comedy and weather.

It is not the first (or last) objection to Google’s photographing streets for its mapping services street view. In the UK, Sussex residents resisted Google’s photographic intrusion, complaining about similar reasons—the lack of privacy. And, for obvious reasons, the U.S. Government put the kibosh on Google’s taking pictures on military bases.

It’s not that Greece is against the progress of technology (or a potentially sweet view of the Acropolis in a drive-by picture shoot). It’s just that they want a little bit more info on how Google is going to process original images, how they will store them, how long they will keep them, how they will protect them from harm or molestation, and how Grecian denizens would know that they were being photographed if a tripod-mounted car drove past. Google has already intoned that they would blur out people’s faces, that they would blur the license plates of vehicles, and that they would even take pictures down if people requested that they do so.

But Greece is serious about privacy. So serious, in fact, that they have a government agency (Hellenic Data Protection, HDP) whose sole mission is to protect people’s privacy. The group even outlawed security cameras because of their potential misuse regarding privacy concerns.

On Friday, European Commission officials met to discuss the issue, and now they are prepared to bring the issue before the European College of Commissioners, the next check in the legislative process. After that, Intel gets to respond to the challenges, and potentially faces staggering monetary losses.

Intel’s disregard of the European antitrust regulations is an eight-year old issue which dates back to their spat with AMD in 2000. Intel purportedly tried to shut down the competition by subsidizing computer manufacturers for not buying AMD chips. Instead,

Intel drove their own prices down—so low that they were below cost—only to keep the competition away from Intel’s wish-list target markets. The strategy worked. Intel captured those big-name accounts and drove the prices back up to customary costs. In addition, some accuse Intel of blatantly paying retail chains to sell only Intel-installed products.

Obviously, such actions would warrant a second-look by trust-busting hounds. The European Union first filed complaint in 2007, but has since garnered additional charges that are expected to be part of Wednesday’s philippic against the California-based chip-maker.

Anti-trust laws are very complex items indeed. And filing said charges is no simple matter. That’s why the EU has taken a very long time in composing their case and in submitting it. This particular case could be bigger than any other in European history.

The Cost
The price tag on a proposed Twitter buyout could reach $700 million, maybe higher. Twitter said no to $500 millionish offers from other tech giants. Apple, sitting on a $30 billion pile of cash, has the chutzpah throw the price tag up a couple hundred million. But isn’t that a lot of money for a social networking site? As history tells us (Facebook and MySpace) social networking sites aren’t exactly the most profitable businesses. Why would Apple spend so much money on Twitter?

Could Twitter be different? Or maybe it’s Apple that’s different, and will be able to capitalize in a way that only Steve Jobs could conceive of. Either way, Apple is rumored to spend a sizeable chunk of their well-earned cash to buy a website—a website where people tell their followers what they ate for lunch.

The Reason
When Apple makes a move, you can be sure it is a calculated and thought-through move. As techies ruminate on the proposed Apple-Twitter union, one word comes to mind: iPhone. Although you can tweet without an iPhone, the cool iPhone apps that help you tweet like a pro are only available through Apple…and an iPhone. Although it seems like small brick upon which to build a castle, this could be a driving reason why Apple may make the purchase. But then again, Apple may have something new in the works that may make a Twitter purchase make perfect sense.

The Timeline
As with all Apple rumors, we won’t know the truth until June 8, when Apple holds the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California.

Disney joins NBC Universal, Fox parent News Corp and Providence Equity Partners in the venture. As part of the deal Disney has agreed to take a nearly 30 percent stake in Hulu.

The deal will add to Hulu’s programming line-up with full-length episodes of popular programs like “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Scrubs,” “Ugly Betty,” “General Hospital,” and “The View.” The programs will be streamed on Hulu on an ad-supported basis.

“From our landmark iTunes deal to our pioneering decision to stream ad supported shows on our ABC.com player, Disney has sought to meet the constantly evolving viewing habits of our consumers, and today’s Hulu announcement is the next important step in that ongoing journey,” said Robert A. Iger, president and CEO, The Walt Disney Company.

Select programs from the Disney Channel including “Wizards of Waverly Place” and “Phineas and Ferb” will also be available on Hulu.

In March Hulu became the third most popular online video site for the first time according to comScore. The site had 380 million videos viewed representing a market share of 2.6 percent. Hulu also attracted 41.6 million viewers during the month. The partnership with Disney will only lead to even stronger growth.

“Hulu’s growth has been fueled in part by the combination of a compelling user experience, increased consumer awareness of the brand, and an overall market trend toward viewing long-form online video content,” Andrew Lipsman, Director, Industry Analysis, comScore, told WebProNews.

2008 was a good year for Oracle. As software sales shot up early in the year, they glanced back at IBM, whose sales they had already eclipsed. By the end of the 2008 calendar year, Oracle had posted a 29% growth, and profits to the tune of 5 and a half billion.

But that was only the prelude to their success story. Early in 2009, As congress bantered around big numbers to save big business, Oracle was bantering around big numbers to buy big business. They picked Sun Microsystems, and after a few high-level talks, Sun Microsystems became part of Oracle on April 20. Nobody makes mammoth acquisitions during a recession. But Oracle just did.

As Oracle closed the books on the third quarter of their fiscal year (February 28), they posted a modest profit—over 4%. Catz, president of Oracle claimed, “We are running our business at record operating margins.” And nobody doubted him.

Still, Oracle shows no sign of slowing. Since 1999, Oracle has gobbled up 54 companies in its acquisition-centered growth strategy. At more than five acquisitions a year, Oracle has proven that it has a big appetite. Who is next? With a war chest of around 12 billion, and a steadily climbing growth rate, they are proving that the recession has nothing on the technology sector.